Geisman arrives at the central train station a bit past noon on Monday. Instead of work clothes like last time, he’s wearing pressed blue jeans, heather-green nubuck day-hiking boots, a wine-red, crew-neck sweater and an aqua wind shell. I guess if he gets bored, he can go hiking in the mountains I can see from the plaza outside the station.
I take Julie to greet him. The German and Austrian news have run small stories about the M275 art heist but don’t mention Gillian; it seems safe enough for now.
When they get done cheek-kissing, Geisman shakes my hand. “Herr Simon, I am very pleased to see you again.” We have to risk using our old covers so we don’t have to explain why we have new names. “I have the photographs you asked for, although I cannot say I fully understand why you want them.”
“I don’t fully understand it, either.” We go outside and angle across the plaza toward the blue-gray glass box of Forum1, the shopping mall next to the station. It also has the closest parking. “I guess I’m trying to put images to the names on the list. How many did you find?”
“Forty-three. I expect that some of them are on the internet already.”
“I’ll take ‘em anyway. Thanks.”
We claim the Citroen from the parking garage and start on our way back to the hotel. The roads here aren’t as narrow or as tangled as the ones in Portsmouth. I guess this is the one upside to having your city bombed to pieces.
Julie asks, “Did you find out anything more about Ute?” She’s in the back seat with Geisman. It feels like I’m practicing for my new career with Uber.
“Very little, I fear. Beata Leininger is her carer. I spoke with her briefly when I arranged for our interview. Frau Kinigader is blind and is becoming frail. She also does not understand or speak English. Frau Leininger attends to her every second day. She will be present during our meeting. She would not share any further information.” I catch his nervous smile in the rear-view mirror. “I doubt that we will be welcomed with kind thoughts and open arms.”
I ask, “Does Kinigader have any other relatives we can talk to?”
“He must have, of course.” Geisman tries to make eye contact in the mirror, but we’re moving around too much. “If we knew his family heritage, we could trace his relatives. Unfortunately, we do not yet. There are several people in Austria with the ‘Kinigader’ name, but how do we know they are part of the correct family? Perhaps Frau Kinigader can assist us.”
Yeah, good luck with that.
After Geisman checks into our hotel, we meet in the restaurant to go over the questions he’ll ask Ute at Wednesday’s interview. The list takes up three pages, with diagrammed branches depending on her answers. Until he told us Ute’s blind, I’d been considering showing her pictures of some pieces in her dad’s inventory to see if she’d react. Oh, well.
Tuesday night. We see Ute Kinigader tomorrow.
Geisman’s been hiding out at the city registrar’s office all day. I’ve been working Kinigader’s inventory. Julie pretends to write her book while she worries.
My brain hurts after another long brainstorming session with Carson, trying to come up with backup plans. The only progress we made was racking up a bigger bar bill. Everything we come up with has at least one of two problems: either it doesn’t pass the smell test, or it’s more of a long shot than the Ute plan.
When I get back to the room, Dorotea’s out of her bag, propped against a wall. Julie’s sitting on the floor next to the bed, facing the portrait with her arms wrapped around her knees. “You gotta be careful about having Dorotea out in the open,” I tell her. “What if I was housekeeping?”
Julie looks toward me, but not at me. After a few beats, she turns back to staring at her grandmother.
I put the “do not disturb” sign on the front door, then sit next to Julie, my shoulder against hers. I wrap my hand around the inside of her thigh and give it a little squeeze. “You okay?”
“I can’t believe she’s really here,” she finally murmurs.
“You don’t sound too happy about it. What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve been at this for almost eight years. Now what do I do?”
This sounds like project post-partum depression. One of Gar’s clients wrote novels, and she got the same way when she finished one. “Start an interesting hobby?”
She sniffs, a more polite version of one of Carson’s snorts. “Maybe. The rest of Oma’s paintings are still out there someplace. I told Stefan I want to find them, but…” She sighs. “Those are just things she owned. This—” she waves toward the portrait “—this is her. What’s left of her.”
“If you’re right about the wills, those others belong to you, too. There’s three on Kinigader’s list.”
“I know. I might need them to buy off Ron so he doesn’t sue me once I tell him they’re mine.” She shakes her head like it weighs a lot. “Not that I’ll have a way to do it once he cuts me off. Stefan doesn’t work for free.” She gives me a long look. “Neither do you.”
I can’t tell if she’s fishing for a volunteer or just saying the way things are. “You only get to steal one.”
That gets an almost-smile out of her. She turns back to the portrait and admires it for a long while. “You know, this is all incredibly unfair.”
“You’re getting Dorotea back.” I don’t say, what else do you want?
“I don’t mean for me. I mean for everyone else. They say there’s what, a hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand artworks still missing from the war? I don’t think anyone really knows; I think they’re just guessing. And they’re not just from Jewish families. The Nazis stole from everyone—churches, museums, cities. Private collections owned by gentiles. And that’s just the Nazis—the Russians stole something like a million and a half pieces at the end of the war. A lot of it’s still in storage at the Hermitage and the Pushkin. No one really knows what they’ve got.” She lets go of her legs and wraps her arms around herself. “All those innocent people who’ll never get their stuff back. I did, they won’t. That’s what’s unfair.”
Now I get it. I thread my arm around her shoulders and give her a one-armed hug. “So go to work for them. Once you get Dorotea back, you and Geisman have a pretty powerful story. Randy Schoenberg’s career took off after he got Maria Altmann’s Klimt away from the Austrians. There’s an interesting hobby for you.”
Julie smiles a little, maybe wistfully. “I’ll say.” She loses a staring contest with her grandmother. “All we need is a happy ending, right? You’ll get that for me?”
Can I? “Sure. One Hollywood ending, coming right up.”