Von Oehson tried to stand. He couldn’t. Not yet. Best he could do was push himself up with his arms just enough so he could sit. The front door, which I’d closed behind me, was now keeping him propped up. If it wasn’t there he’d still be flat on his back.
“Who else is here?” I asked.
His head was down, his chin like a leaky faucet. Plop…plop…plop…the blood was dripping. He wasn’t answering.
“Who else is here?” I repeated.
“It’s just me,” he said finally. “Carter’s up at school…the wife’s in Palm Beach.” He lifted his head. For the first time I saw the eyes of a man who maybe didn’t have all the answers. “How’d you know I wasn’t in the city?”
“The same way I’m holding this,” I said, raising the folder that Foxx had given me. “But we’ll get to that in a moment.”
“Ten million,” he said.
The guy had no shame. “Do you really think you can buy your way out of this?”
“Twenty.”
“Insult me one more time and I swear I’ll kill you.”
“What do you want, then?”
“The truth,” I said. “From the beginning.”
“Carter was never in danger.”
“Gee, I feel so much better now.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“You stole your painting back years ago. That wasn’t enough?”
“No. The painting was about justice,” he said. “What I wanted was revenge.”
“No matter what the risk?”
“Controlling risk is what I do.”
“How’s that working out for you right about now?”
“I’m still going to get away with it,” he said, “no matter how much you know.”
“Get away with it? You arranged for the kidnapping of your son, and let the world think that he had killed himself.”
“Stop with the morality play, will you? It’s not your department.”
“What about the gambling problem? Carter and those bets? Was that all made up, too?” I asked.
“Not all of it. In fact, that’s what gave me the idea, the chance to finally pull this off after all these years. Carter forged that check from his mother, all right. Everything after that was my creation.”
“You mean, your masterpiece.”
“You gotta admit,” he said. “It was no ordinary plan.”
“So Carter, the painting—”
“He knew nothing about it. He still doesn’t. But, yeah, his little gambling problem was real. He was reckless. Spoiled. A little kidnapping wasn’t such a bad thing for him. A good wake-up call. Good for his character. Nice touch staging his return at his own funeral, don’t you think?”
“You’re sick.”
“And you’re just pissed because you got played,” he said, rising to his feet.
I could feel my fist balling up again but there was no point. No matter how many times you knocked a guy like von Oehson on his ass, you could never knock the asshole out of him.
He was even cracking a smile as he continued. “Pawn really isn’t the right word for you, though, is it? You were more like a very predictable bishop. Or maybe a knight. To be honest, I haven’t played chess in years.”
“Not with pieces, you mean.”
“Hey, you made all your own moves,” he said. “Each and every one was your decision. All I did was set up the board in just the right way.”
“No. What you did is use me,” I said.
“I use everybody, Dylan. That’s what rich guys do. Welcome to planet Earth.”
I stood there, staring at him. Glaring at him. Thinking about why he’d chosen me, how I truly was the right man for the job. He knew I’d say no when we first met, that I’d turn down his offer, so he made sure in advance that I’d end up saying yes.
He fed me just enough information, but never so much that I would catch on that he was leading me. I had to believe that I was always the smartest guy in the room. I’m the one, after all, who figured out the clue Carter had left in his father’s office. I spotted the telescope facing inward toward the bookcase, which gave us Jade’s fingerprint on the glass. How clever Carter had been, I thought, his putting it behind The Glass Menagerie.
But it wasn’t Carter. It was never Carter. It was always his father.
Von Oehson knew I’d bring all my skills to bear and begin connecting those dots, one after the other.
But wait. One dot didn’t make sense. Unless…
“Don’t tell me that Grigoryev was in on this, too,” I said. It didn’t seem possible.
“Hell, no,” said von Oehson. “I didn’t know he was the one who ran the escort service. You weren’t supposed to know, either. Or, at least, you weren’t supposed to need to know. You moved even faster than I thought. Before I could point you in the direction of Brunetti, you got tangled up with a mad Russian.”
I had a comeback for him, and I had more questions. A lot more questions. But it was late. Later than von Oehson even realized. There was more to this visit than telling him the jig was up.
So I cut to the end and the purpose of his elaborate plan, a payback that he had waited years to extract from the Hungarian government. Everything had to be just right, and it started with his finding the guy who could solve this mystery of his making. The disappearance of his son was the smokescreen. This was only about getting the Hungarians to buy back the Monet so he could not only hack their central bank to the tune of fifty billion dollars, but also conceal the transaction so it couldn’t be traced. He even knew I’d figure out a way to switch the real Monet with a fake.
All in all, Mathias von Oehson had indeed painted a true masterpiece. And all in the name of revenge.
“Where’s the money?” I asked.
He cracked another smile. It didn’t matter that he was still bleeding and bruising right before my eyes. “What money?”
“Seriously? That’s your answer?”
“Oh, relax, will you? Everyone made out who deserved to, including your husband’s legal aid center. You know your world history. Are you really going to cry for Hungary? The only ones who got hurt were the ones who had it coming to them,” he said.
“Funny you should say that.”
“What does that mean?”
The time had come to wipe that smugness off his face.
It was time to show him the folder.