Chapter 12
February 1
New topic in art class this week: the self-portrait. Every artist in the history of mankind has done one. Even kindergartners do them. There are millions out there. Faces upon faces, the painter using the model that is most available: himself.
We’re set up at large tables in the classroom, each with our own eight-by-eleven-inch mirror. A sketchpad and charcoal lie neatly in front of me. Given my current police job, this should be easy.
“Do my tonsils look big?” Jonah asks, studying his mouth in the mirror. Tap, tappity, tap, tap. His fingers drum on the wooden surface between us. He leans over to look into my mirror, as if anything’s going to be different, and sticks his tongue out like he’s at the doctor’s office. “Ahhhh.” His breath smells like turkey and mustard.
“Jonah. Personal space.” I shove him over to his side of the table for the millionth time and grab my mirror, turning my back to him and scooting my chair to the corner of the desk, hopefully out of his reach. Okay, time to sketch. The only thing I see is my enormous glasses. Not so much a self-portrait as a picture of dorkiness. I take them off, squinting at my reflection. Do I have my mother’s eyes? Hard to say from my severely nearsighted perspective. They’re either buried behind the eyewear or scrunched into slits as I squint to draw them properly.
The rest is pretty straightforward: a small nose, full mouth, decently smooth skin although who knows what will happen there when puberty hits, and roundish cheeks. No startling Egyptian cheekbones for me. My smile is my best feature, or so I’m told, which ironically I get from my dad. Straight teeth and a wide grin. Maybe I’ll grow a mustache like him later in life. He did attract my mother, after all.
I decide to do the portrait smiling. I need all the help I can get.
An eerie feeling sweeps goose bumps across my neck. I realize Jonah’s stopped moving. I put my glasses on and glance back at him in alarm, wondering if he’s gone into some sort of spastic shock, his brain circuits finally fried. He’s watching me with a studious expression. Then he glances around the room to make sure no one’s listening.
“How’s it going?” he whispers, his blue eyes loaded with meaning. Asking about the case. He’s so still, so quiet, that I’m tempted to snap a picture of him on my cell phone to show my parents. See, Mom? He can be calm when he needs to be.
I shrug. “The same. No information yet.”
“You’ll tell me as soon as you know something, right? We have to solve this. You have to come back to Senate next year.”
I smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.” My voice is strained with forced cheer. We have no information, nothing to help solve the case. I don’t even know what the case is. Pathetic.
His answering smile is small and sad. I told him last week about how my dad lost his job and now my parents can’t afford the school. Worst conversation ever.
“We’ll solve it,” he agrees. The tapping starts up again. He clears his throat and pulls my mirror into his work area. “Ahhhhh,” he says, fogging up the glass. “Are you sure you don’t see anything white in my throat? I’m noting some pus in the back left corner. And the tonsils are definitely swollen.”
I snatch the mirror from him and remove my glasses, studying my face once more. I position my hand over the paper, ready to draw.
“Hey, why do you keep taking your glasses off?” he asks. “You’re blind as a bat. You can’t draw without them, Edmund. And your glasses are a part of you. It has to be an accurate self-portrait. I’m going to draw my tonsils. Very art nouveau. Are you even listening to me? Edmund! Edmund!”
I roll my eyes and ignore him, but inside I’m relieved. Things are back to normal. At least for today.
February 2
In the end my mother gets the chaperone job.
She has decided that she can read the paper and do Internet business from her iPad on a museum bench while keeping an eye on me, thereby assuring that no one kidnaps me or sets me on fire or whatever other scary scenario is playing out in her mom brain. Plus she likes being in art museums, and my dad needs to start his job search. It’s a win-win.
We aren’t going to tell her about the stolen canvas, because she would freak out and make me quit. I reviewed the museum tape with Bovano; it appears that some random guy just lifted the canvas and left. The police have decided that it’s unimportant and we should just carry on, business as usual.
Detective Bovano is in love with my mother, of course.
“Call me Frank,” he says when they first meet at the station.
Frank? Are you kidding me? Even my dad calls him Detective Bovano.
“Nice to meet you, Frank.” She smiles at him as he shakes her hand for waaay too long. I’m telling you, the woman casts a spell on everyone she meets. Even Jonah is gaga for her, which is just plain gross and clearly against the code of the best friend.
Bovano muscles me into his office by the arm, leaving my mother out in the main area with a cup of tea that he personally fetched for her. I resist rolling my eyes.
“You passed the practice run,” he says as he deposits me in the chair in front of his desk. “I have your assignment.” He circles the desk and rummages through one of the drawers.
This is it: my assignment! Will he give me folders to read through, or even boxes of all the notes he’s made from the past few years of working on the case? I can barely sit still.
He pulls out a small scrap of paper and hands it to me.
“This is it?” I don’t mask the annoyance in my tone. The man is infuriating. This entire situation stinks like a bad pastrami sub with rotten cheese.
He gives me a curt nod. “That’s it.”
I stare at the bleak paragraph, my supposed “debriefing,” a minuscule blurb that could have been written by a third-grader:
We are looking for a group of suspected art thieves. They have a leader, a blond man. He and the others have been difficult to catch on surveillance. You need to identify these men, and anyone else suspicious who catches your attention.
“But there’s no information here,” I say, stating the obvious.
He answers me with a sneer. “What, you expect me to hand you over the files? Give you the keys to the office? That’s all the detail you need,” he says, gesturing to the paper in my hand. “Plus these pictures.”
He whips out three photos, one of a bald guy who I imagine is the man my father met in the alley, one of a blond man with a trimmed beard, and one of an older man with crazy fluffed-out hair. Bovano holds up the pictures for a split second, then plunks them into a drawer.
“Detective, wait, I—”
“Did you see the photos? Did they pass through your field of vision? Yes? Then they’re in your brain. According to you.”
It’s a direct challenge. Why does this man loathe me so much? I nod glumly. They’re in there. But I didn’t catch the names. Bovano covered up the writing in the lower left-hand corner with his thumb. On purpose, no doubt. “You know this man, of course,” he says, pulling out the picture I drew of the guy with the knife. The one my dad calls Marco.
“Yes,” I mutter.
“All right, then,” Bovano says, standing up. “Those are the most recent pictures we have of the suspects. Your job is to find them. We start tomorrow. Be ready.”
I glance over my shoulder as he ushers me out of the office, focusing on the bulletin board behind his desk where the real materials dangle. Names, city maps, possible crime sites . . .
I go home and draw the three men that he showed me, staring at their faces as if they’ll speak to me from the page and give me the answers I’m looking for. I need more to go on. How am I supposed to solve this case if I don’t have any details?