Page 38 of The Art of Vanishing
Jean
We looked out through the frame in front of us to see that two figures dressed head to toe in black were standing there.
One of them held the journal in their hands.
The alarm had scared them—had they not expected it?
They appeared frozen in place, just how we were supposed to be.
In their moment of hesitation, I grabbed Claire’s hand and dragged her behind the chair in the living room we were currently in, pulling her to crouch down next to me.
Everyone left in the paintings in this gallery stopped in their tracks.
One of the thieves shouted at the other, but I couldn’t make out what they said over the sound of the alarm.
They gestured wildly, pointing toward the exit.
The one holding the journal shouted back and they both took off running toward the door.
Just before they could make a clean exit, they stepped in the puddle of water Claire had spilled when she’d arrived tonight, both falling to the ground next to her cart in a flail of limbs.
With a lack of coordination that would have been comical had the moment not been catastrophic, they got to their feet and finally made it out.
Around us, the alarm continued to ring and we could hear the sound of locks thudding into place at all the exits. The figures in the paintings scattered, racing back to the frames they were supposed to be in. Claire stood up and shouted over the sound: “I have to go!”
“No!” I yelled as I grasped for her hand. She was safe here. I couldn’t protect her out there. “You should stay here with me. You’ll be safe and we’ll be together. I love you!” I shouted as the alarm screamed in the gallery.
“I can’t get stuck here, Jean, I’m sorry!
” Claire leapt from the frame, landing beside the now empty journal stand.
She ran off to her bucket and was making to leave when she stopped, staring down at the floor.
All I could see below her was the puddle of rags, now a soggy mess from the thieves’ fall.
Claire bent down, like she was looking for something, but she straightened back up only to throw the pile of rags into her trash can.
I didn’t understand what she was doing. I waved my arms and yelled, “Get out of here!,” hoping she’d be able to read my lips. Then, on the floor below, we both heard sirens, police cars screeching up to the front door. Claire rushed away into a different gallery, dragging her cart behind her.
For a few seconds, it was just me and the alarm.
I looked across to the plinth, empty of its former treasure.
I could hardly believe my own eyes. I sat back on my heels, looking around, and made eye contact with Odette, standing in the doorway behind me, mouth agape at what had just happened.
She too left in a hurry, crossing away from me and, presumably, back to her painting.
We weren’t going to be alone for long; it was time to get back in position. I sprinted to my living room.
The cavalry arrived at the same time that Marguerite and Pierre rushed into our frame, gasping for breath from their exertion.
The room filled with men in uniforms—security guards and police officers shouting at the top of their lungs that no one was to leave the premises, trying to be heard over the perpetually blaring alarm.
More than one person slid on what was left of Claire’s puddle, skidding along the floor until they found something or someone else to steady themselves.
“What did they take?” one police officer screamed at a security guard. The guard scanned the room, not seeing anything missing from the walls. Finally, his eyes alighted on the empty stand for the journal.
“It’s this new installation,” the security guard yelled in response. The alarm finally cut off in the middle of his sentence, leaving his voice booming across the room. He looked around sheepishly and continued at a normal volume. “Some kind of journal or something.”
“Let’s go,” the officer said, “we have to lock this place down.”
Twenty minutes later, Christie, Henry, and Lisa hobbled into the gallery in various states of disarray. Christie was wearing a nightgown, pants haphazardly pulled on beneath it. When she saw the bare plinth, she howled a bloodcurdling scream.
“It’s gone, ” she wept into Lisa’s arms. “What happened?”
Lisa kept one arm curled around her shoulders as she turned to a security guard. “How did they get in?” she asked.
“Pretty sure they broke in through the service entrance,” he answered.
“We found a guard unconscious and a janitor bound and gagged on the first floor. No sign of any other alarms being triggered until after the journal’s alarm went off.
The southeast fire exit went off about forty seconds later, leading us to believe that is how the thieves exited. ”
“Has the FBI been alerted? What’s the protocol for something like this? How do I not know this answer?” she peppered him with further questions. “Where’s Jamie?”
“Yes, the FBI has been alerted. An agent from their Philadelphia branch will be here soon, joined shortly by their colleagues from the D.C. art theft department. And I’d imagine you don’t know, ma’am, because we have never had so much as a break-in in the almost century of our existence as an institution,” he finished proudly.
Lisa glowered at him. “Until tonight,” she corrected.
“Until tonight,” he echoed.
“What happened?” Marguerite was crouched beside me on the ground, whispering into my ear. “Did you see the thieves? And where’s Claire? Is she here, hiding?”
“She’s gone,” I whispered.
“Obviously no one leaves,” said the security guard, “until the FBI has cleared them. And we’d prefer to keep this on a closed circuit, not telling anyone about the theft for the time being.”
“It’s already all over social media.” Henry stepped forward, showing their small group the screen of his phone.
They crowded together as he continued. “My daughter just sent me this thing on Twitter from @art_hei5t: ‘Blind item: something irreplaceable went missing from a certain trending museum tonight. Any guesses on what it is and who’s got it?’?”
“How do they already know?” Christie asked.
“Some kid probably picked it up on a police scanner,” the security guard said, glancing at the cops milling around the room.
Crime scene tape was being wrapped around the journal’s stand and Claire’s spill.
A man with a large camera set off his flash multiple times as he captured the scene.
The room fell into a productive hum as everyone quieted down to get to their jobs, Christie calming her cries to a gentle burble.
A man arrived in the midst of all this, wearing the pants, shirt, and tie of a suit, but in place of a traditional suit jacket was a navy athletic jacket with large yellow letters that spelled “FBI” on the back. It was the middle of the night, but he had sunglasses tucked in his shirt pocket.
“Who here has been in charge so far?” His voice boomed.
The security guard who had filled the board members in earlier timidly raised his hand.
“I’m going to need you to walk with me. And bring up everyone who was in the museum at the time of the theft, I understand they are all still here—janitors, guards, anyone else.
I’m going to need to talk to them all, one by one. ”
The few security guards in the room scattered to the various exits, off in search of those remaining, as a team of people in FBI jackets that matched the lead agent’s streamed into the room. He turned back to the chief security guard.
“Mark Smith, special agent for the art theft team.”
“Stan Kaminski, former police chief; I’ve been head of this security team for five years now. Wow, you got here fast.” Stan checked his watch; it couldn’t have been more than an hour since the journal theft, right? Time was moving in an unusual way tonight.
“My team was in the area for another case. Ballpark it for me—what went wrong tonight?”
Officer Kaminski looked back over his shoulder at his four museum colleagues; Jamie had slipped in during the FBI’s arrival. Mark read his cues and went over to address the group.
“Hi, everyone, Agent Smith,” he introduced himself. “You can call me Mark.” He offered his hand to shake. Henry clasped it as Christie readjusted her face covering. Mark asked, “What affiliation do you have to the museum?”
“I’m Henry Wallingham, this is Christie Hall”—Christie sniveled in acknowledgment of her name—“and Lisa Meyer.” Lisa nodded. “We’re on the board and are chairing the committee on this installation. And this”—Henry indicated the fourth member—“is Jamie Leigh; she’s the president of the museum.”
“Might I ask you all to make yourselves comfortable, perhaps in one of the offices or library spaces? I think it’s going to be a while until we have anything to report,” Mark said.
“A representative from the museum needs to be present,” Christie snapped.
“Absolutely.” Mark was nodding. “Jamie, you’re welcome to stay.” Jamie looked at the rest of the group with regret as Mark’s people escorted them from the room.
“I’ll come and update you soon,” Jamie promised. Mark had moved back over to Officer Kaminski. Henry, Lisa, and Christie shuffled out slowly. Jamie rejoined the inner circle.
“So,” Mark said to the head security guard. “You were saying?”
“Like Henry said, there’s this new installation that was put in the day before the museum reopened to the public.
It has really limited security—no glass, no nothing, just this little barrier with a warning sensor”—he kicked against the bar that kept the viewer away from the plinth—“and an alarm that activates if someone gets too close for comfort.”
“Tell me about the book,” Mark said to Jamie.
“It’s a journal that a woman discovered in her grandmother’s effects; the author is an unidentified model from the same era as many of the artists featured in this museum, as well as an artist in her own right.”
“What’s the reception been like?”
“Well, it’s been terrific so far. The donor instructed us to turn one page each day until the entire journal has been revealed, and we’ve started doing exactly that.
Patrons have already been returning to read the next page, Reddit threads have sprung up around the world, the art community is abuzz.
There are theories about who the author is that span from the ancestors of French nobility to Matisse’s own daughter. No one can get enough of this story.”
Marguerite let out a single involuntary, “Ha,” and I was sure the journal was not hers.
Mark turned his head to either shoulder, relieving cricks in his neck. “We’re going to need to do some digging into those online boards. Typically, they do more harm than good in situations like these.”
“What do you mean?” Jamie asked.
“Well, it’s a multipart answer. Once we get to the investigation, they can get in our way—trying to solve the case on their own with whatever clues they can find.
Sometimes they’re off, but they turn the public against us.
And sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—they’re actually spot-on and they blow up a lead before we’ve gotten a chance to investigate it.
It’s also possible they’ve already been stirring the pot—creating so much intrigue around this installation that they fed the idea for this theft right into the criminals’ hands. ”
“Ah, technology.” Jamie sighed. “Friend and foe.”
“Regardless, I’ll have my team keep a close watch on any new activity, see if there’s anything we should be paying attention to.”
“Maybe the perpetrator is a member of one of those groups themselves,” Officer Kaminski added.
“It’s possible. Then we can get into the tricky territory of them trying to protect one of their own.
No offense to this journal, but in just taking a glance around, it has to be one of the lowest-value objects in the room.
On that wall alone there’s a Modigliani, a Rousseau, at least half a dozen Matisses.
You’re sure nothing else was taken from the museum? ”
“We’ll have to do a closer inspection,” Jamie said. “But it seems like they came here for one thing and they got it.”
“I’ve seen some pretty enthusiastic fans in my many hours of service here,” Officer Kaminski added. “Maybe someone just really wanted to have the journal for themselves.”
One of the FBI agents entered the gallery, Claire right behind him. A few seconds later, Linda followed. He brought them over to the bench in front of us and gestured silently for them to sit. They did so, and he went over to address Mark.