Page 76 of The Stipulation
“I don’t think that will come up.”
“Humor me.”
She considers. “Five years.”
“Happy?”
She tilts her head, studying me as if she’s weighing the truth. “Obnoxiously so.”
I smile slowly. “Good.”
We’ve chosen our names carefully.
I’m Daniel Laurent, an American financier with discreet European interests, and she’s my wife, Elena Laurent, a London-born and educated art consultant with expensive taste and questionable ethics. We’re a couple with a lot of corrupt money that needs laundering and spending. A couple hunting for something special.
“Ready, Elena?” I ask.
“I was born ready, Daniel,” Jo replies.
I open the door and gesture for her to go in first. I stay a step behind her. There is no quaint bell above the door to chime as we enter. Instead, there is a surveillance camera watching us with an unblinking red light.
The interior of the gallery is understated but meticulous. Parquet floors polished to a mirror sheen, cream walls, quality lighting, the air faintly scented with beeswax. The pieces on display are impressive and carefully curated. There’s a minor Chagall, an early Dubuffet sketch, a modest Modigliani drawing that is real enough but not extraordinary.
This isn’t where the real inventory lives, but to anyone wandering in off the streets, it would certainly look legit, and no one would suspect this was a front for an undoubtedly successful high-end black-market art trader.
Behind a sleek walnut desk stands a man who looks like he was carved from patience and calculation. He is Henri Delacroix, the dealer who moved the stolen Gainsborough. He is in his mid-fifties with thick, immaculately brushed back silver hair. He has a narrow fox-like face, his skin sallow but smooth. He is wearing a charcoal suit, perfectly tailored, of course, paired with a silk pocket square in muted sapphire. He wears neither a tie pin nor a flashy watch, but his cufflinks are clearly expensive. On the surface, there is nothing about him to suggest he is anything but the owner of a small but successful art gallery.
But beneath the surface is where it all happens, and beneath the surface, Henri Delacroix is anything but legitimate. His eyes are the most telling thing about him. They are a very pale brown, and they are sly and watchful. I know he has clocked every detail about Jo and me as we came into the gallery. His expression tells me he is unimpressed. He doesn’t smile, not even when we approach the desk. He assesses us coldly instead.
“Bonsoir,” he says smoothly. His English, when it comes, is flawless but faintly accented. “How may I assist you?”
“MonsieurDelacroix, I am Daniel Laurent. I spoke to your assistant on the telephone on Friday and confirmed an appointment for today,” I say.
“Yes, I was expecting you. Welcome,” he says, his expression one of the least welcoming I have seen on the face of someone who wants to make a sale. Until he knows for sure we are interested in something … let’s say different … he probably doesn’t want to make a sale. That’s why the pieces he has are so overpriced. Replacing them when they are just a front for his real business is enough of a hassle that if a rich tourist who doesn’t know any better buys one of them, it makes it worth his while to allow it.
Jo glides forward next, her expression haughty, her bearing proud and careless. Even I could believe she’s some rich brat with a penchant for criminal pursuits.
“We were told you might be able to help us with something … specific.”
A slight pause. The air shifts. She has his interest now. Delacroix studies her, not lasciviously, not crudely, but intellectually. He is likely measuring whether he thinks she has enough money to make a discussion of this kind worth his time.
“And who told you such a thing, Madame?”
I answer before she can. Calm. Controlled. “Mr. Rousseau in Geneva.”
I have never personally met Mr. Rousseau in Geneva, but the name lands. Not recognition, but possibility. Delacroix’s expression changes by half a degree. “You are not tourists.”
“No,” I reply.
“And you are not collectors of casual means.”
“No.”
He raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Law enforcement, perhaps?”
Jo lets out a quiet laugh. “Do we look like law enforcement?”
His eyes flick between us. “No, but one can never be too careful in my line of work.”
