The Cloisters(76)

“It’s about the figurine,” I said finally.

“What about it?” He didn’t seem anxious. If anything, he was defensive, his hands shoved tightly in his pockets.

“I know you stole it. I know it came from storage.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It hung limply, almost brushing the top of his shoulders.

“Ann—”

“Leo,” I said, my voice gaining strength, “you stole. From The Cloisters. And not just plants. I’ve seen the storage trays. There are a handful of other things missing.”

He shrugged and said nothing in response.

“Did Patrick find out?” I asked. I was facing him now, although still sitting in my chair.

At this, his head jerked up. “No. God, no. Ann. Patrick never knew. No one was even supposed to notice. You know what storage is like at the Met. Thousands of items. Works of art that will never see the light of day. Objects that aren’t rare enough, aren’t high quality enough. Objects that are too niche or from the wrong duchy. You name it. For every object in the gallery, there are two dozen in storage that have been deemed insufficient.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Why not?” he said. “It’s not like you’re not making questionable decisions in here every day. Deciding what has value and what doesn’t. When was the last time you took things without value seriously? That’s right, you don’t. You ignore everything that isn’t anointed as special or valuable or rare. Those objects in storage, some of them have been missing for years and no one ever raised the alarm. Because those objects have been forgotten. I’m giving them a second life. And sure, I’m making some money while I do it.”

It was, in a roundabout way, the same reason I had been drawn to the tarot cards, to my own work, to the objects that had been overlooked and just needed a champion. And in any case, Leo had always been honest with me. He was the kind of person, he once explained over warm beers, who believed that you could take what you wanted so long as it didn’t harm anyone. He had spit out a sunflower seed shell and added, Except for the rich. They deserve it. At the time I had thought it was an homage to anarchism, a punk sentiment turned life motto. But I realized now—and maybe I had then, too—that he meant it.

“Don’t you have debt?” he continued. “Don’t you struggle to make it work in this city on what they pay us here? Sure, Rachel doesn’t. But you, Ann. You haven’t tried to live here, day in and day out, with so little that you share your space with dozens of roommates who come and go. All of us working three, four, five jobs to get by. I did it so I could get space to write. To be experimental. So that I wasn’t getting ground down every day of my life. Isn’t that something you understand, Ann? Isn’t that why you’re here? To try to escape being ground down?”

I said nothing, but stared at him. He was right. It was exactly why I was here.

“How many pieces did you take? Total?” I asked.

He laughed. “You don’t even know, do you? You can’t tell which pieces are on loan or in Conservation and which ones were converted into writer’s grants and residencies. Art begetting art. It’s kind of beautiful if you think about it. The symmetry. The twinning.” He looked between the two of us, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you don’t get it.”

“What happened with Patrick?” Rachel finally asked. She had been quiet the whole time, not even watching our exchange, her gaze transfixed by the stained glass window at the end of the library.

“With Patrick?” Leo said. “Nothing happened with Patrick.”

Then, even if he was a little slower than we had been, I watched him realize the implications of the situation.

“You can’t be serious? You don’t think I—” He broke off, then started again. “No one even notices storage, least of all Patrick. He had no idea. I had nothing to do with what happened to Patrick. Nothing. I’m a thief. I have no problems stealing from people and places with all the money in the world, but I would never murder someone. Are you serious?”

“You’re the only one with motive,” I said, letting the statement out on an exhale, as if I had been holding it in since Leo entered the room.

“I don’t have a motive,” said Leo. “Patrick and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but I respected him. Everyone did.”

“But if he found out—” I said, as if the optics weren’t already clear.

“If he found out, I knew I would go to jail. So I made sure no one found out. Admit it, Ann, you wouldn’t have found out if you hadn’t been in my closet that day. I was scheduled to meet with my antiques dealer the day before, but I blew him off to spend the day with you. You’re the reason anyone even noticed. My weakness for you.”

He was looking at me, his voice had a thickness to it I had never heard, and I could feel the pain spreading from the palms of my hands to my stomach. I believed him. Leo was a criminal—that, I suppose, I had always known—but not that kind of criminal.

“We turned the information regarding the thefts over to Detective Murphy,” I finally admitted. It felt awful, sharing that piece of information. I had been the one to let the outside world in; I was the one who ripped the veil.

“You did what?” Leo said, his eyes still fixed on my face. “Ann. Come on.”