Thorn, Fred Saberhagen [bearly read books .txt] 📗

      The master nodded. “Indeed he did, Signore Lorenzo. I watched with my own eyes.”

      What impressed me most, at my then primitive level of artistic judgment, was of course the marvelously lifelike character of the face, which like most of the figure was completely finished; parts of the background, as I think I have mentioned, were still not done. With this face before me, I felt I must know the model at once if ever I saw her in the flesh. And this suggested to me another point: such a perfect, breathing likeness, if allowed to remain here, might someday serve as evidence in the hands of King Matthias’s enemies, proof that his sister had indeed once been here and posing.

      “I would like to take this painting with me,” I said, reaching for my purse once more. “What is its price?”

      But this time the master of the shop would have none of my gold. “Please, signore, you will honor me by accepting this trifle as a gift.” Verrocchio made the offer quickly and easily; I am sure he calculated that in the long run he would not lose by such a gesture, which ought to bind him closer to the Medici in friendship; and, anyway, the gift was not all that expensive. Not in 1464, though within only a few decades the value of ready-made art from Florentine studios would increase tremendously.

      “It is only the work of a novice, signore, though he is gifted beyond—” Verrocchio broke off, catching sight of the boy still standing nearby, silently attentive. “Back to your work now, Leonardo.”

Chapter Seven

      So.

      It may be that some of my readers, equipped with good memories or else forearmed by a fortuitously recent reading of some art history, anticipated the little revelation at the previous chapter’s end. But before these readers congratulate themselves too heartily, let them consider why none of those supposedly expert folk involved in the art auction uttered that most potent name. Why, barring one hint by Ellison Seabright, there has not been even the most tentative suggestion along that line. Two points awarded for the correct answer, and more on the subject later. For the moment let it suffice that the reader has now caught up with Mr. Thorn in this much at least: that Magdalen was definitely not a Verrocchio, worth perhaps the quarter of a million dollars or so that Ellison Seabright paid for it; it was instead a genuine Leonardo da Vinci, heretofore unknown to the experts as such, but if its origin could be verified worth easily twenty times that much.

      The announcement of the missing aircraft caused Mr. Thorn to cut short his visit to the Seabright mansion as soon as he politely could—which, under the circumstances of confusion prevailing there, was not long. He took his leave without offering his host any further revelations of his own about the painting. He had not been about to provide that gross, half-clever criminal with any very truthful revelations anyway. The two of them vaguely agreed that they would talk to each other again sometime and with that matters between them were left hanging.

      Driving his rented Blazer back into the more plebian regions of the city, Mr. Thorn felt unhappy for several reasons. First, the painting was once more out of his reach, gone again, somewhere, where he could not even look at it. Second—or perhaps really first—it is always a painful experience, that dawning realization that one has underestimated an opponent. That first moment when the placidly grazing prey turns suddenly, baring its own fangs, unsheathing its own sharp claws … and, perhaps thirdly, perhaps worst of all, is the suspicion that one has finally grown old, become ineffectual through overconfidence.

      Mr. Thorn, still determined of course to have his painting, but denied it, and realizing now that he did not even know who his true adversary was, would have liked to go back in time two days, and start over again in the auction room. That being impossible even for him, he decided to do the next best thing, which was to come as close to starting over as he could.

      Sighting a public phone booth, he stopped and made a call. Twenty minutes later he was ringing the front doorbell of a modest house on an anonymously modest Phoenix side street.

      Robinson Miller, eyes full of subtle suspicions, appeared inside and let Thorn in. At Miller’s feet a small dog, on getting his first whiff of the visitor, yapped once in extreme surprise, and then was still. Behind Miller in the living room was the sofa that Mary once had mentioned, looking indeed as if it might have spent part of a long and adventurous career inside a Salvation Army store. Mary herself was just rising from its sagging cushions. Tonight her jeans had been replaced by shorts, revealing legs quite as attractive as Thorn had expected them to be. She wore a blue vinyl vest, doubtless because there was no bra beneath her blue T-shirt. With her usual eagerness for any new development, she greeted the visitor more freely than Miller had. “This is a surprise, Mr. Thorn. Glad to see you. Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”

      “Yes. Though I am not sure exactly what.” Thorn took the offered armchair, a place of honor that got the main benefit of the laboring window air conditioner. He declined well-intentioned offers of coffee and beer, and looked calmingly at the small dog who was edging close to offer worship. To the humans he related the essentials of his visit to the Seabright house.

      Mary was quite as upset as Thorn had been to hear about the missing plane, though her disquiet had a nobler basis. “Then the plane is really down? That’s bad. How many people were on it?”

      “Oh, I am sure that by this time it is down, somewhere. I gather that it carried only the pilot, a man named Gliddon. A search