The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,234

pink.

After the food arrived—Asian fusion, with lots of crispy flying buttresses of wonton and frizzled scallion, from his expression not much to his liking—I waited for him to work around to whatever he wanted to tell me. The carbon of the fake bill of sale, which I’d written out on a blank page in one of Welty’s old receipt books and backdated five years, was in my breast pocket, but I didn’t intend to produce it until I had to.

He had asked for a fork; from his slightly alarming plate of “scorpion prawn” he pulled out several architectural filaments of vegetable matter and laid them to the side. Then he looked at me. His small sharp eyes were bright blue in his ham-pink face. “I know about the museum,” he said.

“Know what?” I said, after a waver of surprise.

“Oh, please. You know very well what I’m talking about.”

I felt a jab of fear at the base of my spine, though I took care to keep my eyes on my plate: white rice and stir-fried vegetables, the blandest thing on the menu. “Well, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not talk about it. It’s a painful subject.”

“Yes, I can imagine.”

He said this in such a taunting and provocative tone I glanced up sharply. “My mother died, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, she did.” Long pause. “Welton Blackwell did too.”

“That’s correct.”

“Well, I mean. Written about in the papers, for heaven’s sake. Matter of public record. But—” he darted the tip of his tongue across his upper lip—“here’s what I wonder. Why did James Hobart go about repeating that tale to everyone in town? You turning up on his doorstep with his partner’s ring? Because if he’d just kept his mouth shut, no one would have ever made the connection.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You know very well what I mean. You have something that I want. That a lot of people want, actually.”

I stopped eating, chopsticks halfway to my mouth. My immediate, unthinking impulse was to get up and walk out of the restaurant but almost as quickly I realized how stupid that would be.

Reeve leaned back in his chair. “You’re not saying anything.”

“That’s because you’re not making any sense,” I rejoined sharply, putting down the chopsticks, and for a flash—something in the quickness of the gesture—my thoughts went to my father. How would he handle this?

“You seem very perturbed. I wonder why.”

“I guess I don’t see what this has to do with the chest-on-chest. Because I was under the impression that was why we were here.”

“You know very well what I’m talking about.”

“No—” incredulous laugh, authentic-sounding—“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Do you want me to spell it out? Right here? All right, I will. You were with Welton Blackwell and his niece, you were all three of you in Gallery 32 and you—” slow, teasing smile—“were the only person to walk out of there. And we know what else walked out of Gallery 32, don’t we?”

It was as if all the blood had drained to my feet. Around us, everywhere, clatter of silverware, laughter, echo of voices bouncing off the tiled walls.

“You see?” said Reeve smugly. He had resumed eating. “Very simple. I mean surely,” he said, in a chiding tone, putting down his fork, “surely you didn’t think no one would put it together? You took the painting, and when you brought the ring to Blackwell’s partner you gave him the painting too, for what reason I don’t know—yes, yes,” he said, as I tried to talk over him, shifting his chair slightly, bringing up his hand to shade his eyes from the sun—“you end up James Hobart’s ward for Christ’s sake, you end up his ward, and he’s been farming that little souvenir of yours out hither and yon and using it to raise money ever since.”

Raise money? Hobie? “Farming it out?” I said; and then, remembering myself: “Farming out what?”

“Look, this ‘what’s going on?’ act of yours is beginning to get a bit tiresome.”

“No, I mean it. What the hell are you talking about?”

Reeve pursed his lips, looking very pleased with himself.

“It’s an exquisite painting,” he said. “A beautiful little anomaly—absolutely unique. I’ll never forget the first time I saw it in the Mauritshuis… really quite different from any work there, or any other work of its day if you ask me. Difficult to believe it was painted in the 1600s. One of the greatest small paintings of all time, wouldn’t you agree? What was it”—he paused, mockingly—“what was it