The Death Artist by Jonathan Santlofer

Rothstein.” Oh, yes, Mert was good. Richard couldn’t wait to plunk down a few hundred grand for a piece of “history.”
    “Joel. How are you?”
    “Very well, thank you, Mrs. Rothstein.” This spoken barely above a whisper by the pretty young man behind the discreet mahogany desk–no big white island counters here. “Mr. Sharfstein is expecting you on two.”
    Kate cut through the public exhibition space with its enormous marble fireplaces, inlaid floors, decorative plaster ceilings; everything about it whispering in your ear: Money. Money. Money.
    The gallery’s grand circular staircase was a set for that actress of yesteryear, the one Kate’s mother liked so much, Loretta Young.
    “A cup of coffee, tea?” offered another young man, even prettier than Joel, this one whispering as though a baby were asleep in the next room as Kate took a seat in one of the small viewing rooms outfitted with a suite of Goya etchings.
    “Will Mert be long?”
    “Just a few more minutes,” he whispered. “He’s with a client.”
    Kate perused a Goya. Up close, the print was impossible to read, nothing more than washes of black and gray ink, dark and mysterious.
    The assistant urged her to back up. She did, and the image sprang to life: a matador slashing a bull.
    “You were too close to see it,” he said.
    A good point.
    Kate moved up again, studied those misty grays, then back, just as the door to Mert’s office swung open and the art dealer emerged, trailed by a young man in skintight leather pants and silky lizard-print shirt open to the navel.
    “Kate Rothstein. Mr. Strike.”
    “Strike, man. Just Strike.” He raised his head of wild blue-black hair toward Kate.
    “Oh, the musician. I just love ‘Mosh Pit Stomper.’ ” Kate snapped her fingers, then let loose with her best Joan Jett: “Kick me, punch me, love me to death, oh, mosh pit stomperrrrr . . .”
    Mert stared at her, mouth open.
    “Musician, that’s the ticket, luv.” Strike threw his multi-tattooed arm over Kate’s shoulder, gave her a mascara-heavy wink. “To everyone else I’m just a bloody rock star.”
    “Mr. Strike, excuse me , just Strike, has a finely tuned aesthetic sense. He’s just selected three old master drawings, a Rubens and two Dürers.”
    “Don’t know about that, luv. But they fucking well set me back. That’s for damn sure.”
    “Yes.” Mert managed a smile, but after another minute he dispatched Strike with his usual grace, then let out a dramatic sigh.
    “Honestly. The riffraff one must deal with these days.”
    “Strike just dropped what–maybe a mil, or two–and I’m supposed to feel sorry for you? ’Fraid not, luv. ” Kate kissed Mert’s cheek. She laughed, then got serious. “Mert, I want to show you something.” She slid the collage out of the envelope, her fingers trembling slightly. “Would you put on gloves. Please.” It might be too late as far as her prints were concerned, but why contaminate it any further? Just looking at it again, Kate was unnerved.
    Mert eased his delicate hands into white cotton art-handler gloves. Kate gave him her magnifier. He squinted through the glass, his eye enlarged to the size of a tennis ball. “Could be a figure, a child, or–Hold on. I have an idea.”
    Moments later, another of Mert’s pretty boy assistants was scanning the collage into one of the gallery’s computers–the image enlarged on the screen four times its original size. Mert tapped his lip, then pointed out one tiny fragmented image after another. “Blow them all up. And print them.”
    Fifteen minutes later, the assistant had not only enlarged over a dozen of the tiny fragments, but, under Kate’s and Mert’s direction, cut them out like puzzle pieces. Now, Kate shifted them around on Mert’s desk, linking up ones that fit together to create about a third of the painting: a child’s head, a breast and an arm, a good part of a royal-blue robe–a Madonna and Child.
    “It’s like a