Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack followed Truman, and they met Governor Gilham on their way to the billiards room. Gilly was dressed as Shakespeare, sporting a wig and high-collared velvet robe, holding a cigar in one hand and a bleached skull in the other.
Truman opened the door and ushered them in. The lights were dim, and the room smelled of scotch and leather. Florence immediately drew Jack’s attention to the pool table, pointing out its panels of walnut burl, satinwood, and maple.
“Those diamond sights look like pieces of ivory,” Jack said.
“That’s because they are.”
“Welcome to the bachelor wing,” Truman said. “Where I keep some of the finest pieces in my collection.”
He pointed to a large hanging frame. It was Rembrandt van Rijn’s Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver.
“Is this what it’s going to look like when you give back all the money you hornswoggled from me last night?
” Governor Gilham asked, coming over to examine the painting with them.
He pulled off his wig and set his skull on the table.
“At this rate, I’m beginning to wonder if you invited me here simply to take me to the cleaners. ”
Truman slapped Gilham on the back. “Come, now, Gilly,” he slurred. “Someday you’re going to know when to walk away from the races you can’t win.”
“I’ll stick to politics, then,” he said, taking the final sip of his whiskey. He set his icy tumbler on the rim of the billiards table. A maid quickly swooped it up before it could leave a mark.
“Shall we shoot?” Gilham said to Rutherford. Rutherford grunted and began to set up the table.
Jack was careful not to look at the Rembrandt.
He had been following the art world ever since Pelican, and he remembered reading about it in the papers when Byrd bought it at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jack glossed past the painting and instead stopped in front of a framed picture depicting a sprawling white house.
Underneath it hung a plaque that read The Rows.
“What’s this?” Jack asked, examining it while he polished his cue stick. “Another property of yours?”
Truman nodded. “I bought it for my mother.”
Jack gave a low whistle. “She’s a lucky lady,” he said.
“Decidedly not,” Truman said. He poured himself a tumbler of brandy. “She was married to my father.”
“Does she live there now?”
Truman picked up another cue stick and inspected the end of it. “Unfortunately, no. She never even got to see it.”
Jack let that sit for a moment. He felt the tug of a lock, waiting to be fitted with the right key. “ ‘The Rows,’ ” he read. “What is it, then?”
“It’s an art school.”
“Ah. Philanthropy?”
“That. And payback.”
“That sounds like a good story,” Jack said.
Truman flipped his new cue stick, still surprisingly adroit. “My father was a real bastard. Spent all his money on drink, never let my mother do anything, least of all take the art classes she desperately wanted to take. I grew up in Chicago; you familiar?”
Jack shook his head. “Not much.”
“Well. My father, good old Franklin Byrd, used to take us out to Lake Forest once a month to look at the mansions along Lake Michigan. This was the one house in particular he always dreamed of.” Jack examined the photograph.
It was white, massive, clean, with a huge wraparound porch and blue stone terraces, gabled windows, and sculpted greenery set in front of it like a maze.
“My father always talked about how one day, when he’d ‘made it,’ this house would be his. ” Truman came to stand next to Jack.
“But he never did. So when I made my first million, I bought it instead. Named it after her—Rose. A little wordplay.”
“And then you made it into an art school.”
Truman smiled into his drink. “I did.”
“Out of love for her, or spite for him?”
Truman smiled. “The heart is a mystery, isn’t it.”
Rutherford and Florence were watching them. Rutherford’s cigar wisped smoke in the dim light. Jack could see the movement of Dallas Winston’s shadow just on the other side of the door.
“We used to visit the Chicago Institute on Sundays growing up. It was our own version of church. Took on new meaning after my older brother died.” Truman brought the cigar to his nose and smelled it, closing his eyes. “I bought the Judas in honor of her, too.”
“She loved Rembrandt?”
“One painting in particular.”
“Oh?” Jack asked.
“She used to go to the museum and stare at it for hours,” Truman said. “On loan the summer after Elias died. It was called The Raising of Lazarus.”
Jack froze.
He stole a furtive glance at Truman, but Truman’s face was blank.
Was this another one of Truman’s twisted games?
Jack breathed out slowly. He set down his glass.
The Lazarus. One of the five paintings that had been stolen from the Bastion.
He couldn’t hide how badly his fingers were shaking.
Truman was clearly drunk, his own hands struggling with the matchbook. Fumbling.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the faintest movement. A panel, slipping aside. He looked up, expecting to see a maid coming through the wall. Instead, he—
“Get down!” he yelled, and threw himself against Truman as a bullet exploded into the wall behind him.
Wood splintered in shrapnel as another bullet hit near Jack’s head.
Florence let out a short, pierced cry as Jack threw himself on top of Truman, waiting for a bullet to find him.
And all he could think in those final moments—was he really willing to die for a man he’d dreamed about killing himself?
Dallas was sprinting across the room and wrenching the secret passageway open. Ronald Rutherford ran to a panel in the wall and picked up a telephone, yelling into the receiver for the guards to cut off the intruder at the other exits. Jack’s ears were ringing, his vision tunneling.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Truman was white, and breathing heavily beneath Jack. “Were you hit?”
It was then that Jack noticed the blood that was seeping through the velvet of his own suit.