Page 53 of The Picasso Heist
My father isn’t feeling “pretty good.” I’d know that even if he hadn’t looked away when he answered. Still, I don’t call him on it.He doesn’t want to talk about how he’s feeling or how he needs better care than what he’s getting from the poor excuse for a medical staff here. His heart attack was six months ago; he needs angioplasty and a stent and possibly a bypass, but the attending cardiologist is content to “monitor” the blockage in his right coronary artery and put him on blood thinners. Meanwhile, my father is getting weaker and weaker. What the prison is really monitoring is their bottom line. Heart procedures are expensive, and a cost-benefit analysis never favors the prisoner.
I’ve adapted to my father being here. The prison part, I mean. I’ve gotten used to the long drive north from the city and the stench of this place, to waiting in line for the metal detectors, then waiting in more lines to see him. The regimen has become habit, and the habit has become numbing, so much so that I almost don’t feel the crushing sense of loneliness and regret that fills every corner here.
But what I’ve never made peace with is how a place designed to let nothing and no one escape permeates every aspect of my own life. Who I was, who I was embarrassed to be—it all changed as fast and loud as the crack of a judge’s gavel. I was the daughter of none other than Conrad Greer, the man convicted of perpetrating a massive art scam, among various other crimes. Money laundering, wire fraud. And the hits just kept on coming.
“Greedy Greer!” read the headline in thePostwhen he was arrested. Then, when he was convicted: “Guilty Greer!”
Was he in fact guilty? Yes.
And no.
It wasn’t his scam, and he was taken advantage of by someone whom he had trusted. There came a point, however, when my father figured out what was happening and had the opportunity to put a stop to it. He would’ve been destroyed as an art dealer, his reputation ruined, but he almost assuredly would’ve suffered the consequences as a free man. In what should have been a moment of clarity for him,when he had the chance to clear his conscience, he allowed his fear and pride to trample his sense of right and wrong. Instead of taking action, he froze. Then he rationalized, thinking if he just went along with the scam and saw it through to its end, he could live with the guilt.
Instead, he now lives in a federal correctional institution.
The prosecution portrayed him as the living example of the rich just trying to get richer with no regard for the rules. If I were them, I’d have made the same claim. But in reality, my father was a man who desperately didn’t want to be an embarrassment to his family. It was his worst fear, a nightmare in his mind, and the irony is inescapable. In his efforts to protect us, my father made the nightmare come true.
And when my mother couldn’t handle the Greer family’s epic fall from grace, she added pills to her drinking regimen. Then, one night, she mixed a deadly concoction of both and managed to make the nightmare even worse than any of us could’ve imagined. She went to sleep and never woke up.
I still remember shaking her that morning, waiting and waiting for her eyes to open. Her skin felt so cold.
Maybe that’s the reason for what I’m doing: to get this nightmare to end once and for all.
The hour passes. Even when I’m with him, I miss him. “I’ll see you next week, Daddy.”
I hug my father goodbye and leave the prison, walking through the same corridor and out the same door as I always do. Only this time, when I get in my car, I do something I haven’t done for years.
I cry.
CHAPTER48
I WAKE UPthe next morning to a text from Skip. He wishes me luck and attaches a screenshot from the New York State Department of Labor website. It’s a form to file for unemployment benefits.
Funny guy, my brother.
I get out of bed, shower, and go to my closet to pick out just the right outfit. I stand in front of my entire wardrobe with my arms crossed and wonder what saysI’m outta herethe best.
I opt for a simple black skirt and white blouse as if to make clear that there’s no gray area in what I’m doing. I’m giving Echelon my two weeks’ notice.
Ha. By quitting, I won’t even be eligible for unemployment.
“Good morning, Jacinda,” I say, standing at the door of her corner office in the HR department. “How was your weekend?”
I don’t really listen to her answer. At least, not to the words. This is simply about gauging the moment. I need her to be somewhatdistracted, a bit preoccupied, perhaps, with the start of a new week and what’s on her plate.
Jacinda says, “It was fine,” or something to that effect. What she doesn’t do is elaborate. There are no details or anecdotes, and she does not ask how my weekend was. She barely even gives me a glance. Her head’s buried in a file on her desk.
The timing is perfect.
“I know you must be super-busy, but do you have a moment?” I ask, then quickly add the two words that will guarantee she won’t say no. “It’s important.”
Telling people something’s important almost always gets their attention. But in the wake of the Picasso theft, with the entire House of Echelon on edge, saying it to the head of HR is a showstopper. Jacinda closes the file, motions to the chair in front of her desk. She asks me to close the door.
“Before you say a word,” she says the second I sit down, “does this have anything to do with your statement to the police? Because if it does, I’ve been instructed by in-house counsel to refer that to them.”
She sounds like she’s reading off a cue card.
The police took statements from every person who was on the scene when the painting was stolen or who had advance knowledge of the day and time the painting was leaving the building. Add them all up and you get about fifty Echelon employees. In other words, it wasn’t exactly a closely guarded secret.
