“Not very comfortable looking.”
“Pillows! We just bring out big pillows. Everyone lounges around.”
“Sure. What kinds of movies does he like?”
“Oh, superhero movies mostly.”
I tried to imagine patrician Jutting, nervous Victoria, and a few close billionaire friends lounging with big pillows on those bare concrete steps, eating popcorn and watching Spiderman. It didn’t seem likely.
Victoria took me to the gilt and marble drawing room I had seen earlier off the hall, found a servant to fetch me a drink, and left me to fend for myself until dinner time. It was a big room with windows overlooking the street. I could have fit my entire studio space inside it twice. A few minutes later, a man entered—maybe six feet tall but somewhat stooped and severely thin, with gray hair like the fuzz on a dandelion gone to seed and a round, drooping face. He saw me and approached nervously.
“Mr. Vincent?” He asked.
I stood to shake hands. “Yes. Call me Justin please.”
“Baptiste. Pleased to meet you.”
“I was just in a meeting with Jutting. He insisted I stay for dinner and told me I would have an opportunity to meet a world-renowned mathematician?”
“Yes. I suppose that is me although I would hardly say world-renowned. Mathematics is very distant from the ordinary world. Very few people know anything about it or the people who do it. I specialize in Diophantine geometry, number theory, and cryptography.”
“I see. And you’re doing some work for Jutting? Something related to his business interests?”
“Oh no! Unrelated. But I can’t discuss it of course. Top secret. A fascinating problem though. I’m sure you will hear about it once we have a solution.”
“I can’t wait.”
“And what do you do Justin?”
“I’m a sculptor. And I do some consulting work. I was meeting with Jutting on behalf of a friend. Going over the details of a business agreement.”
“Would I have seen your work anywhere?”
“Probably not. It’s mostly held by private collectors. I’ve done a few public pieces but they’re nearly all in California. Bay area.”
“Ah, I’ve been to Stanford University of course but have never done much sightseeing around the area. When we mathematicians get together we just talk. Is that where you are from?”
“No, but I’ve lived there since I was…” A crashing sound from somewhere in the house interrupted me and I broke off, listening. “What was that?”
“I don’t know. It sounded almost like wood splintering and breaking.”
A shout came from the entry hall. I set my drink down and ran to the archway that opened onto the hall. I arrived just in time to see a huge figure dressed all in black run full speed into the guard at the door. There was an impressive whump of mass against mass as the two bodies collided. For a moment it looked like they would both go down but somehow the figure in black kept his feet. His hat fell off revealing curly, sandy-blond hair. I saw his face in profile and the memory clicked. It was Dworkin. The absurdity of the situation was, somehow, unsurprising. He continued running, clutching the shoulder strap of a backpack that swung behind him, and bashed the front door open. I ran after him. The guard had regained his footing and, over his shoulder, I saw Dworkin dive clumsily into the back seat of a car waiting at the curb. It was, improbably, an eighties era Citroen. The engine roared and the car peeled away from the curb. The guard gave chase but the car was long gone by the time he was halfway down the block. Watching people jump into vehicles and make narrow escapes was getting to be a habit. At least it wasn’t a van this time. I had to give Dworkin some credit for creativity. And some credit for the smash and grab too. It wasn’t a strategy I would have considered but he seemed to have gotten away with it.
“What happened? Who was that?” Baptiste was standing behind me.
“I don’t know,” I said, turning to him.
“Mr. St. Martin,” Victoria strode across the marble entry hall toward us accompanied by another security guard. “Please come to the library. I believe the intruder has taken some things of yours.”
I tagged along. Baptiste had apparently been using a room at the back of the house as a work space. It was smaller than the drawing room but still impressive for its size and vast collection of vintage books lining the dark wood paneled walls. At the back of the room, the smashed and splintered remains of a pair of French doors hung precariously on their hinges revealing a terraced yard beyond. A patio chair, evidently used as a battering ram, lay overturned in the middle of the floor. Baptiste went to a desk near the broken doors. He crouched down and picked up the end of a charging cable. The other end was plugged into the wall.
“He took my laptop. And my notebook and papers.”
We all turned toward the door at the sound of heavy footsteps. “How the hell did he get onto the property?” Jutting, striding into the library, yelled at the guard from the front door who was following him. Jutting’s face was red with anger.
“Of course, I have backups,” Baptiste said. He opened a drawer and stopped, staring down into the empty rectangle of space. “He’s taken my hard drive too,” he exclaimed, turning back to face Victoria, crestfallen, visibly slumping. “All my work.”
“There are no other copies?” Jutting asked, stomping up.
“Of course not. Nothing in the cloud as you requested.”
“Dear God,” Jutting replied and turned back to the guard. “We need to watch the footage. Let’s go.”
I moved to Victoria’s side. “I’m going to slip out and take a rain check on dinner.”
She looked at me, distracted. “Of course. I have to go with Mr. Jutting,” she said, then hurried off
