'Nothing, the Scotch just tastes a little peculiar. Maybe they put mineral water in it.' I laughed nervously. 'Or maybe I'm getting paranoid.' I took another tentative sip. 'I guess they just changed brands, that's all. No taste of bitter almonds or anything like that.'
'Are you serious?'
'About what?'
'It's wine, not Scotch. Reisling. That's some educated palate you've got there.'
'Wine? Why did you get me wine?'
'That's what I thought you were drinking. You had a wineglass.'
'No, they just ran out of highball glasses, that's all. Is this really wine?' I tried it again. 'Of course it is. Funny that I'd think it was Scotch.'
'Oh, not really. Other things being equal, you see what you expect to see, hear what you expect to hear, taste what you think you're going to taste. Proven many times over.'
'So that's what you learn in career counseling.'
'That's what you should have learned in Psych 101. It's an elementary principle of perception: expectancy.'
'Expectancy! Yes!' Lorenzo burst out. 'Exactly my point! Do you see? It's why you didn't recognize the wine!'
It wasn't the first time I'd observed his ability to take in other conversations even when he was in the middle of one of his own harangues. Presumably it was due to his being unable to follow what he was saying any better than anyone else could.
'You see?' He grinned triumphandy at his glassy-eyed audience. 'One's expectation overrules the evidence of the senses. You expect whiskey, and although your senses tell you you have wine, your 'inner reality' constructs a complex rationale to protect itself, to convince you that it is right and your senses wrong. 'They put mineral water in it'; 'It's a different brand.' Anything to maintain the integrity of your preconception.'
'Yeah!' one of the somnolent listeners said suddenly. 'That makes a lot of sense.'
Lorenzo's button eyes blinked in surprise. It wasn't the sort of thing people generally said to him. 'Well,' he mumbled gruffly, 'I was merely speaking in concrete terms.'
Anne and I seized the opportunity to move on, but after three steps I froze on the spot.
'Anne…? I just realized-preconceptions-expectations-the integrity of-of-'
'I think,' she said gravely, 'you've been talking to Lorenzo too much.'
'No.' I shook my head impatiently. 'Remember what Peter told me? To look at everything without preconception? Well, I haven't done it. I haven't done it!' I laughed, no doubt a little wildly.
'Chris-'
'Come on.' I grabbed her wrist and broke toward the neglected alcove where the eleven copies of the missing paintings were.
'Dr. Norgren, a little decorum, please!' she yelped, tripping after me. 'Remember, we represent the dignity and majesty of the government of the United-'
'Screw decorum! Anne, if I'm right… if I'm right-!'
I was right.
'Chris,' Anne said, looking uncertainly up at my face, 'you're making me nervous. What's going on?'
'Nervous?' I said, barely hearing her. 'Why?'
'For one thing, because you're staring at that picture with a look on your face like that orangutan with his banana, only you're sort of chuckling and oinking-'
'Oinking?' I repeated, not taking my eyes off the painting. 'I don't think I'm oinking.'
'Well, you are, and before that you practically yanked me off my feet, which isn't like you. You also said 'screw,' which also isn't like you-'
'Did I say 'screw'?' I asked dreamily.
'Yes,' she said, 'you did. Christopher, what… is… going… on?'
'Yeah, what?' Harry appeared at the entrance to the alcove. He, too, was in mess dress and looking uncomfortable, as if he longed to stick a finger down his starched collar and tug. 'You practically ran me over getting here. What's the big deal?'
'The deal,' I said slowly, relishing this moment so much I didn't want to move on. 'The deal is, I've found Peter's fake.'
In real life, people don't do double takes very often, but they both did one now. From vague, uncomprehending stares at the painting, their eyes jumped to me and then leaped again to fasten on the smallish, modestiy framed picture we stood before.
'This?' Harry said in a squawk of surprise. 'This?' He leaned closer to the identifying plaque, a neat white rectangle of cardboard on the brown wall covering, a few inches from the picture's bottom right corner.
' 'A Woman Peeling Apples,' ' he read, ' 'Jan Vermeer, sixteen-' '
'I don't understand,' Anne interrupted. 'How can this be a fake? I mean, it already is a fake.' She gestured at the other ten copies in the alcove. 'These are all fakes. That's what they're supposed to be.'
'Yes,' I said, 'but this is a fake fake.' I know I chortled; maybe I even oinked.
'Listen, Chris,' Harry said evenly, 'it's real nice to see you having such a good time, but I think maybe you better let the rest of us in-'
'It's real.'
Silence.
'It's a genuine Vermeer,' I said.
Silence.
I finally looked away from the painting and at the two of them. 'This is Peter's 'forgery.' That's why he was so funny about it. It's not a fake that everyone thought was an original, it's an original that everyone thought was a fake.'
'Are you sure?' Anne said in a bewildered whisper.
'Absolutely. Look at the pointilles, look at the wall texture with all those incredibly tiny color variations; who else ever understood enough to do that? No question about it. It's obvious.' I shook my head, not sure if I were more pleased with how clever I was or distressed with how slow I'd been to get here.
'Well, what the hell are you looking so smug about?' Harry asked almost angrily. 'And if it's so obvious, what in the goddamn hell took you so long to find it?'
'What took so long was that I wasn't looking for it. Not here, anyway, among the copies. They were supposed to be fakes, so I saw them as fakes, and I didn't pay any attention to them. Damn, I should have figured this out weeks ago, but I didn't do what Peter said-I didn't start without preconceptions. My inner reality-'
'Inner reality!' Harry exploded, and looked at Anne. 'Do you know what he's talking about?'
'Sure. Expectancy. The imposition of our values and expectations on the supposedly objective exterior world. Kant. Kafka. Heidegger. Ask Lorenzo; he'll explain it to you.'
'You're getting weird, too,' Harry muttered. 'All right, it's real. I'll take your word for it.' He folded his arms, pulled at the side of his beard, and stared hard at the simple homely scene on the canvas; a seated, house-jacketed woman peeling apples from a basket on her lap, with a little girl standing at her side, both figures bathed in Vermeer's wonderful, clean light pouring in through the window on their left.
'A Woman Peeling Apples,' he said musingly. 'This is why van Cortlandt got killed? Because he figured out what you just figured out?'
So much for chortling and oinking. In the excitement of discovery, I'd actually forgotten the point. 'It's got to be that,' I said, sobered. 'And I think that's why somebody's been trying to do me in, too, before I figured it out as well. I'm supposed to be a Vermeer expert, remember?' I shook my head ruefully again. 'Down my alley, Peter said. Right smack down the middle of my alley.'
'No, wait a minute,' Anne said. 'Why you and only you? If it's so obvious, couldn't someone else have found it, too? What about Earl, for instance? He's also an art expert. Why hasn't someone been trying to kill him before he-' Her eyes widened. 'You don't-do you really think he might be the… Heinrich Schliemann… might be Earl?'
'No, I don't. What motive could he possibly have? Even if he believes that junk he wrote in those letters, how would substituting a genuine painting for a copy help him?'
'All right, forget the letters,' Harry said. 'What about simple greed? Maybe he stole the real one-the real
