Fool Me Twice (Riley Wolfe 2)

7

Whatever else you could say about Patrick Boniface—and I could think of plenty—he was a good host. I mean, once you put aside the whole chain-you-to-a-stone-wall-and-threaten-you thing. And the polite, nonstop reminder of limitless suffering that Bernadette represented. All that stuff aside, Boniface kept me entertained. I stayed for three more weeks, and he gave me a real-life bed in a beautifully furnished room. And he kept me entertained, too. He knew I have a thing for music, like he seemed to know everything else. He had a library of the best—some really rare recordings, too.

And Boniface showed me his art collection. It knocked my socks off. I mean, I’ve seen the very best, all over the world, everywhere from the Louvre to MoMA. But in a cave on a nowhere chunk of rock called Cabbage Island, Boniface had a collection that ranked with the most famous. He had stuff I’d never heard of, and he had pieces that had been “missing” for years, and other things that were theoretically still in museums somewhere but clearly were not. He didn’t just have name-brand stuff, either. What he collected was exactly what he’d told me: beauty. There were paintings and sculptures by artists I’d never heard of, and they were not in any museum catalog I’d ever seen, but they were beautiful, no question about it.

So maybe he was right. Maybe he really did have a soul. He just didn’t carry it with him when he did business.

The only downside was the food. It turned out that the green glop they’d been feeding me while I was chained up in the cell was standard fare. Boniface had started out as a vegan, stirred that up with massive paranoia and unlimited funds, and come up with an entirely synthetic blend of algae and who-the-fuck-knows. It was all grown and concocted right here on Île des Choux so he didn’t need to import any food. He said it contained all the vitamins and trace minerals needed to promote health. But one thing it didn’t contain was flavor. The stuff tasted just like it looked—like it had been made from synthetic algae.

Happily for us all, it turns out vegans can drink alcohol—even the vegans who only eat green slime. Boniface was generous with his drinks, and he let me browse through his library of rare and amazing whiskeys, cognacs, Armagnacs, marcs—all the stuff I like, plus bottles of legendary brews I’d heard about but never even seen before. His wine library was every bit as good, stocked with classic vintages from all the world’s great domains. The only downside was deciding which one to pair with the slime. I mean, what goes best with algae? Red or white? You’d have to think a really big white—but why not a Beaujolais? And there were so many other great reds in the rack. Boniface pulled out a 1965 Château Lafite that—well, that isn’t important. What matters is that with just a few belts of the good stuff I could almost believe the green slime was food.

So we had a jolly old time of it, swilling hooch and yakking about art, and under other circumstances good old Patrick Boniface and I would have become brand-new besties. Of course, that was sort of tough to do under the present conditions. I mean, when somebody is going to kill you unless you do something that can’t be done, it’s a real strain on a budding bromance. And with Bernadette hovering in the background and watching me with a stare like a deranged hungry tiger, it wasn’t something I had any luck forgetting about.

It did begin to wear a little, too, especially after the first week. But there was no help for it. Boniface hadn’t intended to keep me for three whole weeks. I mean, Riley says yes and gets to work, or he says no and goes in the ocean. After Bernadette had her quality time, of course. But apparently it was storm season out there in this part of the world, and no boats could get through right now, so I was stuck until the weather cleared.

Still, it was just about as much fun as you could have under the circumstances. I mean, if you’ve never taken a bottle of truly great Armagnac and sat with a collection of mind-bendingly great art—just sat with it. Sip, stare

, ponder, sip some more. And the whole time you’re listening to something like Christian Tetzlaff’s recording of Sibelius’ string quartets—it doesn’t get much better than that, unless you throw in a hot woman with really low self-esteem. Sadly, Boniface didn’t stock those, and Bernadette was definitely not a replacement option.

I even got to know the guy, Boniface himself, a little bit, and like I said, all things considered, he made a pretty good companion. I know it sounds like I’m kind of stretching it a little? But when you take two art lovers, a ton of amazing art, and an open bar stocked with the very best booze in the world—I mean, that Armagnac was incredible—well, shit. Of course tongues loosen up. You get to talking. You get over your hesitation about chatting with one of the scariest guys in the known universe, outside of Thanos.

So one night, when we had polished off a bottle or two and were looking through an amazing collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, I felt mellow enough to ask him something that had been bugging me. And probably more important, he looked mellow enough to answer.

“Patrick,” I said. Yeah, first names; like I said, mellow.

“Yes?” he said.

“Why The Liberation of St. Peter?” He didn’t say anything. “I mean, out of all the art in the world—and you know I could get you just about anything.” I couldn’t help it—the Armagnac. And anyway, it was true. “So why this?”

He looked at me without blinking, for just about long enough that I thought I’d made a mistake and maybe misjudged things. Then he got up and walked over to the bar. And God bless him, he opened another bottle and brought it back with him. He topped off my glass, poured himself some, and sat. He sipped. So did I. I figured maybe I really had crossed the line and I should just wait and see what happened.

That was a good move. When he’d whet his whistle, he gave me one of his tiny little smiles. “I have been a bad man for most of my life,” he said. I thought I could hear just a little bit of a French accent creeping into his voice. He kept it neutral all the time, so nobody could have guessed where he was from originally, but now—either the drinks or the memories colored his words just a little bit. “I have told myself, so, I have no choice, but I know this is not true. I chose it. And I have been . . . very bad.” He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I didn’t contradict him.

He shrugged. “So. I have been bad, and sometimes, I have paid the price.” He sipped. “Prison, hm? Not unknown to you, Riley?”

I shook my head. “Not unknown,” I admitted.

“Of course. It is the life we chose.” He frowned. “But the second time . . . Merde . . .” He drained his glass and refilled it. “La Santé,” he said. It wasn’t a toast. It was the name of one of the toughest prisons in France. I knew La Santé by reputation. It was supposed to be a very hard place.

“I was in solitary confinement. Because I was so very dangerous.” He smiled slightly. “Difficult, hm? But I had made plans—you must do the same? Plans?” I nodded again, but he was already going on. “Yes. But the plans were not for solitary, which is much more challenging. I did not know if my . . . instruments could adapt.”

I assumed that when he said “instruments” he meant his “people,” and not that he had planned a rescue led by the Tower of Power horn section.

“I had already been there too long, hm?” he said. “And I thought perhaps, this time, the plans would not work. And the days went on. And the months . . .”

He sipped again, and he smiled, which I thought was an odd thing to do when you’re remembering solitary in a very hard prison. “They let me have a book. Art of the Italian Renaissance. And in that book . . . No. I will show you.”

He got up again and went over to the bookshelf. He returned with a large but very battered book. It was dirty, smudged, and dog-eared. He opened it to an illustration. “Here. This is the book itself. There. You see?” He held it out to me, and there it was. The Liberation of St. Peter. I knew it, but I looked anyway, until Boniface began to speak again.

“There you see it all,” he said. “The entire story. I became fascinated with this work. Perhaps even obsessed, hm? I stared at it for hours, and I began to really see it and hear what it said. Its true message. Which is what, Riley?”

It startled me so I almost dropped the book. But I took a stab at it. “Uh—faith, of course. The power of faith opens all, um, doors?”

He beamed at me. A huge, nearly human smile. “Exactly. That is precisely right. Faith opens all doors. And I let that knowledge . . . sustain me. I had faith. And—I was delivered. My doors were opened. My instruments adapted.” He smiled again, but this time it was not quite as pleasant. “And my enemies paid the price,” he said.

He leaned over and pointed to the picture in the battered old book.

“You see it? You see the angel—she comes to him as he sleeps, and she leads him past the guards and out to freedom.” He smiled. “Just as it happened to me. Although my angel was perhaps not so . . . angelic? And the guards were not dazed by glory.” Shrug. “They were dead, of course. By the hand of my angel.”