Chapter Text
If you had asked Jack Zimmermann at age 17 what the most exciting thing in his life would be, he would have said professional hockey. He would have told you a story that begins in 2009 with a first overall draft pick and ends with a Stanley Cup win.
Instead, the story begins in 2015 in a small Boston art museum.
Jack stands at the edge of the room, quietly observing the people around him. It’s exactly where he tends to find himself at parties-- on the outside, looking in. This time however, it’s not anxiety, or his general discomfort with large gatherings, pushing him into the role of an observer. This time, it’s his job to be exactly that.
Jack has been working at the museum for almost a year now, but it’s the first time he’s been asked to work security for an event. This event is special. It’s the opening of the new exhibit in the northeast gallery-- a showing of art and antiques from the Knight Family private collection. They’ve been one of the museum’s biggest donors for years, so displaying some of Bertrand Knight’s personal art is a big deal. A big enough deal to require extra security.
It’s a marked change from his typical night, when he’s alone, with only the art, glowing softly in the moonlight, to keep him company. Tonight, the gallery is bright and loud, the air is thick with the cloying sweetness of champagne and fake laughter. It’s grating, but he grits his teeth. He has a job to do, even if it is mostly for show. The museum is hardly a likely target for criminal activity, not when there are both more impressive museums, and places with worse security nearby.
Jack moves silently from wall to wall, watching a mix of wealthy donors, friends of the Knights, and a select few interested artists drink champagne and look at the works. In lieu of any actual threats, he’s been taking the opportunity to people watch. For the past 20 minutes or so, the subject of his amused observation has been Byron Knight, Bertrand’s son. He’s been engaged in what seems to be an unsuccessful attempt to flirt with one of the artists. Jack thinks the pony tail and inability to stop talking are likely working against him.
He suppresses a laugh at the odd pair and lets his gaze slide away from the two of them to scan the room again. His eyes move over millions of dollars worth of paintings, drawings, and antique artifacts. He reaches the edge of the room in his view and he moves his gaze back again. As he does, his eyes catch on a moment of stillness in the bustling room.
A shorter blonde man is standing still in front of a painting on the opposite wall. Jack watches, eyes drawn to him, as he tips his head to the right slightly. He must be an artist . None of the other people here have paid that close attention to any of the pieces. It’s interesting. Jack takes a step to his left to see which particular painting has caught this man’s eye.
He freezes in place.
He knows that painting.
Table with fruit. Once rumored to be an early work by Paul Gaugin.
Now rumored to be a pile of ash.
This painting shouldn’t be anywhere , let alone in Boston.
It was stolen from the Terrence family estate in London in 1963. And more importantly, it was supposed to have been destroyed with the other works from the theft.
Jack zeroes in on the man observing the painting.
Does he recognize it too?
Jack is about to walk towards him, to ask exactly that, when a crash sounds behind him.
He whirls around to see a smashed champagne glass on the floor and Byron Knight apologizing profusely to the woman he’s been talking to all night. Satisfied that there are no security risks to be handled, he turns back, prepared to make his approach. When he turns, however, the man is gone. Jack looks around, scanning every person in the gallery, but it’s like he’s vanished into thin air.
A few minutes pass, Jack’s still standing in the same spot, half convinced he’s seeing things. He’s about to make a move towards the painting, to see it up close. Maybe from up close it will be a different painting. There’s no plausible reason for a painting, missing for decades and presumed destroyed, to show up here of all places. Surely he’s mistaken.
Before Jack can get any closer though, he’s stopped by a voice to his left.
“Yo!”
Jack turns towards the voice to see the Knight’s son approaching him. He appears to have been ditched by the woman he was with. The spilled champagne must have been the last straw for her. Jack braces himself, aware that if one of the Knights is approaching him there’s a good chance he’s about to get in trouble.
“Not to make things weird, man,” he continues when Jack has turned his way, “But you’re Jack Zimmermann, right?”
Shit .
Getting in trouble would be better than this.
Jack clenches his jaw and resists the urge to sigh loudly. This is another reason he prefers the night shift: no chance of running into someone who recognizes his face and thinks they know him because they read about his fall from grace in 2009.
Jack considers not responding. He remembers what the museum director Hall said when he gave instructions to the security team for the event though: “Keeping the Knights happy is the biggest priority. Do anything they ask.”
Reluctantly he nods, bracing himself for the questions he knows are coming.
“Brah, that’s crazy! What are the chances? I played hockey for a while, and dude you look so much like your dad!”
Jack can feel his shoulders tensing as he waits for the inevitable. He wonders if it’s interest in his dad or interest in his own failures that has this guy talking to him. Years later he still can’t decide which one is worse.
“So,” the guy starts, oblivious to Jack’s reluctance to engage, “You gotta tell me. How’s a guy from Montreal end up in Boston?”
Huh.
Of all the times Jack has been recognized since moving to the States, no one has ever bothered to ask why. All they’ve ever wanted to know was about what actually happened and if he’s ever going to play hockey again.
“Oh. Euh. College.”
“Good stuff,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m Shitty by the way.”
Jack accepts the handshake warily.
“You’re what ?”
He laughs.
“Shitty, that’s my name. Obviously not my given name, but that name’s shitty too, you know?”
Jack does not know. But he does know how hockey nicknames work so it doesn’t seem all that strange.
“Hockey nickname?” Jack asks.
Shitty shrugs. “More or less.”
Jack starts to move, thinking the conversation is over, but to his dismay it seems that Shitty thinks their brief interaction is an invitation to chat.
Jack stays where he is, half listening as Shitty rambles on about law school, his father, and the woman he was with earlier, half actually doing what he’s paid to do.
“There was just something about her, dude,” he’s saying when Jack tunes back into the rambling.
He nods mildly, which Shitty seems to take as encouragement.
“Like I’ve met art people before and I’ve met artists before, but I’ve never talked to someone who felt about art like that— “ he sighs the dreamy sigh of a drunk man who’s fallen in love with someone he’ll never see again.
Jack presses his lips together so he doesn’t laugh and goes back to scanning the room.
At some point Shitty seems to remember that Jack is a museum employee and not someone there to entertain him, and he starts to apologize profusely.
“Seriously brah, my bad, I’ll leave you to it!”
With that he leaves, and Jack is finally able to escape across the room.
He walks slowly past the painting, trying not to draw attention to himself. As he passes, he looks at as many details as he can take in. There’s no way to be sure without looking at a photo of the painting, but a certainty settles into Jack’s bones. This is Table with fruit.
Jack hardly pays attention to the rest of the gallery, as the event comes to a close. Instead, the painting taunts him from across the gallery, as his mind keeps turning over a single question: Does Betrand Knight know he is in possession of stolen art?
Jack pushes open his apartment door, tossing his things aside as he makes a beeline for his laptop. Heart racing he pulls up the folder of research documents for his undergraduate thesis. He knows that somewhere in there is the article he read that briefly mentioned the painting. He scrolls through mountains of research looking for the correct article. When he finds it he pauses for a moment. The urgency he’s felt since he first saw the painting suddenly gives way towards a hesitancy. He hovers over the document.
What if he just closed his laptop and forgot the whole thing?
It’s tempting. If he’s right, then he might’ve just stumbled upon something newsworthy. Jack’s been involved in more than enough newsworthy things in his life. His hand hovers on the lid of his laptop, eyes on the article name. Slowly, he moves his hand to the trackpad and clicks.
It might be a mistake, but he has to know.
He sits in front of his laptop silently for a minute, staring at a photo of the painting he saw just a few hours ago, the caption “Destroyed with other items from the Terrence theft in 1963” underneath.
Unease settles over Jack along with the truth of the situation. What did he just uncover?
Eventually, Jack pulls up the photo he took of the painting on his way out of the museum tonight to compare.There is a chance, of course, that the Knight’s painting is a forgery. He took photos of the painting before he left, both of the whole work, and close-up details. He takes his time, comparing the images on his phone, and every photo he can find online of Table with fruit. There’s not much online to go by since the painting was stolen so long ago, but there’s enough. Brushstroke by brushstroke, the paintings match. If it’s a fake it is extremely well done. Forging a lesser known, stolen painting hardly seems worth the risk. It has to be the real one.
Jack thinks again of the blond man he’d seen at the event. Did he know something about this painting? Did he know it was stolen? It strikes Jack as odd when he thinks about it now, the way he’d managed to completely vanish in the time it took Jack to turn back around.
It’s probably nothing.
All of this, ultimately, is probably nothing more than a case of stolen art being sold to a none-the-wiser collector. But it doesn’t sit right with Jack. He climbs into bed, eyes dry and drooping from the long night, and staring at screens. A sense of wrongness hovers at the edges of his thoughts as he tries to fall asleep. Sleep doesn’t come easy.
