by Stuart Woods
“I’m afraid that’s what I thought, too,” Steele said.
“I suppose your interest in this business has something to do with insurance?”
“It certainly does. We insured the van Gogh in the value of sixty million dollars.”
“I’d heard it might be worth forty million.”
“People always over-insure,” Steele said. “It’s one of the ways we make our money.”
“Did you pay the claim?”
“Mark Tillman’s policy states that if the painting is stolen, we have a grace period of eighteen months before payment is due, to give us and the authorities time for a thorough investigation. Our time is up soon, and I’m afraid that unless the picture is recovered, we’ll have to pay.”
“I trust you laid off some of your liability on a reinsurer?”
“Lloyd’s took fifty percent of it. They’re very interested in the investigation, as you might imagine, and I’m speaking to you with their concurrence.”
“Arthur, what, exactly, are you speaking to me about?”
“Is Morgan Tillman your client?”
“We have no formal arrangement, nor even an informal one. She sought advice on dealing with the police when the windshield of her Bentley was smashed. I expect you’ll be receiving a number of claims for similar events.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about that rash of breakages.”
“I introduced her to Dino so that she could vent. She did so, and that was the extent of my involvement in her affairs.”
“So she is not your client?”
“I don’t intend to bill her, so no, I guess not.”
“All right, from here on we are operating under the strictest degree of confidentiality. Agreed?”
“Arthur, you are already my client, so agreed.”
“We—I, at least—feel that the stolen van Gogh may be a fake.”
“Arthur, surely you took steps to authenticate the painting before you insured it for sixty million dollars.”
There was a knock at the door and a waiter entered, pushing a cart. He served them a cold soup.
“Just leave the cart,” Steele said to him. “We’ll deal with the main course.” The man departed, closing the door behind him.
“We did take steps,” Steele replied, pouring them both a glass of Mersault. “Mark Tillman insisted that it be inspected at his apartment. For security reasons, he did not want it to leave the premises.”
“I don’t blame him,” Stone said.
“We had three experts—one from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam representing Lloyd’s, one from the Metropolitan Museum, which expected to acquire the painting as a gift from Tillman’s estate upon his death, and an eminent authority on van Gogh, representing us.”
“And did they render their opinions?”
“They all agreed that it was genuine.”
“Then why do you believe that it might not be?”
“This is rather a long story, so drink your soup and listen.”
Stone picked up his soup spoon and began.
“Are you aware of the circumstances of Vincent van Gogh’s death?”
“I believe he committed suicide,” Stone said.
“That was the official verdict,” Steele said. “On Sunday, July twenty-ninth, 1890. He told the police later that he had shot himself in the abdomen. There has also emerged a theory that he might have been accidentally shot by one of three boys who were playing with a pistol near where he sat. The theory holds that he didn’t want to implicate the boys, and he wanted to die, anyway.”
“Now that you mention it, I think I read something about that.”
“You probably also know that Vincent’s brother, Theo, who was an art dealer in Paris, represented him in the sale of his work?”
“I do, and I believe he was singularly unsuccessful in that pursuit.”
“Quite right. No van Gogh painting was sold during Vincent’s lifetime. Theo, who believed strongly in his brother’s work, supported Vincent and dealt with all his affairs. He received a telegram on Monday morning, from the keeper of the inn where Vincent lived, telling him of the painter’s wounding. The telegraph office had been closed on Sunday. He took a train immediately for Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent had been living. When he arrived, he found several completed paintings in Vincent’s room, and he had them packed later and took them back to Paris with him on the train after the burial. But before Vincent died he told Theo that he had completed another painting.”
“And what had happened to that?”
“Vincent had taken his painting gear and his easel with him when he left the inn on Sunday morning. He painted the picture, a landscape of a local field with many flowers, then left his gear leaning against a haystack while he had lunch. The shooting, one way or another, took place soon afterward, and Vincent was able to make his way back to the inn, but he was unable to carry his gear. Later, when the police went looking for it, it was gone—including the picture he had painted.”
“Was it ever found?”
“No. It was posited that one of the boys had taken it, but all of them denied everything. There was an investigation, instigated by Theo, but it was cursory. No one ever tried to sell it, and the police had little interest in a work by a madman who was an unsuccessful artist of no reputation.”
“Then how did this painting come to be in Tillman’s hands?”
“The story continues. The young boy died many years later, and his son sold the contents of his father’s small house to a junk dealer in Arles. The painting is said to have been among his belongings. The junk dealer, failing to sell the picture, gave it to a woman who owned a framing shop, but oddly, she seemed to have no appreciation of it. She was apparently interested in framing, but not art. It reposed in the workroom in her shop for years. Upon her death it was discovered by an art dealer who had come to retrieve a picture she was framing for him, and, recognizing that a painting he saw there was a van Gogh, he bought the entire stock of the store, so that the picture’s existence would not be noticed. He then sold the picture to a Paris dealer, who then contacted Mark Tillman, to whom he had earlier sold a Monet. He needed money badly and could not wait for an auction, and Tillman paid him fifty thousand dollars for it. It was cheap, because it could not be authenticated by the usual means—no one had ever seen it and it had never been photographed.”
“Arthur, you still haven’t told me why you think the picture is a fake.”
“I believe that the whole story was contrived to support the authenticity of the painting. Have you ever heard of a man named Angelo Farina?”
“I believe I heard from my mother about him.” Stone’s mother, Matilda Stone, had been a well-known painter.
“I believe the picture was painted by Farina.”
11
STONE WAS INTRIGUED. “Why do you think that?”
“Farina, in his youth, was a very expert and successful forger of art. He worked as an art restorer, repairing hundreds of old paintings, and he learned how they were made and with what materials. He is alleged to have sold hundreds of forgeries, many of which are said to be hanging in museums all over America and Europe, undetected. When law enforcement finally took an interest in him, he stopped doing forgeries and earned his living by selling his own paintings or copies of those of others’, identified as such, and by his art restoration business.
“It has been fifteen years or so since he says he stopped forging, and the statute of limitations has expired for any fakes he may have executed. Also, he left no paper trail—no receipts, bills of sale, no provenance, nothing—so it would have been difficult to convict him, anyway.”
“You still haven’t told me why you think Angelo Farina painted the supposed van Gogh.”
“Angelo lived about two hundred yards from Mark Tillman’s house in the Hamptons.”
�
�So they were friends?”
“They were. Mark would go over to Angelo’s studio and watch him paint. I believe that Mark, over time, concocted the story of the painting and asked Angelo to paint it for him. If that is so, then he probably faked the theft of his painting for the insurance.”
“Could Angelo paint in the style of van Gogh?”
“Angelo could paint in any style. He needed only a picture to copy. In this case he would probably have looked at several photographs of van Goghs in museums, then copied his style and brushstrokes. And that is what makes it so difficult to deny that the picture is a fraud—it is not a copy of anything, so no direct comparisons can be made.”
“But there are differences between old and new paints and canvases. Surely that would have been checked.”
“Of course, but Angelo is highly expert at using old materials and paints.” Steele opened his briefcase and handed Stone a book, entitled Art for Art’s Sake. “He explains his techniques in his autobiography. I think you’ll find it interesting. For instance, he will buy a cheap painting from the period in question, remove the oil paint from the canvas, apply a gesso, or primer coat, of his own invention, which is made of ingredients that cannot be dated. Then he uses his own paints or old ones, the formulas of which have not changed for centuries. He has special techniques for aging the finished painting—like baking it in the sun for days to produce the cracks associated with age, and even adding what appear to be fly specks, which are common on old paintings. He uses pieces of old wood from period furniture for the backings, and he has a large collection of period frames. The results are masterful.” Arthur went back into his briefcase and came out with an 8x10-inch color transparency. “This was taken by our expert during the examination, in sunlight.”
Stone’s breath was slightly taken away. “This is glorious,” he said.
“All of Angelo’s work, that we’ve actually seen, has been glorious,” Arthur said. “The FBI has quite a collection of his, ah, works, but of course they can’t prove that he painted any of them.”
“This is all very intriguing,” Stone said.
“One more thing, and this happened when I was present as the experts were examining Mark’s picture. The man from the Van Gogh Museum wanted to clean a small area of the painting to see what might be underneath more than a century of dust and dirt. He had brought acetone, the best cleaner, with him, but Mark would not allow him to use it, saying that it might damage the painting. Instead, he offered the man a bottle of mineral spirits, which would clean the picture fairly well without damaging it. You see, the varnish on paintings hardens very slowly, over a period of decades, to the point where it will not be harmed by acetone, and even Angelo has not been able to replicate this characteristic, so he can’t allow acetone to be used.”
“Very clever of him.”
“And very necessary. I’ve heard of a case where a man bought an old and expensive picture at auction, and when he got it home and tried to clean it with acetone, it melted. It seems obvious, after the fact, that it was a contemporary forgery.”
“This is all very interesting, Arthur,” Stone said, “but I still don’t know what you want from me.”
“Simple. I want you to find the picture and bring it to me so that I can have it cleaned with acetone. Then I will know, one way or another, if it is a genuine van Gogh, and I can pay or deny payment, as is appropriate.”
“Simple? The NYPD and the FBI have already failed to find it, but you expect that I can?”
“But you have something they don’t, Stone.”
“And what is that?”
“Access to Morgan Tillman—perhaps even her trust. That is why I am prepared to offer you a finder’s fee, for the recovery of the painting, of twenty percent.”
“Twenty percent of what?”
“Forty million dollars.”
“But you have insured it for sixty million, Arthur.”
“Oh, all right,” Steele said grumpily, “twenty percent of sixty million dollars.” Steele opened his briefcase and extracted one of two identical envelopes. “And here is a letter to that effect—a contract, if you like.”
Stone opened the unsealed envelope and read the letter inside. “You have neglected to sign it, Arthur.”
Steele took the letter from him, signed it with a flourish, and handed it back. “There you are.”
“I expect the other envelope contains a letter mentioning forty million,” Stone said.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Steele replied, offering his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Stone shook it. “How long do I have?”
“Two weeks from today, at noon,” Steele said. “It must be in my hands by then to have time for it to be reexamined.”
Stone put the letter back into its envelope and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’ll be in touch,” he said. Then he stopped for a moment. “You realize, Arthur,” he said, “that if you’re wrong about this, the picture is the very last one painted by van Gogh.”
Steele made a little groaning noise.
12
STONE WENT BACK to his office and said to Joan, “Send two dozen yellow roses to Morgan Tillman, at 740 Park Avenue.”
“Gotcha, boss.” Joan leered.
“Immediate delivery, please.”
“But of course.”
Stone called Dino.
“Bacchetti.”
“Hey. Were you at the Tillman house when it was searched?”
“Most of the time,” Dino replied.
“Did you order the search?”
“Yes.”
“What were you searching for?”
“Signs of a burglar—prints, DNA, whatever we could get.”
“Did you tell your people to search for the stolen painting?”
“I don’t think so. We thought it was stolen, so it wouldn’t still be there.”
“Did you have your art squad on the premises?”
“They came in after I was gone.”
“What were they doing there?”
“The art squad always goes in after the theft of a picture or sculpture or valuable book—things like that.”
“And what do they do during their visit?”
“They affirm that the stolen object is absent from its usual place. They look for evidence of a modus operandi of the thief and compare it to what they know about others. Did he jimmy a window? Knock down a door? Or just pick the lock and walk in through the front door?”
“Who runs the squad?”
“Arturo Masi—called Art, appropriately enough. An Italian, of course.”
“Of course.”
“He’s an expert on everything.”
“Except things he hasn’t seen,” Stone said.
“Huh?”
“He didn’t see the van Gogh—it was gone.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“On the phone or in person?”
“In person, in my office, if possible.”
“He’ll give you a call,” Dino said.
“Thanks. See ya.” Stone hung up.
• • •
SEVEN MINUTES LATER, Joan buzzed. “Art Masi on one.”
Stone picked up the phone. “Mr. Masi?”
“Art. The commissioner would like me to come and see you. When’s good?”
“Anytime today.”
“How about in five minutes? I’m in your neighborhood.”
Stone gave him the exact address and told him to come ahead.
• • •
ART MASI WAS TALL, solidly built, and handsome, with thick salt-and-pepper hair brushed straight back, leaving a prominent widow’s peak and olive—or maybe just tanned—skin. He was sharply dressed in a handmade Italian suit. Stone wondered
how he could afford it on a policeman’s salary.
Masi took the offered chair, and he seemed to have read Stone’s mind. “In addition to being a cop and commanding the art squad, I do freelance consulting work. The department feels it’s important that I know what’s going on in the art world. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to hire you as a consultant,” Stone said, “at your usual rate.”
“A thousand dollars a day,” Masi replied coolly, “or any part of.”
“Done,” Stone replied. “I expect you recall being in the apartment of one Mark Tillman, who, at the time, was very recently deceased.”
“I do. He had a small but very fine collection, many of them very expensive pieces.”
“How long were you and your squad in his apartment?”
“The better part of two hours.”
“And what were you looking for?”
“Evidence of a crime against art.”
“Define ‘a crime against art.’”
“Theft, vandalism, forgery, possession of stolen goods.”
“Define ‘forgery.’”
“The copying of a work of art for the purpose of deceiving, or for gain during a sale or exchange.”
“Exchange?”
“You swap me your fake Modigliani for my real Picasso, sell the Picasso, and pocket the difference in value.”
“Of course. Do forgeries have an intrinsic value?”
“If you buy a picture because you like it, having been informed by the seller that it’s a copy, its intrinsic value is whatever you paid for it.”
“So it’s not a crime to sell a forgery as long as the forger identifies it as such.”
“No, then it’s just a copy or a reproduction. If a forger is in the business of selling reproductions, he will change something about his work to make it identifiable to an expert as a copy. I know of a perfect copy of Modigliani’s Reclining Nude, which sold at auction a couple of years ago for two hundred and sixty-four million. In the copy, the nude’s eyes are closed, and the picture is four inches longer than the original.”