by Joseph Flynn
“Well, truth is, the NYPD and the FBI work with each other because we have to; it’s not a cordial relationship.”
“I had the same experience in Chicago,” McGill said.
Marra returned his cup to its saucer.
“Okay, a little primer here, first. Art theft is exploding. The annual loss approaches six billion dollars per year. Only drugs and guns pull in a bigger haul. The proceeds from art theft used to go almost entirely to traditional organized crime, guys who are in the rackets for money. Then along come the terrorists, who think, ‘Hey, this could work for us, too.’ Especially with governments around the world cracking down on their traditional sources of funding.”
“Are you saying there’s a terrorist angle at work with my friend’s stolen painting?” McGill asked. He wanted to see if the New York cop backed up what Patti had told him.
“You know,” Marra replied, “if I get too specific, I might be in a world of hurt, but if you think about what I just said, and why the FBI gave you the cold shoulder, you should have a pretty good idea why Ozzie Riddick warned M’sieur Pruet to steer clear.”
Pruet asked Marra, “How do you explain the forgery? What purpose does that serve?”
“That’s easy,” Marra said. “Why sell a painting once when you can sell it twice?”
“But I recognized it as a fraud immediately,” Pruet said.
“How many times have you seen that painting?”
“Ever since I was a child, more times than I can remember.”
“Can you do the same with paintings you’ve seen once or twice?” Marra asked.
Pruet sat back in his chair. “No.”
Marra took matters a step farther. “Would you say the forgery you saw was good enough to fool a private collector, if not a museum expert?”
The magistrate gave the question a moment’s consideration.
“Yes,” he said. “I think it would.”
“There you go. The thieves could sell the knockoff to some rich creep with the morals of a weasel and sell the real thing to a museum.”
“Wait a minute,” McGill said. Patti hadn’t covered that point. “Wouldn’t a museum want to know where a previously unknown Renoir came from?”
“Sure. One of the big, established museums in, say, New York, Chicago or L.A. would operate that way. Thing is, museums pop up like dandelions in the spring these days. Any place you find new wealth, somebody will be opening or planning a new museum. That’s both here and abroad. Might surprise the average Joe, but people like high culture. A new museum that’s just assembling its collection likely would jump at the chance to get a Renoir, and not look too closely at its provenance.”
Pruet shook his head, his expression grim.
“I know,” Marra said, “and maybe it’s worse than that. Your Renoir was a gift from the artist? I’d guess that would mean there was no bill of sale. Who’s to say you’re the legitimate owner?”
Both Pruet and McGill were stuck for an answer.
Marra took pity on them. “There is this,” he said. “If you can produce witnesses who say that the painting has been hanging on a wall in your family’s home for umpteen years, and no one else can show that he or she held it early on, your claim probably would prevail in court.”
“But only if we can recover the painting,” Pruet said.
“Yeah, that’s the first step. Your best chance is the feds. The FBI, tightlipped bastards though they may be, do a pretty good job at getting things back.”
The New York cop chuckled.
“What’s funny?” McGill asked.
“M’sieur Pruet, you should definitely report the theft of your painting to the FBI. You have a photo or two of it?”
“Yes.”
“Make some copies. Attach them to your report. That will give the feds more to work with than just a description.”
“Still don’t see the humor,” McGill said.
Marra replied, “If the FBI is officially put on the case, and they don’t produce results toute de suite, they can’t complain if you keep looking, too. And if they keep coming up short but they get cranky about your efforts, who could legitimately lean on them?”
Now, McGill grinned. “The president. That’s very good, Detective.”
Marra got up and gave business cards to McGill and Pruet.
“Things lead back to New York, give me a call. I’ll see what I can do.”
He shook hands goodbye, then told McGill, “Clare asked me to tell you she says hello.”
“My best wishes to her, too,” McGill replied.
Colonial Suites Hotel Bar — Newport News, Virginia
Arlo Carsten thought rocket science was easy compared to figuring out women. For one thing, rocket science had textbooks. They were based on proven principles of physics. They listed data out the wazoo, and numbers didn’t lie. Women, on the other hand …
Well, there were books on how to understand them, too.
Of course, those things were all guesswork. Nothing you could prove in a lab or on a launch pad. A woman writing a book on what women liked was really telling you what she liked. But if you tried to apply one woman’s advice across the board, brother, you were asking for trouble.
The advice books men wrote about women? They were more likely to land you in jail than in bed. You put just one hand, lightly, in the wrong place, you were looking at an assault charge or worse. Christ, one time, he’d just brushed the back of a woman’s bare upper arm — a long neglected erogenous zone, according to the book he’d been reading — with a few fingers, accidental like, and she planted her elbow smack on his nose.
Left him sitting on the floor of a flashy nightclub, blood running down his face.
The bouncers threw him out of the place. Said they’d call the cops if he came back.
Of course, he’d been a lot younger then. In the intervening years, he’d overcome his disdain for soft sciences like anthropology and sociology and did all sorts of field work on the subject of adult male-female relationships in the United States, Canada and Western Europe.
Without being obvious about it, he observed couples in public places, the women being the type he’d love to have for his own, the guys being, maybe, something he could aspire to. He watched their body language, where and how often they touched each other. He listened in to conversations while looking the other way. He made notes on cocktail napkins.
Hell, half the world’s technological advances and big marketing ideas had started with scribbles on napkins. Nobody ever thought he was doing anything wrong.
If somebody asked what he was writing, he said he was making notes on a new rocketry ideas. Sometimes that was even the truth. Guys thought it was cool when he told them he was a NASA project manager, had his PhD from Georgia Tech.
Women rolled their eyes if he started talking math and science.
At the end of a good night, he’d have two or three pockets stuffed with notes on napkins. After twenty years of work, though, he’d distilled everything he’d learned into two conclusions he might have guessed in ten seconds. Women were interested in a guy with looks and money.
They were also crazy about a man with rhythm.
A guy who not only could dance, but was lighter, quicker and more sure on his feet than anyone else in the room, and could make a woman look like a good dancer, was halfway home.
To have the kind of women for whom he lusted, Arlo understood he’d have to offer them at least two of the three qualities they prized most in a man. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, and hair grafts, dental bonding, Lasik and facials made the most of what he had.
That was part of his trouble, though. He looked like he was trying too hard. Like, at any moment, a spell might be broken and he’d be revealed for the toad he was. Worse still, he didn’t look comfortable in his carefully managed skin.
At his peak NASA salary, he’d made good money, just under two hundred thousand dollars a year. He’d owned two homes, bought a new car every other year. Then cam
e the federal pay freezes. That was bad. He had to sell one of his houses to fatten his nest egg.
Bad went to worse when that goddamn woman in the White House all but put NASA in mothballs. Ended the whole manned space program. The only way for Americans to get into space these days was to hitch rides with the goddamn Russians. That galled him no end.
Not as much, though, as when he was laid off after nineteen years on the job.
One year short of what it took to guarantee a full pension. So his take was reduced by five percent for each year between his age at termination and sixty-two. He got the axe when he had just turned fifty-two. That meant his pension got chopped in half because the cost-cutting bastards wouldn’t let him stay one goddamn more year.
By then, the bottom had dropped out of the housing market and there was no way he could sell his remaining house for more than pennies on the dollar. So he sold his Lexus and bought a used Prius. Now, there was a ride to make a woman weak in the knees.
Still, he had a roof over his head, enough to eat and formerly stylish clothes to wear.
Put him three notches up on a lot of guys in Florida.
Didn’t make him a bit less bitter. He was well educated, ambitious and had nowhere to go. There was talk about private companies getting into things like space tourism. The goddamn Russians — them again — were taking millionaires up for joyrides. But no one in the U.S. was anywhere close to doing that.
He might well starve to death before another job opened up for him.
Not that he’d ever find another job. He read like crazy to keep his skill set from becoming obsolete, but reading wasn’t close to doing. He was losing his professional edge. He might as well stop showering and getting his hair cut for all the chances he had of getting even an interview. Only a dogged nature kept him going.
He happened to be at the public library, his main job-hunting resource, when he came across a magazine article that expressed the government’s concern about all the nuclear physicists in Russia — there was no getting away from the bastards — who were unemployed and might be lured into working for rogue states and terrorists.
Arlo laughed at the idea that there were skilled and possibly dangerous professionals more desperate than he was. He thought maybe he should start a placement service. Put Russian bomb-makers together with American rocket scientists. Call the company Super Power in a Box.
He could offer their services to whomever could pay.
Top dollar required. Health and dental benefits, too. Six weeks paid vacation.
He was giggling to himself about the idea, trying not to be obvious and look too crazy, when he thought, why the hell not see what his skills could fetch on the black market? He opened a Gmail account in the username BRogers2419. He used that to write a position wanted post and put it up on craigslist. Rocket scientist. PhD. Big government, big rocket experience. No job too small.
He copied the message to every location the site had around the world.
That was on a Saturday. The library was closed on Sunday due to budget cuts.
He showed up at the library first thing Monday morning, along with homeless people who needed the chance to use a bathroom and relax in a cushioned chair for an hour or two. Arlo shook his head, thinking the country never should have come to this point. People using libraries for basic needs because they didn’t have homes.
There had to be somebody who could run a government that would take care of its own.
The current damn bunch sure weren’t getting the job done.
He tried not to think that he might soon be among those looking for a place to pee.
He beat out a bag lady to a computer station and pulled up his Gmail account.
Five hundred and seventy-two responses awaited his attention.
One of them asked, “What do you know about unmanned aerial vehicles and the missiles they fire?” For just a second, Arlo thought the email might be a sting, the kind of thing the feds used to trick dumbass wannabe jihadis.
He decided he didn’t care if it was. If the feds locked him up, it would cost them, what, fifty-to-a hundred K a year. He’d get free health and dental, too.
That’d make up, at least in terms of money, for the pension they’d taken away from him.
Turned out not to be a sting, though. It was a real, if criminal, job. Paid great and the politics of the situation were pleasing, too. He knew more than enough of what the job required to justify his new salary. His first mission was getting ready to launch, and there was the promise of more.
So there he was sitting in a nice hotel bar, drink in front of him, money in both his pocket and the bank, and …
Here she came now. The sweet-talking Southern belle he’d met the day before in this very same drinking establishment. She’d been happy to engage in conversation, but wouldn’t go any farther, not on a first meeting. Her resistance only made him want her more.
That was probably her game.
His was not to waste a minute.
He knew he was playing with fire these days. Might very well be locked up for the rest of his life. Killed even. His days of note-taking were o-ver.
So as soon as she —
Sonofabitch. She had some guy with her. Looked like a shitkicker.
No way was he dressed nice enough for the bar. But just as the trio that provided live music started their set, the shitkicker led the belle onto the dance floor, and had every damn pair of eyes in the place on them. Arlo’s most of all.
He’d never wanted even a fantasy woman as badly as he wanted the belle now.
He was going to have to do something about that shitkicker, no question.
Capital Hilton — Washington, DC
Laurent Fortier returned to his room at the Hilton after an agreeable meal at a French restaurant in DuPont Circle. He judged the restaurant would be given one star by the Michelin Guide. To the uninformed, that might sound damning. In fact, it meant a very good restaurant in its category.
The French loved understatement and could be a bit stingy with their praise.
Two stars from the MG, which still might seem underwhelming to American sensibilities, meant excellent cooking, worth making a detour to have. Three stars meant exceptional cuisine, surroundings and service, worth seeking out as its own destination.
Fortier never ate at three-star restaurants. The patrons there tended to attract the attention of the media, and he never wanted any public notice. His privacy was far more important to him than his taste buds.
The same thinking guided him to the Hilton, a perfectly pleasing hotel.
One almost certain, however, never to have paparazzi lurking in its vicinity.
The Hilton, among its other virtues, was close to the cluster of first-class museums that filled central Washington. Visiting the National Portrait Gallery had been the highlight of the thief’s day. Unlike those in Paris, admission to the museums in Washington was free to the public. So curious, these Americans. Providing such a wealth of culture without a fee while charging a veritable fortune for basic medical services and health insurance.
Ah, well. Chacun à son goût. To each his own.
The National Portrait Gallery, Fortier thought, revealed the face of America to any who cared to see it. See them, more accurately. The faces were famous and anonymous, rich and poor, historical and contemporary. The diversity was staggering. Some of the images were dignified or even reverent. Others were caricatures that made one laugh aloud.
That was also a distinct aspect of the American character. Making fun of the high and mighty and using public funds to do it. The French also loved to satirize the upper classes of government and society, but they left it to the private sector. At least when it came to museums.
Fortier saw several pieces in the National Portrait Gallery he would love to have as his own. But stealing from museums, in his opinion, was an exercise best left to cinema or madmen whose daring far exceeded their intelligence. Not that some of them didn’t get lucky. But eve
n those who did had policemen around the world looking for them.
The game he played was far more subtle, far less risky, but still rewarding.
Fortier had pursued an academic career in art history, winning admission to L’École du Louvre. He’d studied art from its origins in prehistoric times to works with paint that had yet to dry on their canvases. The scope of the curriculum was global not merely Western. After eight years of study, he’d received his diplôme de recherche approfondie.
Diploma of thorough research, The School of the Louvre’s equivalent of a Ph.D.
For all the breadth and depth of his studies, it was the paintings of the Impressionist Period that claimed his heart above all others. He was a longtime fixture at the Musée Marmottan Monet in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. He haunted the Musée d’Orsay like an inconsolable ghost who refused to be put to rest. His despair had to do with money.
More specifically, the lack of it in sufficient quantity.
The paintings he loved most were forever beyond his reach financially.
Then again, such works were unavailable to anyone who wasn’t hugely wealthy.
That couldn’t have been the intention of the artists who created them, he was sure.
Whenever he studied his favorite pieces, he wondered what it must have been like to be a young man in the late nineteenth century when such masterpieces were available for a song. From the start, though, some people — all too often foreigners — saw the beauty in the paintings that the leading arbiters of French culture openly scorned.
As a result of foreign interest and local disdain, boatloads of France’s cultural heritage were shipped off to Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, bought more often than not by the wives of rich merchants. These women consumed the works of Manet, Monet, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec as if they were the latest styles of hats and dresses, meant to be shown off to friends and rivals who couldn’t be bothered with traveling to Europe.
These grand dames were bourgeois plunderers, Fortier thought.
In a just world, the paintings would have been returned to the city where they were created. But such thinking was folly. With the exchange of francs for canvas and oil paint, great art had become mere merchandise, legally bought and sold and for the most part now bequeathed to American museums. In his youth, Fortier did entertain fantasies of slipping into the world’s great museums and making off with the iconic works of France’s master artists.