The Price of Inheritance

by Karin Tanabe

  “What did he ask you to bring back?”

  “He didn’t tell me then. He said it was nothing illegal. No weapons, no drugs.”

  “Not illegal. That’s bullshit. There’s a lot more that’s illegal than just weapons and drugs.”

  “Right, but it made me less worried.” Tyler cleared his throat and looked at me watching him in a total panic. I knew what he was going to say next. I watched him shift his weight on the sofa. He was too big for the piece and looked out of place in the store, and suddenly, in my life.

  “I won’t bore you with every detail, but I became a middleman for Max. He had orders from collectors in the U.S. and the U.K. Specific objects from the museum that they wanted. He had people inside the museum, he had runners from the museum to base, and then he had people on base to bring everything back to the U.S.”

  Tyler sat back uncomfortably, as if telling this story, out loud, maybe for the first time in his life, had stiffened him, pulled a little more of his youth away from him.

  “You’re saying that Max Sebastian, the world’s leading expert on Middle Eastern antiquities, is a thief.”

  “No. A thief is someone who steals cell phones in the subway. Max Sebastian is the head of the biggest ancient art theft ring in the world.”

  I thought about the two bowls. The one Tyler had given to Goodwill and the copy that Hannah made. Had Max even done TL testing on the bowl that NCIS took from me? Did he have the fake that Hannah made? Had he switched them? How did he know that I had the original? I asked Tyler and he said, “I’ll get to that.”

  “Is this all true? Max Sebastian? He’s in his fifties. He’s so posh—”

  “Yeah, and he’s a fucking criminal.” Tyler’s voice rose for the first time that evening.

  I twisted my hands in my lap and looked up at him, thinking about the way he looked at me the first day we met.

  “That bowl, the one I bought from Hook’s auction, that was the real bowl. The one from the National Museum.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “But you were never in the museum?”

  “No, I never even got close. A man, whose real name I never knew, gave it to me, along with several other things. I hid them for the rest of my deployment and six months later, I brought it all home in medical equipment bags. I met one of Max’s guys in New York, gave him everything, and he gave me money, in cash, and deposited it in several different bank accounts.”

  “What did you do with the money?”

  “I spent some.”

  “Some. What did you do with the rest?”

  “Guess.”

  “I’m guessing your mother no longer lives in a twenty-thousand-dollar house.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “Do you know how illegal that is?”

  “Of course. But I didn’t understand the bigger picture for a long time.”

  “And now you do.” His calmness was choking me. The way his blue eyes bore into me, his unemotional delivery, his sex appeal that was ever present, I wanted to push it all away. He didn’t deserve it.

  “I’d like to think I do,” he replied. “But back then, I didn’t. I really was a kid who wanted a challenge and money. At that age, I needed to be challenged. I had a lot to prove.”

  “War wasn’t enough for you? Because the Marine Corps really does it for most people. But not you, right? You’re Tyler fucking Ford. You can’t just go to war; you decide to be part of a major international art smuggling ring, too. What a beautiful challenge.” I gripped the arms of the chair I was sitting in until my hands hurt. I let go and slammed them on my lap. “There was an amnesty program, Tyler!” I yelled. “Do you understand that? The museum had an amnesty program. You could have turned it in! Or had an Iraqi turn it in for you. There would never have been criminal charges. Nothing. You could have reported Max. Been a hero who helped save the museum instead of being part of the looting. But no. And now, what could happen?”

  “A lot has already happened.”

  “Oh, well, I know what’s happened to me! That much I know. And I know what I figured out from your stupidity, or Hannah’s stupidity, even Max’s. But I’ve got a few holes, so why don’t you go ahead and fill me in.” I crossed my arms. My emotions had been running erratically but for now, they’d screeched to a halt somewhere in the realm of furious.

  “I’ll tell you as much as I know, but there was a lot I never knew.”

  “I’ll take what you’ve got.” Tyler reached for my hand, trying to remind me of our intimacy, but I refused to let him touch me. He leaned back on the couch and waited until I looked at him.

  “When I brought everything back to one of Max’s . . . associates in New York, he took it—”

  “How much was there?”

  “A lot. Carolyn, sit there, listen, ask me questions later.”

  “Because you’re controlling this show.”

  “Yes, right now, I’m controlling this show. And though you probably think differently, I wasn’t controlling that show. Until now.”

  I looked at Tyler, the outline of his Marine Corps tattoos coming up from under his shirt. I thought about his Silver Star, how he would never have gotten it if they knew. Maybe he would have only done one tour. Maybe he wouldn’t even have completed it.

  “I gave everything to a man in New York. We met in a hotel room. We both carried plain black luggage, we switched it, I had my money, that was it. Except that he told me to keep that bowl.”

  “The bowl? The green and white bowl.”

  “Yes. He told me to keep it because there was a money problem with the buyer and he didn’t want it on him because it was stolen.”

  “But he wanted you to keep it. How ethical.”

  “I think I made it pretty clear that Max Sebastian and everyone he works with are about as unethical as you can get. The man, again, whose real name I never knew, threw some more money my way, and I agreed to keep it until he told me he needed it.”

  “So you never knew these other men’s real names but you knew Max. The top of the top.”

  “Yeah, I did. He’s smart enough to know that someone like me would not have responded well to one of his circle. People I usually dealt with were not the Max Sebastian type. And I, and whoever else he had in the American military, were essential to his plan. He needed to get things back to New York and he was smart enough to know how much could be found by customs agents when badly concealed.”

  “Did anyone ever ask for the bowl?”

  “Not for years. Not until last December.”

  “December! Last December? That’s when you asked Hannah to make you a copy.”

  “Right. Somewhere between 2003 and last December, I grew up. What I’d done was getting to me and I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I couldn’t fulfill the agreement I made eleven years ago. I think what attracted me to Hannah in the first place, besides the obvious, was that she loved this stuff. I’d never really thought about it before her. Even when I brought it all back from Iraq, I didn’t think of it as anything but a bunch of old junk from a museum that had the fingerprints of Saddam Hussein’s regime all over it. My opinion of all that changed because of Hannah.”

  My throat felt like it was closing as I heard him repeat her name. I abhorred that she was a part of this.

  “But why did you have to get her involved?” I asked, fighting back the current of jealousy.

  “Because I needed her to be. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do without Hannah. By that time, I knew a lot about forgery. If she didn’t think she had an original, she was not forging anything. I even told her not to make the copy very good.”

  “But she made it perfectly.”

  “Yeah, she did. And I knew she would.”

  “Did the original bowl, the one from the museum, the one I had on my crappy bookshelf, have the Hebrew writing on the
bottom?”

  “Yes. Exactly the same as you know it to be.”

  “Did you know that she put a fake base on the original? A new base on an old piece.”

  “I did. I never told her I felt a difference, but I had that bowl for eleven years. I knew it pretty well. I figured out what she was doing, trying to save my ass if things got messy with TL testing, and it was a pretty good idea, so I kept it on.”

  “Did you send it back to Max when his person asked for it back?” Tyler looked at me with a hint of mischief in his eyes, the same expression he’d had that day on the boat.

  “I didn’t. A different guy. Again, someone who used a fake name and who I only spoke to on the phone asked me to leave it for him in a designated place in New York. But I didn’t leave him the real one, I left him Hannah’s.”

  “And the real one you dropped in the Goodwill box on base that Greg LaPorte set up.”

  “Right.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because I wanted it to get back to the museum. But I couldn’t do it. I needed it to get laundered a little. Turn over, exchange hands, then eventually get back there.”

  “Who was supposed to buy it?”

  “Someone, anyone but you.”

  “Not me? Oh, I get it, Tyler,” I said, standing up rigidly. His cool blue expression felt like knives on my skin.

  “So I messed it all up for you. I bought it, me who knows a little too much about all this stuff. And even worse, I kept it.” It was right then that I realized why Tyler had asked me out that night we had first met. He didn’t just fall over from love at first sight. He had to.

  I said as much through fresh tears and collapsed on a chair. He stood up and tried to bend down toward me but I put my hand out to stop him. “Don’t you dare. Do not touch me right now. Do not even come close to me,” I said. “You had it all figured out, you were going to make good on your youthful idiocy, but I got in the way. I brought what you were trying to get rid of right back to you. So what did you decide to do, Tyler? Fuck me? Seduce me so that I forgot all about it and you could realign things like you’d intended them to be in the first place? Is that why you kept trying to get the bowl back from me? I wouldn’t give it to you, though. And why? Because I stupidly, so stupidly, fell in love with you. But it wasn’t even you! It was just some character you were pretending to be. You know what, Tyler? Everything anyone has ever said about you is true. They thought you weren’t going to amount to anything and look at you now. You’re even worse than they thought you’d be.”

  He didn’t respond and I didn’t feel bad for saying it. He knew, and I knew, it was true.

  “You and me, it started for the wrong reasons. I admit that,” he said forcefully. “I needed to keep tabs on you. But after that day on base, after the Breakers, everything changed. I didn’t care about my plan anymore, or anything. I just wanted to make things right and move the fuck on.”

  “And how were you going to make things right? How!” I screamed. My throat hurt from tears and anger. My shirt was stained and my face was burning.

  “I had sent Max the copy. He was going to notice it was a copy eventually because he’s Max Sebastian, but it was so good that it would buy me a little time, enough for me to get the original back from you and to the museum. But then, you sent him those pictures in February so he figured it all out a little faster.”

  “Bad luck, right?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  “Greg LaPorte also sent him pictures.”

  “Yeah, I know. So he figured out who you were and where you lived and how you were connected to me through Greg and then he came to Newport to test the bowl.”

  “And what do you think he did?”

  “I know what he did. He brought the bowl he had, the one Hannah made, and that’s the one he tested. That he could even core from the side, not the base, in front of NCIS and the results would say it was a copy. He showed those results to NCIS and then switched the bowls. They gave you back Hannah’s bowl and he took the real one from you.”

  “But the real one has a fake bottom.”

  “Yeah, he’s not a football coach, Carolyn. He’s the very best. I’m sure he tested under the glaze and then he probably removed the bottom and got it to the buyer. That’s why he contacted me for it in December. His sale, I don’t know the details but he wanted it back fast. He must have finally gotten his money.”

  “But you could have sent the real one back and gotten away with everything. Why the hell would you do what you did? The switch? Getting Hannah involved? Dropping it in that box on base, telling me everything? You yourself admitted that Max would eventually know you were trying to fuck him over. Why are you doing this?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just had my come-to-Jesus moment, Carolyn. I spent a long time being Max Sebastian’s yes-man, then I got to prove my salt, put a wrinkle in his plan with Hannah’s bowl. Now I’ve had my retribution, grown the fuck up, and I need to wipe my plate clean.”

  “Clean?”

  “Fine. Cleanish. I wanted to control everything.”

  He smoothed his thin shirt over his body, pulling it so close that I could see muscle and skin. He looked down at me, his light eyes focusing on my flushed face.

  “If this was going to move, I wanted to be the one to move it because, look, it’s eleven years later and I still got away with it.”

  “You say that like you’re proud!”

  “I am a little proud. And I promised you I wouldn’t lie. So yes, Carolyn, I’m proud of myself. That I, some dumb-ass kid from nowhere, could do what I did.”

  “Smuggle? How hard is it to smuggle?”

  “Pretty damn hard.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Disgusting or not, it is what it is. But now everything is different and I’m ready for the gig to be up.”

  “So what the hell have you been doing for the last nine days? Getting ready to have Max Sebastian out you?”

  “No. I’ve been trying to deal with this without getting you involved.”

  “Well, that was an epic fail, Tyler. You’ve put me in a hell of a position. Why would you ever do this to me?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be you. Like I said, you weren’t supposed to buy that bowl. But I’m glad you did.”

  Tyler sat down and moved closer to the end of the sofa, stretching his legs so they almost touched my feet. I pulled mine in and sat back on my chair.

  “So now what. You admit everything and get court-martialed and dismissed? Are you ready for that?”

  “I wouldn’t have switched it to begin with if I wasn’t ready for consequences.”

  “What about losing me? Are you ready for that consequence?”

  “That’s the only one I couldn’t face.”

  “What about Hannah?”

  “What about her.”

  “You’re still in love with her!”

  I didn’t know what I was more upset about: his lies, his backhanded duplicity, or how much he needed Hannah.

  “I am not in love with her. I swear to you,” he countered, his voice letting through as much tenderness as Tyler knew how. “I’m not. I care about her very much. I’ll always, for many reasons, be tied to her, want the best for her, but I’m not in love with her. I’m in love with you.”

  “You screwed Hannah and now you’re screwing me. What am I supposed to do with all this, Tyler? What!”

  He stood up again and this time I let him walk closer to me. He lifted me from the chair and put his arms around me.

  “I despise you,” I said, holding on to his arms.

  “You love me,” he said, kissing my face. He repeated it until I kissed him back.

  I wanted to tell him I didn’t. I wanted to look at him straight in those blue, glassy eyes and tell him he meant nothing to me. That I could walk out of that ro
om and never again have my heart beat with him in mind. But we both would have known I was lying.

  “What’s going to happen now?” I said, gripping his white shirt with my hands. I wanted to rip it to shreds, to pound on his chest with my fists, to berate him for being such an idiot, but all I did was stand there and cry. “Tell me what’s going to happen now. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know, Carolyn. I guess that depends on what you do.”

  CHAPTER 17

  I didn’t leave the store until half an hour after Tyler was gone. I walked outside and the same motion light that had startled me two hours ago turned on again. I locked the store and texted Jane that I was on the way to her house. She wrote back that she wasn’t home, but she would be momentarily. I told her I’d drive slow, but instead I walked fast. By the time I got to Bellevue, my tears had dried up and all I could think about was how many times I had driven up and down the street with Tyler.

  Jane opened the front door before I rang the doorbell, and for the first time in my adult life, I realized just how enormous her house was. As I looked up at it, instead of marveling at it, it bothered me.

  “What’s wrong? A lot is wrong. I can tell. You have a face full of storm clouds,” said Jane, giving me a hug. She was wearing cashmere. Jane always wore cashmere until the end of May, and then she switched to linen.

  “I can’t talk about it, Jane,” I said trying not to flood her with more than she ever needed to know. “I just need you to be the friend who can distract me.”

  “I can be that friend,” she said, pointing to the living room. “What do you want to do? It’s a little late but do you want to eat? Do you want to walk? Or maybe drive? Swim? Drink?”

  “Swim and drink.”

  “Fine. Swim and drink. I’ll get us bathing suits.”

  She walked upstairs and I sat and stared at the Manet on the living room wall. The Dalbys had paid $32 million for it at a Christie’s auction in London in 2010. It had been part of a huge sale with a Picasso blue-period painting and one of Monet’s water lilies, which surprisingly went unsold. I had asked Mrs. Dalby why she went for the Manet instead of the Monet and she’d said, “If I want to look at a water lily, I’ll just build a pond. No matter what I do, I can’t look at the real Édouard Manet.” I found it to be as good an argument as any.