The Chocolate Falcon Fraud

by JoAnna Carl

  “Of course, I could get a job,” Tess said.

  “But it would be part-time, or you’d give up grad school, too.”

  “We could take turns!”

  Jeff turned back to Joe and me. “It’s complicated. And it began to look as if I could either give up grad school or give up getting married.”

  Or he could give up Buck’s respect. I could see that Jeff needed that. Buck must be quite a guy.

  “I realized that I couldn’t even buy Tess an engagement ring,” Jeff said.

  Then, during his internship at the Texas Museum of Popular Culture, Jeff picked up a hint at how to make some money.

  “The curator asked me to check out the availability of something online, and while I was doing that, I got the idea of looking at film memorabilia. And, Lee, I found out those movie posters you gave me are really valuable!”

  He smiled at me winningly. “I hope you’re not going to be mad. I sold them!”

  “That’s okay.” I laughed at the memory. Back when Jeff and I were stuck with each other’s company and used to spend our weekends watching old private eye movies, he asked me to take him to visit a movie memorabilia shop. He was fascinated with it. So on his next birthday, I bought him two of the posters he had liked.

  “Of course,” Jeff said, “over the years I had acquired a bunch more of them. By selling them I made enough money to buy Tess a small diamond—but . . .”

  Tess was shaking her head like mad. “But I said no! I told Jeff he’d be smarter to spend the money on more posters and stuff. Maybe he’d wind up with a real business.”

  Jeff shrugged. “So since February I’ve been buying and selling noir memorabilia online. I’ve also gone to several movie festivals and picked up more items. And I’ve done all right.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this?” I asked.

  Jeff dropped his head. “I was planning to tell you all the night I asked everybody to go to dinner. But while I was in school, in a way it wasn’t strictly ethical. See, museum employees aren’t supposed to deal in items similar to ones their museums hold in collections. But I couldn’t quit the museum until the semester was over because I was getting class credit I needed to graduate. I explained what I was doing to the curator, and he said it was okay because I was working with the music collection, not films. But I still felt uneasy.”

  Joe cleared his throat. “Let’s forget the ethics of the museum business for a moment. What brought you to Warner Pier?”

  “It started because I bought some Maltese Falcon posters online. Not originals, just reproductions. But I thought maybe I could sell them at a Texas noir festival. I got them from a company called Falcone Memorabilia. They mailed them to me. Very routine.”

  “Falcone?” Joe asked. “That’s the name you mentioned when you first arrived in Warner Pier. Where is this company?”

  “That’s a good question. I didn’t worry about where it was when I ordered online, but when I got the package of posters, the postmark was Grand Rapids. You know, one of those postmarks that covers a large area. And the address on the package they sent was not readable.

  “The next thing I know, I get this e-mail. The guy says he’s with Falcone Memorabilia, and he offers me Maltese Falcon pendants. Plastic, with green rhinestone eyes.”

  “Like the one we found in your pocket?” I asked.

  “I guess so. I remember him e-mailing me about them, but I do not remember buying them! I know the price was reasonable, so I must have ordered them to resell at the film festival—and to give to Tess. Anyway, after that the tone of the e-mails kind of changed. The guy claimed he had some special falcon items, and he asked if I’d be interested in them.”

  Jeff looked worried. “He sounded weird. I almost expected him to say he had ‘feelthy pictures.’

  “I sloughed the first message off, but next he told me that the plastic pendants were replicas of a more valuable one, one that had been made especially for Mary Astor. And he could get the original. Then I began to get interested.”

  Joe looked blank, and I remembered he had little interest in film noir.

  “Mary Astor was the female star of The Maltese Falcon, Joe,” I said.

  Joe nodded, and Jeff went on. “The guy from Falcone Memorabilia said some boyfriend had the little falcon made for her, enamel, with diamond eyes. And Falcone had it for sale. I asked how he got hold of it, and he e-mailed something about ‘its provenance is a little cloudy.’ So I let it drop.”

  “A lot of dealers aren’t so picky,” Joe said.

  “A lot of dealers are stupid, too. I might not be any more honest than the other guys, but an enamel pendant isn’t worth a lot, even with diamonds. The only thing that would make it valuable would be the connection with Mary Astor. And if you can’t prove that, it would be worth very little. Basically just the value of the diamonds. Heck, if it had a perfect provenance, it still wouldn’t be worth a lot.”

  “Why not?” Joe asked.

  “First, it wasn’t in the film. Second, Mary Astor wasn’t as big a star as Bogart became. So I didn’t bite. But they e-mailed me a few more times hinting at even more valuable items. Then I ran into Grossman.”

  “Grossman? You know that guy?”

  “Tess’ dad would say we’ve howdied, but we ain’t shook. Grossman visited our museum, and he got a guided tour from the director. He has a pretty big reputation in the noir world. As he came by where I was working, he was talking about this grant he was going to give the museum, for the five-thousand-dollar prize. Then he assured the director that he’d done a lot of research—actually I think he hires a researcher—and he could prove that a third Maltese Falcon prop existed. I work with this guy named Hal Hale, another volunteer, who’s also a noir fan, and we could hardly wait for Grossman to leave so we could laugh.”

  “Why?” Joe asked.

  “Because we were both sure there is no third Maltese Falcon. Grossman claimed to be such a big authority and he didn’t know crap.”

  Joe was looking mystified again. I spoke. “Jeff, you’ve lost Joe again. Better explain.”

  Jeff laughed. “These newbies! You know what the falcon is, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Lee made me watch the movie. It’s the statue the villains are after in The Maltese Falcon.”

  “Right. There were two falcons made as props in the film. Only two.”

  “Not three, like Grossman claims?”

  “Two. That’s really well established. Both of them are in the hands of private collectors.” Jeff leaned over and dropped his voice. “The last time one sold, at auction, it brought more than four million dollars.”

  Joe nodded. “That’s what Mary Kay told us. So if a third falcon was discovered . . .”

  “It would be worth a boatload of money. But it would need really impressive provenance to prove its authenticity. And it would be auctioned by Sotheby’s, not sold by e-mail by some company in rural Michigan that nobody ever heard of.

  “I really wanted to win the contest for $5,000 though, so I decided maybe I ought to visit the Falcone place personally and get a look at everything they had. But I had no address for them, just a zip. And that zip code takes in a lot of Michigan.”

  Joe looked a little more interested. “I assumed you had used a credit card to buy from them.”

  “Yeah. But the information on my bill was vague.”

  “Then how’d you find the place?”

  “I’m not sure I did! I don’t remember going there. But I tried to find it. I called Visa and complained that someone had charged something on my bill that I hadn’t ordered. The Visa lady told me where the charge had been handled. It was a post box number in Dorinda, Michigan. So that way I got the name of the town. Then I told Visa that I just hadn’t recognized the charge and apologized for bothering them.”

  “But knowing a town doesn’t tell you wher
e to find them.”

  “Right.” Jeff grinned. “So the first day I got here, the morning of the day I went by to see Lee, I went over to the Dorinda Post Office and asked the postmaster where Falcone Memorabilia was. He told me he didn’t know, since the box holders picked up their mail at the office. Then he grinned at me and said, ‘Information central for this town is the Dorinda Donut Shop. Go out the door and turn left.’”

  Joe looked at me, and we both laughed. “There are no secrets in a small town,” I said. “Did the doughnut shop tell you?”

  “The cashier didn’t know, but one of the customers did. He said it was ‘the old Valk place.’”

  Chocolate Chat

  The most famous name in American chocolate is, of course, Hershey’s. Here’s their recipe for fudge.

  Hershey’s Old-Fashioned Rich Cocoa Fudge

  3 cups sugar

  2⁄3 cup cocoa

  1⁄8 teaspoon salt

  1½ cups whole milk

  ¼ cup real butter

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Line 8- or 9-inch square pan with foil. Butter foil. In large, heavy saucepan, stir together sugar, cocoa, and salt. Stir in milk, using wooden spoon. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to full rolling boil. Boil without stirring to 234 degrees F on candy thermometer. This can take 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. DO NOT STIR. Cool at room temperature to 110 degrees F, or lukewarm. (This may take two to two and a half hours.) Beat with wooden spoon until fudge thickens and loses some gloss. (This much beating is work. Find a partner.) When it begins to look more like frosting than like syrup, pour into prepared pan. Cool before cutting into squares. Best made with whole milk and real butter.

  Chapter 18

  Jeff spoke again. “I honestly don’t remember finding Falcone’s. All of you are sure I went to this place out in the boonies, but it’s a mystery to me.”

  I ignored that and asked the question we were all thinking about. “Okay. In that final e-mail, just what did the Falcone man tell you?”

  “He claimed that a third falcon does exist, just not in the form we all expect. It would be an incredible find, if it’s true. But I have my doubts.”

  “In this situation,” I said, “you’re probably wise to be cautious. This certainly could be a setup for a con job preying on noir fans.”

  Then I felt embarrassed. After all, Jeff was a big-time noir fan himself. Would he take offense?

  But apparently my remark hadn’t upset Jeff. “You’re totally right, Lee,” he said. “Someone like Grossman could easily simply be a con man.”

  “What makes you suspicious of a prominent collector like Grossman when it comes to a movie prop?” Joe asked.

  “The Maltese Falcon props are so well-known—they’re documented upside down and backward. It’s just not possible that a third falcon of the same type exists. But when Grossman talks about another falcon, he could mean something different. I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to buy it, but I’d sure like to see it.”

  “I heard what Grossman said about the contest he was sponsoring,” I said. “ He didn’t offer a hundred thousand for the statuette. He offered the money for a clue to where it could be found.”

  Jeff grinned. “Oh. If that’s the case, I might win the money. All I have to do is find out if Falcone has a real falcon and then let Grossman know.”

  I crossed my eyes. “But you said it didn’t exist.”

  “Something like it might exist.” Jeff sat forward and dropped his voice. “If a movie prop man was given the job of creating a falcon, wouldn’t he test several designs? See which one he liked? And see which one the director liked?”

  Joe nodded slowly. “So you mean the falcon Grossman is talking about might not look like—I guess we could call it the ‘Bogart falcon’?”

  “Exactly! If you look at the first edition of the book, for example, the falcon on the cover is nothing like the movie falcon. It’s slimmer, more art deco. In fact, there’s long been a belief that Hammett got the idea to use the falcon as the MacGuffin from a real jeweled falcon owned by a British nobleman.”

  Joe shook his head. “Okay. You lost me. ‘Use the falcon as the MacGuffin’? What does that mean?”

  Jeff looked pained, so I answered Joe’s question. “Jeff taught me that term when he was fourteen. Let’s see if I remember. A MacGuffin is a plot device. It’s the object that everybody in the movie is after. It’s the thing that makes the plot move along.”

  That made Jeff look a little happier. “Right, Lee! And it can be anything.”

  Joe looked even more confused.

  “Joe,” Jeff said, “what’s your favorite movie?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Try The Maltese Falcon itself,” I said to Jeff. “Since Joe and I watched it recently.”

  “Okay. In The Maltese Falcon what are all the characters trying to get hold of?”

  “A statue of a bird.”

  “Right. But what if it had been a statue of something else? A saint, maybe. Or an elephant. Or a Roman Venus. The movie plot would still work.”

  “I see,” Joe said. “Because the movie isn’t really about the falcon statue. It’s about the characters and the choices they have to make as they try to get hold of it. Right?”

  “Exactly! And it’s especially about Sam Spade and the choices he makes. That’s what makes it such a great film! The statue is just the device Hammett picked to motivate the characters.”

  “And movie fans call that the MacGuffin?”

  “Moviemakers and movie fans. Sometimes writers. Everybody at this film festival would know what a MacGuffin is. And Hammett could have used a million different things. A fabulous diamond. A prize racehorse. The heir to a throne. A twelfth-century map proving that Erik the Red discovered America.”

  “But Hammett picked a falcon.”

  “You got it! And one of the guesses as to why he chose a falcon is that he was inspired by this actual jeweled bird, very historic.”

  “I see.”

  Jeff gestured vigorously. “So, if you were a movie prop designer, and you had to make a statue of an ancient jeweled bird for a film, how would you start?”

  “Well, I’m a lawyer. We start by researching. I’d try to find out what actual bird statues of the appropriate time period looked like. Then I’d probably make a model. I’d either draw one or make one out of clay or some other inexpensive material. I’d get an okay from the producer before I made the real one.”

  “Exactly! And I think that’s what the Falcone guy has. A model of a proposed falcon. Probably one the producer turned down.”

  “That could be.”

  Jeff went on, but his voice sounded a bit weaker. “Someplace I’ve got a picture of the famous jeweled statue . . . It’s in a well-known collection of art in England. The falcon in it is much more lifelike than the Bogart falcon, which is stylized. And it’s definitely covered with jewels.”

  “Did the Falcone guy describe his falcon?”

  Jeff sat silently, rubbing his forehead and frowning. “I can’t recall exactly what he said.”

  Suddenly we all remembered something more important than a jeweled falcon. Jeff was recovering from a concussion.

  Tess jumped to her feet. “Jeff! Honey! You lie down.”

  “Yes, Jeff. We’ve tired you out,” I said.

  In five minutes we had Jeff tucked in bed, had consulted the nurse—who wasn’t real happy with us—and had dimmed the lights.

  “I guess I am getting tired,” Jeff said. “But I wish I could remember just how he described the statue. I need my computer.”

  This time I didn’t feel as if he was using his injury to keep from talking to me.

  Tess, Joe, and I settled in the empty waiting area across the hall. Tess and I grabbed a couch, and Joe
moved to a corner and pulled out his phone, saying he needed to check in with his office.

  He had barely put his phone to his ear when Tess turned to me. She spoke quietly. “Lee, I’d like to ask you a personal question.”

  What was coming? “Sure, Tess.”

  “Is there something wrong with Jeff’s daddy?”

  “Not that I know of. What brought that on?”

  “I mean . . .” She wiggled uncomfortably. “I know it’s none of my business, Lee, but Jeff said something about ‘why you walked out on’ him.”

  “Oh. Well, if you’re going to join the family, I guess you deserve to know the family secrets. Rich didn’t beat me or anything, Tess. We just weren’t happy together. We were both seeing counselors more than we were seeing each other.”

  She didn’t look satisfied. And maybe she did deserve a better answer. The problem was, I wasn’t sure I could give her one.

  “Let me think a minute,” I said. And I took a full minute to try to analyze what I wanted to say.

  Finally I spoke. “As they say, Tess, it was as much my fault as Rich’s. See, my parents were always hard up, and they were always arguing about money. Then they divorced, and I thought it was because of their money problems. So when I met Jeff’s dad, part of me may have thought, ‘Well, at least we won’t have to worry about money.’ But I also fell for Rich big-time! I would never want you to think I married him for his money. I was crazy about him. But after we were married—well, it’s the way your dad figured it—Rich saw money as control. He wanted to make all the decisions, and not just the financial decisions. He wasn’t mean about it; he just thought he knew best. If I tried to talk to him, then he saw that he’d hurt my feelings. That made him feel bad, and he wanted to apologize. But instead of trying to understand my viewpoint, he’d buy me a new car or a piece of jewelry.”