FOR A FEW weeks, I followed orders and didn’t call anyone involved in the Gardner case. But I couldn’t stop Laurenz or Pierre from contacting me.
One afternoon in mid-July, Laurenz sent me several e-mails I couldn’t ignore.
Attached to each e-mail was a photograph of a Picasso painting beside a week-old copy of a Paris newspaper. I instantly recognized these “proof of life” pictures as the paintings stolen from Picasso’s granddaughter’s apartment—the ones Sunny and Laurenz had mentioned offhandedly at the restaurant a few months earlier. Laurenz wanted me to buy them.
I didn’t respond, but I let my supervisors know. Soon, Pierre was calling from Paris.
“You know of the Picassos stolen in Paris?” he said. “I have now seen the e-mails.”
“Right,” I said, cautiously.
“There is more,” Pierre said. I knew Pierre was tapping many phones, including Sunny’s, and his team was doing its best to monitor any calls Laurenz made to France. “On the wiretaps, Sunny and Laurenz are talking to these bad guys who have the Picassos about selling the paintings to our undercover man, Andre. And on the phone, they say that Andre can be trusted because he works with a man named Bob in Miami. And I do not think there is another Bob in Miami who they are talking about.”
“Probably not, no.”
I shook my head as I untangled the logic of the situation. At the beginning of the Gardner investigation, Andre had vouched for me to Laurenz, leading him to believe that Andre and I had worked together as shady art dealers. But now that Laurenz and Sunny believed the three of us had actually committed a major crime together—the “sale” on The Pelican—the vouch had doubled back on itself. Sunny and Laurenz were now telling the thieves that Andre could be trusted because Bob could be trusted. Yes, Laurenz was annoyed with me because I’d pulled out of the Gardner deal, but he still believed I was trustworthy. After all, we’d done business together and no one had been arrested. What could be better evidence of my criminal credentials than that?
“So, this has created a problem because of the Boston case,” Pierre said. “Your friends Fred and the others at FBI, they ask us to wait. To not take the paintings right now. You understand why?”
“Yeah, I do.” The moment Andre and his fellow officers completed their sting in the Picasso case, making arrests, the thieves would know that someone involved was actually an informant or an undercover cop. Suspicion would likely turn to Andre and perhaps to his American partner, Bob, the man whose bona fides Sunny and Laurenz had used to convince the thieves to work with Andre in the first place. If that happened, it might ruin any chance of using Laurenz and Sunny to recover the Gardner paintings.
I also understood Pierre’s dilemma. He couldn’t let $66 million worth of Picassos slip away. If word got out that he had failed to recover the artwork as a favor to the FBI, it would create a scandal and probably scuttle his career.
So I offered Pierre a suggestion: When you make the bust, pretend to arrest your undercover police officer. That way the thieves won’t know who betrayed them. At a minimum, it will buy us time.
Pierre liked the idea. “You are a good chess player,” he said, and promised to make it happen.
Incredibly, Pierre’s orders were not carried out during the Paris sting—the French SWAT team failed to arrest their undercover officer with the thieves. Worse, during an interrogation, another French policeman confirmed to one of the thieves that the buyer was in fact an undercover agent. It didn’t take long for the thieves in Paris to make the link from Andre to Laurenz and to me.
Pierre called and apologized profusely for the screwup. It wasn’t intentional, he said, and I believed him.
Unfortunately, the consequences were immediate and severe.
LAURENZ CALLED IN a panic a few days after the Picasso sting.
“They want to kill me! They want you! You and me! They want to assassinate us both!”
I told him to calm down and start from the beginning. Associates of the Picasso thieves were in Miami with Sunny, he said, demanding answers from Laurenz and money for the thieves’ legal bills.
“I was at the Blockbuster,” Laurenz sputtered. “You know I go every Tuesday for the new releases? They follow me there and they want to put me in the car and take me away. I told you these guys don’t fuck around.”
“How’d you get away?”
“I saw them from inside the Blockbuster and have my wife call 911 and when the police come I go out to talk to them.”
“Smart. Where are you now?”
“A hotel. The Loews. They take my dogs here.” Laurenz loved his two mutts, took them everywhere. He began bragging about the size and cost of his suite, and I let him prattle on. I needed time to think.
I wanted to know more about the goons threatening Laurenz. For one thing, they might lead me to the missing Gardner paintings. For another, they were threatening my life. But I had to find a way of stepping in that would be plausible to Laurenz and remain in character for Bob Clay. Here I held an advantage: Laurenz didn’t know that I knew he had floated my name as Andre’s partner to the Picasso thieves. As far as I ought to know, the French thieves had never heard of me.
So I said, “Laurenz, back up a second—you said they want to kill me, too. Why would they want to kill me? All I did was look at e-mails you sent me. I was never in this deal.”
Laurenz fell into the trap, and blamed Sunny. “Sunny said to them that you are a partner with Andre, and that we can trust Andre because we trust you. So now they want to know where you live. They want assassinate you because you are responsible for their friend being in jail.”
I exploded. “What the—? Why would Sunny say that? Never mind! Who do these guys think they are? I want to meet them! You set it up!”
Laurenz called back the next day. We’d meet the two Frenchmen at the bar at a luxury hotel in Hollywood, Florida. In three days.
THE OP PLAN for the hotel meet was a compromise, hashed out by committee. As one FBI employee later handwrote across the coversheet of his after-action report, it looked like “a total clusterfuck.”
Given the circumstances, I was officially brought back on to the case, but Fred made it clear the move was only temporary. He insisted that I use the meeting to introduce his undercover agent from Boston into the mix. The agent who would replace me was named Sean, and he often played a Boston mobster. I was instructed to vouch for Sean, to explain that he was taking over for me on the Gardner deal. I doubted it would work. Sean was a nice guy, but he didn’t know anything about international art deals. Besides, the Picasso case had already spooked the Frenchmen—this was the point of the meeting. It seemed like the worst possible time to get them to start dealing with a complete stranger.
“What if these guys refuse to deal with Sean?” I asked. “What if they insist on working with me? What do we say then?”
“We tell them to take their business elsewhere,” Sean replied.
I laughed. “Seriously? What about leaning on them? Take control of the situation? Maybe make a veiled threat?”
“No threats, not me,” Sean said. “This special agent is not going to be on tape threatening anybody.”
Sean was more worried about covering his ass than protecting mine. I didn’t waste effort arguing with him.
Before I left to meet Laurenz in the lobby, I stuffed a handgun in each pocket. It was the first time in my nineteen-year career I’d carried a weapon while working undercover. But this situation felt different, and I’d already been threatened. The people I planned to meet weren’t looking to sell me a priceless piece of art; they wanted to know why they shouldn’t kill me.
As I stashed the guns, Fred shot me a look. I said to Fred, “If these guys start to fuck with me, I’m going to kill them.”
“Please,” Fred said. “Don’t shoot anybody.”
“I don’t want to shoot anybody—never have—but these guys have already told Laurenz that they want to kill me.”
That got Sean�
�s attention. “Are these guys that dangerous?”
“Yeah, they’re that dangerous,” I said. “Listen, Laurenz told me a story about one of these guys. He has a thing for knives. The guy cut himself the first time he met Laurenz to show how tough he was. Sliced his arm and sat there, letting it bleed, real menacing-like, blood dripping down. And he says to Laurenz, ‘I don’t have any problem with pain. This is what real life is all about.’ So yeah, Sean. A guy like that? I take him seriously.”
SEAN AND I met Laurenz in the lobby.
Before we entered the bar, Laurenz described the two would-be assassins waiting with Sunny for us. He called them Vanilla and Chocolate. Vanilla was the white one—long, stringy dark hair and a crooked nose. Chocolate was black, bald, and wore silver braces across his teeth. He was the one with the knife fetish and was built like a linebacker.
We met them at the bar and the six of us took seats around a corner table—Laurenz, Sean, and me on one side, Sunny, Vanilla, and Chocolate on the other.
Vanilla and Chocolate were large, but they were not stupid. They treaded carefully, treating me with feigned respect. If I was who I claimed to be—a shady art broker with access to millionaire clients—the Frenchmen knew I could make them a great deal of money. It would be foolish to insult me before they got to know me. If, on the other hand, they concluded that I was a snitch or a cop, they could deal with me later.
Sensing their hesitation, I put them on the defensive. “Look,” I said aggressively, my hands under the table, inches from the hidden guns, “it’s obvious someone in France gave your guy up and now we’re all in trouble because of this. Your problem is in France.”
Chocolate said, “The FBI is involved in this. That’s not in France.”
I shot back, “Don’t you think I know the FBI is involved? They came to my house, woke me up, scared my wife to hell, asking us questions about Picasso and this guy and that guy in Paris. This is not good for business, having FBI agents showing up at my home. I’ve got a reputation.”
Chocolate wanted to know why my name had surfaced in Paris. How did the undercover French policeman know to use it to lure the Paris thieves?
I smiled and sat back in my chair. “A damn good question,” I said. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. I wish I knew.” I pointed to Sunny. “Maybe they’re tapping his phone. You know Sunny and I are working on all kinds of things.”
Chocolate asked about his arrested friends’ legal expenses for the Picasso charges. Would Laurenz help pay them?
Laurenz loved playing tough guy, but he knew there was but one correct answer if he wanted to stay alive. “Oui,” he said sharply. He looked away.
Problem solved, I moved my hands away from my pockets and changed the subject, introducing Sean. He stuck out his hand in greeting, but Chocolate and Vanilla just stared back.
Sean spoke gruffly, like a tough guy in a ’40s movie. “OK, here’s the deal. From now on,” he said, “you deal with me. You don’t talk to Bob. I’m the one you contact for business. As far as you are concerned, I am the business. You go through me.”
Sunny and his French friends looked confused, as if to say, what the hell is this? Laurenz translated for them. Chocolate spoke rapidly in French to Sunny, and then turned to Sean. “Non, we deal with Bob, Sunny, and Laurenz—only.”
Sean shook his head. “You call me from now on or we’re done.”
Chocolate sputtered a small laugh. He said to Sean, “Who are you again?”
Fred’s lame game plan was falling apart. I cut in. “Call Sean. It’s good. Tell you what: Let’s cool off for thirty days and then we get back in touch, OK?”
Chocolate didn’t commit either way. He began talking with Sunny again in French. The waitress came by and Sean clumsily jumped to get the check. He shoved a credit card at her. What was his hurry?
Sunny and his friends stood and walked off, headed toward the beach. Laurenz, Sean, and I went the other way, toward the lobby and the valet stand. Laurenz remained uncharacteristically quiet until he and I were alone, back inside the Rolls. He started to open his mouth, but his cell phone rang. It was Sunny. They spoke in French and Laurenz began laughing.
Laurenz hung up, shook his head. “They say of your friend Sean, they say, ‘Who is this fucking guy?’ They say they wish to stuff him in the trunk of their car but they cannot because it is a rental and he is too big to fit.’ Sunny says they think he’s an idiot and they won’t deal with him.”
“What do you think?”
“He is a joke,” Laurenz said. “And I think he might be a cop.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is no wiseguy. This I know.”
“Why do say that?”
“He is a pussycat. He say, ‘Oh, you don’t deal with me, I walk away.’ Oh, I am so scared. A real wiseguy, he look you in the eye and say very quietly, very calmly, ‘Fuck me? Fuck you. You tell me why I should not kill you today. Tell me now or you are dead before the day is over. Thank you. Good-bye.’ This is what the real wiseguy say.”
“Well—”
Laurenz floored the Rolls, rocketing away from the valet stand. “This guy Sean, he use green American Express card to pay the bill! A real wiseguy doesn’t use a credit card. He uses cash. Always, always! And he never takes a receipt! Never! Never!”
I didn’t know what to say. He was right.
Laurenz turned toward the causeway and downtown Miami.
After a few moments, he said, “I drop you at your hotel and then maybe I not see you again. Because if we had not done the deal on the boat, I would be thinking for sure you are a cop. But now”—Laurenz took his eyes off the road for a moment and squinted at me—“I don’t know if you are a cop and I don’t care. I am in fucking bad shape, OK? We are through.”
Laurenz stepped on the accelerator and cranked the radio.
He was out.
WITH LAURENZ GONE, the Boston FBI office shut down Operation Masterpiece.
Wonderful, I thought. Bureaucracies and turf fighting on both sides of the Atlantic had destroyed the best chance in a decade to rescue the Gardner paintings. We’d also blown an opportunity to infiltrate a major art crime ring in France, a loose network of mobsters holding as many as seventy stolen masterpieces.
Our failure convinced me that the FBI was no longer the can-do force it was when I’d joined in 1988. The bureau was becoming a risk-averse bureaucracy like any other government agency, filled with mediocrity and people more concerned about their career than the mission.
The Art Crime Team, launched with such promise, seemed headed for that fate too, roiled by constant turnover. We’d not only lost Eric Ives as unit chief, but our best prosecutor as well, Bob Goldman. Petty and insecure bosses in Philadelphia had given my best friend an ultimatum: Drop art crime and return to garden-variety drug and bank robbery cases or find another job. Goldman had called their bluff and quit, abruptly ending a twenty-four-year career in law enforcement. Perhaps worse, half of the original street agents assigned to the Art Crime Team had now moved on, looking to advance their careers. It was disheartening.
As I began my final twelve months as an FBI agent in the fall of 2007, I planned to finish up a few lingering cases, train an undercover replacement, and start thinking about my retirement party. I’d travel with Donna, visit my sons in college, attend my daughter’s high school recitals.
Then one afternoon that fall, my undercover cell phone buzzed.
It was Sunny.
CHAPTER 25
ENDGAME
Barcelona. January 2008.
FOUR MONTHS AFTER SUNNY’S PHONE CALL, I FOUND myself in a frayed Barcelona hotel room, negotiating with his boss, Patrick.
Six of us crammed around a flimsy table and two single beds. Patrick and I sat on opposite sides of the table by an open window. Sunny and an undercover Spanish police officer perched on the edge of one bed. My muscle, the two FBI agents from Miami, still posing as Colombian drug dealers, lounged on the other bed.
/> A hidden camera in the ceiling fan recorded everything. A Spanish SWAT team waited next door.
Patrick, a lithe and cocksure Frenchman of Armenian descent, perhaps six foot three, sat a foot from my face, chain-smoking Marlboro reds. He was sixty years old, with close-cropped gray hair and a day’s white stubble on his chin. He kept his brown eyes locked on mine, patient and as focused as a sniper. His words came deliberately and in short sentences.
“We are older men, you and I,” Patrick said in French. “Money is nice, but liberty is very important.”
I’d hoped to bring along a French-speaking undercover FBI agent to translate, but the bureau hadn’t been able to find anyone qualified. So the Spanish officer did the job. He moved from French to English and English to French with speed and gusto, but also with an unsettling lisp and effeminate voice that belied the tense negotiation. I could imagine the macho FBI agents watching on video in the next room, snickering at the incongruity.
I said, “I don’t want to go to jail either.”
“Yes, we know what is important.”
“So,” I said, hoping to get a confession on tape, “tell me about the robbery.”
Patrick was only happy to.
I ALWAYS TELL rookies that you’ve got to run down every lead. You never know which one will pan out.
Sometimes long shots pay off.
When Laurenz had dropped out of the deal, the agents at the Boston FBI office had thrown up their hands and closed the file. But the Miami division had not given up on Sunny; its agents opened a new investigation, Operation Masterpiece II, and lured Sunny back with the promise of a large cocaine deal. Soon, Sunny was calling me again to talk art.
At first, we spoke of the Vermeer and Rembrandt. But he also began to offer a second set of paintings—four works, including a Monet and a Sisley—stolen the previous summer from a museum in Nice. The two sets of paintings were held by different sets of gangsters, Sunny said.
I made it clear that I wanted the Boston paintings, not the Nice paintings. Sunny said I had to buy the Nice paintings first. It was a way to build trust, he said.
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