“Welcome back, Mr. Bataglia. Beautiful evening.”
“Hi, Jack. It certainly is. I think that God made the winters so cold here so we could enjoy the summer that much more.”
“I don’t disagree with you there, sir,” replied the doorman.
Anthony entered the grey stone building and made his way to the elevators.
The doors opened on the twentieth floor. Anthony walked out of the elevator and down the hall to his apartment, entered the electronic code, and opened the door. The room was filled with natural light coming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Central Park. The reclaimed hickory hardwood flooring that ran through most of the four-bedroom suite gave a rustic feel to the otherwise modern interior. He loved the way the knots and imperfections in the honey and auburn streaked wood looked. There were hand woven Turkish and Persian carpets on top of the wood floor in the various rooms to help add color and, of course, warmth in the winter.
After he showered and changed into well-worn jeans and a simple black tee-shirt, he went over to the bar and poured himself a glass of single barrel bourbon on ice. Pappy Van Winkle was what he had been enjoying for the past year. Originally he had thought the name to be idiotic, but the bourbon itself was smoky, sweet and sour, and very smooth. He thought it was a play on the Washington Irving classic but it turned out that the Van Winkle family really made bourbon, in very small quantities, and Pappy was the patriarch of the family who had started the movement. Only in America would the name of a fine liquor bear a name that made you think of a toothless old coot sipping a ceramic jug on his front porch while he played the banjo. While he loved single malt scotch, he also enjoyed other finely crafted beverages from around the world. He had recently been introduced to single barrel bourbons by Tommy Rowles, the bartender at Bemelmans Bar. He had to admit that despite his initial trepidation, these were every bit as sophisticated as his beloved single malts, fine cognacs and Armagnacs, as well as some of the gentler grappas from his native country.
He turned on the stereo, which started playing Chet Baker’s smooth jazz trumpet from the sixties. He thought of the young Chet Baker, handsome and talented. Though he did not play as well as Miles—no one really did—his vocals stood easily on their own. He could have made it just as a singer. It seemed like in the early 1960s, the world was his for the taking. Tragically, like many artists in the mid part of the twentieth century, these extremely talented individuals fell victim to the temptation of heroin and other drugs. Anthony felt a pang of despair and sadness for those who wasted away their lives and talent and left this world far too soon.
He sipped his bourbon and listened to the jazz in the background. The light from the park was softening as it grew towards dusk. Colors faded to shades of steel blue and vanilla white. The sun was already behind his building and the shadows seemed taller than the trees. The lights of the apartments on the east side of the park came alive as their occupants returned home.
He opened up his MacBook Air on the leather-topped Thomas Moser desk. He went to Ancestry.com and logged into his account. It already contained a number of well-mapped genealogies that he had researched. He started a new search. This time he typed in Mackenzie Ferrara and followed the tree as far as he could.
Chapter 22
It was well after six on a Tuesday evening. Most of the other restorers had packed up and left for the day, including Anthony, who left at lunchtime to take care of some errands. There was sort of a lull in the action with very few active restorations taking place. Mackenzie was wrapping up some documentation paperwork and was also trying to dig up whatever she could find in the art history archives about a woman with an abnormally long pinkie finger. So far she was having no luck. She might reach out to some of her old professors at NYU to see if they could point her in the right direction.
Simon stopped by her workstation carrying a leather folio. Mackenzie thought that Simon always looked like he had just stepped off of a GQ photo shoot, even though he was at the end of a full workday. His lightweight linen suit looked like it had been freshly pressed, and he kept his tie fully knotted and tight at the neck, even after normal work hours.
“Hello Mackenzie, looks like you’re one of the last ones here, as usual. Anything important?” he asked her cheerfully.
She pushed herself away from the computer and swiveled her chair to face him.
“Not really. Just tying up some loose ends. Sometimes when I’m working I forget what time it is and then next thing you know I look around and I’m the only one here.”
“Psychologists call those flow states. You become so absorbed in what you’re doing, time and the rest of the world seem to flow past. You’re fortunate; very few people experience those states on a regular basis. They are some of the highest level of intellectual engagement humans can achieve.” Simon set his folio onto the work surface and unwrapped the leather tie that held it together. When he opened it, there were several old-looking papers as well as an official looking document.
“I’m sorry to break your flow for something so mundane. Lately I find myself less in flow states and more in the much less absorbing state of dotting i’s and crossing t’s.” He pulled out the top document and turned it over where there were several signature lines, some of which had been filled in already. “I need you to sign off on the restoration you and Anthony did for the Daddi, which, by the way, turned out spectacularly. Somehow I must have missed you when I originally was finalizing this. Anthony has already signed, so all I need is your John Hancock and this will be official and wrapped up.”
“Of course, I’m sorry if I was away when you originally got it signed. I hope it hasn’t created any inconvenience,” said Mackenzie.
“Nonsense,” replied Simon, waving his hand,. “We have rights to the Daddi for another two years, so it will be hanging proudly here at the Cloisters for some time. We just needed to get the paperwork put to bed so that everything would be in order.”
Mackenzie felt relieved. The last thing she wanted was to be seen as a bottleneck. She had always prided herself on her work ethic and punctuality. She wasn’t sure when Simon had the paperwork signed by Anthony because she didn’t remember missing more than a few days in the past year. In the previous restorations she had worked on, she had been the first one to sign, and it was Anthony or one of the other lead restorers that Simon had to chase down. She preferred it that way. She took the beautiful black enameled Mont Blanc pen that Simon handed her and prepared to sign her name to the document. When she looked at the signature directly above where she was supposed to sign, she felt her heart stop beating. She had an immediate, uncontrollable urge to vomit right then and there.
“Mackenzie, are you alright?” Simon asked, placing his hand on her shoulder trying to steady her.
She took several deep breaths, trying to regain her composure. She could not have been more shocked if she had seen her mother’s ghost appear right in front of her. On the signature line directly above her was Anthony’s signature. It was the first time she had actually seen it. The i in Bataglia was dotted with a backward slash. It was identical to the signatures she had seen for both Daddi and Lippi. Thoughts swirled in her head. How was this possible? What did it mean? Had Anthony painted, and then signed for these paintings as Daddi and Lippi? If he had, that would make him a forger. Was he a forger? Could it be possible?
Simon shook her shoulder gently, trying to get her attention.
“Mackenzie, is everything alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She looked up at Simon. She had actually forgotten that he was there. In her mind she was somewhere, not here, not anywhere. Lost in an abyss of confusion, dissolution, and anger.
“I’m sorry, Simon,” she responded trying to put on a smile. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m fine now.”
“Are you sure?” Simon still looked concerned. “We don’t have to do this now. Would you prefer to go lie down somewhere? There’s a couch in my office, you
could rest there.”
She shook her head and smiled. “No, I’m fine. It was just a temporary thing. I got a bit lightheaded. It was probably because I had been looking down for so long and then looked up and the blood rushed out of my head. I feel fine now.” She picked up the pen, which she had dropped on the workstation. She carefully signed her name on the line above her printed name.
Then, without thinking, she had an idea.
“Simon, would it be okay if I took a photo of this with my iPhone? I’ve never seen my signature on a document with Anthony’s and I’d like to have one to put in my scrapbook.” Without waiting for Simon to respond, she fished in her bag and took out her phone.
Simon hesitated a bit—it was a strange request. “Well, um, yes. I guess there isn’t a problem with that,” he stammered.
She carefully pointed her camera at the signatures, focusing on Anthony’s.
“Thank you so much,” she said, smiling after clicking off two shots. “I know it must sound goofy, but I like these types of things. I’m very nostalgic. I guess I’ve always been that way, but especially since I lost my mom.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” recovered Simon, putting the documents in the folder and tying the leather binding. “It’s important to capture important moments in your life.”
“Thank you, Simon. I’m sorry I gave you a scare. Not sure what happened, but I’m fine now.” She packed up her work, put some of it into her drawer, locked it, and then put the rest in her shoulder bag. “It’s probably just my body telling me that I have to get home and get something to eat.”
“I think you’re probably right. Good night, Mackenzie, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Simon made his way back to his office.
Mackenzie headed out the door shortly thereafter, eager to get home. On her way to her car she called her father and told him that she’d be coming home soon and that she had something important to share with him.
Chapter 23
Joe’s phone rang. It was Detective Angstrom calling.
“Hi Chris, what’s the word on the street?”
“The operative word would be ‘weird.’ I’ve got some interesting news about your man Bataglia, if you’ve got a minute.”
“Hell, Chris, I’m retired. That’s pretty much all I’ve got is a whole bunch of minutes sewn together into a huge, boring quilt. I’m sitting down, and have a pen and pad in front of me. What did you find?”
“Well, nothing illegal, no buried bodies but definitely some interesting stuff. This guy is definitely not your average Joe Blow. Anyhow, from what I was able to find out, which admittedly wasn’t much, Mr. Bataglia lives in The Beresford, in a luxury condo on Central Park West. Now there are a couple of interesting things about that. The first is that I found out that he lives on the twentieth floor in a four-bedroom apartment; you and I would call it a suite. I don’t have a firm price, but based on some comparable properties, we’re looking at $11 to $15 million for a place like that. Not too shabby for a restorer at the Cloisters. Maybe we should have thought of that instead of joining the force,” Chris added with a laugh.
“Funny. I’m pretty sure that most restorers aren’t paying for $15 million condos,” responded Joe. “If they are, I need to up Mackenzie’s share of the rent.”
“I hear ya. Here’s the weird thing. According to city records, this condo is owned by the Di Bernardi Family Trust. And get this, it was purchased with cash in 1929, the year the building opened. They were one of the original owners. So it looks like Mr. Bataglia must be some type of trust baby. I’d never heard of the Di Bernardi Foundation, which is based in Italy, so I reached out to some guys we know on the Italian police department. We did some joint stuff with them a couple of years ago related to heroin trafficking and money laundering between the New York and Italian mafia, remember that?”
“Like it was yesterday. In fact, it could be yesterday because my guess is that it’s still happening today,” replied Joe somewhat cynically.
“Unfortunately, you’re pretty much right about that,” replied Chris. “So if you’re done complaining about why we still can’t stop drugs from getting into the country, here’s what I did find out about the Di Bernardi Family Trust. If you weren’t sitting down before, make sure you’re sitting down for this. It’s really odd. This Di Bernardi Trust is old, and I’m not talking New World old, I’m talking Middle Ages old. It’s one of the oldest trusts that exists in Italy—and probably the world. It was established in the mid-sixteenth century, 1568 to be exact, by a man named Giordano Di Bernardi. It’s based in Lucca, which is about an hour west of Florence, and it owns a number of properties, including the apartment in New York, a pretty sizable estate outside of Florence, which seems to generate money from olives, wine grapes, chestnuts, and sheep’s milk cheese, and an apartment in Florence. It pays out some money to charities every year, mostly ones related to schools of art, and has a pretty sizable art collection that it loans out to galleries around the world. But beyond that no one knows much about it. It pretty much operates below the radar. Files tax returns, etc. It does keep money in Swiss bank accounts, but it doesn’t pay tax on any interest because, well, because it’s sitting in Swiss bank accounts.”
“Wow, I didn’t even know there were trusts in the sixteenth century,” blurted out Joe, becoming even more amazed and confused about what he was finding out about Anthony.
“Yeah, actually neither did I,” admitted Chris. “I did a little bit of research and found out that they go back to about the twelfth or thirteenth century in England. Basically, it was a way to protect the property of the wealthy landowners who went off to fight in the Crusades. Before that, they’d go off, and just in case they were to die, they deeded their property to a relative with the basic understanding that they should take care of their heirs or, hopefully, turn it back over to them when they returned. As things go, sometimes those relatives liked the property a bit too much and decided to keep it for themselves, whether the original lord of the manor returned or not. It created a lot of headaches. And so where issues of money are involved, lawmakers stepped in and personal trust laws were developed.”
“Fascinating,” admitted Joe. He always thought that Chris would have made an excellent historian. As it was, he did make an excellent detective.
“From a legal standpoint creating a trust only requires three things. You need ‘intention,’ in other words, a clear intent to create a trust. In this case it would seem that Giordano Di Bernardo demonstrated clear intent. You need ‘subject matter,’ or defining the property subject to the trust. Because trusts can last for generations, it can be pretty open. So, for instance, the trust could include all money, property, stocks, etc., that currently exist as well as any future investments made by the trustees based on the intent of the trust itself. So if you had a million dollars in 1900 and you decided to invest in General Electric, Standard Oil and buy up some choice property in Manhattan, then by say 1950, that million would probably have grown twenty to fifty-fold. All of those assets, as well as anything else the trust bought, such as artwork, etc., would be included in the trust. And finally, the third thing you need is an ‘object,’ which is more commonly referred to as a ‘beneficiary.’ In other words, the person or persons who benefit from the assets of the trust and how those assets are paid out.”
“Makes sense so far. So am I to assume that Anthony Bataglia is a beneficiary of the Di Bernardi Trust?”
“Bingo. Trusts are very private entities. They don’t need to report much of anything unless they want to. Specific terms of the trust itself are not public, like they are in wills. But one thing that they need to do is file a tax return and that’s where you can find out all sorts of things about their holdings, beneficiaries, etc.
“From what I was able to find out, Anthony is the sole beneficiary of the Di Bernardi trust, and has been for a long time, maybe fifty years. And this is no small trust. This is pretty substantial. If you look at its reported liquid assets, cash, stocks, gold, etc.,
then it’s in excess of $75 million. If you add in the value of the artwork, it’s probably ten to twenty times that amount—tough to estimate but based on some of the paintings it has, some Michelangelos, Botticellis, Dürers, Van Goghs, Monets, Vermeers, and dozens more that I didn’t remember. I’m no art historian, but it’s a pretty serious list, even from a novice’s standpoint. Some of these are on loan to the Ufizzi, the Louvre, the Prado, the Met, and the Hermitage. It pretty much loans most of these out for free and takes a tax break for the value of the loan. Sort of a nice strategy when you think about it. It doesn’t cost the museums anything and allows the trust to deduct tens of millions in taxes every year, which probably completely covers any taxes owed on its investments.
“Just from a casual accounting, I would estimate that the Di Bernardi Trust holds in excess of a billion dollars in assets. It’s definitely no mom-and-pop operation.”
“Wow,” exclaimed Joe sitting back and his chair, his mind in a haze. “Is there anything else we can find out about the trust and Anthony in particular?”
“Well, I was able to get the name and address of the trustees of the trust. Like I said, it’s based in Lucca, Italy. I’ll email you the contact information, as well as everything I’ve received from the Italian police. I think that’s all I’ve got. Hopefully this helps you out a bit.”
“Chris, I really appreciate all of your help. I know this isn’t part of your caseload and I’m sure you’re up to your neck with that as it is. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but it just seems like a lot of things don’t add up,” admitted Joe. “This guy is starting to concern me.”
“Happy to help out. I owe you a lot more than this for all you did for me when I was making my way up in the department. If you do find something, let me know. I’m curious myself.”
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