Quick & Dirty

12

Stone went back to his office and said to Joan, “Send two dozen yellow roses to Morgan Tillman, at 740 Park Avenue.”

“Gotcha, boss.” Joan leered.

“Immediate delivery, please.”

“But of course.”

Stone called Dino.

“Bacchetti.”

“Hey. Were you at the Tillman house when it was searched?”

“Most of the time,” Dino replied.

“Did you order the search?”

“Yes.”

“What were you searching for?”

“Signs of a burglar — prints, DNA, whatever we could get.”

“Did you tell your people to search for the stolen painting?”

“I don’t think so. We thought it was stolen, so it wouldn’t still be there.”

“Did you have your art squad on the premises?”

“They came in after I was gone.”

“What were they doing there?”

“The art squad always goes in after the theft of a picture or sculpture or valuable book — things like that.”

“And what do they do during their visit?”

“They affirm that the stolen object is absent from its usual place. They look for evidence of a modus operandi of the thief and compare it to what they know about others. Did he jimmy a window? Knock down a door? Or just pick the lock and walk in through the front door?”

“Who runs the squad?”

“Arturo Masi — called Art, appropriately enough. An Italian, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He’s an expert on everything.”

“Except things he hasn’t seen,” Stone said.

“Huh?”

“He didn’t see the van Gogh — it was gone.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“On the phone or in person?”

“In person, in my office, if possible.”

“He’ll give you a call,” Dino said.

“Thanks. See ya.” Stone hung up.

Seven minutes later, Joan buzzed. “Art Masi on one.”

Stone picked up the phone. “Mr. Masi?”

“Art. The commissioner would like me to come and see you. When’s good?”

“Anytime today.”

“How about in five minutes? I’m in your neighborhood.”

Stone gave him the exact address and told him to come ahead.

Art Masi was tall, solidly built, and handsome, with thick salt-and-pepper hair brushed straight back, leaving a prominent widow’s peak and olive — or maybe just tanned — skin. He was sharply dressed in a handmade Italian suit. Stone wondered how he could afford it on a policeman’s salary.

Masi took the offered chair, and he seemed to have read Stone’s mind. “In addition to being a cop and commanding the art squad, I do freelance consulting work. The department feels it’s important that I know what’s going on in the art world. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to hire you as a consultant,” Stone said, “at your usual rate.”

“A thousand dollars a day,” Masi replied coolly, “or any part of.”

“Done,” Stone replied. “I expect you recall being in the apartment of one Mark Tillman, who, at the time, was very recently deceased.”

“I do. He had a small but very fine collection, many of them very expensive pieces.”

“How long were you and your squad in his apartment?”

“The better part of two hours.”

“And what were you looking for?”

“Evidence of a crime against art.”

“Define ‘a crime against art.’”

“Theft, vandalism, forgery, possession of stolen goods.”

“Define ‘forgery.’”

“The copying of a work of art for the purpose of deceiving, or for gain during a sale or exchange.”

“Exchange?”

“You swap me your fake Modigliani for my real Picasso, sell the Picasso, and pocket the difference in value.”

“Of course. Do forgeries have an intrinsic value?”

“If you buy a picture because you like it, having been informed by the seller that it’s a copy, its intrinsic value is whatever you paid for it.”

“So it’s not a crime to sell a forgery as long as the forger identifies it as such.”

“No, then it’s just a copy or a reproduction. If a forger is in the business of selling reproductions, he will change something about his work to make it identifiable to an expert as a copy. I know of a perfect copy of Modigliani’s Reclining Nude, which sold at auction a couple of years ago for two hundred and sixty-four million. In the copy, the nude’s eyes are closed, and the picture is four inches longer than the original.”

“Who painted the copy?”

“Angelo Farina.”

“And you say it’s perfect?”

“If her eyes had been open and the copy exactly the same size as the original, the forgery could have been substituted for the original, before, during, or after the sale, and no expert would have been the wiser.”

“Farina is that good?”

“He’s that good. He has told me that more than a thousand of his forgeries are hanging in museums and private collections all over the world. Many of them have been auctioned or sold in fine galleries — some of them several times, and in so doing, authenticated by experts on each occasion.”

“So experts can be wrong?”

“They’re wrong at least half the time. Say you’re an expert, and somebody brings you a Rembrandt for authentication. It’s a new find, not in any catalog or sales record, never exhibited. You’re immediately suspicious, because Rembrandt’s oeuvre has been very well documented for centuries. In the absence of any forensic evidence that it’s a forgery, you’re going to say that, in your opinion, it’s a real Rembrandt and an important discovery.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll make everybody happy — the owner will be happy, the gallery that’s going to auction it will be happy, and the buyer will be happy. When the buyer dies, his heirs or the museum he bequeathed it to will be happy. And you’ll always be known as the expert who recognized a real Rembrandt. Who wants to piss in everybody’s punch? You won’t get much new work that way, and if nine other experts say it’s real, you’ll be the schmuck who couldn’t tell the difference.”