The Art of the Heist

Epilogue

It’s difficult to put an exact value on a collection like mine. So many of the pieces I accumulated over the years-hundreds of Japanese swords; dozens of paintings; countless ceramics, bronzes, ivory carvings, Japanese netsukes, and Chinese watercolors; and arms and armor of various provenance-were priceless. But it’s safe to say that by the time I entered Lompoc I had accumulated several million dollars’ worth of art and antiques. It was a fortune I intended to make good use of upon my release. In an interview from my prison cell I once said that I planned to retire to my own private island off the coast of Japan. Unfortunately, I spoke prematurely.

A lot can happen while a man is in prison: people move or pass away, loyalties shift, desperation rears its ugly head. The family member with whom I’d originally stored my things moved to Florida several years before I was paroled, leaving the bulk of my collection with a former prison associate of mine. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, my associate developed a nasty heroin addiction almost immediately after his release. Over the course of the next several years he sold nearly everything to pay for his habit. By the time I was paroled most of my collection was gone. Forget the island; I couldn’t have afforded a tea house.

With nothing left, I went home. Susie, who remained devoted to me throughout my decade in prison, had returned to Massachusetts not long after my arrest, and I joined her there.

I won’t lie to you: there are times when I’ve wondered about all the other lives I might have led. The possibilities are inescapable. And though I try to console myself with the fact that I wouldn’t have been comfortable in any other skin, I suspect that this is not actually the case. I would have been good at any number of things, and may very well have found a great deal of satisfaction in being a doctor or a lawyer. Still, I wouldn’t trade the life I have lived for anything.

In speaking of the Divine, Hindus tell a parable about three blind beggars who come upon an elephant. The first one grabs the elephant’s tusk and says: “An elephant is long and smooth and hard with a sharp point-like the strongest smoothest stick I have ever come across.” The second beggar grabs the elephant’s leg. “No,” he says. “An elephant is rough-textured and immovable, like the trunk of a tree.” “You are both wrong,” says the third beggar as he grabs the elephant’s tail. “It is thin, flexible and swings about like a rope tied to a tree.”

Of course they’re all wrong.

No man’s life is merely a sum of its parts. Taken as such, mine would read as pure tragedy, the occasional moments of triumph poor recompense for three decades spent in prison. Yet this is not the case. There is no scale on which to set the thrill of holding a Rembrandt in one’s hands. No stick by which to measure the cheers of six hundred men in the Walpole prison auditorium.

They say most people lead lives of quiet desperation. Mine, at least, has been anything but.