By Hook or By Crook

by Gorman, Ed

  Molly, though, beelined for the gallery ladder, climbing until she bagged her dream six months ago: the Thompson, a small Asian art museum based around an eclectic, to say the least, private collection. Gordon Thompson, a retired rich person, opens his double brownstone to the public four days a week, with rotating exhibits curated by that rising art-world star, Molly Lo, for whom everything seemed to be coming up roses. Until now.

  Me, I’d only met Gordon Thompson twice, at openings Molly invited me to. But if he had a reason to think well of me, it would be kind of great. I locked up, grabbed a shot-in-the-dark from the Not-Starbucks on the corner, and sprinted to the rescue. I hoped.

  Molly’s assistant, Sherry — when you’re as cool as Molly, you have people — led me through the front hall and up the grand staircase, past scholar’s rocks and cinnabar boxes. Hasui’s woodblock print Kiba hung at the landing and I stopped to admire it. No one, and I mean no one, makes you feel weather like Hasui Kawase. Sherry waited patiently, then led on, parking me in the Americana room. In case anyone was under the delusion Mr. Thompson was perfect, this room would shatter it. The one area that competes with imperial silks and Ukiyo-e for his attention, and his bucks, is a narrow slice of American history: artifacts of daily living, eastern seaboard, nineteenth century. Molly and I have a theory he was there in his last life. That could explain his enlightened-amateur approach to art, something you don’t see much these days. And what else could explain this cheerful obsession with spittoons, riding crops, and doilies? Luckily Sherry didn’t maroon me there long.

  “I’m here to save the day,” I announced, arriving in Molly’s airy Qing-and-Ming office. “Could you cut down the dazzle, though?” I dropped into a scholar’s chair.

  “Too much sun?” She started to close the drapes.

  “No, you. You look gorgeous. Trouble becomes you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  See why I like her? “No, really. Worry makes your cheeks flush or something. So what can I do for you?”

  “I made a big mistake.”

  “Anyone dead? No? Then we can fix it. Tell me.”

  She sat, not behind her desk but in the other visitor’s chair. I’m as Chinese as she is, but the chair looked better on her. “Two weeks ago,” she started seriously, “I bought a bronze standing Buddha. Nepal, fifteenth century. It’s in the center hall.”

  “Saw it. Didn’t spend much time with it, though.”

  “Don’t bother. It’s a piece Mr. Thompson really wanted. There’s a hole in the Himalayan collection right about there. We’d been making the auction rounds but nothing caught his eye. Then Peter Boyd called.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  She nodded. “He said he’d heard we were looking, and he had something we might be interested in.”

  “I’m getting a bad feeling.”

  “On the money. It’s a fake.”

  “You must’ve vetted it before you bought it.”

  “Six ways from Sunday. Mr. Thompson’s been in Asia for awhile, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, for the shows, but Boyd sent him photos and the piece grabbed him. He doesn’t like doing business with Boyd — ”

  “Showing good taste.”

  “ — but he really wanted this piece. You know how it is with collectors, something comes along and they just have to have it?”

  I nodded; I did know. I’m counting on that to pay my rent.

  “He told me to have it looked at, and buy it if it checked out. It’s the first time he’s let me go ahead on my own. So I called in three different experts. It was the real deal. But the one in the case downstairs, not. Somewhere in there Boyd switched statues on us, Jack. I don’t know how.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “I unpacked it. Catalogued it. Put it out. And then every time I walked by it I got the bad feeling you’re getting now. I heard Hans Grolsch was in New York this week, so I asked him to come look at it.”

  “Happy Hans! I haven’t seen him in ages.”

  “Well, he wasn’t so happy with my Buddha. He confirmed it. Total fake.”

  “You called Boyd?”

  “Of course. He said he’d put up with a lot from me already — ‘dicking around,’ he called it — and he’s not surprised to hear Hans Grolsch took a swipe at him.”

  “They have a history?”

  “Boyd’s very existence offends Hans. He thinks people who’re only in it for the money and don’t love the art shouldn’t be allowed to get their grubby hands on it.”

  “Another man with good taste. Any possibility he’s wrong about your statue?”

  “No, and I told Boyd that. He said at this point, caveat emptor. And then, that bastard — !” She stopped, sputtering.

  “Wow.”

  “Wow, what?”

  “You’re so mad your eyes are actually flashing.”

  “Jack!”

  “‘That bastard...?’”

  “That bastard said Mr. Thompson was happy with the piece, wasn’t he? So I should just leave it where it was, let everyone enjoy it, and no one would have to know the Thompson’s new young director spent eighty thousand dollars on a fake.”

  I whistled. “That bastard.”

  “Mr. Thompson comes back in three days. What am I going to do?”

  “For now, nothing.” I unfolded myself from the chair. No great loss: Qing furniture’s not all that comfy. “However, I am going to see Mr. Boyd.”

  • • •

  You may be asking yourself why I bothered. What was he going to do — fall on his knees, confess to the fraud, beg forgiveness and make restitution on the spot (with a little vig to cover Molly’s mental anguish and my fee) now that Jack Lee was on the case?

  But it didn’t seem sporting not to give him a chance.

  Peter Boyd Oriental — that’s a bad sign already, right? — occupies a piss-elegant gallery on the same swank stretch of Madison Avenue as the Thompson and me. Boyd, wearing Armani, his short silver hair bristling and his tan glowing, issued a pained smile when he saw me come in. “Oh, my, Charlie Chan.”

  “If you have to throw around cheap stereotypes, Peter, could you at least go with Chow-Yun Fat? Sex-y. I’m here about that tin Buddha you palmed off on the Thompson.”

  “Oh? Molly Lo feels hard done by, so she’s gone to Jack Lee, Boy Detective? That’s some nice cultural solidarity there, Jack.”

  “You want to talk out here, or in private?”

  “Given that there are no patrons in the gallery at the moment, that’s a rather hollow threat. Still, come in back where we’ll be comfortable.”

  He nodded to his gallery assistant, a faux-hawked kid in an Armani knock-off, and led me into his suite of offices in the back. This was the only gallery I knew with more back-room than front-room space. I mean, who needs a suite of offices? But part of Boyd’s juju was to make his buyers feel the serious business was done here, where he showed them prints, netsuke, and graceful Han dancers that he disdained exhibiting in the front gallery for all eyes to see.

  And rumor had it another part was to sell prints, netsuke, and Han dancers of questionable provenance in deals better done where there were fewer eyes, anyway.

  He turned and gave me a beady eye. At five-eleven, I had four inches on him, but I’m such a beanpole our weight class was probably the same.

  “The Thompson wants their money back,” I said.

  “Molly Lo wants the Thompson’s money back. And she’s not going to get it.”

  “You want the world to know you sold them a piece of junk?”

  “They had it authenticated.”

  “And you switched it.”

  “Careful, Jack. You shouldn’t make accusations you can’t prove.”

  “You want me to shut up, re-switch it. Bundle up the real one and I’ll take it with me right now.”

  “Funny thing about that. I just sold a very, very similar piece to a collector in Singapore. Shipped it over two days ago.”

  I gave him my best level stare. “Th
en return the money.”

  “Come on. Eighty thousand dollars? That’s pocket change for Gordon Thompson. As long as pretty Molly keeps her mouth shut, what’s really been lost?”

  “She can’t do that, Peter. Unlike you, she has scruples.”

  “Oh, ouch.”

  “You’d better think hard about this.”

  “Or what? You’ll go public? Jack, I suggest you think before you stick your foot in your mouth. If it comes out the piece is fake, I’ll just say I had no idea.”

  “You’re supposed to be an expert. You’ll look like an idiot.”

  “Molly, Gordon Thompson, and I will all look like idiots, yes. So will the experts they took it to.”

  “Except Hans Grolsch.”

  “Good for Happy Hans.” Boyd shrugged. “You know what, though? We’ll all survive. We’ll blush, look shamefaced, and go on.”

  “You think so? Then let’s try it.”

  He held up a manicured finger. “Except, maybe, for Molly. They did have it authenticated, so it’s not my problem anymore. I won’t take it back.”

  “Not just an idiot, a swindling, tightfisted idiot.”

  “Maybe. But Molly’s problem will be worse. So young and untested, making a foolish mistake so early in her career?”

  “Bastard” wasn’t strong enough. “You counted on that, didn’t you? That you could paint Molly into a corner.”

  “It’s too bad, but you know as well as I that in situations like this someone has to be sacrificed. And the gods prefer pretty girls to stringy old men.”

  I met his eyes for a long steady moment. Then I broke off, sighed and looked around the office. A Japanese scroll on the wall evoked trees and night in three flowing brushstrokes. The characters read, “Barn burned down: now I can see the moon.” I let my gaze rest on it, then wander to a nearby case. Four long pipes of teak, gold, ivory, and silver; some slender jade needles; a tiny but elaborately carved whisk broom and pan. Opium paraphernalia, a cove off the Asian art sea. So much was destroyed in the late nineteenth-century antiopium hysteria that what’s left qualifies as rare. This was the only area where Boyd himself collected, working from gusto, not just greed. Whether he smoked the stuff I had no idea, but he was known to be addicted to the gear. Sensing a possibility, I turned from the objects of desire back to the man.

  “Those things are beautiful,” I said in a conciliatory way.

  “Those ‘things’ are among your peoples’ best contributions to civilization.”

  The compass? The civil service system? Gunpowder? Steamed little juicy buns? But I wasn’t here to debate. “Peter,” I said, “is there any chance you have a heart?”

  “No. Why?”

  I rubbed my mouth, then sighed again. “Because your bogus Buddha is only part of Molly’s problem. She’d kill me for telling you this, but she’s in hot water already, or about to be. Last week she finished an inventory she probably should have started her first day there. But a big new job like that, you know ... Anyway, now she’s done, and it seems they’re missing three Hasuis.”

  Boyd leaned back, eyebrows raised. “I’d say that’s a problem. But maybe they disappeared before her time.”

  “Likely. But that’s why you do inventories. Now she can’t prove that.”

  “Gordon Thompson thinks she took them?”

  “God, no. Molly? Anyhow, he’s away, so he doesn’t know yet. But at best he’ll think she’s been sloppy with his collection when he finds out. And then to discover she bought your piece of — ”

  “Which ones?”

  “What?”

  “Which Hasuis?”

  I paused, then told him, “Rainy Lake in Matsue District, Evening at Soemoncho, and Spring Night at Inokashira.”

  “I didn’t know Thompson owned those.” Boyd himself is deep in Hasui. Not because he gives a damn about beautiful lines or subtle inks. But he knows an undervalued artist when he sees one. Some years back he bought up a few private collections, narrowing, if not quite cornering, the market. Thereby driving prices up. Hasui’s prints are still not all that costly, in the mid-four or sometimes low five figures. But they’re out of reach of, say, me, who can only admire them on gallery walls.

  “Thompson’s a big Hasui man,” I told Boyd. “From before you locked them all up. He doesn’t show many at a time — right now, only one — but he has twenty-seven.”

  Boyd smiled. “From what you say, now twenty-four.”

  “Peter — ”

  “No.”

  I gave him another long look. “You really are a bastard, aren’t you?”

  “So I hear.”

  • • •

  I hadn’t been back out on the street two minutes when my iPhone treated Madison Avenue to “The East is Red.”

  “Did you get my Buddha?” I could hear Molly holding her breath.

  “It already went to Singapore.”

  “Oh, no! Then my money?”

  “I’m working on it. Listen, is Happy Hans still in town?”

  “Oh, Jack!” she wailed. “You didn’t get anywhere at all with Boyd, did you?”

  “Well, the best he could do was repeat his suggestion that you leave the fake where it is and let Mr. Thompson enjoy it.”

  “I can’t, you know I can’t. And now you want to double-check with Hans and see if he could have been wrong. He’s not, I told you! Oh, Jack, you were my last hope. I am so sunk!”

  “It’s a little early for that level of panic.”

  “What should I do, wait until after lunch?”

  “You should give me Hans’s number. And then calm down. Go meditate or something.”

  She did the first, but not the second, and probably not the third. In her position, I wouldn’t have either.

  • • •

  Now, you may be thinking “Happy Hans” is one of those ironic nicknames for some dour German who hasn’t smiled since 1964. Not in this case. Hans Grolsch could be the picture in the dictionary next to “Jolly Dutchman,” if that were in the dictionary. White hair, chubby red cheeks, sparkling blue eyes, huge smile that you can’t call quick in coming only because it almost never leaves. He’s a dealer and appraiser from Delft and what he really defines is a man who loves his work.

  “Jack, my boy!” Hans raised a pilsner glass, already half-drained, when he spied me. We were meeting in the garden of a red-sauce Italian restaurant, food he claims he can’t get in Holland. “You look well!” If I’d been at death’s door he’d probably have said, “You look awful!” with equal enthusiasm.

  “So do you, Hans.” Sitting, I grinned, which no one can help doing around Hans. Except maybe Molly, yesterday.

  “Ah, yes, the Buddha.” Even Hans sighed when we’d ordered our spaghetti Bolognese, and Hans his second Sugar Hill, and I brought up Molly’s problem. “They were rooked, you know. It’s actually very good, bronze with an applied patina, I think a lost-wax casting from the original. Worth possibly twenty-five hundred dollars.”

  “Any chance you’re wrong?”

  He threw me a pitying look, tucked a napkin under his chin and reached for the bread. “It’s a shame. Such a nice girl, Molly. But a man like Boyd — myself, I do not do business with him.”

  “Molly told me he gives you hives.”

  “Hives, he makes me itch? Yah, that’s good, Jack! Yes, it’s bad enough, the people who buy and sell art as a commodity, with no love. But to cheat also, this is abhorrent. Such men must be avoided. You cannot win against a man like that.”

  That pronouncement was downright gloomy, particularly considering the source. I contemplated it, then contemplated our antipasto.

  • • •

  “Let me buy you a drink after work,” I suggested over the iPhone to Molly as I strolled to my office full of pasta and garlic.

  “Buy me a ticket out of town and a new identity.”

  “You don’t need that.”

  “You made a miracle?”

  “A couple of martinis and you’ll think I did. C
ome on, it’ll make you feel better.”

  “It’ll only make me think I feel better. But if that’s all I can get, I’m in.”

  Molly and I were up late, going from martinis to pad Thai to the late show at Drom, which involved more martinis. I shelled out for all of it. It was the least I could do.

  • • •

  I don’t know when Molly got to work the next morning, but as I was stumbling along Madison toward my office sometime near noon, she called me.

  “I just heard from Peter Boyd,” she said.

  “Do you have to bring him up when I feel like crap?”

  “You shouldn’t drink so much.”

  “You were three ahead by the end of the night!”

  “I could always hold it better, why do you keep trying? Boyd wants me to go to his gallery.”

  “Oh.” I rubbed my aching eyes. “Did he say why?”

  “No. But I’m not going alone.”

  “Sigh. Okay, I’ll meet you. Just give me time for coffee.”

  I grabbed a double-venti, plus a bagel for belly ballast. By the time we rolled into Peter Boyd Oriental I didn’t have any more of a headache than the one he gives me.

  “Molly, my dear. And Jack.” Boyd smiled like the shark he is. “Jack, you look awful.” He said it with almost as much joy as Happy Hans would have, though for different reasons.

  Molly, on the other hand, looked stunning in gallerina black, her hair flowing to her shoulders like ebony silk. She pursed her lips and allowed him to lead us to the office suite, where she sat primly and didn’t speak. Boyd smiled again and didn’t speak either.

  Someone had to break this silence or we’d all suffocate. “Okay, Peter, we’re here,” I said.

  “You weren’t invited,” Boyd pointed out. He turned to Molly. “I have something you’ll want.”