by Lyn Hamilton
It took about an hour, but eventually I had a name I felt reasonably comfortable with. Just to make sure, I took a quick cab ride across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and took in the art of the Americas section there as well. By the time I’d seen what there was to see there, I was convinced I was on the right track.
I went to the museum bookstore, purchased a couple of books on the subject, and headed for the café for a coffee, a muffin, and a quick read. I had what I wanted.
Moche.
The Moche, I learned, were a people who ruled over the north coast of Peru during the first 500 years of the Common Era, long before the Inca had ever been heard from. The empire stretched from the Piura Valley in the north to the Huarmey Valley in the south, from a capital city which is now called Cerro Blanco. The Moche culture is known in archaeological circles for its engineering feats, primarily the building of fabulous adobe pyramids and lengthy canals which brought water from the mountains to the coastal desert where their empire was located; its political mastery of a large area as one of the first definable states in that part of the world; and artistically for masterpieces of craftsmanship in pottery and metals.
There was now absolutely no question in my mind about it. I had seen with my own eyes pottery that matched the stolen pot in style and execution, and ear flares of gold and turquoise that were, to my untrained eye, identical in style to the little ear flare I had in my handbag. And if I needed further corroboration, I had it. The books I had purchased showed photographs of a magnificent necklace of gold and silver beads, each bead in the shape of a perfect peanut.
As carefully as I could, I took the little ear flare out of my bag to take a better look at it. The little gold man with his gold scepter stared back at me mutely. I turned the piece over and over again in my hand. “So what do you have to say for yourself?”‘ I softly asked the little man.
In my business, you learn to spot fakes. You have to. The point is that you can take as many courses about antiques as you like, and I have taken several, but when it comes right down to it, you just have to develop a sixth sense about objects. I’ve learned to look at furniture, for example, to look at the metal hardware, the way the boards are planed, the kinds of nails and other fastenings that are used. But a really good craftsman can fool even a museum curator, and in the end you rely on your gut on some of the things you see. Sometimes, even after you’ve checked out everything you can think of, objects still just don’t feel right, and, taught by an expert, my friend Sam Feldman, I’ve learned to go with this feeling.
Before he opened his own gallery, Sam was a museum conservator. He told me that in his early days at the institution, a mere neophyte, he’d gotten the feeling a particular artifact, the centerpiece in an exhibit, was a fake. He tried to tell the curator of the exhibit and was roundly chastised. On his last day of employment at the museum, now a noted expert in his field, he went back to the curator and told him again. Once again Sam was told he was wrong, but he found on his next casual visit to the museum that the offending piece had been removed from the exhibit. “You see!” he told his students. “I was right. They will never admit it, but I was right. That’s why you go with your gut.”
This time the process was reversed. This object was supposed to be a fake. Maybe it wasn’t.
The piece looked in pretty good condition for something that was at least 1500 years old. Generally I would have said it looked way too good. The gold was nice and shiny, and overall the piece was in very good repair. But there were places where the gold, probably hammered on, was worn away, and the turquoise inlay was not of a uniform color. Carefully I edged a fingernail into one of the cracks between the inlays. There was dirt, but I wasn’t sure that proved anything. A good forger would know enough to rub a little dirt into the piece.
The question was, where had my little friend been for 1500 years? If he’d been well cared for in a museum, that might explain his relatively pristine condition. Or if he’d been hidden away somewhere, in a tomb for example. This might explain it. The Moche lived in the coastal desert, and arid conditions would limit corrosion.
For a while I just sat there looking at him. He was really sweet, if it’s possible to say such a thing about a little gold man on a pre-Columbian ear flare. His eyes bulged out of carefully cut eye sockets, and around his neck he had a necklace, ceremonial I would have thought, made up of tiny heads: owls most likely. Each of the beads had been made separately, then strung together, so they moved when you touched them. The scepter could easily be removed from his hand. His sturdy little legs showed muscle markings that were quite extraordinary. Under his nose was an ornament in the shape of a crescent, and it too moved when you touched it. I thought you could easily imagine the body under the garments, and that my little man could even be said to have a personality.
I reached my conclusion, and I couldn’t really explain why I hadn’t done so before this, except, of course, that I’d purchased it from a reputable auction house. The point was, no one could afford to make such a little masterpiece these days, replica or not. No one could afford to forge it, either. And even if someone had the patience and time and resources to do so, most of us couldn’t afford to buy it. The vase and the peanut might or might not be genuine. I didn’t have them anymore, so I couldn’t say. This little man, however, was genuine Moche, and Edmund Edwards had some explaining to do.
Before I left the museum, I went into the gift shop and bought a large pin in a Celtic pattern. I asked the saleswoman for a box—a big box—for it, saying it was a gift. She was very obliging in finding the right size box. On the steps outside, I put the brooch on my shirt and took the little gold man, carefully wrapped in tissue, and put him into the box with the card identifying it as a reproduction Celtic brooch. It wouldn’t fool anyone who knew anything whatsoever, but I was getting nervous walking around with this potentially very valuable antiquity in my purse.
By ten to twelve I was in position across the street and down a bit from Ancient Ways. It was a very warm August day in Manhattan, and it felt as if rain, perhaps a thunderstorm, would soon blow through. About five minutes to noon, an older man, grey of hair and unsteady of gait, shuffled down the street and opened the security gate with some difficulty. He had on way too many clothes for the heat of the day, as older people often do. It looked from that distance as if he had seriously arthritic hands and knees. He opened the door, but closed it immediately behind him, and the closed sign remained hanging in the door for several minutes.
Finally, at about twenty after twelve, he came and unlocked the front door, and turned the sign around to show the place was open for business. I crossed the street and entered.
Even by my standards of housekeeping, which let’s just say will never earn me a Nancy Neatness Award, the place was a mess. The carpet was old and worn, and quite frankly dirty. The desk at the back, where the old man sat, was covered in junk, papers strewn haphazardly about, coffee stains on his invoice book and everything else. He fit right in: His jacket looked as if it had gravy stains on the lapel, and his hair, what was left of it, was unkempt and unclean. Under his jacket, he wore a grey knit vest, a moth hole prominently featured. As I stood there, the phone rang, and the old man pushed stacks of paper around to find it. By the time he’d located it, on the floor under the desk, it had stopped ringing.
The merchandise was impressive enough, what you could see of it. Glass cases lined the walls, each of them packed with treasures. On top of each of the cases were various objects too large to be placed within: some very impressive African sculptures, including what looked to be a Benin bronze figure, and some really lovely wood carvings. There was no particular theme that I could see, except that everything was old, very old, and to my eye at least, authentic. In the middle of the room was a large table, also piled high with merchandise.
I idly picked up a small figure, a lovely little blue faience statue about six inches high, and had a closer look. It was, I knew, a ushabti, a represen
tation of a deceased person, probably one of some importance, that would have been placed in an Egyptian tomb many hundreds if not thousands of years ago, to be a servant of sorts to the deceased. It is always fascinating to hold a few thousand years of history in the palm of your hand, but one always has to ask the question in these circumstances: Is it legal? I turned the figure over. On the back were tiny little numbers in black ink: museum catalogue number, I thought. Possibly deaccessioned, possibly not.
I turned toward the desk to see the proprietor’s eyes, almost hidden behind thick, thick glasses, focused on me. On the wall behind him were a couple of old prints and right over his head an extraordinary blade mounted on black fabric and framed in gold. It was not a knife as we know it, with a thin blade and handle. Rather it was one piece, almost bell-shaped, with a thick handle that led to a crescent-shaped blade. It was about six inches high, gold in color, with a string of tiny turquoise beads threaded through a hole in the handle. It was, I was almost certain, a tumi, a ceremonial blade used by the ancient peoples of Peru, perhaps for sacrificial purposes.
“Hi,” I said, moving over to the desk. “Are you Edmund Edwards?”
“Who wants to know?” he asked irritably.
I handed him my business card. I don’t know why I did that, exactly, other than that I felt I had to establish my credentials before proceeding. It was a gesture, however, that in retrospect I would come to regard with profound regret. The old man looked at the card very carefully, then peered back at me. “I’m a dealer from Toronto,” I said, just in case he was unable to read the card. “I’m in New York on a buying trip for a client of mine, who shall, if you don’t mind, remain nameless.”
“Anything in particular you’re interested in?” he asked, apparently satisfied.
“My client collects pre-Columbian art almost exclusively,” I replied.
“Big field. Hard to get. Expensive,” he replied.
“Money is no object here,” I said. He opened a small card case of the recipe box variety and thumbed laboriously through it, peering at each card myopically. The box was overstuffed, and at one point, as he tried to pull a card up, several of them flew up and scattered across the desk. Finally, he arose from his chair with some difficulty and shuffled over to the table in the middle of the room. There did not appear to be any particular system for cataloguing what he had, but he seemed to know where everything was. He started to look under the table, leaning heavily on the side of it, but wasn’t up to the task.
“Under there,” he grunted. “In the middle. The stone. Part of a stela from Copan. Nice piece.”
I bent down and pulled the object out from under the table. It was a very heavy stone piece, beautifully carved, and it was probably what he said it was, I decided: Maya, from Copan. I also decided that he shouldn’t have had it.
“Very nice,” I said, “but…”
“Or this,” he said, opening one of the glass cabinets and removing a splendid terra-cotta of an Aztec god, also probably authentic.
“Very nice as well,” I said. “However, my client has a specific interest. Moche. Anything Moche: terracotta, metals. Do you ever come across that kind of thing?”
“Very hard to get,” he mumbled.
“Well, yes,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. A.J. Smythson sent me. From Toronto. Do you remember him? Anton James Smythson?”
The phone rang again, and the old man started shuffling around looking for it.
“It’s on the floor,” I said. “Under the desk.” He just looked at me. “The phone,” I said. Light dawned, and the old man leaned over. The phone stopped ringing as he grasped it and wheezed into the old headset. The caller had evidently hung up again. Once again he turned to a second card box and started rifling through it. I decided he was not looking for objects this time, he was checking the name Smythson. He paused at a card. This is hopeless, I thought.
“How is Anton?” he asked at last.
Oh, dear, I thought, what now? “Not quite as peppy as he used to be,” I replied.
“Not many of us are,” he said. That was true, of course, but most of us were a little more energetic than A. J. Smythson at this very moment, even Edmund Edwards.
“No, I guess not,” I replied. We looked at each other. Already I knew more about Edwards than I had a few moments ago: He wasn’t a close friend of Smythson. Sam Feldman had told me Smythson’s friends called him A. J., not Anton. “Anton told me you were once able to get him some Moche. You mailed him a couple of pieces, three actually, in with some other stuff, a couple of years ago.”
The old man looked very wary now. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It’s illegal. Moche. Can’t take it out of Peru.”
“As I said, that’s why I’m here,” I said, giving him what I hoped was a conspiratorial look. “How about that tumi?” I said, pointing to the blade on the wall behind the desk. “Is that Moche, or later, Inca, maybe?” I asked, trying to sound somewhat knowledgeable.
He looked me up and down. The phone rang again. “Come back later,” he ordered. “About three.”
There did not seem to be much else I could do. “The floor,” I called back to him as I left the shop. “The phone is on the floor.”
It’s not often I would comment on the freshness of the air in New York, but after a few minutes in that shop, even the oppressively heavy air of the city felt good. As I turned back to look at the shop, I could see the old man at the door. He changed the sign to closed and locked the door behind him. I watched for a few minutes, but the closed sign remained firmly in place. Either he kept the world’s shortest business hours, or I’d upset Edmund Edwards.
It was by now about one p.m., and I had a couple of hours to kill. I turned back toward Central Park West, determined to find somewhere to have lunch, in the park perhaps. I found a bench to perch on for a few minutes while I figured out where to go. As I sat there I watched a middle-aged woman dressed up in what appeared to be a Viking costume, a long plait of blond hair tumbling from a helmet with plastic horns on it, harangue passersby. Some Norse cult apparently. She was suggesting that we repent our sins, most notably by offering her money, I gathered, so that we’d all go up to heaven when the end of the world, now very imminent, came upon us. How nice, I thought, just like home.
As I idly looked about me, I was very surprised to see the old man shuffling across the street. He hadn’t come from the direction I would have expected, which probably only meant there was a back door to his shop. Cautiously I arose from the seat and, keeping well back, began to follow him.
As we both shuffled along, I began to feel really silly. It was difficult for me to move slowly enough that I didn’t catch up with him, and he stopped frequently and looked behind him, forcing me to turn and pretend I was going the other way. The only thing that was saving me, I thought, was his vision, which judging from his glasses, which looked like the proverbial pop bottle bottoms, was not very good.
After a block or two, he turned into the park, and I did the same. It was easier here. There were lots of people just strolling along, and the trees afforded me some cover. Finally the old man stopped and sat down on a bench. He took a bag from his pocket and started throwing crumbs in the general direction of a couple of birds.
Wonderful, I thought. Here I am in Manhattan, one of the most fabulous cities in the world, and instead of lunching somewhere elegant, I’m hiding behind a tree, watching an old man with bad eyes and flat feet feed pigeons. I felt like a fool. What I really should be doing, I knew, was flying home before the Toronto police figured out I had left.
I started to leave and indeed had traveled several yards in the opposite direction before something made me turn back. I saw that someone had come over to the old man and, standing with his back to me, was leaning over to talk to him. I wondered if this was a coincidence, or if the old man had arranged to meet someone. And if this meeting was planned, had it anything to do with my visit to the shop?
Suddenly t
he visitor straightened up and turned to look around him. I pulled back to where I hoped I couldn’t be seen. What I saw made me at once nervous, but also certain I was onto something. It was the man who’d reminded me of a spider when I’d last seen him, lurking behind a potted palm at Molesworth & Cox and watching as Lizard, now deceased, had tried to buy the box of what was supposed to have been junk, but which might have been almost priceless treasure. If the Spider was here, and talking to Edmund Edwards, a return visit to Ancient Ways was definitely called for.
I found a cafe for a bit of lunch and did a little more reading on the Moche while I waited. Shortly before three I was back in position across the road from the gallery. The closed sign was still in the door.
About three-thirty, the closed sign hadn’t moved, and I was beginning to get impatient in the oppressive air. I walked across the street and tried the door, but it was locked. I couldn’t see inside. I decided to take a bit of a walk to try to find the back entrance, which I was certain must exist because of where I’d seen Edwards, and eventually found an alleyway. I’d counted the doorways from the corner, so I was able to conclude which building was Ancient Ways. All the others had gates that were securely locked, but the gate to the back door of the gallery was slightly ajar. I walked in. The back door was closed but not locked, and I knocked a couple of times before opening it and calling inside. “Is there anyone here? Mr. Edwards?” I called out.
