Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  She looked up at him with a neutral gaze; Finn wondered whether an FBI receptionist received any special training. She pressed a series of buttons and spoke into her headset. At least Finn assumed she was speaking. Her lips moved, but even standing in front of her he couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Perhaps that was the special training, he hypothesized. It was a neat trick in any case. She pressed a button again and looked up at Kozlowski. “He’ll be right out.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kozlowski walked away from the receptionist’s desk. Finn was tempted to loiter in front of her, perhaps catch her eye—he’d always had a thing for Judy-the-Time-Life-Operator—but Kozlowski beckoned him over. “I don’t want you to talk,” he said.

  “Ever?”

  “In there,” he said. “I’m tempted to leave you out here. This guy trusts me, but this is delicate. He’s gonna be a little hesitant to say anything in front of you as it is.”

  “I’m not staying out here,” Finn said.

  Kozlowski nodded. “I figured you’d feel that way. So you come in. But don’t speak. The more you say, the less we’ll get out of this. You understand?”

  “Yeah,” Finn said.

  Kozlowski frowned at him. “I’m serious.”

  “I got it. No talking.”

  Kozlowski looked at him for another moment or two before letting his gaze drop. If he’d had time to think about it, Finn might have been annoyed, but the door behind the receptionist’s desk opened and Kozlowski’s contact walked into the waiting area. He was a tall black man. Much taller than Finn had anticipated. Six-four, at least, and lean in an athletic way. He was a dominating presence. He looked around the room once before saying anything. Finn followed the man’s eyes with curiosity; Finn and Kozlowski were the only ones in the place other than the receptionist.

  “Kozlowski,” he said. It seemed an acknowledgment and little more, but Finn had been around cops for long enough to recognize the code.

  Kozlowski nodded but said nothing. It was like some strange Kabuki dance. Neither one had extended his hand. They just stood there looking at each other.

  Then the agent looked at Finn. “Who’s this?”

  “He’s Finn,” Kozlowski said. “Scott Finn, this is Special Agent Rob Hewitt.”

  “Finn’s my partner,” Kozlowski said. Then, as an apology, “He’s a lawyer.” They passed through the reception area and walked into the back offices.

  “So was I once,” Hewitt said.

  “It’s curable?” Finn asked. He could feel Kozlowski’s glare, and he reminded himself not to speak.

  Hewitt led them through a large open area overrun with cubicle dividers covered with gray industrial fabric. It resembled so many corporate offices Finn had been in over the years. There was a hush to the place, and men and women in business attire were hunched diligently over their computer screens. Missing was any of the clattering and mayhem that often broke out in local police stations. The FBI didn’t deal with anything so mundane; their targets were higher profile. The only obvious indication that he wasn’t in a bank’s back office was the fact that many of the men in their cubicles had their jackets off, and their shoulder holsters and guns were visible.

  Hewitt brought them through the maze, around toward a long hallway, and into an interior conference room. They went in ahead of Hewitt and he closed the door behind them. They sat around the conference table. It was a cheap piece of furniture. “Okay, Koz,” Hewitt said. “You said you needed to talk to me. I’m here.”

  “Yeah,” Kozlowski said. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

  Hewitt shook his head. “No thanks needed. Ask what you need to ask.”

  “It’s about the robbery at the Gardner Museum that happened back in ’90. You familiar with it?”

  Hewitt was silent for a moment. “Sure,” he said slowly. “It’s the biggest art theft in modern history. Still unsolved. I’d have to be dead not to be familiar with it.”

  “What’s the status of the investigation?”

  Hewitt’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

  Kozlowski shook his head. “Can’t really get into that.”

  “Can’t get into it?” Hewitt leaned back in his chair. He looked back and forth between Finn and Kozlowski. “That puts me in a little bit of an awkward position.”

  Kozlowski nodded. “I understand that. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  Hewitt looked at the former cop for a moment before answering. Then he shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Truth is, I don’t really know. I hear bits and pieces from time to time, but it’s nothing more than rumor. You know how it is, Koz—it’s not my case, so I don’t have a whole lot of real information.”

  “Whose case is it?” Kozlowski asked.

  “Art Theft Program. It’s a relatively new division at the Bureau; they started it up in 2002. There are only ten agents or so. Scattered around the country, but they’re based out of the home office in DC. The division’s headed up by a guy named Angus Porter. He was a field agent up here in Boston back in the eighties and nineties. He used to dabble in a lot of the local stuff—organized crime, drug trafficking, the usual crap we all work on in satellite offices. But he got bit by the art bug. Boston was a major player in the stolen-art world, even before the Gardner got taken. A couple of years before, a guy actually plucked a twenty-million-dollar painting off the wall at the Museum of Fine Arts and ran out the door with it. There wasn’t any security at all. True story.”

  “The guy got away with it?”

  “For a while. The painting was eventually returned to reduce his sentence on another heist that didn’t go quite as well for him. But there were lots of stories like that back in the day. Angus started the process of pulling together information on the thefts and the movement of the paintings. Studied the fences, the transactions, took art classes—became a real expert. After the Gardner job he started lobbying the brass to start up a special division. It took him a dozen years, but they finally gave in and assigned him a half dozen agents and a budget. I’m sure he wanted more, but I gotta give him credit. After 9/11 we were so focused on the antiterrorism issues that I’m shocked he got anybody’s attention.”

  “I’m surprised, too,” Kozlowski said. “Diverting any resources from antiterrorism to find lost paintings seems like a waste of manpower.”

  “In principle, I don’t disagree,” Hewitt said. “But I’ve helped out on a couple cases, and you’d be surprised how big a business it is—and how tied in it all is to some other very bad things. Drugs. Terrorism. Extortion. It’s all related.”

  “How so?”

  Hewitt gave an ironic grimace. Finn figured it was the closest he ever came to a smile. “I could give you the basics,” he said. “But from the look on your face, you don’t want the basics. If you’re looking for the best information, the guy to talk to is Porter.”

  “Do you feel comfortable calling him?” Kozlowski asked.

  Hewitt thought about it for a moment. Then he stood and walked to the door. “I’ll do better,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty

  Finn shifted his feet as he and Kozlowski sat alone in the conference room at the heart of the FBI’s offices in Boston. Talking to Kozlowski’s trusted FBI contact made Finn nervous. Talking to an FBI agent neither of them had ever met made him nauseous. He and Kozlowski knew about a kidnapping and they hadn’t reported it to the police or to the FBI. They were already arguably guilty of obstruction of justice. In addition, his client had participated in the robbery at the Gardner Museum—the very crime about which they were asking questions. Just having the conversation with the FBI agents was putting them all at risk, and Finn didn’t like it.

  He was still fretting when Hewitt walked back in, another man behind him. It would have been difficult to imagine two more physically different people. Hewitt was huge, with a massive upper body and giant hands. Porter was tiny, with shoulders pinched at the top and a neck that looked too thin to support hi
s head. His hands were wiry and small. Finn guessed his age in the mid-fifties, and he had a disdainful look that made him resemble a British filing clerk.

  “Gentlemen,” the second man said. “I’m Special Agent Porter, in charge of the FBI’s Art Theft Program. Special Agent Hewitt tells me you are looking for information about art theft. Specifically the Gardner Museum theft.”

  “Yes,” Kozlowski said. “I’m Tom Kozlowski. This is Scott Finn, he’s an attorney.”

  Porter remained standing. “May I ask what your interest in the Gardner theft is?”

  “We can’t answer that right now,” Kozlowski said.

  Porter looked at Hewitt and Hewitt shrugged. “Special Agent Hewitt speaks very highly of you, Detective. That carries some weight in my book. Perhaps we can talk for a little while? There is always the chance that you’ll develop the same trust in me that you have in him.” Porter spoke like a college professor. His diction was perfect, and there was a hint of an upper-class accent. He spoke slowly and chose his words carefully. “So what is it you want to know about the theft?”

  “You were in the Boston office when the Gardner was hit?” Kozlowski asked. “You were one of the agents originally assigned to the case?”

  “Yes. I have been involved in the investigation from the beginning.”

  “At the time, were you also working with the organized crime unit in Boston?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you work with John Connolly at all?” It was a pointed question, the implications of which could not be overlooked.

  “That’s out of line, Koz!” Hewitt protested.

  “No, no, Robert,” Porter said. “It’s a fair question.” He smiled. “I did work on cases involving organized crime in the eighties and nineties, Mr. Kozlowski. But I had no involvement with the tainted informant program. I was involved in the prosecution of the Angiulo offshoot of the Patriarca family that resulted from the information disclosed by Mr. Bulger and others, but I never ran any of my own informants. And I never had any idea where we were getting our information. Agent Connolly kept that information to himself. As a result, I never had the opportunity to become involved in anything untoward. Believe me, it was an issue that was seriously weighed by the Bureau before it approved the funding for the Art Theft Program.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “And, as you can see, they still saw fit to put me in charge of the new division. That should give you some comfort.”

  “Should it?”

  Porter smiled. “You don’t strike me as the kind of a man who likes to waste time, Detective,” he said. “Assuming that to be the case, you must have a very good reason to come all the way up here to ask questions about the Gardner Museum, yes?”

  Kozlowski leaned forward in his chair. “We understand that there was recently an offer made to sell the paintings,” he said, turning back to Porter. “Is that right?”

  Porter shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I compliment you on not beating around the bush, Detective. Where did you come by that information?”

  “From the director at the museum. Baxter. Is it true?”

  Porter looked as though he were sucking on a lemon. Finn guessed he was either angry or constipated. “Under what circumstances did Mr. Baxter tell you this?” he asked.

  “No circumstances,” Kozlowski said. “We had some questions about the theft.”

  Porter wasn’t done with the lemon yet. He folded his hands together and looked down at them. “In any conversation I had with Mr. Baxter, I indicated that he was to keep any information to himself,” he said. “It is crucial to the case. You understand my surprise at the notion that he would have just blurted this out to you, Mr. Kozlowski.”

  “Maybe you should have been clearer with him,” Kozlowski said.

  “Perhaps. You didn’t, by any chance, represent yourselves as law-enforcement officers, or give Mr. Baxter reason to think you were officially connected in some way to the investigation, did you?”

  “We never represented ourselves as anything we weren’t,” Kozlowski said. “I showed my private investigator’s license to the woman at the desk. You’ll have to ask Baxter what he believed. It’s true, though?” Kozlowski pushed. “There has been an offer to sell the paintings?”

  Porter cleared his throat. “These paintings have been missing for nearly twenty years. They are the most valuable pieces of stolen art in the world—worth an estimated five hundred million dollars. I’m going to need more information from you if I’m going to continue this conversation.”

  “What do you need?” Kozlowski asked.

  “First and foremost, I need a reason to believe you two have something to offer me. I need a reason to believe you aren’t full of bullshit.”

  Kozlowski turned to Finn. “Your call.”

  Finn thought about it for a moment. “A client of mine who may have information that would be helpful to the investigation,” he said at last. “He’s got a problem you may be helpful in solving. If we could work a trade, would you be interested?”

  “I might be,” Porter said. “What can he offer?”

  “Under the right circumstances, he might be able to offer a lot.”

  “Is he directly connected to the theft?”

  “I can’t go there yet. Not without knowing what you can offer in return.”

  Porter closed his eyes in thought for a moment. “Let’s handle it this way: I’ll talk to you generally about the theft and the things that are well known. I won’t discuss the specifics of the investigation, though. Not without more information from you.”

  “Fair enough,” Kozlowski said.

  Porter cleared his throat. “I assume you know the basics about how the thieves tricked the guards to gain access?” Finn and Kozlowski nodded. “Once inside, it was an easy job. The museum had virtually no security systems in place, and the thieves were able to spend close to an hour and a half in the place. In many ways, it was the perfect robbery. In other ways, it was a mess.”

  “How was it a mess?” Kozlowski asked.

  “Well, first, the mixture of art that was stolen was very odd. Several of the paintings stolen were exceptionally valuable. Vermeer’s The Concert, for example, is one of the most valuable paintings ever stolen. Similarly, Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee is an exceptional work, worth nearly as much as the Vermeer. It was the only seascape known to be painted by the Dutch master. Other paintings by Flinck and Degas were worth less, but still justified the effort. Some of the other works taken were comparatively worthless, though. It doesn’t really make sense. It is as though the thieves had some good information, and some bad information.”

  “Are there any theories as to where the paintings are now?” Finn asked.

  Porter looked at him. “Hundreds. We have chased over ten thousand tips, to no avail. There are more theories about who did this and why than there are police officers in Boston. No one has gotten it right yet, and the paintings have still not been found.”

  “Do you have a favorite theory?” Kozlowski asked.

  Porter considered the question. “I do. And I might share it with you if I had reason to believe you had legitimate information to give to me.” No one said anything. “I need more, gentlemen. Otherwise I can’t continue.”

  “There were two men involved,” Finn said after a moment. “One had a list of the valuable paintings. The other didn’t know anything about art; he was just the entry man. He took advantage of the opportunity. That’s why some of what was stolen seemed worthless.”

  “Your client?” Finn said nothing, and Porter smiled. “Of course. That would explain a lot. And it fits with some of the information we have.”

  Finn felt as though he’d been taken. “So? Where do you think the paintings are now?” Finn demanded.

  “I think the paintings are still here in Boston,” Porter said.

  “Why?”

  “You see,” Porter said, “first you have to try to get into the head of the person who p
lanned this. To do that, you have to understand both the nature of the art theft industry and the psychology of the art thief.”

  “Industry?” Finn said. “Can it really be called an industry?”

  “Depends on what you consider an industry, Mr. Finn. We estimate stolen art to run in the range of six billion dollars a year.” Kozlowski let out an astonished whistle. “That’s according to the United Nations. It’s probably more. In terms of economics and volume, the illicit trade in art and cultural property ranks second only to the drug trade.”

  “How do they move it all?”

  “That’s the rub,” Porter said. “It’s become very difficult to move paintings and artwork in recent years. Art isn’t like most other commodities. It is, by its very nature, identifiable. Twenty or even ten years ago, that wasn’t much of a problem. A painting could be stolen in one country, held for a number of years and then sold in another country. Often the buyer would have no idea that the work was stolen at all. Many countries have laws that allow such an ‘innocent’ buyer to keep the painting even if it is later discovered to be a stolen work. However, using the Internet, law-enforcement agencies now cooperate with most of the world’s major art galleries and auction houses, and we have developed a catalogue of stolen art that is so comprehensive that it’s become difficult for any buyer to ‘accidentally’ buy a work that’s been stolen. Plus, the laws in most countries either have been or are in the process of being changed such that the purchaser must prove a reasonable provenance—a chain of authenticity and legal custody—in order to retain ownership. There has also been such an onslaught of lawsuits from people to recover stolen works going back even to World War II and the Holocaust, that the cost of buying or selling stolen art has become very often too high.”

  “So why would anyone steal art?” Kozlowski asked. “Seems like it’s a lot of work for relatively little gain.”

  “One would think so,” Porter said. “But the relative risk for thieves is still often well worth it. First of all, the dangers involved are low compared with other illegal activities. Much of the art in the world is held in private collections—in houses and estates—which have little or no real security. Even many of the museums in the world are minimally protected. The criminal penalties for art theft also tend to be significantly more lenient than those for other lucrative illegal activities—like trading in drugs or weapons. Finally, even if the paintings are difficult to fence, there are other ways to collect. Some are ransomed back to the museums. Even at a fraction of their value, the transaction can net the thieves millions. They hit museums or private residences and then offer to return the paintings for the insurance money.”