The Price of Inheritance

by Karin Tanabe

  “I think it’s worded slightly differently in the Quran,” said Ryan, smiling.

  “I’m paraphrasing. So in this letter Maimonides explains that he was the one who brought the provisions to Richard?”

  “Exactly. He was the one who did, and he also took the opportunity to spy on how many men and how much supplies Richard still had, but that’s not relevant to this story. What is relevant is that Maimonides wrote in the letter that before he delivered everything to Richard, he carved the base of one of the bowls with the words ‘First and the Last,’ which is the end of the fourth principle of faith—Maimonides’s Thirteen Principles of Faith, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. They’re still a pillar of Judaism today.”

  “The fourth principle of faith? You mean, that line is not from the Bible? From the Book of Revelation? I thought it was, Blair Bari, a professor at Brown, did, and so did Tyler. I saw that passage underlined in blue pen in his personal King James Bible.”

  “It’s a common way to refer to God, but it’s not from the Bible in this case. Maimonides wrote that it was a reference to the fourth principle from his Thirteen Principles of Faith: ‘I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.’ ”

  I had gone, in six months, from my Americentric existence to discussing the Crusades with an FBI agent in Newport. Life felt almost unrecognizable.

  “So that bowl, the one that I had in my bag as I walked around a dive bar in Newport, and that had a fake bottom added to it, was the bowl that Maimonides delivered to Richard the Lionheart on behalf of Saladin in 1192.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Ryan laughed loudly and looked at me, sitting by the water on a beautiful day in June leveled by my shock.

  “Yeah, holy shit. There’s more holy shit, too.”

  “Wait, do you think Tyler knew any of this?”

  “Tyler Ford? No way. I don’t think anyone who worked with Max in the Middle East knew about this or they might have kept it and sold it themselves. Without that history, it’s just an old clay bowl. What did you think it was worth?”

  “When I knew it was in the museum? Four hundred, five hundred thousand.”

  “Yeah, not anymore.”

  “But how could it be in such perfect shape? It’s over eight hundred years old.”

  “I’ll get to that. Let me backtrack. This letter that we found perfectly states what this bowl is. In it Maimonides describes the passage from the Quran—‘And God shall heal the breast of the believers’—painted inside the bowl in Arabic in deep green script and writes that he etched part of his fourth principle into the base in Hebrew. He describes carving it in with a medical knife that he had used as a court physician in Egypt. He wrote not only of the health of Richard the Lionheart but how the king of England had previously invited Maimonides to be his personal physician, an invitation that he declined. Maimonides had been a leading physician in Saladin’s court since 1185 and was extremely respected in his profession. In the letter, Maimonides also perfectly details the appearance and beauty of the bowl: the green pattern, the off-white background, the fine brush detailing, the vegetal motifs. According to Max, after buying that letter, Adam Tumlinson wanted him to find the bowl.”

  “And Max did.”

  “He did but it took eight years. The letter was bought in 1995 and the bowl was discovered in 2003. January 2003.”

  “The same year that the museum was looted.”

  “Right. The bowl was found in a private home. It had been—supposedly, this could all be bullshit—but supposedly it had never been in a museum, always in private hands with the family, the descendants of Maimonides. Richard and Saladin reached an agreement in 1192 and Saladin died in March 1193. It’s unclear how the bowl made its way back to Maimonides, but it could have been returned to him before Richard left for Europe. Max Sebastian or his people in the Middle East were able to obtain it in Jaffa, in Israel.”

  “Jaffa, that’s where Richard the First was in 1192, right? The Battle of Jaffa.”

  “Yes, you’re not that rusty on the Crusades after all. The bowl was found there and Max had arrangements to have it brought to the United States, but it didn’t work out like he planned. Before it could be brought here, it somehow ended up in the collection of the National Museum of Iraq.”

  “But how? From Jaffa to Iraq? That makes no sense.”

  “Does any of this make sense? It sounds like a deal gone wrong. There were so many trades for money, objects for money, art for money, money for arms. Something slipped and instead of going to the States, it went to the museum.”

  “But Adam knew that it went there?”

  “No, Adam didn’t, Max did. And that’s when he hired someone inside the museum to get it from the collection before it got archived. It was going to happen before the war, but when the war broke out in March 2003, everyone could sense the museum was going to be looted; it was a perfect opportunity. From what we know, Max already had people in place to loot the museum, on a timeline he dictated, so it was an easy add for him. The fact that the bowl went to the museum actually made it even easier for him to obtain. The bowl, along with thousands of other artifacts, was taken. Some of that was by petty thieves, but we think a huge number of those thefts were arranged by Max for American and European buyers. Tyler and many others helped bring everything back to the United States and Great Britain.”

  “Okay, but then why didn’t the bowl go to Adam?”

  “We’re not perfectly clear on that yet but we think it’s money. Adam didn’t pay him in full.”

  “So the bowl never went to Adam?”

  “No. But eleven years later, Elizabeth, Adam’s wife, was going to finish the deal.”

  “But Max gave it to Tyler to hold until he was sure he had a buyer.”

  “Max is giving a different story on that, saying Tyler insisted he keep it, but that sounds like crap, too. I think, like you said, he didn’t want to take it out of the U.S. And he definitely didn’t want it in London, where it could be associated with him. So it stayed with Tyler. Probably at Quantico, maybe at home in Wyoming, I don’t know where it was when he was deployed again, but it was in the U.S. until it got to Newport.”

  “And then I bought it.”

  “Yes, you bought it in February, but the wheels were in motion for the sale well before that. In December, Max contacted Tyler because Elizabeth Tumlinson had found Maimonides’s letter and the translation and correspondence from her husband where he talked about acquiring the bowl and how much money he had spent. Elizabeth discovered the letter, in one of her husband’s many safe-deposit boxes, before she ever contacted Christie’s about selling her furniture collection. Then she waited a suitable period to make sure the sale looked promising. A month before it was set to go in New York, when the press was giving it love and saying it would bring in forty million, and you all had already given her a big chunk of the guarantee, then she promised Max his money. Several million. And that was on top of what Adam Tumlinson had already paid.”

  “How much money had Adam spent?”

  “Five million.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “No, but I bet it’s worth much more than that now, don’t you think?” asked Ryan.

  “It’s worth whatever someone is willing to spend on history.” From my experience, that could go to eight figures.

  “She wanted the bowl and she was set to pay the rest of the money to get it.”

  “Wait, more money? How much was that?”

  “I’m not sure. But more.”

  “So then Max contacted Tyler to get it back in New York?”

  “Yes, exactly, but like you told Captain Ambrose, Tyler gave him the wrong bowl. He gave him a fake.”

  “Which Max realized when I contacted him with p
ictures of the real one.”

  “You and then Greg LaPorte, whom he linked to Tyler. You he couldn’t connect. He didn’t know you were living in Newport. With Greg, he knew.”

  “How did you get him to admit to all of this?” I asked, very surprised.

  “Torture.”

  “What?”

  “I’m kidding. We just used what we had from Tyler, via you. If you act like you know everything, they fill in the blanks.”

  “Max filled in the blanks?”

  “The ones in Savile Row always break down first.”

  “Did he switch the bowls in Providence?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about the other bowl? The copy?”

  “The one Hannah Lloyd made?”

  I stared at him with desperate eyes. Of course they had found out about Hannah.

  “Don’t worry. We don’t care so much about that,” Ryan assured me.

  I nodded nervously and let him keep going.

  “You still have that bowl, we know that. But we have the one that matters. In the last four days, the false bottom was removed to reveal the original bottom, which was in fact identical, just not in great shape. Elizabeth has given us access to her husband’s papers and Max has been fired from Sotheby’s and is waiting arraignment. The bowl will eventually find its way back to the National Museum of Iraq, and—”

  “And Tyler Ford?”

  “And Tyler is nowhere to be found and now has official deserter status with the Marine Corps.”

  “But Tyler was never inside the National Museum of Iraq?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “And what about the other guy, the one you mentioned who didn’t know Tyler. Was he ever inside?”

  “Noah. Noah Kulik. No, from what we have gathered, and this investigation is by no means complete, he was also a middleman like Tyler.”

  I shook my head and looked out at the lily pads floating by the shore.

  “It’s funny about you and Elizabeth,” said Ryan. “How you worked with her before and she dicked you over. It’s almost like you planned it.”

  “Trust me. I didn’t.”

  “I know. But isn’t the world strange. This woman kicks you in the teeth and a few months later, you do it right back. Only you do it a lot fucking harder.”

  CHAPTER 19

  It was June 29 when news outlets picked up the story about Max and Tyler and Adam and Elizabeth Tumlinson. Unlike the one about Elizabeth’s American furniture collection, this story was worthy of a major news feature in the Sunday edition New York Times and every other paper in America. I called Nina and told her to be sure to buy a newspaper or seven. I wouldn’t tell her why, I just told her to call me back. She did, but it had just been screams for the first two minutes.

  After I had spent a solid twenty-four hours talking about what had happened with Jane and Carter and Brittan, my phone rang from a New York number.

  “Carolyn Everett? This is Alan Buckmaster from Sotheby’s, head of private sales Americas. I don’t think we’ve ever met and I hope you don’t mind me calling. Your former colleague, Nicole Grant, was kind enough to give me your number and assure me that I wouldn’t be disturbing you.”

  “You’re not disturbing me at all,” I said. It was definitely about Max. They wanted to talk to me. I knew they would call. But everything I knew about Max was already out.

  I spoke to Alan for thirty minutes, saying everything I’m sure he had already read. Then I offered to forward him the original email I had sent to Max and he gladly accepted. When I was about to hang up, Alan asked me what I was doing in Newport.

  “I work at a little antique store. It’s called William Miller’s Antiques. You should stop by if you’re ever in the area.”

  “You should go back to New York,” he offered. “You might not have been able to get a job before, but you will now. Don’t you miss New York?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. Coming back.”

  “Then you should. I think you’ve earned it. Call me when you do. I’d like to buy you a drink.”

  Three weeks later, my New York apartment was empty and I had paid an extra month to my landlord in Newport to leave early.

  “You can’t go,” said Jane with tears in her eyes when I told her I was leaving for New York in five days. “I’ve gotten so used to having you here, and with you here, Brittan comes home more, and everything is just perfect. Now you have to go and ruin it by going back to New York.”

  “I don’t think things were perfect when I was here, do you?”

  “Maybe perfect is a stretch, but I’ve had worse years. You brought a very needed wind of excitement up here and it changed the course for everyone, especially you.”

  “Especially Tyler.”

  “Yes, but from what you’ve told me, he set things in motion for himself before you got here. You just got in the way. But everyone likes it when you’re in the way.”

  “You’re going to go to Boston in September anyway.”

  “I would have stayed if you stayed. But now, I guess I will go.”

  “You really saved me from myself, Jane. I love you for it.”

  “No, you did it all. I just provided the sound track.” She shook her wrist, letting her bracelets ding against each other, and gave me a hug. The only other people I said goodbye to before leaving were Carter, Hook, and William. William said I owed him $10 million for the bowl and he gave me a bowler hat to show there were no hard feelings. Hook said he was going to scout Goodwills every single day.

  I got to New York the evening of July 26. My apartment didn’t smell like me. I’d had it cleaned two days before I came home but four hours of bleach hadn’t been enough to scrub out the odor of the tenant I had never met. I looked at the chair by the window. It had been fixed. There was a note on it from the renter and a thank-you for giving them such a good deal on the place. “I hope you don’t mind, I had this restored. I really enjoyed sitting in it and hope you do, too.”

  I sat down and ran my hands over the arms. I would enjoy sitting in it this time, even more than I had when I’d first bought it and imagined my life very differently.

  I didn’t have a job yet, but just knowing I could have a job was enough for now.

  That night, before I went to bed, I called Greg LaPorte. I hadn’t wanted to see him in person before I left Newport, but now that I was safely in New York, he deserved a phone call.

  “Just don’t say ‘I told you so,’ ” I said when he answered.

  “Please?”

  “No way.”

  “Can you just say, ‘Greg, you were right’?”

  “How about I just say this: Greg, you’re a nice guy. You’re a much nicer guy than Tyler Ford.”

  “I’ll take it for now. I guess that’s all I deserve really. I didn’t guess all of it. That whole part about the Crusades and Maimonides, Saladin and Richard the First.”

  “I can’t believe you missed that.”

  “I know, fail. I really like that story. And so does everyone else. The Jew, the Christian, and the Muslim happy together. I heard they’re selling the film rights.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No. But can’t you see it happening?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Yeah, then it definitely will.”

  I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on my bed. Somewhere near my window, someone was screaming. I knew the park, with all of its summer runners and cyclists, was just a few blocks to the west. Just a few blocks past that in one direction was Sotheby’s, in the other direction, Christie’s. This time, I wouldn’t make any mistakes, and if I did, I wouldn’t let them knock me all the way up to Newport.

  “Is it all roses in New York? Top of the Rock and all that?” asked Greg.

  “How exactly do you think people live in New York?
”

  “Well. Very well.”

  I turned toward my window and admired my bad view. After all those months away, it hadn’t gotten better. But I didn’t mind.

  “I do love this town,” I admitted.

  “I hope you grow out of that.”

  “I might. I miss the Newport water every day.”

  “You’ve only been gone for a day, you said.”

  “Then I’ve missed it for a day.”

  “I’ll let you go, Carolyn. But with the risk of sounding uncreative, I’ll just repeat myself. When you get sick of chasing Tyler Ford, I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “He’s a deserter, remember? Flew back to the Middle East? Never said goodbye to me? Left me to do his cleaning up for him. I am done chasing him.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “But you should.”

  “Yes, and you should be telling the truth. Good luck with everything. I hope you come see me in Newport.”

  The truth that Greg knew, and that I knew, was I would always be in love with Tyler. He was furtive and deceitful, but he was solid. He seemed, from the beginning, to be made up of what real American men should be made up of, and that included miles of flaws. But I liked his flaws: his closed-book personality, the way his eyes were unreadable, and that just when you expected him to say one thing, he surprised you with something else. From the moment we met, Tyler took my hand and pulled me into a world that I forgot existed. One where people struggled to make ends meet, where men went to war and never came back, where children shivered at the idea of ending up in their hometowns, and where people loved blindly and completely. Not everyone on earth sprang to life on Bellevue Avenue, and now that I knew Tyler, I was glad. All my life I had been looking at Alex, at the Dalbys, and holding them up as the radiance to chase after. I learned to trail them, at times surpass them, and wrote myself a resume that shined with privilege. I took every leap I could to stay in their moneyed world, their gilded age, but when I met Tyler, I took a step out and I knew I’d never find my stride with them again. In some essential way, he was better than all of us, better than I would ever be, better than the rest.