The Cézanne Chase

by Thomas Swan

  Terry Sloane replied, “Before we start, Alan, I want you to know that our discussion is being recorded, and you will be provided with a copy of the tape. Do you understand?”

  Pinkster nodded.

  Samuelson spoke up. “For the record, please acknowledge that you understand that our discussion is being recorded.”

  Pinkster said angrily, “I acknowledge that you’ve got a bloody tape recorder going.”

  Samuelson neatened the folders and notepads that he had set out on the table and looked directly at Pinkster.

  “There’s a substantial amount of money at stake in all this, and I’m sure that you want to see a fair resolution as much as we do. Eighteen months ago we put $40 million into your Pacific Bowl operation. Six months later, another twenty-five, and forty more in March of this year.”

  “A hundred and five million,” Pinkster said with closed eyes and a flat, impatient voice. “I know the numbers.”

  “I think, for the record, we should go over all the numbers,” Samuelson said with firm insistence. “Interest payments to date total $2.5 million. The principal has not been reduced. Total outstanding interest due on the account, as of close of business today, is $6.84 million.”

  “Less three million.” Pinkster handed Samuelson a draft made payable by the Sumitomo Bank of Tokyo.

  Terry Sloane twisted forward and ran his hand across his chin. “That’s not enough, Alan. Not even a good try.”

  “It’s bloody damned enough,” Pinkster snapped. “And under the circumstances, a goddamned good try.”

  Samuelson got to his feet and took several steps toward the row of windows. He turned, shoved both hands into his pockets, and began speaking softly and deliberately.

  “Alan, I’ve watched you operate in Japan and New York, and I know you’re a bright son of a bitch with a God-given talent for making money. But good as you are, you can’t control events, and you can’t control markets. You can just read them.”

  Pinkster sat motionless, all but his eyes, which shifted upward and glared at Samuelson.

  “The Japanese had a financial scandal a few years ago. There were suicides and arrests. A pretty awful mess. I learned recently that you were in on that deal, that you were one of a few non-Japanese who were offered a private placement of Recruit Cosmos stock, and you made a shitpot full of money.”

  “Less than two hundred thousand,” Pinkster said. “And that has nothing to do with Pacific Bowl.”

  “We think it does,”Terry Sloane said.

  “I’m telling you it doesn’t,” Pinkster said defiantly.

  “The Recruit Scandal is long over with, we don’t care that you made some money. What’s important to us is the fact you were cut in on the deal.” Terry Sloane leaned back in his chair. “We want to know why.”

  Pinkster rubbed ointment over his lips. “I got a phone call. Nothing remarkable about that. I knew a lot of people, and I gave them a good tip from time to time.” He made several indecipherable scribbles on the notepad. “I’m the best at what I do, and in Japan you get rewarded for doing it.”

  “You were trading heavily with Tokyo’s largest securities firms. With Nomura and Nikko and not with your own company. Why?”

  “I was trading for special customers.”

  “You were employed by Aubrey & Weeks and were handling customer trades through other brokerage houses? Isn’t that a bit odd?”

  “I had opportunities on the side. They couldn’t be handled in the usual way.”

  “You say you got a phone call on the Recruit deal. Who was that from?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, but you can,” Samuelson said. He stood beside his chair, an arm draped over its high back. “We’re into Pacific Bowl to the tune of 105 million bucks plus interest, and every goddamned thing you do is our business.”

  “The call was from the chairman of Recruit. I’d helped him buy several paintings. He was returning a favor.”

  “They’re big on that ... you do me a favor, I do one for you.”

  “Private placement of a new stock issue was common practice. And legal.”

  “Then why did so much shit hit the fan?” Samuelson asked. The country went crazy over the Recruit scandal.”

  “Because three cabinet ministers accepted stock donations from Recruit. That’s different from buying the stock, even at a steep discount. They resigned, and that forced the prime minister to resign. The head of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone got mixed up, and he quit. Is that crazy enough?”

  “And you came out of it clean as a goddamned whistle?”

  “First off, I’m not the bloody head of the Japanese government or the world’s largest corporation. And I didn’t take a donation, I was given the chance to buy a thousand shares, and I bought them. All perfectly legal.”

  “What I’m driving at, Alan, is the fact you were on the inside track. That you were meeting all kinds of people.”

  “And I said there’s nothing wrong in that.”

  Samuelson shook his head. “Nothing wrong with the right people. But you met some of the ‘wrong’ people.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Pinkster shot back.

  “I mean that you had connections with organized crime figures.” Samuelson sat on the arm of his chair, arms folded across his chest. “You were doing business with heavy hitters in the Yakuza.”

  “The Yakuza isn’t the Mafia.”

  “Oh yes it is. They make money the old-fashioned way, they kill for it.” Samuelson smiled at his little joke. “What does the name Susumu Ishii mean to you?”

  “Ishii is a very wealthy man. He likes early Picasso ... plays a good game of golf.”

  “He should play golf very well,” Terry Sloane injected. “He owns four golf courses.”

  “What did you do for him?” Samuelson asked.

  “A while back the Japanese began buying important art. At first it was a genuine desire to own western paintings, but quickly they began competing among themselves for more expensive works. I saw an opportunity to buy in Europe and New York, and sell in Japan—”

  “We know all that,” Samuelson interrupted. “That’s why you put Pacific Bowl together and came to us for money. We saw it as purely speculative but with better than average chances for returns above 50 percent. The downside risks were pegged to how well you bought in your inventory.”

  Pinkster turned away from Samuelson. He made another note on the pad but said nothing.

  Terry Sloane broke the silence. “You have a relationship with Akio Sawata. How is that getting on?”

  “Strictly business,” Pinkster answered.

  “Automobiles, real estate, prostitution? That kind of business?” Samuelson demanded.

  “Extortion or fraud?” Terry Sloane added to the list.

  “Sawata’s a wealthy man, and I didn’t ask for his pedigree or where he made his money.” Pinkster pushed himself away from the table. “He bought art, and that’s all I cared about.”

  “Then why do we have a problem? Sawata is one of the wealthiest men in Japan, and you don’t give a shit if he’s Shinto, immoral, or a fucking agnostic. But the way I read it, he’s mixed up with Pacific Bowl and owes a lot of money.”

  Pinkster shook his head. “I don’t have a contract. Sawata doesn’t make contracts.”

  “For Christ’s sake, how can you do business without a contract? Don’t you have something? A letter?”

  Pinkster added more ointment to his lips. “When you do business with Sawata you talk about many things, and then he will describe a painting and say that he wants it. Then he bows.”

  “That’s it? He fucking bows?” Samuelson was back on his feet, his hands jammed back into his pockets.

  Pinkster nodded. “In your American vernacular, he fucking bows.”

  “He told you about a painting he wanted?” Terry Sloane asked.

  “Akio Sawata and I had talked about the paintings of Georges Seurat. There’s not much of Seurat around, and
the ones that are privately owned are in America. I knew interest was building for Seurat and so did Akio. Timing was good, or so we thought, and I said I’d keep an eye out, and as chance had it I picked up a rather nice drawing at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. It was four hundred thousand dollars. I sold it to Akio for half a million. Then a dealer in Chicago wrote and described a painting that was perfect for Sawata. A large painting, done shortly before Seurat died.” Pinkster turned away from both men. “I began negotiations, and immediately there was an announcement from Paris that a Seurat retrospective would open in the fall. The damned French never paid much attention to Seurat, and now they were out to make something of him. The dealer doubled the price to $8 million, and I took it before it went higher.”

  “What did Sawata pay for it?”

  Pinkster did not answer immediately but instead scribbled another note. He looked up at Samuelson. “He hasn’t paid anthing. He said the price was too high and that he was going to close his galleries.”

  “He bowed, goddamn it,” Samuelson said. “You said it was the same as a contract.”

  Pinkster turned on what was neither a bold nor happy smile. “You’re terribly naive, Bud. Sawata bowed, and all that meant was that he would like to have a Seurat. It didn’t bind him to buy anything.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Of course. It’s part of the risk. I’ll get what I paid for the Seurat, but that will take time.” Pinkster got to his feet and looked sternly at Samuelson and Terry Sloane. “I suggest that you listen very carefully to what I’m going to tell you.”

  Samuelson returned to his chair. Terry Sloane shifted to face Pinkster and said, “A reminder, Alan. Everything is being recorded. If you’ve got something to say off the record, I suggest you tell us later.”

  “What I’ve got to say will be very brief, and you can damned well record it.” He sat on the edge of the table and looked out the window at the darkness falling across the big city.

  “Let’s go over a little history together. The Japanese have always had a fascination for Western art. During the eighties they began to buy Old Masters and European art. Paintings were a good investment and a sure way to add to one’s prestige. In particular they liked the French Impressionists, and so the wealthy businessmen began to compete with each other, one trying to buy a more valuable painting than the other. A man named Morishita, who had once been convicted for extortion and fraud, spent $900 million on his collection. Ryoei Saiti, head of giant paper company paid $82 million for a Van Gogh and $78 million for a Renoir, then had the audacity to add a provision to his will requiring that the two paintings be burned along with his own body when he was cremated. The Itoman Trading Company bought over four hundred paintings at a cost of nearly a half billion dollars, and the Mitsubishi Corporation bought two Renoirs from a couple of Frenchmen for $30 million.”

  Pinkster had circled the conference table as he talked, then came back to his chair.

  “Forgive my lecturing you, but it may help to refresh your memory and bring you closer to the problem. It was the Japanese who made the art market, and it is the Japanese who are destroying it. Their economy has shifting sand under it. When you consider a stock market trading at a hundred times earnings and scandals tearing up the financial landscape every other year, it’s a recipe for disaster. Do either of you know what zaitech means?”

  “Creative accounting” Samuelson said. “Two sets of ledgers and all that good stuff.”

  “Nothing so ordinary,” Pinkster disagreed. “They were more innovative. To them, zaitech is financial engineering. For our purposes it’s the use of art as a substitute for currency.” Pinkster returned to his chair and settled into it. “The government’s put a lid on real estate. But if a property owner wants a higher price, he’ll take payment of the fixed price plus a small Degas or a Picasso drawing. That’s zaitech. I supplied three customers steadily, each bought one, sometimes two paintings every month. Then the Ministry of Finance began investigating every transaction over a hundred million yen. Art as a substitute for hard currency became less popular.”

  “What are you saying?” Samuelson’s patience was running low.

  “I’m saying that I have an inventory of twenty-one paintings that cost a bit over $98.5 million. Normally I could sell them for between $150 and $180 million. But the art market is ice cold, and I can’t get $80 million for the lot.”

  “There are other buyers besides the Japanese,”Terry Sloane said.

  “Let me get this straight.” Samuelson leaned forward and stretched his arms out stiffly, the palms of his hands flat on the table. “You can’t get your price because the Japanese economy is fucked up, and you want us to wait it out? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  “That’s pretty much the way it is. I can’t say how long it will take, but their economy will come back.”

  “Along with new and better forms of zaitech?” Samuelson said bitterly. “We’re not in the business of waiting. We put money into a business, and we expect it to earn more money. We’e not waiting.”

  “Extend the deadline for interest payment another thirty days. It’s less than $4 million. I’m good for it.”

  “I don’t want to wait any thirty goddamned days.” Samuelson slapped the table with both hands. “You’ve got five days.”

  “I can’t accept that.”

  “You damn well can, or we’ll start action on all the other shit you own.” He moved a folder out from the others in front of him, “There’s our contract. Failure to pay interest in a timely manner is cause for cancelation and opens the way for one fucking big barrage of legal action.”

  “You knew that art was a volatile commodity when we made our arrangements two years ago. You’ve got to be more patient.”

  “You’re playing with our money, and I don’t like that. You haven’t risked one of your own fucking pennies and now to save your ass, you’re going to have to.”

  “I’ll put a battery of lawyers against you.” Pinkster reached aross the table, grabbed the contract and waved it at Samuelson. “They’ll tie this into a dozen knots, and you won’t see any more money for years.”

  “You’re bluffing, Alan.” Terry Sloane got to his feet. “Make us an offer. Something like full payment of interest in a week, return of half the principal in a month. Give us something to work on, and we’ll try to go along with you.”

  Pinkster glared at Terry Sloane, then at Samuelson. He got up and went to the windows that looked down to Tower Bridge and the Thames. He stood as if frozen for several minutes, then said without turning, “I’ll work it out.”

  “What in Christ’s name does that mean?” Samuelson asked.

  Pinkster had gone to the door. “Precisely what I said. I’ll work it out.” He opened the door and slipped out.

  Samuelson started after him, and Terry Sloane put up his hand. “Let him go, Bud. You gave him a deadline, and he took it. Let’s see what he comes up with.”

  Samuelson’s response was a grudging “OK.” He crossed over to the painting titled Number 3–1954, glared up to the massive field of blue with the strange colored stripes that wandered through it in no understandable way. “Who’s responsible for this fucking atrocity?”

  Terry Sloane came beside him. “I take it you don’t approve.” He grinned. “You should know that the staff is evenly split. Half don’t like it...the other half hate it.”

  Chapter 13

  Sepera was anchored a hundred yards off Battersea power station and showed a pair of green lights at the opening in its railing on the starboard side and three lights in a straight vertical line (two whites and a yellow) on a pole behind the pilot house. It was nearing ten o’clock, commercial traffic had slowed to a trickle, and the river was dark.

  Nikos stood, waiting. He glanced up to the pilot house where Sophie’s face reflected the aqua fluorescence that glowed from a row of radar screens. Her eyes looked past Nikos at the running lights on a boat approaching fast from the stern. The boat was
nearly on them when its power was cut, and it seemed to rise up, then settle on the water, heaving in its own turbulence, edging closer to where Nikos stood with a looped hawser in his hand. The boats came together, and lines were deftly attached to the stout bitts on the tug and across to the brightly chromed cleats on the cruiser.

  A chattering in Japanese came from the cabin of the cruiser, then a man emerged followed by a shorter figure carrying a large, flat zippered case that could easily hold an unfolded copy of the London Times. When they reached the point where the two boats were lashed together, their talk ceased, and helping hands guided them across to the tug and into the care of Nikos. He led them inside Sepera and down to the great salon.

  Instead of four chairs and four tables in the center of the room, there were three chairs and one table with a lamp that glowed softly, creating a round pool of yellowish light. The light did not reach to the walls, so much of the room was dark.

  “Please you be comfortable,” Nikos said. “I will get you a refreshment if you wish, like a good whiskey?”

  “Later. After we’ve done our business.” The reply was in English. The accent, to an Englishman’s ear, was pure New York City.

  Amid the steady hum from an engine making electrical power there came the faint scraping of metal, then the sound of a door sliding open, then closing, and Alan Pinkster came into the pale light. He was holding a towel wrapped around ice, and he dabbed at his face and above his eyes, where there was an angry redness. He said, “There will be more light in a few minutes.”

  “Good evening, Miss Shimada.” He forced a thin smile, “Please sit down.”

  Mari Shimada was facing the lamp. She was small. Her black hair fell across her forehead and was cut short in a pageboy style. Her features were Eurasian, nearly perfect, and her makeup was startling: a creamy white face with large slightly turned eyes outlined in black, her lips and long fingernails colored a deep crimson. She slipped out of her coat, revealing a slim figure squeezed into a black leotard. She wore a short black skirt cinched at the waist with a gold buckle. Pinkster had seen her before, and as then marveled at her compact voluptuousness.