by Ian Hamilton
“Knock off?”
“Wrong choice of words, actually, a bit of a disservice to them. How about they would create a work in the style of Chagall?”
“But you think in this case the fakes were actually commissioned?”
“Yes, as I said, in this case that makes sense.”
“Are the galleries and agents that unscrupulous?”
“My God, that hardly begins to describe them.”
“I wouldn’t have thought —”
“Ms. Lee, beneath the suave veneer of most art agents is a twisted, demented soul willing to sell his crippled mother into whoredom if the price is right.”
“I was going to ask if you had a list of galleries and agents who might do this kind of thing.”
“Open the New York phone book, find the heading ‘Art Galleries,’ and use every name on it as your initial list. Then get a Paris phone book, a London phone book —”
“I get it.”
“Sorry. I wish I could be more helpful in that regard.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m not sure what I was expecting.”
“So what’s next?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not much of anything,” Ava said. “Those paintings you’re examining, when will you be done?”
“Not sure. I have a heavy workload and they aren’t at the top of my list right now.”
“That’s honest.”
“I try.”
“Me too.”
“Look, you can call me anytime if you have questions, but frankly I think this is a bit of a wild goose chase.”
“So it seems. Well, thanks anyway.”
She hung up and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was going on six o’clock. I should check in with Uncle, she thought.
“Wei.”
“Hi, Uncle, it’s Ava.”
“Ava, about that accounting firm — I have a name and phone number for you,” Uncle said. “The woman’s name is Grace Chan, she works for Landmark, and she did the books for Great Wall Antiques for ten years,” he said, then recited the number.
“I’ll call her now.”
“Someone will have told her your name.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Ava hung up and then dialled the number Uncle had given her.
Grace Chan answered the phone with a brisker “Wei” than Uncle’s. “Ms. Chan, my name is Ava Lee.”
“My boss said you’d be calling.”
“Thanks for taking my call. Ms. Chan, I’m told you did the books for Great Wall Antiques for at least ten years.”
“I did, until Mr. Kwong died.”
“I’m looking for some information that might help me resolve a problem. It doesn’t involve Landmark in any way, and I don’t think it actually involves Mr. Kwong either,” Ava said. “Some years ago, Kwong broadened his business to include paintings, specifically paintings for the Wong family in Wuhan.”
“He did.”
“Could you go through the records you have and pull out everything associated with those transactions?”
“There aren’t many of them.”
“Then that shouldn’t be difficult.”
“The files are in our Hong Kong office. I live in Tai Wai Village and work mainly from home.”
“Tai Wai in the New Territories?”
“Yes, past Sha Tin, on the way to the Chinese border.”
“Can you get to the office tomorrow?”
There was a long pause.
“I have been authorized by my clients to pay consulting fees,” Ava said. “Would two thousand dollars make it easier for you?”
“The office doesn’t open until nine, and it will take me a while to find the files and go through them,” she said quickly.
“So what time?”
“Eleven.”
“See you then.”
( 10 )
Ava got to the Landmark office an hour early, hoping Grace Chan had already located the files she needed. The receptionist asked her to take a seat while she called Ms. Chan. A minute later a diminutive Chinese woman in a plain white dress buttoned to the collar and falling below her knees walked into the area. Her grey hair was cut in a pageboy. Ava thought the hairstyle a curious choice for a woman who looked as if she was in her fifties.
“Ava?”
“Yes. I’m sorry if I’m a little early. I was rather anxious to see what you have.”
“Not to worry, your timing is actually quite good. Come with me.”
Ava followed Chan to the boardroom, where three files were laid out side by side on the table. “Those are his annual financial statements and tax returns,” Chan said, pointing to the stack. “I separated the paintings transactions into these three files to make it easier for you.”
“Three files. Three transactions?”
“No, five. Two each in two years and one in another year.”
“There were twenty transactions.”
“I have records for five, that’s all.”
“Let’s look at them,” Ava said, knowing there was no point in arguing.
She sat next to Chan, who opened the first file. “Kwong paid $1.5 million for this painting from a gallery in Paris. Actually, he didn’t technically pay. He negotiated a price, invoiced the Wongs, took their payment, deducted a commission of five percent, and then forwarded the balance of the money to the seller. The seller then sent the painting to Kwong. He used the same procedure for all five of the paintings I have records for.”
“That was trusting of the Wongs,” Ava said.
“Kwong wasn’t a fool,” Chan said. “Why would he risk making an enemy of one of the most powerful men in China?”
Ava leafed through the paperwork. Chan had grouped it in chronological order, making it easy to follow. The procedure she had described for the first painting had been repeated four more times. Each had a different seller. “So he was acting as a broker, a middle man. He never had actual possession of any of these paintings.”
“That’s the case.”
Ava worked through the files again, noting the dates, the artists, the paintings. Then she opened her notebook and compared them against her list. Chan’s files documented three of the five paintings Torrence judged to be genuine; the other two were on his questionable list. She guessed those two were going to pass muster.
“I have a problem,” Ava said to Chan. “Our records show that the Wongs bought twenty paintings from Great Wall, not five.”
“This is all I have.”
“Could you leave me alone with these other files for a little while?” Ava asked, pointing to the stack.
“Certainly. I’m borrowing an office two doors down. Come and get me when you’re done.”
Grace Chan was a good accountant. Ava found it easy to go through a year of business at Great Wall. The income statements and balance sheets were clear and concise, the backup was referenced. It wasn’t much of a business, not in ceramics anyway. The first year she examined had sales of less than HK$2 million — about US$300,000 — and after a myriad of expenses the company was US$20,000 in the red. It was only with the commission on the Wong sale that the company had made any profit.
The next year was more of the same, except this time Grace Chan had recorded four commission payments. Four? Ava thought. Two paintings were sold to the Wongs that year, not four. Where did the other two commissions come from?
She left the boardroom, the file under her arm, and found Grace Chan. “These two commissions,” she said, pointing to the entries. “Were they invoiced?”
“Yes. I only pulled out the copies of invoices and paperwork relating to the five paintings, but yes, those entries were invoiced. The paperwork is in the back storeroom.”
“Could you get them for me, please
?” Ava asked. “And Grace, how many other large commissions were there over that period — commissions not directly related to Kwong and Wong?”
“Quite a few. They were making him wealthy. He could have retired in style if not for the cancer.”
“What were the commissions for?”
“I was never sure. The invoices just say, ‘For consulting services rendered.’ When I asked him what that meant, he said he was doing provenance work on Chinese ceramics for a European company.”
“And you believed him?”
“Ava, as long as the paperwork and the money matched, and as long as he was properly declaring his income and paying his taxes, it wasn’t up to me to question him.”
“I think we should look at all the files and put dates and amounts to these commissions.”
“I’ll get the files.”
It took them more than two hours to go through each file and find the appropriate copies of invoices. Ava recorded everything in her notebook. When they were done, she compared dates and amounts. There were exactly fifteen invoices, each issued shortly after the Wongs had bought a painting from Great Wall. But the commission invoices weren’t made out to the Wongs; they were made out to a numbered company with a Liechtenstein address. The invoice amount was exactly three percent of the Wongs’ purchase price.
“Is it possible for me to make a private phone call?” Ava asked Grace.
“Certainly. I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
Ava tried May Ling’s office line first and got voicemail. She didn’t leave a message. She tried May Ling’s cellphone, which she answered on the first ring. “Ava, I was hoping you would call.”
“I’m in a meeting but I need you to answer a couple of simple questions for me. First, the paintings you bought, how did you pay for them?”
“By cheque or by wire transfer, a bit of both.”
“You paid against an invoice, correct?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Always?”
“No invoice, no payment.”
“I need you to do something for me. Get one of your financial people to go back through the twenty transactions. Dig out the invoices and then tell me who, when, and how you paid. It’s probably best to email everything to me. I’d like copies of the invoices and any wire transfers, and copies of the returned cheques — back and front.”
“What have you found?”
Ava heard the eagerness in her voice and knew she was going to have to be cautious about how often and in how much detail she spoke to May Ling. “Nothing yet. I’m just trying to be thorough about recreating the transactions.”
“I’ll have someone do it right away.”
“Thanks.”
“Please call me later.”
“If I have something to report.”
Ava hung up and then used the boardroom phone to call reception. She asked to be connected to Grace Chan. “How was Mr. Kwong paid these commissions, the ones for the supposed ceramic provenance consultations?” she asked.
“By cheque.”
“Do you have the bank deposit slips, the cheques?”
“Not the original cheques; they stayed with Mr. Kwong. I have copies.”
“They will do just fine.”
Ten minutes later she had copies of the fifteen cheques the numbered company had sent to Kwong for commissions. The company’s bank was the Liechtenstein Private Estate Bank. Ava knew what her chances were of getting any information from the bank: zero. She wrote down the address anyway and double-checked the numbered company. If it wasn’t registered in Liechtenstein she might be able to find out something about it.
“You’ve been really helpful,” Ava said to Grace, passing her a sealed envelope with HK$2,000 in it. Grace looked at it but didn’t open it. The lady has some class, Ava thought. “If this works out well, I’ll see if I can find an additional bonus for you.”
“To be honest, the money doesn’t mean that much to me,” Grace said, not raising her eyes from the envelope.
“Pardon?”
“I’m more interested in knowing whether Mr. Kwong was involved in something improper and if I’ve been a party to it. I’ve found all this quite unusual, and upsetting.”
“I don’t know what he was actually involved in, but whatever it was it won’t be any reflection on how well you did your job. I found your work completely professional and beyond reproach. You have nothing to fear.”
Grace looked at Ava. “And I guess Mr. Kwong has nothing to fear now either.”
( 11 )
Ava went online as soon as she returned to the Mandarin. There was nothing yet from Wuhan. Still, she pushed aside any idea of returning that day to Toronto. There was something odd enough about Great Wall’s accounts to compel her to stay at least until she had figured it out. Wherever it led, she would have fulfilled her commitment to May Ling and could head home knowing she had done all she could.
The thought of home brought her father to mind. How was he surviving the cruise from hell? It was late in the evening wherever at sea he was, but she knew he was a night owl. She punched his number into her cellphone. It rang once and went immediately to voicemail. “It’s Ava. I’m in Hong Kong. The job in Wuhan may not turn into anything worth pursuing, and if it doesn’t I’ll be back in Toronto before you. Give my love to everyone, and tell Mummy I said she’s to behave.”
She hung up and went back to the computer. An email from May Ling with attachments was now in her inbox. When she clicked on it, the email simply said, Here is everything you requested. There were twenty invoices, all from Great Wall Antiques and Fine Art. Five had no payment instructions other than a net ten-day term request; cheques were mailed to the Kau U Fong Road address. The other fifteen specifically requested that the cheques be sent to Great Wall Antiques and Fine Art, care of the Kowloon Light Industrial Bank. An address was provided for the bank, along with Great Wall’s account number.
She checked her notes. The five cheques sent directly to the street address of Great Wall were for paintings Brian Torrence deemed genuine or possibly genuine. The fifteen cheques sent to the account at the Kowloon bank were for those Torrence was sure were forgeries. What was stranger was that the five cheques had been deposited into an account at the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, which was where Kwong banked, according to Grace Chan’s audit records.
Was Kwong running two accounts? And if he was, why? Grace Chan had made it clear that she wouldn’t have tolerated it if he’d been trying to avoid taxes.
Ava phoned Uncle. “Do we know anyone at the Kowloon Light Industrial Bank?”
“Friends own most of the Kowloon Light Industrial Bank.”
“Then I need you to talk to them.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Great Wall Antiques and Fine Art. Who controlled the account? I need copies of all the activity going through the account over the past ten years.”
“I will see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
“You have that tone in your voice, the one you get when you have found something.”
“I’m easily excited,” she said.
“I will pretend I believe you,” he said. “What are you doing for dinner?”
“No plans.”
“There is a new Shanghai restaurant near the Peninsula that they say has the best stewed sea cucumber in Hong Kong.”
“My mother would be happy.”
“Momentai.”
Ava was lying on the bed, closing her eyes for a few moments, when her cellphone rang. “Ava Lee.”
“Ms. Lee, I’m Henry Chew from Kowloon Light Industrial Bank.” Uncle’s guanxi never failed to impress her.
“Thank you for calling.”
“My pleasure,” he said. Ava could hear th
e nervousness in his voice. “I have an assistant trying to locate the documentation you want. We’ll send it to the hotel by courier when we have it. In the meantime, I’ve taken a look at the account. What do you want to know?”
“It was in the name of Great Wall Antiques and Fine Art?”
“Actually no, it was a DBA account. The account holder was a numbered company doing business as Great Wall.”
“Where was the company registered?”
“Liechtenstein.”
Shit, she thought. “A bit unusual, isn’t it, for a company registered there to open a Hong Kong bank account?”
“There was less scrutiny then, fewer concerns about money laundering and that kind of thing. As long as the company was a legal entity and as long as it was obeying Hong Kong law, opening a bank account wasn’t that difficult.”
“Who was the signing authority?”
“A Georges Brun.”
“Just one?”
“It appears that way.”
“What information do you have on him?”
“He has the same address as the numbered company, a phone number that I would guess is in Liechtenstein. The copies of his photo ID all have a Liechtenstein address.”
“Can you give me the phone number now and send copies of the photo ID with the other information?”
“Sure,” he said, and recited the phone number.
“The account is closed now?” Ava prodded.
“Dormant. It still has a minimum balance.”
“When was the last transaction?”
“More than two years ago.”
“How active an account was it?”
“Not very, although a lot of money certainly went through it.”
“Put a number to not very.”
“After the initial opening deposit, there were fifteen more. As for withdrawals, there were fifteen large wire transfers and two smaller ones.”
“You’re sending me copies of all those transactions?”
“We’re searching for them as we speak.”
