So Max sat nervously on his secret for over a year, and then another opportunity presented itself, a way out. Ugo Scoccimarro, moving back to Sicily from Milan, asked Max to oversee the shipping of his collection to his new home. Among the paintings was one that Ugo himself had never seen: a Joachim Uytewael that Clara Gozzi had bought for him in London and that was now at the Pinacoteca being authenticated. As Ugo's agent, Max had no difficulty in picking up the picture at the museum for hand delivery to the Milanese shippers.
But he did it by way of a two-day stop at his workshop, where he cut the face of the painting from the panel. The sawed-off back was replaced with a copy, the exposed edges were hidden with a thick layer of bogus cañamograss, and the piece was reframed. If there were differences from the original, as no doubt there were, Ugo would never notice. How could he? He'd never seen the original. The Uytewael was then shipped off to Sicily with the rest of the collection, while the multitalented Max used the old panel itself as the base for a painstakingly forged Terbrugghen Lute Player. The "van Eyck" that he then painted over it was an added subtlety.
"What's all this got to do with the Rubens?" I asked.
"Everything." I had the impression he was disappointed in me for not having seen it for myself. "It was my way of getting rid of that damn Rubens without the Mafia finding out I had anything to do with it. I got it into one of Salvatorelli's shipments to Blusher, along with the fake Terbrugghen—"
"So Salvatorelli was part of this, too?"
Max shook his head. "I do a lot of business with them, I'm always around the warehouse. It was nothing to slip the pictures into one of those big shipments to Seattle. And I figured Seattle was far enough away so the Mafia'd never connect me with it when the picture turned up."
"But they did."
His hand went to his knees. "Yeah."
"I don't get it, Max. What was the point? You never tried to collect any money on the Rubens. Blusher donated it to the museum."
"Ah, that was the beauty part," he said with every appearance of pride.
He'd given up the idea of getting money for the Rubens almost from the start. Selling it to a crooked receiver or turning it in for the insurance reward, even through a third party, would very likely have led the Mafia to him, a prospect he didn't care to think about.
So he had conceived the idea of using it, through Blusher, as a come-on. Its appearance in the Seattle warehouse would create plenty of preliminary media attention. Then, when the reward was later donated to the museum, there would be even more, and any lingering skepticism about Blusher's motives and honesty would vanish. This would be especially helpful when the second unexplained item in the shipment, an ostensibly "genuine" Terbrugghen under it.
"And that's the story," Max said. "I won't go into the sordid business details."
He didn't have to. It was an old scam. The newly famous, long-lost Terbrugghen could now be sold to a wide-eyed collector who had heard and read all about it. Making a few extra copies of the painting (something Max had neglected to mention) and also selling them as the original was nothing new, either. The trick was to make sure the buyers were: (a) naive; (b) out of the international art mainstream; and (c) from widely separated parts of the world—say, Oman, South Korea, and Uruguay.
If Max and Blusher managed to sell all four copies at roughly $400,000 each, the total would come to $1,600,000, against which the donation of the Rubens reward was no more than a modest investment. But of course Blusher had been too eager, too obvious, too out-and-out dumb, Max didn't know that part of it yet, but I thought I'd leave it to someone else to tell him.
"And now," he said wistfully, "I've got what I deserve, Chris. I'm a cripple for life. I'm still $100,000 in debt. I'll never have a single day free from pain. And most terrible of all, Chris"—his voice trembled, cracked; the implication was of feelings too profound for speech—"most terrible of all, I have to live with Giampietro's death . . . and what I almost did to you."
He dropped his chin to his chest and spoke in a monotone. "Isn't that punishment enough, Chris?"
I sighed and stood up.
His head lifted. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to call Colonel Antuono," I said.
Chapter 21
I would have, too, but as I walked through the lobby of the hotel on my way up to our room, one of the morning-coated men behind it answered a telephone and signaled me with a raised forefinger.
"For you, dottore. He says important." The forefinger described an elegant arc, directing me to a house telephone where I could take the call.
"Do you want to recover the paintings?" was the startling greeting. The words were in Italian, rushed and indistinct, tumbling frantically over each other. This, I thought, was the "somewhat agitated gentleman" who had tried to reach me earlier.
I suppose I ought to say that I responded with a thrill of excitement and anticipation, but the truth is, I was annoyed. I wanted to go upstairs and tell Anne about Max. I wanted to call Antuono. Then I wanted to get on the train and go to Lake Maggiore with Anne. I didn't want to talk to some raving Italian about some harebrained scheme to get back the stolen paintings.
"What paintings?" I said querulously. "Who is this?"
"What paintings? Do you think I'm playing a game with you? Are you testing how far you can go? I'm telling you, I'll destroy them!"
His voice was unsettling. He seemed to be shouting, but muffling the sound with a cloth over the mouthpiece. The result was a disembodied croak, a breathless, disturbing combination of bellicosity and trepidation. The skin on the back of my neck prickled. Was it conceivable he actually had the paintings?
"Now look," I said, trying to sound reasonable, reassuring, "if you really have the paintings, there's no need—"
"Shut up. Leave the hotel. Walk quickly to the corner of Via Nazario, by the back of the fruit market. Wait there. Do it at once. Hang up and go outside."
"Wait, I don't know where it is—"
"Outside, then to your left one block. There won't be another chance, you understand?"
"All right, give me five minutes. I have to—"
"You think I'm insane? No. No telephone calls to your carabinieri friends, no running upstairs to your girlfriend. I warn you—"
He knew about Antuono, about Anne. That meant he knew me. He was disguising his voice. That meant I knew him. I searched in my pocket for a pen and tried to catch the attention of the man behind the desk. If I could scribble a note to Anne—
"Stop!" the voice yawped in my ear. "I can see you."
I stopped dead. I was standing in a glassed-in vestibule at the entrance to the lobby, separated from Via Montegrappa by a row of four clear-glass doors. Across the narrow street was a row of three-story buildings with shops on the ground floor and shuttered windows above. I scanned the upper stories without being able to see anything. Was he really watching me? The situation's comic-opera aspects, marked until then, vanished. A lone shiver crawled down the center of my back. I had the unpleasant feeling that things were about to get away from me; had already gotten away from me.
"Oh, yes," he said triumphantly, "that's right, I can see. I have binoculars. Put your pen back in your pocket." When I did, he said: "There, that's better," and laughed, but there were brittle shards of panic in it. "I've had enough," he told me. "This is it, things are getting too difficult for me. I warn you, I'll burn them!" Possibly he was faking, trying to make me believe he was on the edge of hysteria. If so, he was doing a good job.