For comparison’s sake in the photo lineup, the FBI photographer and I set out again to find seven men who looked like Shih. We couldn’t use mug shots; the pictures had to be similar—candids shot from a distance. I figured the task would take a day. Like a lot of things in law enforcement, it took us a lot longer than it should have. To get it right—to find pictures so similar that no judge would ever throw the case out—it took two weeks. When we laid out the photos for the museum guards, each picked Shih. Bazin told me to open my briefcase and start the paperwork.
Because Shih was armed and might have the sculpture stashed in his house, we hoped to confront him elsewhere. We called our tipster back. Did he know when Shih might leave home? As a matter of fact, he said, he did: At 11 a.m. Thursday, the stripper-cum-art-thief would travel to a building at Twelfth and Walnut streets, a teeming downtown corner. It wasn’t ideal—an armed daylight takedown on a busy intersection three blocks from City Hall—but it was the best we had.
It was bitterly cold that March morning, which was fortunate because it made it easy for us to hide our vests and weapons under thick overcoats. Bazin, sitting in one of four undercover cars parked at the lip of the intersection, had “the eye”—he was closest and would give the order to move in. A handful of FBI agents strolled casually down each of the four streets. A dozen city cops were positioned a block away, ready to pounce or block all escape routes. I sat in a parked undercover car half a block away from Bazin, coordinating the radio traffic with a car unit (and a handheld backup radio in the glove box). The agent sitting next to me carried one of the world’s most powerful personal machine guns, an MP5.
Two minutes before eleven, Bazin’s voice came over the radio. “We think we have our suspect. He is not alone. With a female. I’m behind him.” The agent beside me turned the ignition and put the car in drive. Bazin gave the signal, calmly. “All units: Move in. Move in, now.” We lurched forward fifty feet and braked hard in front of Bazin, who already had Shih spread-eagled against the wall. I jumped out awkwardly, constricted by my vest, and held my gun in my best Quantico-style position. Bazin pulled the .25-caliber Raven from Shih’s pocket. He emptied the magazine. One round was missing.
We had Shih, but not the Rodin, and he wouldn’t talk. We searched his room and found an address book with the name of a well-known antiques dealer. The dealer suggested that we talk to Shih’s mother. We did, and she gave us permission to search her place. In the basement, wrapped in newspaper under a tarpaulin hidden beneath a pipe by the water heater, we found The Man with the Broken Nose, undamaged.
Shih was charged in state court, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to seven to fifteen years in prison. Although we solved the case, it was not yet a federal crime to steal something of value from a museum, reflecting Congress’s belief that art crime was not a priority. Within the FBI’s Philadelphia Division, Bazin’s interest in art theft was considered informal, an interesting sidelight, a hobby. It wasn’t that other agents denigrated what Bazin did. It was just that most didn’t care. They were too busy chasing bank robbers, mobsters, corrupt politicians, and drug dealers. Thefts from U.S. museums were treated as isolated cases—and, like the Rodin heist, one-piece jobs, pulled off by loners or losers. As the eighties drew to a close, art thefts made news as oddities, not as outrages.
In March 1990, all that changed. Thieves hit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and made off with a bounty that dwarfed every other art crime in American history.
I was not involved in the initial Gardner investigation.
I was too busy recuperating and mourning a loss. I was also looking for a good defense lawyer.
Chapter 5
THE ACCIDENT
Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 1989.
“SIR? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, SIR? SIR?”
The voice in my left ear sounded firm, polite. My eyes bolted open and I found myself staring at the gray seat belt across my chest. I lifted my chin and stared through a cracked windshield. I could see we’d hit a tree, and it had split the front bumper. Instinctively, I checked my hands for blood. Nothing. Wow, that wasn’t so bad. And… I’m alive! I switched off the ignition. I looked to my right to check on my partner and best friend, Denis Bozella. His seat was wedged backward and nearly flat. Denis was moaning.
“Sir? Sir?” It was that voice again. “Sir? What’s your name, sir?”
I turned slowly to my left. A Cherry Hill cop leaned in the window. “Bob,” I said. “I’m Bob. Bob Wittman.”
“OK, sit tight, Bob. We’re going to get you out,” the cop said, warming his hands on his breath. The paramedics and firefighters were only a few minutes away, he said. They were going to have to use the Jaws of Life to get us out. “We’re going to take the roof off and give you a convertible for free.”
I grunted and tried to get a better look at Denis. I started to unbuckle my seat belt and winced at the pain in my left side. I wheezed. I tried to lift the door handle, but it was jammed. Frozen air blew through the broken windows. I closed my eyes and thought about Donna. In the distance, I could hear a siren. Jesus, it was cold.
I heard Denis moan again. I turned but I couldn’t see his face. “Denis?… Denis? Can you hear me, buddy?”
He spoke weakly. “What happened?”
“A car cut us off.”
“My chest hurts. I’m not going to die, am I?”
“No!” I caught the panic in my voice and calmed myself. “We’ll both be fine, partner. We’re gonna be fine.”
I held his hand. I heard more sirens and closed my eyes.
The day had begun with such promise.
IT HAD BEGUN an hour before dawn, as I drew myself out of bed, careful not to disturb Donna or our two sons, nursery-schoolers obsessed with counting the final days until Christmas. Overnight, a light snow had laid a fresh thin layer across the frozen remnants of a week-old storm. I showered, made coffee, and put on my uniform—dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, leather holster, and .357 Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver. As I walked toward the front door I smelled the piney evergreen of the Christmas tree. I plugged in the white tree lights.
I was my happiest in years. I had a dynamic wife, two healthy boys, and a dream job with civil service protection and benefits. Donna loved our three-bedroom home nestled in the Pine Barrens, the burnt orange Southwestern decor, the half-hour drive to the Jersey shore. We’d just celebrated the first anniversary of my first FBI post. Like most rookies, I’d been shifted between squads every few months to get a feel for different work. In the summer, I’d moved from the property theft squad, where I’d partnered with Bazin, to the public corruption squad, where I was paired with Denis. A rising star with brown curly hair and piercing green eyes, he was an extrovert from the hills of western Pennsylvania. His rakish charm easily won over fellow agents, supervisors, prosecutors, witnesses, and the ladies. We bonded when we spent several months prepping for a high-profile police corruption trial, sometimes babysitting witnesses in hotel rooms. It was nearly 24/7 work. You drove the witnesses everywhere, took them to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to prosecutors’ offices and the courthouse. Denis and I both liked to play piano, and sometimes after work I’d give him an informal lesson. Lately, I was teaching him Jackson Browne’s “The Load-Out/Stay.”
At 7:30 a.m., I kissed Donna, promised to be home for dinner, and stepped carefully out onto our frozen driveway. Balancing a second cup of coffee and Bazin’s old briefcase in one hand, I ducked into my bureau car, a 1989 silver Ford Probe. I flipped on the defroster and rock station WMMR.