‘Don’t we all?’
‘And I don’t think she believed him about the trust fund, although I certainly do. Why else would he want to marry my mother-in-law?’
‘Do you think he was really a medic, fighting with the army in Afghanistan, Angie?’
‘That part, at least, is true. Christie said it screwed him up, big time.’
I thought about the ball cap. ‘How long had Richard been hanging around, before he showed up here, I mean?’
Angie shut her eyes, considering my question. ‘He arrived about two weeks ago, I think. Christie said she met him for the first time at Grump’s for a hamburger.’ She grunted. ‘At least she was smart enough to pick a public place.’
‘So, that was before Masud was killed.’
Angie’s face paled. ‘Ohmygawd! Richard just hates, uh, hated Muslims. He called Mohammad a seventh-century Charlie Manson.’
‘What a smooth talker,’ I said.
A guy with PTSD and a hatred of Muslims. A guy who had almost certainly spray painted anti-Muslim slogans on the wall of the musalla, if the balaclava in the trunk of his car was anything to go by. A guy who had tussled with Masud. I asked the obvious question: ‘Do you think Richard might have murdered Masud Abaza, Angie?’
Her gaze didn’t waver. ‘Words of wisdom from Richard Kent: “Give a Muslim a rock and they’ll throw it at an embassy.”’
TWENTY-THREE
‘Research… is expensive. For objects with no prior indication of Nazi looting, the costs range anywhere from $40 to $60 per hour, and the time needed to document just one object can vary enormously, from a week to a year, and if initial research suggests an object has a history that may include unlawful appropriation by the Nazis, time and expense can double or triple. One museum spent $20,000 plus travel and expenses over the course of 2 years to have a researcher resolve the history of just three paintings.’
Edward H. Able, Jr, Review of the Repatriation of Holocaust
Art Assets in the United States, Hearing Before the
Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary
Policy, Trade, and Technology of the Committee on Financial
Services, U.S. House of Representatives, July 27, 2006.
‘I’ve thought of something, Hannah.’
I shifted the cell phone to my left ear and stared at the numerals on the bedside clock: 23:45. I’d been asleep for only an hour.
‘What is it, Izzy?’ Little men with hammers were pounding nails into my head.
‘I was going over the packet of materials your brother-in-law prepared for me, and I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before.’
‘Ummm.’ I staggered out of bed, flipped on the bathroom light and rummaged through the medicine cabinet, looking for aspirin.
‘It’s the original bill of sale, the one the Nazis made my father sign.’
‘Uh huh,’ I mumbled, attempting to twist the cap off the aspirin jar without dropping the phone in the toilet.
‘It’s a forgery.’
I dropped the bottle, spilling the aspirin into the sink. Damn. I was wide awake now.
I sat down on the toilet seat, cradling my aching head in my hands. ‘A forgery? Are you sure? At the meeting with Hutch you said it looked like your father’s signature.’
‘That’s not important. What’s important is that my father didn’t sign it, he couldn’t have signed it. The bill of sale is dated September 18, 1943. I don’t know what made me do it, but I checked the universal calendar, Hannah. September 18 is a Saturday. Shabbat. Not even for the Nazis would my father work on Shabbat.’
‘That’s great, Izzy,’ I said, trying to infuse my voice with an enthusiasm that was being sapped by the little men in my head, who were now hurling miniature thunderbolts at one another. I scooped two aspirin out of the sink and chewed them up whole. ‘It’s really great. I’ll let Hutch know. It might make a difference.’
‘You’ll call him? You’ll call him now?’
‘Just as soon as I hang up the phone.’
After Izzy thanked me profusely and wished me a goodnight I staggered down to the kitchen, filled the teakettle with water and switched it on. While I waited for the water to boil, I texted my brother-in-law.
9/18/43 = Sabbath. BS forged?
By morning my headache had thankfully vanished. When I checked my phone there was an I heart U text from Paul and Hutch had texted me back – K. Thx – but I didn’t hear another peep from my brother-in-law for three more days.
When the call finally came, it was early morning and I was in the shower. I put the phone on speaker. ‘Hutch, glad you called. Do you have any news?’
‘I do,’ he said, sounding as pleased as if he’d just been invited to the White House for dinner. ‘Can you find Izzy and bring her to my office at, say, ten this morning?’
I grabbed a towel and started rubbing briskly at my hair. ‘I don’t see why not. Can you give me a head’s up?’
‘It’s very good news, Hannah. The Baltimore Art Gallery might well have come to this decision on their own, but the information you gave me about the date on the bill of sale was probably the clincher. Izzy is getting her paintings back.’
I leaned against the cool tile wall, slid down it until I was sitting on the bathmat. ‘All three?’
‘All three.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Believe it. The fax came through this morning. I’m holding the letter right here in my hot little hand.’
‘Izzy and her family are going to be over the moon.’
‘It won’t be immediate, you understand. There’ll be papers to sign, and…’ He paused. ‘Look, you’d better prepare Izzy for a press conference. This is big news and there’s going to be a lot of hoopla. The gallery’s publicity machine is going to swing into action. Izzy’s face is going to be all over the media.’
‘Shall I tell her to buy a new dress then?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘How about the other paintings? There were thirteen in the Piccio sale, as I recall.’
‘They could be anywhere by now, Hannah, and tough to track down. The best thing to do is register them as stolen. There’s the Art Loss Register in London, plus databases at Interpol, Scotland Yard and the FBI. The next time someone tries to sell one it should crop up in the database. But don’t worry, I’m going to take care of that for her.’ He paused, and I could almost hear him smile. ‘No charge.’
‘How about the paintings pictured in her mother’s scrapbook, Hutch, the one hundred and ten paintings that weren’t part of the Piccio sale?’
‘Let’s hope the scrapbook turns up. Right now, the only evidence we have of the Rossi family’s ownership of all hundred and twenty-three works is on that inventory Piccio made back in 1943, and some of it’s rather vague. “Still Life with Oranges” or “Study #3” doesn’t tell us very much, even if we know who the artist was. And another thing,’ he said. ‘A few of the works in the Rossi collection had never been cataloged. They were painted when the artist was a relative unknown, so nobody knew the works even existed, let alone what they looked like.’
‘Hutch, do Raniero and Filomena Buccho know about this?’
‘Unavoidable. The researchers contacted them both, first individually and then together. Just so you know, there’s going to be no blame attached to the Buccho family. It’s impossible to say what Adriano Buccho knew when he bought those paintings back in fifty-eight, of course, but we’re convinced that Raniero and his sister had no idea that the paintings were stolen. It’s just their rotten luck that both Ysabelle and the paintings ended up in the same museum at the same time.’