Hot Art Read online

  HOT ART

  Copyright © 2011 by Joshua Knelman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Douglas & McIntyre

  An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.

  2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201

  Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7

  www.douglas-mcintyre.com

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  ISBN 978-1-55365-891-7 (cloth)

  ISBN 978-1-55365-892-4 (ebook)

  Editing by Trena White

  Jacket design by Jessica Sullivan

  We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

  For Bernadette Sulgit

  and Martin Knelman

  “The best way of keeping a secret is to

  pretend there isn’t one.”

  MARGARET ATWOOD

  “The greatest crimes in the world are not

  committed by people breaking the rules

  but by people following the rules.”

  BANKSY

  CONTENTS

  1._ _ _ _ _ Hollywood

  2._ _ _ _ _ Law and Disorder

  3._ _ _ _ _ Egypt

  4._ _ _ _ _ The Art Thief

  5._ _ _ _ _ Training Days

  6._ _ _ _ _ Brighton Knockers

  7._ _ _ _ _ Headache Art

  8._ _ _ _ _ Scotland Yard

  9._ _ _ _ _ Business in London

  10._ _ _ _ _ Caveat Emptor

  11._ _ _ _ _ LAPD Confidential

  12._ _ _ _ _ 9/11

  13._ _ _ _ _ Intelligence

  14._ _ _ _ _ Montreal

  15._ _ _ _ _ Art Hostage

  16._ _ _ _ _ Missing Pieces

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  1.

  HOLLYWOOD

  “This happened fast, and in the dark.”

  DONALD HRYCYK

  LAPD DETECTIVE Donald Hrycyk knew his way around a homicide investigation. He knew about the Bloods and the Crips, how the colour of your shoelaces could indicate which gang you belonged to, and whom you had to kill to get ahead in life. He knew about semi-automatics and shotguns and butcher knives, and about streets that felt a universe away from the pristine white walls of the art scene, or the jet set who ruled it. By the time I met him, though, the detective had visited almost every gallery and auction house in the Greater Los Angeles area and had contacts all over the world. He didn’t gloat about it. Mostly, he just got up early every day and worked his cases.

  One afternoon in L.A., in 2008, Detective Hrycyk and his partner, Detective Stephanie Lazarus, were cruising through the city in their unmarked silver Chevrolet Impala. Hrycyk was at the wheel, and drove down Sunset Boulevard toward a crime scene. It was a hot, bright day, and the sunlight burned a little. On Sunset the car passed the Chateau Marmont and the Comedy Store—the marquee read “George Carlin, RIP.”

  At a red light, the Impala idled between two gleaming white SUVS. A driver looking down into the lowly Chevy would have seen that the detectives wore similar uniforms: checkered shirts, slacks, and black running shoes. On their wrists, both sported big digital watches. Their style was so uncool it was almost cool. Beneath their loose shirts, hardly noticeable, they kept a few of their work tools: LAPD badge, cellphone, handcuffs, tape recorder, extra ammo, and gun. They looked like gym coaches on their way to practice.

  Just before crossing into Beverly Hills, Hrycyk hung a left on La Cienega Boulevard. He was heading to a strip of antique and design stores. A few minutes earlier, when the detectives picked me up, they had both turned from the front seat and inspected my shoes (black Adidas with white stripes). Lazarus exchanged a glance with Hrycyk—the original wireless connection.

  Lazarus said, “No. The soles don’t look right.”

  Hrycyk’s eyes smiled quietly in the rear-view mirror. “The antique store that was burglarized has a few clues,” he said. “Apparently there are some shoeprints on an antique dining-room table. From the description, they don’t match yours.”

  So I was a suspect?

  “You never know,” Lazarus said. “A journalist is here from Toronto writing about art theft, and an antique store happens to be hit. It’s good news for you, right? Because you get to ride along for the investigation. We just wanted to rule you out.” Later Hrycyk and Lazarus told me about a journalist in the Midwest who had murdered people and then written about the murders for the local paper. Their point: don’t rule out anyone too early—it’s all about motivation. Everyone’s a suspect. I felt guilty just sitting there in the back seat.

  Hrycyk parked on La Cienega near the crime scene. The antique store was at street level, one of two in the same unit, with a large bay window facing the sidewalk and traffic. The window, which was intact, featured a few choice pieces of Italian Renaissance furniture.

  The attached store was under construction; a large piece of plywood covered the empty hole where its front window should have been. A shade tree stood near the sidewalk in front of the store. A small group of construction workers huddled in the pool of its shadow, their workday frozen by the burglary next door. The construction site was now part of the crime scene. There was almost no breeze that afternoon, and the heat was stifling. The group of men, roughly in their twenties, looked slightly nervous at the sight of the detectives, but it was one of them who had discovered the break-in and called 911. For now the workers waited for their foreman and watched the police from the shadows.

  Hrycyk and Lazarus stood on the sidewalk in the open sunlight as a black and white cruiser with the gold insignia “to protect and to serve” pulled into the asphalt driveway leading to the antique store’s back parking lot. A tall white-painted iron gate, there to protect the back lot from intruders, stood ajar.

  In the patrol car were two officers from Hollywood Division. Officer Ramirez occupied the driver’s seat. He was a sleek-looking man in his early thirties, in perfect athletic shape, with shorn black hair. His aviator shades reflected back the intense afternoon light. Ramirez was relaxed and smiled often. His movie-star white teeth matched the aesthetic of the neighbourhood—upscale fashion and design, expensive. On the road, a cherry-red BMW with tinted windows slowed down, the driver staring at the small crowd and the police cruiser.

  Hrycyk and Lazarus strolled over to the window of the patrol car. On the way, Hrycyk explained to me that Ramirez and his partner had already done a preliminary inspection of the crime scene. The detectives now taking over relied on the officers’ notes and first impressions. “We completely depend on them,” said Hrycyk.

  According to Ramirez, this is what the officers had uncovered: The lock on the gate to the back parking lot had been opened. A large white pickup truck had been seen driving into the lot. The thieves had entered the building through the plywood on the store next door then unlocked that store’s back door for the crew in the truck. Once inside the empty store, the thieves had knocked a hole straight through the shared wall into the antique store. The thieves had then entered the store and carried a number of antiques through the hole, through the empty store, out the back door, and into the truck in the parking lot.

  Ramirez got out of the patrol car and strolled with Hrycyk and Lazarus down the driveway and into the parking lot. The lot was enclosed at the back by a high fence, behind which the balc
onies of a large, low-slung apartment complex had a perfect view of the lot. Ramirez and his partner had already canvassed the apartment building. They got lucky. A witness had seen the events unfold from a balcony—and had noticed a tattoo on one of the men’s legs.

  “Yeah,” said Ramirez. “It was a cobra or a snake.”

  “Maybe a Marine tattoo? Something like that?” asked Hrycyk.

  “No, I know Marines, and it’s nothing like that.”

  “So more like a creature?” asked Hrycyk.

  The problem was that the witness spoke only Russian.

  “We’ll have to find a translator,” Hrycyk nodded. “We have a number for someone, right?”

  “Lost in translation for now,” answered Ramirez.

  “Lost in translation,” echoed Hrycyk.

  Hrycyk walked into the darkness of the back door of the building under construction. The room was long and narrow. In the process of being gutted, it was empty save for some bundles of plywood. Along the wall shared by the two stores two holes had been smashed through the drywall. One was very small, the other large.

  Hrycyk peered through the smaller hole. “Come have a look,” he said. Through the small hole was the antique store, where a crime-scene photographer roamed around the furniture, snapping pictures. “This is what’s called a peephole,” Hrycyk explained. The thieves had created the smaller hole to look into the store and figure out the best place to smash a larger hole.

  Hrycyk walked up to the larger hole. It was big, brutal, the kind the Incredible Hulk would make. It didn’t just provide a perfect view of the antique store—it was a door: the antique store was right there. Lower down, a thick electrical wire stretched across the jagged opening.

  “Nothing here was finessed,” said Hrycyk.

  He noticed some broken pieces of porcelain on the construction-zone floor. “Can we bag these?” Hrycyk said to the room.

  According to Ramirez, the thieves had also stolen the tools stored by the construction workers, who were still waiting outside in the shade. They watched as the owner of the antique store arrived in a silver Porsche and disappeared up the driveway into the back lot.

  When Hrycyk entered the antique store through its proper back door a few minutes later, Lazarus was already questioning the owner, who stood just inside the back door to his shop, beside a desk and computer that looked out onto the showroom floor.

  The owner was dressed in a pale blue polo top, designer jeans, and brown loafers. He was in his late thirties and had just returned from one of his Italian expeditions with a tan and Calvin Klein–worthy facial stubble. He was sporty Euro ultra-cool. He agreed to let me stay and watch the investigation as long as I did not mention his name or the name of the store.

  The owner explained that he dealt mostly in Italian Renaissance and French antiques and served a wealthy clientele all over the city. The room was still full of supply—a French nineteenth-century gilded mirror for $9,000; a neoclassical nineteenth-century Italian mirror for $13,500; a Tuscan walnut refectory table for $27,000. There was a nail on a wall where a painting had once hung. He told Lazarus that he visited Italy often, to hand-pick the pieces for his shop. A few of those pieces he carried with him on the plane home, and the rest arrived via shipping container.

  While Hrycyk focussed on the scene, Lazarus focussed on the owner. Her voice as she questioned him was flat, and her questions were brief and pointed.

  “Sir, where were you last night?”

  “Sir, have you noticed anyone unusual around the store lately?”

  “Oh, and sir, do you happen to have the only key to that lock on the fence?”

  Lazarus kept steady eye contact with the owner. She was pleasant without being nice. I got the feeling from the speed of her questions that she was looking for inconsistencies in his answers. She was so direct and at ease while she worked that it was obvious she had done this a thousand times.

  There didn’t seem to be any inconsistencies. The owner remained calm, serious, and slightly detached from the whole scenario. He may have been in shock.

  The large, dark wood antique table in front of them dominated the space. Its surface held precious pieces of evidence left behind by the thieves—those shoeprints. According to the owner, four large chandeliers used to hang above the table, each worth around $20,000. The intruders had climbed right up onto the table, using it as a stepladder, and removed the chandeliers from hooks on the ceiling. Hrycyk and Lazarus both noted that it would have required at least two people. Hrycyk also noted that this all would have happened with little light except from the streetlamps and the traffic passing by the front window, now bright with sunlight.

  “This happened fast, and in the dark,” said Hrycyk.

  “Yeah, no light,” said Lazarus.

  The shoeprints were very faint, their shape formed by the dust from the construction site next door. It was hot in the store, and suddenly everyone looked a little sweaty. Lazarus wiped her brow and smiled just slightly with her eyes. “It’s hot out, isn’t it?” she said, to no one in particular.

  The owner offered to turn on the air conditioning.

  Lazarus thought about it, exchanging a glance with Hrycyk.

  “No,” she said, “’cause we don’t want the air to blow in here. Not until we get those shoeprints off the table. Would be nice, though.”

  Lazarus continued to question the owner on his whereabouts, his business practices, and whether anyone might want to hurt his business.

  Someone in the room commented that no one in the apartment building or any of the neighbours had called police. The break-in wasn’t reported until the construction workers showed up for work that morning, noticed their tools were gone, and saw the new holes in the wall.

  “It’s unbelievable that no one called 911,” echoed the owner.

  “People just don’t want to get involved,” said Lazarus. “It’s unfortunate.”

  Hrycyk had produced a tape measure and was walking the length and width of the shop, jotting down notes after each trip. He drew a little diagram of the layout. The photographer snapped pictures then sat down in one of the plush, multi-thousand-dollar chairs.

  In the middle of the interview, a UPS deliveryman knocked on the front door. He held a package and waded through the crime scene to deliver it. Normal life intruded. The Scientific Investigation Division (SID) officer entered through the back door. Hrycyk and Lazarus had both been excited that they got to have a SID technician show up. Or rather, they seemed excited for me to see him work. “It’s like magic,” Lazarus said. “Just like on CSI.”

  The SID was dressed in black slacks, a black T-shirt, and black cross-trainers with black laces. He had short, cropped black hair. His biceps bulged out of his T-shirt, just like on television. He surveyed the table and began to unpack his equipment. Hrycyk had already placed folded pieces of paper at four different points on the table: A, B, C, D. Hrycyk explained that the SID was using an electrostatic current to pick up a picture of the shoeprints and fingerprints.

  The SID worked carefully. He chose his first spot on the table, examined it from a few different angles. Then he produced a square piece of foil, very thin, slowly placed the foil on top of a shoeprint, and used a roller to mash the foil into the surface. The foil was so thin it formed around the shoeprint, which was now visible in the metallic skin. He looked up at us and said, “You only get one chance, because once you apply and roll, the dust is gone.”

  Then he took two wires, attached them to a small black box, and turned it on. There was a crackle of electricity. “Done,” he said, and moved on to point B. It was indeed magic: electromagnetic resonance.

  An hour later Hrycyk and Lazarus walked out into the heat and looked up and down the sidewalk. At this time of the afternoon there was barely a soul. It was too hot. The detectives looked up at the rooftops and above the alcove doorways of stores.

  “We’re hoping one of these stores has a security camera,” Hrycyk explained.

 
“Can’t see any,” said Lazarus.

  “Let’s go ask around,” said Hrycyk.

  The two detectives spent the next two hours getting to know the neighbourhood. At the first store Hrycyk asked the owner directly if he had a camera. The owner was suspicious. He said no. Hrycyk thanked him. The owner said, “Next time show me a badge.”

  A furniture store next door had no camera either. It sold slick stuff—expensive retro bookshelves, tables, and lighting. The woman working the cash said there was a gallery space upstairs. Hrycyk looked at Lazarus: “Want to go have a look?”

  “Yes I do,” she replied.

  The detectives went upstairs. The exhibit was photography from Iraq: Eye of the Storm: War through the Lens of American Combat Photographers. There was a photograph of a boxing match, the ring surrounded by American soldiers in tank tops and camouflage pants. “That is a great picture,” commented Hrycyk. Then he noted, “It’s good for us to look at what’s being shown around town. You never know, one day we might be hunting for this work.”

  At another shop there was a piece of meteorite for sale, a dark hunk of rock. It was 4.6 billion years old. It sat on a table almost right beside the front door, with a $18,500 price tag. The owner said he had a fake camera mounted out back. The man seemed happy to chat with the detectives. He said the store was moving: they’d been priced out of the neighbourhood. “Twenty-eight grand a month,” he smiled. “The fashion people are moving in. Marc Jacobs is down the street. They pay something like $32,000 a month.”

  The detectives continued to search for cameras. The last place they tried was a giant old house surrounded by a perimeter of lush trees and bushes and guarded by a high iron fence. It looked like something out of a fairy tale. Lazarus rang the bell, but there was no answer. She shouted, “Hello! Police!” No answer. She raised her voice slightly and shouted again. “Hello! Police!”

  The detectives walked around to the rear of the house. They found a door in the fence and slipped into the back garden, which was full of statues and plants packed tightly together. A narrow path led to a back door. They knocked. A Hispanic caregiver answered and invited them inside. The back hallway opened into a yawning room, two floors high. The room was packed full of antiques and paintings. It was chaotic; it looked like the piled-up remains of what once was a thriving antiques business.