Priceless (6 page)

In the months that followed the 1988 theft, Bazin and I could have used some of that luck.

With so few clues, we did what any cop does when he comes up empty: We offered a reward. The museum and its insurance company put up $15,000 and we got the local newspapers and television stations to publicize it. The tips flew in, and as always, almost all were wrong. We dug through each one anyway. About a month later, we received a call from a Philadelphia man who knew things about the crime that had not been publicized—like the thief’s flamboyant monologue. He also seemed to know a lot about the man he fingered, Stephen W. Shih. The suspect was twenty-four years old, slightly older than the college student described by the guards, but our informant insisted that he was our man. The rest of the physical appearance seemed to match, and—get this—Shih was working as a $400-a-day stripper to pay the rent. He was unusually handsome. And theatrical!

We figured we had our man, but we needed more than a tip to arrest Shih or search his home. We needed solid evidence, and Bazin moved cautiously. He explained that if we simply confronted Shih and tried to intimidate him into confessing, it might backfire. He might clam up and ditch or destroy the Rodin. This has happened several times in Europe as the police have closed in on thieves. In one infamous case, the mother of a Swiss man suspected of a dozen museum thefts dumped more than one hundred paintings in a lake, destroying not only the evidence but also irreplaceable works of art. Our primary goal, Bazin reminded me, was to recover the sculpture. Our job was to save fragments of history, messages from the past. If, in the process, we busted the bad guy, that would be a bonus.

Bazin came up with a simple plan: Show the guards a photo lineup of Shih and seven guys who looked like him. If the guards ID’d him, we’d have enough to move in. First, we needed a photo of
Shih. That was grunt work, and it fell to me. Bazin sent me out with the FBI photographer in the surveillance van. He instructed me to sit on Shih’s house, snap surreptitious pictures, and radio back when I had accomplished my mission.

I learned two painful lessons that week. First: Dress warmly in February in Philadelphia, even if you plan to spend the day inside an undercover van. To maintain cover on stakeout, you have to switch the engine off, and that means no heat. The chief FBI photographer who accompanied me arrived well bundled. After an hour, despite my rookie exuberance, I started shivering like a fool. The photographer’s breath floated through the sub-freezing air as he laughed. My second mistake was leaving my FBI radio on my desk, naively figuring I could use the one in the van dashboard. After a few mind-numbing hours, Shih came out and we got our picture. I flipped on the van radio to make the call, but the radio battery was dead. We drove around the block to the spot where Bazin was waiting for us with another agent, ready to move in if we radioed for backup. I knew he would let me have it for forgetting the handheld radio, and he did.

When we got back to the office, I saw my radio standing upright on his desk. Lesson learned. I’d never again be so casual or make an assumption about an undercover operation.

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.

Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 1989
.

“S
IR
? A
RE YOU ALL RIGHT
,
SIR
? S
IR
?”

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.

I
T 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.

That morning, I was headed to Denis’s house to give him a ride to work—his FBI car was in the repair shop again. It was great to spend time with him, even if it meant inching through South Jersey traffic. Denis had recently been promoted to Washington to serve on the U.S. Attorney General’s protective detail and I would miss him when he left in January.

When I got to Denis’s house, he slipped into the front seat as the first chords of the song “Panama” by Van Halen began to jam on the radio, and he cranked it up. I recall this vividly, because it was the day that the United States invaded Panama. We both enjoyed the joke. I sang and drove. Denis played air guitar.

The corruption squad’s annual Christmas party was that afternoon at a bar in Pennsauken, New Jersey. We would drive into Philly, then after work head to the party. It would be a good day. At the office, we squeezed in a day’s worth of paperwork in time to make it to the party by 2 p.m. We met everyone at a place called The Pub, a sprawling South Jersey landmark at the foot of a triangle of busy highway ramps and arteries. A former speakeasy, The Pub had evolved into a large restaurant, an oversized Swiss chalet with medieval flair—swords and shields on the walls, burgundy carpet, simple brown wooden chairs and tables. The Pub’s size, location,
and bland grub made it a perfect place for an office party. We spent two hours exchanging gifts and talking shop. There was typical ribbing, but this was the corruption squad, a buttoned-down crew, so they kept it light. When we finally paid the bill, most of us wandered over to the bar for a beer. Denis was up for more and he tried to move the party to a bar called Taylor’s for a drink or two. He was single and tried to hit free happy-hour buffets whenever he could. It was nearly 7 p.m. and I wanted to go home, but I figured this might be the last time I could hang out with Denis before he moved. I found a pay phone and let Donna know I would be late.

Taylor’s Bar and Grille isn’t much—a suburban sports bar in a strip mall near the edge of the abandoned Garden State Race Track. But it was packed. I forced my way to the bar, grabbed my second beer of the evening, and found a table. Denis and a fellow agent hit the buffet. Soon, Denis was talking up a cute woman named Pamela. I felt like a third wheel.

By 9:30 p.m., Denis was still dancing with Pamela and I was way overdue at home. I pulled Denis aside. “Buddy, I gotta get back. You ready to go?”

“Look, not yet,” he said. He pointed to Pamela with his eyes. “If that works out, I won’t need a ride. I need to find out, so I need you to stick around.”

We went back and forth like this for another hour. Denis was having fun, dancing, drinking shots of tequila with Pamela. He brought me another beer and shot me a grin. I gave him a look that said, “Let’s go.” Around 11 p.m., I’d had enough. I grabbed our coats, took Denis by the arm, led him off the dance floor to the car. He didn’t resist.

It was only one hundred yards from Taylor’s to Race Track Circle, but this was South Jersey, land of jug-handles, no left turns, and Jersey barriers, so you could only get there by going in the opposite direction and making a series of winding right turns. By the time we reached the circle, Denis was asleep. I slowed as I approached the circle, and as I did, a bright white light flashed in my rearview mirror.
There was a two-inch-high concrete curb at the foot of the circle, channeling traffic to the right, but I was distracted by the light and didn’t see this curb. The car hit the curb at about thirty-five miles an hour, and the steering wheel vibrated violently, throwing my hands into the air. When I regained the wheel a second later and tried to turn into the circle, I got no response. We were airborne.