The Chocolate Falcon Fraud (14 page)

Perhaps a word of explanation is needed here. Tess' use of the word “Daddy” in referring to her father didn't necessarily indicate that she was childish or immature. In many ways she was. But that wasn't the meaning of this situation.

“Daddy” is a universal term for “father” in Texas, especially rural and small-town Texas. My own dad, who was six foot four, who got his deer every winter, and who could turn a tractor into a pile of bolts and then put it back together, always called his own father “Daddy.” There's even a famous cowboy song called “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine.” “Daddy” is just Texas lingo. Maybe comparable to the British “Mum.”

If Jeff and I didn't use “Daddy” to refer to our fathers, it was because we lived in Dallas and moved in a crowd that pretended to be a little more sophisticated, so we said “Dad.” But face-to-face, I called my father “Daddy,” just the way I did when I was little enough to sit on his lap.

Joe had been to Texas, and I had grown up there, so we ignored the “Daddy” part of Tess' remarks.

“If Daddy hadn't treated me like a child,” Tess said, “none of this would have happened.”

Jeff hugged Tess. “I'm glad you have a dad who cares about you,” he said. “He was perfectly right when he reamed me out.”

Jeff and Tess told the story then. It seemed they had been “just friends” for more than three years. But at the beginning of their senior year, the situation changed.

“I finally woke up and realized that my best friend was also the cutest girl on campus,” Jeff said. “If she wasn't afraid of the water, she'd be perfect.”

“I am not afraid of the water!” Tess said. “I just never got around to learning to swim.”

“But you look great in a bikini on the beach,” Jeff said. “I thought, ‘She's wonderful. So why aren't you in love with her, stupid?'”

Tess smiled sweetly. “And I finally realized I liked Jeff better than I had liked any of the guys I'd dated.”

By Christmas they'd begun to talk about a future together, but neither set of parents—accustomed to their long-established “just friends” status—had realized it. Then Tess took Jeff down to her parents' house for a weekend, and her dad caught them necking on the back porch.

“The first thing he said,” Jeff said, “was ‘How long has this been going on?'”

Jeff blurted out something like “Not long enough, sir. I hope Tess will marry me.”

So Tess' daddy sat the two of them down for a serious talk. Her dad, Tess said, was named Buck and he'd worked in the building industry for a long time. Today he was a foreman, managing the crews who delivered lumber, concrete, paint, and
plaster to building sites. The guys on these crews were tough, but apparently Buck was tougher. And his five kids knew how tough he was.

“I was shaking,” Tess said. “My daddy can be pretty earthy. He went in the navy when he was seventeen, and when he opens his mouth—well, my mom and I just never know what's going to come out.”

“He called me a few names,” Jeff said. “Just in a friendly way. Like, ‘I'll croak if my little girl marries some rich boy who's never worked a day in his life. But I'll croak you first.' Of course, I told him I'd worked since I was fourteen, but he shrugged that off. ‘For your parents.' And of course, he was right. I worked in my mom's antiques shop. Then my dad tried to interest me in real estate, and I worked there for a few months. But I like moving furniture and packing china for Mom better than
that
!”

“Buck sounds like the kind of a guy,” I said, “who thinks the word ‘work' means something requiring tools.”

“Also sweat,” Jeff said. “Moving pretty furniture, like I do for Mom, doesn't count with Buck. Now, Tess—well, she's worked since she was sixteen, but she waited tables and such. Buck thinks that's real work.”

“Your dad got me a good job in his office last summer,” she said. “I paid off my car.”

“Yes, but you had to work the Saturday and Sunday shifts.” Jeff hugged her around the shoulders. “Alicia bragged about what good help you were.”

“I didn't dare not be! I'd be back to waiting tables.”

“Anyway, what Buck meant was that I'd never done anything on my own,” Jeff said. “The trouble, according to Buck, was that as long as I was dependent on my dad financially, Dad
could run our lives. He could tell us where to live, what kind of cars to drive, everything.”

Jeff turned to me. “Man! That went straight through me. Because that's just the way things are now. I always have a good car, but I never buy one. It just appears. I have credit cards, and my dad pays the bills when they come in.”

He squeezed Tess' shoulders again. “I knew I couldn't subject Tess to that kind of life. She has too much spirit. She wouldn't put up with it. She'd walk out on me, Lee, just the way you walked out on Dad!”

I shook my head, because that wasn't exactly what had happened, but Jeff kept talking. “So I went back to Dallas determined to get a real job.”

Tess piped up at that point. “But Jeff needs to go to grad school. I mean, he
wants
to go to grad school. I didn't want him to get a ‘real' job if it would ruin that for him.”

“So Tess and I thought about a lot of things. Loans, for example.”

“But I've already got twenty thousand dollars in school loans,” Tess said. “I had a tuition scholarship, and Daddy has a good enough job. He and my mom have helped me a lot, but—well, there
are
five of us.”

“So borrowing seemed like the last resort,” Jeff said. “I talked to the financial aid office at UT, but they were already offering me a slot as a graduate assistant, and they muttered a lot about ‘need.' Which meant they thought my dad should pick up the tab.”

“Of course, I could get a job,” Tess said.

“But it would be part-time, or you'd give up grad school, too.”

“We could take turns!”

Jeff turned back to Joe and me. “It's complicated. And it began to look as if I could either give up grad school or give up getting married.”

Or he could give up Buck's respect. I could see that Jeff needed that. Buck must be quite a guy.

“I realized that I couldn't even buy Tess an engagement ring,” Jeff said.

Then, during his internship at the Texas Museum of Popular Culture, Jeff picked up a hint at how to make some money.

“The curator asked me to check out the availability of something online, and while I was doing that, I got the idea of looking at film memorabilia. And, Lee, I found out those movie posters you gave me are really valuable!”

He smiled at me winningly. “I hope you're not going to be mad. I sold them!”

“That's okay.” I laughed at the memory. Back when Jeff and I were stuck with each other's company and used to spend our weekends watching old private eye movies, he asked me to take him to visit a movie memorabilia shop. He was fascinated with it. So on his next birthday, I bought him two of the posters he had liked.

“Of course,” Jeff said, “over the years I had acquired a bunch more of them. By selling them I made enough money to buy Tess a
small
diamond—but . . .”

Tess was shaking her head like mad. “But I said no! I told Jeff he'd be smarter to spend the money on more posters and stuff. Maybe he'd wind up with a real business.”

Jeff shrugged. “So since February I've been buying and selling noir memorabilia online. I've also gone to several movie festivals and picked up more items. And I've done all right.”

“Why didn't you tell us this?” I asked.

Jeff dropped his head. “I was planning to tell you all the night I asked everybody to go to dinner. But while I was in school, in a way it wasn't strictly ethical. See, museum employees aren't supposed to deal in items similar to ones their museums hold in collections. But I couldn't quit the museum until the semester was over because I was getting class credit I needed to graduate. I explained what I was doing to the curator, and he said it was okay because I was working with the music collection, not films. But I still felt uneasy.”

Joe cleared his throat. “Let's forget the ethics of the museum business for a moment. What brought you to Warner Pier?”

“It started because I bought some
Maltese Falcon
posters online. Not originals, just reproductions. But I thought maybe I could sell them at a Texas noir festival. I got them from a company called Falcone Memorabilia. They mailed them to me. Very routine.”

“Falcone?” Joe asked. “That's the name you mentioned when you first arrived in Warner Pier. Where is this company?”

“That's a good question. I didn't worry about where it was when I ordered online, but when I got the package of posters, the postmark was Grand Rapids. You know, one of those postmarks that covers a large area. And the address on the package they sent was not readable.

“The next thing I know, I get this e-mail. The guy says he's with Falcone Memorabilia, and he offers me
Maltese Falcon
pendants. Plastic, with green rhinestone eyes.”

“Like the one we found in your pocket?” I asked.

“I guess so. I remember him e-mailing me about them, but I do not remember buying them! I know the price was
reasonable, so I must have ordered them to resell at the film festival—and to give to Tess. Anyway, after that the tone of the e-mails kind of changed. The guy claimed he had some special falcon items, and he asked if I'd be interested in them.”

Jeff looked worried. “He sounded weird. I almost expected him to say he had ‘feelthy pictures.'

“I sloughed the first message off, but next he told me that the plastic pendants were replicas of a more valuable one, one that had been made especially for Mary Astor. And he could get the original. Then I began to get interested.”

Joe looked blank, and I remembered he had little interest in film noir.

“Mary Astor was the female star of
The Maltese Falcon
, Joe,” I said.

Joe nodded, and Jeff went on. “The guy from Falcone Memorabilia said some boyfriend had the little falcon made for her, enamel, with diamond eyes. And Falcone had it for sale. I asked how he got hold of it, and he e-mailed something about ‘its provenance is a little cloudy.' So I let it drop.”

“A lot of dealers aren't so picky,” Joe said.

“A lot of dealers are stupid, too. I might not be any more honest than the other guys, but an enamel pendant isn't worth a lot, even with diamonds. The only thing that would make it valuable would be the connection with Mary Astor. And if you can't
prove
that, it would be worth very little. Basically just the value of the diamonds. Heck, if it had a perfect provenance, it still wouldn't be worth a lot.”

“Why not?” Joe asked.

“First, it wasn't in the film. Second, Mary Astor wasn't as big a star as Bogart became. So I didn't bite. But they e-mailed
me a few more times hinting at even more valuable items. Then I ran into Grossman.”

“Grossman? You know that guy?”

“Tess' dad would say we've howdied, but we ain't shook. Grossman visited our museum, and he got a guided tour from the director. He has a pretty big reputation in the noir world. As he came by where I was working, he was talking about this grant he was going to give the museum, for the five-thousand-dollar prize. Then he assured the director that he'd done a lot of research—actually I think he hires a researcher—and he could prove that a third Maltese Falcon prop existed. I work with this guy named Hal Hale, another volunteer, who's also a noir fan, and we could hardly wait for Grossman to leave so we could laugh.”

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Because we were both sure there is no third Maltese Falcon. Grossman claimed to be such a big authority and he didn't know crap.”

Joe was looking mystified again. I spoke. “Jeff, you've lost Joe again. Better explain.”

Jeff laughed. “These newbies! You know what the falcon is, don't you?”

“Sure. Lee made me watch the movie. It's the statue the villains are after in
The Maltese Falcon
.”

“Right. There were two falcons made as props in the film. Only two.”

“Not three, like Grossman claims?”

“Two. That's really well established. Both of them are in the hands of private collectors.” Jeff leaned over and dropped his
voice. “The last time one sold, at auction, it brought more than four million dollars.”

Joe nodded. “That's what Mary Kay told us. So if a third falcon was discovered . . .”

“It would be worth a boatload of money. But it would need really impressive provenance to prove its authenticity. And it would be auctioned by Sotheby's, not sold by e-mail by some company in rural Michigan that nobody ever heard of.