The Looters (17 page)

Welcome back to the real world.

I picked up the phone and dialed Bensky’s number.

Nunes would no doubt ask Eric or Hiram if the provenance had been examined by a document expert and a lightbulb would go off in the head of one of them as they remembered Bensky… and couldn’t find the report.

After four rings, the answering machine came on.

***

Charles Bensky watched his answering machine as Madison Dupre’s voice was broadcast in his home office: “Mr. Bensky, this is Madison Dupre. I need to speak to you. It’s urgent. Please call me when you get this message.” He was too preoccupied with his own fears to recognize the stress in her voice.

His throat was dry. Earlier, he had been visibly trembling. Now he sat very still and held his knees with his hands as he stared at the man standing next to his bookcase. The man had his back to Bensky and was idly leafing through a book. When he returned from a fishing trip, Bensky entered his home and found the man waiting for him.

At first he thought the man was an intruder he had the bad luck to interrupt burglarizing the house.

When the man turned around, Bensky again noted the cap with a Navy SEAL emblem. He had served a hitch in the Navy out of high school forty years ago. In those days they referred to sailors in that branch of the Navy as frogmen.

The gun was still in his hand, pointed at Bensky.

“I was Navy, too,” Bensky said. “Did four years. Most of it on a carrier.”

The man with the cap said nothing.

Bensky earlier told him to take whatever he wanted, even offered him his credit cards and ATM card, but the man was not interested in money. He just wanted one document.

“What are you going to do to me?” Bensky asked.

Unfortunately for Bensky, the information was also in his head.

Chapter 23

I stayed in bed refusing to face the world until midmorning.

Desperate, I tried to call Bensky again. This time instead of a recording I heard a strange garbled noise on the line. Through a telephonic miracle, I managed to actually get a real operator who told me it sounded like the line was out of order or the phone was off the hook. Or maybe Bensky just didn’t want to talk to me, a conclusion I came to all by myself.

Whatever the reason, it meant I was going to have to confront him in person. I got dressed and grabbed my car keys.

New York had two Pelhams. Bensky lived in the small upscale one in Westchester. I input the address into my GPS and followed the instructions, taking the FDR to the Triborough Bridge and onto the Bruckner Expressway. It felt good to get out of the city. Felt good driving a car more expensive than I could afford. Not that New York was an expensive-car town. Expensive clothes, apartment, jewelry, for sure, but owning a car that cost more than you could afford was more a West Coast thing, mostly L.A., where you never went to a restaurant unless it had valet service to make sure your car didn’t get parking lot rash—or stolen.

I opened the windows to let in air. Maybe some of my trouble would blow away.

Pelham was a small, quaint Americana town but with convenient train service that transported you back and forth to the big city. That made it pretty much a bedroom suburb for executive types.

Watching my GPS screen when I made the turn onto Bensky’s street, I almost ran into a police car parked in the middle of the road. The street was blocked. Fire trucks and more police cars were ahead.

I pulled alongside a woman who was pushing a baby stroller away from the scene and asked her out the window, “What’s going on?”

“There’s been a fire.”

“Do you know which house?”

“My neighbor, Chuck Bensky.”

I had already guessed it, but it still gave me a jolt.

“Was he home?”

“They didn’t find anybody inside.”

Lucky for him
, I thought. “Do you know if he’s been out of town?”

“Probably. He does a lot of fishing.”

I thanked her and pulled away. My scaredy-cat left knee shook.

No chance in hell it was just a coincidence that Bensky’s house burned down. Coincidences like that, flukes, accidents, twists of fate, the luck of the draw, just didn’t happen when the FBI was investigating a case. As my father would have put it, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that the fire wasn’t connected to the accusation of theft surrounding a museum piece worth over $50 million.

I didn’t wish Bensky any ill will. I’d never actually met him. No reason for it. I remembered now, Lipton had recommended him, said he had used Bensky before. To me, he’d been a voice over the phone and someone on the other side of a fax machine. I had a mental image of a skinny middle-aged man with thick glasses.

At least he wasn’t home and asleep in bed when his house burned. Now he’d return to find his place burned to the ground.

My mind was working overtime. Bensky’s house was also his office. Maybe somebody wanted to destroy any evidence of the Semiramis report. Somebody dangerous or murderously desperate. If Bensky had been in the house when it burned, it would have been murder.

I wasn’t willing to accept any other explanation.

Somebody was ready to commit murder to protect the provenance.

I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Lipton might know about the report, since he had a connection with the man. For certain, the only person I had told about the devastating report was Neal.

Chapter 24

I was supposed to get together with Neal later in the evening, but I deliberately cold-called him, catching him by surprise.

I sat down in one of the leather chairs in front of his desk and told him about the fire at Bensky’s house.

He shrugged it off. “So.”

“It wasn’t a coincidence.”

“You’re going overboard, Maddy. The pressure has gotten to you. Now you’re seeing murder. Houses do burn down by accident, you know.”

“Not when they’re part of a criminal investigation.”

“Great. Keep it up. Why don’t you call your FBI pal and tell him someone’s out burning down houses to destroy evidence.”

“Neal—”

“Wise up, Maddy. I don’t think I’d run around shouting that someone burned Bensky’s house because they wanted to destroy evidence of a report. As far as I know, you’re the only person who has a motive.”

That thought kept coming back at me and I kept slapping it away. Other than knowing I wasn’t guilty, I didn’t know who was. Neal knew of my predicament, but he wasn’t the one with the smoking gun.

“Come on. Tell me,” he said.

“What?” My mind was a million miles away.

“Your mind is working overtime. And you’re staring at me like I just crawled out of an Egyptian tomb wrapped in rags.”

“I told you about Bensky’s report.”

“And?”

“His house got burned down.”

His eyebrows went up. “You think I burned down his house to protect you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I don’t know.”

He held out his hand. “Let me see that report.”

I pulled Bensky’s report out of my pocket and gave it to him. I rubbed my forehead. I had a king-size headache. I got up to get some water out of his fountain and took three aspirin.

Nothing made sense. I certainly didn’t sleepwalk to Bensky’s house last night and torch it. And I didn’t think I was the only person with a motive. If there was proof that the Semiramis was part of the looted pieces, the fallout would hit everyone in the chain. I was just the weakest link.

Neal’s document shredder went on and I jerked around.

“What are you doing?”

“Assuming your theory is correct that Bensky’s house got torched to destroy the report, you had the last copy. Now there are no other copies.”

“That’s illegal.”

He gaped at me. “Illegal? For sure. Immoral and reprehensible, too, no doubt. But someone is obviously out to get rid of that report and I don’t think you want to be the last person waving it around.”

“You’ve destroyed evidence.”

“I did it for you. Besides, it’s only
evidence
if the police find it. Now they can’t.”

“Neal… you shouldn’t have done it. What if there’s another copy?”

“Where? Who else would have a copy?”

“Bensky. I don’t know, maybe his house burned by accident; maybe he has a copy on his laptop or his fishing reel—”

“The man can say what he likes. No one can prove you ever had a copy. And if that fire did destroy Bensky’s copy, you can bet he’ll keep his mouth shut, too. He was negligent in how he got the report to you. Besides, now you don’t have a motive.”

“A motive for what?”

“For burning Bensky’s house. As long as you had the report, it gave you a motive for destroying other copies.”

I sat back down. Drained. I was way out of my league when it came to chicanery. Working with cutthroat gallery owners and fanatical collectors was a piece of cake compared to engaging in this kind of deception.

Neal sat on the arm of the chair and ran his hand through my hair. “You have to understand, this thing is big. Fifty-five million to Piedmont is chump change, but to Viktor Milan it’s everything. He can’t afford to lose. And people like you and me can’t afford to be in his way.”

“Who
is
this man?”

“He’s been around for years, but Lipton’s the only one I know who’s met him.”

“What does Lipton say about him?”

“He’s scared of him; that much I know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He calls him ‘the Swiss’ and I remember he said the guy’s a loose cannon. Milan also has a vault collection.”

That meant he kept his pieces out of the public eye, not showing them to other collectors or loaning them to museums. Some collections were kept secret because they were contraband.

“Milan seems to be the one behind this whole thing,” I told Neal. “He passes illegal antiquities with forged provenances. I don’t understand how someone like Lipton could get involved.”

“I know nothing. And neither do you. And keep it that way. The enemies in this matter aren’t in the art world but on the political side.”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s this Iraqi cabdriver claiming? That the museum in Baghdad was looted. And that American troops were involved. Maybe they burned Bensky’s house. Maybe they even snatched him.”

“Who are they?”

“The FBI, NSA, CIA, hell, any one of those spook agencies with initials that get us into wars and are constantly screwing up and blaming it on everyone else.”

My head felt like it was going to explode. The aspirin hadn’t kicked in yet. “Neal—that’s crazy.”

“Maybe. But it wouldn’t be the first time those spy agencies covered up their messes.”

“God, I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared.”

“You’re panicking for nothing.”

“Nothing? What planet have you been on? I’ve already been fired from my job. I’m probably going to be arrested any minute.”

“Not true. First, you’re on a leave; you haven’t been fired. Second, you’ve only been interviewed by the FBI. They haven’t indicted you. And won’t. You know what it would take for them to really check out the provenance? The agent told you it made it hell for them. He’s right. They’d never put it together. You should lay low, keep your head down.”

“That’s easy for you to say. My life is spinning out of control. I’ve tried to call Lipton, but I can’t get him on the phone. I can’t get Bensky. When the FBI agent comes knocking at my door again, I need to emphasize they need to check out Milan. He’s the devil behind this mess.”

Another worrisome thought hit me. “What if the FBI has its own document examiner look at the provenance?”

“So what? If it takes an expert to tell it’s a fraud, you’re clear. Now.” He jerked his head at the shredder.

My life had come down to shredding evidence.

I felt like Joan of Arc being burned at the stake.

Chapter 25

Pelham, New York

Nunes drove to the small Westchester village of Pelham after he got the call from a fire investigator that the house of Charles Bensky had burned down. Bensky had been on the FBI’s watch list distributed to local, state, and federal agencies in the region.

Bob Rees, the head of the county’s arson investigations, met Nunes in front of the charred remains of the three-bedroom suburban house.

“I saw the name Charles Bensky on your heads-up alert,” Rees told him. “But he didn’t come up in the computer on a wanted status.”

“He’s not. Bensky’s a document examiner, a potential witness in a case where there’s suspicious chain of ownership on an expensive item.”

They entered the backyard through a side gate as they talked.

“No sign of a body,” Rees said. “The next-door neighbor says he’s been away on a fishing trip. Bensky’s a widower, lives alone; it’s not unusual for him to take off for a week at a time, not letting anyone know where he’s at. Only close relative is a daughter stationed in Germany, a career U.S. Air Force officer. I called her and she hasn’t heard from her father in a month but says that’s normal. One neighbor thinks Bensky went to a Maine lake to camp out and fish but doesn’t know which one. He’s got a cell phone, but the phone company says it’s not turned on and doesn’t have a GPS chip.”

“I’ll need that cell number, the contact numbers for the daughter and neighbors, and anything else before I leave. What have you got on the fire?”

“Still preliminary, but my gut reaction is that it was done by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“A pro?”

Rees shrugged. “There’s so much information available on the Internet, anyone can be a pro at burning down houses or building an atomic bomb.”

The fire investigator led Nunes to the back of the house.

“This was Bensky’s home office.” He glanced at Nunes. “You do any fire investigations for the Bureau?”

“Nope. You have to hold my hand.”

“From the damage pattern to this room and the way the fire spread, it makes this wall a good candidate for the point of origin. A normal burn pattern is for a fire to spread upward and outward in a V shape. We have heaviest damage to the wall and ceiling here.”

“You look to see where the wood is the most charred?”