Page 53 of Conning the Billionaire
There it was again, that New York or New Jersey inflection around the words garbage business. Maybe even Boston.
Kylie said, “So, you’re telling me that the Philadelphia Mafia boss, Salvatore ‘The Gecko’ Grande, has a five-hundred-year-old painting just hanging on the wall in his shitty little office in downtown Philly.”
“Old Masters turn up in all kinds of places. A new one was discovered in a Swiss bank vault in 2013 that was only known from sketches,” Micah said. “A portrait of Isabella d’Este, Marquess of Mantua. The sketch for it hangs in the Louvre. That brought the number of known paintings by da Vinci to twenty-three. It’s not all that surprising that a mafia kingpin would take one in payment and hang it on his wall.”
“I’ve seen that painting, the one of the angel with the rainbow wings telling Mary that she’s going to have a baby even though she’s a virgin. He doesn’t even keep it in a dehumidifier or anything. His air conditioning isn’t even very good in that old building. If it’s really worth what you say, he should have it in a vault or something.”
“Some wealthy people buy irreplaceable works of art and destroy them, just to show how powerful they are. It’s a part of the mental illness of most billionaires. They’re all psychopaths.”
“It sounds like you know a lot about billionaires.”
Micah continued, “The di Credi painting Annunciation was stolen from the Uzbek State Art Museum in Uzbekistan about twenty years ago. For fifteen years, employees at the museum created forgeries of dozens of priceless works of art, swapped the fake paintings for the authentic art on the museum walls, and then sold the originals.”
Kylie leaned forward. “Holy crap.”
“The fact that every single one of those Old Masters and several pieces of modern art was sold for less than a thousand dollars apiece speaks more to the desperation of the people who worked there than to greed. When the same thing happened at the State Art and Sculpture Museum in Ankara, Turkey, restorers and managers stole three hundred and two pieces and sold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.”
She felt her jaw drop. “I am in the wrong business.”
Micah said, “Thieves did it in Spain a few years ago, too. Two hundred and twenty-some objects are missing from the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and five hundred million items have been stolen from Russian museums since 1990. Over three million paintings. Thirty-seven thousand icons. Altogether, they are worth more than a billion dollars. And it appears Salvatore Grande has acquired one of Uzbekistan’s stolen artworks.”
“Sounds like you know a whole lot about stolen art.”
Micah shrugged. “In the circles I travel in, art collecting is discussed, and people purchase art both legally and from the black market. Authenticating art is more important to them than whether it was acquired legally or ethically.”
Kylie asked, “What are you going to do, steal it back and give it to Uzbekistan? Or Italy? Italy would love to get another Old Master painting to hang in its museums. They’re still salty that the Louvre has the Mona Lisa.”
A smile ghosted over Micah’s lips, and he inhaled and paused like he was deciding whether or not to speak, saying, “No, we’re not giving anything away. We’re going to convince Salvatore Grande that the one he has is a forgery, and we’re going to offer to take it off his hands and sell it to some other stooge.”
“The Gecko is smarter than that. He’s probably had it checked out twenty different ways before he accepted it as payment.”
“Stolen paintings often come with little provenance, which is why it’s so easy to pass off forgeries on the art black market. Those experts who advertise they can ‘sense the hand of the Old Master in the paint’ are con artists, too. If you pay them enough, they’ll authenticate a child’s scribble with an orange crayon as an Old Master.”
“Game recognizes game, huh, Micah?” she snarked.
He kept talking. “Scientific analysis of the materials like the paint and the wood is blowing the lid off these forgeries. The only kind of blue paint artists had five hundred years ago was lapis lazuli ground into distilled linseed oil. So, if you find Sherwin-Williams Cashmere Interior Acrylic Latex in Dignity Blue on your Caravaggio, maybe it’s not the real thing.”
“But if Salvatore Grande has the real painting, then the testing will come back as lapis lazuli in linseed oil,” Kylie pointed out.
Micah grinned. “That’s where Shine Industries and our new art authentication service come in.”
“Art authentication? Is that what you do?”
“No. However, I’ll offer Grande a free analysis to certify his painting is authentic, and then I’ll have bad news for him.”
“You’ve got this all worked out. You don’t need my help,” Kylie said.
“Oh, but I do. I need your connections to Salvador Grande to get in to see him.”
Something was wrong here, but Kylie couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Yes, she could facilitate a meeting with Salvatore Grande, and Salvatore had a painting that Micah wanted. But the artwork was supposed to be genuine. It really was an Old Master. Selling it to somebody else would be selling a real Old Master to someone who wanted one. “So, are we just swindling Salvatore Grande? Is that the point of all this?”
“That’s the first part of the plan.”
“I don’t know, Micah. There seems to be so much that you’re not telling me. You hung me out to dry once, and I don’t know why I should trust that you won’t do it again. I know I’m harping on this, but it keeps coming up. I’m not even sure Micah Shine is your real name, and ‘Shine Industries’ sounds so cheesy that it could practically be a supervillain’s smokescreen factory in a Marvel movie.”
He frowned. “I showed you my driver’s license and my passport.”
Kylie looked up at him. “Obviously, I know how easy it is to get a fake ID.”
