Collar Robber by Hillary Bell Locke Page A

Museum is out of pocket zero. It doesn’t have the painting it thought it had, but who cares? I’m assuming Transoxana doesn’t insure blissful fantasies.”
    â€œBesides,” Meininger said, “the Museum will have to deny the forgery assertion. And if Dany is right, it will find an expert to back it up. It couldn’t make a claim against Transoxana without undermining its own position.”
    I noticed just a hint of impatience in the clack that sounded when Proxy set her tumbler of bubbly water with a lime twist back on the table.
    â€œSo what’s the theory?” she asked. “That the heirs will threaten to expose the painting as a forgery unless the Museum gives it back to them? That would mean they’d gone to a lot of trouble to try to get a fake painting back.”
    â€œPerhaps the heirs have a slightly more sophisticated ploy in mind.”
    â€œNamely?”
    â€œâ€˜That’s a nice reputation you have there—what a shame if something happened to it.’”Nesselrode smiled wickedly.
    â€œSo the Museum is going to give away the crown jewel of its collection in order to keep extortionists from making what the extortionists themselves presumably believe is a false claim that the painting is worthless?” This would be Proxy getting intense. “Not gonna happen. The Museum will dispute the claim and hire some culture-whore to support its position. It would rather have a questioned masterpiece than an empty space on its main gallery wall.”
    â€œShe’s right, Dany,” Meininger told him. “You must have cards you haven’t shown us yet.”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œThis would be an excellent time to turn them over.” Meininger made that suggestion before Proxy could—which was a shame, because her version would probably have been more colorful.
    â€œI am thinking about an amicable resolution. Win-win.” Nesselrode paused, milking the suspense while he took a moment to pollute his lungs. “Five-part deal. One: the Museum recognizes that the heirs are making their claim in good faith and blah-blah-blah. Two: the heirs stipulate that the Museum’s position that the painting was legitimately acquired in an arm’s-length transaction is defensible. Three: the heirs ‘donate’ their claim to the Museum because art should be seen by the people and all that crap—and make that the basis for an obscene tax deduction, which the Museum will back up. Four: the Museum throws the heirs a bone—names a gallery after gramps and nana or something. Five: In further recognition of the heirs’ magnanimity, the Museum lends the painting for, say, three years to, say, the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere here in gramps’ native country where, don’t forget, Klimt actually painted the damn thing, in exchange for a loaned work of comparable renown from the Galerie .”
    And six , I thought, Willy Szulz gets screwed and C. Talbot Rand gets a pat on the back and maybe a little bonus at the end of the year.
    Proxy nodded, not in agreement but in recognition of the sheer neatness of the idea. Meininger’s eyes glistened with interest as he turned them toward her. I would have bet you anything that I knew what both of them were thinking, because I was thinking the same thing: If it works it solves the problem at zero cost to Transoxana—and even if it doesn’t, it motivates the Museum to chip in a LOT more toward the price of that piece of paper Szulz is peddling .
    â€œThis has possibilities.” Proxy settled back in her seat, relaxing a little. “But we need to get a handle on the evidence for the forgery allegation. What documentation do you have for it?”
    â€œThe best kind: the real painting.”
    If that line impressed Proxy, she didn’t show it.
    â€œWhere is it?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Nesselrode shrugged at this technicality. “But I can take