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54
Central Park
“How did you find her?”
“She was arrested in Italy last weekend after purchasing a forged Gentileschi from an undercover Carabinieri officer. I was a consultant to the Italian investigation.”
“A consultant?” asked Evelyn dubiously.
“It’s possible I might have painted the Gentileschi for them.”
“A fake forgery painted by Gabriel Allon? This story is getting better by the minute.”
They were moving at an unhurried pace along the footpaths of Central Park. For the moment, Evelyn’s notepad was tucked safely into her Chanel handbag. She was a petite woman of perhaps fifty, with short, dark hair and oversize tortoiseshell glasses. They were her trademark, the spectacles, like her razor-sharp prose, acerbic wit, and ruthless competitive streak.
“Where’s the painting now?” she asked.
“A warehouse on East Ninety-First Street.”
“Chelsea Fine Arts Storage?”
“That’s the one.”
“I remember when Phillip acquired it. I have to say, it made nosense to me at the time. Why would a tycoon like Phillip Somerset want to own a small-time art services company like Chelsea?”
“Because the tycoon needed the ability to ship and store forged paintings, no questions asked. He’s flooded the art market with hundreds of fake paintings, including four that have ended up in the Louvre. But the best part of the story is that—”
“Phillip is using forged paintings as collateral to obtain massive bank loans.”
“How did you know?”
“An educated guess.” Evelyn smiled. “Did I mention that my husband works for Millennium Management. It’s one of the world’s largest hedge funds. Before that, he was a prosecutor in the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. When I was working on the profile of Phillip, Tom took a hard look at—”
“Your husband is named Tom Buchanan?”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”
“Please.”
“When Tom analyzed Masterpiece’s annual returns, he was quite impressed. Envious, actually.”
“Because Masterpiece had outperformed Millennium?”
“Easily. Tom being Tom, he started doing some digging.”
“And?”
“He was convinced that Phillip was using borrowed money and money from new investors to pay off his old investors. In short, Tom believes that Phillip Somerset is the Bernie Madoff of the art world.”
“He’s running a Ponzi scheme?”
“Correct.”
“How close did you get to proving it?”
“Not close enough for my editors. But Phillip definitely knew that I was on to him.”
“How?”
