The Deceivers (28 page)

“This anything goes attitude must be contagious in the Far East. I saw it in Cambodia.”

“It's a worldwide pandemic. We close our eyes here and pretend we're not as crooked. We are. We're just holier than thou about it.”

“Were you able to come up with an address for Nadia the model?” I asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Which means?”

“I couldn't get a home address, but I got a business one—sort of.”

“Sort of what?”

“She's got a booth at the Epicurean Fair.”

“Come again?”

Bolger chuckled. He loved to make me dig for an answer.

“You've heard of the trade shows held for rich people in different countries around the world?”

“Sure. They rent an auditorium at a five-star hotel and rent booths to high-end vendors. People with too much money come to buy the costliest things on the planet—like hundred-thousand-dollar mink shower curtains.”

“You got it. Besides mink shower curtains, you can buy the finest sheets for the most comfortable mattresses on the planet, a million-dollar car and a hundred-thousand-dollar entertainment system for it, or a baby elephant for your kids to play with. Luxury items from all over the world gathered in one place.”

I knew what he meant. The rich gone wild. A vulgar display of materialistic items for people with money to buy—things that the rest of us couldn't afford—so they could be envied by other people. Right now, I'd give anything to be one of those ostentatious people with enough money to pamper myself.

“So what has this got to do with Nadia?” I asked.

“She's started her own line of perfume … ten thousand dollars an ounce.”

“You've got to be kidding. Nothing smells good enough to sell for that much.”

“People don't pay for its smell, but its effect. She claims it's an aphrodisiac.”

“Wow. What a pitch for a scent. What's in it?”

“That's a secret that keeps her from selling it in many countries. She's not telling because it's supposed to have some banned substances in it.”

“What kind of banned substances?”

“Rumor mill blogs on the Internet claim it has stuff like ground tiger penis and the drug ecstasy in it.”

I howled. “Tiger penis!”

“Don't laugh. In the Far East, tiger penis sells for a lot more than ten grand an ounce. It's been a Chinese Viagra for a couple thousand years. Which is part of the reason tigers are on the endangered species list.”

“Does it work?”

“How the hell would I know? Some Chinaman emperor probably got a hard-on after nibbling on one and the rest is history.”

I could see the use of the party drug ecstasy. I'd never taken it but friends who had claimed it made them feel really uninhibited and ready to try about anything. Even if it didn't make you horny, I suppose making you more amiable toward the idea of sex made it something of an aphrodisiac.

Besides being a pedantic collector of miscellaneous information, Bolger had tons of common sense, so I asked his take on the perfume.

“Bullshit for the mink shower curtain crowd. There are plenty of rich men who will give their lovers an ounce of the stuff just to show off … and who knows, they might get lucky and not get a faked orgasm for once. Consider this—at that price, a gallon of the stuff would bring in over a million dollars. That lady has a sweet little racket.”

Racket was right. “I bet Nadia planted the tiger penis and ecstasy rumors on the Internet.”

I collected the address for the luxury fair and signed off with Bolger.

My next call was to the antique dealer. Jimmy Cheung wasn't in, but would be back later … hopefully he'd call me back if I passed the acid test of being a big enough buyer to impress him. I told his assistant that I was representing an American collector who wanted a Chinese museum-quality piece for which an export permit could be obtained.

I gave the assistant information about my credentials in the antiquities trade to impress her boss. I left out the part about having once bought a fifty-five-million-dollar fake. But I knew they'd check me out in minutes on the Internet and find out enough to wet the whistle of any self-respecting art dealer who pushed fakes. The Hong Kong art market was closely affiliated with the New York and London markets and my connection to the biggest art scandal in modern history roared through the art world like a tsunami.

Since I was representing someone else, it was my credibility rather than my line of credit that counted. Jimmy Cheung would assume that we spoke the same language after he heard my comment about needing a Chinese museum piece with an export permit: You couldn't get a museum piece out of the country without an export permit—and it would be a cold day in hell before you got a permit because China didn't permit its antiquities to be smuggled into Hong Kong and sold to foreigners.

It just wasn't done, not unless you were in a venue where officials could be bribed—and bribery wasn't something to attempt in a country where there was a death penalty for just about everything.

Basically my message implied I had a buyer but something would have to be arranged under the table. And it amounted to an open invitation to sell me a superior fake I could pass off to my collector as the real McCoy—even the best replicas didn't need an export permit.

*   *   *

CHEUNG'S SHOP WAS
off the street in a short alley that could only be entered by ringing a gate buzzer and being observed through a barred window.

I passed inspection and was admitted inside.

Jimmy was a nephew, but wasn't a kid. Thin, short, probably fifty, he talked fast in hard-to-understand English. Since my Chinese was limited to saying “Nî hâo” (I pronounced it knee how)—my attempt at saying hello in Mandarin—he was light-years ahead of me in terms of international communications.

I explained I wanted a museum-quality piece of Chinese origin.

“Much problem with export,” he said. This was the third time he explained that he couldn't sell me something that required an export permit. It was a game we both knew and he knew better than me. He had to give the spiel that he only dealt with aboveboard transactions, but it was all just opening moves in game playing—required before we got down to what it was really all about: money. “No export license approved.”

So tell me something I didn't know. “Mr. Cheung, what do you have that will please my client?”

That gave him an open invitation to offer me something under the table. He'd sell me Chairman Mao's eyeteeth and let me figure out how to get it out of the country if there was a big fee in it for him.

“A piece was sold at auction in New York recently,” I said. “A Siva. My client loved the piece. He wants something similar.” The Siva wasn't Chinese. There wouldn't be an export license problem.

“Genuine piece,” Cheung said, waving his arms. “Many lies about it. Not a fake.”

Yeah. Sure. I smiled sweetly. “My client is not extremely discriminating if it's something he likes. And he liked the workmanship on the Siva. You have more?”

“No more Siva.”

“My client is one of those really anxious types who thinks money can buy anything … and is willing to pay for what he wants. If you don't have a Siva, he would be interested in something by the same artist.”

He shook his head with real regret. “Taksin is gone.”

That sent a quiver through me. I'd found out something important: The name of the artist. “He's gone?”

Cheung shook his head. I saw real regret. He wasn't acting. Obviously Taksin had helped the bottom line.

“Taksin make the best pieces,” he said. “As good as thousand-year-old. No one can tell difference, not even museum curators. Then … poof.” He threw up his hands. “Gone.”

“Dead? Missing?”

“Fish food.”

“Fish food?”

“Gone.”

“Dead?”

He shrugged. “Gone. Dead. Fish food.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He threw his hands in the air. Obviously it was a stupid question. “To make into fish food, someone no like. Maybe someone pay too much. Now fish food.”

“Yes, well, uh, I'm sure that here in Hong Kong—”

Cheung shook his head almost off his shoulders. “Bangkok. Taksin not in Hong Kong.”

“Bangkok? Thailand? Taksin's in—”

“Fish food.”

“Yes, of course. Thai fish food. Do you have any more of his pieces?”

His expression turned sly. “Very fine piece.”

“Ah … good. I'm looking for a very fine piece. Money's no problem. My client is a very eager collector. May I see the piece?”

He went into a back room and I pretended to examine a jade Buddha. Nice piece, but not old. My mind was reeling. An artist named Taksin in Bangkok was making the pieces. Now he was missing … maybe dead. Daveydenko was dead. This Taksin had started something that'd gotten out of control.

Jimmy came back with the piece. A statuette of Ganesha. I remembered the elephant-headed god from my college days studying art. He was the son of Siva and his wife Parvati, two of the most important Hindu gods. Parvati created him from the rubbings of her own body so he could stand guard at her door while she bathed. When Siva came to visit, he saw Ganesha. Enraged with jealousy because he didn't know it was Parvati's son, he had Ganesha's head cut off.

When he found out it was Parvati's son, Siva promised that he would replace Ganesha's head with the head of the first animal that came along. And along came an elephant …

Ganesha was the god of wisdom, able to overcome obstacles, but he didn't look like much. Short, fat, with a big belly and broken tusk, the small statue Jimmy Cheung sat before me had four arms, respectively holding a noose, an ax, a book, and his broken tusk.

It was a fake. Not a bad one, it would fool most collectors and even some acquiring agents, but I had spent too much time as a museum curator examining pieces for authenticity to be fooled by a common fake. For sure it wasn't made by the Thai named Taksin. Not only did it lack his exquisite artistry, but the sandstone didn't have the same color as the Khmer pieces I'd seen. It was from a different quarry than the other Khmer pieces. I guessed it was a modern fake made somewhere in China—for the upscale tourist market.

“Ten thousand U.S.,” Cheung said. “Bargain.”

I smiled and set the piece down. “Very nice. I'm sure a tourist would pay as much as five hundred U.S. dollars for something this nice.”

He gave me a smile back and bobbed his head in a bow. “Yes, yes, very nice piece.”

“Mr. Cheung, perhaps you could arrange a meeting between me and Nadia Novikov that would be profitable for both of us.”

His eyes lit up with black fire—and it wasn't friendly fire. He looked at me as if I were a poacher.

“No meeting.”

“Have a nice day.”

As I turned to leave, he said, “Wait.”

He pulled a handkerchief-wrapped object out of his side coat pocket. He unwrapped a jade piece several inches in height and width and handed it to me.

A small Buddha sitting in a lotus flower. I knew it was real, the Met had pieces like it when I worked there. A very nice piece, probably about three hundred years old, Ch'ing dynasty. It wasn't an extremely rare piece, I'd seen a number of similar ones, but it was a high-quality piece—a museum piece, one that no doubt made its way to the colony via mainland China.

“Very valuable,” he said. “For you, a thousand American dollars.”

I hoped I hadn't flinched when he quoted the price. A thousand dollars was ridiculous. The jade content alone was worth more than that. If it was genuine—and I was certain it was—the piece was worth twenty times what Jimmy Cheung was asking.

I met his eyes. Dark pools revealing nothing. But the slightest closure of his already narrow eyelids told me that he was hiding something.

I looked the piece over again, turning it over in my hand. And mind. No question … it was real. No question … I wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting it out of the country without an export permit … and no chance of getting a permit.

“This comes with an export permit?”

He shrugged. “Very small. Fit in luggage.”

In other words, I could smuggle it out he was saying. I handed it back to him and he accepted it in the handkerchief. Did he think I had the plague?

“Handling another piece for Nadia Novikov?” I asked.

He turned and walked away without answering. I took his cold shoulder to mean our session was over. So much for my plan to get some insight into the Russian model.

I left the shop in a brown study and completely puzzled.

Now what was all that about?

First the man tries to pass an overpriced fake off on me at an outrageous price, then offers me a museum piece I couldn't get out of the country without risking arrest—and asks a fraction of its value.

Jimmy Cheung wasn't crazy—so why all the bullshit? Had he been testing me to see if I really could recognize art?

His motives were beyond me, but the session had left me with an eerie sense of free-floating anxiety. I couldn't put my finger on why I was so disturbed, but I had a feeling that there was malice in Cheung's act. A malicious intent that didn't bode well for me.

Shit.

Why wasn't anything in life simple?

What did I do to deserve all the crazies in the world coming into my life?

Maybe I did a few things a woman shouldn't do … at least, what a man would say a woman shouldn't do, but I definitely wasn't a bad person.

Not that bad, anyway.

31

I grabbed a taxi to the convention hall where rich people bought things that I couldn't afford but would love to have.

En route I called Detective Anthony and told him about Taksin the Thai. I was excited that I not only got the name on my own, but found out he was fish food.