Black Tide (10 page)

"Still didn't work, did it?" I asked. By then I had pulled out the reporter's notebook and was making notes, though I trusted my memory more than my notes. Pen and paper can't quite capture the mood and tenor of a person's voice, or how one's face looks like when telling a story. But the reporter's notebook and pen were necessary for the Great Lie.

"No, and you know why?" I looked back at the wall space that was covered by a twisted hunk of metal, and I tried to imagine what it might have been like to have been here that night, five years ago, to stand before those paintings, breathing heavily and sweating, knowing that in a few moments they would belong to you and no other.

I answered by saying, "The part of the system that doesn't come with a warranty failed you. The human factor." "

Exactly," he said, still in that schoolteacher voice. "The humans. We had two guards on duty that night, a Ben Martin and a Craig Dummer. Ben was a retired Manchester cop looking to earn a little extra money to flesh out his pension and his Social Security, while Craig was a student at New Hampshire College studying criminal justice and looking for some experience he could use after he graduated."

"How much were they paid?" I asked.

He eyed me, arms still folded. "Not a bad question, Mr. Cole. That was something else that we got hit with from news reporters who became instant art experts after the theft --- that we had millions of dollars' worth of art being guarded that night by old fat guys making minimum wage. Which wasn't true. Both Ben and Craig were making a fairly decent salary, and they both went through a good training program and an extensive background check. You know, I'd rather hire a couple of bright, trainable people than Ph.D.s who think they know everything."

The two older women came closer, and the nearest one made a show of trying hard not to listen to us. I thought we were going to have to move until a young mother came in, chewing gum, pushing one of those collapsible strollers that's the size of a U-Haul trailer and which was carrying a set of twin baby boys. They were gurgling enough to drown out whatever we were saying.

I asked, "So what happened?"

Justin said, shaking his head, as though he still couldn't believe what had occurred, ''At about eleven at night on July 6th --- during the long Fourth of July weekend --- two men dressed as Manchester cops came to the front door, where there's an intercom and a closed-circuit television monitor. Ben and Craig were on duty that night and had completed their rounds. They were at a security station that was set up near the front door, and they saw the cops as they rang the buzzer. The cops said that they needed to talk to them about a reported disturbance on the museum property."

He turned again to look at me, and the eyes behind his black-rimed glasses were practically brimming with tears.

''Against all training, instructions and just plain damn common sense, they let them in. They didn't call to verify who they were, they didn't ask for more information, they just damn let them in. You know, a reporter from the
Boston Globe
, I believe, asked the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston if their guards would have let them in, and spokesman said, 'We wouldn't open up for God.'"

"Did both of the guards agree to let them in?"

He turned away, and I think he was embarrassed at his display of emotion. ''At first Craig didn't want to do it, but Ben thought he recognized both of them, and so he sent Craig to undo the door. They came in and drew their guns and in a couple of minutes Ben and Craig were in one of the offices, handcuffed and with masking tape around their mouths and eyes. They worked quickly, Mr. Cole, and they knew what they were doing. The first thing they did was to go to the VCR, and they took the tape that showed them entering. They disabled the alarm systems and went to work, and they knew exactly what they were looking for: the three Winslow Homers. Nothing else was touched. It was like they had a shopping list to fulfill and they did it, and then they left. This is a fairly active Manchester neighborhood, and none of our neighbors saw anything untoward."

By then a couple of teenage girls had wandered in, and the gallery was getting full. Justin motioned with his head and I followed him back to his office. Cassie looked up from her machine and smiled at the two of us. Something gave me a little tingle as her gaze stayed with me about three seconds longer than necessary. But if Cassie had any effect on Justin, he didn't show it.

He went back behind his desk and I sat down and said, "So how did you find out about the robbery?"

Justin tapped his hands on the desk's surface. "Morning shift couldn't raise anyone on the intercom, and the door locks were unlatched. I live twenty minutes away, and when I got the call that there was a break-in, I got here in ten. You know," he said, again with that wistful look, "my wife and I owned two cars back then, a Ford and a Toyota, and to this day, I couldn't tell you which one I used to come here. It was a madhouse, simply a madhouse, for a couple of weeks after the theft. Phones rang off the hook. We had calls from all over the country and even England and Japan. Wire services, newspapers, radios, television stations. The Manchester police and the FBI practically camped out here for days. I think I got home maybe twice during that time, and only for showers and naps."

The tone of his voice reminded me of another time, in my old job, how a phone call one early morning, about an unexpected invasion of another country many thousands of miles away, had sent me and the others scurrying to the five-sided palace for days on end, sleeping on cots and eating from vending machines. Long hours of scanning the news wires, reading declassified reports, answering demanding phone calls and questions, trying to read, trying to interpret and make sense of it all, trying to write reports.  To this day, I cannot eat a ham and cheese sandwich, or eat a bag of potato chips from a vending machine, and I hate the sound of a ringing phone late at night.

I said, "I'd imagine that the first thought that came to you that morning was that this was an inside job."

Justin didn't say anything for a moment or two, and it felt odd, since he had been so open in the past half hour. He just gazed at me through those glasses, chin in one hand, and then he slowly said, "This is still an open investigation, so I can't really comment on that, Mr. Cole. But I'll tell you that from that day forward, we always knew where Ben Martin and Craig Dummer were living and what they were doing." '

'And what are they doing today, Mr. Dix?" I asked. Again, that eye-piercing pause. I felt like I was skirting close to the edge of something that Justin didn't want me to see or to look at, and then he surprised me by smiling a bit.

"I suppose I could tell you it's none of your business, but if you dug a little bit, you could find out," he said. "So I'll save you some time. Craig Dummer's living in Bainbridge, a couple of towns over. Completed college and got his criminal justice degree, but I don't think he ever got a real police job. Last I heard, was back doing security work, and was considering going back to school to get his law degree. If you can believe that."

"You don't know?"

Justin shrugged. "I don't care. He could be the president of Amoskeag Bank for all I care. Just so long as I know where he's living and if he's spending his money on Porsches or Caribbean trips. That's all we care about."

From the other office, Cassie was humming something. I knew that I could never work in this office, for the distractions were too many and too attractive. "How about the other guard, Ben Martin?"

The little smile came back. "Well, the job's considerably easier now, you see. Ben Martin died of a heart attack two years after the theft, and he's up in the Manchester Memorial Cemetery. His kids live out on the West Coast and wouldn't know a Winslow Homer if it was hanging over their living room couch."

"So the focus has been on Craig Dummer."

He leaned back in his chair. "I didn't say that. You did."

"How did the investigation go, at the beginning? I don't expect you to give me any secrets, but…”

"But you want some details, right?" I nodded. He went on. "Like I said before, it was like they had a shopping list. The two fake cops came in and took those Winslow Homers, and nothing else. The FBI and others found this to be very strange, since we had other paintings worth more than those three. Hell, some of the silver work upstairs is extremely valuable, and other items. I mean, well, just one of our Chippendale chairs is worth nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Which told us one of two things, Mr. Cole."

"Someone has specific tastes, or they were spooked and had to leave early," I said.

"Exactly," Justin said, his voice returning to its previous pleased-professor mode. "But I would tend to think that they had a specific order to fill, and that those three Winslow Homers were it. They had done quite a good job on the alarm system, and both Ben and Craig were well put away."

''Any leads?"

"None of which I can share with you, but I'll tell you that for the first year after the theft, we were flooded --- literally flooded --- with phone calls and mail and visitors who said there was a trembling in the cosmic conscious and that they'd be able to find the paintings.”

"For free?"

He snorted. "They may have been strange but they certainly weren’t fools. There's a price for everything. We even got the oddest items." He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out sheet of paper in a clear plastic folder. "Like this one, for instance.  Take a look and tell me what you think."

He passed it over and I gave it a quick read. It was column after column of letters, numbers, exclamation points and other symbols from the top row of someone's keyboard. They had been written on a light green piece of graph paper with what looked to be a No.2 pencil. Both sides of the graph paper were covered.

''A secret message?" Justin smiled.

"Of sorts. The letter that came with this secret message said that if we could decipher the code, it would tell us here the paintings were. And the funny part was that the FBI actually made a photocopy of this letter, and I hear that they sent over to the National Security Agency."

With those last three words we had slipped into an area of conversation that I really didn't want to explore, so I passed the sheet back and said, "Do you mind if I ask you a rude question?"

He seemed surprised and faintly amused. "Go ahead, so long as you don't use any foul language. "

I looked around the office and out at the well-groomed, clean courtyard, and I said, "How come you're still working here?"

His eyes seemed to focus right in on a spot an inch below my jaw. "You mean, why wasn't I fired?"

I nodded. He tapped his fingers again and said, "It certainly wasn't for lack of trying on the part of some of the trustees, and for a few days afterward, I really thought that I would spare them the debate and give them my resignation. And then maybe go home and put the car in the garage and turn on the engine."

Justin tugged at his tie and coughed and said, "But I got angrier and angrier, at what had happened, at what those two men had stolen and the incredible lapse of judgment by Ben and Craig. I went before the trustees at a special meeting and laid everything out, from the alarm system to the training and background investigation that I used before hiring Ben and Craig, and I threw the question to them: What more could I have done, with the budget and the resources that were available to me? What was broken in the alarm systems that could be fixed? What could have been done to stop this, outside of locking the guards in every evening?"

"It looked like it worked," I said.

"I'm still here," he said, grinning. I made a show of flipping through my notes. I looked over at Justin and saw his hand beginning a tap-tap dance with a pencil, and I knew it was time to go. Sources and people you interview always tell you a lot, even if they don't say a single word. I could always come back or call later. I told him I was finished. He nodded and said, "I want to show you one more thing before you head out."

We went through the office again and Cassie looked up at me with a wide smile and said, "I do hope you get up here again, Mr. Cole. And I'll make sure to check on your magazine the next time I'm at a newsstand."

I gave her my "polite-but-I'm-interested-against-my-common-sense" smile and said, "Buy a subscription if you can. Believe me, the magazine could use it."

I was still hearing her laughter as Justin brought me into the gift shop. The two older ladies were in there, going through a rack of postcards, and there were a couple of kids with their noses pressed up against a display case. He stopped before a poster stand, one of those metal contraptions with cardboard backing that show posters that are for sale.

Justin said, "The director and trustees want to think the theft is behind us, and that we have to look forward to the future, but I know better. The public knows better." He started flipping through the poster display, the metal rods squeaking as he went past posters that showed a Monet, a Picasso and a photograph of the antique furniture from the second floor gallery.

"Here," he said, stopping for a moment. "Look at these.  These are prints of those paintings, done to exact size."

Even as posters, their colors were vibrant, and if I had been standing some distance away, they might have looked real. Justin's voice became dreamy again as he described each print, and his hands practically caressed the slick paper. The first showed a fisherman alone in a dory, out on a wide ocean, looking over his shoulder at a schooner on the horizon. He shared his dory with fish and gear. The sky was dark and menacing, with a cloudbank of sorts heading toward the distant schooner.