The Great California Game

he was.

“What if I ignore your information? Or simply use it free?”

With some people doubt’s an industry. It was a long way to LA, and time was running out.

He pressed a buzzer, spoke into an intercom. “Get Mr Feldstein and send for Mortimant —”

“Unbuzz your lawyers, Mr Mangold, or I pretend you’ve misunderstood and you’ll look a prat.”

He hesitated, a lifetime’s habit, reluctantly concurred.

“And the recorder, please.” I held out my hand for the tape. He tried telling me it erased automatically, but I didn’t continue until he’d lifted the tape from his drawer and placed it on my palm. I continued with my true story.

“Everybody knows the story. How the English Lord bought the fourteen ancient Roman silvers, illegally acquired via Lebanon from Yugoslavia. All in contravention of UNESCO’s embargo on smuggled antiques. The British Antique Dealers’ Association 1984 Code was also broken. No wonder Christie’s was furious!” I smiled pleasantly, all Edward G. Robinson. “They hate to be confused with arch-rivals, right?”

“Sure.” He was weighing me up. “You have evidence?”

“Who needs evidence?” I asked in all seriousness. “Mudslinging auctioneers don’t.” I held the delay, then said, “Do they, Mr Mangold?”

“This information, properly used, could seriously damage even a firm as famous as, say, Sotheby’s. Or Christie’s.”

He meant improperly, but I let it pass.

“True. Like that terrible Louvre Affair, eh?”

“The Louvre Affair?”

“Spelled as in Poussin, Mr Mangold. Can I refresh your memory by quoting, ‘The Louvre stopped at nothing in its effort to swindle honest people’…?”

Once upon a twenty-five years ago, a Nicholas Poussin painting of 1628 was auctioned by a French engineer. The auctioneers paid him a measly two hundred quid for it, offhandedly telling the owner it was an el cheapo Bologna-school effort. The engineer was sad, of course—but even sadder when the papers blazoned news of the Louvre’s fabulous discovery of (surprise surprise!) his selfsame Olympos painting! Except it was now rare, authentic, and priceless…

As Mangold feverishly tried to keep up, wondering about possible links with his rivals, I listed others for him where the Louvre and other galleries had misbehaved.

“A really malicious person could remember that terrible episode where a certain poor convent sued the Louvre—which had just paid half a million for that famous Lorenzo Lotto masterpiece, the one the Catholic nunnery had just sold for seventy measly dollars, on certain auctioneers’ advice.” I tutted, doing a lot of head wagging to show how I deplored all this. “Fair profit’s fair profit, Mr Mangold. But that’s too many percents for me. And I’ll bet the papers’ll think the same, if you happen to refresh their memories.”

He licked his lips. I’d got him, on his own lifeline.

“There are links between famous auction houses and auctioneers who arrange first sales, Mr Mangold. The pattern’s there. It’s up to you to bring them to the public’s attention. Viciously, savagely. The public understands ruthless greed, but likes to deplore it in others.” I heaved a sigh, in memory of poor old Sokolowsky. “I just can’t help feeling sad over that forthcoming announcement of lawsuits that will be brought against Sotheby’s of New York.” I stood, smiled. “Well, thanks for your time, Mr Mangold —”

He quivered like a greyhound hearing the hare. “Lawsuits?”

I sat. “Didn’t you hear? Well, I hate to be the bearer of really bad news, but it’s just that the antiques dealers in the UK are fed up. So’re the ones on the Continent. Tomorrow there’ll be a media salvo about chandelier bidding, from the Antique Internationalers, in London.”

He thought that one through. “But any AI member who made that protest would…”

“Be driven into the ground by the biggies? Course it would. But it’ll happen, sure as God sends Sunday. Unless you don’t want it to.”

“You wouldn’t link Mangold’s with an outrageous —”

“Never. We’ve got somebody else, who’ll do it for a fee. It’s all fixed.”

He subsided, said slowly, “That will inflict irrevocable damage on them. Immediate.”

Not so outrageous after all. We both thought over the history of recent doubts. They centred on what the trade now calls “Bond borrowing”, and please note the capital.

It came to light when Van Gogh’s painting Irises went up at a Sotheby’s auction. (Incidentally, why is it always poor old Vincent who catches the bad glad? It’s high time some other poor sod had a go.) A mere $53.9 million won the hammer, as we say, for brave Aussie Mr Bond. Everybody was thrilled, especially auctioneers everywhere. And why? Because prices were through the roof, and so was their commission. The trouble was, half the gelt was borrowed. Guess who from? Why, the auctioneers themselves!

The world outcry was followed by instant explanations, that the world’s top auction houses hadn’t deliberately intended to drive up the prices of art works by a secret loan, that Sotheby’s policies would change, et yawnsome cetera. Worst of all, the art market went gaga.

“Art dealers began to ask if the Museum of Modern Art would have paid so high for the next Van Gogh, if Picasso’s self-portrait would have touched forty-eight million dollars, all that jazz.”

“Names?”

I passed him a list of the international dealers who’d complained to the press.

“You’ll combine your diatribe with all sorts of veiled accusations of complicity, naturally. You’ll ask why Thyssen