'It does?' The tone wasn't so much one of skepticism as of pleasurable anticipation: Now how the heck is this fast-talking Ph. D. going to con his way through this?
But I was telling the truth. 'Well, it's only in the last century or so that Vermeer's been considered one of the great painters. A hundred years ago his name would have been the one you scraped off a painting and replaced with a better-known one if you wanted to get a good price: Peter de Hooch's, for example. Or Terborch's, or Metsu's.'
'Is that right? I never heard of those guys.'
'Tastes change. As a matter of fact, Vermeer's most famous painting- The Artist in His Studio, in Vienna-still has a faked de Hooch signature on it. Even so, it brought only about ten dollars in the early 1800s.'
'No kidding,' he said with every indication of authentic interest. 'Boy, there's a lot to learn, isn't there?' He had come in wearing a huge quilted parka that engulfed him like a great puffy tent. Now he took it off and tossed it onto a chair. Underneath was the familiar worn cardigan. 'You almost made me forget what I came in to ask. What's your impression of Earl Flittner?'
'My impression?'
'You think he could be involved with the break-in?'
I had continued to look absently at the painting. Now I turned slowly to face him. 'You're kidding.'
'Well, I was just thinking about all those things he said at the meeting the other day-how the show is all propaganda, that stuff. You think the guy is anti-American, a Communist, maybe?'
Well-conditioned liberal that I am, I bristled at this evidence of the narrow, chauvinistic military mind at work. I had come to expect more of Harry. 'Just because he expressed some honest opinions doesn't make the guy an enemy of the republic, you know. Why ask me, anyway?'
'Well, I understand you knew him in the States. What about pro-Nazi feelings?'
'Nazi feelings? I can't believe you're serious.'
'Well, I'm not, exactiy,' he said, unoffended. 'I'm just, you know, exploring avenues.' He smiled. Under the heavy wool of the sweater his thin shoulders moved in a faint shrug. 'So you don't think he has any leanings like that?'
'All I know about him,' I said hotly, 'is that he's the best-' I stopped. Why in the world was I standing up so righteously for Earl Flittner? I relaxed and laughed. 'What he has,' I said, 'are curmudgeonly leanings. The guy just naturally likes to go against the grain. He's sent in some crank letters to The Artist and Artforum that are classics.'
Harry smiled. 'But not curmudgeonly enough to steal paintings?'
'Not as far as I know.'
'Well, I had a little more than that to go on.' His shrewd eyes watched me to see if I had any idea of what he meant. I didn't. 'Like what?'
But I wasn't in his confidence yet. 'Things. You know.' He turned briskly to the Vermeer. 'Chris, what made you think this one might not be authentic in the first place?'
'Peter told me; that is, he said one of them is a fake.' I told him about the conversation at Kranzler's. Harry listened intently, then made me repeat it while he made desultory notes in his little spiral-bound notebook.
'Son of a gun,' he said finally. 'And he wouldn't tell you which one it is?'
I shook my head.
'So now what? And Chris-' He held up his hands, warning me off. 'Don't tell me it takes an art expert to understand. Art experts are like psychiatrists; you can't get two of them to agree on anything.'
'Well,' I said, having no quarrel with him on that point, 'I usually start by looking for three things: Are the materials as old as they're supposed to be? Do they come from the place they're supposed to? And are the techniques the ones that were really in use when the painting's supposed to have been done? If those check out, I get down to individual styles, but that's a lot trickier.'
He stood looking at the Vermeer, scrunched up in the bulky sweater, his hands in the pockets. 'So take this one, for example. One of the things you'd want to find out is whether the paint on it was really available in Delft in the 1650s or 1660s-are my dates right?'
'On the button.'
He shrugged modestly. 'Well, I figured if I was going to get involved with this show, I better do some reading. Anyway, am I right?'
'You sure are. Most of the paint formulas used by theOld Masters have been chemically analyzed by now, so it's not hard to check and see if a particular painting has the right pigments-mixed in the right proportions.'
'Yeah, but if you can get the formulas, why can't the crooks?'
'They can, but we've still got the edge. They have to be sure every single substance they use is right, but if we can find even one that wasn't available till later, it's got to be a fake. And that goes for everything, not just the paints. If you're looking at what's supposed to be a fifteenth-century Flemish painting, and the stretcher bars turn out to be made of wood that's found only in America… well, you'd better look a little closer.'
'Sure, I see that. But-' He glanced around and pointed to Venus and the Lute Player. 'Titian, right? So when was that painted-1540, 1550?'
I nodded.
'Okay, so tell me: Does the frame look authentic to you?'
We walked up to the painting, and I ran my eyes over the curlicues and rosettes of the heavy gilded Renaissance frame.
'Yes.'
'Meaning it's from about the right time?'
'Uh-huh.'
'All right, say I wanted to push a fake Titian. Why couldn't I go into some little old out-of-the way church and steal some three- or four-hundred-year-old picture of a saint or something-there are millions of them-and then use the frame? Or even buy some old picture that wasn't worth that much, toss the painting, and put in the phony Titian instead?'
'It's not that easy. It's got to be from the right place, not just the right time. You'd need a frame that was made in Venice. One from Germany or Spain-or even Rome or Florence-wouldn't get you past an expert. And I'm not just talking about style; I'm talking about the right joinery techniques, the right nails-'
'OK, OK, but still…' Harry scowled and chewed his cheek, taking this as a personal challenge. 'OK, then, how about this? What's to stop me from finding some old piece of wood-say, a beam from a house built at the right time, or maybe a piece of furniture-and carving the damn frame myself?'
'First of all-'
'I know, I know. I'd have to be some kind of master carpenter, wouldn't I? And I'd need to make the right kind of glue, forge some handmade nails-'
'That'd be the easy part. The hard part would be figuring out how to carve an old piece of wood without making a new skin.'
'A new what?'
'When you cut into old wood, you can't help creating a fresh surface-a skin-that's 'young' to someone who knows what to look for.'
Harry blew out his lips. 'That's interesting.' He used 'interesting' a lot, drawing it out into four slow, respectful syllables: IN-ter-est-ing. 'Look, let me know what you find out. I guess it won't take very long, right?'
When I didn't say anything, he turned his head to look at me. 'Not right?'
'I don't know. A modern fake I could certainly spot. But I don't think that's what we have, and the older it gets, the harder it is to be sure.'
'Like, the new skin gets to be an old skin?'
'Right. And the scientific techniques get less reliable. And if what we have is one that's so old it's contemporary with the original and done by a first-rate artist to boot-say, a Terborch that's been converted into a 'Vermeer'-we've got problems.'
'Huh.' Musing, he picked up his coat. 'Hey, this has really been IN-ter-est-ing; I learned a lot. Listen, I want to ask you something. How come you didn't mention this forgery stuff before?' 'I didn't think of it.'
'You didn't think of it?' He chewed over the words slowly.
