Part 9 (1/2)

Over the years Leif Lier, the detective in charge of the Norwegian end of the Scream Scream case, had come to know Enger well. A patient man whose forbearance would be remarkable even if he were not a cop, Lier shrugged off Enger's antics. ”Enger was a pain in the neck from time to time,” Lier acknowledged, ”but he was funny, too.” case, had come to know Enger well. A patient man whose forbearance would be remarkable even if he were not a cop, Lier shrugged off Enger's antics. ”Enger was a pain in the neck from time to time,” Lier acknowledged, ”but he was funny, too.”

On April 12, two months after the theft of The Scream The Scream, Enger's wife gave birth to a baby boy. The proud father placed a notice in Enger's wife gave birth to a baby boy. The proud father placed a notice in Dagbladet Dagbladet. The baby had arrived, the birth announcement declared, ”With a Scream!” The baby had arrived, the birth announcement declared, ”With a Scream!”

24.

Prop Trap MAY 6, 1994.

Charley Hill had more pressing problems to deal with than Pl Enger's games with the Norwegian police. Hill's primary goal was to retrieve The Scream The Scream. Everything else, including finding someone to arrest, was less important. That was Hill's approach to all his art cases. The question that truly engaged him was whereisit whereisit, not whodunit whodunit. His Art Squad colleagues tended to agree, but many cops did not. Hill's focus on pieces of canvas rather than on criminals, they insisted, amounted to condoning theft. Even a hint of that argument launched Hill into a tirade on ”bureaucrats in blue” and police shortsightedness.

Life would be easy if you could recover the painting and and arrest the thieves. But it didn't usually work like that. Which do you want, Hill would shout, a hubcap thief thrown in prison for six months or a Bruegel back on the wall where the world can admire it? arrest the thieves. But it didn't usually work like that. Which do you want, Hill would shout, a hubcap thief thrown in prison for six months or a Bruegel back on the wall where the world can admire it?

Just how the art dealer and his arsonist companion had come to be involved with The Scream The Scream in the first place was something Hill could sort out another day. For now, Hill's job was to get things back on track. His first meetings with Johnsen and Ulving had gone well enough, he figured, and Johnsen had certainly swallowed hard when Walker showed him the money. But what had the Norwegian duo made of the police convention at the hotel and the plainclothes cop in the bulletproof vest? in the first place was something Hill could sort out another day. For now, Hill's job was to get things back on track. His first meetings with Johnsen and Ulving had gone well enough, he figured, and Johnsen had certainly swallowed hard when Walker showed him the money. But what had the Norwegian duo made of the police convention at the hotel and the plainclothes cop in the bulletproof vest?

Johnsen had left the Plaza in a hurry, saying he would return in midafternoon, leaving Hill to twiddle his thumbs. Hill hoped the Norwegian crook was busy with his partners, whoever they were, sorting out the logistics of handing over The Scream The Scream. If the deal was still on, that is. The fiasco with the police convention had certainly spooked Johnsen, and it might have scared him away altogether.

Hill tried to look at things from Johnsen's point of view. On the one hand, the money. On the other, a hotel crawling with cops and a deal put together by two strangers. Who were were Roberts and Walker? Roberts and Walker?

With time to kill before Johnsen reappeared, Ulving suggested that he show Hill around town. Before they set out, the art dealer gestured to Hill to join him at the back of his Mercedes station wagon. Ulving opened a big box full of prints, including some woodcuts of The Scream The Scream. Hill couldn't tell if they were genuine, but they looked good. Then the two men headed off for a bit of gallery-hopping. Ulving, in his element, bounced along proudly. He was a ”slimeball,” Hill thought, c.o.c.ky as h.e.l.l and oblivious to the sneers and scowls directed his way by his fellow dealers as he sauntered through Oslo's galleries.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, Ulving and Hill returned to the hotel to see if Johnsen had showed up. They met Walker and settled in at the coffee bar to wait. About 15 minutes later, Johnsen stormed in.

”There's cops all around the building,” he snapped, ”and police cars parked outside. Two of 'em, at least.”

Johnsen was furious, spitting out his words. Hill hadn't known about the Norwegians' plan to keep an eye on things, but he was as soothing and unruffled as Johnsen was indignant. ”Let's go up to my room,” Hill said. ”I've got a bottle of Canadian Club up there, and we can talk.”

Hill's room was on the sixteenth floor with a knockout view of the harbor and, what was more interesting to Johnsen, a clear view of the hotel's main entrance. Johnsen and Hill stood together at the window. They looked down, and there was no missing the cops. Hill groaned to himself. The f.u.c.kers were in unmarked cars, lounging around in the sun, bored out of their minds and impossible to take for anything but police surveillance officers.

Johnsen looked at the cops and then glared at Hill. ”What's that about?” he demanded.

Hill decided he'd stick with the same line he'd taken to explain away the cop in the bulletproof vest. If the Norwegian surveillance teams had been skilled-if they'd been well-concealed and Johnsen had managed to spot them anyway-then he would have had some explaining to do. But incompetence like this was a gift. These guys couldn't couldn't be trying to hide. be trying to hide.

”Look at those a.s.sholes down there,” Hill said. ”They can't be looking for us, because n.o.body could have missed us wandering all over the hotel. They've got to be here to protect the narcotics conference.”

Everyone sat down to a drink. Ulving begged off. Hill's opinion of him sank even lower. Johnsen and Hill each took a serious drink, a large Canadian Club, and talked about the merits of rye whiskey compared to scotch or bourbon. Keep it relaxed, Hill told himself. Take it slow.

Hill stood up and walked into the bathroom. In the morning, he had arranged his papers and his traveling kit with all the care of a set dresser on a Broadway play. Setting out a ”prop trap” was a kind of silent storytelling. Hill had stacked a few business cards near his bedside lamp: Christopher Charles Roberts, Getty Museum. He had set his plane tickets by the phone, peeking out from a torn envelope; his Getty ID lay nearby, with a photo. On the desk, a few pieces of Getty stationery. Under an ashtray, a couple of crumpled credit card receipts, signed by Christopher Roberts. On top of the receipts, half a dollar or so in change, in American coins.

Hill had taken similar care with his toiletries kit, in case Johnsen (or, much less likely, Ulving) went into the bathroom and looked through his things. Shaving cream, deodorant, toothpaste, all good American brands.

The preparation paid off. As soon as Hill shut the bathroom door behind him, Walker told him later, ”Johnsen had a good ferret ”round.” Though the crook had waited for Hill to leave the room, he made no attempt to disguise his snooping. For his part, Hill made a point of dawdling in the bathroom, to give Johnsen every opportunity to check him out.

Hill finally reappeared. Johnsen didn't make any reference to the little test he'd conducted, but he seemed more at ease and began to talk again about how to carry out the Scream Scream deal. It had to be done that night, he said. Hill and Walker would have to bring the money to a rendezvous. He'd let them know where. deal. It had to be done that night, he said. Hill and Walker would have to bring the money to a rendezvous. He'd let them know where.

Hill balked. ”Nope!” he said. ”We're not taking the money out of the hotel until I'm a.s.sured that the painting is is the painting and that it's fine. We'll do the deal after that.” the painting and that it's fine. We'll do the deal after that.”

They wrangled for a bit. Johnsen left to make a phone call-he didn't want to use the phone in Hill's room-and came back a few minutes later, worried but still hopeful. For Hill, this wary jostling was sport. You had to stay alert and watchful, but there was no way of knowing just what you were watching for for. In the meantime, you talked, partly to establish a bond, partly to pa.s.s the time, but mainly to amuse yourself.

Every case reached a point where the next move was up to the thieves and there was nothing the cops could do to hurry things along. Hill tried to relax and take life as it came. It took work, for though Hill was a brave man, he wasn't a calm one. Off-duty, the moment a conversation lost its hold on him-and that moment was rarely slow in coming-Hill would start jiggling his keys, or twirling his gla.s.ses, or scanning the room in search of a book to pick up or a television to turn on or a magazine to skim.

Undercover, Hill's fidgeting vanished. If the bad guys asked a question, you went along, looking to see if you could come up with something new. A drink or two helped. The fog-not knowing the rules of the game, or if there were were rules, or just who you were dealing with-was part of the undercover challenge. Spinning a story for high stakes was a chance to exercise one's powers. When it worked, it was enjoyable in the same way that it was enjoyable for a sprinter to run or a skier to carve a line through a turn. rules, or just who you were dealing with-was part of the undercover challenge. Spinning a story for high stakes was a chance to exercise one's powers. When it worked, it was enjoyable in the same way that it was enjoyable for a sprinter to run or a skier to carve a line through a turn.

Ulving asked Hill about the Getty and about his responsibilities there. Hill made it up as he went along. He hadn't seen any of the new construction at the museum-his only visit had been twenty years before-but when he learned that Ulving hadn't either, he laid it on thick. ”When you visit the States, you have to come see us. And make sure you give me a call. If I'm not there, tell them you're a friend of mine, and they'll look after you.”

That kind of ”lightweight bulls.h.i.+t banter” was Hill's favorite. It kept the tedium at bay and sometimes it even helped move things along.

For Hill, the enemy always lurking in the wings, more formidable than any thief, was boredom. The great virtue of undercover work was that, temporarily at least, it provided a means of vanquis.h.i.+ng his old foe.

25.

First Time Undercover By the time The Scream The Scream was stolen, Charley Hill had been an undercover cop for a dozen years. His very first undercover case, like the great majority of those that followed, had involved a stolen painting. (In most of the nonart cases, including one where he was taken hostage, Hill played a crook who wanted to buy counterfeit money.) The decision to give Hill a chance in an art case was easy. He was well-spoken, he didn't look like a cop, and he had been a soldier and therefore could presumably keep his head. Above all, he was game. was stolen, Charley Hill had been an undercover cop for a dozen years. His very first undercover case, like the great majority of those that followed, had involved a stolen painting. (In most of the nonart cases, including one where he was taken hostage, Hill played a crook who wanted to buy counterfeit money.) The decision to give Hill a chance in an art case was easy. He was well-spoken, he didn't look like a cop, and he had been a soldier and therefore could presumably keep his head. Above all, he was game.

In 1982 Scotland Yard had infiltrated a gang of armed robbers in south London. Somehow the thieves had acquired a painting by the sixteenth-century Italian Parmigianino, worth a few million pounds. The crooks wanted to unload it, and the cops saw an opportunity. A pair of detectives in the armed robbery squad took a look at Charley Hill and sounded him out about a role he would later make his own. How would he feel about posing as an American art dealer willing to buy a hot painting?

How would he feel? Hill's early days walking a beat hadn't been bad, but that a.s.signment had been followed by a frustrating stint sitting at a desk shuffling papers. Hill had been trapped, like a soldier detailed to filling out endless forms in triplicate. Now someone had set him free. ”I felt the way I had when I'd been given a weekend pa.s.s from Fort Bragg,” Hill recalled. ”I saw Bragg Boulevard and Fayetteville, North Carolina, as it was years ago. It all came back. It was like the relief of going home.”

First stop, clothes. Hill whirled around London, flitting from shop to shop. Subtlety, he had decided, would be a mistake. ”I thought I should put myself in the place of the people meeting me and give them what they wanted.” That meant something ”fancy and flashy, some kind of half-a.s.sed cross between a celebrity chef and a Virginia preppy, horsey type.” In ordinary life, these were people Hill happily mocked. Now, with an excuse to abandon his English decorum, he combed through suit after suit in search of just the right degree of raffishness. Tie or bowtie? What color socks best set off a pair of spanking new loafers?

When he wasn't shopping, Hill was studying. Parmigianino was a mannerist, he learned, which meant he had better read up on mannerism. Why did Parmigianino distort his subjects' proportions in such odd ways, stretching his madonna's neck so that it could never support her head, depicting fingers longer and thinner than any seen in nature? Parmigianino appears in Vasari's Lives of the Artists Lives of the Artists, Hill found, and he set out to learn the biographical basics as well. Soon he could hold forth on the golden youth, ”more like an angel than a man,” who at 16 turned out paintings that reduced older artists to awe and envy.

Hill's undercover career began at Heathrow Airport, where he had (supposedly) just landed after a Concorde flight from New York. This was theater on the cheap-Scotland Yard hadn't sprung for a plane ticket, but British Air had churned out the proper paperwork and slapped the appropriate tags on Hill's bags. He'd studied the Concorde menu, too, in case the conversation veered that way. Hill emerged from the arrival area looking dapper and rested, as befit someone whose flight had taken only a few hours.

Waiting to meet him were three people: one of the Parmigianino thieves, the thief's girlfriend, and an East End gangster who knew the American art dealer and could vouch for him. The ”gangster” was in fact Sid Walker, and the job marked the first time Hill and Walker had worked together. The meet-and-greet small talk went off well. To Hill's delight, the meeting seemed to be playing out just like a scene from a Hollywood film, complete with a crook and his moll. Life behind a desk didn't come close.

The little group sat down for a get-acquainted drink. Hill, flush with cash, made a point of flas.h.i.+ng a wad of greenbacks as he fumbled through his pockets looking for pound notes. The thief seemed to take to Hill, but his girlfriend held back. Hill and Walker chatted away like old friends. The thief made a pa.s.sing reference to someone who had lost his nerve. Hill jumped in. ”You mean,” he said, ”his a.r.s.ehole went sixpence half a crown.”

The phrase was not an idiom but a kind of compressed joke. A sixpence is roughly the size of a dime and a half crown is close to a silver dollar. Hill had heard the expression a few days before, and it had stuck in his mind. ”I just blurted it out,” he said later, ”because this was my first undercover job and I was in tough-guy-talk mode. And as soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized, My G.o.d, an American would never never say anything like that. He wouldn't say 'a.r.s.ehole,' he wouldn't talk about crowns and sixpence. Jesus! say anything like that. He wouldn't say 'a.r.s.ehole,' he wouldn't talk about crowns and sixpence. Jesus!

”And so I immediately said, 'That's what you'd say over here, isn't it?' to cover my tracks, as if I'd been joking. And they all laughed. The one who laughed the most, of course, so everyone would join in, was Sid. But he hadn't laughed when I came out with that.”

Walker already had a towering reputation in Scotland Yard. Hill's narrow escape from self-inflicted disaster impressed him. Maybe the new kid had the makings of an undercover cop.

Hill ordered another round of drinks. Then the party swept off downtown, to Grosvenor House, the hotel on Park Lane, to drop Hill at his room. The room was real, unlike the plane flight, but this stop was entirely for show. Guests at Grosvenor House had money to spare. If Hill stayed here, he was a player.

After dark, Walker swung by the hotel in a long blue Mercedes. The two cops ate dinner and Walker took Hill through various scenarios he might encounter when he met with the thieves again. Then they set off to a midnight rendezvous with the thieves on the eastern outskirts of London. After an hour's wait at Falconwood train station in Kent, the crook from the airport showed up.

He and Hill drove off. Walker stayed behind. After endless twists and detours intended to throw off any surveillance and disorient Hill, they reached a large pseudo-Tudor house. Inside they met a new man. A standard feature of life undercover was that characters came and went without explanation, and detectives had to depend on their intuition and experience to guess who was who. Hill put the new man's age at about sixty. He looked like an extra from The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather, and he seemed to be in charge. Out came a bottle of Remy Martin, and with it, a stream of questions directed at Hill. Who was he?

Hill made it up as he went along, though he told the truth when he could. No one mentioned art; this was about Hill, not the nature of Raphael's influence on Parmigianino. Hill found that stories about Vietnam went over well. This was a double bonus because it was rich territory and also safely outside the experience of a pair of English crooks.

Hill told the story of the first time he had come under serious fire. He had been in Vietnam about two weeks, in remote country in the central highlands. Hill was in the lead platoon making its way up a steep hill. ”And then all this s.h.i.+t came flying down at us from the North Vietnamese-intense fire from AK-47s. About half the men in my squad were hit straight away. I hit the ground because I'd never experienced that in my life before. Whatever training you've done, nothing actually prepares you for that moment. You think, 's.h.i.+t, I'm going to die die here!' here!'