Free Buy Back by Brian M Wiprud Page A

comp on the Web much higher than that.”
    I had done my homework and comped the goodies prior to arranging them to be gigged. There’s an art auction Web site where you can look up auction sales, how much works by various artists have gone for at Sotheby’s and other houses. Appraisers use the site. I have to pay for access, but that’s an easy write-off. All together the Hoffman, Le Marr, and Ramirez would have cost a million five to replace with comparable works by the same artist. A fence would pay at most ten cents to the dollar and like I said low-ball the value. With insurers the appraisals are aboveboard and verifiable, so I expect fifteen percent to settle an item. I should have been getting a hundred fifty grand, or even a hundred at the low end. My part of that would be forty, so after I paid Scanlon’s monkey I’d still be keeping my head above water.
    “Fifty.”
    “Max, that’s not a lot of incentive for the businessman with the goodies. He can maybe get that in swag without risking exposure.”
    “The industry is cutting fees. Looking at alternatives.”
    “What kind of alternatives?”
    “New deterrents. New recovery methods.”
    “Is my part in this being phased out? I’d like to know.”
    “You’re cozy.”
    “Cozy?”
    “Too cozy.”
    “I’m a clever guy, but not always smart. I don’t get what you’re saying.”
    “The missing Henris stank.”
    “Max, I had hoped we were past that.”
    “USA is not past having to do a partial settlement. We don’t pay so they can swag.”
    “Like I said, they only took four. Somebody at the museum must have taken the other three.”
    “Believe a thief?”
    “I do. They’re just people, Max. They’re business people who are interested in making money through mutual benefit, profitable relationships, and trust.”
    “You succeed because you are embedded with thieves.”
    “Unless the collectors and museums are magically able to protect their goodies, and keep some kind of proper inventory, the art is going to be stolen. How are you going to get the goodies back if you don’t find the goofballs who took them?”
    “What if there were no more goofballs?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t follow.”
    “If the stealing stops, the payouts stop.”
    “How’s that going to happen?”
    “Alternatives.”
    I don’t know if you noticed, but we’d come in a circle, which meant to me he had told me as much as he was going to.
    “Well, in this case, your alternatives may be very limited by the fifty figure. This goofball already has a buyer, and the art may already have changed hands, meaning I may have to step beyond my target and go after whoever he sold it to. My costs go up with that, not down. And here you want to pay less.”
    “A fence?”
    “Probably.”
    “I hear there’s one less.”
    “One less?”
    “One less fence.”
    I’d forgotten to look in the paper about Jo-Ball’s head explosion, and was sure that they would have reported that he was the beloved maître d’ of Dominic’s, Brooklyn’s favorite Italian eatery. Max, of course, knew better.
    “That’s true.”
    “I hear you were there.”
    “I was.”
    “Why?”
    I shrugged. “Keeping my ear to the ground. That’s what I do.”
    “So do we.”
    I didn’t know if he was implying anything, like that they’d heard I was shopping and settling. To have asked him what he meant might tip my mitt, so I brushed aside the remark.
    “I’ll do my best with the fifty, but that figure is a low percentage play.”
    “Maybe your percentage is too high.”
    I wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of imposing his negativity, even though I had a brief fantasy of folding the little Japanese table in half on his head.
    “My percentage is what it is. Like yours.”
    His chopsticks actually paused, causing his eating interval to change from forty seconds to forty-five.
    “Mine?”
    “Everybody has their percentage. I earn mine, so I get mine. My fees are based on the comps