Free Hot Art by Joshua Knelman

Brighton, where Paul had grown up. Paul told me that to understand the foundations of the global black market in art, it was necessary to take a closer look at Brighton as it was before all the art and antiques started to disappear. As he likes to say, “All roads lead back to Brighton.”
    Wasn’t Brighton a nice little resort town with a view of the sea?
    â€œBrighton and hot art fit hand in glove,” he said. He was a pro and knew exactly how to reel me in. “How did I learn to become an art thief? We have to go back to my teenage years. Most people live a mundane life, and the prospect of some kind of danger excites them. The general population doesn’t come into contact with criminals unless they put in a DVD .” On that note, he said that if his story were a movie, it might begin the same way that Goodfellas does, with the camera panning in from above to a close-up on his face as a kid on the streets of Brighton, his adult voice narrating the scene: “Ever since I was boy, I always knew I wanted to be an antiques dealer.” Just like any boy hungry to make his mark on the world, what Paul needed was an education.
    At about the same time that I began talking to Paul, I also began my phone conversations with Detective Donald Hrycyk. Paul was the flip side of the coin to Hrycyk.

5 .
    TRAINING DAYS
    â€œSuddenly I’m walking into museums and galleries asking questions. I was dealing with the rich and the powerful, the most influential people of the city.”
DONALD HRYCYK
    T HE LOS Angeles Police Academy is tucked into the hills of Elysian Park, around the corner from Dodger Stadium. From the window of the Impala, Detective Donald Hrycyk pointed out the sunny hills filled with cicada trees. He knew them well: he’d had to run up and down the slopes as a rookie. He spent four months training here after being accepted into the academy in 1974.
    â€œPolice built this place,” he said, as he pulled into the grand driveway that cut through the trees and opened up into a spacious parking lot. At first glance the academy looks like a hotel. The grounds are protected from the city by the hills and shaded by soaring palm trees. There’s even a swimming pool, and at the gift shop the soundtrack to Top Gun was playing: “Danger Zone,” by Kenny Loggins.
    Hrycyk was born in New York but grew up in the L.A. suburbs. His parents came from an area on the border of Poland and the Ukraine, which they fled during World War II . They were pushed around a few different refugee camps, found a sponsor, and arrived in New York, where they stayed for a time. “My parents divorced,” Hrycyk told me. “I never knew my father, and, in fact, I think he ended up in Canada. My mother worked a number of menial jobs, everything from cleaning to dental assistant. She’s the one who moved us to Long Beach.” Hrycyk bought a muscle car—a meridian turquoise blue Pontiac GTO . He drove it to California State University, Long Beach, where he studied criminology, and then he applied to the academy.
    â€œWhen I went through here, there were a lot of Vietnam vets. The department wanted ex-military experience, and in fact it had a militaristic organizational structure. One of my instructors wore his LAPD uniform by day; by night he wore his Marine Corps uniform.”
    Down the hall from the gift shop, a half-empty diner was populated by beefy-looking young men in LAPD T-shirts, a few officers in uniform, and some older detectives in slacks and sports jackets. We sat at a table under a photograph of the first fleet of radio-equipped police cars, circa 1931. They looked like new toys, black and shining. There was no graffiti in the washroom.
    After he graduated, Hrycyk found himself in the middle of the gang wars raging across the southeast of the city, where he drove a black-and-white cruiser. He bounced around divisions for a few years working tough neighbourhoods, mostly