ENDNOTES

1) I got information about the Unicorn Tapestries from http://www.unicornlady.net . There are many additional sites that I visited to learn about the tapestries. http://victorian.fortunecity.com/eliot/452/tapestry.html has some great pictures of them.

‘The Unicorn Tapestries’ is a real book, but I made up the part about what the caption on the seventh tapestry is.

2) Info about Admiral Raeder’s naval dirks is from http://www.wwiidaggers.com/SPO.htm (Note: I wrote the above in late 2003 or early 2004 and recently noticed that information is gone from that site. Apparently the dirk described there has been sold.)

3) The paintings and Walter Scott novels that Mr. Steele helped fictionally recover are all real (not the royal lavulite mosaic, of course, though see B. below) and have the histories given in that first hospital scene where Laura shows Murphy her notes. In actuality, however, they were recovered at much later dates than 1983, the time of this story. I suppose someone stole them again after Mr. Steele aided the police. He claims not to be responsible for that, however. :-)

A. “Water Lilies, 1904.” Monet. Recovered in 1998:

During a 1998 visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Jonathan Petropoulos, the art and cultural property research director for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, recognized Monet’s “Water Lilies, 1904.” Taken from French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, the painting was part of a collection amassed for Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1941. The Monet had been registered in a French museum as an unclaimed stolen work and traveled to the U.S. as part of a special exhibition, “Monet in the 20th Century.”

B. Walter Scott novels stolen by Hitler’s army from the study of Tsar Alexander I in the Yekaterinsky Palace have never been recovered. Neither have most of the contents of the palace’s famed eighteenth century “Amber Room,” which was dismantled by the Germans. In a further search on that topic, I came up with the fact that amber mosaics had been stolen. Of course, none were encrusted with royal lavulite. In 2000, ending years of wrangling, Germany returned to Russia one of two known pieces from the Amber Room, an intricate mosaic made of amber. Also included in the return was an early chest of drawers that was part of the room's original furnishings. The name “Amber Room“ came from the splendid panels of amber that originally lined the walls of the room.

C. “Portrait of Christ.” Jacopo de Barbari. Recovered in 1999:

The painting not only has the history mentioned in the hospital scene, but also the history told by Mando to Desco at their first meeting in this story, up until the point where it got into the hands of the furniture restorer. In actuality, the furniture restorer, Frank J. Vaccaro, was arrested and sentenced to community service after trying to sell it back to the Weimar city museum, from where it had originally been stolen, for a finder’s fee.

D. Dürer drawing. Two of his drawings, as well as a drawing by Rembrandt, all recovered in 2001, have the history mentioned by Mando to Desco during their second meeting in this story. Actually, after being at the Baku Museum in Azerbaijan, they were stolen once again and ultimately wound up in the hands of a Japanese wrestler who was trying to raise money for a kidney transplant! I decided that might sound too unbelievable if I put that into the story. The drawings have been returned to the Bremen Museum in Germany from where they were originally stolen.

4) “The Portrait of Pastor Adrianus Tegularius.” Frans Hals. Recovered 1990. It never belonged to anyone named Goldschmidt. Below are some facts about it.

This painting’s recovery generated some controversy:

From Art in America, Sept, 2001, by Raphael Rubinstein:

On July 6, a French court convicted Adam Williams, former head of Newhouse Galleries in New York, for handling a stolen painting, Frans Hals's ‘Portrait of Pastor Adrianus Tegularius (1655-60),’ which was taken by the Nazis from Paris art collector Adolphe Schloss in 1943. The Hals was sold at auction in New York and London several times in the 1960s and '70s without the knowledge of the Schloss heirs. In 1989, Williams bought it at Christie's in London for $180,000. The following year he took the painting to an art fair in Paris, where it was recognized by one of the heirs and confiscated by the police. Williams claims to have been unaware of the painting's illicit history, but French prosecutors charged that its provenance was well known. After the British-born dealer was acquitted at his first trial, the decision was appealed. Williams faced up to five years in prison, but the court gave him an eight-month suspended sentence and ordered the Hals to be turned over to Adolphe Schloss's heirs.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

5) Re the Braque painting and faked provenance (although the following story takes place after the events in my fictional one, the principle holds):

A 20th-Century Master Scam.

Source: New York Times Magazine (0028-7822); Volume: 148; Issue: 51587; Date: 1999

The July 18^th, 1999 issue of the NY Times Magazine has an article exposing art forger John Myatt. Myatt, a local art teacher in England, discovered in 1986 that he has an amazing ability to paint in the style of numerous 20th century masters such as Braque, Picasso, and Klee. Enter a con artist named John Drewe, who began to sell Myatt's work through various major auction houses and galleries. Drewe was a brilliant forger himself, in that he looted museum libraries and national archives for material that would permit the creation of seemingly ironclad provenances. The scheme toppled when a former lover of Drewe's tipped off Scotland Yard about Drewe's activities.

Myatt apparently produced some 200 works, many of which sold for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Due in part to Drewe's clever bogus provenances, numerous art experts failed to notice that all of Myatt's works were done in ordinary acrylic housepaint mixed with KY Jelly.

The many formidable lines of defense were easily breached: art experts, museums, galleries, dealers, and archive curators were all fooled. The article notes some experts believe that anywhere from 10% to 40% of works by significant artists for sale are fakes.

Though what I put into this story as Jack Ritt’s story may sound fantastic, the process of his forgeries is closely based upon what Drewe actually did. (Other things like foul play, etc., are purely a fabrication of my twisted imagination.) And wouldn’t you know it, someone else thought this an interesting story, too – I understand it’s going to be made into a movie. I guess they won’t listen to me if I tell them they can’t – I had the idea to use it in my story first!

I am not, however, implying that anything like these events involved LACMA in any way – that is pure fiction on my part.

6) You can see the Horch at http://www.bellesdantan.com/Horch/Pages/Horch1.htm

7) The remarks about John Hewitt that Nevan shied away from are a paraphrase of a snatch of a comment made by Barra Ó Séaghdha while reviewing ‘In the Chair: Interviews with Poets from the North of Ireland.’ (Jonn Brown, ed., Salmon 2002).

I had a lot of fun doing research for this story. It’s amazing what one can pick up on the web. Information about:

Rubies. Clothing. Unicorns. Irish and German Folk Tales. Nazi handguns. Mansions and castles. LACMA and its movie schedules (had to call to find they don’t sell concessions, though <g> ). Landscaping in L.A. The sights in L.A. Con schemes. Artwork. Nazi plundering of artwork. Provenance research (see LACMA’s site, for example). Binoculars. How alarm systems and motion sensors work. How to cut power to a house, pick locks, and break into safes. Tree climbing. Aerial ropeways. What type of searches and interrogation police can do when. Handcuffing procedures. How injured arrestees are treated and where (thanks to a reply by the Beverly Hills Police Department). What real private investigators do in an investigation. The fact that a forensics lab can determine if a lock has been picked. Dogs. Symptoms of infection of dog bites and how they’re treated. Road maps. How long a D.A. in CA has to bring charges. What videotapes were available when. What soap operas were on in 1983. Etc.

Anyway, I tried to go for accuracy as much as I was able, though I admit to some fudging. For example, I don’t know if Steele would be awarded those recovery fees and didn’t want to find out he wouldn’t. In any case, he probably wouldn’t have gotten them that quickly. I don’t know if the mayor would have held a reception for him. I doubt “Nurse Ratched” could really keep a bunch of reporters away from Steele’s bedside. I also don’t know what kind of wards are at the Medical Center at the L.A. County Jail. I did find out that such facilities are generally of one of two types: prisoners are in small locked rooms unrestrained, or they’re in larger wards handcuffed to steel bars. I couldn’t get through to this one in particular. I always got a voice message when I called, saying the operators were all busy, and when I wrote them, no one replied (no e-mail address). I decided it wasn’t worth any more effort and so chose the one better for the story. I decided it’d be easier to get Laura onto a ward than into a locked room. Assuming, of course, she could get into either!

Again, I make no claim of infallibility, so if you are sure some ‘fact’ is wrong, let me know and I will look into it. Unless, of course, it’s something I consciously took creative license with: there are some other things I consciously fudged but am not telling you about. :-)

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Original content copyrighted by Margaret Daniels 2004

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