Priceless Page 5

  In March 1990, all that changed. Thieves hit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and made off with a bounty that dwarfed every other art crime in American history.

  I was not involved in the initial Gardner investigation.

  I was too busy recuperating and mourning a loss. I was also looking for a good defense lawyer.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE ACCIDENT

  Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 1989.

  “SIR? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, SIR? SIR?”

  The voice in my left ear sounded firm, polite. My eyes bolted open and I found myself staring at the gray seat belt across my chest. I lifted my chin and stared through a cracked windshield. I could see we’d hit a tree, and it had split the front bumper. Instinctively, I checked my hands for blood. Nothing. Wow, that wasn’t so bad. And … I’m alive! I switched off the ignition. I looked to my right to check on my partner and best friend, Denis Bozella. His seat was wedged backward and nearly flat. Denis was moaning.

  “Sir? Sir?” It was that voice again. “Sir? What’s your name, sir?”

  I turned slowly to my left. A Cherry Hill cop leaned in the window. “Bob,” I said. “I’m Bob. Bob Wittman.”

  “OK, sit tight, Bob. We’re going to get you out,” the cop said, warming his hands on his breath. The paramedics and firefighters were only a few minutes away, he said. They were going to have to use the Jaws of Life to get us out. “We’re going to take the roof off and give you a convertible for free.”

  I grunted and tried to get a better look at Denis. I started to unbuckle my seat belt and winced at the pain in my left side. I wheezed. I tried to lift the door handle, but it was jammed. Frozen air blew through the broken windows. I closed my eyes and thought about Donna. In the distance, I could hear a siren. Jesus, it was cold.

  I heard Denis moan again. I turned but I couldn’t see his face. “Denis? … Denis? Can you hear me, buddy?”

  He spoke weakly. “What happened?”

  “A car cut us off.”

  “My chest hurts. I’m not going to die, am I?”

  “No!” I caught the panic in my voice and calmed myself. “We’ll both be fine, partner. We’re gonna be fine.”

  I held his hand. I heard more sirens and closed my eyes.

  The day had begun with such promise.

  IT HAD BEGUN an hour before dawn, as I drew myself out of bed, careful not to disturb Donna or our two sons, nursery-schoolers obsessed with counting the final days until Christmas. Overnight, a light snow had laid a fresh thin layer across the frozen remnants of a week-old storm. I showered, made coffee, and put on my uniform—dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, leather holster, and .357 Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver. As I walked toward the front door I smelled the piney evergreen of the Christmas tree. I plugged in the white tree lights.

  I was my happiest in years. I had a dynamic wife, two healthy boys, and a dream job with civil service protection and benefits. Donna loved our three-bedroom home nestled in the Pine Barrens, the burnt orange Southwestern decor, the half-hour drive to the Jersey shore. We’d just celebrated the first anniversary of my first FBI post. Like most rookies, I’d been shifted between squads every few months to get a feel for different work. In the summer, I’d moved from the property theft squad, where I’d partnered with Bazin, to the public corruption squad, where I was paired with Denis. A rising star with brown curly hair and piercing green eyes, he was an extrovert from the hills of western Pennsylvania. His rakish charm easily won over fellow agents, supervisors, prosecutors, witnesses, and the ladies. We bonded when we spent several months prepping for a high-profile police corruption trial, sometimes babysitting witnesses in hotel rooms. It was nearly 24/7 work. You drove the witnesses everywhere, took them to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to prosecutors’ offices and the courthouse. Denis and I both liked to play piano, and sometimes after work I’d give him an informal lesson. Lately, I was teaching him Jackson Browne’s “The Load-Out/Stay.”

  At 7:30 a.m., I kissed Donna, promised to be home for dinner, and stepped carefully out onto our frozen driveway. Balancing a second cup of coffee and Bazin’s old briefcase in one hand, I ducked into my bureau car, a 1989 silver Ford Probe. I flipped on the defroster and rock station WMMR.

  That morning, I was headed to Denis’s house to give him a ride to work—his FBI car was in the repair shop again. It was great to spend time with him, even if it meant inching through South Jersey traffic. Denis had recently been promoted to Washington to serve on the U.S. Attorney General’s protective detail and I would miss him when he left in January.

  When I got to Denis’s house, he slipped into the front seat as the first chords of the song “Panama” by Van Halen began to jam on the radio, and he cranked it up. I recall this vividly, because it was the day that the United States invaded Panama. We both enjoyed the joke. I sang and drove. Denis played air guitar.

  The corruption squad’s annual Christmas party was that afternoon at a bar in Pennsauken, New Jersey. We would drive into Philly, then after work head to the party. It would be a good day. At the office, we squeezed in a day’s worth of paperwork in time to make it to the party by 2 p.m. We met everyone at a place called The Pub, a sprawling South Jersey landmark at the foot of a triangle of busy highway ramps and arteries. A former speakeasy, The Pub had evolved into a large restaurant, an oversized Swiss chalet with medieval flair—swords and shields on the walls, burgundy carpet, simple brown wooden chairs and tables. The Pub’s size, location, and bland grub made it a perfect place for an office party. We spent two hours exchanging gifts and talking shop. There was typical ribbing, but this was the corruption squad, a buttoned-down crew, so they kept it light. When we finally paid the bill, most of us wandered over to the bar for a beer. Denis was up for more and he tried to move the party to a bar called Taylor’s for a drink or two. He was single and tried to hit free happy-hour buffets whenever he could. It was nearly 7 p.m. and I wanted to go home, but I figured this might be the last time I could hang out with Denis before he moved. I found a pay phone and let Donna know I would be late.

  Taylor’s Bar and Grille isn’t much—a suburban sports bar in a strip mall near the edge of the abandoned Garden State Race Track. But it was packed. I forced my way to the bar, grabbed my second beer of the evening, and found a table. Denis and a fellow agent hit the buffet. Soon, Denis was talking up a cute woman named Pamela. I felt like a third wheel.

  By 9:30 p.m., Denis was still dancing with Pamela and I was way overdue at home. I pulled Denis aside. “Buddy, I gotta get back. You ready to go?”

  “Look, not yet,” he said. He pointed to Pamela with his eyes. “If that works out, I won’t need a ride. I need to find out, so I need you to stick around.”

  We went back and forth like this for another hour. Denis was having fun, dancing, drinking shots of tequila with Pamela. He brought me another beer and shot me a grin. I gave him a look that said, “Let’s go.” Around 11 p.m., I’d had enough. I grabbed our coats, took Denis by the arm, led him off the dance floor to the car. He didn’t resist.

  It was only one hundred yards from Taylor’s to Race Track Circle, but this was South Jersey, land of jug-handles, no left turns, and Jersey barriers, so you could only get there by going in the opposite direction and making a series of winding right turns. By the time we reached the circle, Denis was asleep. I slowed as I approached the circle, and as I did, a bright white light flashed in my rearview mirror. There was a two-inch-high concrete curb at the foot of the circle, channeling traffic to the right, but I was distracted by the light and didn’t see this curb. The car hit the curb at about thirty-five miles an hour, and the steering wheel vibrated violently, throwing my hands into the air. When I regained the wheel a second later and tried to turn into the circle, I got no response. We were airborne.

  We landed just before the edge of the circle, hurtled into the oval interior, skidded sideways, and flipped, left wheels over right. When the car’s roof slammed down on my head, everything wen
t black.

  At Cooper University Hospital, Denis and I were rolled into the same trauma room and a surgeon drew blood from our shoulders. The doctor asked me if I had had anything to drink. It was important, she said, for me to tell the truth, because they were going to administer pain medication. I thought back to my first beer at The Pub early in the afternoon. “Probably four or five beers over eight hours.” She nodded.

  I looked over at Denis. There was a little blood on his cheek, but he didn’t look too bad. Denis caught my eye. “Am I going to be OK?” he mumbled.

  I really didn’t know. “It’s OK, buddy. You’re going to be fine, partner.”

  They wheeled Denis away.

  The nurse told me I had four broken ribs, a concussion, and a punctured lung. The doctors performed a thoracostomy, cracking open my chest and inserting a tube into my damaged lung, draining fluid from my chest. About an hour later, I found myself lying in a recovery room, a plastic tube in my left side, surrounded by nurses, a doctor, and my FBI supervisor. I asked about Denis and they said he was still in surgery.

  “You guys are lucky,” the doctor said. “Your injuries aren’t life threatening.” He pointed to the bed next to mine. “Your friend will be back soon.”

  Medicated, I drifted off.

  Three hours later, I woke with the hard winter sun. I felt foggy, sore, confused. I reached up to my head and felt small pieces of windshield glass matted in my hair, a walnut-sized lump on the right side of my skull. I saw a nurse chatting with a female FBI agent and my wife by the door. Donna turned her bloodshot blue eyes to mine. She offered a nervous smile. The bed beside me was empty.

  I winced as I spoke. “Where’s Denis?”

  The ladies glanced at the floor.

  “Where’s Denis?”

  “He’s not here,” the nurse said.

  “When is he coming up? He’s still in the OR?”

  The nurse hesitated and the agent stepped forward. “Denis didn’t make it. He died.”

  “What … what?…” My chest burned. My throat constricted. I coughed and the nurse stepped toward me. They’d told me he was going to make it! What was it the doctor had said? “The injuries are not life threatening.” Yes, those were his exact words. Not life threatening.

  Donna crossed to my side. She held me and we cried.

  “He had a ruptured aorta,” the nurse said, carefully. “He came back from surgery and then it ruptured around 4 a.m. We couldn’t stop the bleeding.” I sat mute for a few seconds and stared into her eyes. I think she felt compelled to fill the silence. “It’s common in this kind of accident,” the nurse said. I suppose she thought she was being helpful. I felt devastated.

  I floated through eight days in the hospital, trying to lose the pain. Denis was buried while I was there. Fellow agents called with updates describing the funeral, but it was hard to focus. I thought about Denis’s family.

  Before I left, a psychiatrist came to see me. I don’t remember the conversation, but years later I came across his handwritten notes: “Patient has feelings of guilt, anguish, chagrin, and humiliation. He feels solidly supported by wife, staff here, coworkers, and bosses…. Acute posttraumatic stress disorder … acute grief.”

  A few days later, a reporter called me in my hospital room. She wanted to know if I had any comment on the investigation, or about the blood-alcohol results.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She told me the local county prosecutor was considering drunk-driving manslaughter charges against me. The prosecutor claimed that my blood alcohol level was .21, more than twice the legal limit. I told the reporter I had no comment. I hung up and tried to digest what she’d said. The blood test results sounded absurd. A beer every two hours over eight hours didn’t get you to .21. It probably didn’t even get you to .04. My mind raced for an explanation. Obviously, there was a mistake in the blood test. But where? And how? More important, could I prove it?

  Five months later, the grand jury filed formal charges. While my FBI colleagues and supervisors appeared sympathetic, I figured my career was over. Worse, I agonized over Denis’s death. Why was I the one who survived? My driving error meant the death of my best friend. Now it threatened to tear away my job and my freedom. What would Donna and the kids do if I was sent to prison?

  Facing a hard five-year sentence, I resolved to fight. I drew strength from the comforting familiar in my life—my family and my fledgling career, everything good I knew. Friends and colleagues were supportive, but a few urged me to consider a plea bargain. I couldn’t do it. As difficult as it was to accept that Denis died when my hands were on the wheel, my tortured heart told me he would want me to be forgiven—and his parents made it clear they didn’t hold me responsible, even urging authorities to drop the charges. But the prosecutor’s position was clear, so I hired a top-shelf criminal defense lawyer, Mike Pinsky, and he put his private investigators to work. Pinsky had a reputation for winning tough cases at trial. He was probably best known for winning not-guilty verdicts for a mobster accused of murder and a county clerk facing a bribery rap. Like me, Pinksy also had a reputation for being brutally frank. During our first meeting, we laid our cards on the table.

  I asked him how he could represent mobsters, people he knew had done terrible things, including murder. How could he be so friendly with them?

  Pinsky moved from behind his desk and took the chair beside me. He smiled.

  “Bobby, let me tell you a little secret,” he said. “Appearances can be deceiving. It’s really all about perceptions, not friendships. These wiseguys call me all the time and say, ‘Mike, I got a parking ticket. Mike, I got a speeding ticket. Take care of it, will you?’ And I say, ‘Sure, no problem, I’ll take care of it.’ And you know what I do? I take the tickets and I pay them with my own money! Then later, much later, I bill them for it from some other case. They think I’ve got some sort of power and can fix their tickets. And I let them think that. It’s legal and it’s good for business.”

  He leaned close.

  “Bobby, I want to be clear about something in your case,” he said. “Before we proceed I want to make sure you understand exactly what’s at stake. If we go to trial, it may take years. It will certainly cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and investigative expenses. There is no way to prepare for the strain this will put on your family, your marriage, and your job. And in the end, you could still lose and go to prison. You’re an FBI agent. You know that if you go to trial and are convicted, instead of pleading guilty at the beginning, the judge will give you a much longer sentence.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Mike, I’m innocent.”

  CHAPTER 6

  LEARNING TO SEE

  Merion, Pennsylvania, 1991.

  I PILOTED MY DINKY BUREAU PONTIAC SLOWLY DOWN North Latches Lane, a wide side street framed by graceful oak trees and gated stone mansions in the heart of Philadelphia’s upper-crust Main Line. I checked my hand-scrawled directions and followed North Latches until I arrived at a black wrought-iron gate with a discreet sign that said THE BARNES FOUNDATION. I pulled to the guardhouse and rolled down my passenger window.

  The guard carried a clipboard. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi. Bob Wittman. I’m here for the class.”

  He checked his list and waved me in.

  I was early and when I found a parking spot I sat in the car for a few moments. I gripped the steering wheel and exhaled. It was a crisp fall afternoon, almost two years after the accident, and I was still awaiting trial on the manslaughter charges. Pinsky wasn’t worried about delays, because it gave us time to get to the bottom of the screwy blood-alcohol test. Every few weeks, the lawyer would mail me a stack of documents related to the case—a pleading, a medical record, a private investigator’s witness interview. I’d quickly scan whatever Pinsky sent me, but I found it incredibly stressful to read investigative records about myself. It was even harder to read the cold, clinical medical assessments about Denis. Sometimes, I would op
en the long legal envelope from Pinsky, stack the papers on the kitchen table, and just stare at them.

  Thank God I was working. The FBI, following an internal investigation, cleared me and put me back on the street. For a while, I worked with the drug squad. We seized cash, cocaine, and Corvettes, and locked up some pretty dangerous guys. I backed up undercover agents who risked their lives in hotel-room stings. I ducked gunfire from a couple of thugs during my first shoot-out. But drug cases weren’t for me. I doubted we were making a big difference. Most people I met on the streets sold drugs because they couldn’t make it any other way; they did it to survive. The way I saw it, drugs were a social problem, not a law-enforcement problem. I asked to return to the property theft squad, and soon I was working art crime again with Bazin. It was good to be back.

  Within a few months, Bazin and I recovered a set of two-foot-high tomes by eighteenth-century British wildlife artist Mark Catesby, books of sketches worth $250,000 and as impressive as any by John James Audubon. Rescuing such beautiful books meant so much more to me than busting some sad sack in a crack house. Bazin told me that if I was serious about making art crime a career, I should consider taking a class at the Barnes, an appointment-only museum in the suburbs I knew only by its reputation as a treasure trove of Impressionist art. I said OK and Bazin set it up.

  As I got out of my car and headed to my first class that afternoon, I didn’t know what to expect.

  I made my way to the intimidating grand entrance—six marble steps, four Doric columns, and two large wooden doors framed by a remarkable wall of rust-colored Enfield ceramic tiles, each centered with a relief of a tribal mask and crocodile by the Akan peoples of the Ivory Coast and Ghana. As I would soon learn, every arrangement at the Barnes carried meaning. The entrance theme represented the debt modern Western art owes tribal Africa.

  I stepped inside, signed in at the security desk, and stepped into the first gallery, an outrageous room jammed with a collection of masterpieces unrivaled by any one room in any gallery in Europe. On the wall in front of me, surrounding a thirty-foot window, hung three works with a combined worth of half a billion dollars. To the right was Picasso’s heroic Composition: The Peasants, a striking rendering of a man and a woman with flowers presented in deep hues of rust and persimmon, accented with a splash of carmine. To the left was Matisse’s Seated Riffian, a larger-than-life oil on canvas. It depicted a fierce-looking young man from the mountains of Morocco, his face rendered in bold Mediterranean hues. Rising above it all, reaching for the ceiling, was the Matisse masterpiece The Dance, a forty-six-foot-long mural with lithe figures in salmon, blue, and black, dancing joyously. I looked to my right and the room continued to overload my senses. The Card Players, a Cézanne in muted denim hues highlighted by the artist’s signature folds in the players’ overcoats, hung below Seurat’s much larger Models, which depicted demure nudes in a firework of color, the figures formed by millions of dots in the pointillist style.