Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [58]
Drewe’s behavior, however, was becoming a principal source of irritation and a cause for concern. He was increasingly unpredictable, and lately his demeanor set Belman’s heart racing every time they did business together. Often, after Belman had set up a deal, Drewe would fail to deliver on a promised painting. If the sale did go through, Drewe demanded his money immediately once the painting changed hands. In one instance, Belman recalled Drewe telling him that he’d hacked into the computer system of the dealer’s bank and watched the transaction take place in real time.
“I’ve got friends in powerful places,” he said.
From that day on Belman began to feel a certain nostalgia for the old days behind the jewelry counter.
Not long after the unpleasant visit to Nahum’s gallery, Drewe invited Belman and his wife over for dinner. The evening was a disaster. Drewe and Goudsmid screamed at each other while the children fought. It was chaotic, a free-for-all, and Belman swore to himself never to return.
The next day, as Belman sat in his living room, Drewe came up the driveway in a brand-new Jaguar. He wanted to talk about a fresh consignment, he said. Neither of them brought up the shouting match of the night before. Drewe had another business proposition: He was selling surplus military equipment for a Middle Eastern country, and suggested with a straight face that some of Belman’s art contacts might be interested. He said he could get his hands on anything from an F-16 on down, and hinted that he had connections to the Ministry of Defence, MI5, and MI6.
“He just threw it out there,” Belman recalled. “I thought he was just another mad boffin.” England was full of them.
When Belman tried to change the subject, Drewe insisted that he come outside and see the Jaguar. He said he had paid for it with money from John Catch, whom Belman already knew as Drewe’s “sugar daddy,” a Scottish nobleman and art collector. Drewe walked Belman to the trunk of the car and opened it. Inside Belman saw guns.
“What the hell do you want all those for?” Belman asked.
“For my own protection,” Belman recalled Drewe saying.
Belman knew that Britain’s gun laws were notoriously tough, and he asked Drewe to leave. The professor insisted it was all legitimate, and that he had a license to carry weapons.
“You’ve nothing to worry about,” he said. “I know everyone from the pope down.”
Belman rolled his eyes and went back inside. Drewe could talk the hind legs off a donkey. In the living room he noticed that Drewe had dropped a letter on the couch—perhaps intentionally, but he couldn’t resist having a look. It was a clinical diagnosis describing Batsheva Goudsmid as suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which the mother fakes or induces illness in her children in order to gain attention and sympathy as the “worried parent.”
Increasingly alarmed by Drewe’s behavior, Belman considered cutting his ties with him: The man was clearly insane. Belman had an offer to work at an air-conditioning supplier, and while it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as selling art, it would provide a steady income and a world without surprises. Before he could break it off with Drewe, however, he had a bite on another painting. He promised himself that if the sale went through, it would be his last.
At a dinner party he met an art expert and lecturer named Maxine Levy, who knew her way around the business and had contacts. Belman mentioned that he had several paintings for sale, including an untitled 1938 watercolor by Ben Nicholson worth about £15,000. Levy thought she could place it, and within a week she called to say she had found a buyer at Gimpel Fils Gallery.
Rene Gimpel was a fourth-generation dealer whose father had been Nicholson’s principal dealer in the 1940s and 1950s. A soft-spoken man with sloping shoulders, he looked more like an impoverished painter