Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian

refreshed.
    He’s gotten himself a fix, Mashberg thought.
    A storage unit in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood was the site in August 1997 where antiques dealer William Youngworth showed Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg a painting purported to be the stolen Rembrandt seascape. Authorities later claimed it was a fake.
    Within minutes, they’d pulled into the nearby parking lot of a giant warehouse on Clinton Street, directly behind the Red Hook Post Office. It was dark, and with a flashlight guiding their way they climbed the three flights of stairs to a storage unit midway down one of the corridors. Youngworth opened the door with a second key and directed Mashberg to stand by the doorway.
    Inside, in the dim light, Mashberg could make out a large bin about ten feet away containing several big cylinder tubes. Youngworth walked over and pulled one out, took off its large plastic top, and removed a large painting from inside it. He unfurled it, rolling it out so it hit the floor. Then he held it up higher so Mashberg could see the whole thing.
    â€œLet me show you something,” Youngworth said, breaking the eerie silence. From five feet away, with Youngworth directing his flashlight over the enormous canvas, Mashberg saw the instantly recognizable features: the sail, the waves, the figures. He couldn’t make out brushstrokes, but there was cracking along the canvas throughout. The edges weren’t frayed but cleanly cut.
    Among the few disclosures the museum made following the theft was that the two large Rembrandts had beencut cleanly from their stretchers and frames, with only a few frayed edges.
    â€œSee the signature,” Youngworth said, pointing the flashlight.
    Amazed by what he was seeing, and believing it was Rembrandt’s masterpiece, the seascape that had been missing for more than seven years, Mashberg edged forward to where Youngworth was standing, holding the painting above his shoulders.
    â€œDon’t get any closer,” Youngworth warned him, and with that he shut off the flashlight and rolled the painting up and back into its tube.
    In all, Mashberg saw the painting for about two minutes. Nine days later he broke his story on the front page of the Boston Herald : “WE’VE SEEN IT: Informant Shows Reporter Apparent Stolen Masterpiece.”
    It read, in part: “The vivid oil-on-canvas masterwork—Rembrandt’s only seascape—was rolled up carefully and stored in an oversized heavy-duty poster tube with two airtight end caps at a hiding place in a barren and forsaken Northeast warehouse district.
    â€œUnder the soft glow of a flashlight, the painting was delicately pulled out and unfurled by the informant and shown to a reporter during the predawn hours of Aug. 18.
    â€œThe furtive viewing was offered to the Herald as proof that the paintings, stolen on March 18, 1990, from the Gardner Museum in Boston, are here in the United States—ransomable for reward money and immunity from prosecution.
    â€œThis reporter was unable to verify that the painting was the original. But the work, which was flaking slightly and somewhat frayed at the edges where it would have been cut from its frame during the Gardner heist, bore the Dutch master’s signature on the ship’s rudder.”
    Quoting his “informant” (presumably Youngworth), Mashberg’s Herald article stated that the robbery had beenpulled off by five men, only two of whom were identified: Robert A. (Bobby) Donati, who was one of the two robbers who entered the museum, and David A. Houghton, who was responsible for moving the stolen art to a safe house. Both Donati and Houghton were dead when the article was published, and none of the other three men were identified.
    A few days later, Mashberg was summoned to meet with museum director Anne Hawley and other museum officials.
    â€œWhat do you feel the likelihood is that you saw the real thing, the stolen Rembrandt?”