Fake
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Synopsis
“'Fake' is great fun, offering a peek into a world of glitz that most of us will never glimpse firsthand." —Washington Post
From the author of The Boys’ Club, a gripping novel set in the high-stakes world of art forgery that moves across the globe, from the trendy art galleries of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood to the high-flying international art fairs of Hong Kong.
Can you spot the difference?
Emma Caan is a fake.
She’s a forger, an artist who specializes in nineteenth-century paintings. But she isn’t a criminal; her copies are commissioned by museums and ultra-wealthy collectors protecting their investments. Emma’s more than mastered a Gauguin brushstroke and a van Gogh wheat field, but her work is sometimes a painful reminder of the artistic dreams she once chased for herself, when she was younger and before her family and her world fell apart.
When oligarch art collector Leonard Sobetsky unexpectedly appears with an invitation, Emma sees a way out—a new job, a new path for herself, and access to the kind of money she needs to support her unstable and recently widowed mother.
But every invitation incurs an obligation . . . and Emma isn’t prepared for what’s to come. As she’s pulled further into Leonard’s opulent scene, she will discover what’s lurking beneath the glitz and glamour. When she does, the past she’s worked hard to overcome will collide with the present, making her wonder how much of her carefully curated life is just as fake as her forgeries . . .
Release date: February 22, 2022
Publisher: Harper
Print pages: 384
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Fake
Erica Katz
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
June 26, 2021—Federal Bureau of Investigation—26 Federal Plaza, 23rd floor, New York, NY 10278
Unclassified/For Official Use Only
VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION
Participants:
Special Agent Trevor Garritt
Special Agent Benjamin Tillwell
Emma Caan
AGENT TILLWELL: |
Thanks so much for coming in. |
EMMA CAAN: |
No problem at all. |
AGENT GARRITT: |
We’ll be recording this, so please try to answer all the questions verbally—no headshakes or what have you. |
EMMA CAAN: |
Sure. Do you always record these conversations? You said I wasn’t in trouble. |
AGENT GARRITT: |
Are you concerned that you’re in trouble? |
EMMA CAAN: |
You guys are the FBI. Has anybody ever not been concerned they’re in trouble when you show up? |
AGENT TILLWELL: |
Fair enough. There’s no reason for us to believe you are in trouble with the law. |
EMMA CAAN: |
That’s less than comforting. |
AGENT TILLWELL: |
Well, we know you’re busy, so we’ll get right to it. Can you tell us a bit about Gemini Reproductions? What the company is and what exactly you did there? |
EMMA CAAN: |
I don’t understand. You know what Gemini is, Agent Garritt. Intimately. You probably know more about the company than I do. |
AGENT GARRITT: |
We’d like to hear it from you. Indulge us. |
EMMA CAAN: |
Okay . . . It’s a company that produces handmade copies of high-end artworks. |
AGENT TILLWELL: |
How exactly is that different from forgery? |
EMMA CAAN: |
In that we’re not forging art. We’re copying it. Like how you buy a print of the Mona Lisa in a museum gift shop—but higher-end. It is common practice among serious art collectors and museums to have a company like Gemini copy a very expensive painting they own. Then they can place the original in a vault for insurance purposes, or a museum or freeport for tax purposes, and hang a high-quality replica on their wall so they can still enjoy it and impress their guests. If something happens to the copy, a guest spills on it or smokes toward it or there is a fire in the house or museum, the owner is out somewhere between five and fifty grand. If something were to happen to the original, they’d be out millions. Copying is not forging. I have always signed the back of every single copy I’ve done, with my name, and indicated it was a copy. |
AGENT GARRITT: |
How did you go about obtaining your clients at Gemini? |
EMMA CAAN: |
I didn’t really have my own clients at Gemini. The clients were clients of the company. I assume Jeremy Jacobsen, the CEO, did a fair amount of business development, but the artists never had to. They were just assigned to us as the work came in. |
AGENT GARRITT: |
Is that how you met Leonard Sobetsky? |
EMMA CAAN: |
Yes. He was a client at Gemini. |
AGENT TILLWELL: |
Do you always meet all your clients? |
EMMA CAAN: |
No, he’s the only one I’ve ever met. He just came into the office one day and asked to meet me. |
AGENT TILLWELL: |
And that’s not typical? |
EMMA CAAN: |
No, it isn’t. But nothing about Lenny Sobetsky is typical. |
I took a step back to broaden my view and found that the vibrant greens and verdant bursts of purple and blue in my Tahitian countryside mimicked those in his perfectly. I had gotten the shape of the women’s curves just right, and they waited expectantly on the porch and in the yard, and my colors shared his exact balance between dazzling and muted, evoking a sense of hedonism and humidity. Still, I wasn’t satisfied. I shuffled to my right, so that I was now standing in front of the original. I leaned in closer, my nose almost touching the green and pink impasto, as I narrowed my eyes in an attempt to channel the artist.
I came up empty.
I straightened my back and allowed my cheeks to puff out as I exhaled, acutely aware of a tingle of dissatisfaction at the nape of my neck. My painting was good. To an untrained eye, it would appear an exact replica of Gauguin’s rich, confident Te Fare, which depicted two women working in a yard and a house with an older woman on the porch, while the mountains of Tahiti stretched skyward in the background. I had used the same unprimed fabric for the canvas that he had, the same paint, the same brushes, the same, the same, the same. I nodded resolutely in an attempt to convince myself I was content with my work, but the tingling endured.
It would be simply too tragic to be mediocre at copying somebody else’s work, even if I had already resigned myself to the fact that my own paintings were unexceptional. Technically superior. Emotionally detached. That’s what my college professor had said about my work. I felt a familiar self-loathing begin to choke me, so I quickly closed my eyes and steadied my breath. When I opened them, my focus settled on the woman on the porch. I put down my brush and picked a white cotton glove out of the box sitting on the shelf behind me, then pulled it over my palm, so as not to damage the painting with the oils from my hand. I gently placed my covered index finger to the woman’s head in the original, attempting to touch whatever inconsistency I couldn’t quite find.
The painting I was copying had just sold at Sotheby’s for $137 million, and its buyer, Leonard Sobetsky, had given it to my company for us to produce an exact replica. Other clients rarely gave me an original to copy from, but Mr. Sobetsky was particular, demanded I use the same materials the artist had, and often insisted I paint from the original to get the textural intricacies and borders correct. He also always paid his thirty-thousand-dollar fee in advance.
“It’s annoyingly perfect.” Sienna’s voice punctured my thoughts, and with that the noises of the busy studio around me did, too. I turned and looked past her at the large room blanketed in paint-splattered drop cloths, speckled with pairs of easels and my twenty-five coworkers diligently copying priceless works of art. The clock on the wall indicated it was noon, though it seemed like only a few moments had passed since I’d arrived at seven o’clock that morning.
“Not quite perfect,” I said. I slipped off the cotton glove and threw it in the trash before grabbing the orange brush and slathering the woman’s sturdy legs with an extra coat of paint. I waited a couple of minutes for it to dry, then allowed myself a satisfied smile before turning my attention back to Sienna.
My only work friend was just shy of six feet tall and rail thin. The thick dark hair she tied up in a messy ponytail further accentuated her large almond-shaped brown eyes. Today she wore a gray V-neck sweater over tight black jeans with ripped knees, and not a stitch of makeup, but despite her best efforts to make herself appear average, she was striking in a high-fashion-model sort of way. Her entire personality was almost an apology for her superior genetics—she was kind and funny and took particular care to befriend me when she saw me eating lunch alone during my first week at Gemini.
“There.” I motioned to my easel.
“That made it perfect?” Sienna gestured at my replica. “You make the rest of us look bad. You shouldn’t even becopying, with your talent.” I inhaled sharply, and she took her cue to change the subject. “Make sure you sign your copies with the new signature pens!” she warned, wagging a finger at me sarcastically.
We had gotten no fewer than three emails and two announcements from Jeremy, our stressed-out, micromanaging CEO, delineating the need to use the new felt-tip markers when we signed the back of our replica canvases. Supposedly, the new markers were “more permanent” than the old ones, as though permanence were something that had gradations. It was an absurd detail for him to harp on while the company’s finances were almost certainly in the red and 3D printers threatened our very livelihood, but attention to ridiculous details was par for the course for Jeremy.
“What new signature pens?” I joked, but I felt a tightness in my stomach as I thought of all the new security protocols being implemented and wondered what other changes the consultants would suggest—a leaner employee base, perhaps. “By the way, I left after ten last night, and the consultants were still here.”
Consultants had been buzzing around the offices for going on three weeks, and chatter was sprouting up at the Nespresso station in the kitchenette that it was only a matter of months before the experts advised Jeremy to replace all of us with artificial intelligence.
“Was the hot one there?” Sienna raised her eyebrows and giggled. I nodded, wishing that I, too, had a rich boyfriend who paid the lion’s share of the rent on our apartment and therefore the luxury of greeting impending unemployment with humor. “You should just ask him out!”
I shook my head. “I feel like there’s a conflict of interest somewhere in there. He’s about to tell Jeremy to lay me off.” What I didn’t add was that I preferred the perfect creature I had made him out to be over whatever disappointment of a human he would undoubtedly prove to be.
Sienna had already moved on, though, and I traced her line of vision through the air to Jeremy as he entered the studio, a room he rarely graced with his presence. My coworkers stopped painting, popping up for a view and ducking back down below their easels in a high-stakes game of Whac-A-Mole. I imagined Jeremy’s mallet lingering over my workstation as he looked directly at me, then walked directly toward me.
Jeremy usually engaged with his artists only to scream at us or fire us. I’m one of his best performers, I reassured myself. None of us liked Jeremy because he was objectively unlikable, but I resented him as well. He had given me a job that lulled me into complacency, sucked out my inspiration, and made me a parasite to the host creativity of others. But still—it was a job I needed.
Sienna quickly returned to her own easel so as not to get caught in the cross fire.
“Emma,” Jeremy said, stopping a few feet from me, his musky cologne intruding on my airspace. His well-tailored gray suit made his five-feet-seven-inch frame appear stockier than it actually was, and he had coated his dark hair in a thick layer of product that reflected the fluorescent studio lights back at me. He was probably fifty years old, with what everybody knew to be a hefty trust fund from his father and a textbook Napoleon complex.
“Hello.” The word came out feebly and seemed to linger in the still studio air. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hi, Jeremy.”
“Leonard Sobetsky is here. He just showed up,” he said, looking annoyed by the interruption. “He’s in my office and wants to see you.”
I felt suddenly off balance. “Why?” I blurted out before remembering I was speaking to the CEO of my company and the question rang slightly paranoid. “I mean . . .” There was no reason I could imagine for a client visiting the studio besides a massive defect in my work, and I certainly would have noticed a massive defect in my work. “Why?” I repeated, unable to help myself.
“He wouldn’t say,” Jeremy said shortly, obviously peeved that Sobetsky hadn’t given him a reason, either. He shrugged before turning on his heel and heading toward the exit, and I understood that I was supposed to follow.
Sienna, who stood in front of her easel a few yards away, pointed at me and then to her right cheek. I wiped my palm down the side of my face and looked at my fingers, which were covered in white paint. I pulled my sleeve down over my hand, spat on it, and wiped again at my cheek before looking back to Sienna. She gave me a thumbs-up and I hurried to catch up to Jeremy.
I undid my messy bun as I fell into stride beside him, letting down my long hair, and struggled to braid it neatly, knowing I would find dry clumps of the white paint in it later. I dropped my hand and opened and clenched my fist to steady my nerves. As much as I’d been dreading the idea of being laid off for cost-cutting reasons, I was truly panicked at the prospect of being fired due to a mistake I’d made.
My thoughts swirled as I attempted to calculate how long I could live off my most recent paycheck. A thousand dollars in rent each month, ten dollars a day in food if I stop drinking coffee and eat half a wrap for lunch and the other half for dinner, five dollars in daily subway tolls. In between paychecks, I almost always paid an overdraft fee for my checking account, and I had zero dollars in my savings account, so the answer was . . . not very long. My mind barreled through worst-case scenarios, lingering on the idea of asking my mother for money for the first time since I had left for college.
“After you.” Jeremy held the door open to his office when we reached it, and ushered me in ahead of him. I had never been in Jeremy’s office—my awkward interview had taken place in the studio, where he’d watched me paint for three hours straight.
The office was small and flashy, like Jeremy. I scanned the glossy white desk and the painting on the wall and the framed picture of Jeremy and his much taller, much younger wife before doubling back to the painting. Original Chagall. And I’m making sixty thousand dollars a year while he . . .
Jeremy saw me notice it. “Isn’t it extraordinary? It was a gift from Leonard after the first few copies we did for him,” he said proudly. The first few copies I did for him, I thought.
“Emma Caan, I presume,” Leonard Sobetsky said with a mild Russian accent as he rose from the guest chair, where he’d been sitting with his back to me. As we shook hands, he covered my hand with his other large palm. He was well over six feet tall, with a full head of thick gray hair and a clean-shaven square jaw, and even though his large, firm stomach protruded slightly under his camel-colored cashmere turtleneck, he was handsome in a manly way rarely spotted within the confines of New York City. A feeling that we had already met tugged at the corners of my attention. “What a pleasure, my dear!” he boomed.
I noted with relief that he looked happy, even jubilant, which was surprising given his strictly business emails that our staffing director always forwarded to me.
“The pleasure is mine, Mr. Sobetsky,” I finally managed, and prayed that when he released my palm, I wouldn’t leave paint or sweat residue in his hands.
“Lenny. Call me Lenny,” he insisted as he dropped my hand and thankfully made no motion to wipe it clean. I nodded politely, though I had no intention of ever doing so. The three of us stood in uncomfortable proximity in the small office, wondering how we should proceed, as there were only two chairs—Jeremy’s and the one our client had just risen from.
Jeremy cleared his throat. “Lenny asked if he could meet you, though I admit I don’t completely understand why. But I’m glad we’re all here,” he said, as if inviting Leonard—I couldn’t think of him as Lenny—to explain.
But he simply stood there, giving me an assessing look with eyes so light blue they were almost clear. I wondered how my cargo pants, Hanes T-shirt, plaid flannel, and clogs looked to somebody who clearly took as much pride in his appearance as Leonard Sobetsky did.
“Jeremy doesn’t like to let me out of my cage for unscheduled visits,” I said dryly, trying to dispel the tension in the room.
Leonard let out an approving snort of amusement, and though I didn’t look to see Jeremy’s reaction, I expected he was trying his best to hide blind rage that I would dare to undermine him in front of a client.
“Here. Please, sit,” Leonard said as he gestured for me to take Jeremy’s leather chair on the other side of the desk.
The vein down the middle of Jeremy’s forehead bulged, like it had just before he threw a can of paint at my colleague Wade last week for reasons that remain unclear, but before he could erupt, he coolly said, “Let’s head to the conference room instead,” in an unprecedented display of emotional control. I should have known Jeremy would never risk jeopardizing an account the size of Leonard’s with one of his meltdowns.
We exited the office and walked a few yards down the hall to the glass-walled conference room, which was sleek and modern, with impractically delicate chrome-legged leather chairs and a long double-paned glass table. It was where we put clients when they visited, because if they were to see our studio, littered with paint-smeared drop cloths and lined with shelves sagging under the weight of books on Vermeer and Rothko, they might never entrust us with their masterpieces.
When we were seated, Jeremy and I on one side of the rectangular table and Leonard on the other, Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, but Leonard went first.
“I wanted to meet the artist who does such good work. To thank you,” Leonard said, leaning back in his chair, which wasn’t engineered to recline but yielded to his weight nonetheless.
“My pleasure. It’s an honor to work with the originals you’ve sent me over the years.” I straightened my spine, the occasion eliciting my best manners. I found the recognition intoxicating, as it was the first time a client had exhibited a modicum of appreciation for my work.
“Did you study formally?” he asked, leaning forward.
“I was an art major at Yale,” I told him, imagining that an undergraduate degree didn’t count as “formally” to somebody with Leonard Sobetsky’s exposure to artists. I had always regretted not getting an MFA, but with the grades I’d received in my senior studio, it had hardly seemed worth the student loans I’d need to take out for two more years in school.
“Emma is one of our most skilled technicians,” Jeremy announced, injecting himself into the conversation.
“Do you create art of your own? I mean, your replicas areart. But do you ever paint anything that isn’t a copy?” Leonard asked, holding my gaze.
I hated the question, which came up almost every time I told anybody what I did for work.
“Not in a long time.” I smiled politely to combat the sinking feeling as I heard the same benign but demeaning tone my father always used. I think it’s brave to shift gears and go into copying. So few artists actually make it. You gave it your best shot. Leonard watched me intently, his eyes flickering with interest. “I used to, but not since my college studio,” I continued. “These days, if it’s not a light installation or multimedia . . .” I waved my hand in the air as I trailed off. “Nobody is interested in traditional paintings anymore, which is what I really love and what I’m really good at.”
I was aware that people obviously still bought paintings, just not mine, but I still found comfort in blaming market forces rather than my own lack of talent for my failure. Leonard watched me for a moment, more comfortable with silence than anyone I had ever encountered, while I picked at my cuticles under the table.
“Born in the wrong era, perhaps,” he finally said, his voice soft. I wondered if I had imagined his response, as I had thought that very same thing almost every day since my senior spring. I watched Leonard carefully, realizing it was my first time speaking to a man with the kind of power he wielded—not the kind my father pretended to have in our small town, where he’d use every waiter’s first name and tip more than necessary, or buddy up with the mailman and ask how his kids were doing. Leonard was actually important, and when he did speak, his words were unhurried and carried weight, the kind I feared mine so rarely did.
“Perhaps,” I agreed lightly, confirming my fear. As a welcome distraction from the topic of my failed career, we both turned slightly to watch the cleaning woman passing by in the hallway beyond the glass wall of the conference room. She wore a purple uniform, long dark hair pulled up in a ponytail, a slight limp to her gait. I turned further, struck by her beauty. She must have been new—she was somebody I would have noticed—but my focus on her was cut short as Leonard slapped his palm to the glass table and rose from his seat.
“Miss Caan, I won’t take any more of your time, since I know you must be busy finishing my Te Fare. But thank you for the beautiful work. Do you have a card?”
“Not on me,” I said, suddenly embarrassed that I didn’t have one off me, either. “But you have the office number, and I basically live here.” I gave an apologetic laugh as Leonard stared at me blankly.
“Here,” Jeremy said, offering him an eggshell-colored business card from a thin metal case hidden in his breast pocket.
Leonard took it reluctantly, as though he didn’t understand why he wasn’t being given what he had asked for. He glanced at it for a moment then handed it to me. “Could you write your cell or email on the back? I sometimes think of new projects on weekends, and by Monday I’ve forgotten entirely. It’s like robbing you of money when I lose track of what I need copied.” He smiled as though there was nothing remotely imposing about what he was asking. Until then, I had felt no flirtatious undertones to our encounter, but I wondered if I’d missed something.
I looked at Jeremy, who just gave me a small nod, sending a reflexive pulse of resistance down my spine.
I turned back to Leonard. “You give us so much business. I could never think of you as robbing us,” I said, and smiled obsequiously. “But we have digital voicemail, so if you leave me a message in the office, I get it on my cell right away.” I returned the card to him, and he placed it in his pocket, watching me with a seemingly amused half-grin.
“My cell is on there. Call me any time at all,” Jeremy said quickly. I met Leonard’s eyes, and while his expression remained neutral, I was certain he shared my delight at Jeremy’s fawning. He broke our eye contact by pushing his palms together in front of his chest, bowing his head slightly, turning, and walking out the door without another word. I noted that the back of his chair was still reclining more than the others, permanently warped into submission to his form.
Jeremy and I sat in silence for a moment as I watched him wrestle with how to ream me out. “Did you finish the Te Fare?” he finally asked.
I nodded. “It’s drying.”
“Have you started on the new assignment from the Met?” He moved his palm lightly across his gelled hair.
“I didn’t know a new one came in. I’ll talk to Daniella now.” Daniella was our staffing director, in charge of assigning the work that came in from clients to Gemini artists.
“Fine,” he said tersely, and tapped the nail of his index finger on the glass table twice to indicate I was dismissed.
I returned to the studio and stood in front of my two easels, pretending to focus on them, as Sienna appeared at my side.
“What the eff was that about?” she whispered.
“Leonard Sobetsky was in Jeremy’s office,” I began. Her eyes widened. “Apparently, he just wanted to thank me for the replicas I’ve done for him,” I added, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “How weird is that?”
“So weird,” she agreed. “Why now? Haven’t you done like ten assignments for him in the past few years?”
I shrugged. “I did manage to piss Jeremy off, but he couldn’t yell at me because we were in front of a client.”
Sienna conspiratorially fist-bumped me. “Good job. But back to Lenny—can you even imagine being worth so much money?” Her eyes brightened. “Forbes has him at fourteen billion last time I googled.”
“Um, excuse me.” A disdain-laced voice came from off to my left. We both turned to see Wade put a finger to his lips to shush us. Our lanky, skittish, postmodern art specialist maintained a highly inflated opinion of his artistic capabilities despite the fact that he, like the rest of us, couldn’t hack it as a real artist. But unlike the rest of us, who struggled daily with the complex brushstrokes of Vermeer and Monet, Wade mindlessly painted Campbell’s soup cans on autopilot and silkscreened Marilyn Monroe on a loop.
I started to apologize, but Sienna stopped me. “Wade!” she said, exasperated. “Just use headphones, like everybody else!” She gestured out over the studio at the other painters, all of whom were wearing noise-canceling headphones. “This is a shared workspace. Deal with it!”
Chastened, he ducked back behind his easel without another word.
“What’s Sobetsky like?” Sienna said, speaking more quietly this time.
“He’s actually kind of . . .” I began as Sienna watched me intently. A burst of laughter escaped my lips. “There’s something . . .”
“A je ne sais quoi.” Sienna nodded. “That’s how he dates all those models in their twenties.”
“Or however you say that in Russian,” I said with a small smile. “But no, not that. More that I feel like I know him from somewhere.”
“Did you grow up in the Russian mafia?” Sienna asked before taking a quick glance at the round clock above the studio entrance. “I have to get back to work, but if you do have a checkered past replete with KGB hit men, I expect a full report later.” She winked and turned to walk back toward her easel.
“You can get offed for saying such things in public,” I warned her. She gave me a wave over her head and continued toward her workstation as I grabbed my phone and headed toward the ladies’ room for a break before I checked in for my next assignment.
I sat in the last stall and opened Instagram to see what my favorite art world personality, @JustJules, was doing with her day. Art influencers ran rampant on social media, even more so since the impossibly Instagrammable world of art fairs like Art Basel and Frieze—with their drug-drenched, vodka-soaked, billionaire-populated poolside parties—had become increasingly popular with young Americans who had no real interest in actual art. For the most part, Jules and her ilk, who shared their day-to-day doings with the entire world to engage viewers and made money from sponsorships of the brands they used and places they visited, seemed phony and unknowledgeable to me. But not Jules herself—she had grown up in New York City, studied modern art at the Sorbonne, was fluent in French and English, and had a keen eye for talent. She also had two and a half million followers and could make or break an artist’s entire career with a single post. Her content seemed genuine and positive, and those private moments I spent in the bathroom, watching beautiful Jules Braun interview a buzzworthy Peruvian muralist, were the closest thing to therapy I could afford since I could no longer take advantage of the Yale Health Center’s free student counseling.
I watched the next story, about her heading to the airport, her chic rolling Louis Vuitton carry-on in tow, and boarding a flight to São Paulo to attend her friend’s gallery opening. She pulled her Breakfast at Tiffany’s–inspired eye mask down from atop her thick caramel-colored waves and reclined in her first-class seat, saying goodbye with the blow of a kiss from her palm. The caption read: Does anybody else sleep better on planes? Or is that just me? Xx, JustJules. I breathed in deeply, enjoying the familiar envy, the covetous quickening of my heartbeat, as I peered into a life so far from my grasp that I felt lucky to have an inside view. ...
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