St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

thinking about that was stupid. He needed his mind on his op, not his crotch.
    “I take it the connecting door gets left open?” she said.
    “Always.” He looked at his watch. “Hope this auction dude gets here soon. I’m too old to live on junk food forever. No matter what the ads say, sugar, salt, and grease aren’t food groups.”
    Jill opened the auction catalogue and looked through it again. Like Zach, she hoped it wouldn’t be long until they saw the paintings.
    She kept wondering if she was dreaming.
    “I still don’t believe it,” she said in a low voice. “Five to eight million dollars. Each.”
    “Remember what Frost said—the buzz on the art circuit is ten million bucks for the big ones. Each.”
    “Is that common?” she asked.
    “What?”
    “To have a lot of rumors that basically fix the price of some paintings at a higher cost than the auction catalogue indicates.”
    “It’s called excitement, and the more the better. The catalogue is nothing but a guesstimate of future bidding.” Zach’s stomach growled. Living out of mini-marts and fast-food outlets was a great way to starve.
    “You heard those two back there,” she said, indicating the registration desk of the Golden Fleece, where guests waited twelve deep for the opportunity to check into the most luxurious hotel-casino-shopping megaplex in Las Vegas. “They were talking about ten million per Dunstan at Sunday’s auction like it was a done deal.”
    “In good times, paintings can blow through the top of their range,” Zach said.
    “Are times that good right now?”
    “I could argue either side of the question.” He frowned, thinking back on the conversations he’d overheard while they waited in line to register. A lot of the people were here for the art auction, not the casino action. “But you’re right. Nearly everyone is talking ten million for the Dunstans. It makes me wonder.”
    “About what?”
    Zach kept watching the people milling in the lobby. The plainclothes guards were well dressed and invisible to anyone who didn’t know that in Vegas, armed guards were always around. A whole lot of those Bluetooth receivers plugged into men’s ears weren’t what they seemed.
    It was easy to separate the hopeful buyers from the hopeful sellers. The sellers didn’t clutch heavily earmarked catalogues. But seller or buyer, the undercurrent of excitement, of being at the place where art history will be made, was unmistakable.
    It made the back of Zach’s neck itch.
    “What’s wrong?” Jill asked in a low voice.
    “I’m wondering how big a fix is in on the auction.”
    “That’s just one more subject my fine art education lacked,” she said wryly.
    “What?”
    “Fixing auctions.”
    “Any auction can be fixed,” he said, thinking of Faroe’s conversation about Lane’s swarming. “Hidden floors for some goods is a favorite.”
    “Translation?”
    “Say that the auctioneer and the owner of some paintings have made an agreement that no paintings from that owner will sell under, oh, five million. Or a buyer and an auctioneer have an agreement on a minimum price. Normally a floor is put right out there for everyone to see. If the floor isn’t met, the painting or whatever is withdrawn. That’s open and legal.”
    “And when the floor is hidden?” she asked.
    “It’s illegal,” Zach said. “It could involve straw bidders in the crowd, or bogus signals from the phone banks, or winning bidders who quietly fail to follow through and take delivery after the headlines about a painting’s record price are made—any or all of the above can be used to be sure the floor is reached, and probably surpassed.”
    Jill frowned. “I can see why the seller would want a big price. Where’s the benefit to the buyer if he’s the one doing the rigging?”
    “Tax deductions. The bigger the sale price of the object, the bigger the deduction if the work is donated. When everyone is in on the fix, the seller gets enough of a kickback to pay capital gains on his art ‘profit,’ which he never really sees but still has to pay taxes on. Or the seller donates other paintings at the inflated price and ends up not having to pay taxes on his gains for the paintings he did sell.”
    “You’re giving me a headache,” Jill said.
    He shrugged. “Those are just a few of the ways to rig sales numbers. When St. Kilda’s researchers get some breathing space, they’ll go through the records and see just how much real money