Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was just hanging up from speaking – rather, in fact, listening – to the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security who was, once again, nervous as a squirrel in a cat farm some Muslims were infiltrating the deep sea fishing industry off the North Carolina coast. Why this would be a national security issue Noonan did not know but the Commissioner was certain nefarious happenings were happening so Noonan was ordered to ‘investigate.’ Noonan had agreed to the assignment and was planning on including his entire office in the investigation.

On the beach.

Starting the next morning.

Friday.

As Noonan hung up Harriet, his administrative assistant and no nonsense, real world, cynic and Commissioner critic, pointed at the phone Noonan was replacing on its stand and stated in a no-nonsense term, “The Commissioner is depriving some village of an idiot.”

“He doesn’t have ulcers,” Noonan responded grittily. “But he’s a carrier.” Then the detective looked at Harriet with suspicion. “Let me guess. . .”

“Line three. Some woman in Virginia Beach has a bask of crocodiles on her front lawn.”

“Bask?”

“Crocodiles come in basks. She used the term and I looked it up. They do.”

“Come in basks? I thought when you lay in the sun you were basking.”

“Same word. A crocodile bask can bask.”

“Fine. Except there are no crocodiles this far north. In a zoo or aquarium, maybe, but not in the wild.”

Harriet rolled her eyes and snickered as she said, “Tell that to the woman on Line Two.”
* * *
The woman on Line Two was CCC: Calm, Cool and Collected. “Is this Captain Heinz Noonan, the so-called ‘Bearded Holmes?’”

“Better be or I’m homeless. And until there’s a crime, I’m Heinz.”

“OK, Heinz. This is Theodosia Hennessey. Here in Virginia Beach. I want to report three crocodiles on my front yard. And there are no crocodiles in Virginia.”

“You are reporting three crocodiles that do not exist?”

“Correct. There are no crocodiles in Virginia. At least not yet. With global climate change, who knows what will happen.”

“But you are reporting crocodiles that do not exist?”

“No, these exist. These are alabaster.”

“Alabaster? That’s a stone, correct?”

“Correct. The crocodiles are made of stone. They are sobeks.”

“Sorry. I’m not familiar with that term.”

“Sobek. The Egyptian crocodile gods. The three crocodiles are sobeks. Museum quality alabaster crocodiles.”

“…and you know this because …”

“I maintain an antiquities storage facility here in Virginia Beach.”
* * *
Noonan had to ask for the spelling of sobek twice, not because he could not spell the word but because Hennessey had an accent thick enough to spread on pancakes. Hennessy understood and said she “got that a lot.” Her maiden name, Egyptian, was one Noonan could not write because it included two diphthongs in a row. But he did write, “Hennessey.” She was married to a retired archeologist from Virginia. “We’re quite the pair,” she said. “My married name is like the car and my maiden name is unpronounceable with a Virginia accent.”

Noonan laughed. “When I my visit in-laws in Alaska, they don’t understand a word I say.”

“And that’s a problem?” Hennessey said humorously.

“You have a point there,” Noonan chuckled. “Now, let’s talk crocodiles.”

“A little background is necessary here. I am the owner of Virginia Antiquities, LLC. We, I, store and validate antiquities. Sometimes for a museum, other times for private collectors. Most often I just do the provenance verification search. Do you know what a provenance is?”

‘Proof of ownership, right? In the case of antiquities, it’s a list of owners going back to the original person who acquired it. In the case of Picasso painting, the first signature would have been Picasso’s. Every other signature would be who owned it and sold it by date and amount right up the present owner.”

“Oh, if it were so simple! Yes, that’s the traditional route of ownership for antiquities which were produced since about the 1860. Before the Civil War it gets really loosey-goosey. Particularly through the First and Second World Wars. During wars valuable things have a tendency to disappear…”

“… and reappear in an estate sale in Phoenix in 1989, right?” Noonan postulated.

“Correct,” Hennessey snapped humorously. “Who owns what can get very complicated. Making a long story short, if a museum buys an artifact which is supposed to be authentic, the museum puts the sale money in our account and it remains there until we prove the artifact can be legally bought. When the provenance clears, so to speak, the museum gets the artifact and the seller gets the money. We take a small fee from each which is how we stay in business.”

“OK. What does this have to do with crocodiles?”

“Good question. The answer is ‘I don’t know.’ I was on vacation for a week and when I got back, there were three sobek in my front yard. There’s no crime here, so to speak. No one has reported any alabaster crocodiles stolen so they are not stolen property. And since the three sobek have no provenance documents, they are not provably owned by anyone. Further, without the provenance, they have no value. So, as far as the Virginia State Troopers are concerned, they are trash on my property.”

“And no police force picks up trash on private property.”

“Correct. The Virginia State Troopers suggested I call you.”

“Nice of them,” Noonan said snidely. Then he scribbled ‘provenance’ on a blank page. “So, these crocodiles, are they authentic or copies?”

Hennessey sighed. “Allow me to give you a short lesson in antiquities.”

“Fine,” Noonan replied. “Just don’t do it after a while.”

“Funny,” she chortled. “In this business,” she said, “not the museum business, the antiquities sales business, we refer to the provenance of unknown antiquities by the 4-Fs. The 4-Fs are questions, not answers. The 4-Fs are fake?, forgery?, fenced? or fashioned? For an object to be authenticated and therefore sold, it cannot be any one of the four.”

Noonan wrote down the 4-Fs. “Fake, forgery and fenced I understand,” he said. “What’s “fashioned?”

“A fashioned antiquities is one designed for a specific buyer. Suppose you have a museum looking for an Egyptian Middle Kingdom mummy for its collection. The Egyptian Middle Kingdom is from 2130 to 1803 BCE. Those mummies are rare.”

“So they are quite expensive,” Noonan cut it.

“You bet your bippy,” Hennessey replied. “So the museum puts out the word and presto!, it gets four offers.”

“Ah,” Noonan said with a half-century of crime detection experience. “Some of the offers are mummies which have been fashioned to appear as Egyptian Middle Kingdom.”

“Yup,” replied Hennessey. “They could be mummies of later origin or, in many cases, fashioned, as we like to say. Made up from scratch.”

“Is that hard?”

“Depends on the artifact. A mummy, yes, it is hard. But somethings cannot be carbon dated, like a cylinder seal, tablet or figurine, no. It is difficult but possible.”

“And profitable?”

“Absolutely.”

“How about crocodiles?”

“Alabaster sobek are hard to date.”

“So the sobek in your yard could be real.”

“Could be. But real sobek are expensive and I don’t see someone leaving a $50,000 artifact out on someone’s front lawn. Let alone three of them. But if they are fake, we’re talking $500.”

Noonan chuckled. “Let me guess. Because there is no proof the sobek are authentic, they have no value. Because they have no value, the Virginia State Troopers view then as litter as opposed to stolen property. So they just filed a report and said something along the lines of ‘the stones are on your property so they are your problem.’”

“You got it.”

“And you’re calling me to see if I can figure out why the crocodiles are there.”

“You got it right again.”

Noonan chuckled again as he started scribbling in his notebook. “OK, here’s a list of questions. When you have all the answers, give me a call back.”

“Go for it.”

“How heavy are the sobek, are they all the same weight, are they all the same design, are there any marks on the sobek, if they are authentic how would you move them?” Noonan took a breath. “Assuming you will take them to your facility, do you have room for them, how will you authenticate them, give me a description of the inside of your facility, how are your records kept, where are your records kept, does the facility have a place for small objects and large objects or are the objects divided by classifications, what kind of security do you have inside and out, who monitors the security system, how many employees do you have, are all the objects insured individually or does your facility have overriding insurance coverage, have you had any break-ins in the past year, have you had any facility upgrade in the last year, and that’s all I can think of right now.”
* * *
Noonan did not know the difference between crocodiles and alligators and a search of the internet gave him just about everything he had to know. About alligators and crocodiles in the flesh. Or scales, as the case was. He discovered there was a great difference between the two species: alligators were placid while crocodiles would eat anything – including, Noonan was surprised to learn – fruit. There was a muzzle difference between the two species and the crocodiles could live in salt water. A crocodile could go through as many as 4,000 teeth in a lifetime and had a downward jaw pressure of 5,000 pounds per square inch, ten times more powerful than a great white shark. But its jaw muscles were so weak the maw could be kept closed with a human hand. The largest crocodile ever captured was over 20 feet in length and weighed 2,370 pounds. They can run up to 11 miles an hour land, hold their breath for an hour, go for a year between meals and surprisingly, swallow small stones of help with their digestion. And they have been around for 100 million years.

But he was looking for crocodiles in alabaster.

The Egyptian god Sobek had been around for a long time. In human years. Crocodiles for 100 million years; Sobek not so long. It was listed as apotropaic; a term Noonan was not familiar with. So he looked it up. It meant a type of magic, according to Wikipedia, “intended to turn away harm or evil influences, as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye.” (“We could sure use a lot of that around here,” Noonan muttered to himself.”)

Sobek was human in form with the head of a crocodile. Legend had it the Nile had been created from the sweat of Sobek and the world had been created from its eggs. He, or it, whichever was linguistically appropriate, had been around since the Old Kingdom, 2686-2181 BCE, about as old as the pyramids. Later Sobek appeared as reptile with a falcon’s head which, Noonan postulated, made no sense. Why would a crocodile god have a falcon’s head? But then again, Sobek was an active god well into the Roman period of Egyptian history.

There were no articles on Theodosia Hennessey but there was a brief reference to Virginia Antiquities, LLC. The article itself was on the lack of regulatory oversight of the antiquities and art markets, a subject Noonan was only marginally aware of. The thrust of the article was on the influence of Russian dollars in both of those markets. The reason was quite clear. There was no regulation of price or movement of money. If a Russian bought a painting for $100 and sold it for a million dollars, there was no scrutiny of the $100 originally paid or the million dollar ‘back end.’ It was simply two, private, person-to-person sales. If the sales involved American taxpayers, there was the IRS to deal with. But if the buyer, seller or both were not Americans and the sale was through an American broker, the IRS would be involved. But only with the broker, the buyer or seller.

Noonan immediately realized how a lot of money – money as in cash – could be funneled to, through and among nefarious individuals, companies and fronts with no United States government oversight. Only the broker was on the hook.

The article included a glancing reference to the Virginia Antiquities LLC. It was mentioned along with a handful of other East Coast operations which had a history of working hand-in-glove with the feds to bring more scrutiny into the process. But the article finished by stating the hands of the antiquities dealers were tied because many buyers and sellers required anonymity so the best the feds could do was get a name at both ends of the transactions – who were often lawyers – and that, as the old saying went, was that. The stench of corruption filled Noonan’s law and order nostrils.

When Hennessey called him back, Noonan’s first question related to the unregulated end of her business.

“It’s an ongoing problem,” she lamented. “Legally it is problem that will not go away. We’ve been lucky because most of our business is with museums and they have boards of directors. Which means when the federal investigators show up, they have no problem opening their books. We do have a number of private clients but they are buying and selling lower priced items. We’re covered because we examine the provenances to make sure they are accurate. If we find a glitch – called ‘an inconsistency’ in our parlance – we inform both parties. What they choose to do afterwards is up to them. Sometimes the deal falls through; other times there’s kind of a shrug of the shoulders and the deal goes forward.”

A distant clang sounded in the depth of Noonan’s mind. “Hypothetically,” he said and gave the word a breathing moment. “Hypothetically, once you put your stamp of approval on the provenance, does not stamp of approval satisfy the federal investigators?”

“In most cases, yes. The same is true with any reputable antiquities business. Once any of us in the profession approves a provenance, it’s good for all future transactions. If the object is sold the next time, it just gets a cursory glance by everyone involved.”

“How many provenances do you do in a year?” Noonan asked.

“In terms of numbers, several hundred. But almost all of those are passthroughs. That is, the provenances of the items have been checked before by a reputable firm. Those are in-and-out just like the burgers. About 10% of our searches take 90% of our time. We have a number of provenance investigations that are a year or two old.”

Noonan kind of muttered. “After you give me the information you have, I might have a few more questions.”

“Fine with me,” Hennessey responded. “Do you want the answers to your other questions now?”

“Sure.”

“Here you go. In the order you asked. The three sobek from my front lawn weigh 90 pounds, 115 pounds and 130 pounds. They were all different designs because they came from different time periods. There are lots of marks on the sobek which, to me, indicates they are replicas.”

“What do you mean by that?” Noonan asked.

“If these were authentic sobek they would be worth a lot of money. If they were worth a lot of money they would have been handled with kid gloves. These were not. There are scrapes and abrasions on the sides, probably from loading, unloading and transporting the sobek to my front yard. I will be moving them to my facility and we’ll be taking every precaution to make sure there are no more scrapes or abrasions. We subcontract to three local firms who will do the transporting of the sobek a lot better than whomever dropped them on my front lawn.”

“OK,” Noonan said as he kept writing. “Go on.”

“Let’s see,” she continued. “The sobek will be transported to our facility and, yes, we have room for them. But oddly because we just released a large collection of Egyptian artifacts. None as large as the sobek but quite numerous. About 80 items, the largest being a sarcophagus.”

“Anyone outside your company knew the Egyptian artifacts were being released?”

“Everyone in the industry did. We’re like a small town on a long street. We all know what everyone is doing.”

“So there is room for the three sobek?”

“More than enough.”

“OK, go on with the answers.”

“Through the eyes of an outsider, we look like a warehouse. We have shelving for small items and open floor space with pallets for items as large as the sobek. The interior of the building has a number of closed spaces because some of our artifacts require moisture. Some require so much moisture the humidity factor is off the charts. We call those spaces “breathing water.”

“Will the sobek go into those rooms?”

“No. They were created for outside display so they will be held in our main room. It will be quite hectic because we have three large objects each of which have no provenance so we will have to do all of the painstaking examination on all three at the same time. That will be done by our technicians.”

“In the same room?”

“On the main warehouse floor. Yes. And it will take all our techs. We’ve called them in for the examination. It’s a large enough project we also have called in our back-up people, secretaries, filing clerks, admin assistants. We’re going to have a full crew working overtime on these sobek.”

“OK, go on.”

“The authentication process is painstaking and everyone will be involved. We will open files on all three sobek and as the details come in they will be logged into a provenance file. At the same time, the ad mins will be checking the data against other sobek we have handled and the data base of sobek from museums and private collections.”

“You have handled sobek before?”

“About six in the past 15 years. Which I believe is a clue as to why the sobek ended up in my yard. We’ve authenticated them before.”

“Do you still have the provenance files on those sobek?”

“We have files on all of our work. The federal government requires it.”

“Are those records paper or on a computer?”

“Both. Smaller objects come with their provenance on paper. We both scan and photocopy the paper. We keep the copies on paper forever but we load the data onto the computer.”

“How about security inside and outside of your facility?”

“Top notch. Inside and outside. There have been no glitches lately if that’s where you are going. We have a lot of very valuable items. And a lot of frauds as well,” she chuckled. “The security system keeps a sharp eye on everything occurring here, inside and out.” She paused. “As to the last of the questions, we’ve had no break-ins in the past year, no facility upgraders in the past year and, to add something you didn’t ask, no new employees in the last year.”

Noonan looked at his notes and asked on last question. “With so many people involved in examining the sobek, how are you going to keep your staff from mixing up the details?”

“Good question. We’ve never done this kind of work before. I set up teams which will move from sobek by sobek. As an example, to use terms you would understand, one team will measure the smallest sobek and record the dimensions in meters – we use the meters, not feet and inches – on a handheld device. The measurement will be sent electronically to the admin staff for that specific sobek who will log the data onto the master computer. The same for the next two sobek.”

“So all the data will be instantly transferred to the master computer?”

“Correct.”

The chiming in Noonan’s brain was now deafening, metaphorically speaking.
* * *
It had not been a pleasant morning. Yes, the sun was shining and it was Friday – afternoon by the time the ‘Bearded Holmes’ made it back to his office. But it was not all bad. His entire office staff – of four – gave him a standing ovation. This is not imply they saw him arrive, stood up in unison and gave him a round of applause. Rather, they were standing when he arrived and not in unison clapped. He was cheered heartily as they, in unison, thanked him for ordering them to patrol the beachfront in search of nefarious Muslim busybodies who were infiltrating the deep sea fishing businesses of Sandersonville. How patrolling the beach would give them a view of the deep sea fishing businesses was not stated but the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security has so ordered and who was Noonan to defy the explicit instructions of his supervisor? Thereafter, in a tidal surge of men and women in flipflops, they were gone.

When Noonan arrived at his desk, he was distressed to see a three-foot, luminescent crocodile on his desk. It had a name tag tied around its neck with a single word: sobek. Harriet, a beach towel over her shoulder, stopped long enough for a short chat, indicating the beast of latex injection. “A gift from the crew,” she snickered, “for your diligence in convincing the powers that be to have us search the beach for evil doers.” Then she looked up at the ceiling. But not to Heaven, just the Third Floor where His Majesty, the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security, had his Royal chamber.

“I’m thrilled,” Noonan said flatly. “You’re off looking for criminals and I’m doing paperwork.”

“Ah,” Harriet sat on the desk and picked up the head of the plastic predator and point it at Noonan. “Poppa Noonan has had a bad day.” She dropped the crocodile’s head and leaned forward. “Tough day at the press conference?”

Noonan snarled. “I was the ornament. His Majesty,” and Noonan let his eyes drift upwards but replicating the gaze of Harriet, to the Third Floor and no higher, “referred to me as an ‘agent of note’ and then said no one could ask me of any details of the assignment.”

“How’d that work out?”

“The three reporters could have cared less. As they were questioning him, I slipped out
the back door.”

“Good for you! Then you headed toward the beach to look for,” she leaned forward, lowered her voice and malevolent stated, “nefarious Muslim infiltrators?”

“No,” snapped Noonan. “I’ve got to fill out the paperwork for the Department of Homeland Security.”

“That’s a crock,” Harriet said and then looked down at the latex injection mold beast. “No disrespect intended.” Then, to Noonan, “well, you did solve the case.”

“No case to solve,” Noonan said. “Just a guess. No harm no foul.”

“Don’t give me that noise,” Harriet snarled. “Someone was happy.”

“Yeah! The Virginia Beach Commissioner of Homeland Security. He was there too. On Skype. Quite the pair. Split the credit and both got newspaper coverage.”

“And what, pray tell, did you do to give them that coverage?” She patted the inert crocodile’s snout.

“A simple scheme, actually. Some bad people, unknown, came up with a devious plan. Maybe. Because it never came to pass. I guessed – and keep it at guessed – bad people unknown wanted to make some big bucks with fake antiquities. You can make fake antiquities real by crating false provenances.”

“Provenances,” Harried said. “The actual paperwork that proves an object is real.”

“Correct. They had – I’m guessing because it never came to pass – a number of forged provenances. What they wanted to do was slip the fake provenances into the paperwork pile of Virginia Antiquities LLC. They had, again I’m guessing, someone on the inside. But for the plan to work there had to be confusion regarding antiquities.”

“Thus the three crocodiles,” Harriet said knowingly.

“Correct,” Noonan said. “My guess was the three alabaster crocodiles were going to cause a major disruption of the usual painstaking manner of verifying both the authenticity of the antiquities and the provenances. In the chaos the inside person was going to slip the fake provenances into the file cabinet of completed investigations. Then, in a month or two, when the completed investigations were put into the computer, the fake provenances would go in with the real ones. Suddenly fake antiquities somewhere would have bona fide provenances. When the buyer or seller checked the provenance records at Virginia Antiquities LLC, they would all appear genuine.”

“But you cut them off at the pass.”

“I’d like to think so.” Noonan looked up again, “The Commissioner is already taking credit for an illegal act that cannot take place.”

“Ah, the price of honesty,” she shook her head sadly. Then she adjusted the beach towel over her shoulder. “I must now go on my appointed rounds searching for infiltrating Muslims on the beach.”

Noonan smiled. “By the way, do you know why you should never play poker with a crocodile?”

“A joke,” snapped Harriet. “OK, why should you not play poker with a crocodile?”

“Because,” chortled Noonan. “You’ll lose every hand.”