The Rescue Artist Part 9

Over the years Leif Lier, the detective in charge of the Norwegian end of the Scream Scream case, had come to know Enger well. A patient man whose forbearance would be remarkable even if he were not a cop, Lier shrugged off Enger's antics. "Enger was a pain in the neck from time to time," Lier acknowledged, "but he was funny, too." case, had come to know Enger well. A patient man whose forbearance would be remarkable even if he were not a cop, Lier shrugged off Enger's antics. "Enger was a pain in the neck from time to time," Lier acknowledged, "but he was funny, too."

On April 12, two months after the theft of The Scream The Scream, Enger's wife gave birth to a baby boy. The proud father placed a notice in Enger's wife gave birth to a baby boy. The proud father placed a notice in Dagbladet Dagbladet. The baby had arrived, the birth announcement declared, "With a Scream!" The baby had arrived, the birth announcement declared, "With a Scream!"

24.

Prop Trap MAY 6, 1994.

Charley Hill had more pressing problems to deal with than Pl Enger's games with the Norwegian police. Hill's primary goal was to retrieve The Scream The Scream. Everything else, including finding someone to arrest, was less important. That was Hill's approach to all his art cases. The question that truly engaged him was whereisit whereisit, not whodunit whodunit. His Art Squad colleagues tended to agree, but many cops did not. Hill's focus on pieces of canvas rather than on criminals, they insisted, amounted to condoning theft. Even a hint of that argument launched Hill into a tirade on "bureaucrats in blue" and police shortsightedness.

Life would be easy if you could recover the painting and and arrest the thieves. But it didn't usually work like that. Which do you want, Hill would shout, a hubcap thief thrown in prison for six months or a Bruegel back on the wall where the world can admire it? arrest the thieves. But it didn't usually work like that. Which do you want, Hill would shout, a hubcap thief thrown in prison for six months or a Bruegel back on the wall where the world can admire it?

Just how the art dealer and his arsonist companion had come to be involved with The Scream The Scream in the first place was something Hill could sort out another day. For now, Hill's job was to get things back on track. His first meetings with Johnsen and Ulving had gone well enough, he figured, and Johnsen had certainly swallowed hard when Walker showed him the money. But what had the Norwegian duo made of the police convention at the hotel and the plainclothes cop in the bulletproof vest? in the first place was something Hill could sort out another day. For now, Hill's job was to get things back on track. His first meetings with Johnsen and Ulving had gone well enough, he figured, and Johnsen had certainly swallowed hard when Walker showed him the money. But what had the Norwegian duo made of the police convention at the hotel and the plainclothes cop in the bulletproof vest?

Johnsen had left the Plaza in a hurry, saying he would return in midafternoon, leaving Hill to twiddle his thumbs. Hill hoped the Norwegian crook was busy with his partners, whoever they were, sorting out the logistics of handing over The Scream The Scream. If the deal was still on, that is. The fiasco with the police convention had certainly spooked Johnsen, and it might have scared him away altogether.

Hill tried to look at things from Johnsen's point of view. On the one hand, the money. On the other, a hotel crawling with cops and a deal put together by two strangers. Who were were Roberts and Walker? Roberts and Walker?

With time to kill before Johnsen reappeared, Ulving suggested that he show Hill around town. Before they set out, the art dealer gestured to Hill to join him at the back of his Mercedes station wagon. Ulving opened a big box full of prints, including some woodcuts of The Scream The Scream. Hill couldn't tell if they were genuine, but they looked good. Then the two men headed off for a bit of gallery-hopping. Ulving, in his element, bounced along proudly. He was a "slimeball," Hill thought, c.o.c.ky as h.e.l.l and oblivious to the sneers and scowls directed his way by his fellow dealers as he sauntered through Oslo's galleries.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, Ulving and Hill returned to the hotel to see if Johnsen had showed up. They met Walker and settled in at the coffee bar to wait. About 15 minutes later, Johnsen stormed in.

"There's cops all around the building," he snapped, "and police cars parked outside. Two of 'em, at least."

Johnsen was furious, spitting out his words. Hill hadn't known about the Norwegians' plan to keep an eye on things, but he was as soothing and unruffled as Johnsen was indignant. "Let's go up to my room," Hill said. "I've got a bottle of Canadian Club up there, and we can talk."

Hill's room was on the sixteenth floor with a knockout view of the harbor and, what was more interesting to Johnsen, a clear view of the hotel's main entrance. Johnsen and Hill stood together at the window. They looked down, and there was no missing the cops. Hill groaned to himself. The f.u.c.kers were in unmarked cars, lounging around in the sun, bored out of their minds and impossible to take for anything but police surveillance officers.

Johnsen looked at the cops and then glared at Hill. "What's that about?" he demanded.

Hill decided he'd stick with the same line he'd taken to explain away the cop in the bulletproof vest. If the Norwegian surveillance teams had been skilled-if they'd been well-concealed and Johnsen had managed to spot them anyway-then he would have had some explaining to do. But incompetence like this was a gift. These guys couldn't couldn't be trying to hide. be trying to hide.

"Look at those a.s.sholes down there," Hill said. "They can't be looking for us, because n.o.body could have missed us wandering all over the hotel. They've got to be here to protect the narcotics conference."

Everyone sat down to a drink. Ulving begged off. Hill's opinion of him sank even lower. Johnsen and Hill each took a serious drink, a large Canadian Club, and talked about the merits of rye whiskey compared to scotch or bourbon. Keep it relaxed, Hill told himself. Take it slow.

Hill stood up and walked into the bathroom. In the morning, he had arranged his papers and his traveling kit with all the care of a set dresser on a Broadway play. Setting out a "prop trap" was a kind of silent storytelling. Hill had stacked a few business cards near his bedside lamp: Christopher Charles Roberts, Getty Museum. He had set his plane tickets by the phone, peeking out from a torn envelope; his Getty ID lay nearby, with a photo. On the desk, a few pieces of Getty stationery. Under an ashtray, a couple of crumpled credit card receipts, signed by Christopher Roberts. On top of the receipts, half a dollar or so in change, in American coins.

Hill had taken similar care with his toiletries kit, in case Johnsen (or, much less likely, Ulving) went into the bathroom and looked through his things. Shaving cream, deodorant, toothpaste, all good American brands.

The preparation paid off. As soon as Hill shut the bathroom door behind him, Walker told him later, "Johnsen had a good ferret "round." Though the crook had waited for Hill to leave the room, he made no attempt to disguise his snooping. For his part, Hill made a point of dawdling in the bathroom, to give Johnsen every opportunity to check him out.

Hill finally reappeared. Johnsen didn't make any reference to the little test he'd conducted, but he seemed more at ease and began to talk again about how to carry out the Scream Scream deal. It had to be done that night, he said. Hill and Walker would have to bring the money to a rendezvous. He'd let them know where. deal. It had to be done that night, he said. Hill and Walker would have to bring the money to a rendezvous. He'd let them know where.

Hill balked. "Nope!" he said. "We're not taking the money out of the hotel until I'm a.s.sured that the painting is is the painting and that it's fine. We'll do the deal after that." the painting and that it's fine. We'll do the deal after that."

They wrangled for a bit. Johnsen left to make a phone call-he didn't want to use the phone in Hill's room-and came back a few minutes later, worried but still hopeful. For Hill, this wary jostling was sport. You had to stay alert and watchful, but there was no way of knowing just what you were watching for for. In the meantime, you talked, partly to establish a bond, partly to pa.s.s the time, but mainly to amuse yourself.

Every case reached a point where the next move was up to the thieves and there was nothing the cops could do to hurry things along. Hill tried to relax and take life as it came. It took work, for though Hill was a brave man, he wasn't a calm one. Off-duty, the moment a conversation lost its hold on him-and that moment was rarely slow in coming-Hill would start jiggling his keys, or twirling his gla.s.ses, or scanning the room in search of a book to pick up or a television to turn on or a magazine to skim.

Undercover, Hill's fidgeting vanished. If the bad guys asked a question, you went along, looking to see if you could come up with something new. A drink or two helped. The fog-not knowing the rules of the game, or if there were were rules, or just who you were dealing with-was part of the undercover challenge. Spinning a story for high stakes was a chance to exercise one's powers. When it worked, it was enjoyable in the same way that it was enjoyable for a sprinter to run or a skier to carve a line through a turn. rules, or just who you were dealing with-was part of the undercover challenge. Spinning a story for high stakes was a chance to exercise one's powers. When it worked, it was enjoyable in the same way that it was enjoyable for a sprinter to run or a skier to carve a line through a turn.

Ulving asked Hill about the Getty and about his responsibilities there. Hill made it up as he went along. He hadn't seen any of the new construction at the museum-his only visit had been twenty years before-but when he learned that Ulving hadn't either, he laid it on thick. "When you visit the States, you have to come see us. And make sure you give me a call. If I'm not there, tell them you're a friend of mine, and they'll look after you."

That kind of "lightweight bulls.h.i.t banter" was Hill's favorite. It kept the tedium at bay and sometimes it even helped move things along.

For Hill, the enemy always lurking in the wings, more formidable than any thief, was boredom. The great virtue of undercover work was that, temporarily at least, it provided a means of vanquishing his old foe.

25.

First Time Undercover By the time The Scream The Scream was stolen, Charley Hill had been an undercover cop for a dozen years. His very first undercover case, like the great majority of those that followed, had involved a stolen painting. (In most of the nonart cases, including one where he was taken hostage, Hill played a crook who wanted to buy counterfeit money.) The decision to give Hill a chance in an art case was easy. He was well-spoken, he didn't look like a cop, and he had been a soldier and therefore could presumably keep his head. Above all, he was game. was stolen, Charley Hill had been an undercover cop for a dozen years. His very first undercover case, like the great majority of those that followed, had involved a stolen painting. (In most of the nonart cases, including one where he was taken hostage, Hill played a crook who wanted to buy counterfeit money.) The decision to give Hill a chance in an art case was easy. He was well-spoken, he didn't look like a cop, and he had been a soldier and therefore could presumably keep his head. Above all, he was game.

In 1982 Scotland Yard had infiltrated a gang of armed robbers in south London. Somehow the thieves had acquired a painting by the sixteenth-century Italian Parmigianino, worth a few million pounds. The crooks wanted to unload it, and the cops saw an opportunity. A pair of detectives in the armed robbery squad took a look at Charley Hill and sounded him out about a role he would later make his own. How would he feel about posing as an American art dealer willing to buy a hot painting?

How would he feel? Hill's early days walking a beat hadn't been bad, but that a.s.signment had been followed by a frustrating stint sitting at a desk shuffling papers. Hill had been trapped, like a soldier detailed to filling out endless forms in triplicate. Now someone had set him free. "I felt the way I had when I'd been given a weekend pa.s.s from Fort Bragg," Hill recalled. "I saw Bragg Boulevard and Fayetteville, North Carolina, as it was years ago. It all came back. It was like the relief of going home."

First stop, clothes. Hill whirled around London, flitting from shop to shop. Subtlety, he had decided, would be a mistake. "I thought I should put myself in the place of the people meeting me and give them what they wanted." That meant something "fancy and flashy, some kind of half-a.s.sed cross between a celebrity chef and a Virginia preppy, horsey type." In ordinary life, these were people Hill happily mocked. Now, with an excuse to abandon his English decorum, he combed through suit after suit in search of just the right degree of raffishness. Tie or bowtie? What color socks best set off a pair of spanking new loafers?

When he wasn't shopping, Hill was studying. Parmigianino was a mannerist, he learned, which meant he had better read up on mannerism. Why did Parmigianino distort his subjects' proportions in such odd ways, stretching his madonna's neck so that it could never support her head, depicting fingers longer and thinner than any seen in nature? Parmigianino appears in Vasari's Lives of the Artists Lives of the Artists, Hill found, and he set out to learn the biographical basics as well. Soon he could hold forth on the golden youth, "more like an angel than a man," who at 16 turned out paintings that reduced older artists to awe and envy.

Hill's undercover career began at Heathrow Airport, where he had (supposedly) just landed after a Concorde flight from New York. This was theater on the cheap-Scotland Yard hadn't sprung for a plane ticket, but British Air had churned out the proper paperwork and slapped the appropriate tags on Hill's bags. He'd studied the Concorde menu, too, in case the conversation veered that way. Hill emerged from the arrival area looking dapper and rested, as befit someone whose flight had taken only a few hours.

Waiting to meet him were three people: one of the Parmigianino thieves, the thief's girlfriend, and an East End gangster who knew the American art dealer and could vouch for him. The "gangster" was in fact Sid Walker, and the job marked the first time Hill and Walker had worked together. The meet-and-greet small talk went off well. To Hill's delight, the meeting seemed to be playing out just like a scene from a Hollywood film, complete with a crook and his moll. Life behind a desk didn't come close.

The little group sat down for a get-acquainted drink. Hill, flush with cash, made a point of flashing a wad of greenbacks as he fumbled through his pockets looking for pound notes. The thief seemed to take to Hill, but his girlfriend held back. Hill and Walker chatted away like old friends. The thief made a pa.s.sing reference to someone who had lost his nerve. Hill jumped in. "You mean," he said, "his a.r.s.ehole went sixpence half a crown."

The phrase was not an idiom but a kind of compressed joke. A sixpence is roughly the size of a dime and a half crown is close to a silver dollar. Hill had heard the expression a few days before, and it had stuck in his mind. "I just blurted it out," he said later, "because this was my first undercover job and I was in tough-guy-talk mode. And as soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized, My G.o.d, an American would never never say anything like that. He wouldn't say 'a.r.s.ehole,' he wouldn't talk about crowns and sixpence. Jesus! say anything like that. He wouldn't say 'a.r.s.ehole,' he wouldn't talk about crowns and sixpence. Jesus!

"And so I immediately said, 'That's what you'd say over here, isn't it?' to cover my tracks, as if I'd been joking. And they all laughed. The one who laughed the most, of course, so everyone would join in, was Sid. But he hadn't laughed when I came out with that."

Walker already had a towering reputation in Scotland Yard. Hill's narrow escape from self-inflicted disaster impressed him. Maybe the new kid had the makings of an undercover cop.

Hill ordered another round of drinks. Then the party swept off downtown, to Grosvenor House, the hotel on Park Lane, to drop Hill at his room. The room was real, unlike the plane flight, but this stop was entirely for show. Guests at Grosvenor House had money to spare. If Hill stayed here, he was a player.

After dark, Walker swung by the hotel in a long blue Mercedes. The two cops ate dinner and Walker took Hill through various scenarios he might encounter when he met with the thieves again. Then they set off to a midnight rendezvous with the thieves on the eastern outskirts of London. After an hour's wait at Falconwood train station in Kent, the crook from the airport showed up.

He and Hill drove off. Walker stayed behind. After endless twists and detours intended to throw off any surveillance and disorient Hill, they reached a large pseudo-Tudor house. Inside they met a new man. A standard feature of life undercover was that characters came and went without explanation, and detectives had to depend on their intuition and experience to guess who was who. Hill put the new man's age at about sixty. He looked like an extra from The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather, and he seemed to be in charge. Out came a bottle of Remy Martin, and with it, a stream of questions directed at Hill. Who was he?

Hill made it up as he went along, though he told the truth when he could. No one mentioned art; this was about Hill, not the nature of Raphael's influence on Parmigianino. Hill found that stories about Vietnam went over well. This was a double bonus because it was rich territory and also safely outside the experience of a pair of English crooks.

Hill told the story of the first time he had come under serious fire. He had been in Vietnam about two weeks, in remote country in the central highlands. Hill was in the lead platoon making its way up a steep hill. "And then all this s.h.i.t came flying down at us from the North Vietnamese-intense fire from AK-47s. About half the men in my squad were hit straight away. I hit the ground because I'd never experienced that in my life before. Whatever training you've done, nothing actually prepares you for that moment. You think, 's.h.i.t, I'm going to die die here!' here!'

"Well, they stopped firing, and we started firing back. The worst thing was that our guys below us started firing up through us, and they were coming up short with their grenade launchers, dropping these things right on us. And then, at just that moment, I saw one of our machine gunners was firing, but neither his a.s.sistant gunner nor his ammo bearer was anywhere near him. Except that the sergeant was nearby and cowering behind a boulder. I thought, 'Oh f.u.c.k, what the h.e.l.l is he doing?'

"I crawled over and grabbed the ammo belt, which was flying around, and Sterger-he was the machine gunner-and I moved forward quite some distance, to cover the whole front of the line. So we were above the point where the guys in my squad were being sh.e.l.lacked by the guys down below. It was chaos. We had to stop at one point because my gla.s.ses fell off. I said, 's.h.i.t! Wait!,' and I put them back on, the sweat pouring down my brow, and off we went again. I was just popping the bullets in, and we were really laying down a h.e.l.l of a blaze of fire.

"The M-79 grenade launcher rounds were dropping on us, plus the bullets flying up from down below toward the Vietnamese, and there was an artillery battery that must have been five miles away, and their rounds were dropping short. It was an awful awful thing. And then, just to make the nightmare worse, in flew some old F-100s-I don't know if they were U.S. Air Force or the Vietnamese Air Force-dropping napalm, and they took out the whole tree line in front of us. thing. And then, just to make the nightmare worse, in flew some old F-100s-I don't know if they were U.S. Air Force or the Vietnamese Air Force-dropping napalm, and they took out the whole tree line in front of us. Kaboomph! Kaboomph!

"The napalm was exploding, and everything was red with flame and black with smoke, and we were so close we could feel the air being sucked from our lungs. The Dust Offs [medevac helicopters] were just flying around up high, but the ordinary helicopters came down and picked up the wounded. Eventually our lieutenant colonel pitched up in his Huey with the battalion sergeant major. But they didn't land; they hovered up there and kicked a few boxes of ammunition out the door and disappeared off.

"Sterger certainly should have got a medal, but he got no commendation whatsoever. And the lieutenant colonel, who never got his hands dirty, ended up getting a Silver Star."

It was a story that touched on several of Hill's favorite themes-the bravery of the troops (not least himself) in contrast with the incompetence of their leaders; the danger of being shot in the back by one's own side; the eternal truth that, when honors are doled out, virtue is ignored and cowardice rewarded. The crooks liked it, too. Hill is no thief, far from it, but his antiauthority streak runs deep, and the thieves saw in him some kind of cracked-mirror version of themselves.

With everyone in a convivial mood, the older of the two crooks pulled out the stolen painting. It was about twenty-four inches by thirty inches. Hill took it in his hands. "It certainly looked like a Parmigianino," he said later, "but when I turned it over, I realized that the stretcher"-the wooden frame on which the canvas is stretched-"didn't look old enough. It obviously wasn't medieval. And when I looked more closely at the canvas, I could see that the craquelure, the pattern of hairline cracks on the surface of the painting, wasn't right, either.

"So now I was on the horns of a dilemma."

The thieves weren't trying to peddle a fake; if Hill was right, they had stolen stolen a fake that they (and the owner) had believed was genuine. Hill, who had yet to say anything about the painting, fortified himself with more cognac. The two thieves looked on, amused rather than alarmed, as Hill once again scanned the painting front and back. a fake that they (and the owner) had believed was genuine. Hill, who had yet to say anything about the painting, fortified himself with more cognac. The two thieves looked on, amused rather than alarmed, as Hill once again scanned the painting front and back.

"We've got a problem here," Hill said. "This might not be by Parmigianino; it may just be in his style. Because if you look closely..." and then he launched into "a stream of bulls.h.i.t" on wormholes in the wood and patterns in the cracking.

The thieves were indignant. Their painting was a fake?! fake?! But though they didn't believe Hill, at least he had put an end to any suspicion that he was a cop. The aim of detective work is to bring down criminals. Any genuine undercover cop, the thieves a.s.sumed, would have glanced at the painting, cheered his good fortune, and slapped on the handcuffs. But though they didn't believe Hill, at least he had put an end to any suspicion that he was a cop. The aim of detective work is to bring down criminals. Any genuine undercover cop, the thieves a.s.sumed, would have glanced at the painting, cheered his good fortune, and slapped on the handcuffs.

By now it was four in the morning. Hill told the thieves he didn't want their painting. They drove him back to meet Walker at the train station. Walker, who had spent a long, cold night waiting in a parking lot, noted without enthusiasm that Hill had booze on his breath. Part of the job, Hill explained, and besides, it was not beer but cognac and good cognac at that. Walker didn't seem much mollified.

Hill had far more distressing news to impart. "I think the thing's a fake," he said.

"s.h.i.t! Are you serious?"

Walker and Hill sped back to headquarters and reported the night's doings. Their superiors, convinced that the painting was real and that they were on the brink of catching two criminals they had long been pursuing, ordered a raid on the house Hill had visited.

The next day Walker collected Hill at Grosvenor House. The police had grabbed the Parmigianino and brought it to the auctioneers at Christie's. The painting, the experts decreed, was a Victorian copy in the manner of Parmigianino. It was worth not 3 million but, on a good day, 3,000.

For an art historian or a restorer, recognizing the painting as a fake might have been a routine day's work. But they would have had expertise on their side and all the time they wanted. Hill, armed only with nerve and a good eye, was an amateur who had to make a snap judgment while a pair of crooks glowered at him.

It came out eventually that the thieves had stolen the painting twenty-five years before and put it away. For a quarter of a century, they had looked on it as a retirement fund worth millions.

"Well, everyone was bitterly disappointed," Hill recalled, "because they were so desperate to put these guys away for something big. But my reputation soared; it made me. From then on, I was the Yard's art 'expert.' And Sid suddenly realized that I could do the job. He said, in that growl of his"-here Hill put on a tough guy accent-" 'Chollie, the thing I like about choo is, you got charisma.' "

Charisma wasn't quite the right word-nerve or or flair flair would have been closer. But the point was that Charley had won Sid's endors.e.m.e.nt. Years later, he still glowed at the memory. "I was flattered by that. No f.u.c.ker had ever said anything like that to me before. Sid was a really hard-nosed cop, whom I'd heard a lot about but never met, the foremost of all police undercover officers. And from that moment, I became one of his proteges." would have been closer. But the point was that Charley had won Sid's endors.e.m.e.nt. Years later, he still glowed at the memory. "I was flattered by that. No f.u.c.ker had ever said anything like that to me before. Sid was a really hard-nosed cop, whom I'd heard a lot about but never met, the foremost of all police undercover officers. And from that moment, I became one of his proteges."

26.

The Trick of It Hill, who had spent a lifetime in dissatisfied flight from career to career, found a home in undercover work. Art jobs in particular were a perfect match, one of the few vocations in the world that called for someone who would be equally glad to study the brushstrokes in a 300-year-old painting or to kick down a robber's door.

For Hill, the pattern never varied. Talent and brains would lift him up, and restlessness and rebelliousness would send him tumbling back down. He had nearly managed to flunk out of college, despite his taste for books. In the army, he no sooner earned a promotion than he picked a fight with an officer who busted him back to private. At Scotland Yard, nearly every higher-up was a "complete dunce who talked through his a.s.s." On the ladder of career success, Hill broke every rung.

Hill saw the pattern himself, but he took it as proof of integrity rather than of self-destructiveness. "p.i.s.sing people off is what I've done best in life," he has said more than once, and his tone when he says so is boastful rather than wistful. He is, after all, a lone wolf, not a creature made to work in harness. "I was a real 'f.u.c.k the army' kind of guy, but I enjoyed fighting, and the people I was with enjoyed having me with them," Hill says defiantly. "I was a good fighter but not a good soldier, and later on I was a good thief-taker but not a good police officer."

Undercover work, with its emphasis on making it up as you went along and on working in small teams rather than in large groups, set him free. Suddenly the very traits that had set Hill apart and made him an odd fit in the police-the chafing at authority, the posh accent, the tendency to drip polysyllables, the arcane interests, the "outsiderness" in general-all turned to his advantage. The starting point in undercover work was the ability to go unrecognized. Hill was the last person anyone would identify as a cop.

"English detectives all look alike," says Mark Dalrymple, the insurance investigator. "They're always in suits-always the same inexpensive suits. Very plain ties, with a neat knot. Short hair, neatly cut. Polished shoes." Dalrymple puts down his winegla.s.s and swings his eyes around the crowded pub where he is holding forth, in search of a live example. "The minute they come in the room, every villain in a place like this knows who they are. n.o.body n.o.body ever makes Charley Hill." ever makes Charley Hill."

It is not because he is a man of a thousand disguises. Hill's range is narrow. One of his undercover colleagues once worked his way inside a neo-n.a.z.i gang and thwarted its plan to firebomb a synagogue. Hill could no more pa.s.s for a skinhead than could John Cleese. (Hill is typecast partly because his acting skills go only so far. But vanity comes into play as well. Hill brushes aside certain roles as not for him. He is a leading man. If all that's wanted is a brute, plenty of others can fill the bill.) "Most police operations are for drugs or arms," says d.i.c.k Ellis, the Art Squad detective who specialized in putting together undercover teams, "and those tend to work out quite nicely. Those deals are done on a villain-to-villain basis, and we have some very well-trained, very astute police officers we can insert into those scenarios. But they could never, ever ever pose as anything other than a villain." pose as anything other than a villain."

The man who brought down the neo-n.a.z.i gang, for instance, was a highly regarded detective named Rocky, who looks like a bigger, tougher Charles Bronson. In police circles, he was renowned for such feats as throwing a desk at a sergeant (and, more surprisingly, getting away with it). Rocky's partner was supposedly the only person who could handle him. Charley Hill, a friend of both men, referred to them as "the monster and his manager."

"Have you met Rocky?" asks d.i.c.k Ellis. "You aren't going to get Rocky posing as a representative of the Getty." Ellis is so struck by the image that he wheezes with laughter, as if he has a slow leak.

"Rocky does not come across as a well-educated, aesthetic, well-to-do person," he goes on. "Rocky is your rough-and-tumble black market dealer, and he's very very good at it. But when you come up against something unusual, you need someone else." good at it. But when you come up against something unusual, you need someone else."

You need, in fact, Charley Hill.

Nearly always, Hill plays a swaggering American or Canadian with a loud mouth and a thick wallet. His characters are invariably light on scruples and, when it seems the best way to tempt a crook into the open, sometimes low on brainpower as well.

Despite Hill's years in the United States, posing as a North American is trickier than it sounds. Getting the accent right is the first requirement, and the easiest. Capturing the melody of American speech, as opposed to the sound of individual words, is slightly more of a challenge. The pitch of an American's voice tends to fall at the end of sentences; an Englishman's voice falls less steeply, or even rises, almost as if he were asking a question. Hill must remember, too, not to cap his sentences with the rote questions-"He's not really up to the job, is he?"-that the English use to soften their judgments.

Speed b.u.mps pop up everywhere. Hill needs to purge his speech of countless English words and idioms beyond the familiar "lift" for "elevator" and "underground" for "subway." The hardest to remember are words where the difference in p.r.o.nunciation seems idiosyncratic, like the American "CONtroversy" and the English "conTROversy."

A few differences are specific to art. Americans p.r.o.nounce "van Gogh" like "van go," for instance, while the English choke out something closer to the guttural Dutch original, as if the speaker has a fishbone caught in his throat.

The greatest danger hides in expressions that are more verbal reflexes than products of conscious thought. Say "cheers" rather than "thank you" to a waiter who has brought a drink, and you have blown your cover. In similar fashion, habits deeper than thought-like the proper way to deploy a knife and fork-pose grave risks. Unlike the English, Americans at the dinner table set their knife down between bites and switch the fork to their right hand. When he plays Americans, Hill sometimes feigns arguments during meals so he will have an excuse to jab the air angrily and, perhaps, draw attention to his fork-wielding right hand.

The problem is not that the differences between England and the United States are so vast. They aren't. The problem, which is familiar to every tourist in London who has looked left instead of right and stepped blindly into traffic, is that the consequences of a moment's carelessness can be disastrous.

For undercover cops, the need to be on guard is constant. Thieves and gangsters confronted with a stranger immediately begin trying to size him up. The process is not subtle. In contrast with ordinary encounters, where etiquette forbids challenging a new acquaintance with belligerent questions, crooks encountering someone new probe him openly and aggressively.

"People are always testing you to find out if you're a cop or a taxman or if you're who you say you are," Hill says. "Are you a wrong 'un or the right guy to deal with? They ask about your background, what you did before this. It could be anything. In my case, maybe some question about art or a painting."

It is not a game for the timid, which is, for Hill, a great part of the appeal. Whether out of courage or foolhardiness or a never-outgrown faith in his own invulnerability, Hill feels most alive when most in danger. Even under fire in Vietnam, he insists, he was never scared but at most "concerned." This smacks of Daniel Boone's remark that he was never lost in the wilderness though he was once "confused" for three days, but the larger point holds: Hill places a high value on physical courage, believes that he is at his best under pressure, and delights in putting himself in harm's way.

When it comes to undercover work, those are essential traits. If Hill were handed a script and told to read it, his performance would be no better than that of many others. A great many actors, after all, can switch with ease between American roles and English ones. Throw away the script, though, and then raise the stakes, and Hill would come into his own.

For it is the setting rather than the acting per se that sets the undercover craft apart. Acting is easy if the greatest danger is that someone in the audience will walk out or a stagehand will miss a cue. But try it when the penalty for flubbing a line is a shotgun to the head. "All undercover work comes down to mental ingenuity," Hill says. "It's a matter of quickwittedness, imagination, the capacity to lie on the hop." Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Cop was a silly movie, Hill remarks, but in its emphasis on talk rather than gear, it came closer to conveying the realities of undercover work than any of the legion of earnest, grim cop films. "You've got to have something to say, all the time, that's sharp and plausible and says 'This guy can't be a cop.' The villains don't necessarily have to like you, but they have to accept you and feel they can trust you." was a silly movie, Hill remarks, but in its emphasis on talk rather than gear, it came closer to conveying the realities of undercover work than any of the legion of earnest, grim cop films. "You've got to have something to say, all the time, that's sharp and plausible and says 'This guy can't be a cop.' The villains don't necessarily have to like you, but they have to accept you and feel they can trust you."

An a.r.s.enal of high-tech gizmos like James Bond's is beside the point. "You survive by your wits," Hill insists. "Hardware will only let you down." The bare-bones approach, it should be noted, applies only to things, not words. When it comes to the stories he spins, Hill begins with the simplest of premises and then tacks on as many unlikely and over-the-top embellishments as pop into his head.

Characteristically, Hill takes his "the less gear the better" view to an extreme. Guns are out, first of all. He never carries a weapon, even when he knows he will be dealing with killers. Out, too, are any kind of hidden recording devices and any disguises beyond some new clothing. No beards or mustaches. No contact lenses or new eyegla.s.ses or changes of hairstyle. No bullet-proof vests. The gallant knight will ride into battle bareback and unarmed.

Even Hill's false ident.i.ties are willfully, almost perversely, thin. His tyc.o.o.ns and wheeler-dealers start out as cardboard cutouts, stereotypes cobbled together from old movies and corny television shows like Dalls Dalls. In the Czech Republic job in 1996 that involved a gang of ex-secret police turned criminals, for instance, Hill created a ludicrously unlikely role for himself.