THE GREAT ART CAPER

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And so the frames of the stolen work today sit eerily empty, sometimes drawing as much interest from visitors as the work that remains. In the second-floor Dutch Room, a self-portrait of Rembrandt looks across the room to the very spot where thieves took Storm. Rembrandt was a witness to the theft of his only seascape.

Today museum officials say only that they are cooperating with federal authorities, that they are not yet convinced that Youngworth or Connor can return the paintings, but that they are hopeful the work will come home. At times, this improbable three-way relationship between G-men, artophiles and cons has been tested by conflicting interests, and Youngworth, paranoid for a reason, says from jail that he believes the feds are trying to establish that his $10,000 payment from the Gardner constitutes extortion. The plan, he believes, is to pile the years in front of him, then reduce the charges in exchange for the return of the art. Museum officials refuse to comment on that or any other possible strategy.

When single paintings began selling for $40 million and more in the '80s, many museum directors grew nervous about both security and their ability to pay insurance premiums. Hanging a painting, Falzon says, "is like hanging money on the walls." Bob Bazin, a retired FBI man who specialized in stolen art for 15 years, says that art ranks behind only drugs and munitions in illicit international trade. And Constance Lowenthal, executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research in New York City, says there are currently about 100,000 works of stolen art floating around somewhere in the world.

In the '80s, Lowenthal says, with inflation raging, many people sought protection by sinking money into art. The auction houses fed this acquisition craze by selling on credit. Japanese buyers poured money into the market, prices soared, and big sales became fodder for the 11 o'clock news. It all "made it clear to every thief that in addition to stealing the family silver, he might as well take what's on the walls."

It begins, Myles Connor says, with his father, a Milton cop. Connor says he has never encountered a single law-enforcement officer who comes close to his late father's standards of honesty, discipline and integrity. Somehow that seems to have left Connor motivated by a desire to beat the badges at a game of cops and robbers. Boston in the '70s and '80s had its share of rogue cops, both local and federal, and they took up his challenge. The result, Connor claims, was that he kept getting framed, which only sharpened his resentment of authority. There is no greater hypocrisy, in his book, than to be a crooked cop.

In 1981 Connor was acquitted on a rap of murdering a Boston cop only after what he calls a miracle. An honest cop admitted that Myles had nothing to do with it. While doing time in the early '70s, Connor served as chief negotiator during a prison riot and standoff. Years later, he was convicted of the 1975 murder of two teenagers, served five years and was acquitted on retrial.