THE GREAT ART CAPER

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Connor says that while he served a prison term in the '60s, the Donati clan kept watch on his mother, and to return the favor, he tried to help them unload some Wyeth paintings stolen from the Woolworth estate in Monmouth, Me. With that, a career was born. Connor's father had been an antique-weapon collector; his mother painted and wrote poetry; and Connor, who already had a cherished collection of Japanese swords, had truly found his niche. But he kept slipping up. In July 1990 a federal judge who doubled the requested sentence called Connor "rotten to the core" and a "menace" and told him, "We don't need you, and we are society."

Connor, who can seem utterly benign as he weaves one story onto the tail of another, and another, and another, changes instantly when the names of certain cops, or that judge, are uttered. His eyes bug out, his neck tenses, and another Myles, a chilling character, crawls out of his skin. He breathes fire when he calls the judge "a vapid windbag and a pathetic martinet."

On a recent afternoon in Rhode Island, Connor was asked how such a smart guy could be so stupid as to be sitting behind bars, yet again, in a pair of mustard-dumb prison-issue duds? Connor didn't have much of an answer. But 40 minutes to the north, at the Norfolk County Jail in Dedham, Mass., Billy Youngworth did. Youngworth, 38, who as a boy took martial-arts lessons from Myles and has had a parasitic relationship with him ever since, said Myles, a member of Mensa, is endlessly interesting and charming, "but he attracts mutts." Billy being Exhibit A.

"Myles is woefully ignorant about people and kind to a fault, and fails to see that guys can be maggots," says Billy, who wears a constant woe-is-me grin that says low-grade grifter; watch your wallet. But while he is no genius, he was smart enough to realize that bringing Myles into this mess gives him a credibility the feds can't ignore.

Last week negotiations were still open on whether Youngworth would be given immunity for returning a small part of the booty as a show of proof that he could deliver the rest. That, in itself, makes it look like the feds believe Tom Mashberg actually saw the real thing that day. If they thought it was a fake, wouldn't Youngworth and Connor have been sent back into their holes by now?

But from the beginning, the U.S. Attorney's Office has entertained no thoughts of letting two career criminals waltz away with $5 million in spending money in return for the art. The office is willing to deal--but on its own terms. For his part, Myles Connor last week told TIME he would forfeit any reward or reduction of the 2 1/2 years left on his sentence, provided Billy be freed and three other unnamed inmates have their cases reconsidered. The three mugs got bum raps, says the rogue crusader.

In San Francisco, Dan Falzon said his policy is never to get too high or too low. "The key is just to keep working every day with the same vigor that you had on Day One." Hanging over his desk, to keep the vigor up, is his going-away present from the guys in Boston: a poster of Vermeer's The Concert, the most valuable piece in the biggest, most confounding art heist in American history.

--With reporting by Charlotte Faltermayer/New York