—Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), Italian art historian Raffaelo was a very popular man. —Georges LeFleur My mind was still reeling at the thought of Michael X. Johnson, International Art Thief, working on the side of the angels when I pulled into the gravel parking lot behind my apartment near downtown Oakland. My art studio and the majority of my clients were in San Francisco, which meant that most mornings I faced the Commute From Hell across the Oakland Bay Bridge. For the past two weeks I had been reveling in the novelty of a breezy commute to the columbarium, a mere five-minute drive from where I lived near Lake Merritt. Home was the former maid’s quarters of a nineteenth-century Victorian that had been divided into apartments: one on the first floor, two on the second, and mine on the third, tucked under the eaves. Small but spacious, my four rooms were flooded with cheerful sunlight during the day, thanks to the dormer windows that dotted each wall, while at night the slanting roofline created a warm and cozy ambience, especially when I lit the candles on the mantel and hearth of my nonfunctioning fireplace.
