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And nobody beyond Eagle-Smith is jumping to Fred Banks' defense -- least of all Banks himself. In fact Eagle-Smith and Banks' lawyer both say the last time they knew Banks' location, he was staying in La Paz, Mexico, and he has shoved on since, without leaving a forwarding address.
A call to James Healy, the former director of Harcourts, drew a denial that he knew works were being sold out of trust. And he added an angry footnote: "They took my pension. They stole from me. And that's all I have to say." Banks' brother, Stephen, who also worked at the gallery, said his lawyer had advised him to decline comment. That lawyer, Melvin Honowitz, says an undisclosed number of paintings in which gallery employee pension benefits were invested have, indeed, become the subject of intense legal wrangling.
Fred Banks' only public statements about the collapse of Harcourts have come in testimony during bankruptcy proceedings for the gallery. The bankruptcy liquidation case listed $2.2 million in debts to unsecured creditors of the gallery, including 113 artists, collectors, galleries, and museums.
Testifying under oath at a meeting of gallery creditors in August, Banks sounded like a broken man, fielding questions from lawyers and others in a halting monotone. He blamed the gallery's demise on the post-boom downturn in prices and left the impression he'd somehow been below deck while Harcourts sailed for the shoals of financial disaster.
"I laid low for a few years," Banks told the attorney representing the bankruptcy trustee appointed to oversee the case, Ed Towers. "I was treated for depression."
According to Banks, he suffered an accident in November 1993 and was "severely injured." Eagle-Smith recalled that Banks fell from a ladder and was treated in a hospital overnight for a slight concussion.
"That was the starting point for me attending the gallery less and less," Banks testified. He went on to say he relinquished control of the gallery to his wife and bookkeeper, Jo Rogers: "Information was forwarded to me. Passed by me. I was sort of dependent on her -- for financial advice and for her intercessions."
From the standpoint of the artists, collectors, other creditors, and their lawyers, however, the crux of the matter -- the reason they were questioning Banks -- never was addressed: Where did the money go?
And the person who might be most able to answer that question was nowhere to be found.
Shortly before Harcourts Gallery filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy papers, Jo Rogers filed for divorce in Marin County. Two weeks before the bankruptcy creditors' meeting, she served her husband of 10 years with divorce papers, fired her divorce lawyer from the case, and left town.
Jo Rogers has not been seen since.
Aron Oliner, an attorney for bankruptcy trustee Ed Towers, has run a series of database searches, looking for property transfers that might suggest Rogers and Banks, either together or separately, were concealing assets from gallery creditors.
Oliner says he found nothing.
"My read is this was just a business going to hell," Oliner says. "A more responsible proprietor would have shut his doors in 1992."
Eagle-Smith believes Banks is destitute, citing the art impresario's efforts to sell a last possession, a motorcycle, as he was leaving for Mexico. "My understanding is that all he has is his $1,000-a-month Social Security check," he says.
But if Banks' final days in the United States suggest innocence to some people, others have a more jaundiced view of his last act at Harcourts.
San Francisco attorney M.J. Bogatin, who represents Paul and Henry Villierme, walked into Harcourts Gallery unannounced last August, just two days after Fred Banks had given his dispirited testimony in the firm's bankruptcy case. Bogatin says he wanted to pick up the financial records Paul Villierme had seen momentarily after kicking in the gallery's door a few months earlier.
"It kind of sounded like a party," Bogatin says, his voice still reflecting disbelief. Instead of the "broken" Fred Banks who had testified 48 hours earlier, Bogatin says, he found Fred and his brother, Stephen, in a festive mood.
"Fred Banks was bounding around. Full of energy. A different man. It was very cavalier. I would have thought they'd be in a deep funk. When I spoke to them, there were a dozen interruptions," Bogatin says. "There was a sense of celebration."
Afterward, says Bogatin, "we were at a loss over what to do."
A few days later, Bogatin's phone rang. A member of California Lawyers for the Arts had managed to interest the San Francisco District Attorney's Office in the Harcourts situation.
The chief of the DA's special prosecutions section, Debra Hayes, invited Bogatin and for a visit. Though she won't discuss details, Hayes says she assigned a prosecutor and a white-collar investigator to the case after Bogatin explained the vulnerability of struggling artists and the unlikelihood they'd obtain justice in bankruptcy court.
When Bogatin and Hayes parted ways, the Villiermes' attorney was sure the prosecutor's office would kick into gear. Instead, inactivity reigned. Banks left the country. His wife remained out of sight, while their divorce stayed suspiciously idle. And the bankruptcy trustee prepared to close shop on the Harcourts case.
Then, last month, the DA's investigation suddenly spurted to life. The renewed interest was sparked -- at least in part -- by a notice the office received from Richard Humphries, a San Francisco art dealer who was in state prison on an arson conviction. Banks had accused Humphries of theft of some art from Harcourts, and the prisoner had sent an official demand that the district attorney either charge him or dismiss Banks' complaint.
