"I'm no fan of the auction houses," admits a Chelsea contemporary-art dealer. "But this situation only proves how screwed up the American justice system's amnesty policy is. How inequitable is it that if two people trespass some law in a way that basically doesn't hurt anybody and one provides the dirt to the Feds, the snitch gets to go scot-free while the other gets taken to the cleaners? It's Monica Lewinsky revisited, only Christie's gets to play Linda Tripp and this John Greene guy gets to swagger about like he's Ken Starr. And no one's even getting a blow job out of this."

Yet others seem downright blasé about the matter. "So many immoral things take place in the art world," a former Impressionism expert at Sotheby's complains, "like dealers who unscrupulously take advantage of a novice buyer by convincing them to buy a third-rate piece at a top price." Price-fixing just doesn't seem to measure up.

Opinion in the art world seems universally supportive of Dede Brooks and mindful of her strong character. And the new chairman of Sotheby's, former Columbia University president Michael Sovern, confirms that she is repaying that confidence with loyalty to the firm. "She has not been involved in making decisions," he points out. "But she has been speaking to clients and urging them to remain loyal to Sotheby's."

If Sotheby's and Christie's did indeed collude in 1992 and 1995, it was perhaps not out of greed but out of terror. During the record highs of the Impressionist sales in summer 1990, gasps of amazement filled New York auction rooms when a Japanese paper mogul, Ryoei Saito, paid $82.5 million for Van Gogh's portrait of Dr. Gachet and $78.1 million for Renoir's Au Moulin de la Galette at Sotheby's, where hammer sales for the year reached a still-unsurpassed $2.4 billion. Stalled by the economic doldrums that followed the Gulf War in 1991, however, revenues at both firms plunged a staggering 50 percent, prompting multiple staff layoffs and a seemingly unshakable aura of gloom. While the houses slogged through the art-market recession of 1991-96, income at Sotheby's and Christie's sank perilously low as the auction houses competed for major consignments by slashing the official 10 percent seller's commissions to zero, effectively wiping out profits.

In 1992, starved for income and mindful of restless stockholders, Sotheby's announced it was raising its 10 percent premium to 15 percent for the first $50,000. Seven weeks later, Christie's followed suit. "In the end, we really had no choice," Christopher Davidge told the New York Times that December. "Internally, we really were hoping we wouldn't have to raise the buyer's premium at all, but in the end, we felt it was important to be competing with Sotheby's on a level playing field." Given the grim economic climate, few questioned the motivation or wisdom of the matching price hike.

Although income was somewhat buoyed as a result, profits remained dauntingly low at Sotheby's and Christie's. In an effort to dig his house out of its hole, Al Taubman made Dede Brooks Sotheby's chief executive in 1994, having been impressed with her financial acumen and tenacity. No less ambitious, Christopher Davidge had recently ascended to the rival position at Christie's, and both set out aggressively to attract business.

Davidge, truculent and often at odds with Christie's board members, made no pretense of his determination to beat Sotheby's, whose successes Christie's had trailed for 40 years. Irreverently known as the Golden Hamster for his stout build and meticulous grooming, he was a highly effective but unlikely leader for the London-based auction house, still known for its ranks of Old Etonians with impeccable connections to cash-strapped aristocrats eager to sell off heirlooms. Raised in London, where his grandfather, father, and mother toiled at Christie's in clerical jobs, Davidge rose from the decidedly unglamorous catalogue-printing side of the business, determined to make his mark at the very institution where his parents could never rise beyond their lower-middle-class status.

"He was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks," a former colleague remembers. "You could tell by his accent and by his mane of white hair that was all swept back. It looked like he'd spent an hour every morning under the blow-dryer."

Since his departure from Christie's, Davidge, 54, has been vacationing in India with Amrita Jhaveri, 29, an expert in Christie's Asian-artifacts department, whom he has been dating since 1998. Rumored to have received a multi-million-dollar severance package, he is also said to still be negotiating with the Justice Department for personal amnesty in exchange for past and future cooperation.

Brooks, meanwhile, grew up in Laurel Hollow, on Long Island's North Shore, where her father, Martin Dwyer Jr., a Yale-educated lawyer turned businessman, urged her to compete with her two older brothers. Outgoing and athletic, she attended the legendary all-girls Miss Porter's school in Farmington -- also the alma mater of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, whose bric-a-brac she would personally auction off in 1996 for an astounding $34.5 million. A superb student, she also went to Yale, where she remains a board member. Brooks generated considerable respect at Sotheby's despite a reputation for toughness. "I thought the world of her," says Christopher Gow, a former nineteenth-century-sculpture specialist at the firm. "She shot from the hip, but most of the staff liked her because she knew everyone's names and fought with the board to get us salary raises. Al Taubman adored her."