Authors: Ken Perenyi
I approached the desk and announced, “I'm Ken Perenyi, the neighbor next door. I have an appointment to see Mr. Cohn.” She raised an eyebrow and said, “Yes. Just go up the steps. Mr. Cohn is upstairs and will see you.”
I headed for a wide, curving staircase covered by thick red carpeting, followed it up to the second floor, and found myself in a bright, lavishly furnished living room. It was a beehive of activity. Several lawyers milled about, talking and studying documents. At the far end of the room I saw a man seated in a wing chair. He was radiant in a gray suit and a deep suntan. He was giving instructions to a secretary, and from across the room I caught the brilliant turquoise of his eyes. Suddenly I felt self-conscious in my old army coat and jeans, but no one even gave me a glance as I walked toward him.
“Hi. I'm Roy Cohn,” he said, looking up from the chair. “What's up?” As the other attorneys looked on, I introduced myself and explained the situation. The room quieted down. Everyone was looking at us. Roy stared at me. “Are you putting me on?” he asked after I'd concluded.
“No!” I assured him. “We got an eviction notice, and the name of the clinic moving in is Encounter. I got it straight from someone who works for our landlord. The lease has already been signed and most of the tenants are already gone.”
Rolling his eyes, Roy stuck out his hand for the eviction notice I'd brought. Like Gino, he took one look at the paper and declared: “This isn't an eviction notice. It's nothing!” I shrugged my shoulders and felt like a fool. He asked if I knew who ran the clinic, but before I could answer, he called across the room to Tom Bolan, his law partner, “Hey, Tom, wait until you hear this one. They're moving a drug rehab in next door!”
Roy rose and said, “Follow me.” We took the elevator up to his office. In the elevator, Roy looked me up and down, asked how long I had lived at the town house, where I came from, what I did for a living, and what I paid for rent. By the time we were two flights up, he knew my life history. The next minute, I was sitting in Roy's office and he was asking questions and writing down names. “So how many tenants are still there?” he asked.
“About ten, but the numbers are dropping each day. By the way, Gino from P. J. Clarke's lives below me and says hello.”
Roy, raising his eyebrows in surprise, said, “Okay.” After some more questions, he told me to go back home and said that he'd call later.
I returned to the house, sat in the lobby with Mrs. Parker, and at noon Roy's secretary called to say, “Mr. Cohn would like to see you in his office.” I knew this was the moment of truth. I took a deep breath, Mrs. Parker patted me on the back, and I was off.
As I approached Roy's office, I noticed that the door was open and there was a cutout of Mickey Mouse on it. Roy waved me in, and I took a seat.
“Ken,” he began, “I checked it all out. They're planning to move in next week.” My heart sank. “But,” he said, “we're gonna stop them.” I almost jumped for joy. Then he asked me if there were tenants willing to stay and fight. I assured him that at least some of us were, and Roy said, “Okay, then I want you to give me a list of names of those willing to stay in their apartments and be part of a lawsuit. The eviction is illegal. The management has no right to lease the property with tenants in place and I'm sure we can win this thing.” He added that his services would be pro bono. We shook hands. But before we parted, Roy told me to be at his place the following morning at eight for breakfast.
By the time I got out on the freezing street, I was so excited I didn't know what to do firstâcall Ann and Raun, or just go and eat. I was suddenly famished. I hadn't felt hungry in a week. I went to a Greek luncheonette on Third Avenue and ordered bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee. Saved from disaster, I felt like a new person and sat there for an hour letting the events of the day sink in.
“Oh, shit!” I thought. “Wait till Igor and the other two find out what's going on!” I paid my bill and left.
That night, as several of us gathered in Ann's room, the mood was jubilant. Roy Cohn was the main and only topic of conversation. Annâwhose paranoia and need to keep tabs on the “over-world” required her to read three newspapers a day, all the weekly newsmagazines plus several tabloidsâwas the house oracle, brain trust, and historian.
For the first time I learned about Roy Cohn's role in Senator Joe McCarthy's hunt for Communist spies in the 1950s and that he was the most feared, notorious, and highly paid lawyer in the country, if not in history. He was courted by politicians, mobsters, and tycoons. He lived a jet-set lifestyle, hobnobbed with the rich and famous, and had his own table at â21'. Roy was big enough to take on anybody or anything. Indeed, as Ann explained it, he'd been indicted three times by the federal government for such crimes as fraud, conspiracy, blackmail, and extortion and had defended himself each time and won.
CHAPTER SIX
Number 39
T
he next morning, I went to Roy's and found him in the dining room, decked out in a silk Hermès dressing gown, sitting at the head of the table breakfasting with two impressive-looking men. He invited me to sit down and order from his Spanish cook. Then he introduced me to Mike Rosen, the firm's top litigator, and Paul Dano, his business partner.
Roy came straight to the point and explained that he was bringing lawsuits against Igor, Phoebe, the clinic, and anybody else he could go after. Then, in a moment of melodrama, with all eyes fixed on mine, Roy said: “You're gonna be our main witness. You just have to be in court when we need you.” And, he added, “Don't worry: we'll tell you what to say.”
“Sure!” I replied enthusiastically, gaining nods of approval from everyone. After I finished breakfast, Roy shook my hand, called me “partner,” and everyone was all smiles. Before I left, and with my absolute loyalty established, Roy told me to come back and check with him at eight that evening. I spent the day strolling around the neighborhood, greatly relieved and delighted by the course of events.
At eight, I rang Roy's bell. Roy answered, and I followed him upstairs to the living room. There, seated in the wing chair, was an exceptionally handsome and well-built guy who Roy introduced as Dave Tacket and who I came to understand was Roy's “friend.” Dave fixed me a drink as Roy filled him in on the situation next door. I noticed a change in Roy's personality compared with our previous meetings. He was very charming, wanted to be addressed as “Roy,” and spoke to me in familiar terms as one does to a friend.
Up until this point, Roy was only aware of the basic facts about the Fergusen Club, Igor, and Rubel. Now Roy wanted to know all I could tell him about the club and its operation. When I told him about Igor's situation, his dependence on Allen and Kevin, and my friendship with Terry, Roy was intrigued. He found it particularly interesting that a large portion of the rents was paid in cash and anxiously collected by Allen and Kevin. When I mentioned that Terry suspected that a lot of this cash went unreported, Roy asked me to write an estimate of the rent the house took in per week and drop it off at his office. When he asked me about my artwork and I explained that I was currently working on my first collection, Roy said that they would come over and take a look, and he suggested that he might be able to help me as well.
Before I left, Roy gave me a copy of a letter he had sent to Igor, Rubel, and the clinic. It was a chilling statement that spelled out in no uncertain terms that their actions were illegal. It informed them that the tenants were now represented by Saxe, Bacon, and Bolan (Roy's firm), that the tenants would remain in residence, and that the case was being handled personally by Roy M. Cohn, Esq. It was signed by him.
Several days later, I dined with Terry. He said that Roy's letter had hit Igor like a bombshell and sent him into a panic, yelling and screaming at his idiot lawyer, Rubel. Terry said that on that evening, Igor, Allen, and Kevin were at the table, where for so many nights before they had dined in comfort. On this night, the dinner was left untouched. “It all had to be thrown out because they were too upset to eat.” Terry continued, “And they discovered that it was
you
who went to Cohn.” That was music to my ears.
Roy lost no time in organizing the neighborhood, the inhabitants of which read like
Forbes's
list of America's wealthiest people. He had pamphlets distributed describing “lines of methadone patients” on Sixty-Eighth Street if action wasn't taken. The following evening, Roy held a neighborhood meeting at his town house. Everyone showed up, from wealthy antique dealers parading around in mink coats to stockbrokers and investment bankers in hand-tailored suits. Rich decorators came with their poodles, and society women lamented that “the neighborhood was going to the dogs.” A row of neighborhood dowagers, dripping with diamonds, were planted on a sofa.
Roy appeared and announced to the crowd his intention to petition the court to issue an order restraining the clinic from moving into the town house. The evening turned into a society cocktail party. Neighbors vented their anger and swore the clinic would have to move in “over our dead bodies,” but they offered nothing else beyond signing a petition and shaking Roy's hand.
The clinic, which was called Encounter Inc., was a rehabilitation program for troubled teens involved with drugs. It was designed to treat twenty patients at a time, who would reside there. The program had originally begun down on Spring Street, and it was state funded, but it had also attracted donations from wealthy supporters. Mr. Levi, the managing director, had staffed the clinic with several psychologists and counselors.
Roy's investigators discovered that a friendship had long existed between Mr. Levi and Rubel, Igor's lawyer. Together they had devised a cushy arrangement whereby the clinic would renovate the house and pay Igor a hefty yearly rent, using taxpayers' money provided by the state. And the director, Levi, was planning to have an apartment for himself in the town house, to boot.
The eviction deadline came and went without any show of Igor's enforcers. Mrs. Parker bid us a sad farewell and wished us luck. In her distress, she left her set of master keys on the deskâwhich quickly found their way into my pocket. I was elected super, being the only person who both owned a toolbox and knew the secret formula for filling the ancient boiler with water each day.
Roy got his restraining order, but it didn't do much good. Right on schedule, Encounter's counselors and patients moved in and occupied every vacant room in the house. A hearing was called in the New York State Supreme Court, and it didn't go our way. With the press and a number of powerful politicians taking Encounter's side, the judge wasn't about to enforce the court order. Instead he modified it, allowing the program to coexist with the remaining tenants until the issue of who had the legal right of occupancy was decided.
The judge was also about to grant the clinic's request that the plaintiffs post a ten-thousand-dollar bond to cover damages in the event the plaintiffs lost, but in lieu of a cash bond, Roy persuaded the judge to accept a notarized guarantee signed by a “responsible individual” to cover up to ten thousand dollars in court-awarded damages. Of all the millionaires in the neighborhood who vowed their support, Roy couldn't find a single one who would sign it. In the end,
I
wound up signing the document. I don't know how Roy got the judge to accept it, but he did.
It was obvious that there wasn't going to be any quick fix to the problem. Each side was intent on evicting the other. For Roy, the stakes were high. All the newspapers were following the story, and his reputation was on the line. He called me over almost every evening around seven for a daily briefing on what had gone on at the house.
I'd have to hunt around to find him. Sometimes he'd be in the penthouse, the kitchen, his bedroom, or even in the bathtub while we had our talks. I noticed a Brice Marden hanging on the wall of his bedroom and recognized the painting. Tony and I had dropped in on Brice when he was working on that series. When I mentioned it to Roy, he offered to have the dealer who sold it to him come over and see my work. Indeed, Roy started to send all kinds of people over to my place to look at my paintings, even a couple of guys from the Gambino family who were waiting for the old man, Carlo, to finish up his business with Roy.
One evening, Roy explained that we could be tied up in court for at least a year. His plan was to “quiet things down” and “get it out of the press” so that he could “take care of it behind the scenes.”
For me, this news was a godsend. After having the rug pulled out from under me twice in the past year, I only wanted some time and breathing space to make enough money so that, no matter what happened next, I'd be able to handle it. The good news was that since the lawsuits had begun, we hadn't paid another cent in rent. The bad news was that, without my promised job, I was under pressure to make money again.
Gino's favorite pastime, or rather his second occupation, was circulating in café society and certain Upper East Side bars frequented by rich single women. Gino suggested that I put on my suit and join him on his forays. His main hangouts were the bars in the high-end hotels like the Sherry-Netherland. He was quite the Romeo and had a number of middle-aged lady friends with Park Avenue addresses. Although we didn't have much luck hustling “high-class broads,” it gave us the opportunity to discuss business and hatch Plan B.
Gino was not ignorant on the subject of art and antiques. In fact, he confided to me over drinks at Elaine's that he sometimes fenced stolen
objets d'art
to crooked dealers in the city. When he mentioned that even some of his rich friends had bought hot items from him, I decided to confide to Gino the truth about the “Dutch” paintings in my room and the way I made money.