Authors: Ken Perenyi
“Your Honor,” Roy began, “I'd like to read into the record that the plaintiff has agreed to withdraw this case against my client, Mr. Perenyi, and to suspend all other actions designed to evict him, until the matter of who is entitled to occupy the building at 35 East Sixty-Eighth Street is resolved in New York Supreme Court.”
When we got out into the hallway, Ann, Raun, and Gino were celebrating with me while a mob surrounded Roy. Some were courtroom buffs, others were attorneys trying to say hello and shake his hand, and some just wanted his autograph. You would think we had just won the biggest case in the world.
Some time after that, I received an urgent call from Roy's secretary. I was wanted in Roy's office immediately. When I arrived, my heart sank. Roy was seated behind his desk. One of his lawyers who had worked on the Encounter case was standing at his side. They were staring down at the floor. I knew this was trouble.
“Read this,” Roy said, tossing a letter across his desk. The blood left my face. I was certain the courts had ruled against us.
It was an impressive-looking document with the New York State seal embossed at the top, but it was a letter issued to the clinic from the commissioner of the Addiction Services Agency, the clinic's source of state funding. In the bluntest terms, it informed them that, due to cutbacks and a lack of efficiency in their program, Encounter Inc. was having its funds terminated. When I looked up, they were laughing.
It was only a matter of time before the clinic would have to pack up and leave. Levi had a complete breakdown and had to be hospitalized. Phoebe died, and, thanks to Roy Cohn, her empire, hopelessly tangled up with lawsuits, the IRS, and state authorities, began to crumble. On top of that, everything was in hock. Igor was flat broke and had to move into a small Yorkville apartment with all the antiques he could grab. Kevin and Allen were last sighted tearing out of New York City on motorcycles, headin south, and Rubel was arrested for “running a male brothel.”
Marshall Management no longer existed. The estate's assets were being sold to settle claims, and the clinic finally left, leaving all their records and office equipment behind. State auditors swooped in, took an inventory, and sealed everything up in a room in the back. From then on, we had to run the house ourselves.
I painted pictures as though my life depended upon it. It was still the only thing that put immediate cash in my pocket. I expanded my circle of Dutch painters to include artists such as Adriaen Brouwer and continued to make trips around the city with my Bonwit shopping bag, but I knew I couldn't go on doing this forever.
As I spent more time at number 39 and got to know Roy better, it became apparent, as Ann had explained, that Roy was a lot more than just another big-shot attorney. The town house was a theater of intrigue, and Roy directed everything. All kinds of peopleâcelebrities, politicians, priests, mobsters, rabbis, and tycoonsâwere coming and going throughout the day and night.
People came to Roy with all kinds of problems. He was the ultimate power broker, and he knew no bounds, legal or otherwise. He could make happen what no lawyerâno matter how high poweredâcould make happen. Let's say you were a public figure caught in a compromising situation. Maybe you were a judge, a movie star, or even a cardinal. You didn't need a lawyer. You needed Roy Cohn!
Right from the start, one of Roy's friends gave me some friendly advice: “Around here, don't ask questions, and don't gossip. If anything gets back to Roy, you're finished.” Yet the whole place was a hotbed of gossip. In fact, it was one of Roy's favorite pastimes. As the picture was being filled in, I came to see that Roy had an organization. His network included ex-FBI agents capable of accessing information beyond the reach of even the best private eyes, locksmiths ready to perform jobs “no questions asked,” cops ready at his service, and several shadowy, well-dressed young men who came and went on a regular basis.
“Roy has judges all the way up to the Supreme Court in his pocket,” I was told. How? “He gets them appointed!” And politicians? “They're the easiest. All he has to do is make a phone call.” And the Mob? Well, he definitely had a special relationship with them. He was counsel to the Gambinos. “There's simply nothing Roy couldn't fix or take care of,” I was told by a loose-tongued friend of Roy's over drinks one night at Chez Madison.
“Really,” I responded, eager to hear more.
“Damn right,” he went on to impress. “How about things vanishing?” he continued.
“Like what?” I asked, my ears the size of pizza pies.
“Like criminal charges. Like stories about to appear in the news. Like items straight out of the evidence rooms. Like witnesses' memories, and sometimes even the witness himself. If the situation was big enough, Roy could arrange anythingâget the picture?”
Indeed I did, and I wanted to be part of it. “What about those smart-looking young guys always showing up with their attaché cases? I know they're not lawyers.”
“Oh, they run businesses for Roy. They're making the weekly delivery.” These weren't just
any
businesses, but cash-and-carry gold mines like porno theaters in Jersey and hot dog concessions in Grand Central Station. Businesses otherwise controlled by the Mob but “sanctioned” to Roy.
One evening, Roy called me to come over to his place. In the living room, Roy introduced me to Martin Shambra. He was in his late twenties and owned Marti's, one of the most successful restaurants in New Orleans. Then Roy told me what they had in mind.
“We're thinking about buying the town house and turning it into an exclusive members-only club, and you're gonna be the manager.
“But,” he continued, “you're gonna have to give up your room. We'll renovate the top floor for you, and Gino can stay where he is and be in charge of security.”
Needless to say, I would have done anything to stay at the town house and was thrilled at the news.
“You can even hang your paintings and we'll sell 'em,” Roy suggested. I was positively overwhelmed. This was undoubtedly the most exciting position he'd ever offered to any of his young friends, and I was flattered. A couple of hours later, after we had discussed the details, including that the property would be titled in my name, I left the town house walking on a cloud.
Roy now stopped in frequently. He wanted to know how I was getting along, specifically how I was making money. I showed him my “Dutch” paintings and, without going into detail, I confided, “I sell them on the side.”
“I'll tell Marty about these,” Roy said, looking over a “van Goyen” hanging on the wall. “He collects art and antiques; I think he might go for this. Just level with him. He's cool.” I still had a small surrealistic painting lying around from my Castle days. It caught Roy's eye, and I insisted he take it as a gift. Al, his chauffeur, later told me Roy spent three hundred bucks to have it framed.
I didn't have to wait long before Marty showed up at my place. As a friend of Roy's and the future manager of their planned club, Marty was anxious to ingratiate himself with me. I showed him my “Dutch” paintings and explained to him what I did. He was very impressed and bought two of them for sixteen hundred bucks on the spot. More importantly, he was intrigued with my contemporary collection in progress. He was an artist himself and was preparing to have a show of his work at Emmerich Gallery. Not only did Marty offer to introduce me to an antique dealer who could be interested in my “Dutch” paintings, but he suggested that he might help me with my contemporary work as well.
The following evening, Marty invited me to join him for dinner at the Sign of the Dove on Third Avenue. The purpose of the dinner was for me to meet Paul Gabel, an antique dealer who had a big operation just north of New York City in Nyack. Paul did a lot of business with city dealers and had a special connection with New Orleans.
Paul arrived at the restaurant, was escorted to our table by the maître d', and introductions were made. Paul was a good-natured man in his forties. He'd been in the business all his life, had extensive connections in the trade, and a particular interest in period paintings. As Marty had predicted, he was anxious to see what I did.
A couple of days later, Paul came by for a visit. He was agog when he saw my room and equally impressed when I showed him a pair of my “Dutch” paintings hanging on the wall.
“If you can keep making paintings like that,” Paul said over lunch at a nearby café, “I know where I can place them.” I wasn't exactly sure what he went by “place them,” but I wasn't asking any questions. I gave him a painting, and a week later he was back with cash. I gave him another, and it looked like I had steady money coming in.
Once again, it was blue skies ahead on the Upper East Side, the neighborhood where I felt I belonged. Even Andy Warhol had a house nearby. We'd pass each other on the street as we had downtown, but now at least we said “Hi” to each other, as I did with Halston. I planned, as I had downtown, to introduce myself and invite him to my studio as soon as my collection was ready. But, for the time being, my attention was on the purchase of the house and Roy's plans.
The asking price for the house was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Roy offered eighty-five thousand, and neither side was budging. I started to get an uneasy feeling when the deal began to drag on far too long. It was the summer of '75, and I got tipped off that a storm was brewing at number 39.
Since the plan to buy the town house had come up, a lot of new faces started showing up at Roy's house. Many were friends of Marty's, and Dave Tacket didn't like it one bit. He was on a campaign to kill the whole deal. By now, I was getting used to being disappointed, but at least this time I was forewarned. So as not to get caught on the short end again, I started making arrangements in case I found myself on the street.
I hadn't seen my parents since they'd retired to Florida, and I thought that not only would it be nice to see how they were doing, but it might be a good idea to set up a fallback plan in case things didn't work out on Sixty-Eighth Street. I had a collection of valuables scattered around the city. This included the credenza that Tony had grabbed from the Warren Club and a duffel bag full of items taken “in payment” from Rodger's defunct auction house. These were residing at Alexandra's apartment. One morning, I gathered them up into the open back of the Jeep, prayed for good weather, and drove from morning to night for three days straight until I landed on the white-sand beaches of Florida.
I had no intention, especially after being victimized by Igor, of leaving Sixty-Eighth Street without the seventeenth-century refectory table in the lobby. So, before leaving Florida, I found a cheap storage unit that not only accommodated the Jeep and the antiques I had carried down, but also had plenty of room to spare in case I found a way to ship the table down too. This way, I reasoned, I'd have something waiting for me if I wound up in Florida myself.
Suntanned, and reenergized from pots of lasagna and veal parmigiana my mother fed me morning, noon, and night, I hopped on a plane and flew back to the Big Apple. It was August when I returned, and the city was dead. Roy was out of town, and the deal wasn't going anywhere. I knew for sure that this situation of living in the town house couldn't go on forever, and at this point I didn't know what I should do. Then began a series of events that made up my mind for me.
José was another of the new friends I had made on the Upper East Side. He was a few years younger than me and shared an apartment with a hairdresser around the corner on Madison Avenue. José had an endearing nature, and everyone liked him. He worked with a veterinarian and cared for animals. His parents were Costa Rican and lived in Miami.
It turned out that he and his roommate had lost their lease, and he needed a place to go immediately. I knew that José loved art and paintings. In fact, he once brought over a picture he had painted to show me. So I told him that, despite my own tenuous situation, he was welcome to move in with me. Things were so quiet at the town house that no one even noticed he had moved in, and it gave me an idea.
This might be the perfect timeâand maybe the last opportunityâto grab the refectory table. In fact, this might be the time to grab everything!
Kay L., a wealthy socialite whom I'd met through Roy, had once told me an amusing story. After hearing her neighbor's screams one afternoon, she'd run down to the woman's floor to find her hysterical in a completely denuded ten-room Fifth Avenue co-op.
Apparently, Roy had secured a judgment in favor of his client, the woman's former husband, against her. In the space of three hours, while the lady was out shopping, Roy had arrived with a sheriff, three moving vans, and a locksmithâand totally cleaned the place out!
Why not apply a similar strategy? I reasoned. Igor and Rubel were gone. The whole estate was in disarray, and nobody had ever come around to inventory anything. With the help of José, I could move all the antique furniture in the house into my room and call a moving company to come and take it away, instead of boosting everything in the middle of the night like some kind of thief.
Traffic was blocked for twenty minutes as José and I helped the men carry a dozen pieces of antique furniture into the North American Van Lines truck. From there, it went straight to Florida and into storage.
The next order of business was the clinic's assets, which state auditors had locked in a room at the rear where they had posted a notice, bearing the official seal of New York State, that the contents of the room were state property. One blow from a sledgehammer smashed the lock right out of the door. Everything from adding machines to typewriters was thrown into the back of a rented truck one night and sold for fifteen hundred bucks to a dealer of used office equipment on Fourteenth Street.
CHAPTER EIGHT