Caveat Emptor (25 page)

We discussed a few more details. If asked, Jasmine would claim to be from Fort Lauderdale, as her phony driver's license stated. Her home phone number would be a call box next to a Lauderdale strip club where she sometimes worked. “If he tries to persuade you to sell the picture to him,” I said, “ask him how much he'd pay. Do not name a price. When he makes an offer, act tempted, but then decline. If he ups the offer, think hard for a while and then say, ‘Would that be in cash? I wouldn't want to have to pay inheritance tax.'” This, I explained, would justify the request.

The following morning, I met Jasmine at a local motel and gave her the “Heade,” and the trap was set. Hours dragged by, and I could only imagine what was happening. Then the phone rang. Jasmine told me to meet her at a diner and hung up. When I arrived, she was alone at a booth. Our eyes met. I walked over and sat down.

“Thirty thousand,” she said coolly and slipped me a thick envelope under the table.

According to Jasmine, Mr. F had taken the bait—hook, line, and sinker—never once questioning her story. As she explained it, “When I described the painting to him over the phone and spelled out the signature in the corner, he insisted on coming to wherever I was to give me the free appraisal. It took some doing, but I assured him I'd bring the picture to his house. I waited around for over an hour just to make him suffer.”

When she finally arrived and pulled the painting out of a plastic garbage bag, Mr. F could hardly contain his excitement or, to put it in her vernacular, “He got a hard-on a mile long.” According to Jasmine, it went down exactly as predicted. Mr. F was forced to concede that the picture was worth, in his “expert opinion,” twenty-two thousand dollars, and then he claimed, conveniently enough, to have “a client who collects just such paintings.” Then, as Jasmine explained it, “He delicately broached the question of whether I had plans to sell it, and I told him I might.

“At that point,” Jasmine said, “he suggested he might be able to get twenty-five thousand for me. I reluctantly refused but assured him I would think about it. Then he asked, ‘What if I could get you thirty thousand?' At first I acted a bit stunned, but after pretending to think for a while, I asked him if that would be in cash, and gave him the spiel about the tax. Before he answered, he got out this small thing that looked like a flashlight and studied the picture under the light from it for a while. Then, after pretending to call his so-called client, he said, ‘It's a deal.' He took me to the bank himself, withdrew thirty big ones, and paid me off.” Jasmine said that the whole thing had taken about an hour.

I discreetly counted out eight grand in hundred-dollar bills and passed it back to her under the table. She promptly left for New Orleans and established a whorehouse. From that moment on, an application of my organically enhanced varnish became standard operating procedure on every painting that left the studio.

In only a few short years, José and I had come a long way. From being penniless, we now had a thriving business, a hefty stock portfolio, and valuable real estate. Unbeknownst to us, however, a dangerous situation was developing. I still wasn't experienced enough to know that no matter how far afield my pictures were sold, they would eventually gravitate to New York City, the market hub. The first tip-off that this was occurring came one afternoon when I was visiting the galleries along Madison Avenue. Stopping in at a gallery that handled marine paintings, I inquired if they had any Buttersworths they could show me. The gallery owner asked me to wait a moment while he got one. A minute later I was staring at a “Buttersworth” that I had sold in Miami many months before.

And word on the street was that Mr. F, the dealer who was fortunate enough to find
one
Heade in his lifetime, had taken a trip to Atlanta, where he bagged another one. The only problem was, it was one of mine too.

Some time after that, I was back in Manhattan having lunch with Alexandra King's father, Bayard, who enjoyed chatting about art and antiques. He was very impressed with my knowledge of art, but a little puzzled by my encyclopedic knowledge of Charles Bird King, who turned out to be his great-grandfather! It just so happened that Sotheby's was having an exhibition of nineteenth-century American paintings, and Bayard suggested we go over and have a look. As we entered the main showroom, we drifted apart to study the paintings on our own. After a while, Bayard caught up to me and wanted to show me the “marvelous colors” in a painting in the next room. I followed him through a doorway and suddenly found myself face-to-face with a “Martin Johnson Heade,” the very one Jasmine had sold to Mr. F and that Bayard's lovely daughter had rescued from the Plaza Hotel!

Bayard noticed the blood drain from my face. “Are you all right?” he inquired.

Meanwhile, my friends in Miami were keeping me busy day and night. Apart from turning up paintings for them, it was dinner parties in Coconut Grove, weekends in New York City, and even masquerade balls in Oyster Bay. It had been months since I'd left Tony and the “Calders.” He'd been gallivanting around the country, making calls from his little black book and “takin' care of business.” At first, he faithfully wired me my money as he made sales. But after a few months the payments slowed, and then, predictably, they stopped altogether. Calls to his number went unanswered.

“I'd just like to know where the fuck that fat ginny is,” I told José over lunch in the courtyard. I got my answer when I called friends in New York and discovered that Tony had been on the West Coast for the past two months “on business,” and was currently “shacked up with two blonde bimbos” in the Beverly Hills Hotel.

When Tony finally came back to New York, I tracked him down. He was in a TriBeCa bar having drinks with John Belushi. As soon as I got him out on the street, I attacked him, desperately trying to get my hands around his neck. He pleaded and begged, admitting to leaving a trail of “Calders” from New York to LA, but explaining that he'd been holding my money for me when he'd met the two blondes while drunk in a bar.

He confessed to making twenty grand with the “Calders,” and another twelve from a “Peto” sold to Meredith Long & Company in Houston and a “Buttersworth” to Stevens Gallery of Beverly Hills. Of course he didn't have a penny to show for it. I demanded my share from the tin can behind the refrigerator, but he claimed it had all been “invested” (loan-sharked out).

Back at his apartment, we were yelling at each other until dawn. He swore on his mother that if I gave him some pictures, he'd sell them and give me every penny, and he confessed that he was an asshole. That settled the matter. We went out and had breakfast.

Back in Florida, José took care of business matters while I went on painting marathons, knocking out one picture after another. Sometimes these sessions could result in a dozen new pictures drying in the courtyard. We had “Petos,” “Buttersworths,” “Antonio Jacobsens,” “Heades,” “Charles Bird Kings,” and works by lesser-known still-life painters like De Scott Evans and John F. Francis, many of which didn't take me more than a day or two to paint. My main problem was that no matter how many paintings I sold in Miami, and no matter how many I sent to Tony, I still had mountains of them piling up. On one occasion, the house was broken into while we were in New York, and a collection of pictures, including two “Heades,” was taken.

The solution to this mountains-of-paintings problem was eventually solved by my friend Mr. X, the picker, and a local dealer who I took into my confidence. Both these guys began purchasing packages of paintings from me wholesale. Envelopes stuffed with cash ranging from ten to twenty grand were laid down on the table as a dozen or so paintings were wrapped up in brown paper and taken out the door to their open trunks. Where these pictures went, I had no idea. But one thing was for sure: they added to a growing critical mass of fakes accumulating in New York City.

I finally realized the danger of the situation that autumn of 1980, when I was back in the city for an extended stay with José and made an accidental sale. The city was crowded, as it usually is in late fall. The Alray, my usual haunt, was totally booked, so in what turned out to be a major stroke of luck for me, we had to settle for the Blackstone, a busy hotel in the East Fifties where I wasn't known. We had planned to do some Christmas shopping and go out on the town with friends. Although I had brought a couple of paintings along, I didn't have any plans to sell them. Instead, I was toying with the idea of placing them in auction myself, as Jimmy, more than once, had suggested I do.

Meanwhile, Tony was putting in overtime to work off his debt and redeem himself with a number of paintings I had left with him. He was paying calls to every stockbroker, advertising director, doctor, architect, or literally anyone else in his little black book he thought might possibly buy a painting. Whenever he made a score, we'd have dinner at the Russian Tea Room, where he'd pass me the cash.

Emboldened by one success after another, I decided the time had come to pay Sotheby's a visit. Slipping a little “Buttersworth” into a shopping bag (Hermès), I strolled up to 980 Madison Avenue. Upon entering Sotheby's, I was directed to a counter where several people were waiting to have their paintings evaluated. When my turn came, I pulled out the picture from the bag and placed it on the counter, but I was informed by the lady in charge that the expert on American paintings was out to lunch and that I'd have to come back later for an opinion. As I placed the painting back in its bag, I saw an oily-looking young fellow standing nearby casting a glance at the painting. As I was leaving the building, he caught up with me and asked: “Excuse me, but are you selling that picture?”

“Well, I'm not sure,” I replied. “I really wanted to get an opinion.”

“Can I take a look at it?” he asked.

“Well …,” I said hesitatingly, and reluctantly took the painting from the bag, but kept hold of it. The look in his beady eyes told me he was already hooked, and easy cash is hard to resist. I let him drag it out of me that I had been “told by a friend” that it could be worth six thousand dollars. To that he replied: “Well, how about I give you six thousand?” I ruminated and acted as if I'd been taken a bit off guard.

“I live right nearby,” he said. “We can go to my apartment, and I can cut you a check. You can cash it right away.”

I thought for a moment and finally agreed. To satisfy his curiosity, I told him I had found the painting in an antique shop in Jersey, where I lived. I went on to explain that I was visiting in the city for a few days, staying at the Blackstone, and thought I'd bring the painting along for an opinion. When we arrived at his apartment, he wrote me a check. He revealed that he owned Revere Gallery, a new establishment in the neighborhood, and that he and his partners were buying American paintings. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he often drove out to the country to hunt for paintings in antique shops and admitted that he was new to the business.

“But what the hell,” he said. “All you have to do is look up the artist's name, see what he brings at auction, and you can't go wrong—right?”

“Right,” I answered just as the phone rang. It was a long-distance call, and he quickly shook my hand and bid me good-bye.

“Perfect timing,” I thought on my way out of the building with plenty of time to get to the bank. But when I got outside and looked at the check, there was a snag. I always assumed that any checks I received from galleries in Manhattan would be drawn on local banks. Using my collection of passbooks, I could instantly cash any check with nothing more than my name on the back of it. But this check was drawn on a small savings and loan in Far Rockaway!

Now I had a problem. I certainly didn't have an account at that bank, and you had to take a whole bunch of subways to get out there.

After every sale, my first priority was to cash the check immediately. It was 1:00 p.m. and I could still make it to Far Rockaway. I looked in my wallet. I still had my voter's registration from 35 East Sixty-Eighth Street. I'll take a chance with that, I thought, and hailed a cab. An hour later and a forty-dollar fare got me to the front door of the savings and loan. There was no way I was going to cash the check with my Florida driver's license, which would be recorded on the back of the check, thereby revealing my Florida address, and there was no way a bank would cash a check, especially a large one, with only a voter's registration card. But, I thought, I might be able to pull something off.

I always carried a roll of cash with me, so I went in and sat down at a desk where I was greeted by a pleasant young man. I began by introducing myself and explained that I lived in Manhattan but had some business with relatives in the neighborhood and needed to open a savings account. I discreetly placed ten hundred-dollar bills on the desk before me. He liked that and lost no time pulling out an application and asking me my name, address, etc. Amazingly, he didn't even ask to see any identification. I gave my old Upper East Side address and volunteered my voter's ID.

That was fine, but then he wanted to see my Social Security card. All I could do at that point was to give him a phony number and promise to bring the card in the next week. He wasn't prepared to let the C-notes walk, so he opened the account and reminded me to bring in the card. Fifteen minutes later, I was presented with a shiny new passbook with a thousand-dollar balance. I thanked him, but before leaving, as a calculated afterthought to deflect any suspicion, I nonchalantly asked, “By the way, what time are you open until today?”

“Till four,” he answered.

“I have to go see my uncle,” I said. “If I get a check, can I deposit it right away?”

“Sure, no problem,” he said with a smile. I thanked him and left.

I hung around the neighborhood until it was close to 4:00 p.m. and went back to the bank. My intention was to deposit the check and return in a day or two to get the cash, but the young man who had opened the account for me wasn't around, so I thought I'd take a chance. I filled out a deposit slip for the check, but when I handed it to the lady behind the counter I asked her if I could cash it as well. After verifying that the check was good, and looking at my passbook, she told me I could. A minute later, I was walking out of the bank with six grand in cash, and all it took was my signature on the back of the check. As for the grand I'd used to open the account, I planned to retrieve that another time.