Caveat Emptor (11 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

The Fergusen Club

M
y artwork went into the town house basement, and I stored my Jeep in a garage on West Fifty-Seventh Street. I was pale, run-down, and depressed. I holed up in my small room on the fourth floor. The weather outside was horrific. Sleet storms raged day and night. I ran to Third Avenue for groceries and returned to my room. It had been a long time since I could take a bath, eat in peace, and sleep in a warm bed. I bought a copy of Dickens's
Hard Times
and read it over the next week in bed. I knew that once I felt better and could think straight again, I'd have to plan where to go from here.

After I convalesced and began to explore my new surroundings, I discovered that every evening, a group of residents gathered in the basement kitchen to prepare dinner for themselves. Like everything else, the kitchen was original to the house and, with the exception of two refrigerators, it retained all of its antique charm.

I began to frequent the kitchen with the others, but, still in shock over the downtown debacle, I skulked around like a zombie and kept to myself. The first person to approach me was Ann. A tall, well-preserved, gregarious woman of forty, she wore her blonde hair in a ponytail and sported horn-rimmed glasses. Articulate and highly intelligent, Ann had an authoritarian air about her. I felt like I was in the presence of one of my grammar-school teachers again. It was Ann's allotted duty to make preliminary overtures to any new and potentially interesting member.

We quickly became friends, and I discovered that Ann was the intellectual and social backbone of the club. She could be found almost any night in one or another tenant's room holding stimulating conversations on most any subject. I learned from Ann that the Fergusen was home to an interesting and somewhat eccentric assortment of people. Many of the long-term tenants liked to swap stories about how they'd found their way to the club, the way religious people like to recount how they've been led to Christ.

Ann herself had once led an exciting life in society when she was married to a young composer. It all came to a sudden end when he died of a heart attack, leaving her almost destitute. Ann's problems might have been solved had she somehow been able to obtain what she claimed was a fortune in royalties due her. She believed that her husband's works were in the possession of scheming lawyers who were in cahoots with everyone from the Bilderberg Group to the Trilateral Commission. She claimed that they had conspired to keep her from collecting as much as a penny in royalties. Furthermore, she was certain that she was being watched at all times by elements of what she referred to as “the overworld” and that monies earned from the royalties were being funneled to right-wing hit squads in South America.

I had viewed the Fergusen Club as a temporary refuge, but after meeting Ann I began to feel at home, part of the family, and I wasn't so anxious to leave. I learned from Ann that the house was owned by Phoebe Warren Andrews, a rich, elderly recluse who lived in two adjoining brownstones on East Sixty-Second Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. She nurtured a lifelong penchant for handsome young men, was a friend of Doris Duke's, and shared many of Doris's peculiarities.

As a young girl, Phoebe had been employed as a maid at the house. The property was owned then by a rich elderly financier who owned several residences. Rumor had it that Phoebe became his mistress. Whatever the circumstances, he died and left her the property. Phoebe displayed remarkable business acumen. She borrowed against the property, purchased other town houses, rented them out, and eventually parlayed her property on Sixty-Eighth Street into a small real estate empire.

Phoebe bought estates in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and Newport, Rhode Island. In Newport, Phoebe became president of the Arts Council and took up with Igor Reed, a handsome schoolteacher. Together they joined the two brownstones that Phoebe owned on East Sixty-Second Street and spared no expense on rich, opulent decorations. Phoebe insisted her help be young, male, and handsome. That was Igor's department. In fact, his tastes were the same as hers, so he had no problem staffing their houses with friends and friends of friends.

Phoebe held a sentimental attachment to the Sixty-Eighth Street town house and, although she used it commercially, she kept it as original and unaltered as possible. During the sixties, the house was opened as an exclusive finishing school for girls. Its clientele came from among America's best families. It was so successful that she acquired the town house up the street, off Fifth, and established one for boys, calling it the Warren Club after a late husband.

As Phoebe aged and became less involved with managing her properties, standards dropped. The buildings went from exclusive boarding schools to coed residential clubs. The Fergusen, however, enforced a restriction imposed by Phoebe as “reserved for young people in the arts,” and Mrs. Parker tried to maintain that policy.

Already a recluse for some years, Phoebe was ill and housebound and rarely left her bedroom. Igor was around fifty or so and reputedly in charge. One could clearly discern the remnants of his former good looks, but years of overindulgence had taken their toll and he was now running to fat. He spent his afternoons walking a pair of shih tzus and sitting at the Carlton Bar on Madison Avenue, sipping martinis. It was common knowledge that when the old lady died, Igor would get the lot, and her demise was expected momentarily.

The first thing that struck me as I settled into the house was the frequent appearance of two sinister-looking guys who projected distinctly unpleasant vibrations. They collected rent receipts from Mrs. Parker. Like twins, they both had shaved heads and wore black-leather biker jackets, motorcycle boots, and tight jeans. Silence would descend on the lobby whenever they entered. They would demand the cash box from Mrs. Parker and shamelessly rifle its contents in front of everyone. A quick check of the receipt book, and they'd leave without a word. When I ran into them, they'd stare holes through me.

Ann explained that their names were Kevin and Allen. They were Igor's lieutenants. In addition to collecting rent, they acted as roving supers for the many properties. They called their company Marshall Management. The clubs offered not only hard and immediate cash, but also new recruits they might consider for positions at either Sixty-Second Street or in the clubs.

Of the two clubs, the Fergusen had a more genteel reputation, in great part due to the presence of Mrs. Parker, who would have made a perfect English public-school headmistress. Not only did she live in the house, she maintained high standards, even forbidding the installation of a Coke machine. In contrast, the Warren Club's reputation was besmirched, and it was whispered that Igor was known to occasionally spend a night or two there.

As a matter of practicality, I realized that I'd be at the Fergusen for the rest of the winter. Ann introduced me to all the tenants, including Raun, a beautiful former model who worked as a secretary and took acting classes.

Al occupied a beautiful drawing room situated in the front of the building. The entrance was to the side of the main lobby where Mrs. Parker had her desk. The interior of the drawing room was designed like an opulent Louis XV salon. It featured carved paneled walls, murals, a marble fireplace, and a single large window overlooking the street. With its own bath and galley kitchen, it was the finest accommodation in the house.

Al was anxious for me to meet his friends and fellow workers from Bloomingdale's who came over to hang out almost every night. Like me, they were struggling to survive by whatever means they could, while nurturing dreams of success as actors, fashion designers, or models.

One day Al announced that he was leaving New York City and moving to LA to take another job in the fashion industry. It was proposed that I take over the drawing room once he vacated. Until this time, I hadn't taken staying at the Fergusen seriously. There wasn't much I could do in my small room on the fourth floor that I shared with a young man who worked at Tiffany's and a half-crazed writer who talked to himself and never ceased banging on an old typewriter.

Although Al's apartment would cost nearly twice what I was paying for my garret, it was an offer I couldn't refuse. Not only was the apartment magnificent—it also came with its own bathtub—but more importantly, I'd be able to
work
in it as well.

My fellow tenants were delighted that I was staying and had agreed to take the drawing room. Mrs. Parker was particularly pleased. Often I would sit and listen to her stories about her friendship with Phoebe years ago, about how they had met socially and gone shopping together along Madison Avenue. She described how Phoebe had entertained at the house and enjoyed getting drunk with her friend the actress Hermione Gingold in the very room that was to become my home. She mentioned that it had also once been the home of Shirley MacLaine. Mrs. Parker went on to explain that, sometime after she lost her husband, Phoebe offered her the position of housemother after it was decided that the house was to open as a finishing school for girls.

When the subject of Igor, Allen, and Kevin cropped up, there was a change in her demeanor. She confided to me that since they had taken charge, Phoebe had become a virtual prisoner to them over the years and now harbored a secret fear that they might try to sell off the properties one day.

My resources were getting dangerously low, and my move into the new apartment made it even more urgent that I start making some money fast. Now, with my plans to create a serious body of work in shambles, I didn't have to think twice about what had to be done. I had hardly finished hanging my clothes in the closet of my new apartment before I ran over to several antique warehouses in Yorkville.

One establishment offered four floors crammed with furniture and architectural fragments. I dove into a pile of broken furniture used for repairs and hit pay dirt. I discovered a collection of Gothic linen-fold panels, ten in all, tied in a bundle. They were thin wood panels, exactly the type on which artists painted in the seventeenth century, except that they bore a carved decoration on one side that resembled a small sheet of cloth folded in pleats. These panels were commonly used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as decorations on the fronts of cabinets and chests. A hundred bucks took the lot, and I was back in the forgery business.

After a stop at the hardware store, where I purchased a plane, a chisel, and some sandpaper, I returned home and went to work. Before the night was over, the linen-fold decoration had been removed from half the panels. After they were prepared with gesso and left to dry, I spent the next few days settling in. I painted the Louis XV wall panels white, hung a couple of my contemporary paintings, and Mrs. Parker let me drag in a few pieces of antique English furniture that weren't being used in the house.

Two “van Goyens” and a “van Ruysdael” were finished and drying under heat lamps before I'd spent my first week in the apartment. Once they were aged and varnished, I took them directly to Mr. Jory to be fitted up in frames.

Desperate and down to my last hundred bucks, I shoved a “van Goyen” into a Bonwit Teller shopping bag someone had left in the lobby of the club and headed up Madison Avenue. Not far away at Seventy-First Street was a dealer in early
objets d'art
by the name of Gluckselig.

His small shop, crammed with paintings, icons, and antiquities, resembled the kind one would expect to find in the backstreets of an old European city. Dressed in a worn, faded suit, the old dealer was dusting and polishing things when I walked in. He instantly fixed his eyes on the edge of the antique frame protruding from the shopping bag. Before I could even finish asking him if he bought antique paintings, he was reaching for the painting in the bag. He produced a large magnifying glass from a drawer and examined the painting closely. It was a beautiful picture of a cottage set in a barren, windswept landscape bathed in a warm golden light. A traveler with a cart being pulled by a jackass could be seen in the distance approaching the cottage.

Gluckselig turned the picture around to examine the back and then the front again. I followed his eyes and knew exactly when he spotted the initials V.G. running along the rail on the fence near the cottage.

“How much?” he asked quietly, never raising his head.

“Fifteen hundred,” I whispered.

“I'll give you eight hundred cash,” he said.

“Nine hundred and you can have it,” I said with a feeling of relief.

“Wait here,” he said and went into a back room.

On an early Italian table he counted out nine one-hundred-dollar bills. He took the painting and handed me the cash and the empty shopping bag.

On my way back down Madison Avenue, I was about to toss the bag into a nearby bin when I thought, Maybe it's a “good-luck” bag. I'll keep it for the next painting.

Never was I more thankful for my talent than when I returned home, paid my rent up in advance, and opened a savings account for the rest. I was still a long way from regarding forgery as a career; at this point I viewed it as something to temporarily keep me going. For now it was the only thing that stood between me and starvation, and I determined never to be without fakes again. From that point on, I always kept a few “Dutch” paintings framed and ready for a sale.

I developed a dual-track work routine. With hope that I could still save my planned artistic career, I painted “Dutch” in the mornings and worked on my contemporary art in the afternoons. With money in the bank and the pressure alleviated, I planned sales trips at my leisure, sometimes traveling with a painting in my Bonwit shopping bag to dealers in Englewood or Brooklyn Heights who had ads in the yellow pages stating that they purchased paintings for cash.

Along with my new apartment came a new ready-made assortment of friends I met through Al, who dropped by in the afternoons and evenings. Terry, Phoebe's nurse, worked the night shift and would visit me in the afternoons. He'd been employed by Igor for over a year, first at the Warren Club, where he lived (and where I'd first met him wearing a bathrobe and slippers), and now at Sixty-Second Street. Terry had drifted to New York City years earlier, and contacts in the gay community led him to Kevin and Allen. Where Igor had picked them up, Terry couldn't say, but they'd been with him for years and he'd grown utterly dependent on their managerial skills.