Caveat Emptor (21 page)

“Oh, really? Do you have anything you're disposing of?” she inquired.

“Well, I've already sold most everything except for a few paintings.”

“I see. What kind of paintings are they?”

“Well, one in particular is interesting. It's a nineteenth-century portrait of an Indian chief. Another is a beautiful little marine painting, and there's a still life.”

“Can you bring them by?” she asked, trying to hide her excitement.

“Well, I suppose so,” I replied casually. “Are you interested in that sort of thing?”

“Oh, maybe,” she answered. “How about tomorrow? Can you bring them tomorrow?”

The next morning, I arrived back at her shop with one of my “Charles Bird Kings.” When her greedy eyes fell upon the painting, she seized it with both hands, stared up into my face, and asked, “Well, what do you have in mind?”

Ten minutes later I was driving south on I-95, back to Miami Beach, with the top down. On the seat I had a fine William and Mary bracket clock, on the floor I had an eighteenth-century Chinese export bowl, and the legs of an English writing table were blowing in the wind.

As soon as he saw the new items I put in the booth, Sandy wanted to sell another picture. Not willing to chance another sale at the show, he insisted I get some paintings, hop into the BMW, and drive with him to Dania, an antique center just north of Miami. Here he believed he could make a big score using an approach similar to what had worked so well for me the day before.

US 1 was the main drag that went through Dania. Antique shops, many of them in strip malls, lined both sides of the highway. The area was strictly downscale and had nothing that would have interested me, but Sandy was undeterred, and we pulled into a block-long strip of shops. Sandy picked out one of the two “Charles Bird Kings” I had placed on the backseat. The paintings were of similar Indian chiefs, except that one version had a single feather sticking out from behind the Indian's head and the other version had him sporting an entire headdress. Sandy, in a high state of excitement and convinced he was just minutes away from having thousands of dollars in his hand, grabbed the portrait with the single feather, got out of the car, and waddled down the row of shops before disappearing into one near the end.

Five minutes later, Sandy was back in the car mad as hell.

“She offered me fifty bucks!” When I was finally able to stop laughing, I tried to persuade him to forget about the place and head back to the convention center, but Sandy wouldn't give up. “Here, let me have the other one,” he said, this time grabbing the chief with the headdress. “I'll try the shop next door. It looks like they got better stuff.”

Once again he waddled down the sidewalk to a shop at the end. I sat waiting in the car, bored and wishing I hadn't let him talk me into this trip, when to my horror I saw the door of the shop fly open and Sandy running toward the car, one hand grasping the painting, the other holding up his pants. Sweat was pouring down his face when he jumped in the car and frantically tried to get it started.

“What the fuck's going on?” I asked, after the car stalled.

“I'll tell you later!” he said breathlessly, while turning the key again. The car started just as two fat ladies came charging down the sidewalk looking for him. Sandy, panicked and cursing, gunned the engine, threw it in reverse, and we tore out backwards into the middle of the road. Then he threw it into first gear, popped the clutch, and stalled out again. At that point one of the women, in a flowing dress and high heels, lunged for the car and grabbed a door handle.

“Wait!” she pleaded. “We want to do business!” But Sandy, in the grip of panic, got the car started, roared the engine, and burned rubber, leaving the woman reeling in a cloud of dust. As he explained it at a nearby McDonald's, where he gobbled down hamburgers and milkshakes to replenish his lost energy, “I should never have used the other Indian!”

Apparently, the two women were partners, and when Sandy walked into the second shop with the other portrait, the woman he had approached first unexpectedly walked into the shop through an adjoining door.

“What the hell is going on here?!” she screamed when she saw Sandy offering her partner the same Indian, who had miraculously grown a full headdress in five minutes. Sandy panicked, grabbed the painting out of the woman's hands, and fled.

“That guy's fucked up,” I told José, as I described Sandy's escapade over dinner that night at Wolfie's deli.

“He's dangerous,” José said, and we both agreed that Sandy was seriously deranged and had to go.

After the show ended, Paul and Sandy headed back to Nyack. I called Tony. He had been busy making sales around the city. He told me he needed a vacation and had eight grand to give me. I suggested he fly down and we'd meet him at the airport. When Tony arrived, we moved into the Coconut Grove Hotel, he paid me my money, and we spent a week having fun going to the beach, restaurants, and clubs. Between the sales of paintings and antiques at the show and my share from Tony, I'd racked up nearly forty grand in cash.

At this time, two important opportunities developed that established José and me in business. Before we left Miami, I had one last “Buttersworth” to sell. Wandering around Coconut Grove one afternoon, I came across a classy antique shop owned by George Campbell, a retired New York theatrical agent and local bon vivant. As I browsed around, he approached me and struck up a conversation. I introduced myself as an art restorer, formerly from New York. I let it drop that I had been to the antique show and had had the good fortune to find “a fine little Buttersworth.” He asked to see it. When I returned with the painting, he offered me three thousand bucks for it on the spot, plus an invitation to a dinner party he was hosting that evening at his swanky home in Coral Gables.

I arrived at eight and was introduced to several of my host's well-heeled patrons and friends. We dined on chateaubriand, fresh asparagus, and Dom Pérignon. The company was interested in my work as an art restorer, and I had a number of requests for my card. As the dinner party broke up and I was about to leave, I was approached by an unassuming man who introduced himself and gave me his card. He wanted me to come to his home the next day and assess his collection of paintings.

The following day, I pulled into the drive of a beautiful mansion situated on a splendid bluff overlooking Biscayne Bay and within a stone's throw of Vizcaya, the historic Deering mansion. Impressed, I rang the bell and was shown in by a housemaid. She escorted me to a living room decorated with fine eighteenth-century English furniture and antique paintings. The maid asked me to wait there while she called “the doctor.” This gave me a moment to take in the beauty of the house. Two large windows and a pair of French doors looked out upon a perfectly manicured lawn that gently sloped down to a seawall and the bay. Not far from the house was a beautiful terraced pool, surrounded by coral-stone balustrades.

Soon the quiet man I'd met the night before descended a staircase that led from one of the wings. Dr. G, the present owner of this wonderful residence, was one of the country's leading plastic surgeons and a fanatical art collector.

“I'm so glad you came,” he said as he shook my hand. “We'll have lunch, and then I'll show you around.” We passed the next hour poolside, where we were served smoked salmon, salad, and champagne. The house was an easy topic of conversation. Known as Indian Spring, it had once been owned, as the doctor explained it, “by a famous movie star of the 1930s” and was pictured in
Historic Homes of Miami
. Its location, known as the “dead end of Brickell Avenue,” was one of the most exclusive addresses in town.

Dr. G had spent a fortune restoring the mansion, modernizing its systems, and decorating it lavishly. He lived there alone in grand style, cared for by a cook, a maid, and a full-time gardener. A shiny Rolls was parked outside the main entrance, but more for effect, as the doctor rarely drove a car, preferring to be picked up each morning by one of his nurses and chauffeured to his clinic in her little Toyota.

Dr. G's pleasure was hosting society cocktail parties at his home, complete with bands, catering from the best restaurants, and a bar that attracted such luminaries as Arndt Krupp and doomed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. His other enjoyment was flying to New York and combing through the galleries for paintings.

After a leisurely lunch, Dr. G was anxious for me to review his collection. He mainly used only three rooms in the house. The kitchen, with a beautiful picture window looking out to the bay, was his favorite. The living room was used strictly for entertaining and, finally, he had his bedroom on the second floor. The other dozen or so rooms were packed with more paintings than I'd ever seen in my life in a private residence. But unlike Jimmy Ricau, the good doctor bought indiscriminately. He lacked focus and he was certainly no expert. We spent the entire day going from room to room examining scores of paintings. Even the closets held stacks of them. Many were second-rate European old masters.

The doctor eagerly sought my opinion on this one and that one. He was shocked when I pointed out botched restoration jobs on many of them. He was unaware, for instance, that it was not unusual for an entire sky or complete figures to be repainted in early paintings when they fell into the hands of incompetent restorers. Occasionally there was a really fine piece, no doubt purchased by accident. He was greatly impressed with my observations and declared that he would “never see paintings in the same way again.”

After we completed our survey, which continued into the early evening hours, we went to dinner at an exclusive Coconut Grove club to which Dr. G belonged. It was obvious to me that money was no object to him and, after finishing off our filet mignon with a hundred-dollar bottle of wine, we spent the rest of the evening discussing how to improve his collection.

“I don't know if you're interested in early American paintings,” I told him, “but that's where people are putting their money these days.” Yes, Dr. G was aware that American art was the big new thing in collecting and, yes, he was indeed interested in starting a collection. He asked for my frank opinion of his present collection, and I gave it to him.

“First, I would weed out the inferior pieces,” I said. “Second, I would have the better ones properly restored if they are to remain in your collection. And, third, I would strictly confine my future investing to American paintings.”

Dr. G appreciated my directness, and had only two questions for me: “Can you begin to restore my collection?” and “Can you help me find American paintings?” On both counts, I assured him that I could.

The next important development occurred as soon as José and I returned home. A local antique dealer for whom I'd been doing some restoration work told me of a charming corner property next to his shop that was for sale. Situated in the old downtown section of St. Petersburg and within walking distance of Tampa Bay, the property consisted of a vintage 1930s coffee shop directly on the corner, with four adjoining shops, two on each side of the restaurant. All this took up nearly half a block. Enclosed behind the shops was a beautiful old courtyard set in antique brick, and each shop had French doors that opened onto it. All this for only fifty thousand dollars!

We spent the next couple of months cleaning, painting, and repairing. The coffee shop was under lease to a Greek family. We took one shop for a restoration studio, another for an antique shop, and the remaining two we rented out. It was a perfect setup. A restoration studio, we reasoned, could act as an ideal cover trade for my real business, and any extra cash we made could be put into antiques for the second shop. Finally, the trade I'd learned at Sonny's years before would begin to pay off. We bought a truck, and soon we were hauling paintings for restoration from Dr. G's estate in Miami to our new studio.

José educated himself in all the principles of bookkeeping and running a business. He took charge of all the financial matters as well as the paperwork. For my part, I realized that if I was going to expand my abilities, I would have to start painting pictures on canvas, as both academy board and wood panels were too limiting in size and in terms of the artists I wished to imitate. Now that I had a large studio, I could proceed with a program of research and development.

To paint on canvas would pose new technical problems for me. Armed with my camera, close-up lenses, and notebooks, José and I flew up to New York and headed straight to Jimmy's house. Jimmy was excited about our new acquisition and my plans to expand my product line. Paul contributed by rounding up restoration work for us from his tenants, and José helped Jimmy with jobs around the house, while I spent my days examining scores of nineteenth-century American paintings on canvas. Of particular interest were unrestored paintings in Jimmy's collection, many of which had not been touched since the artist applied the final coat of varnish.

I began by lining up several canvases against the wall in an upstairs room, away from any distractions. Pulling up a chair, I studied them carefully and made a list of elements that made these paintings look old to me. I began with the most obvious and noted that the characteristic pattern of cracks that occur on canvas is very different than those that appear on wood panels or academy board. On board, the cracks tend to run in somewhat straight lines, but on canvas just the opposite is true, with crack patterns often forming concentric circles. These rings or circles also have a secondary network of finer cracks radiating from the center and joining the circles to each other, forming a pattern that resembles a spider web. Also, when I held a painting at an angle against the light from a window, I could see clearly that the cracks were slightly elevated.

Next, I observed that a number of paintings displayed clusters of little pinhead-size black or brown spots. These tiny spots clustered in curious and distinct patterns, mostly around the perimeter of the paintings. I noted that these spots were elevated and fused to the surface of the painting. These, I discovered from Jimmy, were ancient fly droppings. They were unlike anything I had dealt with at Sonny's. Although they deserved further study, for now I just made a notation and photographed several of the clusters.