Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [61]
They would not see each other again for well over a decade.
During those years Stoakes often imagined Drewe’s comfortable and successful life, while his own life took a decided turn for the worse. He suffered from intense depression and was drinking heavily again. His marriage collapsed, and there was an ugly custody battle over his daughter. He fled southwest to the old port city of Exeter, where he managed to gain employment as a nurse, treating patients with end-stage dementia. His salary was barely enough to live on, and he had moved his few possessions into a mobile home. The same man who used to spend all-night sessions discussing arcane mental challenges with his soul mate now anesthetized himself in front of the TV for hours on end.
Then, one clear, cold day in 1994, he picked up the phone, tracked Drewe down through his mother, and called his old friend. They had a lot to catch up on. Drewe told him that his relationship with Batsheva Goudsmid had gone to hell, and Stoakes confessed to the loneliness that now marked his own life. When he mentioned to Drewe that he had changed his Christian name from Hugh Roderick to Daniel, Drewe reacted palpably, something Stoakes would only later fully understand.
A few days later Drewe arrived in Exeter in a Bentley. They talked about old times, and Stoakes felt as if his long-lost brother had returned in the form of a great bird swooping down to pull him out of the muck and save him. Drewe said that Goudsmid, whom he had once loved, had become a danger to his children. He had tried but failed to have her committed. He claimed that Goudsmid had conspired with her father, a former Mossad agent, to destroy his career and take the kids away from him. She was an unrelenting harpy, a “savage” with powerful friends in Israeli intelligence. She had made bomb threats against him and had managed to freeze his bank accounts. Drewe broke down in tears when he talked about the children, and Stoakes was moved. “That grabbed me,” he later recalled.
But Drewe went on to say that he had his own powerful contacts who could be convinced to act on his behalf, and Stoakes’s too. Drewe waxed eloquent about their shared history and suggested they throw in their lot together. They were brothers in arms in a common struggle. He invited Stoakes to his new home in Reigate, two hours away by train.
When Stoakes arrived at the station a day or two later, Drewe was waiting for him in the Bentley. As they drove up to the house, Stoakes admired the impressive garden. Inside, he saw that Drewe had turned the living room into a workshop. There were picture frames in various stages of deconstruction, a mountain of clippings, sheets of foolscap, stacks of letterhead and file folders, pots of glue, rulers, and utility knives.
Drewe made tea and invited Stoakes to spend the night. They had a great deal to talk about. The following morning, Drewe was up early and in good spirits. He sat his friend down and told him he’d had a vision, something they could work on together. He had a plan, a proposition.
“Listen,” he said. “Listen to me.”
18
STANDING NUDE
Armand Bartos Jr. was at work in his Upper East Side duplex in Manhattan when the long-awaited painting came in from Sheila Maskell, a New York-based private dealer and runner. Every once in a while, when she came across something really special, she would put in a call to Bartos. The last time they did business, she’d hooked him up with a Smoker, one of Tom Wesselmann’s many quintessentially American pop art pictures of erotic red lips puffing on a cigarette.
Now she had something rarer and considerably pricier: Standing