Conversations With the Crow

by Gregory Douglas

  RTC: Who was…?

  GD: Yes. B. Gerald Cantor of the private banking house of Cantor and Fitzgerald. Cantor was going to Paris, buying new copies, getting Elsen, the expert, to overvalue them and then presenting them to Stanford as a wonderful gift from a cultural man. In fact, old Cantor was taking a huge tax write off. I put a stop to that and the schmuck lost three millions over it.

  RTC: No wonder they hated you.

  GD: They hated me even more when the IRS ruled that you couldn’t take a write off for more than you paid for the piece. Cantor would go to the Musee Rodin, pick out a piece, let us say, from their catalog. They would make it up for him. He would pay, let’s say, two hundred dollars for it. Elsen would certify it was an old piece worth say a hundred thousand and Cantor, armed with this, would nick the IRS. That got stopped. And they called me a Nazi and a Jew hater because, it turns out, almost everyone involved in this, the auction houses, the big dealers, the press, the Elsen academic types were all Jewish. I never knew that when I got started but I learned very quickly. No, Robert, most of the expensive art is either faked, enhanced or a modern copy. They’ve been faking everything for years, especially bronzes. They do Warhol and anything else that brings in money. Now, they’re doing Dalis by the bale full. I mean that if you know what you are buying, do so, but if you think you know, put the money in pig futures or opening a peg house for Congressmen.

  RTC: (Laughter) Very ugly. If you start that one, let me know and I will invest in it. A sure money-maker.

  GD: You know, Jensen knew I did Monet paintings, just for my own amusement, of course, but I did get a period painting that was very bad, but had a nice frame. Took off the original painting and then painted the entire canvas black. And when that had dried, I signed it in red at the bottom. And then a nice little gold museum title on the bottom and I gave it to Jensen over a bottle of very good wine. He looked at it and looked at it and said, in bewilderment, that it appeared to be all black. His boyfriend, who was highly cultured and a great fellow, read the little title and roared with laughter. When Jerry asked him what was so funny, he said that the title, in French said ‘Two Negroes fighting in a tunnel.” Then Jerry laughed. I pointed out that the signature was a wonderful copy and the brushstrokes were pure Monet of the period. He hung it in his living room and got quite a few laughs from his guests.

  RTC: You spend all your time playing jokes?

  GD: No, just some of the time. I like a laugh once in a while and note that Jerry never paid me for this. It was a present in exchange for the wine. Yes, the spirit of Jesse James is alive and well in the rarified world of very fine art.. I was in the basement of the Met once and they had a huge room jammed full of fake art. Rich collectors with no taste bought these pieces of crap for huge money and when they died, their heirs lovingly presented them to the Met. Perhaps a gallery naked after Uncle Sid and Aunt Leah? Not likely. Out of twenty rare Renaissance works, two were original and one misattributed. It’s a huge joke among some of us but believe me, fine art is not an investment other than for the workshops that crank them out like chocolate Easter Bunnies. I did a really wonderful and sensitive oil of two dykes going at it in a barn and signed Renoir to it. Of course, you couldn’t put it in a catalog but I did sell it finally. Some peanut butter titan bought it for his office. Oh, well, munch away, dears.

  (Concluded at 11:15 AM CST)

  Conversation No. 90

  Date: Tuesday, July 1, 1997

  Commenced: 9:10 AM CST

  Concluded: 9:22 AM CST

  RTC: Good day to you, Gregory. I’m happy the package arrived safely.

  GD: Well, I had you send it to the alternative address so no one intercepted it and considering its contents, it is just as well that they did not or I would be calling you from jail. Jesus, what a horrible thing that is. I am very cynical, Robert, but I have a really hard time accepting all of that. Murdering a Pope and a President is one thing but killing the children of a head of state and sending him the bits and pieces in a box is really outrageous. I take it your people did not do this.

  RTC: Actually, they did but I am sad to say they got the wrong children.

  GD: That’s even worse.

  RTC: I agree but then it was after my time. Things have gone downhill since my time, Gregory. The new breed of people in the field are scarcely human but then I am out of it entirely. Are you planning to include any of that in the Müller book?

  GD: No one would believe it, Robert. And when you told me that your people decided not to blow up Kennedy when he was sailing because of the children, I can see that your new breed, as you call them, ought to be exterminated. Still, who will bell the cat? There was that smallish file on the Allende business as well. As I reread it, Nixon told Kissinger to get rid of the man and Henry got your people to blow him away during a convenient civic outbreak. Can I publish the letter?

  RTC: I would rather you didn’t. Henry is still around and he might get nasty. Allende was a nuisance and Allende is dead. Why not leave it at that? I thought you might enjoy seeing the activities of the mighty. I mean, the hit order came from Nixon, not some adventurous person at Langley. I admit we stirred up terrible trouble down there what with the unions, whom we bribed, and the strikes, but the kill order came right from the top. Of course Tricky Dick would deny it and so would Henry and aside from the letter, where is the proof? That’s how it’s done but mostly a private conversation somewhere. A very important person says to our DCI that the President would like….you know the drill. If it happens, why so much the better and the President has plausible deniability as Reagan loved to say. Most of the dirty work is done that way and then when the President retires, he hires someone to write a book that a few people read. It’s filled with lies and self-justifications and the New York Times raves about it. I mean, my God, we got the Times to rave and drool over the Posner book on Kennedy. It should have been called ‘Why I love the Warren Report and look what the CIA paid me!” Ah well, not on my watch, Gregory.

  GD: One of these days, Robert, the string will run out.

  RTC: Surely will, lad, but by that time, I will be comfortably dead. Why I’m forgotten even before I am dead. Ah, when I think about the special limousines, the bowing and scraping, the ass kissing while I was in harness and now, the utter silence.

  GD: Yes, how soon they all forget.

  RTC: Well, I always have you.

  GD: Ah, I recall the old song about that subject. A sheepherder heard it once and hanged himself.

  RTC: And it was….?

  GD: ‘They’ll never be another you.’ Of course if you spell the last word ‘ewe’…

  RTC: Now, Gregory. Don’t beat a subject. I can spell, after all. And yes, I would imagine he would much rather hear a song of my time, ‘My sweet embraceable you.’

  GD: God, these puns will be the death of us all, Robert. I’ll cut up my overweight niece and send the parts to you by UPS.

  RTC: What will I tell Emily?

  GD: A little loving from your friends at the Company?

  (Concluded 9:22 AM CST)

  Conversation No. 91

  Date: Monday, July 21, 1997

  Commenced: 8:15 AM CST

  Concluded: 8:50 AM CST

  RTC: I decided to let the phone ring for awhile, Gregory. I’m glad I got you. You appear to have won some money from me.

  GD: Pardon?

  RTC: Oh yes, I thought you might like to know that your friend James Atwood is dead.

  GD: Ah! Start the week with good news, Robert. How did this totally unexpected thing happen? Shot to death in a Savannah mall by a drug crazed dwarf? Dead elephant fell out of a passing cargo plane and landed on him while he was walking his dog?

  RTC: (Laughter) No, nothing so noticeable. One of our people took James out for Sunday brunch and he had a sudden embolism and fell face down into his salad.

  GD: An embolism? Into the salad? (Laughter) My, my, such a tragic but somehow expected death. An autopsy?

  RTC: I doub
t it. He was getting old. Sixty seven by my information. I’ll send you a check.

  GD: I will honor it. Will they bury him in Arlington with full military honors?

  RTC: Probably not.

  GD: Well, at least he didn’t shoot himself in the back of the head and fall off his boat.

  RTC: Yes. The Paisley syndrome. Well, they both had mouth problems.

  GD: And just think, if I hadn’t filled Critchfield in about James that time, Jimmy might still be operating down there; spreading joy wherever he went.

  RTC: Do I know her?

  GD: Know who?

  RTC: Joy.

  GD: (Laughter) Oh yes, that must be Joy Kobinski. We call her the Mattress Queen. Do you know what Jimmy said when Joy had a runny nose?

  RTC: Please tell me, Gregory.

  GD: Why, she was full.

  RTC: (Laughter) My God, have you no compassion?

  GD: Very little. I save it for my dogs, Robert. Why waste compassion on those who do not deserve it? Jimmy tried to use me and to rip me off once. Perhaps he even planned a salad drop for me, who knows? And don’t pity the dead, Robert, they are at peace. You know, in retrospect, I can comfort myself by considering the number of people I have brought peace to.

  RTC: I share your sentiments.

  GD: That’s why we talk to each other, Robert. Wonderful shared memories of those departed for a better land. Still, unless their silence is beneficial to me, I prefer to keep them alive so I can poke them up once in awhile. Small pleasures to contemplate when one is depressed.

  RTC: Have you always been so brutal, Gregory? Subtle and creative but brutal, I must say.

  GD: No, not always. Why would you believe it, Robert, when I was young, I was loving and kind.

  RTC: When you were three?

  GD: No, up until high school. I was essentially a private person, disliked by most of the teachers and some of the student body because I always said what I thought, but only if asked. And I knew a good deal about people; their sins of commission and omission. People are afraid of this sort of thing so I was generally avoided. So when a very attractive and intelligent girl in one of my classes became very friendly with me, I was, to be sure, very pleasantly surprised. No, my hormones were not raging, Robert, and it was what I believed was a very warm and friendly relationship. In fact, this began to occupy my thoughts more and more and each time I talked with her, I became more and more interested and, I might add, very happy.

  RTC: These things happen.

  GD: Oh, they do but not very often to me, I assure you. So, I began to explore the means to widen the relationship outside of school. She had what we would call very correct parents but that did not bother me because my own family was the same way. Then, as the Christmas season was approaching, I thought in my innocence we might go to San Francisco and attend a performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ I love the work and in fact, when my grandfather died, I inherited an autograph copy of the conductor’s text for this back when King George II attended a London performance and stood for the ‘Hallelujah chorus.’ When the King stood, so also did the entire house and that’s why today everyone stands. Well, so much for that. Anyway, I prepared my scenario and got up the nerve to ask her. A couple of days later, I came to school late after a dentist’s appointment and when I was walking down the empty halls to my classroom, I ran into her so I very politely chatted with her for a few minutes and then invited her. She looked right at me, over my shoulder and then walked towards me and past me away down the hall. At first, I thought she had seen someone but when I turned, there was no one.

  RTC: What was the reason for that? Did you ask her?

  GD: No, I watched her walk away and then just stood there. I was so stunned that I told the school nurse I had just had a tooth extraction and was having some pain so she sent me home. There was no one there so I just went to my apartment and sat in the armchair for a long time. I wondered what it was that I had said to cause her to just walk away. I went over my very short conversation a dozen times…a hundred times is more like it…but could find nothing.

  RTC: I assume from this that you were of an unsettled mind.

  GD: Yes, very. And no, I did not call her or try to visit her. She did what she did and there was no point in bothering with it any further. This was on a Friday and Monday, I went to school early and had my class changed so I didn’t have to see her any more. I did see her from time to time in the halls but we never made eye contact at all. Devastation, Robert, total devastation but I would not chase after anyone, believe me. Anyway, about six months or so later, give or take, I was talking with a girl and she mentioned that everyone knew I was very friendly with this girl but didn’t appear to be around her anymore. Before I could concoct some story, she told me that my friend was a member of a very aggressive young Christian group that met every week at the school and that this girl was what my communicant told me was a ‘seeker.’ That is, she was chosen by the group to single out what were essentially social misfits, befriend them and bring them into the group. Once they did this, the mark would be passed off to another handler. And, she added, they were not permitted to get too close to their victims and had to break off contact if the relationship heated up. I personally don’t think going to see a sacred oratorio at Christmas is particularly intimate but who knows what evil lurks in the minds of women? I later came to the conclusion that the evil lay in their pants. Robert, I was polite with her but got away as fast as I could because I got very, very angry. I was nothing but some poor sucker to be lured into some Jesus freak group and I was so mad I started to shake.

  RTC: Well, I don’t blame you.

  GD: Yes, well, I walked around the football field for about an hour until I calmed down. Then, of course, I did remember her little comments about her circle of worthy friends and so on. And I noticed that she was now walking and talking with some other social misfit and learned that she had a very serious boyfriend in the Jesus group. This did not go over too well with me, Robert, not at all. So I decided to teach all of them a lesson in manners.

  RTC: Not with a gun I assume.

  GD: No. If you kill a person, they are immune from ongoing payback. I thought about it for some time and then I made up a letter from her to a fictional Miguel Ramirez. As I created him, Miguel was an illegal who worked in the local animal shelter, euthanizing unwanted cats. He got tired of giving them fatal shots because they would fight and scratch him so he took them by the tails and slammed them into the wall of his work area. Sometimes, Miguel had to slam them several times….

  RTC: Jesus….

  GD: No, cats. And no one who worked there wanted to go into the room so the walls were a smeared mess. Anyway, this girl was enamored, very enamored, of Miguel and her letter to him was full of grossly explicit discussions of their sexual writhings amidst the cat remains. Oh yes, very graphic indeed. So I had her letterhead copied in a San Francisco print shop, envelopes too, and wrote, or rather typed this grossly pornographic and sadistic letter out. I took one of the envelopes with her name printed on the back flap, just like the original, and wrote my name is pencil on the front. Into the mail and when it came, erased my address and typed in Miguel’s at the local Humane Society. So, I put the terrible letter into the envelope and later, I was sitting next to a school gossip in the library and slipped it into her bulging notebook. You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you, Robert? And then I waited, and waited. About a week later, she found it and proclaimed its contents throughout the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof. Oh, my God, what an uproar! We didn’t have the Xerox then but we did have Thermofax and within a week, that evil missive was all over the school and the town. My gossip mongering sister had two copies and someone in my mother’s bridge club had give her a copy. Of course I got a ragging for having the bad taste to associate with such a vile monster but I took my ass chewing peacefully.

  RTC: And the result?

  GD: Well, her Christian parents were horrified but not at
her. No, they believed she did not write it and they found out there was no Miguel at the cat killing emporium but no one would listen to them and the letter was copied and recopied for months afterwards. My former friend? Her family sent her off to a Christian academy in southern California. It’s location was supposed to be a secret but a friend who worked after school filing in the principal’s office found out where her school transcripts had been forwarded so I sent them copies of the Miguel screed along with a fictional letter from an outraged local parent, warning them of the foul beast they had taken unto themselves. I understand that she left the place a month later and I never heard about her again. Of course her truly Christian real boyfriend had dumped her very quickly, the image of her nude writhings amid the decaying cats must have sickened him. But then I dealt with the religious freaks. They had a student office in the school and I broke into it one night and planted a number of bad things around. First off, I had bought a box of rubbers from a friend, filled the ends with liquid starch and draped and threw them all over the little room. There was a picture of an Aryan Jesus on the wall and I tossed one on top of the frame. And several large uncooked and shelled prawns under the couch and I scattered a few truly awful porn pictures here and there. The shrimp started to rot and I dropped a note in the school snitch box about the wild sex orgies going on right under the nose of Jesus. The smell got very bad very quickly and when the assistant principal and a janitor went into the room, one of them threw up. Of course the group was at once banned from the campus and many students expressed outrage and the Miguel letter was dragged into the situation as a typical example of these sick people.

  RTC: My oh my, Gregory. You really must have been angry to do all that.

  GD: Oh, very angry, Robert, very, but also eventually very satisfied.