8 Million Stories: She Graduates to a Mountebank

I  hung on to the brownstone in Lefferts Manor, Brooklyn, for about a year after my mother’s death, since her last will and testament left provisions for me to live in the house at cost, if I was unmarried when she died. Plus, I’d get the antiques. But I eventually lost the building after a bitter estate battle because “somehow” the original, signed will went missing. My critical mistake was that after bringing the body to Campbell’s Funeral Parlor, I went for consolation with my boyfriend instead of going back to the house with my three brothers. Even if you once had a copy of the signed will, that doesn’t wash in Probate Court!

My three older brothers were demanding $10,000 in rent from me. My lawyer told me it was time to move. The exquisite house was sold for $235,000 in 1992. (It recently sold for over a million dollars.) I then moved to a one-bedroom apartment in Tudor City with two dogs and a cat. I was traumatized on the day of my move—the princess had moved from a castle to a closet—so I went downstairs to walk my black Sharpei and red-and-white English Setter, Casey. Shell-shocked, I was strolling with them on Tudor City Place when a short young blond man, looking to be somewhere in his early thirties, ran across the street. He stood in front of me, introduced himself as “Clark” and told me how he loved Casey and would walk him for me if I desired. 

Clark showed me the nuances of the neighborhood, like the dog park on the East River. He never told me his last name, and since I sensed brittleness in him, I never grilled him for details about his life. It was a pleasant social friendship in which I played to the balcony since I had a boyfriend and was not looking for additional interests. In retrospect, however, it’s fascinating how one’s subliminal impressions can keep one out of harm’s way.

Clark attended two cultural events that I staged at the Harvard Club and three art shows that I had curated at a friend’s gallery in Carnegie Hall. By that time, he had told me that his last name was “Rockefeller.” He said that his parents had died in a car crash when he was young. He added that he was mute from the trauma for 10 years and home-schooled. He said that his profession was advising foreign governments on how much money to print. He told me about his Learjet and trips to London accompanied by Yeats, his Gordon Setter. When I asked him about certain historical restaurants in London, such as Rules, he said, “The food there is so awful, I just bring cereal.”

I introduced him to some friends that were completing a satellite deal. He was quite intelligent and had thoroughly digested the deal and agreed to be put on the board of the company. When they asked him what he would like in terms of remuneration, he said, “Gentlemen, there is nothing that you can do for me, as I don’t wish to jeopardize my tax structure. I am tax exempt by an Act of Congress, and Texas is my official residence.” That all sounded interesting as he proceeded to regale us with tales about attending the inaugurations in D.C.

He had an interest in art and was a collector. I introduced him to a prominent conceptual artist at the Yale Club. He told my friend that he was going to build a museum in a quarry in New Hampshire and wanted my friend to curate the Ad Reinhart room. My friend said, “Great, we will call it the Ad Reinhart Vault.” Clark’s accent was rather stiff and clipped, vaguely New England. I noticed that when I introduced him to prominent individuals, there were subsequent social occasions with them to which I was not invited.

He would frequently tell me about taking friends up to Pocantaco Hills to run the dogs. Again, I was never invited and was too busy to pay this any serious mind. I took the prominent artist over to Clark’s place on Sixth Avenue and West 56th Street. We looked at the $12 million Mondrian, the Morris Louis, the Jackson Pollock and the Rothko. Yeats, the dog, was flinging his saliva on the Morris Louis. I told him that Chinese moguls of old would mark a painting with their chop as designation of ownership and that his chop was Yeats’ spit.

Clark had a collection of multi-colored corduroy pants with all sorts of dogs and birds flying and running on them. When I knew him, he was about 145 pounds, had very blond, short hair and blue eyes with no glasses. But I never got a sense that Clark was a fabulist.

Instead he spent hours configuring my first computer with all sorts of software. This was my gentle introduction into the cyber world, and I was grateful. Clark once sold me a Bose stereo for half price. I thought, “If this guy is a Rockefeller, why didn’t he just give it to me?” Perhaps he needed the money, but I still had no reason to question his identity.

But he wasn't the only predator on the loose. I thought it curious when, later, another slight, blond man, with blue eyes approached me in Tudor City. He was a jewelry dealer who sold me some fine pieces. He bragged of his earnings and evasion of New York State and City taxes. He suggested that I should put him on my will as no one else could properly liquidate my antiques. He also suggested that I refinance my apartment and buy the adjacent studio and rent it to him. When he finally sensed I was a dead end, that there was nothing else to obtain, he got frustrated and turned nasty. He got physically abusive, once kicking me in the shoulder after I sold a fur coat for him at an East Hampton Jewelry show. Then he began to get rude in front of others in order to demean me. Since I have a giant Bullmastiff and grew up with three older brothers, I always figured I could take care of myself.

I heard he trawled East Side gay club The Townhouse by evening, essentially buying Eastern European boys whom he would kick out after they serviced him. This aggressive behavior toward me was even more perplexing coming from a diminutive gay man whose income I had augmented by 40 percent due to social introductions. The game was over.

But my thoughts return to Clark now that he's made headlines in the news. I lost touch with him when he moved to Cornish, NH, and bought the house: “In order to influence the presidential elections,” according to him. I quipped, “Not unless you are going to put LSD in the food.” I realized he might have become somewhat unhinged when I read about the moat he dug around the house for security and the two old police cruisers positioned at the entrance to the property: there were blow-up dolls dressed as cops at the driver’s wheel.

I was shocked when I first read the story about the abduction of his daughter “Snooks,” the divorce from Sandy (whom I had met) and the subsequent pursuit. This put me on a rollercoaster of emotions as the story unfolded and “Clark” became a living palimpsest—with the name “Rockefeller” working like an open sesame for him. 

Hopefully “Snooks” did not inherit her father’s unique talents. A friend, who also knew him, emailed me from Puerto Vallarta the other day, stating that the Clark story he’d been told was “about $300,000 in gold bars” with which “Clark” had claimed to have purchased a 72-foot catamaran called “Serenity” and Stilton Cheese. “It must be a joke,” my friend said. Now the joke’s on Clark since there is no Stilton cheese or imported sherry served at the Nashua Street jail.

I watched the interview on NBC news with “Clark.” When questioned about claiming that he worked for NASA as a physicist and was working on a secret project for the Pentagon, he stared the interviewer in the face and said that he had worked for people who held those jobs. He collaged aspects of their identity into his. As he abides within his “memory loss,” the apparent depth of his pathology is no longer amusing, but rather chilling. Especially when you learn that his favorite movie was Double Indemnity.

Sharlene Spingler is a writer and photographer whose family arrived on the island of Manhattan in 1643. This story is adapted from her unpublished book, Swollen Bones: A Growing Girl's Guide to Rakes, Cads, Scoundrels and Bounders in Area Code 212.