by Andy Behrman
Stuart starts his summation with a simple question: “Did Andy intend to defraud anybody?” He questions the money I received from Art Collection House. Miss Kawamura’s testimony supported, he argues, the fact that I had my own extensive collection of Kostabis and was entitled to any monies that I received. He accuses Kostabi of lying to Art Collection House customers by writing letters requesting to correct their paintings. “The government is accusing Andy Behrman of engaging in criminal fraud, and what does Kostabi do? He writes letters to people saying these are real paintings. These are really my paintings. I want to, quote, change them, and he doesn’t tell them that he’s claiming now that they are fakes. What is his explanation, basically? I lied in the letter,” says Stuart. “Judge Nickerson will explain to you what an attempt to defraud means, and the government has to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. So he can get up here and say, see, all this evidence, eyewitnesses, people saw him signing, you got all these ten different ways that we showed people signed and it wasn’t Kostabi. Big deal. Where is the proof that Andy Behrman believed that what he was doing was not in accord with—and I hesitate to use this word but I will say it—normal, within the realm of what was normal at Kostabi World? It’s so appropriate that they call it Kostabi World because that’s what it is, it’s like some other world where concepts that apply in this courtroom about truth and honesty have no meaning; where a man says he’s the world’s greatest con artist and makes a lot of money by saying it.” Then Stuart brings up the issue of how the two Kostabi brothers treated me at Kostabi World. “Before any of this ever happened, they used to go around accusing him of being a thief. There was pressure on Andy to get more sales. Not only that, ladies and gentlemen, they owed Andy a lot of money.”
After lunch in the cafeteria, I’m in the elevator with my father and some friends when my knees buckle and I nearly collapse, but my father grabs me before I fall. I’m a lot more anxious than I’ve realized. I’m huddling with my parents, holding their hands, wishing the trial could go on for a few more days and that I could have a chance to say a few words to the jury.
All the jury knows is that somebody has painted Kostabis and forged a signature. They are never introduced to any coconspirators. They aren’t even sure which paintings are fake. Kostabi isn’t even sure. But I can tell them apart. Judge Nickerson instructs the jury on how to determine the guilt or innocence of a defendant and sends them to the jury room. They deliberate for only an hour before he dismisses them until the following Monday to start deliberations again.
December 11, 1993. New York.
My friend Paul takes me to see Wayne’s World to get my mind off the trial and the deliberations, and for two hours Garth and Wayne manage to keep me focused—it is a good diversion. I go to a party at Larissa’s, a friend of Deb and Paul, on the Upper East Side, and the intensity of my week disappears in the crowd of partygoers. Everyone is curious about how the trial is going, but I don’t have the best perspective. “We’re doing great,” I say, just glad to be out of the courtroom and in a room full of people smoking and drinking.
December 13, 1993. Brooklyn.
I pace the area in front of the courtroom waiting for the jury to return with the verdict. I am surrounded by my family and friends and make calls to other friends on the pay phone to keep them posted. At 4:30 P.M. Judge Nickerson enters the courtroom and everybody quickly assembles inside. He asks for the verdict from the foreperson. I am frozen. “How do you find the defendant, Andrew Behrman, as to count one, guilty or not guilty?” asks the clerk. “Guilty,” says the foreperson. Ouch! The clerk runs through counts two through five quickly, and I am found not guilty on each count. The clerk polls the jury. Judge Nickerson releases me on a personal-recognizance bond and sets a sentencing date for May 20, 1994. The prosecution team has mixed reactions, Stuart seems let down, and I’m just glad that the jury has come to a verdict I had predicted an hour earlier. I was pretty confident they wouldn’t convict me of these other counts because none of them involved unauthorized paintings.
I am now officially labeled a felon. There doesn’t seem as much of a stigma associated with being a felon as I thought there would be. So I won’t be able to buy a handgun. A few days after the verdict I’m contacted by New York magazine writer James Kaplan, who is working on his story of the “Kostabi affair.” He has attended the trial and wants to interview me, but Stuart asks me to decline being interviewed by him or any other member of the press because I haven’t been sentenced yet. Nonetheless, I agree to meet with Kaplan because I feel like I can trust him and desperately want not only to be a part of the story but to exert some control over it. He agrees not to quote me. I meet Kaplan one afternoon for lunch on the Upper West Side at Lenge, a Japanese restaurant, and give him my version of the story. The article, complete with a bizarre nude photo of Kostabi, is published. It’s a cover story. My reaction to the story and the response I get is extremely positive—calls from friends, family friends, and clients are all very supportive. The article portrays me quite fairly and does not paint the most flattering picture of Kostabi. “ ‘With Mark, Andy got a tabula rasa,’ says a friend of both men. ‘When Andy wasn’t there to make him do tricks, he was boring. Where with Andy, everything was a joke, Mark had absolutely no sense of humor. He was almost like a trained dog—he’d always talk about how Donald Trump was his big hero.’ ” Kaplan asks Kostabi, “Would you ever forgive Andy Behrman?” “If he served a sufficient number of years in jail, and made financial restitution, and offered a sincere apology—under those circumstances, and those only, I would forgive him.” Kaplan writes, “For one who has often portrayed himself as a con artist, for one who claimed that people who bought his paintings were fools, Kostabi pursued Behrman with remarkable single-mindedness. His determination seems all the more striking when you realize that until May 1991, Kostabi had considered Behrman one of his closest friends. Oddly, Behrman seems to have felt the same. After he was indicted, Behrman told a friend, ‘I’m scared this is going to be a movie of the week, and I’ll be played by Andrew McCarthy.’ ”
The media’s attention to the trial only fuels my mania more, instilling me with an extra shot of confidence. I’m tremendously relieved that the jury has issued its verdict and that I can finally put an end to this chapter of my life. Concealed in this defeat, I think, is a small victory. I have been convicted on only the first count—conspiracy to defraud. Since I’m clear on the other four, that means I’ll spend less time locked up. So I tell myself not to worry and I go about making the best of my time before my sentencing, allowing the wounds of the past few months’ time to heal.
February 24, 1994.
U.S. Probation is going to visit my parents at their house in order to prepare a profile of the family for the judge, for the purpose of sentencing. It’s about 9:30 A.M. on the appointed day, and my parents and I have just finished breakfast and are nervously awaiting our visitor. My father is straightening up newspapers, and my mother is cleaning up the kitchen while I watch television. My father and I both wear khakis and a sweater; my mother is dressed in a skirt and jacket. A guy who looks no older than nineteen arrives to interview us, and we greet him as if he’s a salesman. My father invites him in, and he sits on a chair next to the couch and begins to ask us questions about our educational backgrounds, employment and financial histories, and our living situation in general. We must appear to this interviewer like a relatively stable family. I don’t think he’s going to leave with the impression that I come from a family of crime, and he ends up putting together a picture-perfect report of the family for Judge Nickerson. But I’m actually not living at this quiet, safe, and cozy home—I don’t want to stay in New Jersey. I’m just bumming around at night or sleeping in my office or on friends’ couches in Manhattan. And I’m running around drinking excessively, talking to complete strangers that I meet in bars and on buses about my recently acquired felony conviction. I’m not lucid. In fact I’m losing it quickly.
At night I
roam the streets, spending my time in bars and clubs, ending up in diners at 5:00 A.M., begging one waiter to serve me Jack Daniel’s in a paper coffee cup because it’s after hours. I find myself talking incessantly and feeling agitated, constantly needing to be on the move and involved in several activities at once. My friends are becoming more and more concerned about my mental health, and one of them insists that I see her therapist for a consultation. At this point I can’t even keep track of how many doctors I’ve seen, but I figure I’ll give another one a shot. Dr. Rector is a young therapist who after about a half hour of talking to me gently tells me that there’s nothing that he’s going to be able to do to help me with my problem. He feels strongly that I need to see a psychiatrist and arranges for me to meet with a colleague on the Upper East Side, Dr. Caroline Fried. I feel like I’m being bounced back and forth from East Side to West Side. How many times will I have to cross Central Park before someone will be able to help me? But this is the first time I’ve been referred to a female psychiatrist or psychotherapist since my days at Wesleyan, and I feel oddly hopeful about seeing a woman.
When I arrive at Dr. Fried’s office, I decide not to judge her on her bad magazines: Redbook. Parenting. Colonial Home. She shares the office with another psychiatrist, and I’m hoping that they’re his. She opens the door to her office and smiles. She looks like she is in her late thirties. I sit down on a small leather couch and spend the first few minutes of our session trying to figure out who she reminds me of. I decide it’s Sally Field, with her short, dark, straight brown hair and her friendly but serious nature. She’s petite. She has a contagious laugh. Glasses. I take an instant liking to her. I’m in the right place. She seems to approach the session like a science project. She’s methodical in her questioning and collecting background information. She asks me about my spending habits (which surprises me), my drug and drinking habits, my sleeping schedule, and my sexual promiscuity. I even offer to talk to her about my suicidal thoughts and my impulsive behavior in general. I tell her that there are some days that I feel like jumping in front of a bus and back away at the last second. Nothing I say frightens her. I feel her taking an imaginary giant breath to figure out how she is going to attack my problem. She doesn’t panic, but I can tell she’s not exactly sure how bad my situation is yet. At the end of the session she prescribes Klonopin, an antianxiety medication, for the time being, to try to stabilize things. I make an appointment for another session and leave her office feeling that I have found the doctor who’s going to rescue me from hell. No other doctor that I have ever met is ever going to help me. Not even Dr. Golub. He was going to treat me like another one of his twitching psychiatric patients in his waiting room. Over the next sessions, Dr. Fried and I talk about everything from my recent conviction to my manic trips around the world to my obsessions with food, spending, exercise, and sex. She asks lots of questions. During the third session she starts talking to me about moods. Mood swings. Highs. Lows. Cycles. What is this mood thing she’s talking about? The more I talk about my activities—sleepless nights, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity, overspending, and breaking the law—the more convinced she is that I have manic depression, or bipolar disorder. Her diagnosis sounds so definitive that it feels like a life sentence. Hearing it from her, I’m frightened that this “energy” floating around my brain and attacking my neurons, this force that has already wrecked my life, is going to continue to destroy me and that she won’t be able to help. There’s got to be some combination of medication to quickly put an end to this hopelessness. Her goal now is to stabilize me on medication before I am sent away to prison. We’ve got some time to work things out before I’m sentenced. But the Klonopin doesn’t seem to do anything for me, and I start to abuse it, randomly popping a handful every so often. One night at dinner with Pamela at E.J.’s Luncheonette I order an ice cream sundae and just for fun sprinkle ten or twelve of the little blue pills on top and eat them off the top with the whipped cream. I don’t really seem to care what happens or if I have to be taken out by an ambulance. It’s just an urge I need to satisfy, a chance I take. I joke to myself that I shouldn’t be too anxious after I’m done with this sundae.
A week later, my mind racing as if I’m on speed, I tell Dr. Fried that I’m fighting off sleep and feeling manic and suicidal again. She prescribes Depakote, a mood stabilizer and alternative to lithium. My problem with Depakote, the peach pills, is that I take too many at once, too, sometimes up to ten or twelve at a time—not because they’re addictive, just because I can’t resist the urge. I like experimenting with the medication to see what kind of reaction I have, and my mania seems to shield me from fear. I’m aware that I’m sabotaging my own treatment. I report back to Dr. Fried that I obviously can’t be trusted with either Klonopin or Depakote, and that anyhow they both make me dull. Usually it’s the doctor who makes the decision that the patient isn’t trustworthy, but in this case I do. So we switch to lithium, which I haven’t been on since Dr. Golub prescribed it for me, and after a while my racing thoughts slow down. I see Dr. Fried twice a week but give her daily updates on how I’m feeling so that she can adjust my medication. Soon I feel stabilized, more centered and without any dramatic highs or lows.
Dr. Fried insists that I see a psychotherapist as well, since my stabilized mental state allows me to think more coherently about my situation. She refers me to Dr. Arlene Marks, whom I start seeing once a week for therapy. We have so much to talk about: impending incarceration, IRS problems, manic depression, medication, suicide, sexuality, family, career. My level of anxiety has registered an all-time high. I’m still dealing with the aftershock and fallout from the trial, sorting through the hype from the New York magazine article and a television segment that has just aired on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, am juggling five clients at work, and am extremely frightened about the sentencing. I’m also in the process of giving up the office space on Fifth Avenue after three months because it’s not practical and I need a real apartment to live in. I move to a one-bedroom apartment in a new luxury building on 86th Street and Broadway, which I also plan to use as an office. I actually draw a flow chart for Dr. Marks and include “dry hair” as one of the issues I feel we need to address in our therapy. I’m under attack from all sides—there’s almost too much for this woman to sort out and deal with once a week. I feel like I’m overburdening her.
In a letter to Dr. Marks, I write, “My seams are coming apart and my insides are on the outside. I can’t feel my being, I can only think of freebasing or masturbating—of getting high. Nobody loves me. I can’t perform. I’m waiting for the drugs to take effect and to send shocks into my brain. I am suffering.”
March 11, 1994. New York.
I am becoming paranoid and having psychotic thoughts. I won’t answer the telephone and think that the words on the pages of books and newspapers can hurt me like sharp objects. I’m walking down Broadway to the cash machine when all of a sudden I start feeling a razor blade slicing my tongue from all different angles. I twist my face in agony and hope that nobody notices. The psychotic episode only lasts for about thirty seconds, but I can’t get the image of razor blades out of my head, or the belief that my tongue is a bloody mess. It creeps into my mind every so often and frightens me when I least expect it. After I call Dr. Fried in a panic, she puts me on the antipsychotic Risperdal, which relieves me of these visions but has several bizarre side effects. For instance, I become very stiff and walk with a shuffle, I lose facial expression and don’t blink, and I can’t urinate in a straight line any longer (I spray all over the toilet). I have a noticeable tremor in my hand and find it difficult to hold utensils or write. I’m put on Propranolol to counterbalance the tremor, which seems to help a bit, and Symmetrel for the stiffness. I am taken off the lithium and put on a different mood stabilizer, Tegretol, but it makes the backs of my hands itch and gets me revved up, so I have to stop using it. I’m talking very fast and under more pressure since I’m about to be sentenced.
> 11:30 P.M. Rihga hotel bar, New York.
I’m sitting drinking a Pilsener Urquell, just for a change, when I hear a couple speaking German, sitting on a couch nearby. They’re in their midthirties and dressed in jeans, black turtlenecks, and boots. They have blond hair and tans. They’re splitting a bottle of champagne and smoking, so I walk over to them. “Can I borrow a cigarette?” I ask, even though I don’t really smoke. “Sure, do you need a light?” the man asks. “Thanks,” I answer. “Are you from New York?” he asks me. “Yes, just waiting for a friend,” I tell him. “We’re here from Germany for a week,” he says. I’ve now gotten myself into a conversation. “What do you do in New York?” he asks me. “I do public relations. I used to be in the art business,” I say. “Oh, what kind of art?” she asks. “I work for a gallery in Düsseldorf,” she says. Small world. “I used to work for an American artist named Mark Kostabi,” I tell them. They look at each other and start laughing. “Kostabi? Kostabi?” he asks. “Such crap. You’re not the guy who reproduced his paintings, are you?” he asks. I nod. “We hate that stuff, but we would love to own a fake one,” he says. I’m not sure if he’s joking. “Here, have some of our champagne,” he says as he asks the waiter for another glass. We spend the next two hours talking about the entire saga.
Sentencing: The Electric Chair
May 20, 1994. Brooklyn.
Five months after the trial, after a sleepless night at my parents’ house, I return to court with Stuart, my sister, my parents, and the same loyal group of friends who had attended the trial. I have no idea what kind of sentence Judge Nickerson will give me, but I’ve been considering all the possibilities for the last five months, and I’m hoping for less than a year in prison, although there is the possibility of as much as five years. Stuart goes before the judge and speaks for quite a while about the case and about my character. “Andy, in his own mind and heart, has difficult feelings about what happened here but, in any event, honestly didn’t believe that he committed a crime, and I realize that that issue has been resolved. But that is the feeling of the person, and I’ve come to have some exposure to that,” he says. “I think that under any view, Kostabi World was an ethical swamp that Andy Behrman had the misfortune to be working at.”
