Feature

The Double Dealer

But with the float, the customary grace period on payment, Cohen could turn a loss into a short-term gain for himself -- having the $800,000 in his trading account.

"Eventually he just obviously overextended himself. It's a daily market, so you know immediately when somebody doesn't have money, and you shut him down," says Murphy. Robert Galoob, who has known Cohen as long as anybody in the U.S., sees his flight as a gambler's fugue. "You go on and on and down and down," Galoob says. "You can't stop yourself."

The contours of the cohen case are now defined. The vanished art has mostly popped up again -- Chagalls in galleries, the Richard Gray Picasso (the insurance company made the gallery whole) on the wall of a ponytailed California computer mogul -- and is likely to remain in the hands of whoever bought it in good faith. The dealers smolder, but their abhorrence of public disclosure makes it unlikely their handshake culture will be disturbed.

"Michel Cohen was an anomaly," Leslie Feely, a private dealer, says defensively.

Paul Kantor's West Hollywood house is a warm pink. When I went to ask the doyen of California dealers for some insight into Cohen's self-destruction, we had tea in the dining room. Behind me was a red-and-blueMirò sculpture. Even at over 80, Kantor retains a formidable presence with a wave of snowy hair, pink skin, and icy blue eyes.

"I was his taste buds," Kantor said of his relationship with the runner. "I lunched with him three times a week at Morton's. He would always have five or six transparencies."

"I never picked up the check. Not once!" Kantor added. "I wanted to see if he would say something. He never did."

I was reminded of a comment Marc Richards made about Cohen's vulnerability. "He was misused by his backers, "Richards complained. "He would go halves on the profits but eat all the losses."

"It was a pyramid," Kantor admitted of his loans to Cohen. Even a seasoned hand like Paul Kantor would learn the hard way the truism about free lunches.

We moved into the drawing room. The walls were hung with Picasso, De Kooning, Yves Tanguy, Arshile Gorky. Kantor settled down. "I didn't realize how many people he had been dealing with," Kantor went on. "Nobody realized. He kept it all in his mind."

Kantor has never laid eyes on the actual Picasso she thought he bought from Cohen and has no idea where they might be or to whom they actually belong. Cohen sold him Femme Dans L'Atelier in March. "Three people bought that painting," he said tartly.

In late January, Cohen was still trying to get a chunk of money from him. "It was the continuation of all kinds of deals," Kantor said. "I'll give you half a picture; you give me a quarter. You buy, you sell, you trade."

Kantor got up and adjusted a Picasso, which was askew on the wall. Sounding oddly serene, he talked of visiting the Cohens in Malibu. Emboldened, I asked whether -- when all was said and done -- he felt more sorry for Michel Cohen or angry.

"Angry?" he retorted. "He stole $6 million from me."

How in the world could Michel Cohen have bamboozled cagey old birds like himself and Ernst Beyeler?

Kantor looked me full in the face. He wore a seraphic half-smile.

"Greed," he said, lightly. It was as if he had drawn the word on the air in smoke. "That's the obvious answer."