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He was on his way. His sophisticated presence and strategic name-dropping, combined with the quality of his forgeries, quickly added up to a thriving yet surprisingly casual business. Whenever he was short of cash, De Hory would dash off a small portfolio of sketches or water colors, put on his one expensive suit and saunter into a gallery. A few dealers were suspicious. One threw Elmyr out of his gallery and chased him down the block.
Faced with the possibility of exposure De Hory migrated to America. The U.S.—especially Los Angeles—soon proved a land of bilk and money. He lived in the best hotels, drank at the smartest cocktail parties. Friends and acquaintances included Averell Harriman, Stanley Marcus, Jacques Path, Fanny Brice, Tennessee Williams, Wiley Buchanan and the Gabors. Elmyr prospered, bagging not only dealers and collectors but even Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, which bought a "Matisse" drawing.
It took the satanic charm and infernal appetites of Fernand Legros to transform Elmyr's gentlemanly one-man racket into a worldwide industry. Legros persuaded Elmyr to devote all his time to forgery and leave the selling to him. He soon turned the forger into an underpaid filler of rush-order masterpieces. The fringe benefits weren't too bad, however. Legros set Elmyr up in a clifftop villa with a pool and secret studio on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where the English-speaking colony included Clifford Irving. The setting was so attractive that the U.S. State Department tried to rent it briefly for Lynda Bird Johnson. Elmyr was willing until he learned that the party included four Secret Service men. "What do they think I am running here on Ibiza," he exclaimed, "some kind of flophouse for the fuzz?"
In the end, Legros's commercial and private indiscretions proved too much even for the art-market world, where many dealers and experts are often willing to be discreet for a price. The last days of the ring saw a cycle of brawls over who was cheating whom, Keystone-cop chases, indictments, Spanish jails and swift departures. Legros fled back to Egypt where, for all anyone knows, he has already sold a phony Chagall to Nasser. As for Elmyr, he is last seen in Fake! bound for Portugal, leaving his paint set behind.