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Page 29

by Stephen Greenleaf


  Sands wasn’t a publicity hound like Trump or an obsessed crusader like Lorenzo; he was more a mystery man like Lungren or Buffett. Not much of his story was known, at least to me, but I did know Sands’ rise was hardly rags to riches—his father had owned a small but lucrative business that catered primarily to the market for snack foods. Sands had attended Stanford and the Wharton School, then spent some years in Europe running the Hamburg branch of the family company, the Germans apparently possessing an unquenchable affinity for the charms of beer nuts and popcorn. But the snack trade soon became too tame for young Richard, and he set out after bigger game.

  His initial success was at the form of legalized extortion known as greenmail. In the early eighties, Sands used a portion of the family fortune to accumulate stock in a company that specialized in updated versions of Murphy beds and convertible sofas. Two months later, he came away with $12 million in greenmail when the company bought out his position at a premium in order to prevent Sands from taking control of the board.

  With the profits and publicity from that transaction, Sands was on his way. Two more greenmail forays yielded similar returns, along with a blip of adverse publicity when the founder of a target company killed himself rather than see Sands dismantle his dream. Casting about for bigger game, Sands hooked up with a protégé of Michael Milken’s, and the two of them used Sands’ brief but impressive record to persuade a host of mutual-fund managers and go-go S&L executives, whose jobs depended on achieving record levels of short-term performance regardless of long-term risk, to buy more than a billion dollars’ worth of 16 percent junk bonds that constituted little more than a war chest for the raids of Richard Sands. Armed and eager, Richard Sands went hunting.

  When greenmail became too outrageous even for the pirates of the eighties, Sands made the switch to LBOs. In a series of lightning moves, many involving established West Coast businesses, Sands helped managements take their companies private by buying up the stock at a price that was more than market but less than book value—advancing management’s interests over those of the shareholders they were sworn to serve, in other words. Once the deal was done, Sands would aid the new owners in selling off enough of the company’s assets to satisfy both the debt obligations incurred in financing the buy-back and the enormous fees that Sands and his battery of lawyers and accountants deemed their due for alerting management to the opportunity and arranging the funds to finance it. It took only a few years of such maneuverings to boost Sands’ personal worth above eight figures and his reputation into the stuff of legend.

  Sands wasn’t stupid, obviously; he wasn’t even crooked by the definitions most recently at work in the world. He’d played by rules that made millionaires out of twenty-five-year-old investment bankers and billionaires out of people like Boesky and Milken for doing nothing more valuable than persuading the government that it was foolish to follow a lot of Depression-era notions about antitrust and insider trading and fair disclosure and due diligence, let alone notions a lot older than those, notions of the sort you can find in the Bible if you consult passages other than the ones read on TV by slick-haired preachers who see the Good Book as a come-on rather than a code of conduct.

  As far as I knew, Sands had never been indicted or convicted or even criticized very much, certainly not by the newspapers and politicians who operated within the generous ambit of Sands’ corporate headquarters, a long, low slab of slate and cedar that lay along a reclaimed strip of land on the edge of San Francisco Bay directly east of the hill on which I lived. Over the years, Sands and his bright white helicopter and his pearl-gray limousine and his silver and gold Gulfstream had become as familiar to San Franciscans as the Golden Gate and, as Sands swept off in search of yet another corporate coonskin to hang on his well-hung wall, apparently inspired the same degree of awe.

  Richard Sands was a San Francisco titan. Now that he’d conquered most of the Western world, what he apparently wanted next was the wife of the morose young man seated across from me, whose tears had finally begun to flow.

  I patted the back of his hand, which lay on the bar between us, as helpless as a fish out of water. “Hey. It’s not that bad. She’s still with you, isn’t she?”

  Tom Crandall blinked at the tears, but the effort was ineffective. When he swiped at them with his palm, the streak across his cheek was made metallic by the reflection of the bar lights. “You know where I was this afternoon?” he managed after a minute.

  “Where?”

  “Down in the Tenderloin, helping my partner pull some poor bastard out of a fleabag on Eddy Street, then rushing him to S.F. General even though I knew he had AIDS and that whatever opportunistic infection had laid claim to him was so advanced that even if he was alive when we got him there he wouldn’t be for long.”

  “Rough.”

  “Sure—there’s lots of rough out there these days. AIDS is as bad a way to die as there is. But that’s not the point at the moment. The point is, while I was doing business on Eddy Street, guess where my beloved Clarissa was?”

  “Where?”

  “Los Angeles.” His grin turned sly, even close to evil. “Mr. Sands flew her there. For lunch.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish. The occasion was the grand opening of some place in Malibu owned by a bunch of talent agents and movie stars. She says it could be a great boost for her if she fits in with the Colony swells. That’s what they call Malibu—the Colony. Isn’t that interesting? Do you suppose it’s anything like a leper colony? And isn’t it thrilling that the brilliant Mr. Sands has taken such an interest in my wife’s career?”

  The tortured ripple in Tom’s voice caused several of the faces at the bar to turn our way, which in itself was saying something—one night a guy in the front room got stabbed in the throat by his wife, who was in turn punched in the face by his mistress, and no one in Guido’s moved an inch.

  I tried to be as comforting as I could. “Maybe that’s all it is, did you ever think of that? Maybe Sands is just trying to get Clarissa a break in the business.”

  Tom’s voice fell to a funereal pitch, albeit an Irish funeral. “You’re like Chamberlain at Munich; you don’t quite grasp the dimensions of the problem. Sands has proposed to her. Get it? He doesn’t just want to sleep with her, or squire her around to the chichi watering holes, or turn her into his private plaything; he wants to make her his wife.”

  “I thought he already had a wife.”

  “He does; apparently, like me, she’s excess baggage. Either that or he’s going to take them both to Utah and set up shop with the Mormons. Howard Hughes was big on Mormons, you know. Maybe it’s a fetish with rich people.”

  I laughed. “You’ve got one thing going for you, at least—Clarissa’s not eligible for marriage at the moment.”

  Tom waved at the suggestion. “Sands has that covered. He’ll choreograph the whole thing—divorce on demand, all expenses paid; lawyers provided by him, one for each; a financial settlement that will be eminently fair to the miserable wretch she’s married to—all very civilized and mature. Hell, I even come out of it with a profit, which would make marriage the only decent investment I ever made. In the meantime, he’s shedding his spouse as well, so they’re cleared for nuptial number two. After an appropriate period of recuperation and regret, of course.”

  I let Tom’s bitterness swirl for a while, hoping the air would absorb or at least dilute it. But from the expression on his face and the clench to his fists, I could see his anger still fed on itself, and silence was an appetizer.

  I spoke hurriedly, without thinking where I was going, which turned out to be a mistake. “It could be just talk, Tom. Maybe Sands thinks he has to talk marriage to get her to …”

  “What? Let him into her pants?” Tom’s lip twitched meanly. “I told you, he won’t be satisfied with that. He wants to make it legal—hell, he’s already got the ring. Five carats, I understand; formerly on the finger of Barbara Hutton.”

  I was
amazed in spite of myself. “She’s already wearing his ring?”

  Tom shook his head. “Not yet. But it’s there when she wants it.”

  “Clarissa’s told you all this?”

  “Are you kidding? Every night she comes home with a new chapter; she makes it sound like ‘Héloise and Abélard Hit Hillsborough.’ Last week he told her he’d buy her any house between San Diego and Seattle. If she wanted one that wasn’t on the market, he’d do what it took to see that it was.”

  “That’s just talk—rich guy bragging about his money. I don’t think they can help it.”

  “Yeah? What about this? He says he’s going to buy her a club of her very own. Clarissa’s, featuring the vocal stylings of Clarissa Crandall. And that’s not all. Seems that among his holdings is a small record label in L.A. that specializes in reissues of old standards—right up her alley. So he’ll not only give her a venue, he’ll make her immortal as well. Now how the fuck do I compete with that?”

  His voice rose to the edge of hysteria. I said the only thing I could think of. “If she loves you, the rest of it won’t matter.”

  Tom closed his eyes. “Come on, Marsh. Live in the real world. Love is sloppy sentimentality, an immature indulgence. You can’t let it stand in the way of the good life.”

  “I doubt very much that Clarissa’s that kind of woman. If she was, you wouldn’t have married her.”

  In the face of my implicit praise, Tom’s ire seemed to cool a tad. When he spoke, it was a hum of reminiscence. “She used to love me. A lot, I think, hard though that may be to believe. Then this bozo came along. He turned her head, Marsh; there’s no getting around it.” Tom blinked and indulged in rhetoric. “And who can blame her? No one in their right mind would choose a life with me compared to what Sands is offering.”

  “She picked a life with you before.”

  “But that was before she had a chance like this one. Look. I know it’s not just his money she’s after—she’s not interested in Cadillacs or castles on the Rhine—it’s what his money can do for her.”

  “Like what?”

  Tom closed his eyes. “When we were young, we both had these ideals. I was going to start a free clinic. Clarissa was going to be a star and give lots of benefit concerts for the poor. All very liberal and altruistic. Except it didn’t happen that way, for either of us; we’ve had to struggle just to keep our heads above water. But we’ve been working it out, at least I thought we were. Lowering our sights, coming to grips with what and who we are. It’s been bumpy—Clarissa is afraid her voice will go before she gets her best work on record, and then there’s the age-old problem of what to do with me. But we were okay, or so I thought, because our marriage was the most important thing in our lives. But now it’s not. Not for her, at least. How could it be, for her to hurt me this way?”

  “What does Clarissa say about it?”

  “She says she doesn’t know what she wants anymore, she only knows she needs to find out who she is.”

  “A lot of women her age feel like that these days.”

  “But that’s the point. Sands won’t let her find herself; he’ll gobble her up before she has time to look. Or worse, convince her that what she’s looking for is him.” Tom swallowed and almost choked. “I thought she already knew who she was, you know? I thought she was my wife.”

  Tom fought for self-control as I searched for some consolation to send his way. “She’s not asking for a divorce, is she? She’s just saying she’s not sure.”

  Tom shrugged. “And in the meantime, Sands is hitting her with everything he’s got. He’s says he’s tired of the rat race, wants to establish a foundation that will fund a medical center for homeless people and—here’s a nice touch—that I can be the chief of emergency services, or some sort of consultant if regulations say the chief has to be an M.D.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at the man’s gall, and Tom couldn’t help being incensed by it.

  “The guy is telling Clarissa she’s more important to him than anything he has, which the last I read came to almost fifty million.” He rubbed his face so hard I thought he was going to draw blood. “You’ve got to help me put a stop to it, Marsh.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “You ever see the movie Roger and Me?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “It’s a documentary by a guy named Moore. He—”

  Tom scowled, angry at me for the first time ever. “I’m not in the mood to talk movies, for God’s sake.”

  I persevered. “This guy Moore set out to talk to Roger Smith, the president of General Motors, about why GM was shutting down the auto-assembly plants in Flint, Michigan, and destroying the town. The movie was about all the tricks Moore came up with to get to talk to Smith.”

  “So how did he manage it?”

  “He didn’t. And I’d have about as much luck getting to see Richard Sands as Moore did getting to see the head of GM. Besides, I don’t think Sands is your problem; I think Clarissa’s your problem.”

  He shook his head. “She can’t help what she’s doing. He’s hypnotized her.”

  “But if he’s really in love with her, there’s no way you or I or anyone can stop him. I mean, it’s not like you can buy him off. I don’t know what I could do to help, even if I wanted to.”

  Tom looked at me bleakly. “Scare him, maybe? Threaten to sue?”

  “I already told you, criminal conversation isn’t a civil offense anymore, and he’s got lawyers who would see through any other ploy in a minute. Plus, if you filed suit, the whole thing would come out in public, and the press would make it seem like the slimiest thing since Liz and Dick or Madonna and whatever the guy’s name was she married for a minute. It’s hard enough when these things are worked out in private; I don’t think you or your marriage would have a chance if it was being played out in the papers every day.”

  Tom looked around the room, as though an idea might float by on a cloud of smoke. “Maybe you could, like, threaten him? Physically. Not really, of course. Just enough to—”

  “Come on, Tom—guys like that have bodyguards three deep. I’d end up in the hospital or in jail, and Sands would step up his campaign even more.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “Maybe you can challenge him to a duel,” I said, but when Tom seemed to be considering the idea, I tried to find an answer. “The only thing I can think of is for you to talk to Clarissa and get her to see that this guy’s no good for her. Even I know that the wife of a man like that gets swallowed up in his wake. After a month with him, she really won’t know who she is.”

  “I’ve already tried to get her to see it that way. All she says is that she’s been through so much pain trying and failing to make me happy, she’s not sure of anything except she doesn’t want to keep doing that.”

  “It sounds to me like she’s got problems that don’t have anything to do with you or Sands.”

  “Of course she does. She’s getting old, Marsh—she’s almost forty. A middle-aged torch singer is pretty much an oxymoron, you know.”

  “Maybe she should get into something else.”

  “She’s been talking about it—teaching, songwriting, maybe even social work. The problem is, she’s not considering them because she wants to, but because she’s afraid she’ll have to. If she marries Sands, she won’t have to consider them at all.”

  There wasn’t anything for me to add, so I let Tom work with it by himself for a while.

  “I actually feel sorry for her,” he said after a moment, “in spite of everything she’s done. Show business is an awful life. She’s out there all alone, seldom has a job that lasts longer than six weeks, has to compete with the new talent that comes along every year. She doesn’t have much to show for her years in the business—no retirement plan, no record contract, no long-term bookings—and I’m certainly no security blanket. She’s run to Sands because she thinks money will eliminate her problems, but she’s wrong. Clarissa isn’t the type of woman who can be happy as
someone’s consort, but by the time she realizes it, it’ll be too late. For us, at least. I mean, I love her, but there are things I can’t accept, you know? Some things a man has to hang on to or he can’t call himself a man.”

  Tom convulsed silently, the brandy still his only lifesaver. “There’s one thing I better mention,” I said after he had control of himself. “I don’t do domestic work. Haven’t for years. I’ve turned down a lot of friends who wanted me to help them through a marital crisis, so I can’t very well—”

  “This isn’t a domestic case, this is a murder case.”

  Oddly enough, I believed Tom saw it just that way. He had so little sustenance from the sources most men look to—money, power, fame—he was dependent on his marriage for the nutrients to keep him going. Tom had married above himself, he had always told me, an assessment that carried with it the fear that someday Clarissa would realize the fact and rectify the situation.

  I was resisting the urge to back away from my refusal to get involved when Tom spoke up, all of a sudden endlessly calm and eminently reasonable. “I understand your position, Marsh. And I know there’s really nothing you can do. I just needed someone to talk to about it.” He shoved the snifter down the bar and looked around, a beatific smile elongating his lips. “I’ve enjoyed it here. You … Guido … the others.”

  As he tossed some money on the bar, I gave him as much solace as I could find. “If you think of something concrete I could do to help,” I said, “or if you need to talk some more, you know I’d be happy to. Any time.”

 

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