The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Please, Mrs. Rothman,” the girl sobbed. “I begged Mr. Rothman not to announce it like this—not here, at your party. He insisted that it would come as a nice surprise for you, but it didn’t, did it? It didn’t come as a nice surprise at all!”

  Alex started to say that nothing Herbert Rothman did would ever surprise her, but instead she said, “Don’t worry about that. The first thing we’ve got to do is get this crowd under control.”

  “He says he thinks you and I can work well together. He says you and I can be a team, but I can’t be a part of a team unless you want me too! He says it can work, and I want to believe it will work, because I admire your work so much. Please tell me you believe we can at least try to work together. I’ll try—I’ll try so hard—to learn—”

  Once again Alex started to say something angry. She could have said that there were three things in life she had learned never to believe in: the tooth fairy, no-run panty hose, and Herbert Rothman. But the girl was so clearly distraught that she simply said, “If we’re going to be a team, help me think of a way to stop this fighting! This party’s being televised, for God’s sake.” Because it was getting worse. One of the principal reporter combatants had managed to step on Carolyne Roehm’s foot. She had screamed in pain, and already her diminutive husband, Henry, was shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, preparing to join the fray. Now there was another crash, as one of the round pink-draped tables was overturned, sending crockery, glassware, hurricane lamps, a pair of Chelseaware porcelain birds, and one of Renny’s floral centerpieces shattering across the flagstones.

  “Oh, please!” Alex cried, stooping to pick up a white dove’s broken wing. “Please stop all this!”

  But all at once help, as if by divine intervention, came from an unexpected direction.

  The guests who were seated on the north-facing arm of the L-shaped terrace were largely unaware of the free-for-all that was developing around the corner of the building, on the east-facing arm, and around the gazebo bar. Beyond wondering why the music had become suddenly so loud and spirited, these guests had found another diversion. Just before the fireworks began, a small pleasure boat had appeared on the river, moving briskly downstream. It was a snappy little cruiser, and as it zipped along, slapping the waves with its fiberglass hull, it sent up twin white feathers of spume, and left a wide trail of foam in its wake. As the little boat approached the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, the fireworks started, and the boat paused to watch the display from the barge. Then, apparently sensing that there was a connection between the fireworks they had just seen and the music and noise from the terrace high above Gracie Square, the skipper of the boat had steered his (or her—it was never clear who was at the wheel) craft closer to the Manhattan side of the river, for a better look at the party.

  One didn’t often see pleasure speedboats on the East River; in fact, they were discouraged, and often challenged, though not banned, by the Coast Guard, since they tended to interfere with the commercial barge traffic on the river. So the appearance of the little speedboat was an unusual, and cheering, sight. It seemed to be all about innocence and love and youth and fun and irresponsibility, and to the celebrated guests on Alex’s terrace it was a reminder of the days when they, too, had been young and foolish, and as it approached the towers of 10 Gracie Square, one of Alex’s guests at the parapet identified it as a Regal Runabout, about eighteen feet long, and someone else later claimed to have made out the red-white-and-blue burgee of the American Yacht Club in Rye, which meant it was about twenty-five nautical miles from home, though it was difficult to make out much else in the dark, and from twenty floors above. As the little boat slapped and spanked its way through the water below, its passengers—who appeared to be three, or possibly four, young people because, later, accounts would differ—seemed to be lifting toasts with cans of beer to the people leaning on the parapet, and the people at the parapet waved back and returned the toasts with their champagne glasses.

  But then, all at once, something was terribly wrong. The small boat suddenly listed sharply to one side, then instantly to the other. Its passengers gripped their seats and handrails, and their cries could be heard twenty floors above, as the skipper struggled with the wheel to bring his craft under control. Now the prow of the runabout made a violent swing to the right, and the boat was spinning, spinning in circles, faster and faster circles, as though caught in a maelstrom. There were screams from the terrace now, and cries of “Oh, my God! Somebody help them! They’re sinking! Call nine-one-one! Call the Coast Guard!” And all were straining over the parapet, pointing toward the dark river below, while the television crew, aware of some new calamity, rushed to the scene.

  What they saw was the speedboat being literally sucked into the river. The surface of the river seemed to swell up, then open into whirling eddy, with the small boat spinning at the center of a deepening hole. The whirling hole in the water opened wider and deeper and blacker, as the helpless boat was drawn into it like a toy into a huge and churning drain, and disappeared from sight. As quickly as it began, it was over. The river seemed to swell again, then flatten, and its surface was the same as before.

  “I got it!” the TV cameraman cried triumphantly. “Got it all!”

  “Oh, my God, help them!” someone said. “Help them!”

  “Call nine-one-one!”

  “No, call the Coast Guard!”

  “Call the police!”

  “How do you call the Coast Guard?”

  “For God’s sake, just call the police! Somebody—just call the police.…”

  Later that night, on the eleven o’clock news, Mel Jorgenson would describe the accident. It became the lead story on all the New York stations.

  “A rare, but by no means unheard-of, freak of nature appears to have claimed the lives of three, or possibly four, young boaters in a small pleasure craft on New York’s East River earlier this evening. The phenomenon, known as a tidal bore, is caused by a sudden confluence of tides from opposite directions, particularly at phases of a full moon, which we have in New York tonight. It is particularly apt to occur in narrow stretches of water, such as that at the foot of East Eighty-fourth Street in Manhattan, where tonight’s tragedy occurred. Tidal bores, or whirlpools, can be extremely hazardous to shipping, and especially hazardous to small craft. Tidal bores have been observed in the East River before, but this is the first known to have claimed human lives.…

  “The East River, of course, is not a river at all, but a tidal estuary connecting Long Island Sound and Upper New York Bay.…

  “No survivors of tonight’s tragedy have been reported, nor have bodies been recovered, nor are the identities, or exact number, of the victims known.…

  “I might add that tonight’s accident occurred in a section of the river known, since Colonial times, as Hell Gate—well named, it would seem, in light of tonight’s tragedy.…”

  At that point in the telecast, Mel Jorgenson pressed his thumb and forefinger across the bridge of his nose and said, “As it happens, I was a guest at a gathering this evening at an apartment just above the site where the tragedy occurred. I left the building not long before it happened. Conceivably, I could have been an eyewitness to it.…”

  Two weeks later, two bodies of teenage brothers would be recovered from the sea just off the Battery. No other bodies were ever found. The Regal Runabout was never recovered.

  But meanwhile, in the aftermath of what they had just seen, Alex’s guests were crowded along the length of the parapet, frozen in silent horror now, staring down into the dark water, hoping—even praying, perhaps—for the sight of bodies popping to the surface, while the television cameras continued to roll in order to capture such an occurrence. But there was nothing to record, and the river remained as smooth as glass. From the drive below, police sirens were screaming now, and presently police divers could be seen lowering themselves into the water.

  As two hundred and fifty people pressed against the parapet, stra
ining for a better look at what was happening twenty floors beneath them, somehow someone (or, more probably, it was the pressure of several bodies) managed to push against one of the stone planter boxes filled with azaleas, and to dislodge it from its pedestal base. The stone box tilted, tipped, and began to fall, spinning almost lazily downward with its cargo of pink and white flowering shrubbery, toward the river. Now there were more screams, and several people turned away and covered their faces with a long collective groan, for it seemed almost certain that the plunging planter would crash upon one of the bobbing heads of the wet-suited frogmen in the river, and the evening’s disaster would be complete. But, miraculously, this did not happen. The masked heads of the frogmen surfaced as the stone planter plummeted into the water harmlessly. Then their heads disappeared again to investigate this new occurrence.

  Otto Forsthoefel, the former detective, seemed to have placed himself in charge of crowd control as well as in charge of Joel Rothman’s safety, and as the throng of guests pushed and elbowed their way for a better view of what was happening in the river, Otto was barking commands. “Stand back! There’s nothing to see! Stand back! Don’t shove! Disperse! Go back to your tables! Let the police officers do their work! Stand back …!”

  Now Joel found himself looking down into the tearful face of the young Englishwoman. “Help me,” she sobbed. “Get me out of here. This is a nightmare. I can’t find your grandfather. Please take me home. Now.”

  “How?” he said miserably, rolling his eyes in Otto’s direction. “He’s in charge of me.”

  Quickly, she turned and seized the lapels of Otto’s brown jacket. “Conspiracy,” Joel heard her saying. “It’s a plot—to draw our attention away from what’s going on. There’s a man on the roof.”

  “Where?”

  “Up there—on the roof.” She pointed. “Look—he saw us! He just ducked behind that ledge. He had a gun.”

  Immediately Otto pulled his service revolver from his shoulder holster. “Don’t anybody move!” he roared, brandishing the pistol in the air. “Stay right where you are. If anybody moves, you’re all under arrest,” and, waving the gun in front of him, he charged through the crowd toward the French doors that led into the apartment, and the stairs that led to the roof, and now—with an armed gunman in their midst—if anything resembling mass hysteria could be said to exist, it existed on Alex Rothman’s terrace, with black-tied men throwing their hands in the air, and shrieking women clutching at their jewelry.

  “Now, we run,” the Englishwoman said to Joel.

  “Run?”

  She grabbed his hand. “Run! Through the kitchen—the service elevator. Run! You lead the way.”

  Alex Rothman had seated herself in a little gold chair in the farthest corner of the terrace she could find, which was where Lenny Liebling discovered her, an almost dreamy expression on her face. “Could anything else go wrong?” she asked him quietly. “Could anything else possibly go wrong with my party? Can you think of just one little thing, darlin’?”

  “Yes,” he said, and nodded toward the French doors, through which four uniformed New York policemen had just emerged.

  Alex began to laugh. Soon she was laughing so hard it seemed she might never stop. She laughed so hard that hiccups came and, after hiccups, finally tears. “Dear old Lenny,” was all she managed to say, at first, and then, savagely, “I’m going to kill him!”

  6

  The last limousine had pulled away from the entrance to 10 Gracie Square, and Alex Rothman and Lenny Liebling were alone in her book-lined library, where her Bouché portrait gazed down from above the fireplace, and where Alex was now furiously pacing up and down the room, her arms clasped around her shoulders, a slim, white, moving exclamation-point of a woman. “Did you-know this was going to happen, Lenny?” she said. “Tell me the truth.”

  He raised his right hand. “I had no idea,” he said. “I had no idea that this woman was involved. Of course, since this last stroke of Ho’s, I’ve been worried that something like this might happen. And I did try to warn you.”

  “I’m going to speak to Ho. He won’t allow this. Ho and I may have had our ups and downs in the past, but he’s always respected me.”

  “My dear Alex,” he said with a sigh, “I hate to speak of the great Ho Rothman in the past tense, but that is what we’re going to have to do. Ho Rothman used to respect you. He’s beyond respecting anyone now. We must accept the fact that the Ho era has ended. Tonight we saw the dawning of the era of the son. The son also rises.”

  “What about Aunt Lily? She’s an officer in the corporation. Herbert isn’t.”

  “I agree,” Lenny said carefully, “that this is a very good time for all of us to be especially nice to Aunt Lily. Just this afternoon, in fact, I sent a lovely flower arrangement over to her from Renny’s. But the only trouble is—”

  “She wouldn’t let that little snake son of hers take over the company. She knows what a snake he is.”

  “But don’t forget that Herbert is her snake. She is a woman, Alex, and she is his mother. If forced to choose between what you want and what he wants, she might choose—”

  “What the little snake wants.”

  “Lily has always been a weak link in the chain. Often useful, but weak.”

  “She can be tough as nails when she wants to be!”

  “Could be. Could be. We must use the past tense again. She could be tough as nails when Ho was behind her. But Aunt Lily is not another Ho. There will never be another Ho.”

  “What about—?” But she broke the question off, biting her lip. She had been about to ask: What about you, Lenny? You’ve always seemed to have some strange influence over the Rothmans, all the Rothmans, including Herbert. But she was not about to ask any favors of Lenny Liebling. She knew this world, and this town, too well. One did not ask favors of anyone to whom one couldn’t offer favors in return. This was a world in which no one could be trusted, not even Lenny with his secrets, whatever they were.

  “You were about to say, What about me? Let me just say that, from the very beginning, I have planned very carefully for my future. I asked you earlier this evening if you had any insurance. From the very outset of my association with the family, I recognized the need for insurance—against a very painful affliction known as Rothmanitis. Another word for Rothmanitis is abuse of power. The Rothmans have become rich through the abuse of power, at which they are world-class experts. But I have taken out insurance, over the years, to be sure they could never use their power to abuse dear old Lenny.”

  “Blackmail, you mean.”

  He sighed again. “Blackmail is such an ugly word,” he said. “Blackmail, I believe, is against the law. I prefer the word leverage. I have developed leverage with the Rothmans. Leverage is what one uses to move an object from here to there. With a large enough lever, one could move the world. Of course my levers are very small, though they have been effective enough to suit my simple needs. Do you have any special leverage with the family?”

  “Not the sort you’re talking about.”

  “And of course, years ago, you may remember, I gave you a piece of advice about dealing with Herbert Rothman. It was advice you chose to ignore. I hate to say I told you so, my dear, but I did.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t go that route.”

  He sighed once more, and sat back in the big leather chair and stared at the ceiling. “And so here we are,” he said. And then, “Would you like me to use my leverage in your behalf?” he asked. “I’m not promising it would work, but I could try. And if you want me to try it, all you need to do is ask.”

  Her eyes flashed. “No,” she said. “And do you know why? Because I don’t trust you, Lenny. I never have. I love you, but I don’t trust you. You’re one of my dearest friends, but you’re devious and conniving. Lenny is only interested in what Lenny wants.”

  “And Alex is only interested in what Alex wants—or do I mistake the subject of this conversation? My dear, I see no real differ
ence between the two of us. Each of us wants what each of us wants.”

  “But I have a better way to get it.”

  “Oh?” he said, still gazing absently at the ceiling. “And what is that, pray?”

  “I’m going to sue the little bastard. He’s not going to get away with this. I happen to have a contract with Rothman Publications, which he happens to have signed, and which happens to run for two more years. That contract states that I am to be editor-in-chief of Mode. It says nothing about being co-editor-in-chief. He’s not going to get away with this.”

  “Oh, Alex, Alex,” he said wearily. “That’s not the way to deal with Herbert. He has fifty lawyers working with him right now on the IRS case. They’re not going to tolerate another lawsuit over your silly little contract. They’ll wipe the floor with you.”

  “A contract is a contract!”

  “They’ll find a paper clip in your purse, and claim you stole it from the company supply room. He’ll fire you for pilferage. No, no, Alex, that is not the way. No, as I see it, there are two things you can do.”

  “What? What are they?”

  “One, you can resign. He’s certainly given you reason enough tonight. If you resigned tomorrow, everybody in the business would understand. In fact, I rather imagine that’s what he’s hoping you’ll do—resign.”

  “And forfeit the balance of my contract?”

  “Oh, the hell with your contract, my darling child. Surely you don’t need the money. Surely you’re quite rich. And with your reputation, there isn’t a magazine in town—a publisher in town—a designer in town—a company or ad agency in town—that wouldn’t snap you up in a minute, at twice what he pays you. Or television. Any one of the networks would kill to have you. Or you could do what Vreeland did, and become a museum director. There isn’t a glamour industry in this town that wouldn’t want the glamorous Alex Rothman in some glamorous position. If you resign, you’ll hardly be out on the street. Remember who you are, Alex. You are Alex Rothman—a high priestess of fashion. A legend. Resign, and your phone will be ringing off the wall with offers.”