The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Joel, don’t you talk to me like that!” she cried.

  But her only answer was the sound of his angry footsteps marching down the hall, and the slamming of his bedroom door.

  The lovely eastern banks of the Hudson River were permanently scarred in the nineteenth century by the tracks of the Harlem Division of William H. Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad. It was he who said, “The public be damned!” and the ribbons of ugly steel along the river’s edge were proof that he meant what he was saying.

  However, most owners of riverfront property here were given what were called riparian rights—rights of access to the river. At what was to become “Rothmere,” Moe Markarian had built a boathouse on the river, and access to it was through a tunnel under Mr. Vanderbilt’s railroad tracks. It had been Moe Markarian’s plan, in the early 1920s, to buy an oceangoing yacht that would transport him between Tarrytown and his office in the city. Ho Rothman had toyed with the idea of a yacht, too. But his own vivid memories of that rough crossing of the Atlantic in the early 1900s deterred him. Also, he remembered only too well what had happened to the Titanic. The clincher was the fact that Ho had never learned to swim. Though, in later years, Ho Rothman flew fearlessly all over the world in his company’s 727, he was always a nervous ocean traveler. And so, over the years, the boathouse at “Rothmere” remained empty and, for the most part, unused.

  But the elegant boathouse at “Rothmere” was to become the scene of two separate, but related, family tragedies.

  Three

  HIGH PRIESTESS

  22

  THE FASHION SCENE

  by

  Mona

  Well, kiddies, just as Mother Mona promised, here it is—my first exclusive interview with Fiona Fenton, the glamorous young Brit who’s been taking N’Yawk by storm and who’ll soon be sharing the tippy-top of Mode’s masthead with longtime fashion vet, Alexandra Rothman, and who’ll soon be a fashion High Priestess herself, I betcha.

  Fiona—or Lady Fiona to her chums back in Merrie Olde Englande—is the daughter of Viscount Hesketh, England’s handsomest and richest peer, and she’s a petite Size Six, with dark hair and eyes to die over. She received Mother Mona graciously in her glamorous East Side digs, wearing Chanel’s hot pink lounging pajamas and a Nehru-type top, the height of chic. In person, she’s a model of youthful pep and zip, something that Mode could use right now, and she outlined her unique fashion philosophy. “To me, fashion is basically appropriateness,” she told Mother avidly. “I mean, one wouldn’t go to a beach party in a floor-length sheath and three-inch spike heels, would one? Nor would one go to the Royal Garden Party in a T-shirt and jeans.” To which Mother avidly agreed.

  So—move over, Alex! The British are coming, with lotsa youthful new ideas, just what publisher Herb Rothman is looking for! And how does Ageless Alex feel about sharing her crow’s nest at the top of the mast with a much younger Brit? That’s the burning question everybody’s been asking Mother. And I’ll tell y’all soon’s I finds out, kiddies. Says Fabulous Fiona, “I do hope she and I can work things out together so we can share the responsibilities of running a big and important magazine. I know I’ll have a lot to learn from her. After all, Alex Rothman will always be the High Priestess of American Fashion.” Well, we’ll just hafta see about that, won’t we?

  And speaking of beach parties, here’s a few “grains of sand” for your mill. At a fab S’hampton bash Saturday nite, where so many veddy-veddy top names gathered to munch avidly on spit-roasted boar and goodies from a yummy clambake, and to have the thrill of watching a $35,000 sand castle created exclusively by Si Wells and Cliff Derr of Hampton Bays get washed out by the tide, including yours truly, something really fishy happened. To sport on the beach, lotsa the gals left their purses in the ladies’ loo of the hostess’s beach cabana. And while the guests dined & danced and sipped champagne, a cat burglar snuck in and emptied every last purse of cash, credit cards, etc., etc. Talk about a fishing expedition! Lotsa rich gals are feeling poorer today, I betcha.

  At Mortimer’s, Pussy McCutcheon and Molly Zumwalt were having lunch at one of the front tables. “Was every woman’s purse emptied?” Molly Zumwalt asked.

  “Every purse that was left in that room,” Pussy said. “We were all ripped off.”

  Lenny Liebling strolled by. He often dropped into Mortimer’s at lunchtime—rarely to eat, but to see who was there, visit the tables, and catch up on the latest news and gossip. A friendly waiter had just tucked a couple of luncheon receipts in Lenny’s jacket pocket, which he would use later for his expense account. “Thank you, dear boy,” he murmured. He approached Molly and Pussy’s table, and was greeted effusively with air kisses.

  “I assume that was Maggie Van Zuylen’s party she was writing about,” he said. “It was the only important party in the Hamptons Saturday night.”

  “You are absolutely correct,” said Pussy McCutcheon with emphasis. “And every word of it is true.”

  “Who gave the item to Mona, I wonder?”

  “Well, actually, I did,” Pussy McCutcheon said. “I wasn’t going to, at first. But then I decided that the publicity might help to catch the thief.”

  “Poor Maggie,” Lenny murmured. “She must feel terribly, knowing that such a thing happened at her party.”

  “Maggie is absolutely furious. Maggie is absolutely ready to kill Mona! Mona mentioned her florist, and gave them a plug, but she didn’t even mention Maggie’s name!”

  “And what about you?” said Molly Zumwalt, with a wicked look from beneath her famous false eyelashes. “How are you going to get along with this new young editor, Lenny?”

  Lenny smiled a wan smile. “My dear, I am a survivor,” he said. “I survived the Holocaust, and I shall survive this.” He moved on, thinking: So much for these East Side Razor Blades.

  Just across town, at Le Bernardin where Alex had suggested that they meet for lunch, Alex and Rodney McCulloch were being escorted to their table. Before taking his seat, Rodney McCulloch pulled off his suit jacket, slung it over the back of his chair, and loosened his signed Countess Mara necktie. Then he sat down. A captain hurried toward them. “Sir,” he said, “we do request that gentlemen wear jackets in the dining room. And,” he added almost in a whisper, “that they keep their ties fully tied.”

  McCulloch gave the captain a Don’t-you-know-who-I-am? look, and Alex looked on with wry amusement.

  “Sorry, our dress code, sir,” the captain said, looking nervous.

  Slowly, Rodney McCulloch rose and put on his jacket again, and straightened his tie. Then he sat down again. “What kind of a place is this, anyway?” he muttered.

  “Four stars in the New York Times,” Alex murmured.

  Mr. McCulloch studied the menu. “Isn’t there anything on this menu but fish?” he asked.

  “We are exclusively a seafood restaurant, sir,” the captain replied politely. “May I suggest the carpaccio of fresh tuna to start?”

  Alex had heard and read a great deal about Rodney McCulloch, the brash young Canadian entrepreneur, recently down from Toronto and now fully prepared to take New York by storm. He turned out to be a brawny, thickset fellow, just forty-two years old, with salt-and-pepper hair that seemed to fly every whichway, twinkling blue eyes, and a smile that revealed teeth that were as every whichway as his hair. He had made his first fortune manufacturing babies’ pacifiers. Then he made another with a chain of tanning salons. Then he got into North Slope Oil, and got out just before the market dropped, and made a third killing. Now he was becoming a force in publishing. He had started, as Ho Rothman had two generations earlier, buying up small newspapers—at first in provincial Canada, and later in the United States. It was widely rumored that he was now looking for something in New York City. Looking at him now, Alex was quite sure that shucking his jacket had been a calculated challenge to this fashionable restaurant, and that, back in Toronto, he might have got away with it. She had to admit that she rather liked his style.
/>   This was the way Time magazine had described him in a recent Business story:

  Big-boned, bushy-haired and snaggle-toothed, the gravel-voiced Media Tycoon McCulloch, 42, exudes a blustery charm and an air of down-home machismo which, those who have had dealings with him assert, can be misleading. Among his employees, the “Billionaire Bumpkin,” as he is sometimes called, is known as the Father Confessor for his ability to involve himself with their problems, large or small.

  “He’s the most caring man I’ve ever known,” says one. “I find myself telling Rodney things I wouldn’t tell my parish priest.” Learning that the wife of a reporter on his Brownsville paper had given birth to a baby with a clubfoot, McCulloch personally flew to Texas with a team of New York specialists who performed the necessary corrective surgery. Finding a secretary in one of his offices in tears, and learning that the diamond had fallen out of the setting of her new engagement ring, McCulloch crawled about her office floor on his hands and knees for half an hour until he located the tiny stone in the pile of her carpet.

  At the same time, associates say, behind the good ole boy exterior lurks a tough-as-nails businessman who, in pursuit of a deal, will go after it with all the tact and finesse of a trained-to-kill pit bull terrier, straight for the jugular.…

  For instance, in 1988, when McCulloch learned that Lorena Teasdale, the widow of Des Moines Star Publisher J. C. “Bud” Teasdale, was planning to wed Beverly Hills Designer Marc Collins while, at the same time, the Star’s typesetters were threatening to strike for increased benefits, McCulloch shrewdly decided that the widow Teasdale might be more interested in her future life in the movie capital than in Iowa newspapering. McCulloch made the widow what media experts call a “shockingly low” offer for her paper. It was promptly accepted, whereupon McCulloch notified the typesetters that if there were further threats of a walkout, he would fire the lot of them and computerize the entire operation.

  Asked to comment on the Des Moines deal at the time, the Billionaire Bumpkin’s comment was his trademark rapid-fire “Ha-ha-ha!”

  The Rothmans might have been around publishing a lot longer, but Rodney McCulloch had already become someone to be reckoned with, and, before his most recent stroke at least, Ho Rothman had begun referring to Rodney McCulloch as “my enemy.”

  “Look, I know all about what that little shit Herb Rothman is trying to do to you,” he said after they had ordered, pronouncing “about” in the Canadian fashion—“aboat.” “Little shit’s trying to force you out, and slide his little Brit tootsie in to take your place. You gonna let the little son-of-a-bitch get away with that?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Little son-of-a-bitch needs to have his ears pinned back. Little son-of-a-bitch has a Napoleon complex, if you ask me. Him and his brother Arthur.”

  She was noticing two things about Rodney McCulloch. He was a man who believed in getting down to business right away, with no beating around the bush, and when he asked a question he seldom waited for an answer.

  “Both the little sons-of-bitches,” he went on. “I see those little sons-of-bitches having lunch together all the time at the Four Seasons, which is why I said you and I would have lunch any place but there. Little sons-of-bitches with their heads together, making their little plans, swapping their little secrets. They pretend not to notice me, of course, but I know they know I’m there. Know what they remind me of? Couple of little ferrets. Two little ferrets with their heads together. Ha-ha-ha. We used to shoot ferrets down by the lake when I was a kid growing up in the backcountry in Manitoba.” He raised his arms as though shouldering an imaginary shotgun, drew a bead on a passing waiter, and pulled an invisible trigger. “Ka-pow,” he said. “Ka-pow! Ever have ferret stew? Polecat stew? It’s even better than possum stew. It’s sure better than Carpathian tuna fish, or whatever the hell this is we’ve ordered,” and he laughed his big laugh, revealing that remarkably disorganized array of teeth, as his plate was set down before him.

  From now on, he was talking between forkfuls. “Couple of little ferrets,” he said. “Now listen to me. Their old man, old Ho Rothman, he may have been a bastard, and he may have been a crook. But at least he was a decent old bastard, and at least he was an honest crook. His ferret sons—that Herbert in particular—they’re mean bastards, and they’re crooked crooks, and believe me, there’s a difference between an honest crook and a crooked one. So when are you going to tell that ferret outfit to go to hell? I think you should tell the ferrets to fuck themselves and the horse they rode in on, and come to work for me.”

  “What would I do for you, Mr. McCulloch?”

  He swallowed a mouthful, and patted his mouth with a napkin. “Call me Rodney,” he said. “Everybody does. I always hated the name, but that’s what everybody calls me irregardless. Sounds like a sissy name—Rodney. I’d rather they called me Rod. Rod Serling. Rod McKuen, though I hear he’s a pansy. Hot Rod. But Rod never stuck, and Rodney did. But to get back to that ha-ha-ha ferret. I mean, after all you’ve done for that magazine—Herb Rothman should be down on his knees, kissing the ground you walk on. Kissing your ass, not handing you shit. Five million circulation! That magazine would be nowhere if it hadn’t been for you, everybody knows that. Knows all that. And that was a great ad—the whale spouting off—‘Thar she blows!’ I loved it. To hell with what the little ferret says. I also loved your June cover.”

  “Tell me something, Rodney,” she said, taking a bite of tuna. “How did you know that Herb and I had a—slight disagreement—over the June cover and the whale ad?”

  He hesitated. Then he said, “Ha-ha-ha. You got an office boy? Let’s just say you got an office boy, and I’ve got an office boy. The office boys in this town all talk to the other office boys. This is a small town. Let’s just say that. Ha-ha-ha. You ever heard of the Bay Street boys?”

  “No, I can’t say I—”

  “The Bay Street boys’re in Toronto, they’re a kind of club. Hell, they are a club—it’s called the Bay Street Club. They’re the hoity-toity, elite types that call themselves the Canadian Establishment, the big bankers, and the Eatons that own the stores, and all those other elite types. They snoot me, and they snoot my wife, Maudie. They’ve never asked me to join the Bay Street Club, and you know why? You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

  “No, but my husband was.”

  “Well, I’m an Irish Catholic, and so is Maudie, and in Canada an Irish Catholic is worse than being a Frenchy, and being a Frenchy is considered pretty bad. Well, I’m out to show the Bay Street boys a thing or two. I’m going to show those Bay Street boys that they snooted the wrong Irish Catholics when they snooted Rodney and Maudie McCulloch. I’ll show ’em before I’m through. I’m telling you all this because you need to know where I’m coming from, if we’re going to be partners in this thing. What the hell is that?” he said, looking down at the new plate that had just been set in front of him.

  “Your grilled sea bass, sir,” the waiter said.

  “Well,” he said, staring balefully at the plate, “you got to die of one thing or another.” He looked up at Alex. “Say,” he said, “you’re even better looking in the flesh than you are in pictures. Is that a compliment to a woman, or does that mean you take lousy pictures? Hell, I don’t know, but I meant it as a compliment, anyway. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to put the make on you. I’m a happily married man. Maudie and I have been happily married for eighteen years. Seven little kiddies. I guess you could say that I’m thoroughly domesticated at this particular point in time. Ha-ha-ha. But to get back to what we were talking about. How much of that little son-of-a-bitch ferret’s shit are you going to take, anyway? You’re not going to take that kind of shit laying down, are you?”

  “Now wait a minute,” she said. “Back up a bit. You mentioned partners. Partners in what?”

  “You’re supposed to be a tough broad,” he said. “Lucy Withers tells me you’re a tough broad.”

  She laughed. “Lucille is an old friend,
” she said.

  “Now there’s another tough broad,” he said. “Lucy. She has the top modeling agency in Kansas City, but what kind of shit is that? If she’d of been just a little tougher, and moved her act to L.A. or the Big Apple, she’d have the top modeling agency in the country. But she wasn’t quite tough enough to make the big move. You were. She also tells me you’re a smart broad. You’ve also got credibility. You see, I know all about you—your background, Paradise, Missouri, and all that. I guess you’d hafta say that I’ve done my homework on you. Ha-ha-ha.”

  “Let’s just say that I’m a little girl from the Missouri Corn Belt, without much in the way of formal education, and that everything I know about this business I’ve taught myself.”

  “That’s what gives you your credibility. Now, what would you do if you were given all the money in the world to start your own magazine? I’m talking a whole new magazine. What would you do with it?”

  She laughed again. “All the money in the world?”

  He put down his fork. “That’s what I’m offering you,” he said. He held up his hand. “Don’t interrupt, let me finish. I’ve been watching you, and I’ve watched what you’ve done with that magazine of yours. But to do what you’ve done you’ve had to fight the ferrets every inch of the way. What would you do in a ferretless world? Starting from scratch, with all the money in the world behind you. You’d create a magazine that would be even better than Mode, even more successful than Mode, wouldn’t you? That’s what I’m betting on. And I’ve got the money to put where my mouth is.”

  “Well,” she said carefully, “that’s quite an offer, Rodney.”

  “You bet it is. Now let’s talk money. How much money would it take to start up a new magazine? To start it right, the way you’d like to do it, to your personal specifications. I’m talking a magazine that would bury Mode, circulation-wise and ad revenue–wise—a magazine that would send Mode limping off into the sunset, and that ferret Herb Rothman with it. What do you think? Fifty million? A hundred million? Hell, you tell me. I don’t give a damn. I’ve got the dough.”