The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Couple of midgets, compared with the son.”

  “Yes. Funny, isn’t it? But I’ve noticed how the children of the first really rich generation in a family seem to shoot up in height. Better nutrition, I suppose, is what does it.”

  Adam turned back to the photograph of Alex curtseying before President Georges Pompidou. “What was her maiden name, d’you know?”

  “Lane. Alexandra Lane.”

  “From a little midwestern town?”

  “A little town called Paradise, Missouri, in’ fact. Can you imagine?”

  “She’s come a long way, hasn’t she? Meeting the king of France.”

  “The president of France,” Lenny corrected.

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “She’s the girl I used to know. Wears her hair a little shorter now. But, if anything, she’s even prettier than when I knew her.”

  Lenny looked up, startled. “You knew Alex Rothman?”

  He nodded. “Back in Paradise.”

  “Well, if you’re an old friend, why don’t I get the two of you together?”

  “Friend doesn’t exactly describe it,” Adam said.

  “It would be easy enough to do. She and Steven don’t come to our Sunday night salons because they spend their weekends up in Tarrytown. But I could ask them over for a drink on a weekday night, and you and she could have a Paradise reunion.”

  Adam laughed. “Nah, I don’t think she’d be too happy to see me now. It would bring back too many unhappy memories.”

  “Oh?” Lenny said, all at once intensely interested. “What sort of unhappy memories, pray?”

  “I don’t want to get into any of that,” Adam said. “Besides, she probably wouldn’t even recognize me now—with my new black hair, my new nose, my new teeth, and my new, veddy fahncy speaking voice. No, don’t tell her you know me, Lenny—that would be bad.”

  There was a twinkle in Lenny’s eye. “When you first came to us, you said your name was Johnny Smith,” he said. “I’ve heard Alex speak of a boy back in Paradise whose name was Dale Smith. I gather Dale Smith was something of the town bully. Alex hated him. Was that who you were, Adam?” He winked at him. “Were you the town bully, Adam? I’ll bet you were. Peck’s bad boy!”

  “No, I don’t know no Dale Smith.”

  “You don’t know any Dale Smith,” Lenny corrected.

  “Right, Henry Higgins,” Adam said, and grinned.

  It was their little joke.

  “Did you know Alex before or after you went to prison?” Charlie Boxer asked him a few days later.

  “Before.”

  “You know, Adam, you’ve never told us what you went to prison for. Would it be rude to ask?”

  “They tried to charge me with murder two, but they couldn’t make it stick. It was reduced to involuntary manslaughter.”

  “You mean to say you killed a man?” Charlie said. “How exciting. How did it happen?”

  Adam grinned a little sheepishly. “Barroom fight,” he said. “A guy said something to me I didn’t like. I slugged him. He cracked his skull on the bar rail. I didn’t mean to kill him, but what the guy said really made me mad.”

  “Oh? What did he say?”

  “I used to have a nickname—Skipper. This guy said that the reason why I was called Skipper was because I liked to skip around from one sex to the other—that I liked to have sex with both boys and girls. That really made me mad.”

  “Oh, my. Yes indeed, I can see how it would have.”

  “Anyway, that was in the old days. I’m a whole new person now, thanks to the two of you.”

  Lenny strolled into the room, a copy of Casting Notes in his hand. “There’s an audition for the second male lead in a new Broadway musical tomorrow, Adam,” he said. “I think you should get yourself over to it.”

  “Only the second lead? Not the lead?”

  “Second lead is a very important part.”

  “I don’t feel much like doing a musical,” Adam said.

  “Really, Adam,” Lenny said with more than a touch of annoyance in his voice. “I do think you should apply yourself a little harder in terms of looking for work. The parts aren’t going to come looking for you, you know. You’ve got to get out there and look for them.”

  Adam stood up and stretched. “Well, maybe I’ll wander over there tomorrow,” he said. “See what kind of a part it is.”

  Alex was lying beside the pool at “Rothmere,” and Lucille Withers lay in the lounge chair next to her. Alex was wearing a red bikini, and the tall Lucille was wearing an old-fashioned, full-skirted suit. Lucille had arrived for one of her occasional, unannounced visits to New York, and Alex had persuaded her to come up to Tarrytown for the weekend. Lucille had agreed to come only after the inexpensive hotel where she was staying had promised not to charge her for the two nights she would not be using the room. Steven was on the tennis court, playing with his father.

  “Yes, I can see he’s made you very happy, Lexy,” Lucille was saying as they watched the two men.

  “Oh, yes,” Alex said.

  Lucille’s eyes wandered across the pool, past the tennis court, to the gardens, and the great châteaulike house on the rise above them. “Well, it’s certainly a far cry from Kansas City, isn’t it?” she said. “A far cry …”

  August, who was the family’s majordomo in those days, appeared in his white mess jacket at the moon gate that led out to the pool area. “There’s a telephone call for you, Mrs. Rothman,” August said. “The gentleman won’t give his name, but he says to tell you that he’s an old friend from Paradise.”

  Alex frowned. “All right. I’ll take it, August.”

  “Would you like me to bring the telephone down here, Mrs. Rothman?”

  “No thanks. I’ll take it in the house.” She rose, knotted a white beach towel around her waist, and started up the garden walkway toward the house, with August following a few steps behind her.

  Across from the living room at “Rothmere” was a small room called the telephone room. It was, as its name implied, a room designed just for placing and receiving telephone calls. It was furnished as a tiny, elegant office, with a loveseat, and a small, leather-topped table upon which reposed a pad of pink note paper, a slim pencil for doodling or taking notes, and a black telephone of the old-fashioned jonquil shape. The telephone room had a door that could be closed for privacy. Alex lifted the receiver. “Hello?” she said.

  “Well, they finally put me through to you,” a man’s voice said.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Skipper Purdy,” he said.

  When she returned to the pool several minutes later, Lulu Withers looked up at her questioningly. “My goodness,” she said. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “Just spoke to one,” she said. She unknotted her towel, spread it out on the lounge chair again, and lay down, facing the sun. Her eyes drifted off in the direction of the tennis game. “It was my old friend Annie Merritt,” she said. “She just happened to be passing through.”

  Lulu’s look remained questioning. Hadn’t she just heard August say, The gentleman won’t give his name?

  But she said nothing.

  34

  At HoBo’s luncheonette on West 44th Street, Lenny Liebling sat at the counter eating a tuna salad while having a small disagreement with Mr. Howard Bogardus, the eatery’s proprietor, who, in turn, was trying to handle the orders from his lunchtime customers, barking the orders into a small microphone that was connected to the kitchen in the back.

  “Scramble two. Side o’ down.”

  “Pastrami rye. Extra mustard.”

  “Fry two, over easy.”

  “But you see, my good fellow,” Lenny was saying, “we agreed that your invoice for last month’s conference room lunches would be for twenty cheeseburgers, seventeen tuna melts, twenty-eight roast beefs, ten grilled cheese, and sixty turkey clubs. At eight ninety-five, the turkey club is your most expensive sandwich. But you have only billed for six turkey clubs
. There’s quite a difference between six and sixty. And the difference to me would amount to—”

  “Rare cow. Side of French.… Sorry, Mr. Liebling, but that’s what my records show.”

  “Four hundred and eighty-three dollars and thirty cents.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Liebling.… Egg salad on white down. Hold the mayo.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to prepare a new invoice, Mr. Bogardus,” Lenny said.

  “Fry two, straight up. Side of down … medium cow, side of rings …”

  “Yours is not the only coffee shop in town, Mr. Bogardus,” Lenny reminded him.

  “Rare cheese … pig ’n cheddar rye … stretch two … two blacks, two regular …”

  “Did you hear what I said, Mr. Bogardus?”

  “Look, whyntcha come back when I’m not so busy?” Mr. Bogardus said. “Maybe we can work something out.… Pig ’n Swiss on whole down …”

  A woman seated herself on the stool next to Lenny, and suddenly the air around him was heavy with gardenia scent. He turned, and there she was.

  “Why, Fiona, what a strange place for us to meet,” he said.

  “It’s the nearest coffee shop to your office,” she said. “I rather fancied you might come here for lunch.”

  “In fact, I usually don’t. I usually have a hamburger sent over from ‘Twenty-One.’ But today I had some personal business to attend to.”

  “Then let’s say I’m prescient,” she said, and there was something sneering in the way she said prescient.

  “What’ll ya have, lady,” Mr. Bogardus said.

  “Just coffee, please.”

  “Five dollar minimum, twelve to two.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Black or regular?”

  “Black, please.”

  “Draw one black!”

  “Herbert tells me you’re causing us some—difficulties,” she said.

  “Really? I wonder what Herbert means by that?”

  “About a certain letter.”

  “A letter? What letter, I wonder?”

  “A letter Alex wrote years ago. To a friend of yours.”

  “Well, Alex and I share a number of friends, and I’m sure Alex has written many letters in her lifetime, but I have no idea which letter, or which friend, you might be talking about.”

  “This friend is dead.”

  “Well, I’m reaching the age when many of my friends are dying,” he said. “Alas, we are all mortal.”

  “I could cause some trouble for you,” she said.

  “Really? How?”

  “Joel Rothman and I have become very close.”

  “Really? I was not aware of that.”

  “Oh, yes. Joel’s mother has been so—preoccupied—these days that she hasn’t had much time for him. And Joel’s told me things—things that he would only tell a mother.”

  “What sort of things, pray?”

  “That you have made sexual advances to him.”

  “But that is patently untrue,” he said, eating his salad.

  “But Herbert is very susceptible to things I tell him,” she said. “And if I were to tell him that—that you have made sexual advances to his grandson, the last male Rothman heir—that wouldn’t make Herbert very happy, would it? It could mean the end of your long, free ride with the Rothmans, couldn’t it? You see, Herbert is quite madly in love with me.”

  “Oh, I’m quite aware of that,” Lenny said. “That’s been apparent ever since you appeared on the scene—from out of nowhere. It’s quite apparent that you have Herbert Rothman in the palm of your hand.”

  “Herbert will do anything for me. He will believe anything I say. And if I were to tell him about you and Joel—on top of what he already knows about you and Joel’s father—well, I think that would effectively end the career of Lenny Liebling, wouldn’t it?”

  “It might. But it wouldn’t get him his precious letter, either, would it? Really, Fiona, you disappoint me. I’d expected you to come up with a more original threat than that.”

  Fiona glared angrily down at her untouched cup of coffee, and Lenny took another forkful of his tuna salad.

  “Now let’s talk about you for a moment,” he said. “You say your father is the Earl of Hesketh. The one who styles himself Viscount Hesketh.”

  “That is correct,” she said.

  “Then your brother would have been Lord Moyne.”

  “Correct. My brother Alistair, yes.”

  “Alistair? I understood that Lord Moyne’s given name was Percy.”

  “Percy, yes. But we’ve always called him Alistair. He hates his real name. He’ll simply fly into an absolute rage if you call him Percy.”

  “Very curious,” Lenny said, balancing his fork between his thumb and forefinger. “DeBrett lists Viscount Hesketh as having had only one child, a son named Percy Edward George, Lord Moyne. Deceased several years ago. It’s hard to imagine him flying into rages now. DeBrett makes no mention of a daughter, or of any other issue, for that matter.”

  “I had myself taken out of DeBrett. I refuse to be listed there. It’s just a snob thing, you know.”

  “Really?” Lenny said. “I didn’t know that one could have oneself taken out of DeBrett, which is supposed to be the official and complete compilation of the British peerage.”

  “Well, one can, and I did,” she said.

  “And can one also have oneself taken out of Burke’s Peerage—where, incidentally, I can’t find you either?”

  “Absolutely. If you know the right people, it’s easy. You won’t find me in the Almanach da Gotha, either. I refuse to have my name appear in any of those snobby hereditary listings.”

  “Interesting,” Lenny said. “I didn’t realize anything like that was possible.” Toying with what remained of his salad, he changed the subject. “Your shop in Sloane Street. Where was it exactly?”

  She hesitated just briefly, but noticeably. “Number forty-three,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. “That would be just down the street from Harvey Nichols.”

  “Across the road,” she said.

  “And it was called?”

  “My shop was called Fiona. What else?”

  “And never listed in the telephone directory?”

  “Never!”

  “Pity I never noticed it. I’ve been going to London twice a year for twenty years, and I thought I knew Sloane Street like the back of my hand. But I never noticed a shop called Fiona.”

  “There was no sign in front,” she said. “It was that exclusive. You had to ring the bell for entry, and then take the lift to the first floor. I never advertised. My clients were too important. I was by appointment only.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” he said, and once more changed the subject. “As a Londoner,” he said, “I’m sure you know my old friend Nigel Dempster, the society columnist.”

  “Oh, dear me, yes. Everyone knows Nigel.”

  “Curious,” he said. “I spoke to Nigel the other day, and he claims not to know you.”

  Her dark eyes flashed. “That,” she said, “is for two reasons. Nigel is cross with me for refusing to share gossip with him about the Royal Family for his silly column. Nigel is spiteful. He’s also cross with me for defecting from England, and coming to America. A lot of Brits are cross with me for that. Fergie is cross with me for that, too.”

  “Ah,” Lenny said. “So that explains it. As you know, Nigel and Fergie are very thick. That would explain why Fergie claims she doesn’t know you, either.”

  “Exactly,” Fiona snapped. “Fergie is also cross with me because I told her she simply had to lose weight. I refused to fit her unless she lost at least a stone, and so she just flounced out of my shop. Typical Fergie. Typical Nigel, too. Typical Brit, if you ask me. Such snobs about Americans, whom I happen to admire.”

  “I don’t suppose Nigel would have known you under another surname. After all, in England, the name Fiona is almost as common as Doris.”

  “Certainly not
.”

  “Not as Fiona Stanfill?”

  “What? What did you just—?”

  “Fiona Stanfill.”

  “How did you—?”

  He put down his fork. “At Alex’s party the other night, on her terrace, after Herbert made his little speech and introduced you. You and Herbert were so busy dealing with the press and television cameras, and answering all their ridiculous questions. I happened to notice that you’d left your handbag by your place at the table. Quite a handsome bag, by the way—a Chanel, black alligator, with a long gold shoulder chain. I took the opportunity to open it, and found your passport. You see, you’re not the only person who’s clever at exploring the contents of women’s handbags. Alex has a detective checking on your background. His name is Mark Rinsky. Mark’s representatives in England haven’t been able to come up with much in the way of background on Fiona Fenton. But they’ve been barking up the wrong tree. If they were looking into the background of Fiona Stanfill, they’d discover quite a little, wouldn’t they? Yes, quite a little. I suppose one could tip them off. Yes, I can see why you’re in such a hurry to get rid of Alex.” He looked at his gold watch. “But I must get back to the office. Alex has a story meeting.” He stood up, and dropped his paper napkin in his plate. “Just don’t mess with Lenny, Miss Stanfill,” he said. “Don’t mess with dear old Lenny.”

  He walked out of the lunchroom and left her sitting at the counter in front of her untouched cup of cold, five-dollar coffee.

  He also left behind his unpaid check. That would be for Howard Bogardus to deal with.

  “I need to see you, Alex,” he said.

  With one hand she reached out and closed the door to the telephone room. “I have some money for you,” she said. “The money from your money belt. I put it in a savings bank. I never touched it. With interest over the years, it’s probably increased quite a bit. I’ll mail you the passbook, wherever you are.”

  “I’m in New York. But it’s not that. I don’t care about the money, Alex, but I need to see you.”

  “I eventually sold the yellow Corvette. There was a little problem over the title to it, but I sold it. I added that money to the savings account.”