The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Oh, wouldn’t I just? Test me, Adam. Just test me. You’ll see how fast I can throw you out. This apartment is leased to Charlie and me. Nowhere in our lease are we required to give you house room.”

  “Yeah, throw me out and have to admit to all your fancy friends that you were a miserable flop at turning me into something I never really wanted to be?”

  “That’s it, of course, isn’t it? You never really wanted to be anything but what you are—a drunken bum.”

  “Don’t call me no bum!”

  “But that’s what you are, sweetheart! And, on the contrary, our fancy friends, as you call them, would be very much relieved to see us throw you out. Most of them loathe you. You read what Mona Potter wrote about you in her column. If we threw you out, Adam, our friends would congratulate us for finally coming to our senses. They would throw a party for us to celebrate this blessed event. And when you go, where will you find yourself? Back on the street again as a piece of trade. And I lied a moment ago when I said you’ve never looked better. You’re beginning to look old, darling. You’re going to find it harder to turn those twenty-dollar tricks. At a rough guess right now, I’d say that most Johns wouldn’t be willing to pay you more than five.”

  Adam started to rise, and Lenny reached for the house phone, and rested a finger against the red panic button that would set off the alarm downstairs. “Are you going to strike me?” he said coolly. “If you do, I’ll have Peter the doorman up here so fast with the police that you won’t know what happened, and you’ll find yourself right back in jail on an attempted murder charge. With your record, it shouldn’t be hard to make that stick, and I should imagine your jail sentence would be somewhat longer than the last time.”

  Adam sank back in his chair. “I wasn’t going to hit you,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lenny.”

  “That’s more like it,” Lenny said. “A little remorse is called for here. A little remorse, and a little gratitude.”

  “Just give me one more chance.”

  “All right,” Lenny said. “One more chance. One last chance. And with this chance goes an ultimatum. We’re giving you exactly six months, Adam, and I think that’s very generous. Today is March twenty-fifth. That gives you until September twenty-fifth to find some work that will bring substantial money into this household. If nothing happens by that date, out you go. Is that quite clear, Adam?”

  “You used to say you loved me, Lenny.”

  Lenny sighed. “Oh, we do, I suppose, in a way. But even love has its limits of endurance.”

  “Want me to give you a blow job, Lenny? Let me give you one of my nice blow jobs.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not in the mood. Six months. That is the final limit of our endurance. Six months.”

  March passed, and then April. “Five months,” Lenny reminded him.

  May passed, and June. “Three months,” Lenny said.

  Then July. “Two months.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m already working on a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “A big deal. You’ll see.”

  “Money in it?”

  “Big money. And if this deal goes through, and I think it’s going to, none of us will ever have to work again. Get ready for our cruise to Bermuda in the spring.”

  Throughout the remainder of the summer, Adam continued to refer to his “deal,” though nothing much seemed to materialize from it, and Lenny reminded him that it would not be too long before Adam would have to find himself another place to live. At least he had stopped drinking, which made life a lot easier.

  Then, in September, Adam announced that he was “going out to wrap up my deal.” That was when he handed Lenny the long sealed manila envelope of “personal papers,” with the instruction: “Hold on to this—in case something happens to me.”

  And, of course, something did happen to him, and the man they had transformed into Adam Amado never came home again.

  From Joel Rothman’s journal:

  6/28/90

  11:00 P.M.

  Dear God, how did I ever get myself into this mess I’m in? Dear God, I’m not even sure I believe in You—You seem to take forever to do the things people ask You to do. To hell with God, for Christ’s sake, but I just can’t do what Fiona wants me to do. Not to Uncle Lenny, who’s been like a father to me, I can’t do that. I just can’t, just can’t, and she tells me I promised her I’d do anything for her, and I did promise her that. Why can’t she see that I’d do anything in the world for her, but not this? Not this! And now she says that all I ever wanted to do was f—her, that I never really loved her, that I could never really love any woman because I’m a gay, like Uncle Lenny, but a gay who’s scared to come out of the closet because I’m scared of Mom, and the whole family, all the Rothmans. But I do love her with all my heart and soul—and body, too!—and I tried to tell her that. And I tried to tell her that, someday, when I finish college, I was even thinking we might get married, if she’ll wait for me. But she says that if I really loved her, I’d help her, and I want to help her! But not this way. She say’s she’ll never—never!—see me again, if I don’t do this little thing for her. Little thing! Dear God, my dilemma … why do so many dreadful words begin with D? Dreadful. Dilemma. Disaster. Destruction. Danger. Disappointment. Debris. Demons. Devil. Darkness. Decay. Dejection. Depression. Demolish. Depraved. Degenerate. Deranged. Desecration. Despair. Difficult. Dirty. Disarray. Dispirited. Dissolute. Disreputable. Distress. Dour. Doomed. Dragons. Downfall. Dungeon. Dope. Dorian Gray. Dreary. Dregs. Drunken. Drugged. Dreary. Drowning. Death. Disintegration.

  How did Dad die? Dad. Die.

  It will be a test of my manhood, she said.

  36

  A few weeks later, she discovered that something far more serious had occurred in the boathouse that afternoon. Serious steps would have to be taken, and very soon.

  That night, she slipped into Steven’s bedroom. He looked up from the book he was reading, and lighted a cigarette. She sat on the corner of his bed. “Can we talk about something, darling?” she said. It was in October of 1971.

  “Of course.” He reached out and patted her hand.

  “We’ve been married four years now,” she said. “Your father keeps hinting that he wants us to produce an heir, and lately his hints have become a little bit—unpleasant. I know he’s never really liked me, but perhaps if we could have a baby—perhaps—”

  He smiled a little sadly. “I’ve never been much good to you in that department, have I?” he said.

  “No. It’s not that. But could we perhaps try a little harder? I know Ho wants us to have a baby, too. So could we try again? For my sake, Steven? It would make life for me so much easier in this family.”

  “What has my father said to you?”

  “The other night he—he made a suggestion to me that was so awful I don’t even want to repeat it to you. But it made me decide I could never spend the night under the same roof with him at ‘Rothmere’ again.”

  He sighed. “I can’t control my father. Never could. Can’t now.”

  “I know,” she said. “And neither can I. But it’s made me desperate, Steven. Desperate that I might lose you over this. I don’t want him to destroy our marriage, Steven, but I’m frightened that he might try. So let’s try to give him what he wants. Let’s try again, and maybe if we succeed he’ll treat us both a little better. Let’s start trying now. I know you’ll make a wonderful father, darling, if we can only have a child.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “I’m ready to try, my darling,” she said.

  “I’m a little tired right now,” he said.

  “Let me try something,” she said. Gently, she pulled aside the bedclothes, and lowered her face across his body.

  Her son, whom they named Joel Steven Rothman, was born on June 29, 1972, under the sign of Cancer, a few weeks prematurely, it seemed.

  She thought she had never seen Steven seem so happy.

  And she had been right. Steven made a
wonderful father.

  Now it was the summer of 1973, and René Bouché’s brush was poised above his easel as she sat for her portrait in the drawing room at “Rothmere.” The little dog squirmed in her lap. Steven paused at the doorway with the toddler Joel by the hand. “We’re going for a walk,” Steven said. “Buster and I.”

  “Rock,” said Joel.

  “No, not rock, Buster. Walk.”

  “Mommy too?”

  “No, Mommy’s having her picture painted. Isn’t Mommy pretty?”

  “Pwet-ty,” Joel said. “Pwet-ty Mommy.”

  “Why couldn’t you paint me with my son?” she said to Bouché after they had gone. “It would make more sense than with a little dog that isn’t even mine.”

  “Madonna and child? No, dear lady, that would be cliché, and nothing about you is cliché. No, Bonbon is perfect—all soft, fluffy loveliness, like yourself. Now please, look beautiful for me again.…”

  She placed her fingertips against her cheek, as Bouché had instructed her to do. With her other hand, she tried to keep Bonbon still.

  Now August appeared at the doorway. “You have a telephone call, Mrs. Rothman,” he said.

  “Who is it, August?”

  “The gentleman won’t give his name. But it sounds like the same gentleman who called you the summer before last. He said to tell you the same thing—that he’s an old friend from Paradise.”

  She frowned. “I’d better take this, René,” she said. “Will you excuse me?”

  Lifting the skirts of the borrowed chiffon Poiret dress, she made her way to the telephone room and closed the door firmly behind her. She lifted the receiver.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Yes. You promised not to call here again, Skipper.”

  “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess you would just hafta say I changed my mind.” His speech sounded slightly slurred.

  “What do you want?” she said, trying to keep her voice as cool as possible.

  “You,” he said.

  “You know that’s out of the question.”

  “Look,” he said. “I’ve got myself in a little bit of trouble, Alex.”

  “Oh?” Her hand holding the receiver was shaking.

  “I need some money, Alex.”

  “Oh? How much do you need?”

  “I need a million bucks. If I can’t have you, I want a million bucks.”

  “That’s also out of the question. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “No, but I bet those fancy new in-laws of yours do. Rothmans spent a million bucks just on a party in Paris. I read that in the papers. I bet they can spare a million bucks for old Skipper.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you, Skipper.”

  “Oh? I think a million bucks is cheap for what I got. I got a valid marriage license from the Jackson County Court House, sayin’ that you and me was legally made man and wife on August twenty, nineteen sixty-one. What would your fancy in-laws say to that? What would they say if they found out their son is married to a bigamist? What would the newspapers say to that one?”

  “You’re trying to blackmail me. You’re not going to—”

  “And here’s another interesting little item. I read you had a baby born last year—born June twenty-nine, nineteen seventy-two. Counting back on my fingers, that makes just nine months after our last date. I kinda think that kid could be mine, don’t you? Remember our last date? In the boathouse? The Deck Room? You see, I got all the details, Alex. I can prove I was there, describe the room—”

  “You wouldn’t dare do this to me,” she whispered.

  “Wouldn’t I? Well, wait and see. A million bucks is all I want. Get the money for me, and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “You promised me that once before.”

  “Yeah, but this is an emergency. Oh, and by the way, I need the money by September twenty-fourth. That’s my deadline, Alex. But it gives you a little time to scrape the dough together.”

  “How do I reach you?” she asked. “Give me your telephone number.”

  “No telephone number. But I’ll give you an address.” He gave her the number of a post office box in Manhattan, and she scribbled it on the pad of pink note paper on the telephone table.

  “To think that I could have ever thought I loved you!” she said.

  “Yeah. Well, them’s the breaks,” he said. “Be hearing from you, Alex. And don’t forget my deadline. September twenty-fourth. And one other thing. I want the money in a cashier’s check.”

  “My dear lady, what is wrong?” Bouché said when she returned to where he waited with his brushes and his easel. “I think something has very greatly upset you. You are white as a sheet, and trembling like a leaf!”

  “Yes,” she said. “Can we be finished for today, René? Something has come up.…”

  “Of course, of course,” he said, gathering up his tubes and brushes. “I just hope it is nothing serious, dear lady.…”

  She knew that the only person who could help her now was Ho. Though they often argued and disagreed, he had become her friend. She found him in the library at “Rothmere” that he used as his weekend office, sitting in his high, thronelike antique Spanish chair that made him look like a king, monarch of all he surveyed.

  “Ho, I need your help,” she said. “Something terrible has happened.”

  He looked down from his lofty throne, and the sight of her, in the middle of the afternoon, in a pale pumpkin-colored Poiret ball gown must have signaled to him immediately that the matter was very urgent. “Sit down, Alex,” he said. Then he said, “Woman problems. I think we get Lily in on this, no?”

  “All right,” she said.

  He picked up the telephone. “Lily,” he said. “Alex and I need to see you. In library.”

  Presently Lily joined them, and now two pairs of eyes stared at her as she sat there, her knees pressed tightly together, feeling like a guilty schoolgirl who had been caught doing something naughty in the playground, facing two stern principals. She began. “Years ago, I did something very foolish …”

  “… and her little boy,” Aunt Lily was saying when she finished. “Little Joel. How could something like that affect his future if the enemy press got hold of this?

  “Blackmailers,” Ho said. “They is worst kind of pipple. They is cowards, stinkers, rats, worse than Communists. Give them anything, and they just come back for more. They keep coming back, keep coming back—for more, more, and more, for the rest of your life. Okay. You say this man has criminal record?”

  Alex nodded miserably.

  “Okay. Then here is what we going to do is …” Suddenly, in perfect and unaccented English, he outlined his plan.

  In all fairness to Ho Rothman, in that late summer of 1973 he was feeling at the end of his tether, financially and personally, and so the solution he proposed at their little council of war that afternoon was perhaps harsher and more Draconian than it might have been had the problem arisen at any other point in his life or career. That summer, the universe of wealth and power that he had spent his whole life creating seemed in serious danger of falling apart.

  On the national front, the energy crisis precipitated by the Arab nations’ cutback of oil production, along with soaring grain prices, had created a world monetary crisis and then a worldwide economic recession that was felt to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. On a personal business level, the so-called Nixon Recession had caused advertisers to slash their budgets, and revenues from Ho’s newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations were lower than the year before. Newsstand and subscription sales of his publications were also sharply down.

  There were other headaches. The experience of Mode’s hundredth anniversary gala in Paris two years before had taught Ho that fame, publicity, power, and money are all two-edged swords. The higher that the mighty rose, the more eager were the rivals of the mighty to see him brought to his knees. The splendid publicity that the Paris gala generated coul
d have been destroyed altogether if it had become known that the highlight of the party had culminated with a young Frenchman’s death. There were rival publishers who would no doubt have contended—loudly, in front-page headlines—that the Rothmans were responsible for that death.

  Ho had managed to cover that one up, but other problems were proving harder to solve, and slower to go away. An investigative reporter from the enemy press was preparing a long story on the Rothman empire that would claim, among other things, that the Helen J. Pritzl Award for Editorial Excellence for Tiny Tots was a fake, and that Ho had never actually “predicted” the sinking of the Titanic, as he had long claimed. The reporter was pressing Ho for comments on these matters.

  The company had also found itself the defendant in a number of petty lawsuits—petty, but also untidy. Ho’s Tampa Gazette, for instance, had printed a story about a local clergyman who had been arrested for exposing himself to children in a local schoolyard. Knowing how Ho Rothman liked titillating headlines, the paper’s overzealous editor had run the story under the headline “DEFROCKED PRIEST IS TAMPA FLASHER!” There was nothing wrong with the story itself, exactly. The crime was certainly an unsavory one, and there were reliable witnesses, including two teachers. There was only one detail that was in error: the wayward priest was not defrocked. His ecclesiastical frock firmly in place, he promptly sued Rothman Publications for defamation of character, asking fifty million dollars in punitive damages.

  The Rothman lawyers recommended settlement, but an outraged Ho refused, shouting, “Now I’m rich, every pipple wants my money! Nothing to the pervert!” And so the case dragged expensively on.

  An even more bizarre lawsuit had descended on the company. In Iowa, a woman named Reba Slobenska claimed that Ho’s paper, the Fort Dodge Clarion, had libeled her by claiming that she had given birth to a three-headed baby and then had sold it to a circus for a dollar. The story, which several of Ho’s tabloids ran every three or four years, in this instance somehow failed to include the fact that the alleged event had occurred in Rumania in 1801. And by a most unfortunate coincidence, the Iowa woman’s name was the same as the Rumanian woman’s—Reba Slobenska. Reba was asking for $100,000,000.