“And they think it’s a psycho, the paper says? Somebody who wrote a note?”
“Yes. I think Cynthia, by the way, disagrees. She thinks the ‘somebody’ involved is using the note as a cover, to create confusion.”
“Very possible,” Bautista said. “But what can I do for you?”
“Help me with some real confusion. There was the note the paper mentioned. Then, today, the Company got another one delivered at its office. Here’s a copy of it.” Frost showed Bautista the copy. “It doesn’t show up on the Xerox, but this one’s on brown paper, whereas the first one was on regular white typing paper. The handwriting’s different, too. The first one was in block letters.”
“So what’s the confusion? Whether the same guy wrote both of them?”
“Yes.”
“The lab and the handwriting guys can help with that,” Bautista said. “Offhand, it seems to me you got three possibilities. One, the killer wrote both notes because he’s crazy and the reasons for killing Andersen were crazy. Two, the killer is perfectly sane and wrote both notes to confuse everybody. Third, the killer wrote the first note—either because he was crazy or to throw people off the track—and some screwball who read the newspapers or watched TV tried to get into the act by writing the second. Happens all the time, you know. When you get one note in a case, you may get half a dozen more from nutcakes who had nothing to do with the original.”
“Hmn. Shouldn’t we tell Castagno up in Greenwich about this?”
“I don’t know about the we, Reuben. This is brother Castagno’s case.”
“But don’t police departments cooperate in a situation like this?”
“If we have time. Though you’ve got to understand we’re much less interested in a guy killed in Greenwich than somebody bumped off right here under our noses.”
“I’m disappointed,” Frost said. “But I guess everybody has to have priorities.”
“Look, Reuben, I’ll try to help any way I can, as a favor to you, but, as I say, I think Castagno is your man right now.”
Frost repeated his desire to call Castagno, hinting that he would like Bautista to be in on the call. Bautista caught the hint and said he’d be happy to talk to his Connecticut counterpart. Reuben placed the call, and located Castagno after being directed to two separate numbers.
Frost relayed the news of the second note, read it to Castagno and described it physically. Castagno seemed at a loss as to what to do, so Bautista, on the library extension, suggested that the Greenwich police have the first note brought to the city to be analyzed along with the second.
“Or we can get the second note up to you,” Bautista said.
“No, I appreciate your offer of help,” Castagno said. “I think having your fellows do it will get things moving faster than trying to get it done in Hartford. How do I go about it?”
Bautista gave Castagno detailed instructions about reaching his office and told him that if he left the office he would leave a message behind.
“Okay, thanks a lot,” Castagno said, sounding grateful for the help he was getting. “Anything else?”
“Not here.”
“Nor here, either,” Castagno said. “Good-bye, gentlemen.”
“Luis, thank you,” Frost said after the phone conversation ended. “Is this going to cause you a lot of bother?”
“Yes, but that’s all right,” Bautista answered. “Anything for you, Reuben. Just don’t get me involved any deeper.”
SHERWOOD FOREST
10
After Bautista left, Frost was grateful for the chance to rest before his late-afternoon meeting with Jeffrey Gruen. He actually slept for an hour before the alarm he had set woke him at four-thirty. Cynthia, home from an afternoon of grant-committee meetings at the Brigham Foundation, sat on the edge of the bed and talked while her husband changed his shirt.
Once Cynthia found out where Reuben was going, she commanded him to observe carefully what he saw.
“It’s supposed to be the most ostentatious apartment in New York,” Cynthia said, “which is saying quite a lot. It’s always in W and the fashion magazines—four floors stuffed with every artifact money can buy. They say that wife of his—you know, Gloria Gruen, the jewelry designer—spends twenty thousand dollars a month on flowers.”
“That sounds almost impossible,” Reuben said, tying his necktie in front of the mirror.
“Well, you just take a good look and be ready to make a full report.”
“Yes, my dear. Maybe I can bring you back one of Gloria Gruen’s creations.”
“Thank you, no,” Cynthia said. “She does terrible designs. Clunky and vulgar gold things with too many stones.”
“I agree,” Frost said. Shopping for his wife the previous Christmas, he had looked over a selection of Gloria Gruen pieces and had indeed found them clunky and vulgar.
“Wish me luck,” he said.
“Of course, my dear,” she replied, kissing him good-bye before he left the room.
Frost walked to the building at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street, where the Gruen apartment was located. He was admitted by a maid in uniform and taken through an immense foyer to what he took to be the living room. At once he began to believe his wife’s tale about Mrs. Gruen’s florist bills—there were flowers, trees and plants everywhere, rivaling the city’s Botanical Gardens.
“Mr. Gruen is on the telephone, but he says he will be with you shortly,” the maid told him.
“Fine. Thank you.” Frost went to one of the windows and looked out at the splendid view of Central Park, twenty-eight floors below. He was about to take a seat when he realized that the walls of the room were covered with paintings, many by eminently recognizable artists at that—Renoir, Cézanne, Monet. He found himself strangely unmoved by the works as he walked around the room. Why should this be so? These were all artists he liked.
Then it came to him: without exception, the paintings on display were decidedly second-rate. The orangey-pinks in the two Renoirs were not pleasing; the pair of Monets, while unquestionably the works of the master, were experimental exercises that did not quite come off. And then there were the oils by minor French artists that filled out the room—thoroughly undistinguished and derivative paintings by Georges d’Espagnat, Henri Martin and Armand Guillaumin.
Did this collection reflect the taste of the Gruens, or had sharp dealers talked them into these purchases? He wondered. It all reminded him of the Getty Museum: lots of money spent for a disappointing result. As he turned from the walls, his eye caught sight of an enormous coffee table with a recessed top covered by glass. Inside was a sampling of the jewelry designed by Gloria Gruen. Frost sat down and looked at the pieces through the glass, concluding that he saw no reason to change his earlier assessment of her work. He also thought it slightly queer that the living room had been turned into a sales annex.
Gruen entered and shook hands with Reuben, addressing him as “Mr. Frost.” He apologized profusely, both for being unavailable to Flemming Andersen and Robbins the day before and now for being late.
“It turned out I had to be out of town yesterday, but I got the message from AFC through Norman Cobb,” Gruen explained, as the two men stood facing each other next to one of the Renoirs.
Gruen then expressed great sympathy over Flemming’s death. “It’s a great tragedy, Mr. Frost. He was an eminent businessman. Are there any clues to identify the madman who did it?”
“Nothing very promising, I’m afraid,” Frost replied.
“Let’s go into the library, where I think we’ll be more comfortable.” He led Frost back to the wood-paneled foyer, turning off the lights in the living room as he did so.
“Have you been here before, Mr. Frost?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t.”
“We had a party for the NatBallet benefactors last year, but I guess you didn’t come.”
“No, I’m sorry we didn’t. We had a conflict, I forget just what. I think somethi
ng to do with my wife’s Foundation work.”
“You didn’t miss much. One hundred twenty-five sitting down for dinner,” Gruen said. “We practically had tables on the ceiling.”
“Good heavens,” Frost said, scarcely able to comprehend a party of such a size in a New York apartment.
“Before we talk, let me show you the dining room,” he said, guiding Frost toward double doors across the foyer. Gruen went inside and turned up the rheostats on one wall.
Frost had trouble believing what he saw, although he vaguely recalled Cynthia showing him, with some amusement, a magazine picture of the room. The floor was blue, gray and white marble—blue squares surrounded by white borders on a gray background. Towering over the long dining table were three portraits of truly heroic proportions, each considerably larger than life-size.
“That’s Sir Walter Scott,” Gruen explained, pointing to a seated young man looking out into the landscape. “Sir Henry Raeburn did that about 1810.”
“Very interesting.”
“Scott has always been a hero of mine, ever since I read Ivanhoe in school.”
“Really?”
“And over there is Lady Lucy Fox-Strangeways, daughter of the first Earl of Ilchester and niece of the first Lord Holland. Done by Allan Ramsay about 1763.”
“Is that so?”
“She’s quite attractive, don’t you think?” Gruen asked.
“Oh yes. Yes, indeed.”
“And finally, that’s the Duke of Atholl over there.”
“Who?”
“The Duke of Atholl. Oh, ha, ha. It’s spelled A-T-H-O-L-L.”
“Of course.”
“Painted by Johann Zoffany in 1766.”
Frost was as close to being speechless as he had ever been in his life. What could one say to this boy from Brooklyn babbling on about the Earl of Ilchester and the Duke of Atholl?
“Is your wife from England?” Frost asked, trying both to get at the root of this Anglophilia and to say something.
“Oh no. Pittsburgh. We just like these old portraits, that’s all. We find them expressive. And it’s fascinating to study the lives of the sitters.”
“Hmn. I see. Very impressive.”
“Come on, let’s get down to business in the library.”
“Fine.”
Gruen turned off the dining room lights and led the way across to the library, which turned out to be only slightly more believable than the dining room. It looked like an uptown annex of the American Craft Museum; in addition to the plants and the flowers, there was an anonymous panoramic oil of the Erie Canal at Schenectady on one wall; an Ammi Phillips portrait of a lady on the facing wall; and a Shaker wardrobe taking up a third. On one large table at the side of the room, there was a crowded and large collection of small scrimshaw pieces. And on two other large tables, and in bookcases next to the wardrobe, were bound leather volumes of Currier & Ives and Audubon prints. Not to mention a proliferation of duck decoys, weather vanes and other assorted folk objects in, on and under the room’s furniture. The total effect was to create the impression that everything in the room had been purchased at once as a preassembled package.
Is it possible to buy taste? Frost wondered to himself. On the evidence he was viewing this afternoon, the answer was no. Though it clearly was possible to spend a fortune on “art.”
“Who should go first?” Gruen asked, once they were seated in facing chairs in front of the room’s large fireplace.
Frost said he would be happy to, and started by confirming that Gruen had gotten AFC’s position straight from his assistant.
“Yes, unfortunately, I think I understand what the AFC Board decided,” Gruen said. “No to my proposed purchase and yes to a self-tender for something like ten percent.”
“Yes, that was the decision,” Frost said. “Of course, you must appreciate that now everything is in turmoil after Flemming’s death. As I’m sure you can imagine, the Company and the family have quite enough to consider just now without dealing with a tender offer from you.”
“So what are you proposing?”
“Basically, that you give the Company some breathing space by postponing your offer for, say, two weeks.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” Gruen said. “I’ve already started to pay a commitment fee to my banks for the money I’ll borrow to do the deal. So I want it over and done with just as soon as possible. Besides,” he went on, “the 13D I filed Monday said I was contemplating an offer. If I don’t make one, people will wonder why. I can get along without a lot of wise-ass comments in the financial press—‘Has Jeffrey Gruen stretched himself too thin at last?’—that kind of thing.”
“Mr. Gruen, I’m obviously not in a position to advise you,” Frost said, leaning forward and rubbing, perhaps unconsciously, the head of a carved duck decoy on the coffee table in front of him. “I’m in fact your adversary, or a representative of your adversary. But may I give some unsolicited advice—public relations advice—just the same? My own opinion is that it would be disastrous for you to pursue a hostile tender offer against a Company that has just lost its chief executive and a major stockholder—and lost him through a bizarre murder, at that. I don’t think such a move would do your long-term reputation much good.”
“I don’t see that the two things are related,” Gruen answered.
“Also, Mr. Gruen,” Frost went on, cutting off further comment, “it seems clear to me that you must be assuming that some part of the Andersen edifice is going to crumble. Otherwise your offer doesn’t make any sense. If the holders of forty-seven percent of AFC’s stock hold firm—and that’s what management, the Foundation and the family have—there’s no way, realistically, that you can get control of the Company. You have to be betting that someone’s going to defect. I can’t say you’re wrong about that. I don’t know the innermost thoughts of those involved. But I think the likelihood of the family façade giving way is a good bit more likely two weeks from now than it is within hours of Flemming Andersen’s death.
“Two weeks from now management and the Board may feel exactly as they did yesterday morning,” Frost continued. “But they may not. I submit to you, sir, that you have nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain by holding back on your offer.”
“What about the Company’s buyback proposal?” Gruen asked.
“I assure you AFC won’t get out in front of you on that,” Frost answered.
“Maybe you’d just like to buy me out and have me go away,” Gruen volunteered.
This was a possibility Frost knew the AFC Board would never accept—paying Jeffrey Gruen “greenmail” to keep him from making his takeover bid.
“That’s out of the question,” Frost said. “There is absolutely no point in discussing it.”
“Just thought I’d ask,” Gruen replied. Then he paused and appeared to be thinking.
“I’ll give you a week,” he finally said. “A week from today. Wednesday.”
“All right.”
“That means if there’s any change in the Board’s position you’ll have to get back to me by the close of business next Tuesday, sooner if you can,” Gruen said.
“That’s not really a week, is it?” Frost said.
“Okay, okay, close of business Wednesday,” Gruen shot back, slightly irritated. “You want a standstill agreement?”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Gruen,” Frost said. “I think your word will suffice.” Frost, a lifelong believer that a man’s word was his bond, tried to keep any hint of scorn or disdain out of his voice. If such a hint was there, Gruen ignored it.
“I don’t know how much influence you have with your client,” Gruen said, “but I suggest you try to persuade them that the way to go is a friendly takeover. Much easier for them, even if it’s more expensive for me. Shall we drink to that?” He pushed a button on the wall and a uniformed butler appeared.
“I can’t say I’ll drink to your proposal but, yes, I’ll have a drink. An extra-dry martini with
a twist, please. On the rocks.” Frost was usually leery of ordering a martini in strange territory, but the sight of the butler in uniform gave him confidence it would be prepared correctly.
“A Lillet mist,” Gruen ordered, and the butler disappeared.
Once the two men had drinks in hand, Gruen proposed a toast to a “friendly outcome.” Frost smiled but remained silent.
“Who’s going to be AFC’s new Chairman, can you say?” Gruen asked.
“The Board hasn’t met yet, but I’m almost certain it will be Casper Robbins. He’s the President already, as you know.”
“He’s not family, is he? Won’t that be the first time AFC has gone outside?”
“Yes.”
“What about the son? Or the nephew, O’Neal?”
“I don’t think either one will be picked.”
“I’m not surprised. I’d never met them before last Monday, but they both seemed like backseat types at our meeting, though I guess O’Neal has been quite a go-getter in the beer business.”
Gruen then changed the subject and he and his guest had a reasonably amiable time discussing National Ballet affairs until Frost rose and announced that he had to leave.
“When’s the NatBallet fall board meeting?” Gruen asked.
Frost consulted his pocket diary and told him that it was on September 28.
“I hope I’ll be able to make it,” Gruen said. “I’m going to September on the twentieth of London.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, I’m going to London on the twentieth.”
The pair continued chatting as Gruen led Frost though the flora to the door.
Walking home, Frost thought about the little oddities of the interview. That unlikely slip of the tongue at the end, for example. Did a small glass of Lillet disorient the man? Or was he nervous for some reason about meeting with Frost? Very strange. And what about switching the lights on and off? Here was a paper billionaire obsessively turning off lights like an economizing Lyndon Johnson. Also strange. But nothing, Frost concluded, was nearly so odd as the Sherwood Forest where this modern Robin Hood lived.
FAMILY GATHERING: II
Murders & Acquisitions Page 10
