The Rothman Scandal Read online

  The Rothman Scandal

  Stephen Birmingham

  For Fredrica S. Friedman

  Prologue

  In those days, they all lived in Tarrytown, at “Rothmere,” one big happy family. There were seven of them then: Ho Rothman and his wife Anna Lily; their son Herbert, and his wife, Pegeen; Herbert and Pegeen’s son, Steven, and his young wife, Alexandra, and their infant son, Joel. Four generations of Rothmans lived under one capacious and many-gabled roof in a house that was considered one of the finest in the East, a Palladian jewel covering a hilltop that overlooked the mighty river, the graceful curves of the Tappan Zee Bridge, and the twinkling lights of Nyack on the opposite shore where some ancient volcanic event had created a break in the Palisades.

  Of course, after the scandal and the tragedy that followed it, no one wanted to live at “Rothmere” anymore. The locals claimed that the place was haunted, or at least that it brought bad luck to anyone who lived there. Its previous owner, the man who built it in 1920, had died a broken and ruined man, whose wife walked out on him and was never seen or heard from again. Ho Rothman put it on the market, but it didn’t sell. There were no offers even close to “Rothmere” ’s worth. Then Ho tried to give the house away. He offered it to the federal government as a guest residence for visiting dignitaries, and then to the state of New York, for the same purpose, but neither Washington nor Albany wanted it, citing the high cost of maintenance. For a while, “Rothmere” was rented to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church, and Lily Rothman’s famous formal gardens with their elaborate parterres became a parking lot. But the Moonies neglected the place, made no repairs, and in 1980 the house was vandalized, and one wing burned, leaving the ballroom without a roof. Weeds grew up in the cracks of the parquet ballroom floor, where Lily Rothman had given her grand entertainments, where a secretary of state had dined, and where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had danced, and moss covered the rusted pipes of the giant Wurlitzer.

  In 1983, the house was razed, and the property was sold to a developer who divided it into quarter-acre lots and built five hundred cracker-box houses, which sold for up to $750,000 apiece. Only the name of the development, Rosemere Estates—the developer’s wife’s name was Rose—carried the faint hint of what was once “Rothmere.” None of the family ever came back to view this real estate travesty.

  It was at “Rothmere” that this letter was penned in a sharply pointed longhand:

  ROTHMERE

  Old Post Road

  Tarrytown-on-Hudson, New York 10591

  September 10, 1973

  Dear Sir,

  I address you as “sir” because I have no notion of what your real name is, nor have I ever had. I do not address you as “sir” to imply that you are even in the remotest sense a gentleman. No gentleman would threaten to do to a woman what you have threatened to do to me. I regard you as the lowest of the low, lower than the lowest species of earthworm, to threaten to destroy my family, my marriage, my child’s future, my career, my whole life, as you have done. To think that I ever believed in you … that I ever believed I loved you …

  However, I have discussed your threats with the senior members of this family in a perfectly businesslike way, and we have agreed to accede to your demands. If you will come to this house on Thursday, September 20, at three P.M., I will see to it that your demands are met. It is agreed that you will come alone, and you can be sure that I will be quite alone when you arrive, as you requested. No other family members will be present, and the servants will have been given the afternoon off. There will be no guard at the gate. You can drive straight to the boathouse.

  Sincerely,

  A.L.R.

  Since 1973, the letter, along with the envelope in which it had been mailed, had been kept in a secure place. Clipped to the envelope was a short note, typewritten:

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  If the lessor of this Safe Deposit box is ever found dead under suspicious or other than natural circumstances, this letter will offer sufficient evidence as to the reasons why.

  Lessor of Box No. 369

  Manufacturers Hanover Trust

  Fifth Avenue Office

  I am the lessor of that safe-deposit box.

  One

  FIREWORKS OVER HELL GATE

  1

  “René Bouché painted that of me in nineteen seventy-three,” Alexandra Rothman said.

  “Nineteen seventy-three. The year everything happened,” Lucille said.

  “Or the year after everything else happened. Whichever way you choose to look at it, I guess,” Alexandra said.

  “Any regrets?”

  “No. Only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Only I wish he hadn’t made me pose with the little dog. Not that I have anything against dogs. I like dogs. But it wasn’t even my dog. It was Bouché’s dog. Its name was Bonbon.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the portrait,” Lucille said.

  They were sitting in Alexandra Rothman’s green library at 10 Gracie Square—Alex Rothman and her old friend Lucille Withers, Lucille who had been Alex’s first boss, really—the room where Alex’s portrait hung over the green marble mantel, against the green paneling, the only artwork in a room of book-lined walls, books from floor to ceiling, even above the door and window frames, all bound in leather colors of gold and rose and blue and brown, books-of-a-color shelved together the way birds are supposed to flock. “I must say you don’t look a day older, Lexy,” Lucille said. “Only richer.”

  Alex Rothman laughed her throaty laugh. “Richer? What in the world do you mean by that?”

  “You just do. Rich people develop a special set of worries. They develop special little worry-lines.”

  “That’s just a nice way of saying wrinkles,” Alex said.

  “Character lines, I call them. How old were you then? Twenty-nine?”

  Alex counted backward on her fingers. “Just,” she replied.

  “I see you still wear his ring,” Lucille Withers said, pointing to the ring on Alex’s finger, and glancing at the ring finger of the hand in the portrait.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you love him, Lexy?”

  Alex spread the fingers of her left hand. “Sapphires are among the heaviest of all precious stones,” she said. “Did you know that? Emeralds are among the lightest. Kashmiri sapphires are supposed to be the best. This is a Kashmiri sapphire.”

  “Of course I didn’t expect you to answer that question,” Lucille said.

  “Certainly not. You know me, Lulu. Ask me a personal question, and I’ll give you a gemology lesson. Ask me another, Lulu.”

  “What did you two do on your wedding night, honey?”

  “A sapphire’s specific weight is—”

  Now they were both grinning at each other like happy conspirators, the only two women in the world who knew the whereabouts of the key to the king’s countinghouse, and the secret schedule of the night watchman’s rounds.

  They had always been something of an odd couple, these two old friends who had known each other for nearly thirty years—Alex Rothman, the legendary Manhattan fashion editor, and Lucille Withers, the spinster Kansas City businesswoman who was at least twenty years Alex’s senior. They appeared to have nothing in common, aside from the commonality of their sex. Alex was small-boned, almost dainty, still a perfect size four. Lucille was immensely tall for a woman, easily six feet, with large bony hands and feet that were always encased in sensible walking shoes. Her face was long and thin, with a high forehead and an aquiline nose, and her jet-black hair was always pulled back tightly from her face and secured in a bun that possibly concealed a rat or even a chignon; no one had ever seen Lucille with that blac
k hair down but, if it was all her own, it would have reached to her waist. She dressed her long and lanky frame in high-necked Gibson Girl blouses with puffed sleeves and ribbon bows, and long, boxy, pleated skirts, usually black. “When you find a style that suits you, stick to it,” Lucille often said, which of course was not bad fashion advice. But whether or not Lucille’s style suited her, it was certainly distinctive. Lucille, on the street, did not go unnoticed, which was doubtless her intention. To a stranger, seeing Lucille’s tall figure striding along the sidewalk, swinging her long arms—usually with an oversize briefcase in one hand—she suggested one’s notion of a nineteenth-century high-school principal—she even affected a pair of wire-rimmed pince-nez spectacles slung from a cord around her neck—or, just possibly, a matador in drag. “Who is that woman?” people would whisper, spotting her for the first time. And this, of course, reflected the advice she always gave her girls: “Stand up, stand straight, walk tall, be noticed. Make people ask themselves who you are.”

  As a young girl, she had once told Alex, she had thought, because of her height, of becoming a fashion model. Instead, she had settled on being the proprietress of what would become one of the most important modeling agencies in the Midwest—not, she would quickly point out, that this was any big deal. The Midwest was hardly a Mecca for modeling agents.

  And yet, despite the difference in their ages and sense of style, Lucille and Alexandra had become friends from the moment they first met, which was in 1960, when Alex was just sixteen, and the friendship proved to be a lasting one. In Kansas City they had been called Mutt and Jeff, but they were Lexy and Lulu—names no others were permitted to call them by—and whenever Lucille was in New York she always dropped by to see Alexandra, always unannounced, as she had done this afternoon, always with a portfolio of composite photos of new model clients for Alex to consider for the magazine. The photos were spread out on the sofa between the two women now, and Alex had placed check marks on certain of the prints with a yellow grease pencil. The advantage—to Alex—of using models from the Withers Agency was that the girls were fresh faces, newcomers, unknowns. And the advantage to Herbert Rothman, Mode’s publisher, was that newcomers and unknowns worked for less than models who were familiar and famous, which made Herb happier when he reviewed Mode’s production budget.

  “Well, you’ve certainly come a long way, baby,” Lucille said now. “But like you always said, you was gonna see you some big towns, hear you some big talk. You sure done it, honey.”

  “Damn right! Just ’cause I’se a li’l gal from a li’l ole pissant town in the Show-Me State don’t mean I ain’t got no brains!”

  “Sure don’t!” It amused them to drawl in the accents and elisions of the Missouri backcountry.

  “But it’s all thanks to you, Lulu,” Alex said. “You got me started.”

  “Oh, bullets, honey,” Lulu said. “Bullets to that one. I had nothing to do with it. You caught the brass ring, Lexy. Or the platinum ring. And it just happened to have a li’l ole Kashmiri sapphire planted on it.”

  “But you put me on this merry-go-round in the first place, Lulu. You put me on that carousel horse where I could reach for the ring.”

  “Bullets, honey.” Her long hawk’s nose pointed high in the air.

  Coleman, Alex’s butler, appeared at the library door. “Excuse me, Alex,” he said. “The florist is here. I showed them how you wanted the little porcelain birds arranged around the centerpieces. Is there anything else?”

  “Can’t think of anythin’, darlin’,” Alex said. “I’ll be out in a bit to check the tables.”

  “I wish,” Lucille muttered when Coleman had departed, “that I had a butler I could call darlin’. I wish I even had a butler.” Then she slapped her thigh. “But I’ve got to go. You’ve got a party to host, and a million things to do.” She began stuffing the composites back in her big black portfolio.

  “Remember the little blonde,” Alex said. “Send me a few more shots of her.”

  “That’s Melissa. She’s okay if you shoot her straight on, and from the waist up. But she’s got a rear end you could land a helicopter on. Full length, she goes to hell in a handbasket.”

  “I liked her face. She’s got a foxy look. She looks like she’s going to go to the party. And when she gets to the party, she’ll have a good time. I’m working on a party issue.”

  “Okay,” Lucille Withers said, standing up, and when Alex Rothman also rose the top of her head reached roughly the height of Lucille’s shoulder.

  “And I wish you’d come to my party tonight,” Alex said. “All sorts of people are going to be here. The Kissingers. Richard Avedon. Dina Merrill. Won’t you change your mind?”

  “Hell, no, honey. You don’t want an old belle like me at your party. You’re going to be having all the Beautiful People. I’ll read about it in Women’s Wear. Besides, I don’t have a party dress. Never did have one, in fact.” They moved together toward the door and out into the entrance gallery.

  “I’d like to introduce you as the woman who discovered me,” Alex said.

  “Bullets. I didn’t discover you. You discovered yourself, Lexy.”

  “Please come, Lulu. Wear just what you’re wearing now. In New York these days, it’s pretty much anything goes.”

  “No, no. I’ve got to get back to my hotel. Got some phone calls to make.”

  “Where are you staying this time, Lulu?”

  “Say, I’ve found a swell little place,” she said. “It’s called the Arnold Arms—on Adam Clayton Powell Junior Boulevard, at One Hundred and Sixteenth Street. Thirty-five dollars a night. Not bad, I say.”

  Alex giggled. “But Lulu, that’s in Harlem,” she said.

  “That so? Now you mention it, I did see a few darky dudes hanging around the lobby this morning. But don’t worry. No Nigra is gonna mess with Lulu.” She brandished her large case to demonstrate how she would deal with an attacker. It was another of their private jokes. Though Lucille made plenty of money, she refused to pay what she considered to be New York’s outrageous hotel and restaurant prices, and on each trip she searched for a hotel that would be less expensive than the last, and for the kind of diner where you could get a decent hamburger for $1.49.

  At the elevator, which opened directly into the apartment, Alex pressed the button, and the giantess lowered her huge hawk-shaped head to give Alex a peck on the cheek. “I’ll send you some more Melissas,” she said. “But don’t forget the helicopter pad.”

  Alex looked down at Lucille’s feet. “You and your orthopedic shoes,” she said, and giggled again.

  “They’re Red Cross. They’re the best. My mother used to say that high heels made a girl’s uterus tip—not that my uterus is much use to me anymore. But you wouldn’t put high heels on a girl my height, would you?”

  The elevator door slid open. “Say, now you-all take care, ya hear?” Lucille said, while Frank, the elevator man, held the door.

  Alex squeezed her hand. “And you-all come back real soon, ya hear?” As the elevator door was closing, Lulu threw her a wink.

  “Love ya, Lulu!”

  “Love ya too, Lexy! Bye!” came the disembodied voice from the descending elevator car.

  2

  On Alex Rothman’s terrace, twenty stories above the East River, the florist’s people were setting out the centerpieces on each of the twenty-five round, pink-draped caterers’ tables, and the banquet manager from Glorious Food was delivering his instructions to the two dozen waiters, still in their shirtsleeves, who were lined up in front of him like soldiers on a parade field. “This will be a seated dinner for two hundred and fifty people,” he was saying, “with music and dancing. Guests are expected to start arriving at eight o’clock, and between eight and nine you will be alternately passing hors d’oeuvre trays and taking drink orders. The bar is over there”—he pointed to the white wrought-iron gazebo—“and the bartenders are Buddy, here, and Jerry. There will be ten hors d’oeuvre trays, and when you pick up
a new tray from the kitchen try not to offer it to the same group of guests you’ve just passed it to. Keep circulating from group to group. There are some important people coming tonight, and I don’t want any glitches. At approximately nine o’clock, start suggesting that guests go to the tables. There will be no place cards. Mrs. Rothman likes her guests to sit wherever they like. The first course will be a lobster bisque.…”

  Other people, on stepladders, were attaching clusters of pink and white balloons to the awning posts and to the top of the gazebo, and a willowy young man wearing a golden ponytail and a turtleneck to match was wielding an electric hair dryer on a long cord to force open the tulip buds in the centerpieces.

  “Why not just open the white ones, and leave the pink ones in the bud?” Alex suggested.

  The young man with the dryer looked skeptical. “Think anybody’ll notice?” he said.

  “Some people will. Not everybody will, but in this group some people will.”

  “Who is this dame, anyway?” she heard one waiter ask another.

  “The dame happens to be the lady standing right behind you, beanhead.”

  Alex turned and flashed a smile at both of them. “Dot’s-a me,” she said. Coleman followed her about the terrace with a pad and pencil, taking notes, for Coleman was more than Alex’s butler and majordomo. He was her part-time social secretary, friend, and, tonight at least, almost her cohost. “That tablecloth is a little crooked,” she pointed, and he made a note.

  “I just called the weather report,” he said. “Zero chance of rain. Zip precip, but it may get a little breezy after the sun goes down.”

  “Breezy? Do we have clothespins for the—”

  “Clothespins are ready if we need them. And did you know there’ll be a full moon tonight—rising at eight forty-seven? That should make it pretty out here.”

  “Is it true that people do crazy things on nights with a full moon?”

  “This full moon was ordered especially for your party. It took some doing, but when I explained to the moon people the nature of the occasion, they agreed to rearrange their schedule.”