Mrs. Astor Regrets (22 page)

The glowing testimonials presumably helped. Jay Topkis, who chaired the disciplinary panel, noted at the end of a two-day hearing in 1996 that his staff had recommended disbarring Morrissey. But the three-lawyer panel chose merely to suspend him from practicing law for two years. Granting that Morrissey had "in a deceptive manner obtained his client's signature" as well as billed for watching television while waiting for his client to call, Topkis nonetheless wrote that "we are not convinced he is a totally lost cause."

Then fifty-four years old and a legal pariah (although even during his suspension he earned a yearly income of around $150,000 for nonlegal advice), Morrissey could never have imagined how successfully he would recover, thanks largely to Tony and Charlene Marshall. "He was devastated and embarrassed," says Chuck Merten, a high school teacher who was then Morrissey's neighbor in South Salem, New York, where the lawyer had a weekend retreat. "He truly believed that he had not done wrong and he was being railroaded."

In order to be readmitted to the bar, Morrissey had to demonstrate contrition. At a disciplinary committee hearing on April 9, 1998, he was a portrait of remorse. His groveling became so overwrought that Charlotte Fischman, the special referee presiding over the case, asked him if he had sought psychiatric help. Morrissey claimed that during the terrible time he had gone to the Madison Avenue Coffee Shop and envisioned the neon sign "saying, Suicide, suicide." He admitted that he had seen a therapist but had been distraught at being given a prescription for antidepressants. According to the hearing transcript, the usually eloquent Morrissey launched into a hard-to-comprehend wail: "He frightened me too much and so I, I figured this pain, I won't say like Lady Macbeth, but I, I, figured I had to, I had to come to grips with it myself." Then he stopped long enough to declare, "I don't want anybody screwing around with my brain."

The lawyer also seemed genuinely mortified to have brought shame to his family. His father, then in his late eighties and teaching at an inner-city school, was the object of his concern, because "my name is the same as his." In his closing statement, Morrissey said, "I have to always watch these bad, these bad things inside me. I had to realize that I had not only breached ethics, but that something evil was inside me. I had to manage it." Convinced of his redemption, the panel allowed him to resume practicing law. But in an age of databases, Morrissey could not easily escape the stigma of his punishment. A simple Internet search turns up a 1993 article in the
New York Times
about Morrissey and the Mar Oil dispute, headlined, "A Modern Form of Tilting at Windmills: Try Filing a Lawsuit Against a Lawyer." The Mar Oil rulings and details of the lawyer's suspension are available on Nexis-Lexis. Morrissey was under no obligation to wear a scarlet
S
for suspended. The Marshalls later claimed that they had no idea that he had ever been disciplined for legal improprieties.

By the time Morrissey became Mrs. Astor's escort, he was embroiled in other legal controversies. He had developed a particular approach with elderly clients: wining and dining them if they were able, arranging nurses and caregivers if they were not, working on their estate planning, but rarely sending legal bills. Appreciative clients often left him substantial bequests in their wills, frequently making major changes in his favor right before they died.

Citing his dyslexia as a rationale for not doing paperwork, Morrissey often worked with two other lawyers, Peter J. Kelley and Warren Forsythe, who drafted the documents. "Frank can read and write but not as easily as the rest of us," says Kelley, who has worked on legal matters with Morrissey since 1984. "He relies on other people. He used me to draft a number of wills over the years. Frank would let me know what the parameters of the will would be. I would meet with the people only at the will signing."

A month before he died, in 1987, the art dealer José Garza, who was in the hospital, marked an agreement with an
X
to name Morrissey as an executor, apparently because he was too frail to sign his name. "The man was quite weak," explains Kelley. The lawyer insisted that Morrissey's clients have all been of sound mind and cognizant of what they were signing. "I would go over the will with them piece by piece to make sure that was what they wanted," he says. Kelley adds that Morrissey is thoughtful and compassionate to his clients, saying, "He treated elderly people and disabled people with more professionalism and insight than anyone I've ever met."

But as for Morrissey's legal billing practices, Kelley added, "I tried to tell Frank on more than one occasion, you have to be careful with your billing. You can't just wait and get all your rewards in the afterlife. It doesn't look good."

And angry relatives did pause in their grief to express their rage at Morrissey, charging the lawyer with using undue influence to benefit himself. Sam Schurr, an economist who had been felled by a stroke, signed a new will on March 3, 2002, the day before he died. The major beneficiary of the latest changes: Francis X. Morrissey, Jr. Schurr bequeathed to Morrissey a Diego Rivera drawing and his recently purchased $680,000 Manhattan apartment. But Schurr's nephew, New Jersey judge Stephen Rubin, contested the will. His lawyer, Donald Novick, pointedly noted that Schurr's signature on this will was "markedly different" from his signature on a will executed just a year earlier by his lawyer of twenty years, Michael Miller. The case was settled out of court.

The relatives of Elisabeth Von Knapitsch also settled out of court, on January 3, 2003, albeit with an amusing postscript. As noted, Morrissey had received two Renoirs from the widow. A friend of his arranged to have the paintings appraised, at his behest. It turned out that the Renoirs were actually department store reproductions, one valued at $300 and the other at $7.

To be fair, Morrissey also has his grudging admirers. Margot Adler, a National Public Radio reporter, came to know Morrissey well during the decade that he looked after her widowed aunt, Alexandra Adler Gregerson, who died at age ninety-nine in 2001. Gregerson, a psychiatrist, was the daughter of Alfred Adler, one of the pioneers of psychoanalytic theory. "There was no one to take care of Allie," says Adler. "Morrissey comes into this situation, he got these Irish ladies to give her round-the-clock care." The lawyer, a devout Catholic, was beside Gregerson's hospital bed for three weeks before she died. During that anxious time, he urged Adler and her husband to keep her aunt alive, even though she was on a respirator. "His attitude was, 'What would she want? What did we think?'" recalls Adler. "He had incredible respect for her." But the reporter was shocked to discover that her aunt's will, prepared under Morrissey's auspices, left him 40 percent of her estate—far more than previous wills. "The estate was 1.2 million dollars," Adler says. "My husband and I argued this thing. Should we fight it? Was it fair? Was he a crook? We said, 'No one else would have done what he did. He took care of her for ten years, and that's worth quite a lot.' He's a very complicated figure."

In the mythology of New York—from Lorenz Hart to Woody Allen—Central Park is the idyllic place, the urban Garden of Eden, where everyone from the poorest pushcart vendor to the richest ... well, Astor can enjoy grass, trees, and sky. On a sunny November day in 2002, Brooke Astor, taking her usual walk in the park with Annette de la Renta, let go of Boysie's and Girlsie's leashes, and the two dogs took off. Annette went chasing after them and successfully caught up with the much cosseted pets. Despite the canine rescue, Brooke was in a querulous mood that day, complaining that Annette did not appreciate her. Annette took it in stride, assuming the mood would pass. But the next day, November 11, Brooke, worried that she had said something hurtful, poured out her heart to Annette in a four-page handwritten declaration of love, asking for forgiveness.

Dearest, Darling Annette,

I had
the most
awful nightmare last night which continued until 11 o'clock this morning. It was
utterly terribly
stupid of me to have even thought that you did not love me (as a mother almost)...Frankly, there is no one in my life like you. My own dear Tony is so happy with at last a wife that loves him so that I hardly see them ... Darling Annette, I love you dearly. You are
My
child—and I hope will always be so. Love, Love, Brooke

How rare, after nearly a half-century of friendship, to receive a note from a hundred-year-old woman that says it all. Still holding close to what remained dear to her, Brooke was staking her claim. This was one of the last notes that she wrote by hand on her monogrammed stationery, and these were words to cherish, words to hold on to, for the time when there would be no words at all.

Palm Beach was Mrs. Astor's favorite winter destination, although she preferred to rent rather than buy an oceanfront mansion. She scheduled her annual month-long visit to Florida for February 1, 2003, and arrangements were made for her to be met at the airport by Bunny du-Pont and Virginia Melhado, Freddy's wife. Four days before she left, David Rockefeller went by her apartment at 6:45
P.M.
with his chauffeur to pick her up for a farewell dinner at Tony and Charlene's home. The other guests included Mike Wallace and his wife, Mary, and the theater producer David Richenthal.

The Marshalls had decided they wanted to try their hands as Broadway angels. Tony had first gotten the theater bug in 1982, when he signed on as a producer of a revival of Eva Le Gallienne's
Alice in Wonderland
starring Kate Burton. Investing $250,000 of his mother's money and $250,000 of his own funds, he also solicited his mother's friend Laurance Rockefeller for $400,000 and raised funds from WNET, where he was a board member. But after a scathing review in the
New York Times
("miles of scenery sadly going to waste"), the $2 million show closed quickly, at a large loss. As Tony later told the
Times,
"I swore I'd never produce another one."

But now, at seventy-eight, Tony had been seduced again by the bright lights, and Charlene was also intrigued by the idea that the couple could become Mr. and Mrs. Opening Night. Richenthal, with a solid track record of producing Arthur Miller revivals, had convinced the Marshalls to invest in his upcoming version of
A Long Day's Journey into Night.
With the play opening in the spring of 2003, just in time to be eligible for the Tony Awards, the producer had lined up a stellar cast, with Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennehy. Richenthal's presence at the February dinner party at the Marshalls' home was fortuitous. If Tony and Charlene were going to be serious players on Broadway, it would be helpful to have Mrs. Astor's blessing and her financial wherewithal.

The theater was not Tony and Charlene's only stage in New York cultural life. As a member of the Juilliard School Council, a fundraising group created by the music school as a steppingstone to full trusteeship, Charlene had made a strong initial impression. Mary Rodgers Guettel, the daughter of the Broadway composer Richard Rodgers and a trustee of the school, says, "Charlene's a delightful person to talk to—I found her absolutely charming." But charm and good family connections only go so far up the hierarchy of New York cultural institutions, especially since the Marshalls had not been major benefactors at Juilliard. "The only thing we knew about them was that they didn't have a great deal of money," says Guettel, adding, "Everyone assumes they would, being related to Brooke Astor."

Brooke had always been generous to her son but kept him on a financial leash. When she died, however, everything would change. Tony was due to inherit her Park Avenue apartment (later valued at $46 million); Holly Hill, a sixty-five-acre property that could be developed; Cove End (worth $7 million); a $5 million bequest; and a yearly payment of $4.2 million for life, which represented a percentage of a trust. But for now he and Charlene were on an austerity program for people in their position.

Tony also had a real fear about the future and his ability to provide for Charlene. Apparently reflecting her ongoing pique at her daughter-in-law, Brooke had structured her will so that if Tony predeceased her, all of her bequests to him would go to charity rather than to Charlene. In her 2002 will, she left Charlene a spectacular diamond snowflake necklace with 367 round diamonds and matching earrings, but this generosity was coupled with the presumably insulting gift of two used fur coats, which had been tailored for Brooke's slender frame and were unlikely to fit her robust daughter-in-law. John Jacob Astor had originally achieved success as a fur trader in the 1780s, so for Brooke there may have been a mischievous poetry to leaving her old mink coat and often-worn chinchilla short coat to Charlene instead of giving her the means to buy her own coats from the celebrity furrier Dennis Basso.

Therefore, if Tony died before his mother, the Astor millions and real estate would be out of Charlene's reach—a nightmare scenario, and a very real one. Brooke had signed her most recent will just a year before, but she did have a lifelong habit of making revisions. It was not too late. Tony made a date to take his mother to lunch at the Knickerbocker Club when she returned from Palm Beach in early March, along with her attorney, Terry Christensen.

On the night before Brooke's hundred and first birthday, Philip and Nan and their children, Winslow and Sophie, drove to Holly Hill for an early celebration. This was a stealth visit, designed to avoid over lapping with Tony and Charlene and arranged with the assistance of Brooke's obliging social secretary, Naomi Packard-Koot. She and Philip had become phone friends, and she was aware that the Marshalls frowned on his efforts to see his grandmother. "I always saw them bristle when Philip's name came up," Packard-Koot recalls. "It wasn't clear why. Philip and I really bonded on the phone—he wanted to know how she was, what he could do for her. I would try to get him in to see her without their knowing, because they would thwart it. It was a hornets' nest."