The Rothman Scandal (41 page)

Though the hours involved were grueling, there were many advantages to be had from holding down two jobs. For one thing, as assistant furniture buyer, Ho now had a desk and a typewriter. At his desk at the store, Ho was able to pound out stories for his paper. If Mr. Gossage objected to this use of the store's time, he did not say so. For another, the store offered its employees discounts on its merchandise—thirty percent off on items of personal clothing, and twenty percent off on everything else. At his newspaper, all the furniture had been confiscated and sold at auction at the time of the city's foreclosure. Gradually, Ho was able to refurnish his office there. He was also able to make private deals with some of the store's suppliers, and to buy, at wholesale, certain items not sold at the store—filing cabinets, for instance, to hold his paper's growing morgue. Suppliers also gave their buyers gifts—sometimes straight cash kickbacks for their orders, and sometimes merchandise that could be put right out on the floor and sold, for cash, which the buyer could simply pocket or, if he was like the kindly Eldridge Gossage, split with his assistant. Also, Ho was able to persuade Mr. Gossage to increase his advertising budget with the
Explorer
. In return, Ho was careful to make repeated favorable mentions of the store in his general copy. A racehorse, for example, was “as speedy as a Bamberger's delivery to a customer,” and a hockey player was “as solidly built as a Bamberger's credenza.” Later, Rothman newspapers would become famous for this sort of thing. It was called giving advertisers “editorial support.”

But, most of all, Ho's Bamberger's experience taught Ho Rothman that there was really no difference between selling advertising space and selling furniture. It was all a question of persuading the customer that he was getting a bargain. Like Mr. Gossage, Ho offered his advertisers periodic “sales,” and “one-day-only” special prices. By the end of May 1913, Ho Rothman had $7,145.84 in the bank. He began to think of himself as a rich man. Still, though he was always careful to see to it that his shirts were clean and his shoes were polished, he did not act or live as though he were a rich man. That came later.

It was an era of superlatives, of overstatement, of extravagance, exuberance, boastfulness, and baseless optimism, as the young century moved into its teens and early twenties. Everything that appeared was not only the newest but the biggest, the best, the tallest, the most opulent. Trains ran faster then, on rails of shining silver. Airplanes flew, but never crashed. Automobiles were replacing horses because they were easier to care for, cheaper to feed. Even the weather was better then, because the air was filled with hope and promise. Songs were more tuneful. Books and plays and films were more understandable, and even crimes were more perfect. You could get away with anything. The war in Europe was far away, and of little interest to Americans, and when America finally did become involved with it, the involvement was brief—just long enough to whip up a bit of excited patriotic fervor, and bring home a hero or two. Prohibition was exciting, because now Americans drank more than ever, and even women got roaring drunk in public places.

In this heady atmosphere, Ho Rothman
floruit
—Latin described it best: he flowered. People began to notice that, though Ho was small in stature, he was a damned good-looking fellow. There was a sparkle in his eyes as he strode down the street between his two places of business, and young women caught his eye and blushed from impure thoughts. What flowered was his self-confidence. He ruled the world, he straddled it like a Colossus, he could do no wrong, he was invincible, and the growing balance in his bank book proved it. He was master of all he surveyed, and by November of 1919 he was worth $29,176.42.

But that was when disaster struck. He received a letter from Newark's City Hall advising him that due to “an unfortunate clerical error,” the city had been paying the electric bills on Ho's commercial property for the past half-dozen years. The city enclosed its bill for $14,987.60 for Ho's electric service. If he paid this, roughly half his savings would be wiped out in a single stroke. For the first time in his life, Ho found it necessary to consult a lawyer.

His lawyer, Mr. Waxman, took the position that; since the city admitted that it had committed an error, he saw no reason why his client, “a young immigrant, unfamiliar with the intricacies of the American property transferal process,” should be penalized for the city's recordkeeping mistakes. It had been up to the city, Mr. Waxman maintained, to transfer the Newark Light & Power Company's account from its own name to that of Mr. H. O. Rothman. Having failed to do so, claimed Mr. Waxman, was tantamount to the city's acceptance of responsibility for the bill. To bolster his client's case, Mr. Waxman pointed to “the obvious good faith and esteem” in which the power company held Mr. Rothman, which it demonstrated by advertising regularly in his newspaper. The city was fortunate, Mr. Waxman added, that Mr. Rothman had graciously agreed to assume any charges for future electric service, and was willing to dismiss the possibility of legal action against the city, claiming that the city, having established this lengthy precedent, owed Mr. Rothman electrical service
in perpetuum
, as well as for his heirs and assigns forever,
in stirpes
. For good measure, Mr. Waxman threw in the assertion that, since the statute of limitations had long passed, “no civil tort, in fact, exists.”

Back and forth the letters went between Mr. R. Jerome Waxman and Newark's City Hall. Particularly embarrassing to the city's case was the fact that it could not seem to pinpoint the identity of the clerk in its Records Office, one J. D. Sasser, who had initially issued the directive to the power company. Mr. Waxman responded that he hoped the laxness of the city's record-keeping would not be published in the press, in particular in his client's popular newspaper. “What would the taxpayers of Newark say if they learned that the elected officials of their City Government keep such shoddy records, and that the Government does not even know who its employees are?” asked Mr. Waxman, adding, “I can foresee a major scandal over this, with serious repercussions at the polls.”

And so, finally, begrudgingly, the city relented, though it continued its search through personnel records for the elusive J. D. Sasser. It finally settled on a certain H. E. Sisson who, though he denied any knowledge of the matter, was reprimanded and transferred to the Sanitation Department, with a dock in pay.

Mr. R. Jerome Waxman sent Ho Rothman a small bill. He was more than happy to be compensated with a front-page story in the
Explorer
, headlined:

WILL BRILLIANT NEWARK LAWYER
R. JEROME WAXMAN BE
PRESIDENT WILSON'S NOMINEE
FOR THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?

Ho Rothman often wondered what President Wilson must have thought if he had seen this story.

Buried in the back of the same issue was a small story with the headline:

J. D. SASSER,
RETIRED CITY AIDE,
DIES

That tied up, Mr. Waxman explained, the only loose end, and ever since that episode Ho Rothman had found it wise to employ the services of good lawyers.

He had also been impressed by the phrase “heirs and assigns forever,
in stirpes
.” He decided that it was high time that he began thinking about creating some heirs and assigns for his growing business. Sophie Litsky, sweet and hardworking though she was, did not appeal to him as the instrument through which to accomplish this mission. But someone would be found, and Ho began seriously looking around.

From Joel Rothman's journal:

Sunday 6/24/90

3:00
P
.
M
.

I knew there had to be an explanation for why Fiona broke our dinner date Friday night, and she has just telephoned me, very apologetic, to tell me what happened. It seems her sister Brenda, who lives in Connecticut, was rushed to the hospital on Friday afternoon with a kidney stone, and Fiona had to rush up to Greenwich to sit with Brenda's kids. Of course she tried to call me, but I was out all afternoon doing dumb shopping errands! Anyway, her sister's kidney stone “passed,” and Fiona's back in town, and she wants to see me tonight! Her place at 7:00
P.M.
, so I've made another reservation at Le Cirque for 9:30—same schedule I planned for Friday!… Meaningless phrases picked up from this
A.M.
's
Times,
mostly in ads in the Real Estate section. Keep coming across the phrase “world class.” What does that mean? One apartment house has a “world class health club.” Another has a dining room that serves “world class cuisine.” Still another offers “round-the-clock world class doorman and concierge service.” How about a world class parking lot? “World class” seems to be replacing “state-of-the-art,” and means even less. Well, I'm getting a world class, state-of-the-art hard-on thinking about what Fiona and I will be doing about four hours from now!

Now they were both lying naked on her pale blue satin sheets where they had just made love, and her telephone was ringing. “I'd best get that,” she said, reaching one pale arm for the receiver. “It'll likely be my sister. Hullo?” she said. “Oh, hullo, darling.… You're back from San Francisco? But I didn't expect you back until
Tuesday
.… It went well?… You're down
stairs
? No, you can't possibly come up now—I wish you'd rung me first, darling, to tell me you'd be getting back two days early.… No, I simply can't. I've got the most bloody awful headache, and I'm running a fever. I do hope it's not the flu.… No, I didn't go to the Hamptons after all … my sister in Connecticut.… No, I'm most frightfully sorry, darling, not tonight … I'm feeling really so bloody punk, and I look a fright. In fact, the doctor's with me now.” She winked at Joel. “He's just given me a great big injection.” She winked at him again. “And in a most indelicate place.” Another wink. “Call me tomorrow, darling, and if I'm feeling a bit more fit we'll get together. Kiss, kiss.… Bye-eeeee.” She replaced the phone. “My friend Georgina from London,” she said. “Most inconsiderate girl. Never calls in advance. Just
appears
, and expects you to drop everything.”

Joel started to say that it had sounded like a man's voice, and as though she had read his thoughts, she said, “Georgina has this big, deep voice. Like this.” She imitated it, and then giggled. “Sometimes I wonder if Georgina is a Lesbian.” She was stroking his penis. “Oooh, look at Pinocchio!” she said. “He must have told another lie. His nose is getting bigger again.” Then she said, “I think we're ready to try something a little different tonight.…”

21

“Buy 'em sick, make 'em healthy—and if they don't get healthy quick enough,
sell
'em!” That was the way Ho Rothman once described, to a journalist, how he had succeeded in amassing his communications empire, which, at the time, consisted of more than a hundred newspaper and magazine titles, along with radio and television stations, and was the third-largest in the nation. “And pipple don't have to be there to run a newspaper,” he added, explaining how he acquired his reputation as “the absentee press lord.” “You get other pipple to do that.”

A publication's balance sheet told him all he needed to know, and otherwise his editors were permitted to print and publish pretty much whatever they chose. His was the Eldridge J. Gossage approach to journalism—if a story would sell papers, print it; if it wouldn't, don't. By then—this was the early 1970s—it was a well-known fact that Ho Rothman owned publications in cities where he never set foot, and ran everything from his huge thirtieth-floor office with its map of the United States covering one wall. By then, it mattered little to Ho whether his editors' opinions and philosophies coincided with his own. The name of H. O. Rothman might decorate the boardroom of B'nai B'rith, of the United Jewish Appeal, but he voiced no objections when the editor of his
Tampa Sentinel
published a series of thinly veiled anti-Semitic articles on “the invasion of Mediterranean-looking Miami Beach types and rag-trade tycoons” coming to Florida's “traditionally more selective West Coast.” A little anti-Semitism, it seemed, sold newspapers in Tampa.

But it was all quite different, back in 1921, when Ho was still the one-man proprietor of the weekly
Newark Explorer
. He was now twenty-four years old, and had run the paper for nine years. He had quit his job at Bamberger's two years earlier—retaining, naturally, Mr. Gossage's advertising account—but he still resisted the notion of taking on any employees. His paid circulation was now about fifteen thousand, which seemed to him spectacular, and he saw no reason to tamper with what was turning out to be a very good thing. He was also resisting the increasingly pointed suggestions from Sophie Litsky's father, the rabbi, that Ho could do worse things than taking young Sophie as his bride. In fact, Rabbi Litsky had lately been almost threatening, hinting that he, his wife, and his children could not be counted upon to toil for Ho's newspaper without wages indefinitely, unless matrimony lay somewhere down the road. Ho was able to hold the Litskys off by offering the family a small “profit share” from each week's receipts. But these pressures made Ho nervous. He had almost been forced into marriage once before, and he was handling his relationship with Sophie with extreme discretion, taking no chances and making no promises.

Then, out of the blue, a savior appeared on Ho's horizon who would remove him forever from the mounting pressures from the Litsky family.

The savior's name was Moe Markarian. Everyone knew who Moe Markarian was. Moe Markarian, they said, had made his entire fortune in fifteen minutes. That was the time it had taken him to recite his marriage vows to Mrs. Markarian. Mrs. Markarian was the daughter of wealthy Hymie Weiss, whose real name was Earl Wajchiechowski, who had gone out to Chicago a few years earlier and made his name, and millions, in the new and lucrative profession known as bootlegging. In fact, Midwest bootlegging was now controlled by four men—Hymie Weiss, Dion O'Banion, Johnny Torio, and another youthful Italian-American named Alphonse Capone. In time, of course, competition in the illegal liquor trade would eliminate all but one of the Four Horsemen, as they were called, but in 1921 the daughter of Hymie Weiss was considered quite a catch for Moe Markarian.