The Rothman Scandal (52 page)

Rothman Publications

A division of

Rothman Communications, Inc.

*
SOURCE:
Audit Bureau of Circulations

She put down the paper with a little sigh, and patted the ad with the flattened palm of her hand. “So,” she said, “Fiona Fenton is now my idea. Very clever, isn't he, our little Herbert?”

Coleman still looked worried.

“It's a war of nerves, darlin',” she said. “He's trying to force me to resign. But he ain't about to, as we used to say back home—at least not on the terms he has in mind. But don't worry, darlin'. I still have a few more arrows in my quiver, and I intend to use 'em. If he wants to get rid of me, it's going to cost him. And a lot more than a double truck in the
New York Times
.”

“And the
Wall Street Journal
.”

“
And
the
Journal
.”

“May I ask you one question, Alex?”

“Sure.”

“It's none of my business, of course. But I know Mr. Herbert Rothman has always hated you. But—
why?
”

She looked at him candidly. “Actually, there're several reasons,” she said. “For one thing, he had another woman in mind for my job, but his father voted him down. But the real reason is that a number of years ago he made a pass at me, and in a particularly unpleasant way. I'm afraid I laughed in his face. He never forgave me for that. Hell hath no fury like a Rothman scorned.”

“I guessed it might be something like that,” he said.

“You guessed correctly.”

“And now that his father is ill—”

“Dying,” she said. “I'm afraid Ho Rothman may be dying, or that's the way they're making it sound.”

He nodded. “—the son is making his big power play.”

“Exactly.”

But now the telephone was ringing, and Coleman moved across the terrace to answer it. Alex picked up her coffee cup, and discovered that her coffee was cold.

Coleman returned with the telephone on its long cord. “Mr. McCulloch,” he said.

“Good morning, Rodney,” she said brightly, after picking up the receiver.

“Well, well, well!” he said. “Does this ad in the morning paper mean that you're mine, all mine? Ha-ha-ha.”

“I really haven't had time to think about your proposal, Rodney,” she said. “After all, it's been less than twenty-four—”

“
What?
You mean you haven't handed in your resignation letter
yet?
After being kissed off like that in the
New York Times
by the little ferret bastard?”

“
And
in the
Wall Street Journal
.”

“Damnedest piece of shit I ever read. I thought you'd of had your resignation letter sitting on the ferret's desk by now.”

“It's quite clear that's what he wants. But there are certain contractual problems that have to be worked out. My lawyers are working on it now.”

“Well, build a fire under your lawyers' asses. The more time you let a lawyer take, the bigger the bill they can run up on you. That's what lawyers call it. Billable hours. I know all about them billable hours. Meanwhile, you coming by to see Maudie and me tonight?”

“Yes. Six o'clock at the Lombardy.”

“We want your absolute candy opinion about Maudie. Your completely candy opinion. We trust you, as a high priestess of fashion, to give us your totally candy opinion.…”

Downtown, in his office at 530 Fifth Avenue, Lenny Liebling's telephone was also ringing. Lenny lay on his back on the massage table, and Francisco, his young Ecuadorian masseur, who was working on his lower abdominal muscles and had noticed the bulge that was developing under the towel that lay across Lenny's middle, had just asked politely, “Would you like me to bring you off, Mr. Liebling?” Lenny considered this while the phone rang. “I'd better take this call first, Francisco,” he said. His secretary had not yet arrived for the day.

“Maybe not be able to get you like that again, later,” Francisco said, looking irritated.

Lenny reached for the telephone.

“Hello, sweetie, what's up?” he heard Mona Potter's voice say. “Has she quit yet?”

“I—uh—I haven't—
uh!
—heard anything yet, Mona,” he said, gasping as Francisco's strong and agile fingers and knuckles kneaded and poked at his stomach and pectoral muscles.

“What's the matter? You sound like you're choking on a piece of steak. You need the Heimlich Maneuver or something, sweetie?”

“I'm—
uh!
—just having my morning massage,” he said.

“So—you saw this morning's ad, of course.”

“I—
uh!
—I did. But—”

“So when's she gonna quit? I need to know today, sweetie, 'cause I'm doing my whole tomorrow's column on it.”

“I—uh—I just don't know, Mona.
Uh!
Not quite so hard, Francisco!” But Francisco, who seemed angry now that his best professional techniques were not being employed to his client's full advantage, was pummeling him harder than ever, his brown face grim.

“Think it's safe to say she'll be quitting some time today, sweetie? I gotta know for my column deadline.”

“I don't know any—
uh!
—more than you do, Mona darling.
Uh! Please
, Francisco!” Francisco had just flipped him over on his stomach, and was furiously pounding his shoulders and upper arms. The telephone cord was now twisted around Lenny's neck and, with his free hand, he struggled to extricate himself from it.

“What's she cooking up with Rodney McCulloch?”

“Uh!—
who?
”

“Rodney McCulloch, sweetie. The two of them were having lunch yesterday at Le Bernardin. One of the waiters tipped me off. He said it looked like a heavy-duty meeting.”

“I don't—
uh!
—don't know anything about that,” he said, annoyed that she should have acquired a piece of news before he had.

“He said they were talking about money. Whaddaya think? Think he's offered her some kind of deal?”

“I just—
uh!
—I just don't know, Mona,” Lenny said.

“Think it's safe to say they're cooking up some sort of deal? Everybody knows McCulloch's looking for a New York property. C'mon. Gimme a break, sweetie. I gotta have something for tomorrow's column.”

“I—just—don't—know,” he said again.

“Well, I think it's safe to say he's offered her a deal,” she said. “Anyhoo, let me know the minute you hear anything. You know I never identify you. You're just ‘a high-placed source at Rothman Publications.' Toodle-oo, sweetie.”

“Toodle-oo,” Lenny said.

Francisco flipped him over on his back again. “Okay, I make for you one more chance, Mr. Liebling,” he said. “If this no work, my hour is up.”

“Thank you, Francisco, dear,” he said.

Alex strode down her office corridor that morning trying to exude her customary self-confidence, her chin up, her hands in the deep pockets of her Calvin Klein suit, her skirts swinging, her Chanel bag—stripped of its signature double-C's—slung jauntily over her shoulder, even though she was aware, as she passed each open office door, of the sudden and apprehensive little hush that seemed to fall, from within, as her Susan Bennis heels clicked by. This day, she promised herself, must not be permitted to seem any different from any other.

Gregory met her at her office door, and she immediately noticed another unusually tall stack of telephone message slips on her desk.

“Most of those are from the media,” he said, “wanting to know about your future plans. Do you think we ought to prepare some sort of statement to give to the press?”

She tossed her bag in a chair. “I don't think so,” she said. “I think we should leave all statements to Herbert Rothman for the time being. He seems to be very good at making statements.”

“I agree,” he said.

“If they call again, just say I'm unavailable, or in a meeting, or whatever.”

“That's exactly what I've been saying.”

“Don't even say, ‘No comment.' I always think ‘No comment' sounds snippy and defensive.”

“There's one call here from Miss Lucille Withers in Kansas City. She just says, ‘I've talked to the Canadian. Go for it.' She said you'd know what she meant.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And Mr. Mark Rinsky called. He'd like you to call him when you get a chance.”

“Good. See if you can get him now.”

Gregory glanced at his watch. “And we've got the Scaasi show at the St. Regis at eleven thirty,” he said.

“Right,” she said.

“Mark,” she said, when she had him on the phone.

“Alex,” he said, “do you think there's any chance your office phone might be bugged?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Do you think so?”

“Let's not take any chances,” he said. “Things seem to be heating up over there. I've got a little scrambling device I can turn on. It'll scramble both ends of this conversation, and if this conversation is being recorded, both of us'll sound like chipmunks. It'll make my voice sound a little funny, but hold on while I turn it on.” She waited. Then he said, “Hello? Okay, it's on. We can talk.” His voice sounded as though he was talking in a wind tunnel.

“I've been talking with my operatives in London,” he said. “A lot of what our friend has been telling people checks out, but a lot of it doesn't, and we keep hitting dead ends. To begin with, it seems she did work for a publication in England called
Lady Fair
. It wasn't much of a thing—just a little advertising giveaway, really, with fashion tips in it, and it was published out of a woman's basement in a house in Maida Vale. Woman named Jane Smiley. She and our friend Fiona put it out together, just the two of them. Anyway,
Lady Fair
went out of business two years ago, and Jane Smiley—who now works for a newspaper in North Wales—doesn't know what happened to Fiona Fenton. Doesn't have too much to say about her, either, except that she was a hard worker. Good at selling ad space, apparently. But the two women had some sort of falling out. My man wasn't able to get to the bottom of what it was about—the Smiley woman wasn't very forthcoming—except that it apparently had nothing to do with the little business they were in together. My man got the impression that the falling out was over some guy—some bloke, as my man in London puts it—that they were both involved with.”

“Hmm,” said Alex.

“Now, the next part of her story—about how she ran some ritzy little dress shop in Sloane Street, and sold clothes to the Princess of Wales—we've struck a complete dead end here. Nobody with a shop on Sloane Street seems to have heard of Fiona Fenton, or know anything about a shop she might have run. And Buckingham Palace just stonewalls questions like this. They refuse to say where the princess buys her clothes, except places that have so-called Royal Warrants, and all they'll give out is a list. So as far as the so-called dress shop is concerned, we've come up with zip.”

“What about her family background? Anything there?”

“Another dead end, Alex. She claims that her father is the Earl of Hesketh, and there really is such a person. But it turns out he's a real looney-tune. Lives all by himself, with a single manservant, in a falling-down castle in Surrey, and hasn't set foot outside the place in years. Most of his neighbors haven't ever laid eyes on His Grace, though they know he's there because they see the manservant go in and out every week or so with groceries. The manservant won't speak to anyone. No one even knows his name. There's no telephone in the castle, and the entire place is guarded by big, fierce Doberman dogs. None of the people in the village know anything about the old earl's family, even if there ever was a wife or children.”

“So, if Lady Fiona Fenton has picked a peer to be her fictitious father, she's picked the right one,” Alex said.

“Exactly what I was thinking, Alex. My man did find one old lady in the village who claimed to know all about the Earl of Hesketh. She told him all sorts of stories, and the stories got weirder and weirder. She told him that the earl could change himself into a starling, and often came to feed at her bird-feeder. So—you guessed it. This old lady is the village crazy, who makes the Madwoman of Chaillot look like Margaret Mead. So I'm afraid, Alex, that this is all we've got and, as I said, it's not much.”

“No, it really isn't, is it?” she said.

“But don't worry. We're going to keep digging. We're going to get to the bottom of this dress-shop thing, if there ever
was
a dress shop.”

“Well, thank you, Mark.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then he said, “That was a shitty ad in this morning's paper, Alex.”

She laughed softly. “Yes, it was a shitty ad,” she said.

“Well, if someone's going to give you a shitty ad, maybe it's a comfort to know that it came from somebody everybody thinks is a first-class shit.”

She whooped. “Yes! It is!”

Now Bob Shaw, her art director, was waiting for her in her outer office. He, too, was doing his best not to seem edgy and nervous. “I've got some more information for you on the sex life of the bees,” he said. “I've been talking with a beekeeper out on Long Island, and it seems that it's tannic acid that attracts a swarm, which is why bees will usually swarm on the branches or the trunks of trees. This guy thinks that if we can put some tannic acid in the model's hair, and he can lead a few drones over to her from a crowded hive, he might be able to get the swarm to form in her hair.”

Gregory beamed. “My mother had been swimming in the river. River water is often full of tannic acid.”