The Rothman Scandal (68 page)

“Certainly not.”

“Not as Fiona Stanfill?”

“
What?
What did you just—?”

“Fiona Stanfill.”

“How did you—?”

He put down his fork. “At Alex's party the other night, on her terrace, after Herbert made his little speech and introduced you. You and Herbert were so busy dealing with the press and television cameras, and answering all their ridiculous questions. I happened to notice that you'd left your handbag by your place at the table. Quite a handsome bag, by the way—a Chanel, black alligator, with a long gold shoulder chain. I took the opportunity to open it, and found your passport. You see, you're not the only person who's clever at exploring the contents of women's handbags. Alex has a detective checking on your background. His name is Mark Rinsky. Mark's representatives in England haven't been able to come up with much in the way of background on Fiona Fenton. But they've been barking up the wrong tree. If they were looking into the background of Fiona Stanfill, they'd discover quite a little, wouldn't they? Yes,
quite
a little. I suppose one could tip them off. Yes, I can see why you're in such a hurry to get rid of Alex.” He looked at his gold watch. “But I must get back to the office. Alex has a story meeting.” He stood up, and dropped his paper napkin in his plate. “Just don't mess with Lenny, Miss Stanfill,” he said. “Don't mess with dear old Lenny.”

He walked out of the lunchroom and left her sitting at the counter in front of her untouched cup of cold, five-dollar coffee.

He also left behind his unpaid check. That would be for Howard Bogardus to deal with.

“I need to see you, Alex,” he said.

With one hand she reached out and closed the door to the telephone room. “I have some money for you,” she said. “The money from your money belt. I put it in a savings bank. I never touched it. With interest over the years, it's probably increased quite a bit. I'll mail you the passbook, wherever you are.”

“I'm in New York. But it's not that. I don't care about the money, Alex, but I need to see you.”

“I eventually sold the yellow Corvette. There was a little problem over the title to it, but I sold it. I added that money to the savings account.”

“I don't care about any of that. I need to see you. When can I see you?”

“Are you in some other kind of trouble, Skipper?”

“No! Not at all. I have a great new life, a whole new career. Just tell me when I can see you.”

“That's going to be difficult,” she said. “Because I have a whole new life, too.”

“I know. I know all about that. But I do need to see you. There are things I need to tell you. Things we need to talk about. It won't take long.”

“It's been over ten years, Skipper.”

“I know, I know, and you'll probably hardly recognize me now. But I do need to see you, Alex. Please. For old times' sake. For all the things we used to be to each other. For the afternoons on the bluff, where the two rivers meet. Please.”

She felt her head spinning. “It would have to be on a weekday, when the rest of the family is in the city—you understand,” she said.

“Of course. Just tell me when.”

“Thursday,” she said. “The servants here take Thursday afternoons off. Thursday at three. I'll meet you in the boathouse.”

“Fine. Just tell me how to get there.”

“When you come through the gates, don't take the drive to the right that leads up to the main house. Take the drive to the left, down the hill, past the pool and the tennis court. The drive ends in a circle, and you can park there. There's an underground walkway, under the railroad tracks, that leads to the boathouse.”

He laughed. “Sounds like you live on a real estate,” he said.

“Well, I do,” she said. “It's called ‘Rothmere.' You can't miss it. As you come up the Old Albany Post Road, just before the village of Tarrytown, there are big wrought-iron gates on your left—gates with big double-R's on them. I'll see that the gates are left open.…”

And now, nearly twenty years after all of that, whatever it all meant, she was sitting in the green library at 10 Gracie Square with Rodney McCulloch.

“Nineteen seventy-three,” she said. He had just asked her the date of the Bouché portrait.

“Well, you haven't changed one bit,” he said. “You're just as pretty as ever. Ha-ha-ha.”

“I think I'm a little smarter now,” she said.

He sat forward in his chair. “Now you know me,” he said. “I don't like to beat around the bush. I've been thinking, Alex, and here's what I think. I think you should put up some of your own money into this project of ours.”

She smiled. “You're changing the terms of your offer, Rodney,” she said. “The last time we met, you offered to finance it with—‘all the money in the world,' I think you said.”

He scowled. “Figure of speech,” he said. “But I was just thinking that you might feel better about this project of ours if you had a few million of your own in it. Psychologically speaking, I mean. It would give you the feeling that you were partways working for yourself, and not just for me. Besides, the market's down, and—”

“Do you mean the great Rodney McCulloch is feeling the great economic crunch of the nineties?”

“Not really, but—ha-ha-ha.”

“A few million of my own? But I don't have that kind of money, Rodney—nothing of the sort that would be more than a drop in the bucket for what it would cost to start up a new magazine.”

“Whadda ya
mean?
The Rothman millions?”

“I don't have the Rothman millions, Rodney. As far as anybody can figure out, the Rothman millions are pretty much all in the hands of Ho Rothman.”

“But he's about to check out! He's a goner.”

“That may be, but he isn't gone yet, and nobody's seen his will. There was supposed to be a trust fund set up for Joel and me, but nobody can seem to find it. That trust may all be in Ho Rothman's head.”

“The head of a vegetable!”

“And since I last talked to you, I've learned that I don't even own this apartment. The company owns it. I could be kicked out at any time, I suppose.” She spread her hands. “So, if you're thinking of me as an investor, you've come to the wrong woman.”

He looked crestfallen.

“But look, Rodney,” she said. “I've been thinking, too, about your offer. And—this is hard for me to say, because I like you, Rodney, and I also like your wife. And I hope she finds what she—what you both want for her, in terms of New York society. I was glad to help her in whatever small way I could, and I'll be happy to help any other way I can. But I just don't think I could ever work with you or for you, Rodney. Our personal styles and personalities don't mesh.”

He jumped to his feet.
“What?”
he roared. “You're saying that you can work with a son-of-a-bitch like Herb Rothman, and you can't work for me?”

“I work for
Mode,
” she said simply.

“Well, you're soon gonna be out of a job,” he said. “You know that, don't you? Everybody on the street knows that. All the cards are stacked against you.”

“Well, if I lose this one, Rodney, at least nobody can say that Alex Rothman went down without a fight,” she said.

“Dammit, I am not fucking gay, Fiona,” Joel was saying to her. “Please let me see you, and prove it to you.”

“I think you're gay, but trying to deny it.”

“But dammit, I'm in love with you, Fiona. I've fallen head over heels in love with you. How could I be in love with you if I were gay?”

“It's called compensation,” she said.

“But, dammit, wasn't everything fine between us before you started shoving stuff up my nose? Wasn't everything fine before then?”

“Well, I guess so. It was all right, I suppose.”

“I just don't get turned on by drugs, Fiona.”

“Why not? Everybody else does.”

“Maybe I'm not like everybody else, Fiona.”

“Obviously not,” she said.

“Please let me come up,” he said. He was calling from the lobby of the Westbury.

“Not tonight,” she said. “I'm busy tonight. Maybe some other time.”

“And what you said about my father. That really hurt, Fiona. Saying he was gay, just because—”

“Everybody says he was gay, but trying to deny it. You know how he died, don't you?”

“He killed himself. But that doesn't mean—”

“But don't you know
how
he killed himself?”

“Yes! He hung himself in the boathouse at ‘Rothmere'—in nineteen seventy-three! But, Christ, I was only sixteen months old, Fiona. I don't even remember—”

“But don't you know
how
he hung himself? The scandal?”

“What scandal?”

“Well, if you don't know about it, I'm certainly not going to be the first to tell you. It was in all the papers. Not the Rothman papers, of course—they tried to cover it up. But it was in all the other papers. You could look it up in the library—you're supposed to be such the little scholar. Look-it up. I even remember hearing about it when I was a little girl in England. Look it up—and tell me he wasn't gay!”

“Fiona,” he said miserably, “tell me what's wrong. We started out so—wonderfully. But now you seem so angry at me. What's wrong?”

“Well!” she said sharply. “It's funny you should ask! You ask me what's wrong. I'll tell you what's wrong. I let you seduce me, which was perhaps my first mistake. Then I let you come back—and come back again. I've let you treat me like your personal toy—your personal sex kitten. Now you think I'm at Joel Rothman's beck and call. All I am to you is a convenient lay, an easy fuck. You're like every other spoiled rich boy I've ever known—take, take, take, and give nothing back. And meanwhile, what have you done for me? Nothing! Nothing! And here I am—desperate! Desperate! In a desperate situation here, in the middle of a horrible situation, with your mother coming after me with lawyers—with detectives! Have you been any help to me at all? No! I may have to go back to England, you know! I may be forced to go back—by your mother! Back to my father's wrath, back to the hell I knew there. But do you care? No! Have you offered to help me? No! All you want is an easy fuck! And you have the nerve—the bloody nerve—to ask me why I'm angry with you! Because you're a bloody selfish brat who thinks he can fuck me whenever he feels like it, and give me nothing in return. Well, I'm just not that kind of girl!”

“Fiona,” he said, “I love you. I'll do anything I can to help you—anything. Anything in the world, Fiona.”

There was a brief pause on the line. “D'you mean that?” she said, almost sweetly. “Even after I've just given you ruddy hell?”

“Of course I mean it. I promise you.”

There was another brief silence. Then she said, “Lenny Liebling. Is he your mother's friend?”

“Uncle Lenny? One of her oldest. He's been almost like a father to me. When I was a kid, he used to tuck me into bed at night.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Then maybe there is something you could do for me.”

“Just tell me what it is, Fiona, and I'll do it.”

“You are sweet,” she said. “I'd forgotten how sweet you are. Will you forgive me for blowing off at you? I'm under such a strain.”

“Of course.”

“Then come on up. I'll cancel my other plans.”

When Alex entered the anteroom of her office the next morning, Gregory sprang to his feet and blocked her path. “Don't go in there, Alex,” he said. “Please go home! Something awful has happened! Just go home! Don't go in that office!” With shock, she saw that tears were streaming down his face.

“Gregory, what in the world—?”

“Please, Alex!”

She pushed him aside, and stepped to her office door. Painters were at work in there, and her furniture was draped with drop cloths. The antique
Mode
covers had been scraped from the walls and ceiling, and lay in damp curls and wads on her office floor. And her office was being painted in a bright Chinese red.

35

When Moe Markarian built the boathouse at what later would become “Rothmere,” his plan had been to acquire an ocean-worthy yacht, on which he would make the leisurely commute between his estate in Tarrytown and his office in Manhattan. He had envisioned inviting influential Westchester neighbors, such as the Rockefellers, to join him on these cruises. He had also planned on a yacht big enough to carry him and his wife down the Intercoastal Waterway for winter vacations in Florida, and sufficiently seaworthy for even longer voyages—across the Atlantic, into the Mediterranean and Aegean.

Of course none of this had ever come to be, but a channel had been dredged, and a berth had been dug deep enough to handle the future yacht's draw—both of these long since silted-in—and above the berth had been erected the boathouse.

But the building that rose above the yacht's berth was designed for more than dockage. It had been planned as a house to accommodate overflow guests. There were two full guest bedrooms on the upper floor, each with its own private sitting room, dressing room, and bath. On the lower floor, there was a fully equipped kitchen with a pass-through bar, a dining room, a powder room, and a long glassed-in living room, cantilevered out over the water, with a magnificent three-sided view of the river, upstream and down, and across to the Palisades and where they dipped at the Tappan Zee. Though the rooms in the boathouse had been kept furnished, they had never, to Alexandra Rothman's knowledge, been used. Aunt Lily complained that the rooms in the boathouse, built over the water as they were, were always damp. Also, the Hudson River was still tidal at that point, and so there was often a brackish smell. Below, in what was to have been Mr. Markarian's yacht's berth, the largest vessel ever parked there was a somewhat leaky canoe, which now lay on its side on the dock.