The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Or he could fire me.”

  “Yes. But your Aunt Lily Rothman was right. Firing you would also cost him a lot of money because he’d have to pay out the full balance in your profit-sharing plan. Firing you is the last thing he’s going to want to do. So don’t worry, Alex—we’re going to win this one. I’m very confident.”

  “But now, on this other matter—” She touched the letter that she had just shown him, that had arrived in her office mail that morning.

  “Ah,” he said with a sigh, “I’m really afraid there’s nothing we can do about that, Alex. Alas, they are within their rights.”

  She picked up the letter again. It had been written by one of the company’s in-house attorneys.

  June 29, 1990

  Dear Mrs. Rothman:

  The apartment you presently occupy, to wit the North Penthouse of 10 Gracie Square, New York, N.Y. 10028, will be put to other Corporate use in future. Therefore, it will be necessary for you to vacate these premises within sixty (60) days of the above date.

  We trust this will cause you no inconvenience.

  Sincerely yours,

  Stuart A. Melnick

  “You know, I could even accept him having this office repainted,” she said, “though Chinese red is not my favorite color. It was petty and mean, but it was typically Herbert. And, after all, the company owns this building. But I really never thought he’d do this—throw Joel and me out of our home. His own grandson.”

  “Unfortunately, the company owns the apartment,” he said.

  “‘I’ll send you back to that little town you came from so fast you won’t know what the hell hit you—without a pot to piss in. And on a Greyhound bus.’”

  “Hmm?”

  “That’s what he said to me.”

  “That was just sword-rattling, Alex. But this, unfortunately, is different. The shares in the co-op are held in the Rothmans’ corporate name.”

  “How could I have been so stupid, Henry? How could I have lived in that apartment for more than twenty years without knowing that I didn’t own it—just because I paid the maintenance?”

  “You were probably too busy running the magazine to look into details like that.”

  “Coleman telephoned. One of the building’s engineers was there this morning, measuring the terrace. It seems there’s been a petition to enclose the terrace with glass. My beautiful terrace! My beautiful roof garden!”

  “I know,” he said sadly. “I know exactly how you feel, Alex.”

  “Oh, I really think I do hate him now,” she said. “Up to now, I just thought he was a mean, petty, stupid, miserable little man who never had any real power, and saw a chance to grab some now. I thought he was pathetic, more than anything else. But now I think I really hate him.”

  “You’ve got him angry now. He was served with a lawsuit yesterday, and so he knows we were serious when we talked about taking legal action. He’s playing hardball now, and he’s playing it as dirty as he knows how. In a way, it’s good that we’ve got him angry. When people get angry, they’re seldom at their best, or at their most effective. So try to contain your hatred, Alex. Continue to play it cool.”

  “Have you heard what he’s calling himself now? President and chief executive officer of Rothman Communications. He’s had that printed on his stationery! That was Ho’s title! Can he just do that, Henry?”

  Henry Coker smiled faintly. “The fact is, he’s just done it. Grabbed the title before his younger brother could, I guess. When a company and a family are the same thing, anything can happen. The prize belongs to the person who grabs it first. And don’t forget there’s his new ladyfriend in the picture. He’s got to demonstrate and prove his new power and authority to her. Which is why, if he loses this lawsuit—as I think he will—it will be an even bitterer, more humiliating pill for him to swallow. Which is why I imagine we not only have him running angry now, but also a little scared.”

  She hesitated. “Let’s go back to the trust fund for a minute,” she said. “If the trust fund exists. Could the trust fund be affected—not just for me, but mostly for Joel—if it turned out that I had been married to someone previously to Steven, and that, for whatever reason, I had never actually been divorced from that other man?”

  He gave her his most prim, buttoned-down look—a look that suggested a mild stomach distress rather than a frown. “I think I once told you,” he said, “that a lawyer always tries to learn as little as possible about his clients’ private lives. I still believe that. But, in this case, Alex, perhaps you’d better tell me just a little more. For instance, is this other man still living?”

  “No.”

  “I’m considerably relieved to hear that,” he said.

  “But what if someone should come forward with a piece of paper—a marriage license or certificate, indicating a previous marriage? Would that be anything more than just a mild embarrassment to me?”

  He steepled his fingers. “Let me just say that I would hope that no one would come forward with such a piece of paper,” he said. “But if someone did …” He smiled grimly.

  She sighed. “You love a fight, don’t you, Henry? I suppose all lawyers love a fight. That’s their job—fighting other people’s battles for them.”

  His buttoned-down look now composed itself into a prim, self-congratulatory smile, his eyes downcast. “Yes, I guess you could say I love a fight,” he said. “In school and college, I was the gawky, skinny, ninety-nine-pound weakling, whom the bigger boys bossed around. As a lawyer, I have learned that there are other, more satisfying ways of besting one’s opponents.”

  She sat back in her chair and looked up at the newly lacquered Chinese red ceiling. “But I dunno about this one, darlin’,” she said at last. “Is it really worth the candle? Is this little job really worth the fight I’m putting up? Maybe it’s time for me to throw in the towel.”

  Outside, in the anteroom, Gregory Kittredge, who rarely missed a word, heard these words, and winced. And, in the office, Henry Coker’s buttoned-down look transformed itself into one of thorough disapproval.

  “I found something interesting in Alex’s jewelry case,” Pegeen Rothman said to her husband when she found him in the music room at “Rothmere.” It was ten days after the shooting incident in 1973. In those days, Pegeen’s figure had a certain roundness, though she was not plump. It was before years of dieting had given her a figure which, when she stood in a room at a cocktail party, was straight up and down in every direction, and, when she gestured with her hands and thin arms, she became all corners and sharp angles. It was before, in Lenny Liebling’s phrase, she had become another East Side Razor Blade. Pegeen had never been technically a pretty girl but, in those days, she had a soft and pleasant face, before the face-lifts had frozen it into a permanent, almost feral smile.

  “I wouldn’t dream of asking you what you were doing rummaging around in Alex’s jewelry case, dear,” Herb Rothman said. “But what exactly did you find?”

  “This, for one thing,” she said, and she dropped a gold ring into his palm.

  “A ring,” he said.

  “Yes. It looks like a wedding band, don’t you think? And look how it’s engraved inside.”

  He peered inside. “J.P.—A.L.,” he said.

  “A.L. would be Alexandra Lane. But who do you suppose J.P. was?”

  “I’ve no idea. Some teenage crush, perhaps?”

  “And I also found this,” Pegeen said, and she handed him a folded sheet of lined yellow paper. He opened it. It was a note scrawled in a large, uneven hand, and it bore no date or salutation. It simply said:

  I don’t know why you say such things to hurt me in your letter, after all we were to one another. I just need your help right now. Well, anyways, I’ll be there on the date and time you said to be there.

  J.P.

  “Well, what do you make of it?” she said when he had read it. “It’s from J.P.”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “It sounds lik
e a letter from a lover, or a former lover, doesn’t it? ‘After all we were to one another.’”

  “Well, perhaps. But how can we even be sure this letter was addressed to Alex?”

  “Why would she keep it at the bottom of her jewelry case? Under all the shelves and little drawers.”

  “Ah,” he said, “I see you’ve done a very thorough search, Pegeen.”

  “I’m thinking it could have been a letter from the man she shot. He wasn’t an intruder at all. She was expecting him.”

  “Hm,” he said. “But that man’s name was Nils something.”

  “Johanssen. But the police said he used a lot of different aliases.”

  “True,” he said.

  “You know, I’ve never figured out what a gun was doing in the boathouse—in a drawer, she told the police. But it was a gun from Ho’s collection, and all your father’s guns have always been kept in the Gun Room, right here in this house. In locked cases. That’s your father’s rule.”

  “True,” he said again. “But look, Pegeen, this letter in itself means nothing. The point is, that this letter is an answer to another letter that she wrote to this J.P. He speaks of a letter from her, you see. Now if we could ever get hold of that letter, the letter that tells him the date and time to be there, then—”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’d have proof that she’d invited him here. That it wasn’t an intruder that she shot.”

  “That it was an ex-lover.”

  “And that it was premeditated murder.”

  “Where would we find her letter?”

  “A letter to a dead ex-convict? I’ve no idea. Let me think about this, Pegeen. Meanwhile, put her ring back exactly where you found it. I’ll have a photocopy made of this, and then you can put this back where you found it, too.”

  “Let’s get rid of her, Herbert,” his wife said. “You’ve never liked her, and I’ve never really liked her, either. She’s served her purpose. She’s had the baby, and it’s the boy you wanted. Let’s dump her, Herbert. She was never anything but a gold-digger.”

  “Let me think about all this,” he said. Then he chucked her playfully under the chin. “Meanwhile, good work,” he said.

  Later that day, he spoke to August, the majordomo. “Did young Mrs. Rothman ever entertain any visitors here who seemed out of the ordinary, August?” he asked him. “Visitors who seemed to come from outside the family’s normal circle of friends?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think so,” August said. “Oh, yes, there was one—the very tall lady, Miss Withers.”

  “I meant male visitors.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Any unusual telephone calls that you handled?”

  “Well, sir, now that you mention it there was one who called a couple of times.”

  “Do you happen to recall his name?”

  “No, sir. Very mysterious he was, sir. Wouldn’t give his name. He just told me to tell Mrs. Rothman that he was an old friend of hers, from Paradise.”

  “Thank you, August,” Herb Rothman said.

  One or two discreet telephone calls and a bit of detective work led Herbert to the funeral home of Sturm & Weatherwax, where the deceased’s remains had been sent, and which turned out to be in a rundown neighborhood in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

  “Boy, do I remember that one!” said Mr. A. Fairleigh Weatherwax, when Herbert found the funeral director in a small office that smelled of cigar smoke and some unidentifiable chemical substance. “What a time we had prepping that loved one for the Slumber Room! That loved one had been shot in the face six times, and we had nothing to go on! No photographs—nothing. Ended up looking real nice, though. Looked just like he was asleep. He looked real lifelike.”

  “Who paid for the funeral arrangements, I wonder?” Herbert asked him.

  “The state of New York, that’s who! We got that passed into state law. Every stiff’s entitled to a viewing and a funeral, even if he’s going to be planted in Potter’s Field. Every stiff’s entitled to a full makeup job, even if it’s going to be a closed casket, or what we call a c.c. And every stiff’s got to be embalmed and have a coffin, even if he’s gonna be creamed.”

  “Creamed?”

  “Cremated. We got that all through the legislature. Thank God for the FDA.”

  “I beg your pardon? You mean this is a rule of the Food and Drug Administration?”

  “Hell, no. Our Funeral Directors’ Association. We finally got something out of Albany for the taxes we pay.”

  “Tell me something,” Herbert said. “Don’t you usually keep a little visitors’ book, where people sign their names when they come to view the deceased?”

  “Yeah,” said Mr. Weatherwax, looking pained. “We usually give that to the loved one’s next of kin, or to his nearest and dearest among the bereaved, once we finish a job. But that loved one didn’t seem to have no next of kin, nor even any nearests or dearests. Do you believe it? All that work we went to, and only maybe half a dozen bereaved showed up for the viewing! Talk about a waste of time! I coulda easy done a c.c., and billed the state for makeup anyway.”

  “Then you still have the little visitors’ book? I wonder if I might take a look at it.”

  “Yeah, I got it here somewheres,” Mr. Weatherwax said, poking through a particularly untidy-looking desk drawer. “Lucky you came along when you did. I was just about to pitch it.” He handed Herbert a slim black volume.

  Herbert glanced quickly through the short list of names. Most of the names meant nothing to him, but two signatures jumped out at him:

  Leonard J. Liebling

  Charles Edward Boxer III

  Next to his signature, Lenny Liebling had written, “Good night, sweet prince!”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Weatherwax,” Herbert Rothman said, and handed the black book back to him.

  “Say, are you a florist, by any chance?”

  “No, I’m not, actually,” Herbert said.

  “Funny, you kinda look like one. We’re working with the Florists’ Association to make P.O. illegal in New York State.”

  “P.O.?”

  “Please Omit. What kinda funeral can you have without flowers, for Chrissakes?”

  Herbert had approached his father with what he had learned thus far.

  “Stop meddling in other pipple’s business, Herbie!” Ho Rothman shouted. “Is none of your business!” He pounded his fist on the top of his desk. “Stop meddling, Herbie!”

  “But, Pop—don’t you see? It begins to look as though the man wasn’t an intruder at all. It looks as though she was expecting him. It looks as though he may have been a lover, and Lenny Liebling had something to do with it. The gun—”

  “Shut up!” his father said. “What I just tell you? Is none of your business. Is over, is finished, is done, is none of your business.”

  “But, Pop—”

  “Who is boss here? You? Or me?”

  “You, of course, Pop, but—”

  “Then do what I say. Shut up. Stop meddling where you got no business. Now get out of here. Get back to work making money for this company. Magazine Division’s figures are down this month.” And he turned his attention back to some papers on his desk.

  Several days later, after further consultations with Pegeen, Herbert decided it was time to confront his son. “So you see,” he said, after telling Steven about the ring, and showing him the photocopy of the note that was signed “J.P.,” “it looks very much as though her alleged intruder and assailant wasn’t an intruder at all. She knew the man, and the boathouse was where they had agreed to rendezvous. It was a lovers’ tryst, as that note makes quite clear—‘after all we were to one another.’ It was a lovers’ meeting, and Lenny may have been their go-between, but something went wrong, and she shot him. I think you’ve got enough evidence here, plus the telephone calls that August has reported, to file for a divorce and get full custody of the child. I’ll call Jerry Waxman in the morning and get him started on it.” />
  Steven’s face was a blank. “But I don’t want a divorce,” he said at last. “I love her.”

  “What?” his father shouted. “How could you say you love that two-timing little slut? All she married you for was your money to begin with, you know. Everybody knows that. Your mother and I have known that all along. She couldn’t have married you for sex, could she? Not you. Knowing the problems you’ve had with women in the past—your problems with impotence—it wouldn’t surprise us in the least if that lowlife, that ex-convict, was the father of that child you think is yours!” Then he added, “That woman has fucked anything that comes down the street—including me.”

  That last outburst, of course, turned out to be a tragic miscalculation on Steven’s father’s part. Because that was the afternoon when Alex Rothman, changing her shoes in her dressing room at “Rothmere,” noticed the note that was pinned to the skirts of her dressing table.

  My darling—

  You will find me in the boathouse. Please forgive me for doing what I am going to do. And I forgive you for anything you may or may not have done. I love you always. My last picture will be of your tricolor eyes. Don’t hate me ever.

  Steven

  It was nearly a mile from the main house to the boathouse, and most people drove the distance. But by the time she got to her car, she discovered that she had forgotten her keys, and so she began running down the long gravel drive toward the river in her bare feet, running blindly and praying. Oh, Steven, Steven, give us one more chance, please, Steven, give me one more chance, let me try again, I’ll try so hard this time, I promise you. It was a terrible thing I did to you, and I have no excuse except to say I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. Isn’t being sorry for the rest of my life enough punishment for me, enough punishment for not loving you enough, or in the same way? Oh, Steven, please.