Shades of Fortune (43 page)

“What sort of a problem?” Edwee wanted to know.

“Upon reviewing your father's estate over the past few days, it appears that there are insufficient funds with which to carry out these bequests of his. This is unfortunate, because—”

“Insufficient? How insufficient?”

“Your father kept his books in a somewhat unorthodox fashion,” Wardell said. “It has been very difficult for us to determine exactly how much cash is in the estate. But from what we have determined thus far, it would appear that your father had somewhat grandiose notions as to how large his estate would be at the time of his death. Yes, I'm afraid, somewhat grandiose.”

“How much is there?” Edwee wanted to know.

George Wardell paused, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and looked down at a slip of paper on his desk. “From what we can determine thus far,” he said, “from examining the statements of banks and brokerage houses where your father had accounts, it would seem that the cash value of the estate is exactly fourteen thousand, three hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty-six cents.”

There was a collective gasp, followed by a stunned silence, throughout the room.

“Of course, it is possible that, as we continue our searches, more funds will turn up. But, thus far, we have found nothing.”

“What about the hundred million?” Edwee shouted. “He used to say that he had a hundred million dollars' worth of the best gilt-edged securities in the world!”

“Upon examining the contents of four separate safe-deposit boxes that we know he kept, we have found certificates for stock in many different companies, but most of these, I'm afraid, went out of business a number of years ago. For instance, he owned ten thousand shares of something called the Pittsburgh Municipal Streetcar Company. Pittsburgh Municipal declared bankruptcy and went out of business in 1933. I've prepared a full list of the securities he owned but, I'm afraid—”

“Worthless!” Nonie sobbed.

“At some point in time, these securities may have represented an investment of a hundred million dollars, or thereabouts, on his part. But, today, I'm afraid—”

“Worthless! Worthless pieces of paper!”

“Yes, I'm afraid so. Yes.” He paused again. “Meanwhile, there are, of course, other assets in the estate. There is the Miray manufacturing plant in Secaucus. There are the two distribution warehouses in East St. Louis and in Burbank, California. And there is the value of the inventory presently stored in these warehouses, and the products in Secaucus that are ready for sale. All this—equipment, supplies, office furnishings—will be taken into account when we compute the book value of the shares of Miray stock each of you now owns. That will take some time. Meanwhile, unfortunately—”

“Unfortunately what?”

“Unfortunately, against these assets there are some rather heavy liabilities. During the last twenty or twenty-five years of his life, it seems, your father borrowed rather liberally—too liberally, it would now seem—from various banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies, and other financial institutions. These outstanding debts, unfortunately—”

“How much?” It was Edwee again.

“Right now, we are talking about a figure between eighty and ninety million dollars.”

There was another collective groan around the room.

“And, of course, there is no guarantee that other debts won't surface as we move forward in time. No, unfortunately, no guarantee. We are talking only of the state of affairs at this particular point in time.”

There was silence now, and none of the members of the family seemed able to look at any of the others.

It was Henry Myerson who broke the silence. “This whole thing is inconceivable to me,” he said. “How in God's name did this happen, George?”

“Straighten your necktie, Henry dear,” Granny Flo suggested.

“I was never privy to your father's business decisions, Henry,” George Wardell said. “I only served as your father's legal counsel. My specialty, as you know, is trademark law.”

“Your necktie, Henny-Penny,” Granny Flo said, tapping her collarbone. “It's all twisted and funny.”

“Tell me something,” Henry continued. “How much of this Miray stock we've just inherited is being used to collateralize these loans of his?”

“That's another thing,” Wardell said. “Another most unfortunate thing. Quite a lot of it has been used that way. Most of it, it seems.”

“So the banks own us.”

“My God!” Nonie screamed. “First you tell me that I got only five percent, and then you tell me it's five percent of nothing!”

“Now listen, Nonie,” Henry said. “There are more important things to discuss here than who got what. We've got a company to run. We've got a payroll to meet, for one thing.”

“Yes,” George Wardell said. “There is a payroll to be met on the fifteenth of this month, which I don't need to remind you is only six days away. One hundred and fourteen thousand dollars will be needed for that. Yes, Henry, I agree that meeting this payroll must be one of your very first concerns.”

“How would he have met it if he had lived, I wonder?”

“That, Henry, I do not know. It's one of the questions I've been asking myself as I've been going over the estate. Your father was a very shrewd businessman, but also a very secretive one. He carried his entire business, as they say, around with him in his head.” George Wardell chuckled softly, as though he had made a little joke, but there was little mirth in the chuckle.

“Those loans will have to be extended—somehow,” Henry said. “Also,” he said, looking around the room at the others, “all of us are going to have to make some deep personal sacrifices.”

“Don't talk to me about sacrifices!” Nonie said. “I have nothing to sacrifice! I'm penniless. I'm a pauper, now.”

“Listen to me, all of you,” Henry said, sitting forward in his chair. “If I'm going to run this company, I'm going to need sacrifices from all of you—personal sacrifices, or there's going to be no Miray Corporation left to run, and nothing left for any of us. I'm talking about personal funds—stock portfolios, savings accounts. I'm going to need your help. Are you all behind me, or are you not?”

“We're behind you, Daddy,” Mimi said.

“Well, I'm not!” Nonie said. “Count me out!”

“Nonie, this is a crisis,” he said. “Don't you understand? It seems to me you've always lived pretty well. Think you could do without your butler, Nonie? Think you could do without your personal maid? Without your private secretary? Without getting your hair done every day?”

“You're asking me to give up my private
secretary?
”

“You're talking like a damned fool, Nonie,” her mother said.

“As for the widow,” George Wardell said, “Mrs. Myerson has inherited, outright, three important pieces of property—outright and, fortunately, unentailed. There is the house on Madison Avenue, the house in Bar Harbor, the house in Palm Beach—plus, of course, the yacht. These pieces are of not inconsiderable value, and there is also the value of their contents—antiques, Oriental rugs, the art collection, jewels, and so on.”

Granny Flo, who had been working on her needlepoint throughout most of this, suddenly put down her stitchery and looked up. “My Guggenheim trusts,” she said sharply. “Where are they?”

“Subsumed, I'm afraid. Dis—”

“I had a trust from my father and grandfather, and from each of my uncles!”

“I realize that. But, you see, Mrs. Myerson, you gave your husband your full power of attorney in 1936. The following year, he appointed himself your sole trustee. The funds in those trusts appear to have been dissipated, I'm sorry to say.”

“Dissipated! Stolen, you mean! Robbed blind! I might have known it! All those pieces of paper he was always getting me to sign!”

“Most unfortunate, yes.”

Granny Flo slapped her needlepoint canvas with the back of her hand. “So. I'm left with three big houses, and no money to run them on.”

“That would seem—”

“Where did it go? What did he spend it all on?”

“On maintaining, it would seem, your somewhat opulent lifestyle.”

“Opulent,” she snorted. “Well, I'm fed up with opulence. I've had it with opulence up to
here
,” and with her index finger she drew an imaginary line just beneath her chin. “With opulence and a quarter, you can get a free ride on the bus! So that's where it all went—on opulence. All through the Depression, when everyone else was tightening their belts, nobody could understand how we were able to live the way we did. The Magnificent Myersons! Ha! The Magnificent Mr. Myerson was just raiding his wife's trusts. Well, I'll tell you what I want to do, George. I want to unload all that stuff. Right now. All of it. Unload Madison Avenue; I never liked that house, anyway. Unload Bar Harbor. I hate Bar Harbor—those snobs. They came to our parties but never invited us back. Unload Palm Beach; I hate Palm Beach even more than Bar Harbor, if that's possible. Down there, they wouldn't even let us inside the Everglades Club because we were ‘of Hebraic extraction.' Unload the damn yacht. I tossed my cookies every time we went out on it. Unload everything. All I need is a little apartment, big enough for Itty-Bitty and me. I'll tell you what I want you to do, George. There's this hot-shot young real-estate man in town—Michael Something. Mimi knows him.”

“Horowitz,” Mimi said.

“That's him! Michael Horowitz. They say he could sell umbrellas in the Gobi Desert. Call him. Tell him I want to unload everything, as fast as I can, and for as much money as I can get. Tell him Miray has a payroll to meet in six days, so there's no time to waste. Got that? Get this Michael Horowitz for me.” She stood up abruptly to her full stature, which, for Fleurette Myerson, was not very tall. “I don't know about any of the rest of you,” she said, “but I'm going home now. I'm going home and start putting price tags on everything. Good-bye.” She gathered up her needlework and marched toward the office door, opened it, and closed it with a slam behind her.

After her departure, George Wardell replaced his spectacles on his nose and looked about at the others. “I'm afraid this hasn't been a very happy meeting for any of us,” he said quietly. “All this, coming on top of your natural bereavement—”

“Bereavement!” Nonie said. “I'm glad he's dead. Now we all know what a bastard he was.”

“Well,” Brad said to Mimi as they sat having a drink, “at least we still have each other.” They had crossed the street to the Biltmore's Under-the-Clock bar after leaving the lawyer's office, and a string quartet was playing “Zegeuner.” “I may not have married an heiress, but I married the prettiest, smartest girl in New York, who makes me very happy.” He touched his cocktail glass to hers. “I'm doing all right downtown. Next year, I expect to be made a partner—old Walrus Waldenmeier has hinted at it. I'm happy, I'm in love, we're together. We'll survive.”

“I felt sorriest for Aunt Nonie. She's always been a frustrated tycoon. Or tycooness. Is there such a thing as a tycooness?”

“I felt sorrier for your father, taking over a company that's eighty-plus million dollars in the hole.”

“Don't worry about Daddy. Now that he's finally been given his head, I think he'll show strengths that will surprise you. He'll pull the company out of this. You'll see.”

“This reminds me of one of my uncles,” he said. “One of my Bradford uncles in Boston, Uncle Reggie. Everybody assumed that Uncle Reggie was pretty rich. Since he and Aunt Abby had no children, everybody sort of hoped, you know, that when Uncle Reggie died, each of us would get a little something. Well, when Uncle Reggie died, there was nothing. Nothing. What had he been living on? On air, it seemed, and credit. He owed everybody in town. Aunt Abby kept insisting that he must have had a lot of money hidden away somewhere. She became convinced that he must have had the money pasted under the wallpaper of his house, so she had all the wallpaper stripped throughout the house. They stripped off layer after layer of wallpaper, looking for a layer of thousand-dollar bills. Of course they never found anything. They ended up with nothing but a paperhanger's bill.”

“Fourteen thousand, three hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty-six cents. That's all Grandpa was worth. How much will old Wardell's bill be for all of this, would you imagine?”

With a finger, he scooped the olive out of his martini glass and popped it into his mouth. He scratched his head. “Well, speaking as a member of the legal profession,” he said, “my guess would be that Wardell's bill will be roughly fourteen thousand, three hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty-six cents.”

She laughed. “Dear Brad,” she said, “that's what I love about you. You can make me laugh. Even in the face of disaster, you can make me laugh.”

“I had to hand it to your Granny Flo. I think she plans to help the company out in any way she can. That thing she said about Miray having a payroll to meet. You say you know this Michael Horowitz character?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Is he the right person to handle her property, do you think?”

“Yes,” Mimi said. “He probably is.”

21

“My father did a very brave thing,” Mimi is saying. “In retrospect, given hindsight, it may not have been the wisest thing to do, but, at the time,
something
had to be done, and what he did took courage. He acted decisively, and he acted fast. I was terribly proud of him at the time.

“If you talk to others in the industry, you'll hear them say that Henry Myerson took a deeply troubled company and drove it virtually into bankruptcy. But that's not a fair appraisal of what really happened.