The Rothman Scandal (44 page)

From now on, he was talking between forkfuls. “Couple of little ferrets,” he said. “Now listen to me. Their old man, old Ho Rothman, he may have been a bastard, and he may have been a crook. But at least he was a decent old bastard, and at least he was an honest crook. His ferret sons—that Herbert in particular—they're
mean
bastards, and they're crooked crooks, and believe me, there's a difference between an honest crook and a crooked one. So when are you going to tell that ferret outfit to go to hell? I think you should tell the ferrets to fuck themselves and the horse they rode in on, and come to work for me.”

“What would I do for you, Mr. McCulloch?”

He swallowed a mouthful, and patted his mouth with a napkin. “Call me Rodney,” he said. “Everybody does. I always hated the name, but that's what everybody calls me irregardless. Sounds like a sissy name—Rodney. I'd rather they called me Rod. Rod Serling. Rod McKuen, though I hear he's a pansy. Hot Rod. But Rod never stuck, and Rodney did. But to get back to that ha-ha-ha ferret. I mean, after all you've done for that magazine—Herb Rothman should be down on his knees, kissing the ground you walk on. Kissing your ass, not handing you shit. Five million circulation! That magazine would be nowhere if it hadn't been for you, everybody knows that. Knows
all
that. And that was a
great ad
—the whale spouting off—‘Thar she blows!' I loved it. To hell with what the little ferret says. I also loved your June cover.”

“Tell me something, Rodney,” she said, taking a bite of tuna. “How did you know that Herb and I had a—slight disagreement—over the June cover and the whale ad?”

He hesitated. Then he said, “Ha-ha-ha. You got an office boy? Let's just say you got an office boy, and I've got an office boy. The office boys in this town all talk to the other office boys. This is a small town. Let's just say that. Ha-ha-ha. You ever heard of the Bay Street boys?”

“No, I can't say I—”

“The Bay Street boys're in Toronto, they're a kind of club. Hell, they
are
a club—it's called the Bay Street Club. They're the hoity-toity, elite types that call themselves the Canadian Establishment, the big bankers, and the Eatons that own the stores, and all those other elite types. They snoot me, and they snoot my wife, Maudie. They've never asked me to join the Bay Street Club, and you know why? You're Jewish, aren't you?”

“No, but my husband was.”

“Well, I'm an Irish Catholic, and so is Maudie, and in Canada an Irish Catholic is worse than being a Frenchy, and being a Frenchy is considered pretty bad. Well, I'm out to show the Bay Street boys a thing or two. I'm going to show those Bay Street boys that they snooted the wrong Irish Catholics when they snooted Rodney and Maudie McCulloch. I'll show 'em before I'm through. I'm telling you all this because you need to know where I'm coming from, if we're going to be partners in this thing. What the hell is
that?
” he said, looking down at the new plate that had just been set in front of him.

“Your grilled sea bass, sir,” the waiter said.

“Well,” he said, staring balefully at the plate, “you got to die of one thing or another.” He looked up at Alex. “Say,” he said, “you're even better looking in the flesh than you are in pictures. Is that a compliment to a woman, or does that mean you take lousy pictures? Hell, I don't know, but I meant it as a compliment, anyway. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to put the make on you. I'm a happily married man. Maudie and I have been happily married for eighteen years. Seven little kiddies. I guess you could say that I'm thoroughly domesticated at this particular point in time. Ha-ha-ha. But to get back to what we were talking about. How much of that little son-of-a-bitch ferret's shit are you going to take, anyway? You're not going to take that kind of shit laying down, are you?”

“Now wait a minute,” she said. “Back up a bit. You mentioned partners. Partners in what?”

“You're supposed to be a tough broad,” he said. “Lucy Withers tells me you're a tough broad.”

She laughed. “Lucille is an old friend,” she said.

“Now there's another tough broad,” he said. “Lucy. She has the top modeling agency in Kansas City, but what kind of shit is that? If she'd of been just a little tougher, and moved her act to L.A. or the Big Apple, she'd have the top modeling agency in the country. But she wasn't quite tough enough to make the big move. You
were
. She also tells me you're a smart broad. You've also got credibility. You see, I know all about you—your background, Paradise, Missouri, and all that. I guess you'd hafta say that I've done my homework on you. Ha-ha-ha.”

“Let's just say that I'm a little girl from the Missouri Corn Belt, without much in the way of formal education, and that everything I know about this business I've taught myself.”

“That's what gives you your credibility. Now, what would you do if you were given all the money in the world to start your own magazine? I'm talking a whole new magazine. What would you do with it?”

She laughed again. “All the money in the
world?
”

He put down his fork. “That's what I'm offering you,” he said. He held up his hand. “Don't interrupt, let me finish. I've been watching you, and I've watched what you've done with that magazine of yours. But to do what you've done you've had to fight the ferrets every inch of the way. What would you do in a ferretless world? Starting from scratch, with all the money in the world behind you. You'd create a magazine that would be even better than
Mode
, even more successful than
Mode
, wouldn't you? That's what I'm betting on. And I've got the money to put where my mouth is.”

“Well,” she said carefully, “that's quite an offer, Rodney.”

“You bet it is. Now let's talk money. How much money would it take to start up a new magazine? To start it right, the way you'd like to do it, to your personal specifications. I'm talking a magazine that would bury
Mode
, circulation-wise and ad revenue–wise—a magazine that would send
Mode
limping off into the sunset, and that ferret Herb Rothman with it. What do you think? Fifty million? A hundred million? Hell, you tell me. I don't give a damn. I've got the dough.”

“There's a lot more that has to go into a new magazine than just money. There's a lot of thought, a lot of research—”

“I'd leave that all up to you. I'd make you editor and publisher. You'd be your own boss. I'd let you toss your own party, and all I'd do is write out the checks.”

“Well, as I say, that is quite an offer,” she said.

“Damn right,” he said. “Now let me tell you my plan. But first let me tell you what's going to happen to the Rothmans. Old Man Ho Rothman was a smart old bastard, but he made two mistakes that he's going to pay for now. A, he never delegated any authority to anybody else in the company. He always ran a one-man show. B, he never really believed in credit. He never really trusted banks. Most of everything he got that wasn't by hook or by crook, he got for cash. That was a mistake because a man is only as good as his credit line. A man is only worth as much as he can borrow. That's how I got rich, because I understand credit, I understand leverage. A man's credit is his credibility. Credit. Credibility. They mean the same thing. Now the old man's in trouble with the IRS because they're saying his whole damn empire was always a one-man show, and of course they're right, it was. And the IRS is going to win their case. This phony senile act he's pulling now isn't going to help him.”

“Phony? What makes you say that?”

“Hell, Ho Rothman is about as senile as you or I. I know the guys in that Waxman firm that's working for him. Young Jerry Waxman is a worse shyster than his father. This senile act is all their idea. They want to take him down to Foley Square on a stretcher, and let him put on his cuckoo act for the IRS boys. They want to point to Ho and say, ‘How can you accuse this poor old man, no longer in control of his faculties, of manipulating, et cetera, et cetera.'”

“Interesting,” she said. “Very interesting.”

“Why else won't they let anybody see him except his doctor and his nurses—and of course his wife? They'll get the doctor and the nurses to testify how sick he is.”

“
Very
interesting,” she said.

“Hell, you don't think it was real blood that Imelda Marcos coughed up in the courtroom, do you? It was ketchup that her lawyers gave her, and she coughed it up on cue, at just the right point in the trial. It worked for her. It turned the jury around, and they thought—Oh, this poor old sick widow, and all that shit, and they acquitted her. But the same sort of grandstand play isn't going to work for Ho, and you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because, A, there's too much money involved, and, B, because even though Ho's not senile, he's still ninety-something years old and he's gonna croak sometime soon. And if the IRS can establish that Ho's company has always been a one-man show, which it has, and which they will, the IRS can move in when he croaks and tax the entire company, the whole shebang, as his estate. So what's going to happen when Ho loses his case? The IRS is talking nine hundred mil—with interest and penalties, over a billion. We're talking big bucks here. A billion dollars is big bucks—I know, because I've got that much in a single brokerage account. So the company's gonna need cash, right? They got no credit. They're gonna have to raise that cash by selling off some properties, and one of the properties they're gonna be selling off is
Mode
.”

“Why would they sell
Mode
?”

“Because I'm gonna make them an offer they can't refuse, that's why. I'm gonna buy it, and then I'm gonna fold it. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have you and your new magazine—right? And you and your magazine will have the field free and clear—no competition. That little ferret won't snoot me at the Four Seasons anymore. I'm gonna crush Herbert Rothman—crush him like a bug.” He pressed his large thumb hard on the tablecloth as though crushing an ant, and then wiped off the imaginary offending matter on his trouser leg.

“So I'm faced with a kind of Hobson's choice,” she said.

“Eh?”

“Either I let Herb Rothman destroy my magazine, or I join you and help you destroy it.”

“That's the beauty of my plan,” he said.

“But if you're going to buy
Mode
, why not put your money into
Mode
? Why spend it on the obviously very risky business of starting up a whole new magazine?”

“Yeah, I thought of that. The answer is, A, I like risk. I always have. And, B,
Mode
is an old product—I mean,
Mode
is something like a hundred and twenty years old. It's like fixing up an old car. It's like you can take an old Dusenberg or a Pierce-Arrow, or even a Model T, and fix it all up like new, and the result is pretty cute, pretty snappy. That's what you did with
Mode
. You restored a classic car. But what have you got when you're done? You've still got an old car. What I want to do is build something entirely new. I want to build a DeLorean, only even better. That's what I want to attach my name to in New York, something that's never been done before. And I want to attach your name to it, too—yours and mine. So what do you say? Are we partners? Is it a handshake? I've never done a deal in my life that wasn't done on a handshake.”

“Let me think about this,” she said.

“Don't think too long,” he said. “We don't have too much time. The IRS trial's coming up. And if you do go along with me, there's only one thing I'd ask in return.”

“Oho,” she said with a little smile. “So there is a little string attached.”

“Just a little quid pro quo. Isn't everything in business a little quid pro quo? It's a personal thing. It isn't much.”

“Okay, Rodney. Tell me what it is.”

He stared down at his plate, and he was definitely blushing. He seemed embarrassed to tell her what his condition was. Waiting for him to answer, she glanced around the restaurant to see if there were any familiar faces. She saw none, but that didn't matter, for she couldn't help but imagine what Herb Rothman's reaction would be when he learned—as he certainly would learn, in this small world that was New York, and in this even smaller world that was the magazine business—that she had lunched with the man the family considered its enemy, and when he found out—as he certainly would—what this man had just proposed to her.

She was still smiling, “Come on, Rodney,” she said pleasantly. “Tell me what it is. I can assure you that after twenty years in this business nothing you say would surprise me. You've made your proposal. Now give me the rest of the terms.”

“It's—it's Maudie.”

“Maudie?”

“My wife, Maudie. I just thought that—maybe—well, with the kind of people you know, the kind of people we read were at your party the other night, I thought maybe you could help Maudie get into New York high society.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding almost disappointed.

“These rich New York women, they've been snooting Maudie. They're just as bad as the boys at the Bay Street Club and their snooty wives. Worse, even. She's tried to do her best, to get them to like her, but they still snoot her. It hurts her—real bad. But I thought, with the kind of people you know, maybe you could introduce her around—to the people she reads about, Mrs. Peabody, Mrs. Buckley, Mrs. Astor, and this Mona—”

“Potter?”

“Is that her last name? The one that writes the column? Maudie loves that column. And it would mean everything in the world to Maudie if she could just see
her
name in this Mona's column.”