The Rothman Scandal (66 page)

“Notice the date,” he said. “Nineteen twenty-two. You could say it was Ho's wedding present to you. Wouldn't that sound nice? I particularly like the Mercury symbol at the top—Mercury with his winged feet. Mercury was the messenger of the gods. Mercury—communications. See? And I also like the scroll and key design along the border. It's printed on something called distressed paper—new paper that looks old. Aren't I clever at making new things look old?” And he hoped, briefly, that she would not look down at the rug again. She did not.

“If you approve, I'll have more printed up,” he said. “In different denominations, different people's names, different dates, as we discussed.”

“What about the people at the plant? Does anyone know what we plan to do with this?”

He smiled. “Fortunately,” he said, “I have found a pressman who is not too bright.” He tapped his head. “He has been my sole accomplice.”

“I don't like that word
accomplice
, Lenny.”

“Assistant, then. Anyway, he thinks we're printing party favors.”

She nodded. “Let me study this awhile,” she said. “I'll call you in the morning.”

When Lenny had gone, Aunt Lily walked quickly down the linenfold walnut-paneled hallway to her husband's room. “Why don't you take a coffee break, Mrs. Zabriskie?” she suggested. “I'll sit with Mr. Rothman for a while.” Mrs. Zabriskie gathered up her needlework, and rose.

And when Mrs. Zabriskie had gone, Ho Rothman opened his eyes and pushed himself up on his elbows in the hospital bed. “Damn bedpan,” he said. “Damn pipple make me use this bedpan.” He pushed the offending object out of his way. “Okay, whatta you got?” He pointed to the parchmentlike sheet of paper in her hand.

“I think we've just had a rug ripped off us,” she said. “Now he's after my Boulle chests. How much more do we want to give him?”

“Chests, shmests,” he said. “Let's see what the
schnorrer
's done for us,” and he snatched at the sheet of paper.

“Three million,” Herb Rothman's voice said into the telephone.

“Three million what?” Lenny said.

“Three million dollars. For the letter, you rubber asshole. That's my final offer.”

“My dear fellow, I have no idea what you're talking about,” Lenny said, and hung up the phone.

And at that moment, Alex was taking a telephone call from Rodney McCulloch. “I think we need to talk,” he said. “Let's do another lunch. The fish place again? Ha-ha-ha.”

She hesitated. “Our last meeting at the fish place got us written up in Mona Potter's column,” she said. “If you think we need to meet again, maybe you'd better come to my house. But I ought to warn you, I haven't made any decision about your offer, Rodney.”

“Look, you're fighting a losing battle,” he said. “Everybody in this whole damn town knows you're fighting a losing battle now. Why fight a losing battle? Why not shake hands with Rothman and get out of the ring? Why wait till there's blood all over the floor?”

33

“I usually try to read my so-called fan mail,” Mel Jorgenson said. “But not the way things have been going this week. Luckily, one of the secretaries thought this letter might be of particular interest to me. I want you to read it.” They were sitting in her dark green, book-lined library, and he reached in his jacket pocket, withdrew a letter, and handed it to her. She read:

Dear Mr. Jorgenson:

My name will mean nothing to you, but your name means a great deal to me. And since you performed a particularly kind service to me, I am writing not only to thank you for that, but also, I hope, to perform some equal service to you
.

I don't-know whether you will remember this, but at the outset of a recent week-end, my daughter and granddaughter and I were stranded on the median of the Long Island Expressway with a flattened tyre. Suddenly a mechanic's lorry appeared, and came to our rescue, and with his spanner the mechanic changed our tyre in a trice. When I offered to pay this gentleman his fee, he replied that there was “No charge,” and explained that you, who had passed us on the motorway, had rung him by motorphone and described our plight and instructed him to send the bill to you. That was an extraordinarily kind thing for you to do, and two helpless women, my daughter and myself—not to mention my infant granddaughter, who was already wailing for her bottle (and in need of a nappy change, I might add!)—will always be extraordinarily grateful to you for that kindness. I am an Englishwoman, visiting in America, and everywhere I have gone I have been impressed by the extraordinary kindness and courtesy of Americans. But you, sir, are truly a Good Samaritan
.

Which brings me to my second reason for writing to you. As I say, I am English, visiting my daughter and her husband, who live in New York, from my home in London to inspect the new grandchild. In reading American newspapers recently, I have run across the name and photograph—particularly in the
Daily News
column by a woman who signs herself “Mona”—of a young woman who styles herself Lady Fiona Hesketh-Fenton. I wonder if you are fully aware of who this woman is. To begin with, her given name is indeed Fiona, though I am not sure of the Fenton part. As my maiden name was Fenton, I can only say with surety that she is not a member of our own, rather small, Fenton clan. In England, I believe she used another surname, though I can't recall what it was, but I am quite sure that she does not bear the title “Lady.” But what I am quite positive of is that she is not the daughter of Viscount Hesketh. Viscount Hesketh is, in fact, a distant cousin of mine (the Hesketh and Fenton families merged in the late seventeenth century) and a sometime neighbour, since he lives near Reigate, Surrey, where I keep a small week-end cottage, though I have never met him. The Viscount is one of our famous “English eccentrics,” and something of a recluse and misanthrope
.

But I have checked the Hesketh and Fenton family charts, and, as I was quite certain even before checking the “tree,” Viscount Hesketh has no daughters, though there was a son who was killed in the Falklands War. Furthermore, if there were a daughter, she would normally style herself a Marchioness, which I suppose is neither here nor there since there are no daughters
.

It is true that until rather recently this young woman worked in a dressmaker's shop in Knightsbridge, though she was not the proprietress of it, as I have read in your news dailies, and it seems to me most unlikely, considering her position, that she ever designed or selected clothing for H.R.H. the Princess of Wales or the Duchess of York, or that she was the recipient of any sort of Royal Warrant, as I have also read. All that, I suspect, is a fiction
.

I should also tell you that when this young woman left England earlier this year, she left under a considerable cloud. In fact, it is my understanding that, should she return to England, she could face criminal charges as a result of certain financial peculations alleged to have taken place while she was employed at the dressmaker's shop. I confess not to have all the details of these, but it was alleged that she had embezzled or stolen sizable sums of money from the shop's till. The proprietress of the shop was a Mrs. Alcock, if memory serves
.

I would not go into such exhaustive detail with you, dear Mr. Jorgenson, had I not also read in the American press that this young woman has recently been engaged as co-editor of the American magazine
Mode,
whose other co-editor, Alexandra Rothman, is often mentioned in the press as a dear friend of yours, and sometimes as your fiancée. I felt it my duty to warn you and Miss Rothman that the woman who now calls herself Lady Fiona Hesketh-Fenton seems to be “flying under false colours” in America today
.

I hope that you and Miss Rothman will take this letter in the spirit in which it is intended, which is one of helpfulness—the kind of helpfulness which you so generously showed to me whilst my daughter and I were so ignominiously stranded on the motorway. I cannot thank you sufficiently for that
.

Yours most sincerely
,

Elizabeth Fenton Hardinge

(Mrs. John D.B.R.)

Alex put the letter down. “She's a little vague, and fuzzy on some details,” she said. “But I'll fax this over to Mark Rinsky in the morning. Maybe it'll give him a few more clues.”

“I'm getting bad feelings about this girl, Alex. I'm getting the feeling that she's very bad news.”

“Ha!” she said. “She's just about the worst news I've had in a long time.”

“She told me she has a sister who lives in Australia. She told me she and her sister were both sexually abused by their father when they were little girls. She told me she had a husband who was killed in the Falklands War. She told me she has a daughter, who's retarded and lives in Switzerland. Suddenly I don't believe any of that crap.”

“I didn't realize you'd gotten to know her so well, Mel!”

“I guess I felt sorry for her that night I took her home from the Van Zuylens'. But I'll tell you something else.”

“What's that?”

“I wasn't going to tell you this, but I will. She tried to put the make on me.”

“She
didn't!
That night?”

“A couple of days later. She asked me for a drink at her place at the Westbury. She wanted me to try to get you to call off your lawyers. She said she wanted me to help her make her peace with you. Then she tried to put the make on me. Literally.”

“And what did you—?”

“Got up and left, of course. I sensed then that she was a phony, but …”

“A
phony!
The word begins with ‘b' and rhymes with rich!”

“And remember that night after the Van Zuylens' party? When we got back to Sagaponack, and I went for a swim? And you thought you saw a prowler?”

“Of course.”

“That was her. She came to the house in a taxi, thinking I'd be alone and feel like bedding her down. Then she saw you through the glass, and ran off.”

“Oh, Mel!” she cried. “This is just getting to be too
much!
Fix me a drink, darling.” She jumped to her feet, and found herself facing the René Bouché portrait.

From where he stood at the drinks cart, Mel said, “There's just one more thing I want to tell you, Alex. I know you're going through hell with this right now. But, whichever way it turns out, I don't want you to worry about your future. I don't want you to worry about where Steven's trust is, or whether you're going to lose your job, or whether this apartment will be taken away from you, because I'll always take care of you. Just as soon as this mess is settled, I'm going to marry you, and your future is going to be our future. Together. That's all I have to say.”

“But you don't think I'm going to
lose
this, do you, Mel? Not now—when I'm suddenly, and for the first time since all this started—when I'm all at once beginning to
enjoy
this?”

It was a second or two before she realized that he had just asked her to marry him and, in his own way, set the date.

She ran across the room to him and hugged him as he poured whiskey into their glasses. “Oh, Mel, what a dear, sweet, wonderful thing to say,” she said.

“Let's see if we can nail the bitch,” he said gruffly.

“So that's Alexandra Rothman,” Adam Amado said. It was 1971, and Adam had been with Lenny and Charlie for nearly two years. Lenny was just home from Paris, and they” were going through the press clippings from
Mode
's hundredth anniversary gala the week before.

“Yes, that is she,” Lenny said. “Lovely, isn't she?”

“Husband's good-looking, too.”

“Yes, but unavailable, alas.” Lenny sighed.

“Tall guy. Look at him standing next to his father.”

“That's his grandfather, actually,” Lenny said. “That's the great Ho Rothman himself. But Steven's father is also a small man. There's a picture of Ho and Herbert Rothman standing together.” He pointed to the clipping.

“Couple of midgets, compared with the son.”

“Yes. Funny, isn't it? But I've noticed how the children of the first really rich generation in a family seem to shoot up in height. Better nutrition, I suppose, is what does it.”

Adam turned back to the photograph of Alex curtseying before President Georges Pompidou. “What was her maiden name, d'you know?”

“Lane. Alexandra Lane.”

“From a little midwestern town?”

“A little town called Paradise, Missouri, in' fact. Can you imagine?”

“She's come a long way, hasn't she? Meeting the king of France.”

“The
president
of France,” Lenny corrected.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “She's the girl I used to know. Wears her hair a little shorter now. But, if anything, she's even prettier than when I knew her.”

Lenny looked up, startled. “You knew Alex Rothman?”

He nodded. “Back in Paradise.”

“Well, if you're an old friend, why don't I get the two of you together?”

“Friend doesn't exactly describe it,” Adam said.

“It would be easy enough to do. She and Steven don't come to our Sunday night salons because they spend their weekends up in Tarrytown. But I could ask them over for a drink on a weekday night, and you and she could have a Paradise reunion.”

Adam laughed. “Nah, I don't think she'd be too happy to see me now. It would bring back too many unhappy memories.”

“Oh?” Lenny said, all at once intensely interested. “What sort of unhappy memories, pray?”

“I don't want to get into any of that,” Adam said. “Besides, she probably wouldn't even recognize me now—with my new black hair, my new nose, my new teeth, and my new, veddy fahncy speaking voice. No, don't tell her you know me, Lenny—that would be bad.”