The Rothman Scandal (74 page)

“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
.

By the time she reached the boathouse, her feet were bleeding. The covered yacht basin was open on three sides, embraced by two piers, and at first she saw nothing. Then she noticed that the old canoe, which normally lay on its belly on the pier, was floating, partially sunk, in the river. Then she saw him, and she knew that one of the most awful things that could ever happen to a woman had happened to her. The roar of a passing commuter express drowned her screams.

After that, needless to say, Herbert's and Pegeen's suspicions became something of a moot point.

“What did you say to him?” Pegeen demanded.

“
I said nothing to him
.”

“I think you did,” she sobbed. “I think you did. I know you did.”

Joel Rothman woke from his dream with a scream, and found his sheets soaked with sweat. Immediately, he reached for his journal.

6/30/90

3:45
A.M.

Just now I dreamed I saw him hanging there, and it woke me up. I saw the boathouse at “Rothmere,” even though I can never remember being there. I saw the thick rafters overhead, and he'd tied the rope to one of them, and I saw the dark and murky water underneath, and I saw the canoe drifting in the water. His head was bowed, as though in prayer, his chin touching his chest, and the tips of his shoes were just an inch or two above the water's surface. But the tide was coming in. I've watched the tide turn in the Hudson River, when the river, which wants to flow from north to south like all the great rivers in the world—except the Nile—turns around and begins to flow from south to north. That was happening in my dream, and I saw the river rising to where it began to touch the tips of my father's toes, and soon his toes were underwater, and then his feet, and then his ankles, and I knew that if someone didn't cut him down soon he would be underwater altogether, but I was too far away to reach him. It was as though my own feet were anchored in concrete, and I couldn't move. Then I saw that my feet were actually stuck in mud, in a kind of quicksand on the riverbank, and that I was sinking too as the tide came in. I was crying, “Stop! Stop!” I was trying to stop the tide. And there was a breeze, and the breeze was spinning my father's body in it, spinning him first one way, so his face was toward me, and then the other way, so that all I could see was the back of his head. And the wind was blowing the skirts of the long red dress he was wearing, and now I know that we do dream in color, because the dress he was wearing was a bright, bright red, the color of blood, and now the water had reached the hem of his skirts, staining them an even darker red that was almost black, and that was when I knew we were both drowning, my father in the red dress, and myself. And I cried out, “Degenerate! Fairy!” Because it was all his fault that this was happening to me. And then I woke up. I saw something else today that wasn't a dream. I saw Otto, and I know now that he is still following me, and has been trying to follow me all along. It was on Madison Avenue, not many blocks from Fiona's hotel, where I'd made one last attempt to see her, to try to explain my dilemma to her, that I just couldn't do what she wants me to do with Uncle Lenny. But she wouldn't see me. She says she never wants to see me again, and if I try to call her from the lobby again she'll have her number changed. She says I broke my promise to her, and of course she's right, I did. Sometimes I think I've let everybody down. But it's hard, very hard, on me to know I've let her down. But anyway, there he was—Otto. I was crossing 58th Street, and I just happened to look back, and there he was, about ten steps behind me. He tried to duck into a storefront so I wouldn't see him, but I saw him, and I know he knows I saw him. So my mother didn't keep her promise to me after all. It was the only thing I asked for for my birthday, and she double-crossed me, just the way Fiona said she would. Perhaps Fiona's right. Perhaps I've always been too dependent on my mother, and that's what my trouble has always been. But without her to depend on, who is there left? My life seems to be full of broken promises now. Sometimes there seems to be nothing left for me to live for. I told that to Fiona, and I know I was crying like a baby, and she said, “Well, if that's the case, perhaps you should do what your father did.” That's how little she cares for me. And I said, “Perhaps I will,” and she said, “At least that would show that you can follow through on something,” and then she hung up on me. And so perhaps I will. But if I did, would that show her anything at all? It's so hard, so hard. I feel that everybody has abandoned me now … Father … Mother … Fiona … everybody that ever mattered, or ever ought to matter. If I did that, would anybody really care? I just don't think so. It's so quiet in this house now, but I'm afraid to go back to sleep because I dreamed I saw my father hanging in a bright red dress … and I'm afraid I'll never be able to dream of anything else again
.