Trump Tower Read online

  She shook her head. “It comes and goes. The first few days I couldn’t stop. By the second week I was only crying twenty-three hours a day. Now . . .” she tried to smile . . . “now I’m only crying when I’m awake.”

  He motioned toward the empty showroom. “When do you expect everyone to come back to work?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t?”

  “My husband’s cousin . . . the business was started by my husband’s grandfather,” she explained. “He was a shoemaker in Italy. He left the business to his two sons. They left the business to their two sons. A few years ago my husband, Mark . . . Marco was his real name . . . he bought out half his cousin’s share, so he controlled it. But Mark allowed his cousin . . . his name is Johnny . . . to work here. Johnny is now saying that the business should be his, and he wants to take it back. The staff . . . they don’t think I can run it and are siding with him. They’ve left and gone away.”

  Belasco stared at her, then sat down. “Are you going to run it?”

  She sighed, “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know anything about the business, except what Mark told me. I don’t even know if there’s any money left in it. Johnny might have already stolen everything out of it.”

  “Stolen it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took a deep breath. “I think the first thing you need is to get someone in here who can look at the books and tell you what’s what.”

  Her eyes welled up again. “Be my guest.”

  “No, not me . . .” He leaned forward, “Who’s your accountant?”

  “I don’t know. I presume we have one, but . . .”

  “There must be records somewhere. Isn’t there anybody who works here . . . or used to . . . you can trust?”

  “Mark kept everything to himself. I was never a part of . . .” Now she started to cry again.

  “Please . . .” He wanted to make her understand, “It’s going to be all right.”

  “I feel like . . .” Tears poured down her cheeks . . . “I feel like a bird with a broken wing.”

  He hesitated, then slowly reached over and put his hand on hers.

  She pulled it away and started crying again.

  After a while he said, quietly, “I wish there was something I could do.”

  She stared at him with big, red eyes and repeated what she’d said to him earlier. “Can you give my husband back to me?”

  HE TOOK the elevator up to twenty-four—a bird with a broken wing, he kept hearing her say—and crossed over to the residents’ elevator.

  The door opened, the elevator operator Alex said, “Hello, sir,” and Belasco stepped in to find Odette.

  “Monsieur Belasco,” the elegantly dressed ninety-three-year-old said, “Quel plaisir de vous voir.” What a pleasure to see you.

  He smiled at her, took her right hand and almost kissed it. “You are earlier than usual this morning,” he said in French.

  “It’s Friday,” she continued in French, “my busiest morning.” Now she leaned forward and, so that Alex did not hear, asked quietly, “Did you hear the news?”

  “What news, Madame?”

  She whispered, “Michael Jackson is dead.”

  “Ah yes . . . I heard,” Belasco said.

  “I used to see him here all the time.”

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her that Jackson was dead quite a while now. “He lived on sixty-six. Next door to Mr. Trump.”

  “Poor Michael.” She shook her head. “How did he stand the noise?”

  “Mr. Jackson?”

  “No, Mr. Trump. Do you know how many times he told me, ‘I like you so much’?”

  “Mr. Trump?”

  “No, poor Michael. He said he’d seen my movies. He said he thought I was the most beautiful star in the French cinema.”

  “I agree.”

  “You know,” she nodded proudly, “he used to let me ride up in the service lift with him. I was the only one. He hated anyone seeing him bandaged like that. His face and all. But whenever he saw me, he would say, would you like to ride with me? He even learned to say it in French. I was the only one.”

  The elevator doors opened on the ground floor and Alex turned to Odette. “Madame.”

  “I was the only one,” she said in French to Belasco. Then, in English, she asked Alex, “Please don’t tell anyone about Michael Jackson.” She got out.

  “I won’t,” Alex promised.

  Belasco followed her out of the elevator.

  Odette walked into the residents’ lobby and pointed to the small, unmarked door next to the concierge’s desk. “May I?”

  “Yes, of course,” Belasco opened the door for her, then helped her down some steps into the tiny fire control office. He said, “Excuse us, please” to the man sitting there watching a bank of monitors, then opened another small door, this one leading into the atrium.

  Odette stepped out, looked at the Trump Grill to her right, then spotted some tourists standing nearby taking photos. She walked straight up to them and greeted them, as if they should have recognized her.

  Belasco returned to his office, took his Rolodex, found the card he was looking for and dialed the number.

  A woman answered, “Ronald Rose and Company, how may I direct your call?”

  “Is Ronnie there, please, it’s Pierre Belasco.”

  She put him through.

  “Pierre?” Rose said, “Audit or refund?”

  “Neither,” Belasco said. “A favor. Have you got a junior person in the office who could run through some books and figure out where a company stands?”

  “Trump?”

  “No. There’s a company in the Tower . . . the owner died, and the widow is up to her neck in problems. I thought if someone could stop by . . .”

  “When?”

  “Monday? After lunch? Say, three?”

  “Yep,” Rose said. “I’ll have someone there at three.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who do we bill?”

  “For the time being . . . me.”

  “Still pretending to be the Red Cross?”

  “Just trying to help a little bird fly again.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Thanks,” and hung up.

  He addressed a handwritten note to Mrs. Battelli. “I have arranged for my personal accountant to send someone by Monday at 3. I hope he will be able to help you make sense of your books.” He signed it, “Pierre,” looked at that for a long time, then added, “Belasco.”

  He asked one of the concierges to take it up to the nineteenth floor.

  When a note came back that simply said, “Thank you. Rebecca,” he asked himself why she hadn’t signed it with her last name.

  That’s when he realized he’d completely forgotten to mention to her that Scarpe Pietrasanta was behind in the rent.

  10

  It was one of those unforgettable evenings.

  Antoine de Maisonneuve, the interior designer whose fortieth birthday had been celebrated with cover stories this month in Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar, was having his party.

  His long-time partner, Bobby Baldwyn, who’d once been called the great black hope of American ballet, rented the Beacon Theater on Broadway at West Seventy-Fourth Street, removed all the seats, leveled the floor so that it didn’t slope and put in tables for 250 people.

  Alain Ducas created the appetizers and Joel Robuchon cooked the meal.

  A floor-to-ceiling ice sculpture portrait of de Maisonneuve sat in the middle of the wonderful Art Deco room, where everyone who has ever been anybody in the world of rock has played. From the Stones, Jerry Garcia and Aerosmith, to Michael Jackson, James Taylor, Radiohead and Queen—they all appeared on the Beacon stage. So has Bill Clinton. So has the Dalai Lama.

  Now the stage was set with forty chairs and forty music stands to accommodate the string section of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. In front of that was a grand piano where, for seventy-fiv
e minutes, Elton John played his heart out. The music ended with “Happy Birthday,” a duet by Elton and Madonna, who wheeled out a twelve-layer black currant mousse and marzipan cake created by Anne-Marie Pradel-Besson, who’d been flown in from Paris just for this.

  “I could not eat another thing,” Tina Lee Cove said to Donatella Versace. Karl Lagerfeld blew them both kisses and went to say goodnight to the birthday boy, who was telling Wendi Murdoch, Rupert’s wife, that she looked more beautiful than ever. Charlize Theron held on to Mike Bloomberg’s arm as he asked Corice Arman if she’d had enough to eat. “Anyone for a late night snack?” the mayor joked.

  Diane Kruger groaned at the thought of more food, but Sarah Jessica Parker pointed to her husband, Matthew Broderick. “He does killer Eggs Benedict. Anyone up for breakfast?”

  Elton kissed Lizzy Tisch, who was talking to Brian Williams and Alicia Melendez, while Daphne Guinness was chatting with Dylan Lauren.

  Marc Jacobs was saying goodbye to Christina Hendricks, who was kissing Spike Lee goodbye, while David Beckham was telling a dirty joke to Kate Moss.

  Across the room, Victoria Beckham never took her eyes off her husband, all the time assuring Neil Patrick Harris that he was better looking than Nacho Figeras, who happened to be standing right there, insisting that she was wrong.

  Zeke Gimbel was explaining to Katie Couric how he was putting together a mega studio deal and bragged that he would soon own the world.

  “Why do you want to own the world?” Couric asked.

  “That’s what Trump wanted to know when I mentioned the deal to him. You know what I told him?”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Donald, when you own the world, you get laid a lot.’”

  Couric looked at him askance.

  “And you know what he said to me?” Zeke nodded several times, “He said that when he was single and running around with some of the most beautiful women on the planet, absolutely gorgeous girls, he used to get laid all the time. He said, ‘Zeke, I didn’t have to own the world.’ And I said to him, ‘Donald, of course not, because you already owned the air rights.’”

  Couric smiled politely.

  Not far away, Carson Haynes asked David Cove, “Need a ride home?”

  “Nah,” David, dressed all in black and wearing his square black sunglasses, grinned proudly, “I got us Trump’s Phantom.”

  “Trump’s Phantom?”

  “Big white mother.”

  He had to know, “How’d you arrange that?”

  “Out-putted him yesterday at Pebble Beach. That’s why he’s not here tonight. He’s playing a charity thing with Tiger.”

  “You beat him out of his Rolls Royce?”

  “For the night. But y’all gotta know I’ll have it forever as long as he’s willing to give me four strokes.”

  “What?”

  “Damn right.”

  “You have the nerve to take four strokes from him?” Carson reminded David, “You play scratch . . . Trump’s a two.”

  “Y’all have a problem with that?”

  Carson mimicked David’s accent, “Y’all got any friends left?”

  David laughed, “At four, only Trump. At five? Not a one.”

  Carson shook his head in amazement, patted David on the shoulder, and went to find Alicia, who was suddenly standing too close to the French soccer star Thierry Henry.

  Before long, David motioned to Tina, and the two of them made their exit. Just as they did, the white Rolls pulled up to the curb. David signaled to Harold, the driver, to stay put and opened the back door himself for Tina. She got in, and he got in, and Harold asked, “Home?”

  “Home,” David said, then sat all the way back and smiled at Tina. “Y’all gotta say that was a reasonable evening.”

  Harold pulled into traffic.

  “Alicia is such a bitch,” she said, taking her iPhone out of her bag. “Did you see the way she was looking at that polo player from Argentina?”

  “You mean that Figeras kid?”

  “Not him. The other polo player from Argentina.”

  “What other polo player from Argentina?” He pulled his own iPhone out of his pocket and turned it on.

  “The one screwing Felipa.”

  “Who’s Felipa?”

  “Felipa Guillermo? The one who inherited her mother’s estate? Two billion bucks worth? She’s forty-one, and her polo player is twenty-two.”

  He shook his head, as if to say he didn’t know who she was talking about.

  She looked at him. “Red Chanel dress with those plastic things hanging out?”

  “Oh. They’re from Argentina?”

  “No, they’re from Dr. Howard Rosenberg of Hartsdale.” Tina’s e-mails clicked in and began downloading. “Marlboros?”

  Now his e-mails also clicked in. “Nah.” He scrolled down. “Felipa what?” Then he asked, “Copper wire?”

  “Guillermo,” she said. “No copper. How about iPads?”

  “iPads?” He looked down his list of e-mails. “Ah . . . Malaysia? They’re fake.”

  “Just like Felipa’s.”

  “How ‘bout some Chianti?”

  She continued scrawling through her e-mails. “Italy or Chile?”

  “Doesn’t say.” He read through the note. “Looks like a thousand pallets, forty-eight cases to a pallet.” It only took him a few seconds to do the calculations in his head. “Two-point-three million and change. Four and a quarter a bottle. Four-twenty. Something like that.”

  “The Turk?”

  “Himself. So it must be Chile. Distressed in Gib.”

  She checked her watch. “The sun’s already up over the Bosphorus.”

  David nodded and speed-dialed a number in Istanbul.

  On the other end a phone rang three times before a man with a gruff voice asked, in Turkish, “Who is it?”

  “Asil?” David said, putting his phone on speaker. “Tina and I have decided we’re thirsty.”

  He answered in good English, “How thirsty?”

  “What can we do at . . . say, three-ninety a bottle?”

  “Get thirstier. I’m looking for four-twenty-two.”

  “It’s Chile, right?”

  “It’s Chile, right . . . except that everything is labeled product of Italy.”

  David looked at Tina. “Three-ninety-two.”

  Asil said, “Four-twenty-five.”

  “Y’all just said four-twenty-two.”

  “So now you have to come up to four-twenty-five.”

  “How about you come down to three-ninety-two?”

  “For the beautiful Tina? All right, my friend, for her I’ll come down to four-twenty-two.”

  Tina leaned toward the phone. “The beautiful Tina used to love you.”

  He answered, “If the beautiful Tina will leave cowboy David for Asil, a man of infinite intrigue, I will come down to four-fifteen. But that’s my best best.”

  “Intrigue means what, in Turkish,” David wanted to know, “bullshit?”

  “I will disregard him,” Asil said. “But tell me this, how much does good Italian Chianti sell for in New York? Fifteen dollars a bottle? Maybe twenty?”

  “Good Italian Chianti that isn’t from Italy?” David said, “That’s why I’m thinking three-ninety-three.”

  “I’ll go down to four-eleven, but the offer is only open for fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m in a car.”

  “I’m in the bath.”

  “Give me thirty.”

  “Ten.”

  “Okay, fifteen.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  “Y’all don’t forget to use soap.”

  As soon as David opened the door to their forty-fifth-floor duplex, Tina kicked off her three-inch spike Louboutin heels—“My feet are numb”—and let her black lamé dress fall to the floor. David took off his dinner jacket, dropped it on top of Tina’s dress, then kicked off his shoes and took off his pants too.

  She walked down the hall, wearing only a bl
ack lace half-bra, a black silk thong and her mother’s pearls.

  He followed her in his black dress shirt, black underpants and black socks.

  In the corner room that looked toward Central Park and Fifth Avenue—the one they used as an office—Tina snapped on one of their four laptops, lit up the ninety-six-inch flat-screen hanging on the far wall, but left the rest of the lights off.

  New York beyond the windows was still wide awake.

  Somewhere not far away, an ambulance raced by with its siren blazing.

  She logged on to three of the intranet sites they used, saw several bulletin boards come up in various sections of the huge screen, sat down and started sending e-mails.

  David checked his watch and was about to dial Istanbul when Tina announced, “Three-ninety.”

  He said. “Keep fishing.”

  She highlighted every bulletin board. “There’s nothing . . . he’s the only one . . .”

  Going over the various sections of the screens, David hoped to find someone who would be interested in taking this distressed cargo from them for a few cents more per bottle than they had to pay Asil for it. But no one seemed to be out there.

  “Where’s Shithead in LA?” He asked.

  She reminded him, “He’s never around after eight or nine at night.”

  “No one in Italy? Look for France. Spain? Try Germany.”

  “No one.” She kept typing messages and sending them to all of their contacts around the world.

  “Where’s Boris, or whatever his name is, in the Ukraine who took the cigarettes last time?”

  She typed a few lines on her keyboard, looked up at the big screen, waited for a moment, then said, “No one’s home.”

  David shook his head, “Well . . . it was worth a shot,” and put the call through to Istanbul.

  The line rang once before Asil answered it. “You’re late.”

  “We’re trying to off-load this paint thinner for y’all, but even at four . . .”

  Suddenly Tina grabbed his shoulder and pointed to the screen. Someone in Brazil was willing to pay $3.94.

  David told Asil, “I mean . . . three-ninety is really where the market is,” and motioned to Tina to get the Brazilian to bid higher.

  “Four-ten,” Asil said. “No way I can go lower.”