Read Online Madness Under the Royal Palms by Laurence Leamer - Free Book Online

month. He could have pled out and avoided prison time by accepting a guilty verdict to a major felony and paying restitution, but he could not have a felony on his record and Maria going after him in a civil suit. In addition to this, his problems with the IRS and child support made it seem as if his life was crumbling.
    Palm Beach was only sixty miles to the north, a haven protected from this unseemly Miami world that had so abused him. That was his father’s world, a world of luxury and privilege where he belonged, not in the vulgar, mean streets of Miami. He had no way to get there, but he was an actor and there would be a role somewhere to take him where he belonged.

5
Hope Is Not a Diamond
     
    I had only been in Palm Beach a few months when I was invited to a cocktail party given by Mildred “Brownie” McLean in the party room at Trump Plaza, a twin-tiered condominium looking out on the Intracoastal Waterway from West Palm Beach.
    The guests were an eclectic group; everyone from leading socialites, members of the old establishment, and an intriguing group of artists, PR people, antiques dealers, and interior decorators. The victuals included mini sandwiches and vegetable trays from Publix, and jug wine that also came from the local supermarket. There was only one aging bartender for the large crowd, a nearsighted man who is a fixture at Palm Beach parties.
    Brownie came sweeping up to me, her words cascading into each other, and started introducing me around as an author, using superlatives that would have made Tolstoy blush. Brownie kept her age as secret as a nuclear code, but by the time I met her, she was almost seventy. Yet, there were still vestiges of the youthful blonde not only admired for her beauty, but loved for her joyous spirit. In his book Ball, William Wright wrote about Brownie in the early 1970s, when she was putting on the celebrated “April in Paris” ball in New York City, “people—and many of them the right people—don’t just like her, they adore her.” The author described Brownie in her heavy black eye makeup contrasted against her white blond hair as looking like “an albino raccoon.” She wore pronounced makeup so that her appearance would be unmistakable, but if she looked like an animal, it was more a Cheshire cat.
    In her public mode, Brownie has a subtle, pleasurable demeanor, as if she had just heard a joke intelligible only to her. She allows herself to be gently petted, but never deeply touched. Champagne is her water. There are some who assume that this woman is a silly Pollyanna so self-absorbed and nonobservant that she notices nothing around her, but the opposite is true. If her catlike eyes cannot quite see through walls, they see to the heart and soul of any matter that affects her.
    Brownie has rarely found a party she did not like. She is a philosopher of frivolity. She finds wit where others hear only dullness, amusement where others experience largely tedium.
    The worst she ever says about anyone is, “I do not know her,” and that was what she said about Barbara Wainscott. The comment could be taken either as a bald statement of fact, or brutally dismissive, and she usually prefers to leave the matter ambiguous. In Barbara’s case, she had known her since the sixties, and her meaning was clearly the latter.
    Brownie is a legendary figure, not only in Palm Beach, but in the haute world of New York and Europe. Wherever she goes, from Claridge’s or Ascot in England, to the Ritz in Paris, people greet her with delight. Her life on the island goes back to the most glorious days of the fifties, and she evokes that era the way nobody else does.
    Brownie has been married to two wealthy heirs, first George Schrafft, whom she divorced, and then the ultrawealthy John “Jock” McLean II, who left her a widow. By rights, she should have inherited a fortune. The rumor I heard was that she had been terribly profligate and had fallen on hard times. Living in West Palm