Read Online The Rothman Scandal by Stephen Birmingham - Free Book Online Page B

carrying a bunch of long-stemmed red roses in her arms as she would a baby. And they drank at places like the Stork Club and the old El Morocco with its zebra-striped banquettes and silver palm trees, and, oh, how innocent and free they had all been then! Lenny could remember ordering his very first martini—well under age, of course, but so sophisticated—and saying to the waiter, “Very dry, please—no water at all,” and the laughter that order had provoked among his friends who all had names like Gloria and Bobo and Tommy and Dickie. When they were poor, they ate at the Automat or Childs, and when they were feeling a little richer they ate at Longchamps, or took tea at a wonderful little bonbonnerie on Fifth Avenue called Rosemarie de Paris, with its heavenly chocolate-peppermint smell, where waitresses in black uniforms with starched white lace caps and aprons passed the French pastry trays. It was here he learned that the only time it was polite to point was when it was at French pastry, and that it was considered rude and gluttonish to point at more than two, though Lenny could have eaten the entire tray because he was often hungry then, even though he smoked expensive Murad cigarettes. Nobody had any money then, and yet they went to all these places. There was a spirit of tomorrow-we-may-die during those war years, and so everyone wanted restlessly to live and love to the fullest, to the hilt, and relish life while it lasted. At the glamorous Cotillion Room, the cover charge was one dollar, considered steep, but if you tipped the captain another dollar he gave you a ringside table, which was worth it. And at the Stork Club drinks were fifty cents, unless you knew Sherm Billingsley, in which case they were often free. After a night at the Stork, you grabbed for Walter Winchell’s column to see if your name was in it, and it sometimes was. The Ritz-Carlton was the most expensive hotel in town—seven dollars a night for a room! No wonder they went everywhere, and Lenny could remember many a rollicking, squandered night at the Ritz, and waking up at dawn, luxuriously hung over. Or, for the night, they might all go downtown for jazz at Eddie Condon’s, or uptown because, in those days, you really could go to Harlem in ermine and pearls. And there was one little club up there, Lenny remembered, the Tic-Toe Club, where the most beautiful black boys danced naked on the stage. And, at the end of the night, you might all take the subway down to the Staten Island Ferry—over and back for a nickel—and watch the sun rise over Brooklyn Heights, and as the sun’s first rays caught the windowpanes of the houses on Brooklyn Heights, there was such a sense of harmony and lyricism, modulated chords of domesticity and care and love, as windows opened and white curtains fluttered out. Gone, all gone, le temps perdu . But there was kindness then, and civility, and gentleness, and people you hardly knew would lend you a dollar for your cabfare home, long ago when the world was young and green and full of promises and hope.
    Lenny had grown used to the way it had all changed. He had become hardened to the new cruelty that had replaced the old kindness, and he had learned to play by the tough new rules that had been imposed on this once-graceful business they were all in. Grace was out. Greed was in, and it was Wall Street that had changed it all. Wall Street, and the gnomes who determined interest rates, governed the city now. It was Wall Street that had silenced the church bells on Sunday mornings, and replaced them with the scream of ambulance and police sirens. But Lenny had grown used to it, taken it all in his stride, and if the new rules meant that only Number One was going to look out for Number One, so be it. He was a veteran now. He was used to being resented and envied for the mysterious power he wielded with the Rothmans. After all, he had survived in the company longer than anyone on