The Stars Shine Down (15 page)

“Great,” Lara said. “Now we’d better get hold of Stanton Fielding and Andrew Burton and see if they’re interested in working on the project.”

Howard Keller could not believe the news. “I heard what happened,” he said. “You conned her! That’s incredible. You don’t
have
a daughter!”

“They need this project,” Lara said. “This was the only way I could think of to change their minds.”

Bill Whitman was listening. “There’ll be hell to pay if they ever find out.”

In January construction was completed on a new building on East Sixty-third Street. It was a forty-five-story apartment building, and Lara reserved the duplex penthouse for herself. The rooms were large, and the apartment had terraces that covered a full block. She brought in a top decorator to do the apartment. There was a housewarming for a hundred people.

“All it lacks is a man,” one of the lady guests said cattily.

And Lara thought of Philip Adler and wondered where he was and what he was doing.

Lara and Howard Keller were in the middle of a discussion when Bill Whitman came into the office.

“Hi, boss. Got a minute?”

Lara looked up from her desk. “Just about, Bill. What’s the problem?”

“My wife.”

“If you’re having marital difficulties…”

“It’s not that. She thinks we ought to go away for a while on vacation. Maybe go to Paris for a few weeks.”
Lara frowned. “Paris? We’re in the middle of half a dozen jobs.”

“I know, but I’ve been working long hours lately, and I don’t get to see much of my wife. You know what she said to me this morning? She said, ‘Bill, if you got a promotion and a nice raise, you wouldn’t have to work so hard.’” He smiled.

Lara sat back in her chair, studying him. “You aren’t due for a raise until next year.”

Whitman shrugged. “Who knows what can happen in a year? We might run into problems with that Queens deal, for instance. You know, old Edith Benson might hear something that would make her change her mind. Right?”

Lara sat very still. “I see.”

Bill Whitman got to his feet. “Think about it, and let me know.”

Lara forced a smile. “Yes.”

She watched him walk out of her office, her face grim.

“Jesus,” Keller said. “What was that all about?”

“It’s called blackmail.”

The following day Lara had lunch with Paul Martin.

Lara said, “Paul, I have a problem. I’m not sure how to handle it.” She told him about her conversation with Bill Whitman.

“Do you think he’ll really go back to the old lady?” Paul Martin asked.

“I don’t know. But if he does, I could get in a lot of trouble with the Housing Commission.”

Paul shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s probably bluffing.”

Lara sighed. “I hope so.”

“How would you like to go to Reno?” Paul asked.

“I’d love to, but I can’t get away.”

“I’m not asking you to get away. I’m asking if you’d like to buy a hotel and casino there.”

Lara studied him. “Are you serious?”

“I got word that one of the hotels is going to lose its license. The place is a gold mine. When the news gets out, everyone is going to be after it. The hotel’s going on auction, but I think I can fix it for you to get it.”

Lara hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m pretty heavily committed. Howard Keller says the banks won’t lend me any more until I can pay off some loans.”

“You don’t have to go to a bank.”

“Then where…?”

“Junk bonds. A lot of Wall Street firms offer them. There are savings and loan companies. You put up five percent equity, and a savings and loan company will put up sixtyfive percent in high-yield notes. That leaves thirty percent uncovered. You can get that from a foreign bank that invests in casinos. You’ve got choices—Switzerland, Germany, Japan. There are half a dozen banks that will put up the thirty percent in commercial notes.”

Lara was beginning to get excited. “It sounds great. Do you really think you can get the hotel for me?”

Paul grinned. “It will be your Christmas present.”

“You’re wonderful. Why are you so good to me?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” he teased. But he knew the answer. He was obsessed with her. Lara made him feel young again, and she made everything exciting for him.
I never want to lose you,
he thought.

Keller was waiting for Lara when she walked into the office.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “There was a two o’clock meeting that…”

“Tell me about junk bonds, Howard. We’ve never dealt with them. How are bonds rated?”

“Well, at the top you have Triple A. That would be a company like AT and T. Down the ladder you have Double A, Single A, BAA, and at the bottom of the ladder, Double B—those are the junk bonds. An investment bond will pay nine percent. A junk bond will pay fourteen percent. Why do you ask?”

Lara told him.

“A
casino,
Lara? Jesus! Paul Martin is behind this, isn’t he?”

“No, Howard. If I go ahead with this,
I’m
behind it. Did we get an answer on our offer on the Battery Park property?”

“Yes. She won’t sell to us.”

“The property is up for sale, isn’t it?”

“In a way.”

“Stop talking in circles.”

“It’s owned by a doctor’s widow, Eleanor Royce. Every real estate developer in town has been bidding on that property.”

“Have we been outbid?”

“It isn’t that. The old lady isn’t interested in money. She’s loaded.”

“What
is
she interested in?”

“She wants some kind of monument to her husband. Apparently she thinks she was married to Albert Schweitzer. She wants to keep his flame burning. She doesn’t want her property turned into anything crass or commercial. I hear Steve Murchison has been trying to talk her into settling.”

“Oh?”

Lara sat there quietly for a full minute. When she spoke, she said, “Who’s your doctor, Howard?”

“What?”

“Who’s your doctor?”

“Seymour Bennett. He’s chief of staff at Midtown Hospital.”

The following morning Lara’s attorney, Terry Hill, was sitting in the office of Dr. Seymour Bennett.

“My secretary told me that you wanted to see me urgently and that it has nothing to do with a medical problem.”

“In a sense,” Terry Hill said, “it does concern a medical problem, Dr. Bennett. I represent an investment group that wants to put up a nonprofit clinic. We want to be able to take care of those unfortunate people who can’t afford regular medical care.”

“That’s a splendid idea,” Dr. Bennett said. “What can I do to help you?”

Terry Hill told him.

The following day Dr. Bennett was having tea in the home of Eleanor Royce.

“They’ve asked me to approach you on behalf of this group, Mrs. Royce. They want to build a beautiful clinic, and they want to name it after your late husband. They visualize it as sort of a shrine to him.”

Mrs. Royce’s face lit up. “They do?”

They discussed the group’s plans for an hour, and the end of that time Mrs. Royce said, “George would have loved this. You tell them that they have a deal.”

Construction began six months later. When it was completed, it was gigantic. The entire square block was filled with huge apartment buildings, an enormous shopping mall, and a theater complex. In a remote corner of the property was a small one-story brick building. A simple sign over the door read: GEORGE ROYCE MEDICAL CLINIC.

O
n Christmas Day Lara stayed home. She had been invited to a dozen parties, but Paul Martin was going to drop by. “I have to be with Nina and the kids today,” he had explained, “but I want to come by and see you.”

She wondered what Philip Adler was doing on this Christmas Day.

It was a Currier & Ives postcard kind of day. New York was blanketed in a beautiful white snowfall, wrapped in silence. When Paul Martin arrived, he had a shopping bag full of gifts for Lara.

“I had to stop at the office to pick these up,” he said.
So his wife wouldn’t know.

“You give me so much, Paul. You don’t have to bring anything.”

“I wanted to. Open them up now.”

Lara was touched by his eagerness to see her reaction.

The gifts were thoughtful and expensive. A necklace from Cartier’s, scarves from Hermes, books from Rizzoli, an antique carriage clock, and a small white envelope. Lara opened it. It read: “Cameron Reno Hotel & Casino” in large block letters. She looked up at him, in surprise. “I have the hotel?”

He nodded confidently. “You will have. The bidding starts next week. You’re going to have fun with it,” Paul Martin predicted.

“I don’t know anything about running a casino.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll put some professionals in to manage it for you. The hotel, you can handle yourself.”

“I don’t know how to thank you. You do so much for me.”

He took her hands in his. “There isn’t anything in the world that I wouldn’t do for you. Remember that.”

“I will,” she said solemnly.

He was looking at his watch. “I have to get back home. I wish…”He hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Never mind. Merry Christmas, Lara.”

“Merry Christmas, Paul.”

She went to the window and looked out. The sky had become a delicate curtain of dancing snowflakes. Restless, Lara walked to the radio and turned it on. An announcer was saying, “…and now, for its holiday program, the Boston Symphony Orchestra presents Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. Five in E flat, with Philip Adler, soloist.”

Lara listened with her eyes, seeing him at the piano, handsome and elegant. When the music ended, she thought,
I’ve got to see him again.

Bill Whitman was one of the best construction supervisors in the business. He had risen through the ranks and was in
great demand. He worked steadily and earned good money, but he was dissatisfied. For years he had watched builders reaping enormous fortunes while he got nothing but a salary.
In a way,
he thought,
they’re making their money off of me. The owner gets the cake; I get the crumbs.
But the day Lara Cameron had gone before the community board, everything changed. She had lied to get the board’s approval, and that lie could destroy her.
If I went to the board and told them the truth, she’d be out of business.

But Bill Whitman had no intention of doing that. He had a better plan. He intended to use what had happened as lever-age. The boss lady was going to give him anything he asked for. He could sense from their first meeting at which he had asked for a promotion and raise that she was going to give in. She had no choice.
I’ll start small,
Bill Whitman thought happily,
and then I’ll begin squeezing.

Two days after Christmas, work began again on the Eastside Plaza project. Whitman looked around at the huge site and thought,
This one’s going to be a real moneymaker. Only this time, I’m going to cash in on it, too.

The site was crowded with heavy equipment. Cranes were digging into the earth and lifting tons of it into waiting trucks. A crane wielding a giant saw-toothed scoop bucket seemed to be stuck. The huge arm hung suspended high in midair. Whitman strode toward the cab, under the huge metal bucket.

“Hey, Jesse,” he called. “What’s the matter up there?”

The man in the cab mumbled something that Whitman could not hear.

Whitman moved closer. “What?”

Everything happened in a split second. A chain slipped, and the huge metal bucket came crashing down on Whitman, smashing him to the ground. Men came running toward the body, but there was nothing to be done.

“The safety brake slipped,” the operator explained later. “Gee, I feel really awful. I liked Bill a lot.”

When she heard the news, Lara immediately telephoned Paul Martin. “Did you hear about Bill Whitman?”

“Yes. It was on television.”

“Paul, you didn’t…?”

He laughed. “Don’t go getting any crazy ideas. You’ve been seeing too many movies. Remember, the good guys always win in the end.”

And Lara wondered,
Am I one of the good guys?

There were more than a dozen bidders for the Reno hotel.

“When do I bid?” Lara asked Paul.

“You don’t. Not until I tell you. Let the others jump in first.”

The bidding was secret, and the bids were sealed, to be opened on the following Friday. By Wednesday Lara still had not made a bid. She telephoned Paul Martin.

“Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll tell you when.”

They stayed in touch by phone several times a day.

At 5:00
P.M
. , one hour before the bidding was to close, Lara received a phone call.

“Now! The high bid is a hundred and twenty million. I want you to go five million over it.”

Lara gasped. “But if I do that, I’ll lose money on the deal.”

“Trust me,” Paul said. “After you get the hotel and start redoing it, you can cut corners on the changes. They’ll all be endorsed by the supervising engineer. You’ll make up the five million and then some.”

The following day Lara was notified that hers was the winning bid.

Now Lara and Keller were on their way to Reno.

The hotel was called the Reno Palace. It was large and sumptuous, with fifteen hundred rooms and a huge, glittering casino that was empty. Lara and Howard Keller were being escorted through the casino by a man named Tony Wilkie.

“The people who owned this got a bum deal,” Wilkie said.

“What kind of bum deal?” Keller asked.

“Well, it seems that a couple of the boys were pocketing a little money from the cash cage…”

“Skimming,” Keller interjected.

“Yeah. Of course, the owners didn’t know anything about it.”

“Of course not.”

“But someone blew the whistle, and the Gaming Commission pulled out the rug. It’s too bad. It was a very profitable operation.”

“I know.” Keller had already studied the books.

When the tour of inspection was completed, and Lara and Howard were alone, she said, “Paul was right. This is a gold mine.” She saw the expression on Howard’s face. “What’s the matter?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t like us getting involved in anything like this.”

“What’s ‘anything like this’? It’s a cash cow, Howard.”

“Who’s going to run the casino?”

“We’ll find people,” Lara said evasively.

“Where from? The Girl Scouts? It takes gamblers to run an operation like this. I don’t know any, do you?”

Lara was silent.

“I’ll bet Paul Martin does.”

“Leave him out of this,” Lara said.

“I’d like to, and I’d like to leave you out of it. I don’t think this is such a great idea.”

“You didn’t think the Queens project was a great idea either, did you? Or the shopping center on Houston Street. But they’re making money, aren’t they?”

“Lara, I never said they weren’t good deals. All I said was that I think we’re moving too fast. You’re swallowing up everything in sight, but you haven’t digested anything yet.”

Lara patted his cheek. “Relax.”

The members of the Gaming Commission received Lara with elaborate courtesy.

“We don’t often meet a beautiful young woman in here,” the chairman said. “It brightens up our day.”

Lara did look beautiful. She was wearing a Donna Karan beige wool suit, with a cream-colored silk blouse and, for good luck, one of the scarves Paul had given her for Christmas. She smiled. “Thank you.”

“What can we do for you?” one of the gaming commissioners asked. They all knew perfectly well what they could do for her.

“I’m here because I would like to do something for Reno,” Lara said earnestly. “I would like to give it the biggest, most beautiful hotel in Nevada. I’d like to add five stories to the Reno Palace, and put up a large convention center to attract more tourists here to gamble.”

The members of the board glanced at one another. The chairman said, “I think something like that would have a very beneficial effect on the city. Of course, our job is to make sure that an operation like this would be run completely aboveboard.”

“I’m not exactly an escaped convict,” Lara smiled.

They chuckled at her little joke. “We know your record, Miss Cameron, and it is admirable. However, you’ve had no experience in running a casino.”

“That’s true,” Lara admitted. “On the other hand, I’m
sure it will be easy to find fine, qualified employees who will meet the approval of this commission. I would certainly welcome your guidance.”

One of the members of the commission spoke up. “As far as the financing is concerned, can you guarantee…?”

The chairman interrupted. “That’s all right, Tom, Miss Cameron has submitted the financials on it. I’ll see that you each get a copy.”

Lara sat there, waiting.

The chairman said, “I can’t promise anything at this moment, Miss Cameron, but I think I’m safe in saying that I don’t see any obstacles to your being granted a license.”

Lara beamed. “That’s wonderful. I’d like to get moving as quickly as possible.”

“I’m afraid things don’t move quite that fast here. There will be a one-month waiting period before we can give you a definite answer.”

Lara was dismayed. “A month?”

“Yes. We have a bit of checking to do.”

“I understand,” Lara said. “That will be fine.”

There was a music store in the hotel’s shopping complex. In the window was a large poster of Philip Adler, advertising his new compact disc.

Lara was not interested in the music. She bought the CD for Philip’s photograph on the back of the case.

On their way back to New York, Lara said, “Howard, what do you know about Philip Adler?”

“Just what everybody else knows. He’s probably the top concert pianist in the world today. He plays with the finest symphony orchestras. I read somewhere that he just set up a foundation for scholarships for minority musicians in inner cities.”

“What’s it called?”

“The Philip Adler Foundation, I think.”

“I’d like to make a contribution,” Lara said. “Send them a check for ten thousand dollars in my name.”

Keller looked at her in surprise. “I thought you didn’t care for classical music.”

“I’m starting to get interested in it,” Lara said.

The headline read:

DISTRICT ATTORNEY PROBE OF PAUL MARTIN—ATTORNEY REPUTED TO HAVE MAFIA TIES

Lara read the story with dismay and telephoned Paul immediately.

“What’s going on?” Lara asked.

He chuckled. “The DA is on another fishing expedition. They’ve been trying to tie me in with the boys for years, and they haven’t had any luck. Every time an election comes up, they try to use me as their whipping boy. Don’t worry about it. What about dinner tonight?”

“Fine,” Lara said.

“I know a little place on Mulberry Street where no one will bother us.”

Over dinner Paul Martin said, “I hear that the meeting with the Gaming Commission went well.”

“I think it did. They seemed friendly, but I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any problem. I’ll get you some good boys for the casino. The man who owned the license got greedy.” He changed the subject. “How are all the construction jobs going?”

“Fine. I have three projects in the works, Paul.”

“You’re not getting in over your head, are you, Lara?”

He sounded like Howard Keller. “No. Every job is on budget and on schedule.”

“That’s good, baby. I wouldn’t want anything to ever go wrong for you.”

“Nothing will.” She put her hand on his. “You’re my safety net.”

“I’ll always be there.” He squeezed her hand.

Two weeks went by, and Lara had not heard from Philip Adler. She sent for Keller. “Did you make that ten-thousand dollar contribution to the Adler Foundation?”

“Yes, the day you mentioned it.”

“Strange. I would have thought he would have called me.”

Keller shrugged. “He’s probably traveling somewhere.”

“Probably.” She tried to conceal her disappointment. “Let’s talk about the building in Queens.”

“That’s going to take a big financial bite out of us,” Keller said.

“I know how to protect us. I’d like to lock the deal in with one tenant.”

“Do you have anyone in mind?”

“Yes. Mutual Security Insurance. The president is a man named Horace Guttman. I’ve heard they’re looking for a new location. I’d like it to be our building.”

“I’ll check it out,” Keller said.

Lara noticed that he made no notes. “You constantly amaze me. You remember everything, don’t you?”

Keller grinned. “I have a photographic memory. It used to be for baseball statistics.”
It all seems so long ago,
Howard thought.
The kid with the magic arm, the star of the Chicago Cubs minor league. Someone else and another time.
“Sometimes it’s a curse. There are a few things in my life I’d like to forget.”

“Howard, have the architect go ahead and draw up the
plans for the Queens building. Find out how many floors Mutual Security will need, and how much floor space.”

Two days later Keller walked into Lara’s office. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I did a little snooping around. You were right about Mutual Security Insurance. They
are
looking for a new headquarters, but Guttman is thinking about a building in Union Square. It’s your old friend Steve Murchison’s building.”

Murchison again!
She was sure that the box of dirt had been sent by him.
I’m not going to let him bluff me.

“Has Guttman committed to it?” Lara asked.