Trump Tower (15 page)

Belasco left them cooing about her camera, went back inside and rushed upstairs to the Glass apartment on thirty-one. He rang the bell twice, then knocked on the door several times, trying not to knock too loud.

Mikey's wife Karen eventually opened it, looking pretty rough, as though they'd been fighting nonstop. “If you've come to help me throw him out . . .”

“Actually, I have.”

When Mikey finally emerged, still dressed in his sweatpants, sweatshirt, and porkpie hat, he clung to Belasco's arm and they came downstairs.

“You are a prince among men,” Mikey assured him. “You are saving my life, and all I can give you in return is . . . Belasco . . . name your reward. Anything. Anything at all. If you want to marry Karen and adopt my children as your own, please be my guest. You can adopt me too.”

Belasco brought Mikey outside.

Dani took the camera back from Gimbel and moved into position.

“Wait a second,” Belasco said to her, not wanting to appear in the photo.

Now Mikey spotted Gimbel. “As I live and breathe.”

“If you call that living,” Gimbel said. “You coming with me?”

“Where to?”

“I'm going to Los Angeles.”

“I've already been there. Many times. Do I have to go to Los Angeles?” He looked at Gimbel, then at Dani, then at Belasco. “I understand that Bora Bora is wonderful this time of year.”

“You can drop me in LA . . . it's on the way.” Gimbel motioned to him, “Get in the car.”

The chauffeur stepped up to help Mikey. Belasco quickly moved out of the shot and whispered to Dani, “Be my guest.”

“No bags, sir?” The chauffeur asked Mikey as Dani shot pictures.

“I travel light,” Mikey answered, then turned to Dani. “Want to come with us? We're going to Bora Bora.”

“Thank you, but I have to work,” she said, running off picture after picture.

“No, you don't. Marry me. I'm very rich.” He thought about that, then pointed to Gimbel. “Not as rich as him. No one is. But I'm rich enough that we'll live happily ever after. You're beautiful. We can go native. I'll climb trees and bring you coconuts.”

“I think I'll stick with Josh,” she said.

“Who's Josh?”

“My boyfriend.”

“Does he like coconuts? What the hell, bring him along. I've got a whole plane . . .”

“Actually,” Gimbel cut in, “I'm the one who's got a whole plane and, Mikey, if you don't get into the car right now . . .”

Mikey pointed to Gimbel and told Dani, “He acts like I was married to him,” then got into the car.

Dani kept taking pictures.

Gimbel jumped in, the chauffeur shut the door and then climbed behind the wheel. As they pulled away, Mikey yelled at Dani through the window, “To Bora Bora and beyond!”

Now she turned to Belasco, “Wow. Paper will love this. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he smiled. “Good night.”

She corrected him, “Good morning.”

“Technically,” he said, “somewhere it is always night.”

B
efore she'd agreed to the book project with Mel Berger, Alicia had decided that she needed to get NBC's official blessing.

Even if her boss' permission wasn't contractually required, politically, she and Carson had agreed that it was a good idea. So she'd written to her immediate bosses at WNBC, and had also written to Steve Capus, who was president of NBC News and, within two days, word came back from all of them that she was more than welcome to write the book.

Next, she'd wondered,
what about Donald Trump?

Berger had assured her that Trump had already approved the project but agreed that, here, too, it might be politically correct if she dropped Trump a note to say she was doing it.

Clearly, Trump thought Alicia was a great choice because he'd phoned her in the newsroom to say, “I'm thrilled that you're doing it.”

That night Carson said, “Looks like you're good to go.”

But she still wasn't sure. “I think I need to send a note to everyone in the building and ask if anyone objects to being named.”

So Alicia wrote to the Residents' Board, which had circulated her letter to all 209 of the stakeholders.

Lucy Greenwich had written back that before she and Edmond decided whether or not they'd cooperate, they wanted to know what Andrew Lloyd Webber was going to do.

Zeke Gimbel had mentioned that he would personally arrange for Lucca Ortelli—the fashion photographer whose signed, unique, 1975 photo of Queen Elizabeth in deep conversation with Keith Richards had been sold at
Sotheby's for a record $235,000—to photograph him with his art collection for the book.

There were a few people who'd asked whether or not their privacy would be protected if they allowed their apartment to be photographed without their names appearing.

The only out-and-out no was from the chairman of the Trade and Industry Banking Corporation of China, the government's official commercial investment bank.

The letter, written and signed by his legal adviser, was terse. “Thank you for your invitation to participate in your forthcoming project. But the chairman has asked me to advise you that, under no circumstances whatsoever, does he wish to be, or would he tolerate being, included.”

It was noted at the bottom that a copy of this had been sent to both Mr. P. Belasco and to Mr. D. J. Trump.

Belasco had then written to Alicia, “I will gladly discuss this on your behalf with the chairman.”

Trump's answer had been slightly less diplomatic. “Screw him!”

And then there'd been the response from Katarina Essenbach.

She'd written that, as hers was the best apartment in the building and would soon include Trump Tower's only indoor tropical rain forest, she could understand why Alicia was insisting that photographs of it be included. However, Essenbach warned, she would not cooperate unless the book contained a recipe—“No one else in the entire tower has a chef who can compete with mine”—and had suggested that the featured dish be
venison en croute
.

Now, on Saturday morning, barefoot and wearing a bright yellow tracksuit, Alicia installed herself at her dining room table, setting up her laptop and spreading out everything she already had about the book project.

“No rest for the weary,” Carson said, dropping his overnight bag and six tennis rackets at the front door, then coming back into the dining room.

“You think Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare and Martí took the weekend off?” She got up to kiss him goodbye. “Have a good weekend.”

“Who's Marty?”

“Not Marty . . . Martí.”

“He must have taken weekends off because I never heard of Marty or Marti.”

“He's Cuba's most famous writer. José Julián Martí Pérez.”

“We know for sure that no one in Cuba works on weekends. Anyway, I never heard of Pérez either.” He kissed her and walked back to the door. “I'll call you when we land. Be a good girl.”

“And you be a good boy,” she said, following him.

He was meeting up with Tommy Arcarro and the two of them were off to
the Greenbriar, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, for one of their money-tennis weekends.

This time they'd hooked Lee-Jay Wesley Elkins III, possibly the richest twenty-five-year-old in the state. He was heir to his grandfather's mining fortune and couldn't care less about dropping fifty grand over a weekend of tennis because he loved playing with pros and former pros more than he cared about money.

Carson grabbed his rackets and bag. “I love you.”

“As much as
venison en croute
? It's the recipe that the Dragon Lady wants to put in the book.”

“Yes, I love you more than I love
venison en croute
,” he assured her. “Are you really going to include a recipe?”

“No.”

“Just as well. Dragon Lady probably serves it with her own homemade arsenic glaze? Good luck with this.”

She put her hands on her head. “What have I gotten myself into?”

“How many people in the building? And every single one of them is convinced that he or she has the best apartment.”

“Except we do.”

“And the best view?”

“We don't, but we tell people we do.”

“And the best chef?”

“Can we have a chef?”

“What would we do with a chef?”

“He would chef for us.”

“Why do we need a chef?” Carson asked. “We bring food in. It's like having nine thousand chefs all over New York.”

“You're probably right,” she conceded. “Especially because if we had a chef, whenever you woke me in the middle of the night, I'd have to ask, is that a tuna fish sandwich in your pajamas or are you just happy to see me?”

“In case you haven't noticed, I don't wear pajamas.”

“I have noticed,” she said, pushing him out the door, “and that ain't no tuna.”

A
LICIA SPENT
the rest of the morning going through every Internet mention of Trump Tower that she could find.

And there were thousands.

She pulled up references to the usual battles for planning permission and stories about other buildings that once stood on the same site, most notably, the famous old New York store Bonwit Teller.

Next, she went through references that brought up dozens of new names
associated with Trump Tower, people who'd supposedly lived there for a period of time, adding to her list Pia Zadora, Dick Clark, Paul Anka, Martina Navratilova and Susan St. James.

Moving from Google to the very extensive news archives at NBC, which she could access from home, she continued listing names and facts and other leads to track down.

That's when her phone rang.

“Are we ladies who lunch?” It was Cyndi.

“No,” Alicia said.

“Yes we are.”

“We are?”

“When Donato calls, we are.”

“Donato called?”

“Just now.”

“I thought you two were having one of your every-other-month feuds.”

“We are. I mean, we were. He wants to kiss and make up. Well, not exactly kiss because he doesn't do tongue with girls . . . But making up is good. He said, come to lunch and bring Alicia.”

“He said, bring Alicia?”

“Not exactly. He said come to lunch, and I said I'll bring Alicia, and he said I love Alicia.”

“What time's lunch?”

“I've called for a car. Meet you in the lobby in thirty minutes.”

“How wonderful.”

“Ladies who lunch,” Cyndi said.

“This time,” Alicia suggested, “let's try to keep our clothes on.”

Donato Firenzi had been Donatella Versace's number two for many years before going out on his own to design women's lingerie. But his wasn't merely some up-market Italian version of Victoria's Secret. Firenzi actually made Victoria seem celibate.

As Firenzi himself described it once to Carson, “I create underwear for the whore that every man prays his mistress might become.”

Alicia had been to these private lunches before. There were only six invited guests, but there was enough champagne for twice as many and the food was to die for. And even though Firenzi had the most gorgeous models in the world showing off his goods—more often than not, theirs, too—it wasn't unheard of that one or two of the women who'd been invited for lunch wound up on the catwalk as well.

He did these lunches once a month and invitations were always very last
minute. All of the lingerie on show was, of course, for sale. But Firenzi never spoke about that. However, anyone who didn't buy never got a second invitation.

Alicia hurried back to the table to finish up.

Her laptop screen had a dozen open pages and she needed to rush through them before she jumped into the shower.

She bookmarked the pages she wanted to come back to and made a few extra notes on her pad. She closed out of Google and was about to sign off the NBC News archive site when she spotted a very small reference on the bottom of one page.

It read, “A mysterious buyer, believed to represent L. Arthur Farmer, has become the first residential tenant in Donald Trump's Tower.”

That's all.

The date was 1979, the year construction began on the Tower.

Of course she knew who Farmer was. Everybody in the country had, at some point, heard of him, much the same way everybody in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies had heard of Howard Hughes.

In fact, since Hughes' death in 1976, Farmer had taken on the mantle of America's most famous recluse. Google and Bing had thousands of references to him—Where is he? Is he alive or dead? How much is he worth?