Trump Tower (47 page)

But she couldn't sleep.

Getting up, she threw on a robe and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

That's when she saw it was 5:45.

“Yes? No?” She stared at her espresso machine, decided, “No,” and went back to bed.

Now, when she closed her eyes she pictured the three women chasing him, except he was down on his hands and knees, and so were they . . .

She got up again and reached for her laptop to check her e-mail.

Seeing nothing special, she thought for a moment about last night, then Googled “Roberto Santos.” There were a couple of thousand links that came up—she wasn't surprised that his Google search brought up more results than hers—and because the first one was his Wikipedia page, she started there.

She read through it, ignoring the baseball statistics and how well he'd played center field for the Yankees over the past twelve years, or how he was certainly going to retire in the next year or two. According to this, he was already thirty-six. Also according to this, he grew up in Texas, a first-generation American of Nicaraguan immigrants.

Further down, the page noted that he'd been married for ten years to his high school sweetheart. They were divorced and had two daughters whom he only saw occasionally because his wife had remarried, and she was jealously guarding custody of them.

Then, even further down, one line jumped off the page.

“Santo, famously, lives with his mother.”

Cyndi read it and remembered what he'd said to Carson about her watching Alicia on television.

She lay back on her bed and stared up at her own smoked-glass reflection in the mirror that looked down on her.

He lives with his mother? I wonder what that means?

After a while, she couldn't decide, so she sat up again, took her laptop, got on the Net, did a search for “Marva Josie” and George Harrison's song “Something” and found an album of Marva's called
Forever
. She bought it on iTunes, set up a link so that Roberto could download it for his iPod, and handwrote a note to him on her own stationery.

“Thank you, again, for last night.” She noted the iTunes link, and added, “Just ‘Something' to make you smile.”

She thought about signing it, “XXX, Cyndi,” but at the last minute, left off the XXX.

Putting the note in an envelope, she addressed it to him and left it on the little table next to her front door. She'd have the concierge deliver it later.

Right now
, she decided,
I'm going back to sleep
.

This time she managed it.

Z
eke Gimbel's
pied-à-terre
on the thirty-ninth floor of Trump Tower had originally been a two-bedroom apartment. But after he and Miriam split up, his accountant convinced him that he needed to turn the whole thing into a business expense. So Zeke broke down the wall to the second bedroom and expanded the living room into a large office.

He bought a huge Georgian mahogany partner's desk, installed it in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced Central Park, turned the couches toward the desk, and re-angled the dining room table that, for tax purposes, was inventoried as a conference table.

When he took over First National Artists and moved all of his New York people into their big offices on Fifty-First Street, his accountant warned him that if he started going there to work, or even if he maintained a desk there for an occasional visit, he'd lose his home office deduction.

Around the same time, Zoey and Max tried to convince him that, since he already had an office in Manhattan, anyway, if he could rebuild the second bedroom, then they could have their own place in New York. He had to remind them that teenaged school kids in California didn't actually need their own place in New York.

Then Birgitta suggested that if they put the second bedroom back, she could bring her sisters over from Stockholm for regular visits. Her parents, too. And maybe even her best friends.

Next, his mother, Hattie, began saying that it would be nice if there was room for her so that she could come to New York once in a while.

After that, his sister called to ask if it was true that he was building a second bedroom in Trump Tower for Hattie and, if so, could she and her husband use it occasionally.

That's it
, he decided,
the office stays an office. No in-laws. No kids. No family. No friends of the family. Just me
.

And his art.

“Whatever you put in your office,” his accountant told him when he bought the partner's desk, “is a legitimate expense.”

Asking himself,
what would I like to own if the government is paying for it?
, he started going to art auctions in New York and very quickly got hooked.

He bought a Giacometti
Walking Man
for the entrance, and a Giacometti
Dog
, which lived on a marble pedestal next to his desk in the corner of the big room. For the wall, he bought a huge Arman accumulation of paintbrushes. For the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that he'd built facing that, he'd bought several
small sculptures, including two by Elizabeth Frink, one by Henry Moore, two by Jean Arp, and a Jasper Johns “Ballantine XXX” beer can bronze.

He bought a Rauschenberg to hang over his bed and a Lichtenstein for the wall inside the door. He bought a Jim Dine
Heart
for the hallway and put a Jean Dubuffet face next to it. He had a small Wesselmann nude in his bathroom and a small Robert Indiana
Love
pencil drawing in the guest bathroom. There was also a Jim Dine
Bathrobe
in his kitchen, which would otherwise be an unsuitable place for a painting, except no one ever cooked there.

Soon out of wall space, he stashed more than two dozen other paintings in closets—including works by Frank Stella, Ed Ruscha, Larry Poons, and Cy Twombly—still wrapped the way they'd come from the auction house.

With two homes in California, he had plenty of places to hang them if he'd wanted to, the way he'd found room to hang two Warhols—a Campbell's can of vegetarian vegetable soup and an Elvis—and his Julian Schnabels. But keeping them in New York maintained their “business expense” status.

Anyway, hanging paintings had long ago ceased to be the object of the game. This was all about buying and selling and, especially, upgrading.

A
FTER THE PARTY
at the museum, Zeke had invited a bunch of friends to Rools, a private dining club on the East Side, near Sutton Place.

Audra Kaleigh Harris and her husband, Romain Neal, came along. She was a client of the agency and had just opened a biopic based on the life of the entertainer Pearl Bailey. And he was in his fourth season with the Knicks.

Solly Green and his wife, Belinda, were also there. He'd just sold his Green Room Music label to CBS for $1.7 billion.

So was Zeke's old law school friend, Natie Whitestone who, with his wife Ruth, was the largest-single taxi fleet owner in the country, having more than sixteen thousand cabs on the road in eighteen cities.

When they finished supper, he'd taken them all to Doubles—the private club in the basement of the Sherry Netherland—for a nightcap. It suited Zeke because he didn't have to be up early and could walk home from there.

He'd gotten to bed at three and had set his alarm for 8:45, but the phone rang at seven.

“This is James Malcolm Isbister. Good morning to you.”

“Oh.” Zeke was half asleep. “Good morning.” He didn't realize that Isbister had his New York number.

“Would it be possible to meet this morning?”

“This morning?” He looked at the time. “Ah . . . I guess I could do breakfast but in . . . like an hour?”

“Unfortunately, I can't. I received the real estate–only plan from Mr. Lerner on Monday night. We reviewed it yesterday and need to make a decision today.”

“The rest of the morning is a little tough for me.” Zeke couldn't recall ever mentioning to him that he'd be in New York today. “Do you always work this fast? Can't it wait a few . . .”

“Everything with us happens in real time. It's always been our policy that whatever comes in needs to go right back out. We never put things off because other things are always coming in to get in the way. Could we meet at eleven? I apologize that I can't do any other time.”

“Ah . . . yeah . . . all right. But you'll have to come to me.” He gave Isbister the address. “Second floor. It's a big room, and there will be a lot of people, but you'll find me. I always stand off to the side.”

W
ALKING INTO
that big room on the second floor at 9:50, Zeke was greeted by Caroline Tomblay, a hefty, middle-aged woman with girlish bangs. She handed him a catalog and a cardboard paddle—like an oversized Ping-Pong paddle—with the number 512 across the front of it, and assured him, “I am quietly optimistic.”

Zeke looked around at row after row of empty chairs and worried that the place wasn't yet even half full.

Quietly optimistic
, he decided,
could cost me a lot of money
.

At exactly ten, a gray-haired gentleman of a certain age, wearing a well-tailored suit and carrying a small, round, wooden gavel head in his left hand took his place behind the large, polished wooden podium that sat on a raised platform at the front of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he adjusted the microphone on the podium, “good morning.”

There was a high desk to the right of the podium where four young men stood facing the room. To the left of the podium there were tables with a dozen telephones where several young men and women took bids.

“This morning's sale of contemporary art consists of one hundred and forty-three lots, and bidding in the room is by paddle. If you have not yet signed in and received your paddle, we have several people scattered around the room to help you.”

The room finally began filling up.

“We will begin at the beginning,” the man said. “Lot number one . . .”

Large screens on the walls suddenly lit up with a black-and-white drawing of a man sitting on a chair.

“. . . David Hockney, seated man, ink on tracing paper, signed with the artist's initials DH in the lower right. We will start the bidding at fifteen thousand dollars. I have fifteen. Thank you. Seventeen . . . twenty . . .”

A large screen over the auctioneer's head constantly updated the bid price in dollars, euros, Sterling, yen, Swiss francs, Hong Kong dollars and rubles.

“. . . twenty-two thousand dollars . . . and twenty-five . . . twenty-eight . . . and thirty . . .”

The sale was off and running.

For the next three-quarters of an hour, Zeke watched as most of the lots appeared to sell. Although a couple that Zeke was sure would sell went unsold, and a few that he doubted would ever sell somehow managed to find buyers.

Now the auctioneer announced, “Lot number forty-five . . . Alexander Calder, gouache on paper, untitled . . .”

A series of red-and-yellow circles appeared on the big screens.

This was the first of the four lots Zeke was selling.

The catalog estimate was $20,000 to $24,000, but he'd set a reserve price of $18,000, meaning that he wouldn't accept anything less than that. Obviously, no one in the room knew what his reserve price was.

“We will begin bidding,” the auctioneer said, “at ten thousand dollars . . .”

Immediately, Zeke worried that starting so low was a sign of limited interest.

“I have ten thousand . . .” The auctioneer moved quickly through the numbers. “. . . eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . . fourteen . . . fifteen . . .”

A few cardboard paddles rose and fell, but not that many, as the auctioneer pointed to various parts of the room.

“Seventeen . . . eighteen . . . in the room at eighteen thousand.” He stopped.

And Zeke's heart dropped.

The auctioneer was obliged to offer the piece at the reserve price. But if there were no bids, if the lot went unsold, that didn't portend a healthy enough sale for Zeke to buy the piece he wanted using the money he made selling these four.

“Eighteen thousand dollars . . .” the auctioneer paused . . . “eighteen thousand . . .”

That's when one of the young men at the desk pointed to a gentleman in the second row.

The auctioneer spotted the bidder. “Now nineteen . . . thank you. Twenty thousand, to you?” He pointed to someone in the middle of the room. “Thank you, I have twenty thousand in the room on my left . . .”

Zeke sighed in relief.

A woman working one of the phones raised her hand.

“Twenty-two thousand here . . . twenty-four in the room . . . twenty-six on the phone . . .” The auctioneer stared at a man in the second row. “Twenty-eight, sir?”

The man nodded.

“I have twenty-eight in the room . . .” He looked at the woman on the phone. “Thirty thousand dollars to you.”