I'll Take Manhattan (50 page)

“Cancel them. For the next three months Amberville Publications is not blowing its own horn. We’ve been around for almost forty years and the advertising community is hardly unaware of us. I want promotion and publicity eliminated.”

“Yes, sir.”

“These photographers’ bills are insane, Oxford. Insane.”

“That’s what all the top photographers are getting now, Mr. Amberville.”

“Send out a notice to the Editor-in-chief of each magazine that they are to stop using the same photographers they’ve been relying on for years. One of our editors’ problems is that they’ve been letting the photographers do the imaginative work they should be doing themselves. I want them to use new photographers, the least expensive they can find, particularly women, people who will work for a great deal less and work harder. What’s more, I want thirty percent fewer color spreads, replaced by black and white. That can be just as effective as color, used properly. As for models’ fees, they’re killing us. Whenever possible I want celebrities to be used for models—they don’t cost us anything at all.”

“Mr. Amberville, I must object. There’s a limit to how many celebrities you can use before the magazines will all begin to look like
People
. Mr. Zachary Amberville never—”

“I’m not interested in repeating the past, Oxford. Readers want to see celebrities and we’re going to give
them what they want. I’m very disappointed in our profit for the last quarter. It has to come
up
, Oxford.”

“It will, sir.”

“Won’t advertisers supply free articles and pictures if their products are plugged?” Cutter asked.

“It’s been known to happen, but not at Amberville.”

“Well, make it happen, Oxford. As often as you can. And another thing, just look at these travel expense accounts for our ad and sales representatives,” Cutter went on. “They’re an absolute scandal. Let each rep know that we’re watching him and tell them that we expect a reduction of thirty-five percent in the next set of figures.”

“Hell, Mr. Amberville, the reps live off their T-and-E’s—everybody knows that.”

“They’re living too high, Oxford. Every rep who doesn’t change his ways will be replaced. Be sure and put that in the memo.”

“But the reps have to maintain relationships …” Lewis Oxford’s voice trailed off at the mounting rage he saw in Cutter’s face.

“Amberville Publications is not a God damned gravy train, Oxford! I can see that these cuts are long overdue. I blame you for letting things go on in this way. And do
not
, if you value your job, tell me that Mr. Zachary Amberville wanted it that way. My brother was a great editor, Oxford, but I can see he wasn’t keeping a tight ship, as Mrs. Amberville and I have suspected. Do you have any more suggestions, Oxford? or have I covered everything?”

“There are small things, tables we take at magazine industry dinners, the lunches we give for major advertisers, things like that.”

“Leave those alone. They don’t amount to enough to make a difference and I want our presence maintained on that particular level. Don’t worry, Oxford, when the profit is up, we’ll take out media ads and let everyone know about it. Three months from now.”

Cutter waited a few seconds and Lewis Oxford, hoping that the conversation was over, began to pull his papers together in preparation for departure.

“One more thing, Oxford.
B&B
. How much are we losing on it every month?”

“I’d need time to get the exact figures, Mr. Amberville. But I’ll send Miss Amberville all your cost-cutting directives.”

“No, don’t bother. How long will it take for
B&B
to break even, assuming that every issue does as well as the first one?”

“Many months, I’m afraid. As you know, every startup is a major hemorrhage of money, sir. But that’s only normal. Once they’re back in the black profits should be tremendous.”

“Stop publication of
B&B
, Oxford.”

“What?”

“Don’t you understand English? Cancel it, eliminate it, finish it! No more
B&B
, Oxford. Give the printers instructions not to print any more copies. Let all the creditors know that they’ll be paid in full for whatever is currently owed, but beyond that Amberville Publications will not honor a single bill that Miss Amberville runs up. Warn them, Oxford. Not a dime. And fire the whole staff except for Miss Amberville. She’s not on salary.”

“But the magazine is a success, Mr. Amberville! The biggest success story since
Cosmo
or
Life
or
Seven Days.
”

“It was a successful experiment, Oxford. But we can’t afford the loss over the next year, or even over the next six months, not if we plan to raise our profit to where it should be. Even you would have to admit that whatever you save everywhere else will be more than offset by
B&B’s
losses.”

“Well, yes, in fact I assumed that those losses were why you were taking such drastic measures.”

“Never assume, Oxford,” Cutter said with a pleasant smile, and rose to show the man to the door. “Never assume anything in a privately owned company.”

Angelica stood on Fifth Avenue, between Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh streets, leaning disconsolately against a tall, metal city sign. “Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here,” it said, and added, for emphasis, “Red Zone, Tow Fine, $100 Minimum. No Standing at Any Time.” Behind the sign, sitting around the fountain of the Steuben Glass Building, were the usual collection of waifs, drunks and
tourists, some of them eating falafel, schnitzel or chicken nuggets from the pushcarts that stood conveniently at hand, others dipping their aching feet in the fountain, and still others studying the contents of the shopping bags they had just filled up and down the avenue. It was an affluent North American version of Calcutta.

The stern no-parking sign was Elie’s favorite place to sit in the limo when he waited for Maxi. He had reached a tacit agreement with the cops on the street to start the motor and pull up a symbolic inch or so whenever they came along. But this afternoon he was late in bringing Maxi home and Angelica scanned the passing traffic with impatience.

Finally the long blue limo pulled up and Maxi hopped out.

“Oh, no,” she groaned, seeing Angelica and the copy of the
New York Post
that she was holding, open to the story of Justin’s arrest. How could she not have realized that there was the chance that Angelica would see the story in the paper before she’d been told about it? The lunch with Justin and Lily, followed by a few hectic hours at the office, making up for the work she hadn’t done that morning, had driven the thought of warning her daughter out of her head.

“Ma?” Angelica’s voice was blurred with tears.

“Baby, it’s all crap. A giant setup. Uncle Justin has absolutely nothing to do with selling cocaine. Don’t worry about it for a second. He’s totally innocent,” Maxi said in a rush.

“I know he’s innocent, Ma, for goodness’ sake, you don’t have to tell me that. But how come you and Granny are smiling in that picture? That’s what I want to know. How could you be so heartless? You look like two freaked-out beauty queens—Miss North Carolina and her lovely mother.
Honestly.
”

“How do you think we should have looked? Frightened, miserable, horrified?”

“A little cool wouldn’t have hurt. I mean, after all, you’re not supposed to be thrilled about a bum rap. At least Uncle Justin handled himself properly … he looks terrific, tough, grim, indifferent, just like Sting, yeah, exactly like Sting.”

“Angelica, I think you should seriously consider a career in public relations. Come on, let’s go home.”

“Can I have a falafel first?”

“You’ll ruin your dinner. But go ahead, if you can pronounce it you can eat it, as far as I’m concerned,” Maxi said, too exhausted to argue.

“You’re losing your grip,” Angelica said in relief, “but I’m not surprised. Today I found out that Cyndi Lauper’s thirty years old. She’s older than you are, Maxi.”

“Please, a little respect,” Maxi said, stung into firmness.

“I’ll try,” Angelica said hastily, feeling better. Cyndi Lauper might be older but Ma was … her mother.

Rocco opened the
Post
, his head snapped upright and Angelo, the barber downstairs at the St. Regis, who dispensed his forty-dollar haircuts to a chosen circle, narrowly missed nicking him with his scissors, although his reflexes were finely conditioned to the aberrant reactions of executives under stress.

“Hey, Rocco, trying to lose an ear?”

“I have to get to a phone. Don’t bother to finish.” Rocco stood up and started to undrape himself.

“Sit! I’m half through. You can’t leave here like that.”

“The hell I can’t.” Brushing off hairs, Rocco ran up the staircase. The phone booths in the lobby were all occupied. He rushed out of the hotel and saw that even if he could get a cab it couldn’t move in the late-afternoon traffic. Where could he get a phone? All of the booths on the street were permanently out of order, vandalized as soon as they were repaired. The office was too far to run to. Angelo! He ran back to the hotel, descended the stairs three at a time and took unasked possession of Angelo’s private phone. The barber, who could get a president of a Fortune 500 company a previously unobtainable reservation at the Hotel du Cap at Antibes during the busiest week of the year, merely raised an eyebrow. Rocco was crazy but his hair was a pleasure to cut. Old Country hair, thick, curly, healthy, the real thing, should last him till he didn’t need it anymore.

“Maxi, I just read about Justin. What can I do to help?”

“I don’t know. Mother’s busy mobilizing legal talent but Justin hasn’t the first idea of how the cocaine got there. Apparently he’s been doing a lot of entertaining … he insists that it could be any one of dozens of people. However, he did say there had been some guy who had a key to his place but all he would tell us was it was someone he met on a shoot and that it couldn’t possibly be him.”

“Why not?”

“Apparently he’s just too perfect a person,” Maxi said dryly. “And Justin absolutely refused to tell us this saint’s name. What’s more the wonderful human being is out of town.”

“Can you follow it up?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been asking myself. The first bathing-suit shoot Justin did for me used twenty-four male models. The next fashion feature was the one called ‘Celebrity Closets, or The Positive Effects of Creative Disorder,’ and the following month we had Bill Blass showing you thirty different ways to wear your oldest sweaters. Besides the fashion shots, Justin’s done a lot of other stuff for us … I’m looking over the pictures now.”

“Twenty-four male models? All from the same agency?”

“No, Julie booked them from four different agencies, or maybe even five.”

“Look, get hold of the bills. They must be there at your office. Then give them to me and let me make a few phone calls. I’ll let you know if anything checks out.”

“I’ll go get the bills now.”

“Tomorrow morning is soon enough. I have to talk to people in their offices, people I can’t call at home.”

“I’ll have them delivered first thing. Rocco, look, this is really extraordinarily sweet of you, and I’m deeply, deeply grateful,” Maxi said. “I won’t ever forget it.”

“What the hell,” Rocco said, ignoring her emotion. “You know I’ve always liked Justin. That poor bastard. How’s Angelica taking it?” he asked, his voice suddenly anxious.

“In her own way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If anyone survives this, it will be my daughter,” Maxi sniffed.

“You don’t understand her,” Rocco said, “my daughter’s an exceptionally sensitive little girl.”

“Angelica has finer feelings I couldn’t possibly comprehend, I suppose.”

“Exactly. She’s probably suffering a trauma you wouldn’t even recognize, much less cope with.”

“Rocco, I have an idea. Why don’t I have Elie bring her over to your place? You can take her out to dinner tonight and help her deal with the shock.”

“Uh. Well. As a matter of fact I have a date. Of course Angelica could join us, I guess, or maybe that wouldn’t be such a great idea. No, probably not, on second thought. Angelica’s going to be spending the weekend with me. We’ll talk it all out then.”

“You do that. Thanks anyway, Rocco. Talk to you.” Maxi hung up softly, and looked around for something to throw at the wall, something guaranteed to break into a billion pieces and make one hell of a lot of noise. But nothing too valuable. That miserable pissant wasn’t worth it.

“Sue, this is Rocco Cipriani.”

“Oh, hi there, Mr. Cipriani. What can I do for you?” she chirped.

“There’s a little question I’d like to ask about four of your guys,” Rocco said lightly. Sue was the best booker of models at her agency.

“Sure thing. Which of our glorious boys interests you?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. It’s a little delicate, Sue, but I’m sure you understand that sometimes I have to ask a, well, a somewhat hard question.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Sue proclaimed perkily.

Rocco gave her the names of the models from her agency who had been in the bathing-suit shoot and added, as if he were asking their chest measurements, “I’d like to know if one or more of them uses cocaine.”

“Is this a complaint, Mr. Cipriani?” Sue asked after a tiny pause.

“No, Sue, nothing like that. Nothing to be alarmed about. But I figured that if anyone else had been having trouble with one or more of the guys, if there had just possibly been some complaints, you’d know about it before anyone else.”

“Mr. Cipriani, you know as well as I do that if a model is on dope he won’t last long. If we get enough complaints we drop him.” Her upbeat voice had disappeared completely, replaced by the firmness that had made her a power in the industry.

“Of course you do. On the other hand, Sue, it’s not impossible to get away with a few complaints here and there if you’re really hot. A model in real demand can get away with murder, much less a few toots.”

“Not here,” she insisted. “This isn’t Hollywood.”

“Your people are special, Sue, we’ve always known that.” Rocco’s voice curled sweetly around the compliment. “I also want to find out if any of the guys I’m curious about are living high, spending more money than they could be earning.”