If I Should Die Before I Die (21 page)

The cover-up involved a certain degree of collusion, some of it unconscious. Nobody pushed the Nora Saroff connection. Partly this was the Counselor's Wife's own doing. While it was known that she'd been McCloy's last shrink, she went pretty much into seclusion after the suicide and managed to duck the media. The whole subject of McCloy's videotapes, for instance, never came out. At the same time, somebody on the Task Force understood that they could put themselves in the best public light by simplifying. They'd gotten on to Carter McCloy, they maintained, as part of the dragnet operation they'd spread over the whole city. That they'd let him go only a few hours before his last crime wasn't due to any negligence on their part. They'd been hamstrung by the law, and they'd been put under terrific pressure to release him. Similarly the whole issue of McCloy's alibis, which could in theory have led to accessory charges, was left buried. The Task Force dissolved itself with haste and efficiency.

As for me? Well, nobody asked me anything.

It seemed just as well at the time, for by then we were caught up in a limelight of a very different sort.

CHAPTER

12

“I didn't think it was possible to overestimate their intelligence,” the Counselor said, standing at his desk in his shirtsleeves and glaring down at the morning's
Wall Street Journal
. “I was wrong, Phil. I was goddamn wrong.”

He'd called for me first thing, and I was surprised to see him in shirtsleeves and suspenders that early. Usually he came downstairs as dapper as the Counselor's Wife's tastes could make him, all the way to a matching handkerchief tucked in the lapel pocket of his suit coat, and it took at least a few hours for disarray to set in. This morning, though, the suit coat had been flung over a nearby chair, the bow tie was already lopsided and his shirtsleeves folded a couple of times over his forearms and then abandoned.

He was, to put it simply, in a towering rage.

“Myrna!” he shouted at Ms. Shapiro through the open door. “I want McClintock! I want him right now!”

And when, moments later, Ms. Shapiro stuck her head in to say that Mr. McClintock was in a meeting: “I don't care if he's meeting with God, Myrna, tell them to get him on the phone!”

It took a few minutes, but then McClintock came on and the Counselor, jabbing at a button on his desk, put him on the speakerphone.

“What's going on, Charles?” said McClintock's even, cultivated voice.

“That's what
I
want to know,” the Counselor thundered back. “Did you see the paper? What your clients have done?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

“Well? Don't you think you ought to have told me about it?”

“We learned about it the same way you did, Charles. We read it in this morning's paper. The Magisters never saw fit to tell us.”

“Is it true?”

“I see no reason to believe that it's not.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“I've got a call in to Young Bob,” McClintock said soberly. “But I don't see what you're so worked up about, Charles. I think the white knight was even your recommendation, if I re—”

If McClintock had said that face-to-face, I think the Counselor would have swallowed him whole. As is.

“You're damn right it was my idea. I think I even said: ‘a white knight on a white horse.' But for God Almighty's sake, if Raffy Goldsmith's a white knight, then I'm the Angel Gabriel!”

A word of explanation:

The Wall Street Journal
, in that squibs and rumors column on the front page that everybody reads first, had reported that Steelstar Investing Corporation was allegedly buying shares in Magister. Furthermore, according to an informed but unidentified source, Steelstar was about to make an SEC filing, with a formal tender offer to follow. Neither Raphael E. Goldsmith, president of Steelstar, nor any of the principals of Magister could be reached for comment by press time.

I knew a little about Raphael E. “Raffy” Goldsmith, and I was about to learn more. Some years back, a relatively obscure outfit called Starlight Investing Corporation had pulled off what some at the time called “the folly of the century” by acquiring control of Inland Constitution Steel, the first of the major steel companies to flirt with bankruptcy. “Raffy's folly,” though, soon became the model for corporate raiders of all shapes and sizes, for by a combination of financial juggling and the dismembering of Inland's assets, Goldsmith had made millions for his shareholders—meaning, principally, for Raffy Goldsmith. Though he'd since gone on to numerous other takeover ventures, he'd kept the name “Steelstar” for his company, as a symbol of his first big score.

“I still think you're reacting prematurely, Charles,” Doug McClintock said. “We're not even sure that this is the Magisters' doing. It could be the other side. Or even Goldsmith on his own. Why don't we wait and see?”

“We're not going to have to wait long,” the Counselor predicted. “And let me tell you this, Douglas. If the brothers did go to Goldsmith, then my advice to you is to get off the sinking ship while you still can.
If
you still can.”

“I don't know what you mean by that,” McClintock said, but you heard a certain quiver in his voice.

“Think about it then,” said the Counselor coldly, and he punched the button, canceling the call.

We spent much of that morning on the phone. The Counselor had excellent sources down on Wall Street, and I had a few of my own. We also had Charlotte McCullough, our resident guru in financial matters. Charlotte's a big and blowsy and frankly sloppy-looking redhead whose appearance belies one of the sharpest analytical minds I know. A CPA, she's officially our staff accountant, but the Counselor uses her in a variety of ways and she spent much of that morning at her computer, running through various scenarios based on Magister Companies numbers.

We confirmed the Steelstar story early. Raffy Goldsmith had open-to-buys at various brokerage houses, at supposedly any price. But very quickly he had company. As the automatic sell levels hit in computer systems all over the Street, insiders snapped up the available shares of their own accounts while their heavy-hitting customers—the institutional portfolio managers, the investment banks, the arbitragers—clamored for a piece of the action. It was, in short, one of those crazy, paper-castle mornings when the Street pros made small fortunes in a matter of minutes, and the stock, which had opened the day at 32 and 1/8, hit 49 just before lunch.

Just before, that is, the Exchange suspended trading in Magister.

Just before, that is, Margie Magister announced a press conference for three o'clock that afternoon.

Charlotte McCullough had, so to speak, run behind the ticker all morning, and a little before noon she threw in the sponge.

“Forty-five tops,” she said, leaning over the Counselor's desk to point to numbers on a spreadsheet she'd prepared. “At least based on past performance and current management. Beyond at forty-five, you're betting on the twenty-first century.”

The Counselor had just taken a call telling him that Magister had broken 48.

“Well, I give up,” Charlotte protested, throwing up her arms. “It makes no sense.”

“It doesn't have to make sense,” the Counselor said. “Besides, nobody says Goldsmith is still buying. He's been known to bail out before.”

We learned later that Steelstar had in fact started to sell in the hour before lunch, and the SEC filing, a legal requirement when you reach five-percent ownership of a publicly held company, never happened that day.

The call about the press conference came in to me from a reporter I know on one of the major business magazines. I'd been talking to him all morning, and he was smart enough to figure out how I connected to the Magisters without my telling him. He'd just gotten an invitation from a PR agency which, he said, often worked for Roy Barger and his clients.

“How big is Margie's apartment?” he asked me.

“I guess it's plenty big,” I said. “How come?”

“Because I think they ought to have rented Grand Central Station. They told me they're limiting the invitations, but this is one hell of a story. What do you think she's going to say?”

“Beats me,” I answered.

“Come on, Phil. You've got to give me some
quid pro quo
. Can you confirm that it was the brothers who brought in Raffy?”

“I wouldn't know,” I dodged, although by then I could have confirmed it.

In the end I managed to get off the hook with one of those if-I-learn-anything-you'll-be-the-first-to-know promises. Then I told the Counselor.

“I knew this was coming,” he said, “or something like it. The stupid bastards jumped the gun. I want you there, Phil.”

“Where?”

“The press conference.”

“But it's by invitation only. Besides, you know I don't have press credentials.”

“You don't?” he said, glowering at me as though to say: Why the hell not? Then: “Well, get yourself invited. Be resourceful. Call Roy Barger, tell him you're interested in his job offer. But I want you there.”

To each his own needle, you could say. I hadn't been able to resist telling him about Barger's offer.

I made some calls: no luck. Then I did call Roy Barger. Surprise surprise, Mr. Barger wasn't available. But—further surprise—he called me back a little before two.

“Well, Phil, how nice of you to call,” he said in his usual drawl, as though this was a day like any other and he had nothing better to do than chat on the phone. “What can I do for you, my friend?”

“I understand Mrs. Magister is meeting the press this afternoon.”

“You do? Boy, news travels fast in this town.”

“I'd like to be there,” I said.

“You and everybody else,” he answered, chuckling. “There hasn't been a hot-ticket event like this since the pandas had a baby at the Bronx Zoo. I'm afraid I can't help you, though. The people who're organizing it are trying to keep the numbers down, you can understand that. But I'll tell you what: Tell Charles I'm going to have the press release delivered to him by hand the minute the conference is over. Will you tell him that for me?”

Clearly he was enjoying the situation. The Counselor, equally clearly, would not.

“But I'm not asking for Mr. Camelot,” I said. “I'm calling on my own account. It's for me.”

“Is that right?” He sounded surprised.

“That's right,” I said.

I had no idea, right then, what he was calculating. But then he said:

“In that case, Phil, let me see what I can do. I'm not promising anything, but I'll call you back. Are you in your office?”

I told him I was and sure enough, a few minutes later, he called back. He'd gotten me on the list—“just above the
New York Times
,” he said—and all I had to do was show my card downstairs.

That was how I ended up pushing my way through the jostling, irate crowd of press and curiosity-seekers that bulged out onto Fifth Avenue, stopping traffic that afternoon outside Margie Magister's apartment house. And if I wasn't so naive as to suppose Barger didn't have some ulterior motive, well, it's still nice, every once in a while, to think you're appreciated.

Margie Magister's living room wasn't quite Grand Central Station, and you'd have to give credit to the people who'd handled the arrangements, down to the microphone set up in front of the central fireplace and the straight chairs set out in arcs with the media overflowing outside the open terrace doors. But it was still Margie's show. Even, I assumed, to the positioning of the three generations of Magisters in attendance. Margie herself spoke from center stage. Sally Magister towered over her to her left, with three of her children. And Vincent Angus Halloran stood to her right, also towering, next to a representative, I learned, of one of the Wall Street proxy firms, the people who orchestrate campaigns aimed at stockholders' votes.

Their clothes looked like they'd been carefully chosen. Sally Magister had exchanged the overalls I'd seen her in for a tailored business suit, and Halloran wore a navy blue suit, striped shirt with suspenders and maroon foulard tie. But it was Margie, again, who set the tone. How she did it I've no idea, but she managed to look chic and corporate at once. She wore a black suit that pulled in tight at the waist, with wide lapels and the collar turned up around her neck, and a figured scarf, and large round glasses, slightly tinted, for reading her speech. Later, during the questions, she perched the glasses on top of her head and then, yes, you really could
see
her in a corporate boardroom, listening intently and answering decisively. The media laughed in the right places as though her smile was their signal, and when she spoke, you could hear the proverbial pin drop.

She'd also, I gauged, been carefully coached. Barger, probably. While she talked about Magister stock having been put “in play,” she was careful, then and later, not to blame the Magister brothers for it. As for the brothers themselves, she said she had repeatedly held out the olive branch to them, in public and privately, but they continued to act as if the rest of the family simply didn't exist. And that, she thought, was wrong. Wrong for the family, obviously, but also wrong for the thousands of employees who worked for Magister Companies, the thousands of investors, large and small, who owned stock, wrong even for the American people. Why was it wrong for the American people? Because Magister was a communications company. It made profits out of the airwaves, which were owned by the American people. Beyond that, she thought anything to do with communications—magazines, movies, newspapers, books, recordings—was of public concern. And when the financial vultures came in, looking for a new carcass to tear apart for their own profits, then it was time everybody took notice.