Fifth Avenue

CHAPTER NINE

The morning after the party, George Redman was showered, shaved and in his black track suit at a time most people were still in bed asleep. Before meeting RRK for lunch, he planned on running three miles in Central Park.

He stepped out of his dressing room and moved to where his wife lay motionless in their bed. They had made love last night and the sheets were now twisted impossibly around her pale legs. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he said, bending to kiss her on the cheek. “Will you be up?”

Elizabeth murmured something in her sleep, lifted her head from the pillow and kissed him awkwardly on the chin. “You smell good,” she said, and turned onto her side. “Don’t forget to stretch.”

He went to the elevator at the end of the long hallway. The apartment was quiet. Besides Isabel, the family cat, who was washing herself on top of an ormolu table, he was the only one up, which was not surprising considering it was just a little past five.

He stepped into the elevator and pressed a button. As the floors sped by, George wondered again how the meeting with RRK would go. If they decided not to back him, he would have to move fast on Ted Frostman at Chase. He had come too far to miss this deal with WestTex.

The elevator slowed to a stop. The doors slid open and George stepped out, pleased to see the lobby nearly back in order. The cleaning crew had arrived not long after the party ended and they had worked throughout the night.

George left the building, checked the time on his watch, dutifully stretched his legs and started uptown. Soon he was running along the nearly barren paths of Central Park, and musing at how far he had come since graduating from Harvard.

When he graduated in 1977 and moved to Manhattan, it seemed everything he tried failed. Banks were reluctant to trust a newcomer and so they ignored his requests for loans. Instead, they chose to finance the established developer over the rookie. George knew he could go back and work for his father, but that would mean giving up on his dreams. And so he pressed on, determined to find success.

It didn’t come. It seemed the harder George tried, the more often he failed. It wasn’t until the fall of 1977 that things began to look up.

Louis Ryan, an old college friend, called and told him about Pine Gardens, a 1,000-unit apartment complex that recently had been foreclosed on. Would George be interested in going into a partnership?

George’s first mistake was saying that he would. His second was sealing the deal with a handshake. What began as the beginning of his dream, ended with years of fighting Louis Ryan in court-only to lose. Miserably.

He finished his run in just under twenty-four minutes. Winded, he leaned against the trunk of an elm and stretched his legs before leaving the park. The city was coming to life. Cars were shooting down Fifth, rich widows and hip divorcees were walking their well-groomed dogs on retractable leashes and the sun, visible now, gilded the cluster of limestone buildings surrounding Central Park, turning their beige facades to gold.

He bought the Times from a newspaper-vending machine, tucked it beneath his arm without looking at the headline and started down the avenue toward his building, which towered above its neighbors.

Just looking at it filled George with pride. The new Redman International Building was as extravagant in design as its predecessor on Madison Avenue had been conventional. Instead of having four straight sides, the new building sloped gently upward, narrowing from its base to its roof, producing a rather uneasy effect of a hill carved from glass and stone. It trumped everything on Fifth Avenue-especially Louis Ryan’s Manhattan Enterprises Building, which was two blocks south.

Before entering Redman International, George stopped and looked at Ryan’s building. Despite the years that had passed, anger still seized him when he saw it. To this day, he could remember Ryan telling the court that there had never been a partnership between him and George. To this day, George could remember Ryan standing up and calling him a liar for saying so.

While waiting for Michael to arrive for their eight o’clock appointment, Louis Ryan stood high above Fifth Avenue in his corner office, his hands clasped behind him as he looked out a wall of windows and took inventory of his empire.

From where he stood, he could see the many hotels, condominium and office complexes that he had either owned for years, or were presently under construction. There was the new hotel he was building on the corner of Fifth and 53rd. It would be the city’s largest, it would open shortly and it was nearly $13 million under budget.

He learned how to control his costs years ago. When they worked together, George Redman taught him well.

On Central Park South, ground was being broken for Louis’ new condominium complex. The demolition of the two prewar buildings had been completed four weeks earlier, the foundation one.

He still had to laugh at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who asked if he would donate the four demi-relief Art Deco friezes that decorated the exterior of each building. At first, Louis agreed, seeing no reason why he shouldn’t donate them. If anything, it would be good press and free publicity for the new building. But once he learned that it would take weeks to remove them properly-not to mention hundreds of thousands of his own dollars-Louis had the friezes torn down, not wanting or willing to pay for what he considered worthless art.

He moved away from the window and walked the few steps to his desk. His office was large and filled with things he never had as a child.

Born in the Bronx, Louis came from a poor, working-class family. He looked across the room at his parents’ wedding picture. In it, his mother was seated on a red velvet chair, her hands arranged in her lap, a faint smile on her lips. She was in the simple, ivory-colored wedding dress her mother and grandmother wore before her. She was seventeen in that photo and Louis thought she was beautiful.

Standing behind her was Nick Ryan, wearing one of the few suits he ever owned. It was dark blue and a few sizes too large for his slim frame, but the smile on his face and the defiant way he held his head made one notice not the suit, but the man himself.

He wished his parents could have witnessed his success. In the fall of 1968, Nick Ryan had been killed while on duty in Vietnam. On the day Louis learned of his father’s fate, he quickly learned his own. At the age of thirteen, he was thrust into the position of provider and nothing was the same for him after that. While his mother took in laundry and became a seamstress on the side, Louis worked forty hours a week washing dishes at Cappuccilli’s, the Italian restaurant at the end of their block. He pulled straight A’s in school. He and his mother planned budgets together and managed to put something aside for a future they were hesitant to face.

As a team, they were invincible. It was in his eighteenth year, only days after Harvard offered him a full scholarship, that his mother became ill. She was tired all the time. There were lumps in her neck and groin. Her joints ached. “I’ve lost a lot of weight, Louis. There’s blood in my stool.”

He brought her to the hospital. The doctor was crass, frank and cold. After examining Katherine Ryan, he took her son aside. “There are holes in your mother’s bones,” he said. “She has cancer. It’s beyond treatment. She’ll need to be hospitalized, if only to keep her comfortable. That will be expensive. Do you have insurance?”

Louis looked the man hard in his eyes. “We don’t,” he said. “But we have money, so you treat her right just the same.”

His private hell began then. Times were hard and the hospital was overcrowded. His mother was placed in a room with three other women-each struggling to hang on to lives that were leaving them. Louis wouldn’t forget the days that followed-working three jobs so he could afford bills that were scarcely affordable; going without sleep so he could spend time with a woman who no longer resembled his mother; holding her hand because he knew that she was frightened and missing her husband.

He remembered the never-ending stream of specialists injecting poison after poison into a body that was manufacturing poisons of its own. He watched his mother slowly slip away from him. Her skin gradually becoming too large for her body. The experience hardened Louis. Made him see things differently.

At the end of her first week’s stay, Katherine, so weakened by the toxins in her system, reached out a hand and gripped Louis’ knee. Her voice unusually strong, resolve still burning in her eyes, she spoke calmly and clearly. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But you won’t drop out of school. I won’t hear of it.”

“Mom-”

“You listen to me, Louis. My life will have been for nothing if you don’t succeed. God gave you that scholarship and God gave me this cancer. He’ll take me, but He won’t take that scholarship. You go to school in the fall. You become a success.”

“But the bills-”

“-will take care of themselves.” Her face softened. Drugs had clouded her eyes and they now were as gray as the four walls surrounding them. “Don’t you see?” she said, squeezing his knee. “Don’t you see what you’re going to become?”

She died three weeks before he started Harvard. On the night before her death, she said to him in a whisper, “I want to be cremated. If I’m going to die, this cancer is dying with me. I’m not going to let it feed off my body any longer. I’m going to burn it up. I’m going to have the last say.”

He granted her wish and scattered her ashes in the park she and his father used to bring him to in upstate New York. It was then that he made a vow-no matter what the costs, he would conquer the business world. He would become the best of the world’s best.

His focus wasn't broken until his Junior year at Harvard, when he met Anne.

He had been walking home one afternoon when he heard what sounded like a woman shouting and several barking dogs. Curious, Louis stopped to listen. For a moment, he thought he was hearing things-there now was nothing but the buzz of traffic and the sound of leafless trees clicking in the stiff March wind.

But then, suddenly, a team of seven dogs rushed around the street corner he was standing at, nearly toppling him as they hurried toward downtown Cambridge. Louis turned and watched them run, their expensive leather leashes whipping and writhing behind them.

And then he saw her.

“For God’s sake!” the young woman shouted as she shot around the corner. “Help me catch them!”

Louis ran after her. She was out of breath, her face flushed, her long black hair swinging. Louis was about to ask how they got free when she stopped and her hands flew to her mouth. There was a screech of tires. Undaunted, the dog joined his friends and trotted on-only this time a bit slower as the group weaved through traffic and moved toward the center of town.

“Hurry!” she said.

They began running again, faster this time. Louis’s mind raced. “Are they all joined by one leash?” he asked.

“Yes!”

He was running alongside her now. She’s pretty, he thought. “I’m going to cross the street and head them off. You lure them to me.”

Her eyes widened. “How?”

“I don’t know-get in front of them, chase them in my direction. When they’re close enough, I’ll grab their leash and they’ll be yours again.” He looked across the street and pointed to a cluster of trees. “I’ll be over there.”

“It won’t be that easy.”

“It will be,” he said. “Go.”

He started across the street. “I don’t even know your name,” he said. “I’m Louis Ryan.”

“Anne Roberts,” she said, starting to run again. “And I promise if we get these dogs back, you won’t regret it!”

It was over dinner that evening that Anne told Louis she walked the dogs to earn extra money for college. Now, remembering that day and those that followed, almost made her death seem as if it hadn’t happened, as if George Redman had never fouled their lives. But then, as always, Louis remembered that snowy February evening, just days after George lost his final appeal in court, and the first memory shattered.

He leaned forward in his chair and lifted Anne’s picture from his desk. When his mother died, he had been powerless to help her. He accepted her death as he accepted his own fate. But his wife’s man-made death could be fought. This time he didn’t have to accept the unacceptable.

For years, Louis fantasized about killing George Redman’s wife. For years, he imagined how sweet it would be to take from the man what he assumed was his greatest love. But as time passed and he learned more about his wife’s murderer, Louis realized that while Redman loved his wife deeply, he was just as passionate about Redman International and his daughter, Celina.

They were his life’s accomplishments. They hadn’t failed him. It was then, as Redman’s daughter and his conglomerate matured, that Louis had his awakening. In order to make Redman feel the pain he had felt for years, Louis would take everything from the man, not stopping until his own thirst for revenge was satisfied.

There was a knock at his office door. It was only seven-thirty. Michael wasn’t supposed to be here for another half-hour. “Yes?” he said.

The door swung open and his secretary, Judy, stepped into the room. When she saw that he had been studying his wife’s picture, she hesitated, remembering a time years ago when she walked in unannounced and saw tears in his eyes while he held it. She turned to leave. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just coming in to catch up on some work. Jim told me you were here.”

She held the current edition of the New York Times in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. “I was going to give you these.”

Louis replaced Anne’s picture and managed a smile. “Remind me to give you a raise,” he said. “Those are exactly what I need right now. Come in.”

“I think you might find the paper interesting,” Judy said as she crossed the room to his desk. She was an attractive woman in her middle forties, with short blonde hair and a nose that was just saved from being too wide. She had worked for Louis for nearly twenty years and had become rich because of her ability to keep secrets. “Especially the front page and the business section.”

Louis looked up at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Judy placed the coffee down beside him. “This,” she said while handing him the paper. There, on the front page, was a picture of the new Redman

International Building-complete with a close-up of one of the destroyed spotlights. The banner headline read: EXPLOSIVE DAY FOR GEORGE REDMAN

Before Louis could react, Judy was saying, “And here,” as she opened the paper to the business section. There, the headline read:

REDMAN STOCK CONTINUES PLUNGE; PLANS TO TAKE OVER WESTTEX CONFIRMED

Louis skimmed the article that ran beneath the headline before turning to the front page and reading about the three spotlights he had Vincent Spocatti rig with explosives. When he was finished, he looked up at Judy. “And I thought today was going to be a bad day,” he said.