Cheyney Fox
Authors: Roberta Latow
Cheyney Fox
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1990 by Roberta Latow
For
John Mann, Ted Carey, Peter Jacobs,
who were there for me then
and
Donald Munson,
who is here for me now
It does not bother me if outside
winter spreads fog, clouds, and cold.
Spring is within me, true joy.
Laughter is a sun ray, all pure gold,
there is no other garden like love,
the warmth of song melts all the snows.
C
AVAFY
AUTUMN 1963: CAIRO.NEW YORK.ATHENS
T
he New York law firm of Dewey, Chapin & Rosewarne. Prestigious, definitely. And he was everything a woman in distress could want in a lawyer. Jewish, Harvard, Ivy League, from his Brooks Brothers buttoned-down shirt to every consonant or vowel he uttered. His baldness was not unattractive — sensuous even, combined with the handsome face and the intelligent, observant manner with which he quietly took in everything. He wore conservatism and the law like a suit of shining armor.
The troubled woman, Cheyney Fox, mega-wealthy, international high society, celebrated art dealer. Famous for her beauty, the power she wielded in the art markets around the world, and for being the widow of Kurt Walbrook, art collector and philanthropist
extraordinaire
. An erudite, sexy lady, jetting around in a champagne world of dazzling good times on the arms of men in high places, with a life-style both glamorous and intellectually significant.
She had forgotten that he was bound to look very much older. How very personable David Rosewarne was. It took her by surprise. Faint memories of him back in the sixties became instantly vivid. That had been a crushing time in her life. It had proved to be a turning point in his. They had had their victories as lawyer and client, but had been defeated in their personal attachment to each other by convention, moral and family obligations, by passion, and guilt.
They greeted each other cautiously. “What brings you here?” he asked.
Cheyney Fox paced nervously around his office, rather obviously trying to compose herself. He sat back in his chair, eyes following her. Silent and waiting. Finally she stood squarely in front of him and, grabbing the edge of the desk, leaned forward.
“Important secrets buried long ago. Ghosts that speak the truth. Mysteries better unsolved.”
There was an edge of panic — or was it anger? — in her voice. She closed her eyes and pressed outstretched fingers across her chest, as if trying to suppress her anxiety. She took a deep breath. Slowly she opened her eyes, stared into his, and sighed.
“Cheyney,” — with a gesture he offered her a chair — “take your time. Tell me everything, from the beginning.”
A few simple words and a way of looking at her. It was enough. Her calm restored, she sat down. “Something has happened. I have had a call from Washington. A new post is to be created by the president. He wants the country to have a Department of Fine Arts, and he has asked me if I will consent to be his first Secretary of Art for the United States. He wants Congress to pass funding for it and to ratify my nomination.”
“Congratulations.”
“A little premature. I have, as yet, not accepted. I am not sure I want to become a public figure, have my personal life, wealth, success, and integrity seriously questioned by a federal investigation. As you well know, my life does not read like
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
. Any investigation will expose me mercilessly to the world’s media.”
“I’ve never thought of you as a great train robber, a Wall Street thief. You’re not into murder or drug dealing. What’s so scary about standing in the limelight? You’ve been doing it admirably for the last few years. You’re a celebrity.”
“Mini, David. And we’re talking maxi here. Public office is not the same thing as private enterprise. I’m worried. I don’t want to disappoint anyone.”
“Why should you? Your sponsor doesn’t seem to be concerned. I can assure you, he would have had you checked out by the authorities long before he even approached you. The President of the United States thinks twice about appointing anyone to a position of power — no matter how much regard he has for them — if it’s going to cause him embarrassment.”
“That may be. But if I do accept, a deeper probing will follow. I will be threatened with several monumental problems. Problems that have grown out of my past. I will be forced to confront a major crisis, the possibility of ruin, on every level of my life. For the second time. All that could put my son at risk. Taggart’s only fifteen, and he is the most important thing in my life. Ruin this time, David, could be on a life-and-death scale.”
“Cheyney, that’s a bit dramatic.”
“I think not. Though it
is
ironic. To have, at last, made it to the top of my profession, to have everything I’ve ever wanted within my grasp — only to find it poses a serious dilemma for me: whether to grab for the brass ring or decline. That’s not dramatic, it’s pathetic.”
The sudden calm in her voice, the sadness in her eyes, the way she placed her fingertips together and touched them to her lips, the pensive expression on her face, spoke volumes.
“Are you telling me you have enough in your past to set off public malice, and threaten your credibility as an honorable candidate for office?”
She placed her hands back in her lap again, and, not quite looking at him, she answered. “Without a doubt. It will be a fight every inch of the way to win through.”
“This isn’t the Cheyney Fox I know. Good God, Cheyney, what are you afraid of?”
“I’m not quite sure. I’ve done nothing wrong, but that didn’t prevent me being dragged through the courts because of financial failure, and having my business and personal affairs twisted and turned against me. I’ve been there once, David. You saw how the facts of my life were distorted to make a picture the opposition wanted to see. It’s no easy thing for me to submit to that again.
“I’ve always suffered when I’ve shown courage, spirit, shot for the moon. Of course I have done nothing wrong. But nobody likes a victim, David, and you and I know I have in the past been the victim of circumstances beyond my control. Who hasn’t been? But the public tends to forget that when they’re reading about someone else. And especially a someone else who doesn’t keep to the middle lane in life.”
“Well, it’s a simple decision. How much do you want to
be the first lady of art in the United States? Enough to face whatever you must to get the job? Or would you rather pass it up?”
“Oh, I want it. Every instinct I have tells me to go for it. But, although these are heady days for me, my first thoughts are for my son. How the nomination and the publicity will affect him and his life. To fight is one thing. To face having some very private aspects of my life and work laid bare before my son is another. For fifteen years I have hidden behind a marriage, a network of galleries and corporations, before breaking out, for a second time, into the forefront of the art world. Do I want the secrets of those years, the ruthless wheeling and dealing, revealed?”
“Cheyney, be honest with me. We’re not talking, are we, about your going outside the law?”
“Absolutely not. No need to worry about that.”
“Then be specific. Tell me, how can I help you?”
Cheyney Fox looked away from him and took her time before she answered. “I want you, David, and your firm, to act on my behalf, handle anything to do with my past that erupts from an investigation. The demise of the gallery, and all my personal and business dealings of the early sixties. I feel strong enough to face any investigation. But I need to be prepared and advised by a team of people to get me through this. I don’t intend to have my chances ruined because of misrepresentation of facts. And that is what might happen.
“During the time you and I were in and out of bankruptcy courts, I was traumatized by failure. Anguished by having to prove that I had not robbed my own gallery of its assets. I was such an innocent, so dumb. The humiliation of it! The years of being down on my luck without a dime that followed, and just the passage of time, have dulled and distorted the facts to block out memories too painful to contemplate. So how am I expected to answer questions about a past that is in some cases hardly even there for me. In the life I lead now, it all seems like a bad black-and-white B movie. The theme music blaring ‘He done her wrong.’ Too awful, that will never do. Emotion and time tend to blur things. I need you to focus in on the truth for me if I am to come through this.”
David Rosewarne rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he contemplated
Cheyney’s words and studied her face.
She looked not so much older as more mature. And she had a son. He liked that softness he saw in her face when she spoke of the boy. Not so the determination in her voice, the hardness in her manner when she spoke to him. What was the glint in her eye — ambition? A steely protective shield? Could it be ruthlessness? He didn’t much like that edge of world-weariness he sensed, but he could understand it. It did nothing to detract from her good looks. They still made a man twinge. He weakened. Before he even realized what he was saying it was out:
“You changed my life.”
She had not expected that. David Rosewarne was not usually a man to give things away. She was quick with a retort, “But not for long.”
They shared an intense gaze for a few seconds, and he felt the sting of an undelivered slap on the wrist. Sufficient to snap him back to the business at hand. He could have wished for a flicker of something more. Affection? Intimacy? But it wasn’t there, and he wasn’t surprised.
“Your success as a clever art dealer, museum director, generous patron of art these last few years has preceded you. You’ve come a long way from the naive girl I once defended.” He made no mention of love. Her appointment had been made for a consultation, not a reconciliation. “You’ve acquired a taste for power, that’s obvious. And you know how to go for what you want, and get it. But I respect your caution, Cheyney. Am I right in assuming that if we act on your behalf you will accept the nomination?”
“Yes, but only after I’ve talked to Taggart and that means a trip to Eton, where he’s in school. I need to discuss the situation and its implications with him. He is my only family now. There are no major decisions without a powwow.”
From her handbag she took a box of Jujubes and put one of the gummy yellow drops in her mouth. She looked up at him and announced, “I gave up cigarettes years ago.” The only bit of self-revelation she offered to him that morning. Then she fixed him with a gaze that said, “Well, I’m waiting for your answer.”
“We here at D.C.R. could represent you. But surely you must have a team of lawyers handling your various business
affairs. Wouldn’t it be better for us to act as consultants to them on the years we represented you, if indeed that will be at all necessary?”
It was a cop-out he was going for, not a mere compromise. Determined to have him on her side, she pressed on. “Yes, of course I have lawyers. Judd Whyatt, of Draycott, Whyatt & Fowler has been my business and corporate lawyer since I started collecting and dealing again ten years ago.”
Cheyney watched David Rosewarne’s face intently for a reaction to the name, anxious for a sign of approval. But lawyers have cornered the market in deadpan.
“Look, David, I did consider what you suggest, but I feel, as Judd does, that I will be better represented if you handle directly any questions that arise from the years when you acted on my behalf. Judd will do the same job for me, only dealing with my affairs where your knowledge of them leaves off. The three of us will, of course, work as a team.”
He recognized a return of anxiety in her voice and signs of distress: a change in her breathing, the nervous energy returning. She needed him far more than he had realized. And she wasn’t sure she was going to get him. She rose from the chair and stood in front of him. A flush came to her face, she raised her chin and gave him a haughty look. Cheyney Fox was putting on a brave front.
Restless, she walked first to the bookshelves and ran her hand across the bindings, then walked to the window and looked out across the skyline of New York. Neither of them spoke, and the silence weighed heavy between them. With her back still to him she broke the stillness of the room. She neither pleaded nor demanded, she simply asked him in a voice devoid of emotion.
“Do this for me, David. I need you, take me on.”
At the very moment Cheyney Fox was consulting with David Rosewarne, eleven-thirty on that beautiful spring morning, Judd Whyatt went through the swinging doors of the New York Athletic Club into the breezy warm sunshine of Fifty-ninth Street. He was feeling in top form, having just played a hard game of squash. Okay, so he had lost: that made little difference to him. Gratified, at his stage of life, to have lost to such an
excellent opponent and to have played the game as well as he had. Better, if you must be defeated, for the champion to do it.
As Judd Whyatt walked the streets of New York toward his office at Rockefeller Center, his thoughts were on all the information and documentation being piled up on his desk concerning Cheyney Fox and her holdings. Over breakfast with her at seven o’clock that morning, he had made up his mind, instantly, that she was going to come out of this the first secretary of art in the United States. It was the sort of challenge that drew the best from the famous lawyer.
Draycott, Whyatt & Fowler were international lawyers who handled large corporations and a few wealthy individuals with smaller corporate holdings and businesses in their portfolio. Cheyney was one of those, and by far the most interesting one. He had taken her on ten years before as a client, after they had met previously under strange and secret circumstances that involved her then husband Kurt Walbrook. Hence a certain personal pride in her rise to power and wealth in the art world. He knew things about Cheyney Fox that only a few other men did. They were the aces he could always play if needed to win the day for her. Whether he used them all depended on just how hairy the investigations became, just how much fabricated smut was scattered by her enemies and competitors. She had made more than a few of them since her exposé on Andy Warhol and Pop Art, and by her relentless rise to success as one of the top dealers of contemporary art. Judd was ready to fight to win for Cheyney; she was too valuable an asset to lose.
He saw a pretty girl give him the once-over and twinkle at him, while he waited for a streetlight to change. Young enough to be his daughter. He gave her a dazzling smile and surprised them both by leaving her standing at the curb.