Innocent Spouse (26 page)

At the eleventh hour Paul Wahlberg called. He came with an outstanding reference, Nora Pouillon of Restaurant Nora, an acclaimed Washington restaurant and one of my personal favorites. Paul said the place where he worked had just closed and he was ready, willing, and able to be Nathans’ head chef. Moreover, he had the qualifications.

Paul and I hit it off right away. He loved food and had grown up in a big family, where I got the impression he may have been the short-order cook. He was from the Dorchester section of Boston, complete with the accent. His manner was unassuming, almost shy. I can say he looked like the older brother of the movie star Mark Wahlberg because he
was
the older brother of Mark Wahlberg, a fact he revealed to me later, after he was hired. He had substantial experience as a chef and as a kitchen manager. He’d worked hotels and restaurants in the Boston area before moving to Washington. His wife had been relocated here by Crate & Barrel, where she was a manager. He was in his midthirties, he didn’t drink, and he really loved to cook. His exuberant enthusiasm was infectious. We both thought an audition was a good idea. I was eager to see his game.

He showed up on time, dressed in a clean white chef’s jacket, got along well with the line cooks, and prepared several delicious American dishes. “What do you think?” he asked, standing beside me at the table in the bar where I was sampling his food.

“I love everything,” I said, sincerely. He made a spring roll of
potatoes and crispy duck that was inventive. He made a salad of julienned prosciutto, goat cheese, roasted red peppers, and pine nuts on romaine that was delicious. He made salmon in a broth of fennel and truffles that I wanted to eat every day.

He sat down. “I wanted to make you some fried clam bellies but the clams weren’t right. But I think I do fried clams better than anyone.”

“I can’t wait,” I said, already imagining the salty sweetness of the clams. The next day I offered him the job and he accepted. Vito Zappala thought hiring Paul was a good move.

If Doug Moran wondered about all this activity and what it meant for him, it didn’t show. He welcomed Paul. He did not interfere with Paul’s plan for a complete redo of the menu, moving it toward American food. I liked Paul’s ideas. Paul, Vito, and I felt like a team, with Doug on the sidelines not paying much attention.

The scenario the lawyers provided at this point was that if the IRS let me keep the business I would probably be making payments to them for years to come. It was essential that Nathans become as profitable as possible, so that I could sell it for top dollar. Every choice and decision I made was based on that goal. How would the customers respond to a new menu? Well, I had made changes to the old menu and though there were grumblings at first, they stopped eventually. I expected the same reaction when we switched from northern Italian to American. If we did a good job and put great food on the table, who really was going to bitch? This was an all-American saloon. It should have American food. Paul’s was such a winning personality. He gave me courage. He was also a real captain of his kitchen. We gave him a budget and left him alone.

Things were looking up at the restaurant, but across town at
Larry King Live
my career was going from bad to worse. Three important bookings slipped away, and I’d worked hard on all of them. I’d been pursuing Ralph Lauren for months, wooing him with flowers and letters. I met with him in his surprisingly small New York office. We hit it off, and I thought he seemed favorable to an interview. Hamilton South of his staff told me Ralph had never done a big network interview. All the major talk shows seemed to be after him at once, but in the end his communications chief called with the news. “He’s decided to go with Diane Sawyer and
Primetime Live
. He feels more comfortable
with the taped format. He’s afraid he won’t do well on live television and that he’d make a fool of himself.”

Then the possibility of Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford began to fade. They were a hot get at that moment because Frank had been caught in a tabloid sex scandal involving another woman and some hotel trysts. Kathie Lee was Regis Philbin’s cohost on the highly rated
Live with Regis and Kathie Lee
. An appearance on
LKL
would be a sure ratings winner. In the summer, their public relations man, Howard Rubenstein, assured me that if they gave an interview, “Larry would be the one.” Now in the fall he told me, “They’re leaning toward Barbara Walters. Frank feels she’s been good to him.”

I said, “If he talks to Barbara she’ll want him to cry.” Howard said nothing. I kept pedaling. “Okay, let’s say Frank goes on Barbara. Let’s say that’s a done deal. Here’s my idea: Have Frank go on Barbara and cry and apologize and then have Frank and Kathie Lee appear together on Larry to make up. And do it just before her Christmas special. It will be more in the spirit of things and America can believe Kathie Lee is happy again.” Howard said he’d find out. No promises. The couple planned to do only one interview. The sum of our conversation was that Larry King would not be the chosen one for Frank and Kathie Lee. That’s what mattered to Wendy.

The biggest loss was Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, the infamous Fergie, who, shortly after the Paris crash, said she would do one interview on the subject of Princess Diana’s death. Her New York publicist, Jeffrey Schneider, told me Fergie had decided Larry King would get that interview. Wendy was elated. Suddenly, in October, when I met with Jeffrey, the deal had changed. He said, “It’s now between you and Oprah.” I sat across from him in his Sixth Avenue office while he called London and negotiated with her office on Larry’s behalf. I heard him tell Fergie’s people, “
Larry King Live
should be first.” But then she, too, decided to go with Diane Sawyer. It happens. Sometimes you’re on a roll and sometimes you’re not. Right now I couldn’t afford the
not
.

All I had in the pipeline was Marv Albert, the sportscaster who was in the middle of his own sex scandal, which made big headlines due to his alleged fondness for biting his lover and wearing women’s underwear. That came out in a trial prompted by a former lover who
had accused him of biting her. As always with talk TV, sex was a ratings winner and made Marv a white-hot get. Howard Rubenstein was his representative, too. Rubenstein pointed out that every major interviewer wanted Marv. When I was in the middle of my spiel about the relative merits of Larry versus Barbara, Diane, Katie, or Oprah, he interrupted. “Well, let me tell you who else has asked for the first interview. You won’t believe it: RuPaul!”

“RuPaul!” I exclaimed. “That’s who I would go with. Hands down.” He chose Barbara instead. We would be second, but that was okay because we announced before she did, using a clever promotional tactic, touting the show as Marv’s first “live” interview. We always found an angle.

While I was enjoying booking Marv Albert, Wendy understandably was focused on the ones that got away. Losing Fergie and the Giffords did not go over well with the boss, and she was disappointed about Ralph Lauren. Wendy didn’t expect Lauren to pull big ratings, but he would have been a prestigious interview.

“I need to talk to you,” Wendy said, inviting me into her office. I sat in the chair across from her desk. Becky was sitting on the sofa behind me. I could feel her chill on my back. “The McKinsey people have done a study of CNN and they have looked hard at our show,” Wendy said in a tone that expressed more frustration than anger. McKinsey & Company is a global management-consulting firm that CNN hired to assess ways the company could trim budget fat. “Atlanta isn’t going to tolerate anymore the way I have you in a staff position but only working part-time. I’m going to have to make you a freelancer.” In the past she would have fought for me, but those days were over. Now, my career, which had been teetering on the edge for some months, was falling over the cliff.

“I feel bad about this,” I said. “Can I think about it over the weekend?”

“Don’t,” she said. “Nothing’s going to change. This arrangement will be better for you. You can concentrate on what you do best.”

My long career in network news had taught me many things; one of them is that when a boss says, “This will be better for you,” it means nothing of the sort.

“But, Wendy, I’ve been able to give much more time to the show
lately. I’m working the same number of hours as when Howard was alive.”

“You’ve only booked Rosie, Marv, and Calvin Klein,” she said, shorting me by several other solid bookings. “And what about the pope? You haven’t booked the pope. He’s the number one target of Barbara Walters.”

“Wendy,” I said, “are you serious? Do you actually believe that if the pope were to do his first television interview it would be with Barbara Walters?”

“I have to end this,” she said. “I have a call to make.” The meeting was over.

This turn of events was more humiliating than heartbreaking. As I sat there talking to Wendy, I also stood outside my body watching myself beg for my job while Becky sat behind me saying nothing.

Later Wendy said to me, “My God, Carol, you have a full-time job at the restaurant and a child to raise. I don’t know how you think you can do all this.” She paused. “Tell me something. Is it that you want the job, or that you need the job?”

“Wendy, it’s both. I want and need the job.”

“We’ll talk again,” Wendy said. “We’ll try to work something out.”

The next morning, a Sunday, I went for my usual run. Along one of the prettiest stretches of the running path, where it skirts the Potomac River in front of the Kennedy Center, I took a bad fall, landing on my hands and knees, ripping open my running pants, and tearing the flesh. I pulled myself into a sitting position and rested my back against the railing, with the river behind me. My hands and knees were bloody. I sobbed like a little kid who had fallen off her bike on the playground, but I wasn’t crying over my physical wounds; I was crying over all of it—Nathans, my no-longer-brilliant career at CNN, my debts, the IRS, the uncertainty, the fear, and now my bleeding leg. I sat in a heap on the running path feeling sorry for myself. Then I got up, wiped myself off, and limped home.

Sometimes—and this was one of them—I felt that Spencer was the only thing that kept me going.

D
EBORAH
M
ARTIN FROM
the IRS contacted current and former members of Nathans’ staff who had received the notorious “pink checks.” She wanted to tell the employees the obvious: The pink checks were income that had to be reported on their tax returns. The money had come from a slush fund Howard had created with the withholding tax money that he hadn’t sent to the government. Miriam assumed that Howard had told Doug and that Doug had advised the staff that nobody needed to report it. But this off-the-books money was recorded in a checkbook, not doled out the old-fashioned way, in cash and under the table. A check is a check is a check; it’s a paper trail. When Deborah did her audit, the checkbook was right there in Doug’s desk.

The employees were as scared as I had been when the IRS first landed on me in February, which now seemed like a long time ago. Several of them were immigrants and the attention of the IRS made them crazy. Doug Moran asked what we could do to ease their fears. “What do we tell them? Do they have to get lawyers?”

I wanted to help the staff, but I was struggling to satisfy the IRS myself and I had no money to pay for any more lawyers. “If they declared the income, then no, they have nothing to worry about,” I said. “If they didn’t declare the income then they should contact at least an accountant.”

“Well, no one declared the income,” Doug said. I still remember the pink oxford-cloth shirt and flowered tie he was wearing that day, and that he hadn’t shaved. Maybe he was growing the stubble that was coming into fashion.

“I figured that,” I said. “But, Doug, I’m the least smart about this stuff and even I know if an employer gives you a check and you cash
it, that’s income and you have to report it. There’s a paper trail. It can be traced.”

“This was Howard’s doing,” he said.

I wasn’t about to let Howard off the hook, but I had no doubt that he and Doug had worked in tandem. “Well, you didn’t declare it as income,” I said. “So a lot of the staff probably thought they didn’t have to, either.”

“A lot of them think Nathans, meaning you, will cover their tax debt.”

Later I asked Miriam if I was personally liable for their debt.

“No,” she said. “You have your own debt and the corporate debt, and that’s that. You got what they got a thousand times over.” Nonetheless, Miriam agreed to come to Nathans to talk to the staff, to answer their questions, to try to calm them.

Miriam arrived on a Thursday morning wearing a black suit and carrying her briefcase. She was in serious lawyer mode. About a dozen staff filed into the office, finding places to sit on the tattered sofa or on chairs they’d brought with them. Some leaned against the counter that held the copy machine and the paper cutter. The kitchen workers were in their white jackets, black-and-white checked pants, and aprons. It was an hour before opening and the rest of the staff was dressed casually. With the gray walls and the low ceiling, the room felt cramped. The atmosphere was quiet, expectant. When Miriam spoke, one of the Latino staff quietly translated. To me, their need for a translator underscored their vulnerability. It made me sad.

Miriam’s talk was tough. She stood in front of my desk and I sat behind her, watching their faces. They looked shocked and helpless when she told them they could each owe thousands of dollars. Watching their reactions I could feel only sympathy. They’d been duped, just like me.

A full half hour after the meeting began, Doug ambled in, eased his way through the group, and tossed his keys down on his desk. He went about his business as Miriam continued talking.

“Because this income was not reported, the IRS now expects you to pay the taxes owed,” Miriam said. “You may want to hire a lawyer to represent you in this matter.”