Mrs. Astor Regrets (33 page)

In presenting his case, Salzman included not just the gravest charges but myriad small details. An aide said that Tony had complained upon seeing Brooke wearing a scarf: "Mr. Marshall was concerned about the $16.00 dry cleaning bill." The petition quoted Philip chiding his father for reducing Brooke's usual elaborate flower arrangements and substituting bouquets from Korean greengrocers. But that charge wilted on closer scrutiny. At 104, Mrs. Astor was no longer entertaining and did not require an apartment full of blooms. Sam Karalis, the owner of Windsor Florist, which had supplied Mrs. Astor with flowers for two decades, later told me, "When she was feeling well, she had the whole house filled with flowers. Toward the end, she was in bed all the time—she didn't use so many flowers. One bouquet a week for the bedroom, roses and lilies."

The guardianship lawsuit was never meant to be about money or property, but the entangling of Brooke's and Tony's finances was thrown in like a garnish on a Wedgwood plate. Philip had provided Salzman with financial documents including details about the sale of Brooke's Childe Hassam painting and his father's 2005 tax return. Tony later admitted that he had given himself a huge raise and a bonus—the W-2 showed that he had received $2.38 million that year for managing Brooke's money, five times his usual annual salary, $450,000. "All the money stuff was thrown into the lawsuit for leverage," Salzman recalls. "We didn't care about the money."

Caught up in the Oedipal implications of what he was about to do, Philip unburdened himself to Salzman, describing his pent-up frustrations and suspicions over the behavior of his father and Charlene. In constructing Philip's affidavit and his own cover letter, Salzman reflected that intensity of feeling. But these legal arguments were never designed for public consumption (let alone tabloid headlines) but were crafted to convince a judge in private of the dire nature of Brooke Astor's problems.

"Her diet is inadequate, endangering the life and safety of this slight and sickly 104-year-old woman," read Philip's affidavit. "Her Park Avenue duplex is in such a dirty and dilapidated state that she's been forced to live among peeling and falling paint and dusty and crumbling carpets. Her bedroom is so cold in the winter that my grandmother is forced to sleep in the TV room in torn nightgowns on a filthy couch that smells, probably from dog urine ... Why should my grandmother, who was accustomed to dining with world leaders and frequented 21 and the Knickerbocker Club, be forced to eat oatmeal and pureed carrots, pureed peas and pureed liver every day, Monday through Friday months on end?"

In hindsight, Philip concedes that the language in the affidavit was harsh but argues, "If we weren't effective, things were going to be really bad for my grandmother." In reality, there were two elements to Philip Marshall's guardianship lawsuit. The Marshalls were indeed inexcusably tightfisted and the household was poorly run; basic hygienic tasks such as walking the dachshunds were ignored, and maintenance of the apartment was neglected. But Salzman's petition went further by giving the impression that Brooke Astor was living in squalor that endangered her health. Philip's hurried financial investigation was designed merely as an ironic contrast, demonstrating that his father and Charlene were skimping on Brooke's care while living off her money. But the Watergate-era dictum—Follow the money—would prove irresistible to the district attorney's office. What began as a sideshow—Tony's fiscal stewardship—would prove to be the main event.

The guardianship petition would have provoked an ugly fight whether conducted in the hushed offices of $700-an-hour lawyers or in a judge's chambers. But once the family feud hit the newspapers, what gave it such a long-lasting and lurid quality was the colorful language of the petition. The frame for the story became "elder abuse," a phrase that Philip, as the petitioner, never used but that Salzman included on the first page of his own cover letter.

At 4
P.M.
on July 21, 2006, the phone rang in the Times Square law office of Susan Robbins. The forty-nine-year-old Robbins, an outspoken former social worker, was well known in the city's courthouses for her impassioned advocacy on behalf of nonprofit social service agencies that served as guardians for elderly and incapacitated clients. On that sleepy Friday afternoon, the lawyer was intrigued by the request from Ann Gardner, the law clerk for Judge John Stackhouse: would she agree to be the court evaluator for a new client without knowing in advance who that client was? "I knew it was something weird or out of the ordinary," Robbins recalls. "I said, 'I'll do it.'" And that was how Brooke Astor acquired a lawyer far different in background and style from, say, the Harvard-Yale norm at Sullivan & Cromwell.

Robbins, who is single, lives by chance in Astor Court, an Upper West Side building with a courtyard that Vincent Astor constructed in 1916. Even though she did not follow the society pages, she remembered reading about Brooke Astor's remarkable one hundredth birthday party. A graduate of Cardozo Law School, Robbins, the daughter of a music publisher, already had a full caseload. There was a sexual harassment case, a quadriplegic with housing problems, a mentally ill young woman whose caretaker grandmother had died, and a schizophrenic man afflicted with a brain tumor and warring doctors. "You can take the girl out of social work," her father constantly teased, "but you can't take the social work out of the girl."

Against the backdrop of her normally earnest but unglamorous battles, these new court papers were riveting. The words "elder abuse" and "Brooke Astor" in a guardianship lawsuit gave Robbins a jolt. A curvaceous woman who wears her hair in an old-fashioned bun and pairs serious suits with sexy scoop-necked tops, Robbins is a smoker. This news required a calming Marlboro.

Over the next few days, her role changed from neutral evaluator to Mrs. Astor's court-appointed lawyer, with the daunting task of attempting to find out what Mrs. Astor herself wanted. The 104-year-old could scarcely communicate, uttering mostly incoherent words, and suffered from tremors. She had a painful tumor on her leg and had been diagnosed with a chronic form of leukemia. Indeed, with all that was afflicting her, it was a tribute to her iron will that Mrs. Astor did not just let go.

Three days earlier, the conspirators had held a final meeting at Ira Salzman's Empire State Building office. Philip Marshall participated by speakerphone, Annette de la Renta was there in person, and David Rockefeller sent as his emissary Fraser Seitel, the veteran communications consultant who had handled the press at Chase Manhattan Bank and now had his own firm. Salzman outlined the steps he planned to take to file the lawsuit while keeping it confidential. "I thought it would be taken care of privately," Annette recalls. But Seitel warned that a lawsuit involving a woman as famous as Brooke Astor would be virtually impossible to keep under wraps, regardless of what legal precautions were taken. Philip was heard to say, "I'm worried that this will be on Page Six if it's not sealed," referring to the
New York Post's
fearsome gossip column. Salzman replied in words that would prove prophetic: "No, Philip, you don't understand. It will be on page one."

11. Blue-Blood Battle

U
NAWARE OF WHAT
was happening in New York, Tony and Charlene Marshall were enjoying a late July weekend at Cove End and the last peace of mind they would have for years to come. Annette de la Renta relaxed with her husband and her many dogs at her country retreat in Kent, Connecticut. The situation was about to go thermonuclear, but even the instigators of the guardianship lawsuit were still expecting a closed-door battle. If the protagonists had caught a whiff of where they were all heading, they might have taken a breath, a nap, or a tranquilizer, since "the Astor affair" was about to fulfill every aspect of New York's obsession with the foibles of the upper class.

The elements were irresistible, from the iconic 104-year-old victim to the roster of Social Register names to the easy-to-grasp presumed motive—greed. It was not a trip to rehab or a political sex scandal, but the continuing story featured that time-honored puller of heartstrings, an old woman in distress, as well as an unlikely trio of heroes trying to rescue her from the clutches of briefcase-wielding men in suits. An avaricious son and a scheming daughter-in-law provided classic stock-company villains. It was the kind of story that could only be missed if you were touring the Amazon rain forest in a dugout canoe and your satellite phone was on the blink. From Shanghai to Sydney to the banks of the Seine, the Astor docudrama was destined to be a global event.

On Sunday night, June 23, 2006, at Brooke Astor's apartment, when Marta Grabowska left and the nurses changed shifts at seven o'clock, the departing staffers believed that all was well with the lady of the house. "She was perfectly fine," insists Grabowska. The day nurse, Beverly Thomson, seconds that view. "I worked with Mrs. Astor that Sunday. She didn't talk much—she'd nod her head to say 'Thank you,'" recalls Thomson. "When I left, she was okay. But when I got home, I got a call from Minnette, who said, 'Beverly, we're losing her.'"

Either Brooke Astor had suddenly taken a turn for the worse or the two staffers had missed the warning signs. Minnette Christie, the night nurse, says that she became concerned as soon as she checked on Mrs. Astor. "I thought she had fluid in her lungs," says Christie. "I thought she had pneumonia. But I'm not a doctor—I'm not supposed to diagnose." Alone with her patient, Christie called Dr. Pritchett and reached his answering service. When the physician covering for him called back, he asked about Mrs. Astor's vital signs and then advised the nurse to monitor her patient closely. Christie phoned several nurses for backup help before reaching Pearline Noble, who raced over. Late that night the two caregivers became so worried that they called an ambulance to take Mrs. Astor to the nearest medical facility, Lenox Hill Hospital. In the emergency room, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. "For a person of one hundred and four, pneumonia can easily be fatal," explains Dr. Sandra Gelbard, her doctor at Lenox Hill, who signed a do-not-resuscitate order. "I was not going to put in a breathing machine or shock her heart or use aggressive measures. But I was going to treat her."

Christie and Noble had accompanied Mrs. Astor to the hospital, and Christie used her own credit card to guarantee that Mrs. Astor got a private room on the VIP floor. In normal circumstances, Mrs. Astor's nurses would immediately have contacted Tony Marshall, but since they, unlike Tony, knew that the guardianship lawsuit had been filed forty-eight hours earlier, they telephoned Philip instead. (Tony got the news several hours later from Dr. Pritchett.) As soon as Annette heard, she drove into the city and went straight to Lenox Hill to keep an all-night vigil. On Monday morning, when Susan Robbins learned the whereabouts of her new client, the lawyer decided to delay making contact, reasoning that "very elderly people who go into the hospital do not usually come out." But once again, contrary to expectations, Brooke Astor gradually responded to antibiotics and rallied.

Tony and Charlene arrived at Lenox Hill after 10
P.M.
on Monday, having been told earlier in the day by Philip about the guardianship lawsuit. In Mrs. Astor's hushed room, they immediately ran into two of their accusers, Pearline Noble and Beverly Thomson, who had given signed affidavits to Ira Salzman. "Mrs. Marshall burst in and he followed behind," says Noble. She added that Charlene angrily asked, "What have I done to you? Why did you do this to me?" While Charlene glared, Tony worriedly focused on his mother's health, inquiring with concern about what the doctor had said and whether she would be all right.

For two days the outside world did not know that Mrs. Astor was in the hospital, although she was registered under her own name. But once the
Daily News
broke the page-one story on Wednesday, July 26, about the lawsuit—dubbed the "Battle of N.Y. Blue Bloods!"—the hospital was besieged. "This was like nothing I've ever experienced," says Dr. Gelbard, a thirty-five-year-old New York native. "I'm unlisted, but the press got my beeper number. You have to answer your beeper, because it could be an emergency." Gelbard had been consulting on all medical decisions with Annette de la Renta, since Judge Stackhouse had named her Brooke's temporary guardian. The doctor, however, never spoke with Tony Marshall. "He was at the hospital," she says, "but I wasn't there when he was there."

Security guards stood watch over Mrs. Astor's hospital room—which had mahogany walls and hotel-style amenities—as if it were a branch of Harry Winston. "The whole floor was blocked off," Dr. Gelbard recalls, "but the press was still trying to break into the room." With rumors that the newspapers were offering $75,000 for a picture of Mrs. Astor, the nurses covered the windows for privacy, blocking out the sunlight. One reporter managed to get onto the floor by claiming to be the son of another patient, but he was escorted out once he neared Mrs. Astor's room. The
Daily News
ran a follow-up story quoting an unnamed hospital staffer as claiming, "She weighs seventy-three pounds and she's completely emaciated and bony." Among the authorized visitors granted safe passage to the suite was Chris Ely, who had not been allowed to see her for a year.

Philip Marshall, who had driven to New York after the nurses called him, visited daily, often at the same time as Annette. But reporters initially raced to his home in Massachusetts after the
Daily News
story broke. His wife's trepidation over the lawsuit was fully justified by the family's first exposure to the paparazzi. "Winslow went out to mow the lawn, and someone jumped out of a car and started snapping pictures," Nan Starr says. "He ran back in the house, white-faced." Soon the reporters knocked on her door. From the other side of the screen, Nan icily informed them that her husband was not home. But an hour later, after she calmed down, she took freshly baked banana bread and bottled water to the photographers and reporters camped outside on this sweltering day. "The mediator side of me kicked in, and I realized they were just doing their job," she says, adding shrewdly that she hoped her gesture would convey "that we are regular folks." When the press corps decamped several days later, they left a fruit basket and a note of apology. It was a small but telling predictor that Philip and Nan would hold the upper hand in the bitter public relations war.