Mrs. Astor Regrets (43 page)

Tony and Charlene did not attend this event either. "We were not invited," Tony told me later, adding with bitter irony in his voice, "It was a small party—three hundred people." This was the ultimate insult, to be ostracized at an occasion where his mother was being lionized. Society was striking back, closing ranks against the couple. None of the speakers even mentioned that Mrs. Astor had a son. The program included a photograph of Brooke with Annette, but none of Tony. He was being erased from his mother's life. Liz Smith got up and told a funny but pointed story about visiting Brooke Astor in Maine. Standing with her hostess in a hallway trying to choose among stacks of new books arranged on a chest, Smith had picked up a biography of Violet Trefusis, Vita Sackville-West's lover. "Brooke said, 'Oh, I can't stand that woman, I despise her.' I said, 'Why, because she was a famous lesbian?' Brooke said, 'I don't care about that. She was horrible to her mother.'" Amid the gales of laughter, no one laughed harder than Annette and Philip.

When it came to tributes to Brooke Astor, more was more. On Friday night, September 28, the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated her life again, this time with a large gathering in an auditorium open to the public. Everyone entering the museum that evening, from socialite to schoolchild, was given a commemorative blue Brooke Astor metal button. The front rows on the right side of the auditorium were reserved for the "Astor Family." Tony and Charlene stood alone in that section, and until the auditorium had filled to capacity, no one went to sit with them.

Charlene had dressed up for the occasion in an elegant white silk blouse and dark skirt. She told me that this was a rare night out but that she had been looking forward to this evening. "All we do is spend our time with lawyers and take naps in between," she said. "But we wouldn't miss this." A grand jury was convening in three days to investigate the Marshalls and Francis Morrissey. Many in the auditorium had received subpoenas to testify, including Philip, Alice Perdue, and Naomi Packard-Koot, seated in the center of the room, and Chris Ely, Minnette Christie, and Pearline Noble in the back row.

The first speaker was Viscount William Astor. Walking onstage to the lectern, he found himself standing directly in front of Tony and Charlene. "It was the most extraordinary thing—he was in the front row," Astor told me later. "I thought, If I catch his eye, I don't know what I'll do." In his remarks, Astor pointedly thanked David Rockefeller and Annette de la Renta for making Brooke Astor's final year comfortable, a public putdown of Tony and Charlene.

Maxwell Hearn, the curator of Chinese paintings, then gave a lengthy description of Brooke Astor's role in building Astor Court, the museum's imported Chinese garden, and showed slides of her posing with the Chinese workmen. Then he pointedly echoed Lord Astor's comments, also thanking Annette and David Rockefeller for what they had done for Mrs. Astor. There was an intake of breath as Hearn opened a second front against Tony. The Marshalls looked shaken. Afterward, Hilary Marshall, who had been sitting with her uncle Philip, innocently bounded up to her grandfather and gave him a hug. But Tony seemed inconsolable and walked slowly out of the auditorium holding Charlene's hand, as if having trouble understanding why people felt such enmity toward him.

At a private reception upstairs given by Annette, the mood was festive. This was a gathering of Brooke's friends and also a reunion of those who launched the lawsuit. Susan Robbins chatted with Alice Perdue, Minnette Christie, and Pauline Noble. Philip and Chris Ely hugged each other. Annette played hostess, making introductions and posing for pictures with the staff. Summing up the efforts of the past year, Alice Perdue said, "All the help, helped."

In wandering around the party, I had mentioned in passing to two of Mrs. Astor's friends that I felt sorry for Tony Marshall. It was as if I had announced that Pol Pot was actually a misunderstood guy. The words ricocheted around the room. Earlier in the evening, Chris Ely had spurned my request for an interview, politely saying, "I'd rather say things under oath in a court of law." But as security guards were ushering us out of the museum, I fell in step with Ely. Informed by others of my comment, he wanted to respond, asking, "Are you getting the level of meanness? The Marshalls start out so nice, then they teach everyone to dislike them." He continued, "I was employed by Brooke Astor—my loyalty was to her. I promised I would be there always for her. Everyone here did what they did for the love of Mrs. Astor."

***

Back in the tabloid bull's-eye, Tony and Charlene Marshall tried to carry on, but every encounter was fraught with potential humiliation. The Marshalls were celebrities now, for their notoriety, and their routine movements were breathlessly tracked in the gossip pages. The
New York Post
noted in its sightings column that the couple had attended the dress rehearsal of
La Traviata
at the Metropolitan Opera. They were subject to whispered asides and outright snubs. Marilyn Berger, who had written Brooke Astor's obituary for the
New York Times,
chatted with the Marshalls at an October gala honoring Mike Wallace at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. "If one didn't know, they didn't seem like they were having any troubles," Berger said. "But everyone knew. Some people did not want to shake their hands. People circled around the other way to avoid them."

On October 18, 2007, the Marshalls, accompanied by Ken Warner, traveled to Westchester Surrogate's Court for yet another session. This time Philip and Annette did not attend. Judge Scarpino, ending the public session after less than ten minutes, sent the fifteen lawyers to a private conference room for an hour to schedule depositions. I sat with Tony and Charlene on the hard wooden bench in the hallway waiting for the lawyers, and we started to chat. Eventually I pulled out a notebook.

Charlene's cell phone kept going off every few minutes, and Tony responded by cocking his eyebrows and murmuring that the world would be a better place without cell phones. "They are the death of civilization, but they are convenient," he said. Well-mannered and polite, he was wearing his Marine Corps tie and tie clip but was fiddling with his hearing aids, totems of his youth and old age. He wanted to stress to me his continued happiness with Charlene. "Two things have taken us through all this from day one, from the minute it happened," he said. "We know the truth no matter what was printed and published. And the other thing is our love for each other. While some people who did not like us hoped it would do damage to us, it has made us closer together."

I mentioned that several people had told me that Charlene had brought him the only real love in his life. "That would suggest that I didn't love my mother, or didn't love my wives when I married them," he said, adding, "Things happen in marriages that set people apart." Charlene, who had just gotten off the phone, picked up the thread of conversation and interjected, "I adore him. And I will protect him with the last breath of my life." She said it in a passionate and vehement tone of voice, for her husband's ears as well as mine.

The Marshalls had given their friends permission to speak with me, and so I passed along a few compliments, mentioning that a theatrical producer had raved about Charlene's charm and a book editor had called her sexy. Today she was wearing a black skirt, black flats, a white blouse, a blue silk scarf, and a pale blue sweater tied around her shoulders, soccer-mom style. Charlene laughed, saying, "One of the newspapers called me a little hottie. I thought, I'll take that." She turned to Tony and said affectionately, "You wouldn't understand that, dear."

After the previous court hearing, I had left with Philip Marshall. Now Charlene wanted me to pass along a message to her stepson. Her voice turned raw and anguished as she said, "You talk to Philip all the time. Why doesn't Philip talk to his father? Why doesn't he just call him? I don't care if he hates me, but he should talk to his father."

It seemed as if Charlene hoped to spark a reconciliation. But a few minutes later she took the conversation in a direction that was not meant to promote father-son harmony, urging me to try to find out how Philip had dug up the financial details contained in the lawsuit. Hinting at legal repercussions, Charlene suggested there might be "something criminal" in how he got the information. She ended the conversation by saying, "What does it matter what you print? Our friends know us and we know what happened." She urged Tony to get to his feet, saying that he had been sitting too long; it was not good for him. The two of them went off to pace the corridor, back and forth, back and forth.

When Judge Scarpino issued his legal decision on October 26, he gave aid and comfort to both sides in this battle. He turned down Annette's and Philip's requests to be temporary administrators of Brooke Astor's estate and chose retired judge Howard Levine, as the Marshalls had requested. But Scarpino retained Chase Bank as an administrator. "That was perfectly acceptable to us," says Paul Saunders, Annette's lawyer.

"Mrs. de la Renta's priority was to keep the bank in the picture, since the bank had a year's worth of knowledge that no one else had." Chase had indicated that it planned to pursue the charges of financial mismanagement by Tony vigorously. Philip was disappointed, since he wanted to oversee his grandmother's wishes. Ken Warner, representing the Marshalls, viewed this decision as a victory, since he had been successful in removing Annette de la Renta as an administrator of Mrs. Astor's will.

But the jousting over Brooke Astor's fortune was about to be reduced to a minor plot line in an infinitely more dramatic story. On October 30, Dan Castleman, chief of the district attorney's investigative division, and the prosecutors Leroy Frazer, Peirce Moser, and Elizabeth Loewy held a meeting with Tony's new criminal lawyers, former prosecutors Gary Naftalis and David Frankel. This was show-and-tell time, a chance for the prosecutors to sketch out their criminal case in advance before indicting Tony. Castleman, who had played a recurring bit part on
The Sopranos
as a lawman, told them that Charlene ought to get her own criminal lawyer. The prosecutors were considering charges against her too.

On November 5 the group reconvened at Castleman's eighth-floor corner office, and Tony's lawyers presented their version of events, offering facts that caused the prosecutors to remove a few potential charges. The DA's office did not pursue tax fraud charges against Tony Marshall for his error over the Childe Hassam painting. Prosecutors also did not challenge the first codicil of Brooke Astor's will, giving weight to the fact that it has been prepared by her longtime lawyer Terry Christensen. However, that codicil was still expected to be disputed in the battle in surrogate's court over Mrs. Astor's will.

Even the jaded prosecutors had been fascinated by the father-son drama that led to this full-fledged investigation of Brooke Astor's final wishes. "If it wasn't for Philip, none of this would have come out," said Castleman. "It all would have sailed through. No one would be the wiser. No one ever thought these things would see the light of day."

With an indictment looming, Tony and Charlene unburdened themselves to Steve Fishman of
New York
magazine, for a story strategically timed to hit the newsstands on November 12. The Marshalls hoped for a sympathetic portrayal, but the
New York
cover story, "The Curse of Mrs. Astor," had an edgy tone. Fishman wrote that Tony Marshall was in the "pathetic" position of trying to prove his mother's love for him. Tony was reduced to reaching back into his childhood for anecdotes, saying, "When I had a terrible nosebleed, my mother put me next to her in bed. I stayed right in her bed till the next day." Charlene kept trying to bolster her husband's ego during the interview, referring to him as Mr. Marshall and exaggerating his investing skills, saying that he had made "all the money" for Mrs. Astor to give away. Tony had to correct her, saying that he had managed his mother's personal funds, not her foundation money.

Tony dug himself in deeper with his efforts to explain the $2.4 million bonus he had given himself in 2005 from his mother's funds. "If Mother was interested in financial details, I'm sure she would have agreed," Tony told the magazine, conceding, "In retrospect, I shouldn't have done it. It doesn't look good." He and Charlene insisted that Brooke had changed her will to make amends. "I think a certain amount of guilt came into her decisions, for not being the best mother," Charlene said, to which Tony added, "Atoning." They excoriated Annette de la Renta for challenging the wills. "The only word that comes to my mind is jealous," said Charlene. "That we were happy," added Tony. Charlene finished his sentence, saying, "That Brooke and I did get along so well."

Nothing inspires rumors so much as when the wheels of justice seemingly slow for a stop sign. The district attorney's office had been telling reporters that the indictments would probably be handed down in early November. But a sudden silence from Foley Square provoked a torrent of speculation. The most common theory—totally unsubstantiated, as it turned out—was that Tony Marshall was negotiating a plea bargain.

In truth, it was Charlene's fate that was being decided. The prosecutors held spirited debates among themselves over whether to indict her for conspiracy and larceny—to treat her akin to the woman who drove the getaway car. Charlene was believed to have been present when two of Brooke's valuable paintings were taken from her walls and rehung in the Marshalls' apartment. But the burden of proof is high, and the prosecutors were not convinced that they could make their case. Charlene was off the hook.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Dan Castleman alerted Tony's lawyers that the indictments would be coming right after the holiday weekend. Tony and Charlene turned down an offer to spend the holiday again with Sam Peabody at the Racquet Club, opting for a quieter time. Philip and his family drove to Vermont with Alec to spend Thanksgiving with their mother. A pall hung over the weekend. Philip had been pacing his house in the middle of the night, sending off e-mail at 3
A.M.
He wanted ... well, he did not know what he wanted. As Nan says, "Philip has not looked back and said, 'Whoa, did I just open a huge can of worms.' He does not want his father to go to jail, but the can of worms was much bigger than he knew."