“Thank you, Heather.” Constance Hodges lifted her eyes as her assistant set the clear mug of coffee on her desk. She stared at the headline. Park Manor: Lucy Merchant’s Last Address. She was not surprised to see it. In these waning days of print media, disclosing the excesses of the privileged was still a sure way to sell tabloids, and Lucy Merchant’s death was the predictable excuse for another Park Manor exposé.
Hodges sipped her coffee and studied the byline. The reporter’s name wasn’t familiar to her, and that meant it was unlikely he had ever set foot in Park Manor. If he had, she would know it, because no one gained admittance without signing in and showing a valid ID card. His article, she concluded, must be a tapestry of tabloid fabrications and rehashed rumors. Still, there was the possibility he had sniffed around. He might have “befriended” a talkative resident leaving the building. And many of those residents had no filters. There was no telling what they would say.
She read the first paragraph.
Park Manor. The name evokes an idyllic estate in the English countryside, a Downton Abbey for New York City’s aging gentry—retired hedge fund managers, successful entrepreneurs, investment bankers, box-office stars, and Botoxed heiresses.
The Downton Abbey reference was such a cheap allusion. Leave it to the Post, she thought, and continued reading.
Situated on the first three floors of a lesser-known Emery Roth building between Fifth Avenue and Madison, Park Manor has served New York’s privileged for almost three-quarters of a century. The institution is now the crown jewel of health care empire Foster Health Enterprises. Competing health care conglomerate Eldercare Elite recently made an offer to acquire Park Manor. According to an unnamed source at Eldercare Elite headquarters, “Park Manor has breathtaking facilities and amenities beyond belief, but its management is bloated and shortsighted. Folding the operation into Eldercare Elite’s portfolio would save money, improve care, and benefit shareholders.”
Hodges reached for her coffee and wanted to slosh it all over the tabloid. Sam Davidson, the Eldercare Elite CEO, was an egocentric maniac willing to trample over anyone in his path, and Hodges hoped Renee Foster would not let the bastard get his hands on Park Manor. He would cheapen the institution’s name by creating a chain of Park Manors in upscale markets—and Hodges would certainly be out of a job.
What is life like in this rarified world of the privileged senior set? Park Manor is highly protective of its clientele, but many celebrities, politicians, and business moguls are known to have spent their last days here. No one who’s worked at Park Manor will speak on the record—employees sign a no-exceptions confidentiality agreement for life—but by all accounts, these high-achieving seniors like nothing better than to reenact their glory days.
Hodges skimmed the familiar anecdotes about high-profile Park Manor residents: Vera Pressley, the invalid actress who clutched a pen in her arthritic hand at all times to sign autographs, and chain-smoking inside-trader Chuck Rose, who rolled his oxygen tank around the first floor giving investment advice until his dementia advanced and he had to move upstairs to the Nostalgia Neighborhood.
These anecdotes, Hodges was pleased to see, were the tried and true tales regurgitated periodically for the masses who loved to envy or hate the rich. She could tell far more interesting tales—like the night just six months ago when former Federal Appeals Court justice Mark Gallop ordered a prostitute off the Internet and she had to be turned away at the front desk, or the day last month when declining socialite Erika Speers refused to allow two other residents to dine at her table, saying, “You’re just old, you’re not old money,” and a golden girl fight had ensued.
Hodges skimmed the over-the-top description of Park Manor’s perks.
Need a quick Buddhist chant to make you forget that your legs don’t work? At Park Manor, a Tibetan monk is a snap of the fingers away, and so are the nutritionist and Hollywood-trained makeup artist.
Hodges imagined straphangers eating up this exaggerated drivel as their subways slammed through tunnels taking them to their low five-figure jobs. Finally she got to the part about Lucy Merchant.
Sadly, the musical theater legend did not qualify for life on the vibrant first and second floors. She did, however, receive a standard of care few dementia sufferers enjoy. Sequestered above the socially stimulating world of Park Manor Village is the Nostalgia Neighborhood, a state-of-the-art dementia care unit where the well-heeled participate in brain research studies and pharmaceutical trials that make potentially effective drugs available to them long before they are approved by the FDA. And at Park Manor, the specially trained caregivers outnumber their charges by a ratio of almost 2 to 1.
Hodges tossed the article onto her desk and sighed with relief. Michael Berger, the Foster Health Enterprises chief of operations, would not be calling her to complain about leaked information. And there was no mention of Julia Merchant’s surveillance video, either. Hopefully, Thomas Merchant had calmed down his daughter since yesterday.
Hodges smiled when Heather Granahan appeared in her doorway. “Yes, Heather?”
“Baiba—Ms. Lielkaja, I mean—she just called. She said she’s not feeling well. She won’t be in today.”