Introduction

Many people have asked me over the past three years what this book is about. For months I hesitated and stumbled when answering. I knew it was about a group of flamboyant real estate tycoons whose rise-and-fall stories spanned 150 years and whose connections to one another were entwined in their desire for a plot of land upon which stands a gleaming white marble tower, the most expensive office building in the United States: the General Motors (GM) Building.

I knew that the first of the overreachers was Tammany Hall scoundrel William Magear “Boss” Tweed, whose lust for lucre meant he wound up bankrupt in jail. After him came Harry S. Black, America's most prolific builder in 1900. Black committed suicide in the house he used to own with his first wife, a woman he had foolishly betrayed and lost. Then there was the towering, talented William Zeckendorf, a man who expanded the importance of the job description developer, but who also died alone and bankrupt. There followed the urbane British Lord Max Rayne and his colorful, indefatigable female chief executive, Cecilia Benattar, the so-called “housewife tycoon” who brazenly battled New York's social and business elite, then disappeared as suddenly as she'd arrived. There was Disque D. Deane, a brutal man who, it was whispered, as good as killed his wife with cruelty. Next came David Simon, the mall heir; he was quickly followed by Stephen “Steve” C. Hilbert, the one-time insurance salesman from Indianapolis who helicoptered five miles to work each day—and married a woman who jumped, practically naked, out of a cake. His partner was Donald J. Trump, who needs no introduction. And then came Harry Macklowe, the most charismatic of these characters and perhaps the most tragic.

Why do their stories matter? Why should anyone care about a group of rich guys competing for a very expensive building? What became both bewildering and absorbing as I researched this book were the extraordinary lengths to which these men went to achieve their goals.

Dream chasing, it turns out, in the world of global real estate is a sordid pursuit.

In these pages, lying, cheating, stealing, suing, and tax evasion are just humdrum ways of business. Friendships and alliances get made to be broken; a man's word is never his bond; partners routinely sue one another; wives are discarded and cheated on; but so too are bankers, colleagues, and brokers.

The boorish behavior at the Liar's Ball, the party that the Real Estate Board of New York throws itself each year, had intrigued me when I attended the event. It also paled in comparison to the roughness I would unearth. And yet . . . .

Tempering the grotesque intemperance was the humanity, the vulnerability that these characters—for the most part—revealed.

I realized as I combed through more than 200 interviews with my crowd of “rough riders” (as the New York real estate deal makers were once called—there was even a room in the Roosevelt Hotel where they negotiated over lunch) that my fascination with them lay as much in their insecurities as in their ambitions. And that one explained the other.

And whatever faults these people share, these leaders of the dance at the Liar's Ball have at least danced.

A friend of Harry Macklowe's long-suffering wife, Linda, put it this way: “This is not a normal world. . . . None of these people are fuckin' normal. And, again, what is normal? They're all gifted in such a way that they are unique, disturbed individuals. . . . And the level of disturbance is oftentimes about how successful they are.”