On Friday morning, a lengthy article by Gina and Drew on the Metropolitan Museum homicide appeared in the New York Times. The crime was still no closer to being solved, they wrote, but from talks with Met officials they were able to report that the perpetrators (at this point it was assumed by everyone that there was more than one) were extremely well informed on several fronts. They certainly knew the layout of the museum: backstairs, entrances and exits, corridors, in fact, all the out-of-sight intricacies of the building. They also knew the ins and outs of museum schedules, not only when the rooftop exhibition would close but internal workings as to which committees of the trustees would meet on what days, at what hours, and who would be attending. In short, it was obviously an extremely sophisticated, well-rehearsed operation.
Most of the article, however, focused on Mulholland in his pre-Chicago days, starting in Kansas City. Obviously, one of the Times writers, probably Drew, had gone out there. This was the place, it was noted, where Mulholland had made his fortune. After graduating from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, he got a job with a bank in Kansas City. From the beginning he apparently was both devilishly clever and untiringly industrious. After only ten years with the bank, he, along with two others, formed KCVC Partners, the initials standing for Kansas City Venture Capital. A private equity firm in which Mulholland was the brains, KCVC was ahead of its time in the Midwest. Using borrowed money, they bought out ailing companies and, after a period of laying off workers and introducing new equipment, made them profitable.
In virtually every case, KCVC was able to unload these newly minted lean and mean companies in a few short years for a multiple of anywhere from 50 to 500 percent. This was not the mother lode, however. That came after Mulholland had left KCVC and gone out on his own. First, he put together an outfit called MAA, Medical Advisors Associates. A sharp physician friend came to him with an idea. Medicare was fairly new then, and doctors, his friend pointed out, were overwhelmed and baffled by the paperwork required. Why not form a company that would relieve doctors of all those details and file with Medicare on their behalf? The plan was a huge success; MAA signed up hundreds of physicians in nine states across the Midwest. Mulholland and his physician friend made millions. Strangely, just when it seemed to be reaching its peak, Mulholland got out—to everyone’s surprise.
A year or two after that, it fell apart. Several watchdog groups had become suspicious and reported irregularities. It turned out that MAA, at the same time it was filing claims for their clients, was also adding a little extra to each fee. When it all unraveled, it proved to be the largest case of Medicare fraud uncovered to that time. Not only did MAA go under, Mulholland’s physician friend and several of his fellow officers ended up in jail. They yelled and screamed that Mulholland was just as responsible as they were, but he maintained that he had no idea what was going on, and, if he had, he certainly would never have been a part of it. Amazingly, he had also seen to it that there was no paper trail, no emails, nothing to implicate him.
His next venture was Pharmegen, a pharmaceutical company in Des Moines, Iowa, that specialized in generic drugs—aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen—but had moved into more sophisticated items: drugs for heart, liver, kidney, and blood disorders. The company knew to the day—almost to the hour—when the rights of a brand name would expire, and it began preparing well ahead of time to turn out the equivalent generic drug so that it could launch its product the moment it was legal. Before moving into the more complicated drugs, it announced it was setting up a lab in New Mexico, and indeed there was a small lab there. But the real reason for New Mexico was to provide a warehouse to store drugs made in Mexico that Pharmegen had begun distributing without saying they were prepared outside the United States.
The real problem came when Pharmegen got into the more complicated drugs such as those for epilepsy, diabetes, and arthritis. These drugs were considerably more expensive and difficult to manufacture than headache or cold remedies. In other words, they needed capital, which was where Mulholland came in. The expansion was a huge success.
Besides costs, there was another, much more troubling problem with these high-end drugs. A number of them, which seemed to work extremely well at first, eventually proved to have serious side effects, to the point that the manufacturers were forced by the FDA to recall them. Operating somewhat below the radar, Pharmegen continued to market a few of them, and, of course, had the market pretty much to itself. Besides, there was also a legal factor that played into the equation. There is a quirky drug law that says the generic manufacturers have less legal risk than the original name-brand company if their products allegedly cause harm. The law doesn’t make much sense, but there it is, and it proved an irresistible temptation to Pharmegen to continue selling these extremely chancy products. For a while the money was pouring into Pharmegen, but then, seemingly all at once, the warned-against side effects from several of the drugs arrived with a vengeance, to the point of causing not only numerous life-threatening illnesses but more than a few deaths.
Once again, Mulholland had been the canary in the coal mine. Having made a fortune in the early days of the venture, he had cashed out well before the debacle. When Mulholland left, things were going so swimmingly that the CEO of Pharmegen was baffled. “We’re just getting started,” he told Mulholland. “I need the money elsewhere,” Mulholland told him, “but I wish you all the luck in the world.” When the axe fell, and the company, faced with multiple lawsuits, was forced out of business, the CEO, hearing that his erstwhile backer had pleaded complete innocence of what had gone on, was apoplectic. Mulholland proved, however, as he had before, to be a miracle worker, a quick-change artist of the highest order.
Having amassed close to $1 billion, which over the next decade only increased, Mulholland undertook what was to be a series of reinventions of himself. His wife, Cornelia, had always been a person with a strong social conscience, supporting things like Meals on Wheels and shelters for the homeless. Moreover, Kansas City was a wholesome, homespun town—the home, after all, of Hallmark. Retiring from active participation in finance, Mulholland became a serious, dedicated philanthropist, not only joining his wife in her work, but also becoming a strong supporter of Kansas City’s first-class art museum, the Nelson-Atkins.
When, four years later, Cornelia contracted pancreatic cancer and died, Mulholland’s ties to the financial world had been all but forgotten. And he himself was ready to move on.
• • •
When I finished the article, I called Drew at the Times to congratulate him on his terrific research. When I couldn’t reach him, I called Gina and asked her to pass along my congratulations to Drew.
“Quite a story, isn’t it?” she remarked.
“I’ll say. First-rate reporting.”
“Did you see the piece next to ours on the inside page—a four-column box on a man named Izzy?” she asked.
“No.”
“Read it.”
IZZY – TODAY’S TAILOR OF CHOICE
Izzy Schwartzman has a small store, Tux DeLuxe, on West 37th street in the Garment District. Inherited from his father, it specializes in men’s formal wear: tuxedoes, tails, cutaways, morning suits—rented or sold. Through the years the business has seen a slow but unmistakable decline. Informality—the advent of dress-down Fridays, the emergence of blue jeans and the T-shirt as acceptable for all occasions, Broadway theatre audiences without a single necktie in sight—has become the order of the day.
In such a world, formal wear has landed near the bottom of the food chain, which is why a few years ago Izzy found himself one hot October day—it was spring in Colombia—getting off a plane in Bogotá. Speaking what little Spanish he could manage (anyone in the clothing business in New York City has to speak some Spanish), he was about to ask someone for help when a sharp-looking dude appeared at his side and introduced himself. It was Manuel Escobar, who was as thin as Izzy was overweight, with hair as dark and shiny as Izzy’s hair was thin and wispy, and a nose as thin as Izzy’s was flat and wide.
Manny, as he was known, took Izzy in hand, whisked him into a Mercedes S550, and headed out of town. About three miles outside the crowded city, they turned into an industrial area. Most of the buildings were old, a bit rusted and weathered, and Izzy began to wonder what he had gotten himself into, when, just past an empty warehouse, they turned a corner and headed toward an impressive, new-looking shed of corrugated steel where they disembarked. One of Manny’s assistants took Izzy’s bag, another assistant opened the door, and Manny ushered him into the building. Inside was a long, rectangular building about the length of half a football field, most of which was occupied by a hundred or more women hunched over sewing machines, ignoring everything except the garments in front of them.
In one corner were enclosed offices, and next to those was a long table on which were laid out samples of Manny’s products: formal wear, sportswear, business suits, overcoats, sweaters. Behind the table were mannequins dressed in the same garments. Manny was beginning to show Izzy his line when the latter’s eye was caught by something in a far corner of the building. He saw a man standing, facing another man who was aiming a pistol at him. All of a sudden, the man with the pistol fired point blank at the other man. Izzy was dumbstruck, even more so when nothing happened. The bullet appeared to bounce off the man’s chest onto the floor.
“Did you see that?” asked the startled Izzy.
“What?’ asked Manny.
Izzy pointed to the far corner, “That man just shot another man in the chest.”
“I’m sorry,” Manny said. “I should have warned you. That’s our test area.”
“But, but … nothing happened.”
“Of course. That’s why you’re here.”
Manny had gotten into the bulletproof garment business at the height of the Colombian drug wars, outfitting various drug lords and their associates in impervious clothing. Along the way, he had spread out in two ways. He included more and more styles in his inventory: blazers, figured vests, leather jackets. He also perfected ever thinner, stronger, lighter fabrics out of which to make these garments. In addition, he had developed materials that would ward off knife blows as well as bullets.
The result of all this was that Manny had become one of the premier exporters of bulletproof gear. Izzy, hearing of Manny’s enterprise, thought that maybe, just maybe, this might be a way to expand his own business and prevent the sinking ship of tuxedoes and morning suits from disappearing altogether, which was why he was now in the unlikely environs of Bogotá. The outcome of the visit was that Izzy began to carry Manny’s merchandise in Manhattan, joining outlets that Manny had around the globe: Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Istanbul, Dubai—you name it.
After Izzy made his deal with Manny, he had his nephew, a computer nerd, develop a fancy web site and enlisted a female cousin in the design world to prepare a glossy brochure. In a relatively short time, he had established a reliable supplementary income in state-of-the-art protective gear with such customers as prominent political figures and mob bosses along with their lieutenants in New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Bridgeport.
Izzy did not read the New York Times. His news sources were the Post and the Daily News, along with local TV, of course. He was aware of the murder at the Met, but since there was a regular drumbeat of murders in the five boroughs and the tristate area, and since he had never been inside the Met, he did not pay too much attention. He was astonished, therefore, that on the Friday morning after the crime at the Met, he began to get phone calls from chauffeurs and security guards for prominent social and business figures. Day after day following that, limos were lining up on 37th Street, and a stream of men, and some women, thronged into his shop.
After the murder, one the first things trustees of the museum and, indeed, of all the large arts organizations did was check with their people to see how their security measures stacked up in this new world of trustee assassinations. They were concerned, not just for themselves, of course, but for their wives, children, and small grandchildren headed for private schools and soccer games. It was understood that in addition to beefing up the private security at the entrances to their apartment buildings, a number of trustees also engaged security personnel to ride shotgun next to their chauffeurs. Inquiring of their security advisors what else they might do, they discovered, almost simultaneously, Izzy’s enterprise. Not only chauffeurs and security men arrived, but in some cases the principals themselves, who wanted to be sure that they got the right fit and style, as well as maximum protection, by trying these things on.
In between waiting on customers, Izzy phoned every relative or friend who had ever been near the shop and asked them to get there as quickly as possible. Watching his stock disappear, he put in an urgent call to Manny in Bogotá for as many items as Manny could spare, plus urgent orders for more. Izzy has sold more in a matter of days than he sometimes previously had in a year.
• • •
Dressing for Dorothy’s funeral, I put on my one and only dark blue suit; my one white shirt, a subdued, patterned yellow tie; and black dress shoes and headed out. As I emerged from the subway at 50th Street and Sixth Avenue, my cell phone was ringing. It was Arnie, calling from Stamford.
“I’ve been trying to get you,” he said.
“Had my cell turned off. I’m on my way to the funeral.”
“I assumed as much. Half of southern Connecticut is headed down this morning.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The junior associate I mentioned, the one who knows the scene in the business community?”
“Yes?”
“He says this young man you asked about, Stuart Ross, doesn’t hide his light under a bushel, especially at a local watering hole: McGonagle’s Pub. Monday night is Happy Hour at McGonagle’s, when all the young try to make the scene, and last Monday Ross, who goes by the name of Stu, was there. The reason my associate remembers is that Stu and another fellow, a left-leaning environmentalist, got into a heated political argument.”
“What time?”
“Happy Hour is from 5:00 to 7:00. Somewhere in the middle of that.”
“Arnie, I can’t tell you how helpful this is.” I looked at my watch. “Sorry, but I have to ring off. I’m almost there. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
• • •
Monaghan and I had agreed to meet near the church in Paley Park, a tiny, vest-pocket park on 53rd, just east of Fifth Avenue. He was there when I arrived, dressed in a quiet gray suit, blue shirt as usual, and a muted white-and-red striped tie—his churchgoing outfit, I assumed.
“Have you tracked down Troy?” I asked.
“Late last night. He’s staying with an actor friend, someone named Halliday. Seems they’re all friends, Samantha the lighting woman, Halliday, and Troy. Troy admits he was there. Said he’d heard about the playwright and the director but had never seen their work and wanted to take a look. He was supposed to leave town before the previews begin, so Samantha invited him to sit in the light booth. One of my people talked to him—Elena, a sharp Hispanic girl. He’s angry all right, but he denies having anything to do with Tremayne’s murder. He did leave the booth briefly to go downstairs to the john, but that was earlier, he says, and he came right back. Once the news of the murder was reported, he immediately skedaddled. As for wanting to kill Tremayne, he says no way: ‘She’s one of the only decent producers in the theatre: If I’d wanted to kill anyone, it would have been that bitch Ardith,’ he’s quoted as saying. We’re checking to see who remembers seeing him. It still could have been one of those unintended things.”
“Obviously, there’s something off-kilter here, what with his being in the booth and Samantha denying it. Also, he’s known to be a volatile individual.” I then told Monaghan about my conversation with Arnie. “In other words, Warren’s alibi, that he and that young man were in Stamford working late, seems not just problematic, but untrue.” I changed the subject. “You’ve never seen Warren, have you?”
“No.”
“He’ll be at the funeral, and probably his sister from Tucson and her husband as well. We’ll go to the church separately, but when we get there, stand at the back corner on the right-hand side. It’s dark there, and I can point people out as they come in. The family has reserved a private dining room at the University Club—a block north of the church—for lunch after the service. I’m assuming Warren and his sister will go to that.” We left separately, and headed for the church.