Too Much and Never Enough, стр. 32
Only the most dedicated optimist could have lived in Sunnyside Towers without losing hope. There was no doorman, and the plastic plants and flowers that filled the two large planters on either side of the plexiglass front door were perpetually coated in a thin film of dust. Our sixth-floor hallway reeked of stale cigarette smoke. The dank carpet was a soulless shade of seal grey. The indifferent overhead lighting hid nothing.
The height of my father’s lifestyle had been when he and my mom had lived in their one-bedroom near Sutton Place right after they were married. During that year, they had spent their evenings going to the Copacabana with friends and flying to Bimini on weekends. It had been all downhill from there, a trajectory that mirrored that of Donald, whose own lifestyle became more extravagant as the years passed. Donald had already been living in Manhattan when he married Ivana. After the wedding, they lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue, then in an eight-bedroom apartment also on Fifth Avenue. Within five years they were living in the $10 million penthouse triplex in Trump Tower, all while Donald was still effectively on my grandfather’s payroll.
My grandfather created Midland Associates in the 1960s to benefit his children, each of whom was given 15 percent ownership in eight buildings, one of which was Sunnyside Towers. The express purpose of this apparently quasi-legal, if not outright fraudulent, transfer of wealth was to avoid paying the lion’s share of the gift taxes that would have been assessed if it had been an aboveboard transaction. I don’t know if Dad knew that he owned part of the building he now lived in, but in 1973 his share of it would have been worth about $380,000, or $2.2 million in today’s dollars. He seemed to have no apparent access to any of the money—his boats and planes were gone; his Mustang and Jaguar were gone. He still had his FCT vanity plates, but now they were attached to a beat-up Ford LTD. Whatever wealth my father had was by then entirely theoretical. Either his access to his trust funds had been blocked, or he had stopped thinking he had any right to his own money. Thwarted one way or the other, he was at his father’s mercy.
Dad and I were watching a Mets game on television when the intercom buzzed. Dad looked surprised and went to answer. I didn’t hear who was calling from the lobby, but I heard my father say “Shit” under his breath. We’d been having a laid-back afternoon, but Dad seemed tense now. “Donald’s coming up for a couple of minutes,” he told me.
“Why?”
“No idea.” He seemed annoyed, which was unusual for him.
Dad tucked his shirt in and opened the door as soon as the bell rang. He took a couple of steps back to let his brother pass. Donald was wearing a three-piece suit and shiny shoes and carrying a thick manila envelope wrapped with several wide rubber bands. He walked into the living room. “Hi, Honeybunch,” he said when he saw me.
I waved at him.
Donald turned back to my dad and said, “Jesus, Freddy,” as he looked around disdainfully. My father let it slide. Donald tossed the envelope onto the coffee table and said, “Dad needs you to sign these and then bring them to Brooklyn.”
“Today?”
“Yeah. Why? You busy?”
“You take it to him.”
“I can’t. I’m on my way to the city to look at some properties that are in foreclosure. It’s a fantastic time to take advantage of losers who bought at the height of the market.”
Freddy never would have dared develop his own projects outside of Brooklyn. A few years earlier on a weekend trip to the Poconos, as he and Linda had driven past row after row of condemned buildings on either side of the Cross Bronx Expressway, she’d pointed out that he could start his own business and renovate buildings in the Bronx.
“No way I could go against Dad,” Freddy had said. “It’s all about Brooklyn for him. He’d never go for it.”
Now Donald looked out the window and said, “Dad’s going to need somebody in Brooklyn. You should go back.”
“And do what, exactly?” Dad scoffed.
“I don’t know. Whatever you used to do.”
“I had your job.”
In the uncomfortable silence, Donald looked at his watch. “My driver’s waiting downstairs. Get this to Dad by four o’clock, okay?”
After Donald left, Dad sat on the couch next to me and lit a cigarette. “So, kiddo,” he said, “want to take a ride to Brooklyn?”
When we visited the office, Dad made the rounds on his way to Amy Luerssen, my grandfather’s secretary and gatekeeper (and also my godmother), whose desk stood right outside of her boss’s door. Aunt Amy clearly adored the man she called “my Freddy.”
My grandfather’s private office was a square room with low lighting, its walls covered with plaques and framed certificates, a lot of wooden busts of Indian chiefs in full headdress scattered about. I sat behind his desk and chose from what seemed an endless supply of blue Flair markers and the same thick pads of cheap scratch paper he had at the House, writing notes and drawing until it was time to go to lunch. When I was left alone, I spun wildly in his chair.
My grandfather always took us to eat at Gargiulo’s, a formal restaurant with crisp cloth napkins and tablecloths where he went almost every day. The deferential waiters knew him, always called him “Mr. Trump,” pulled out his chair, and generally fussed over him throughout the meal. It was better when Aunt Amy or somebody else from the office joined