Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [201]
He let go of me and pinched my cheek, hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. I do not know if he had acquired this habit by reading about Napoleon, who often singled out one of his veterans on parade by pinching his cheek, but I could see that Bluhdorn was in fact Napoleonic in other ways. He had the same piercing eyes, the visible energy, the total self-confidence, together with the absolute certainty that he was your master and that you would do anything for him.
It was not a type likely to frighten me, having grown up in the wake of my Uncle Alex. Like Alex, Bluhdorn could radiate charm when he wanted to; also like him, Bluhdorn was an expert at telling people what they wanted to hear, then doing the opposite. He had, in fact, persuaded Shimkin to sell S&S by offering him an honored place on the G+W board, where he could serve as an elder statesman, only to pull the seat out from under Shimkin the moment his company had been bought, thus plunging Shimkin into well-heeled, but gloomy, retirement.
Bluhdorn was Napoleonic in more ways than one. He had the reputation of disliking anybody who was taller than he was, and certainly short people seemed to do better at G+W than the tall, which I took as a good augury for Dick and myself, who were about the same height as Bluhdorn. Unlike the emperor, however, Bluhdorn did not surround himself with a praetorian guard of very tall men to show his contempt for their height; on the contrary, Bluhdorn’s bodyguard of assistants and PR flacks were short, nervous, and sweaty. Clearly kept on a tight leash by their master, they laughed when he did and cringed when he didn’t, and clung close to him like remora around a shark.
Bluhdorn released my cheek, and made his way off through the crowd, embracing everyone he passed like a politician on the make. He had the gift, I could not help noticing, of remembering people’s names, which in a company of G+W’s size and diversity cannot have been easy.
I was seated at the dinner table next to the tallest man in the room, Michael Burke, former president of the New York Yankees, now president of Madison Square Garden, who had been shanghaied into the G+W family when Bluhdorn bought the Garden. I knew Burke slightly—he was a fellow equestrian—and he was what the Irish call “a lovely man,” funny, brave (he had been a spy behind the German lines in Rome in 1944), and engagingly cynical about authority figures, including Bluhdorn, who suspected, correctly, that Burke made fun of him behind his back. Unfortunately for Bluhdorn, Burke was the darling of the New York press, and a beloved figure in the world of sports, so it was almost impossible to fire him.
Beside each place setting was a thin black box wrapped with a gold ribbon. We had been advised not to open our presents before Bluhdorn’s speech, and the rumor was that each box contained a Christmas bonus check. Burke and I talked horses and hunting through the meal. There was a certain queasiness in the air, partly caused by proximity to power—most of the executives around the table were from out of town, and only saw Bluhdorn once a year, so they were like officials from the far corners of the Roman Empire invited to dinner by the emperor, and not sure whether the meal would end with dessert or their beheading—partly because the G+W tower was notorious for swaying in a high wind, producing a sensation not unlike seasickness in those who had delicate stomachs. If you looked at your glass closely enough, you could actually see the water moving.
As dessert was served Bluhdorn rose to speak. His voice was high-pitched and rasping, something between quacking and an angry bark, and his way of encouraging the troops