The Marshal Falcon.

The headline in today's (3/29/12) New York Times reads, Inheritance For Astor Son Is Cut by Half/Settlement Ends

Dispute Over $100 million dollar Estate. So, it may be a good time to reprint my blog post, The Marshal Falcon (TFT 10/13/09) and thereby reacquaint ourselves with Brooke Astors's son, Anthony D. Marshall and the blonde limpet he made legal, but not respectable, by marrying, Charlene.

A brisk, October morning. Anthony Marshall, 85, and his wife, Charlene, 64, stand facing each other in the parlour of their seventeen-room Park Avenue duplex. Flames lick and rollover in the fireplace, but the temperature of the room remains arctic because Marshall has just been convicted on fourteen counts of Grand Larceny and Conspiracy to Defraud. He plundered the estate of his mother, 105-year-old heiress and philanthropist, Brooke Astor, while she was helpless from Alzheimer’s disease. Marshall is free on bail, but faces a sentence of up to twenty years. With his drooping eyes and sagging jowls, he looks like a bloodhound in a bespoke suit. Charlene looks like Liz Smith from Hell.

CHARLENE

If you get a good break, you’ll be out of Tehachapi in a couple years.

ANTHONY

Where?

CHARLENE

Tehachapi.

ANTHONY

Is that near Kykuit?

CHARLENE

I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck.

ANTHONY

This wasn’t a capital crime. The only hanging I’ll be doing is around.

CHARLENE

The chances are you’ll get twenty years. If you’re a good boy, you’ll get out in five. I can’t wait that long.

ANTHONY

Don’t, Charlene. Don’t say that even in fun. I was frightened for a minute. I really thought . . . You do such wild and unpredictable things.

CHARLENE

You’re taking the fall - and I’m taking a vacation. Liposuction here, botox there and Charlene’s got her groove back.

ANTHONY

You’ve been playing with me . . . You didn’t care at all. You don’t love me.

CHARLENE

I won’t play the sap for you.

ANTHONY

You know in your heart, In spite of everything I’ve done, I love you.

CHARLENE

I don’t care who loves who. I won’t play the sap. I won’t follow in Morrisey’s and I don’t know how many others’ footsteps.

ANTHONY Morrisey was our lawyer. He followed in our footsteps.

CHARLENE

You robbed your mother and you’re going over for it.

ANTHONY

It was your idea!

CHARLENE

This won’t do any good. You’ll never understand me, but I’ll try once and then give up. I was already old when I met you. Now, I’m over the hill. My chances of finding another husband are slim to none. I can’t waste any of them waiting for you.

ANTHONY

But I won’t last in prison. You know that. You won’t be waiting long.

CHARLENE

Your mother lived to be one hundred and five under worse conditions.

ANTHONY

The conditions were your idea.

CHARLENE

The only reason I should wait is maybe you love me and maybe I love you.

ANTHONY

You know whether you love me or not.

CHARLENE

Maybe I do. I’ll have some rotten nights after they send you up the river, but that’ll pass.

ANTHONY

If my mother had died when she should have, twenty-five years ago, would you still feel this way?

CHARLENE

A lot more money would have been one more thing on your side of the scales.

(Anthony takes a poker and plants it in Charlene’s forehead. Then pours himself five fingers of 100-year old cognac, drinks and calls Morrisey.)