Brief tales with big lawyer

New magazine issues are rejuicing old stories on people who’ve gone. The New Yorker’s Aug. 10 edition has multiple pages on the late lawyer Roy Cohn once babysitting Donald Trump.

I was at their beginning 50 years ago. I knew both well. The magazine story repeatedly mentions me.

Like Ronald Reagan’s Screen Actors Guild, my husband was president of NYC’s American Guild of Variety Artists. Joey Adams emceed all major events. Gala Waldorf dinner. VIP dais. Joey at the mike. Roy needed that connection. They became close. He gave Joey’s birthday party. As Joey’s young wife, I was nobody.

Cohn’s home? East 68th mansion. Upstairs, a law library. The fabulous volumes — golden pages open, on the floor, stepped on, spilled coffee dribbled on. Me: “How can you do this to these precious books?” Roy: “Who cares? Just give me the judge.”

Roy took me to then-elegant French restaurant La Grenouille. Arriving, he told its maitre: “The check is in the mail.”

Above the law

He never paid bills. Joey brought him to our antique dealer. He selected three items. Lamp, vase, table. Six months passed. Never paid. Housekeeper Elvira knew me well, so one afternoon, my driver and I just arrived at his home, walked in, repossessed the items and delivered all back to the dealer. That night, Roy took me to dinner. Never ever mentioned one word about what happened.

One Joey birthday, we planned a party in Hong Kong. Suddenly, Roy arrived. Nobody knew he was coming. Nobody invited him. He flew in without telling anyone. Then he canceled all our dinner plans while inviting those he knew to a place he also knew.

Legal opinion

Roy perennially told Donald he could be president. Then came that moment it actually happened. Donald’s elected. First time. We — just we two alone — nobody near us. In his Trump Tower office. We’re standing close together, speechless, staring at multiple wall-size TVs. His family behind a barrier of desks. Staffers behind man-made gates. Workers behind them. Nobody around us. Nobody speaking. Or breathing.

And all he said to me was: “You remember what Roy said?”

Then, when major trouble hit him early on, all he said to me was: “I wish Roy were here now.” Roy couldn’t have cared less about me. That was until 1981, when I joined the New York Post and he then figured there was a possibility I could be useful.

I wasn’t. He only organized one accomplishment. I’d signed to do a book on Estée Lauder. Her people then got in touch with their new great lawyer, Roy Cohn. Although I stayed far away from him, I somehow never did get to complete my bio on Estée Lauder.

The quiet one who did magician Roy’s work and smoothed his schemes was lawyer Tom Bolan. Phone operator Christine, on every call, monitored every word probably starting with Alexander Graham Bell. My home has a large silver ashtray autographed, etched with a long thank-you in Roy’s handwriting, to Joey. I was there fresh after his face-lift and, maybe too soon, when Roy engaged much too soon with one of his friends in what this friend should not have been then engaged in that soon.

And Roy’s almost-every-day lunch was a tuna fish sandwich.

Yes, I knew Roy Cohn.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.