River Oaks 77019
Will Oscar bleed Bobby dry? Did Lynn betray her daddy for money? Was Doug pals with an alien? Has Fergie given Steve the heave-ho? Will the Wyatt-Sakowitz feud blow Houston society apart? It could be this summer’s hottest miniseries.
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There’s one chance for the family to piece itself back together. In 1990, after Sakowitz has closed for good, Robert gets Oscar off his back by paying him half a million plus a share of those secret sewer rights (Oscar, of course, had filed just another little-bitty lawsuit to get what he wanted). Oscar even starts to think Robert isn’t such a lightweight. He reminds Berg in a deposition that Robert “dunked his creditors for $24 million and remains well-to-do.” But Douglas won’t quit. On principle, he says.
That’s what he says, but there’s a lot of history here. His real father ended up going to jail for murdering a French student on an LSD trip to hell. Then he died mysteriously. Uncle Robert stood in briefly, until Oscar signed the adoption papers. You wonder if all that coming and going wasn’t rough on the kid. Maybe he wants to prove he’s as bad as his Oscar. Or maybe there’s an even weirder reason.
Flashback a little bit. Douglas makes friends with this commercial real estate broker named Roger Hall. Looks like a fullback, but like Douglas, he’s into Big Questions. The two start jogging around Memorial Park, talking about God. Douglas tells Roger about a Manhattan guru who runs something called Eternal Values. One of his pitches is that wearing big gems—not just any big gems, only those purchased from External Values—will ward off evil. Grandma Ann knows better—she has read the March 1990 issue of Vanity Fair, where she found out that Eternal Values is really an anti-Semitic, woman-hating cult whose leader claims to be from another planet. The jewels are—you guessed it—a scam. But Roger is loyal to Douglas, so he shells out $44,000 for some magic rocks of his own. Then he gets suspicious, goes to a jeweler, and gets them appraised. Whoa, Douglas! Turns out they aren’t worth anywhere close to what Big Roger paid.
Looking for a lawyer of his own, Roger takes this news to Robert Sakowitz, who in turn, takes it to his lawyer, David Berg. Mr. Perry Mason, of course, knows just what to do with the info: Long before the trial starts—you can hear Douglas’ denials on voice-over—Berg spreads the word that Robert is being sued by a coconut who thinks his family feud is the reincarnation of an earlier shoot-out, in which Robert was an evil gunfighter and Oscar was a sheriff. Grandma Ann was a saloonkeeper. (I’m not kidding, Mr. S, it’s all in the depositions.) Douglas even got his mom involved: Lynn wore a $70,000 Eternal Values voodoo ring to her deposition.
So, see, there’s lots to choose from here: Did Douglas keep suing to make a point to his dad or to his guru, who later dies of AIDS? Or maybe he thinks his dad is gonna cut him off if he thinks his son is wacko. Maybe he needs the money for the cult. Then again, maybe it is just principle, like he says.
Flash-forward to the courtroom. Berg’s got Douglas in a corner. Did he ever offer to help out at the store? Did he ever check the books with the Sakowitz corporate accountant? As Douglas answers no to every question and the scene fades out, you start to wonder. Maybe he could have spent a summer in the store’s shoe department. Maybe he should have bought his jewelry at Sakowitz. Maybe his mother didn’t do him any favors by giving him her inheritance. Maybe there are easier ways to make people happy.
THE VERDICT IS IN
Thursday Night
Open in the courtroom. It’s time for the show-stopping climax. Berg has called Ann Sakowitz to the stand. You can almost hear the nails going into Douglas’ coffin as she tells the jury why she used Lynn and Oscar’s Christmas gift of $20,000—the maximum gift allowed tax free—to pay her legal fees. “I felt they had already taken so much from me,” she says. “I wasn’t going to give them my conscience.” Then she has words for the Wyatts. “Families are not supposed to betray each other. Families are supposed to help each other. Familes are supposed to love each other.” Like, Lynn, have you forgotten who taught you to braid your hair?
But we see that the Wyatts have been busy with other things. The Duchess of York visited Tasajillo and gifted Lynn with a photo signed, “To my dearest and most special friend.” Steve and Fergie took a trip to Morocco with her kids and a camera. Oscar got to play the good guy: With John Connally in tow, he rescued around two dozen American hostages held by Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf hostilities. Soon after, the U.S. government dropped its investigation into whether Coastal violated the embargo against Iraq in order to continue supplying oil to its customers. But then Oscar blew it again when he gave a speech to the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce. He criticized America’s stand in the Persian Gulf and swore he wouldn’t allow his sons to become “white slaves of an Arab monarch.”
Back in the courtroom, Douglas and Andy Vickery seem to awaken from a dream. They finally realize that this is a trial, not a poetry reading. Cut to the shocked faces of the people in the courtroom—jurors, lawyers, reporters—when they call a surprise witness. Who’s the babe in the Bill Blass? You guessed it, it’s Lynn. Heading for the stand, she ignores her mother and brother. Okay, once and for all, no matter what David Berg or anybody else, i.e., Mom, says, this thing isn’t her fault. She didn’t start it by giving her sons their inheritance early. She was trying to make peace. Lynn: “I was a Sakowitz, I am a Sakowitz. Did I betray my father in any way?” Guess what? She’s got the same answer as brother Bob: “No.”
Still, you wonder. Maybe she cared more about Princess Grace and Mick Jagger than Sakowitz, Inc. Maybe Bernard sold her short, at just $1 million. And maybe Lynn made her choice a long time ago, when she told Oscar Wyatt, “I do.”
So it’s up to the jury now. Hours pass—four of ’em. Robert looks like the special guest star at his own funeral. Then the jury comes in. Close-up on the clasped hands of Robert and Laura as the verdict is read. Cut to a commerical—just kidding, Mr. S. It’s Robert 12, Wyatts zip. Robert weeps. He’s not a crook. It’s over.
Or is it? Dissolve to Armando’s, a Mexican restaurant in River Oaks. The owner, Armando Palacios, hovers near a table of revelers. He offers them free Armando’s T-shirts. As we get closer, we see the faces are familiar: Robert, Laura, David Berg, several jurors. Robert doesn’t look like king of the worrywarts anymore. He is a free man, free of Oscar. He can get back to making money, this time with a new investment called Cafe Lite, a new low-sodium, low-cholesterol, low-calorie restaurant.
But there is a problem. Pat Gregory, the judge, starts to worry. Maybe it’s about his rulings in the case; maybe it’s about Oscar, who has been known to punish a judge or two. Next thing you know, Gregory throws out the verdict on a technicality. Cut to Robert. You see his face, you know what he’s thinking: Oscar did this!
CANDY, COUNTS, AND CASINOS
Friday Night
Now, it really gets nuts. Berg and Robert think they’re stuck with a judge who is on Oscar’s team. They have to get rid of him, or they’re sunk. Enter Michelle Smith, a winsome but wily fashion writer who covered the trial for WWD. She also happens to be pals with Douglas Wyatt. Turns out, Michelle is also writing the judge’s memoirs, called (I swear) Candy, Counts, and Casinos, because Gregory presided over cases involving accused murderess Candace Mossler, jet-setter Baron Ricky di Portonova, and the Howard Hughes will dispute. (Michelle and Pat haven’t started writing exactly—they just have the title.) Aha! Berg files a motion asking the judge to step aside because he would profit by including the Sakowitz trial in his memoirs! Maybe Berg believes Michelle is a spy for Douglas, maybe he’s just desperate. Either way, his idea works—Gergory clears his name in a public hearing and then steps aside. But by now Berg’s got bigger problems. Douglas has hired a new lawyer: Tom McDade.
But the end of the trial is not the end of the Wyatts’ trials. A British rag gets hold of the photos of Steve and Fergie’s Morocco trip, and he gets blamed for the royal breakup. He issues a statement that he’s “saddened” but says his relationship with Sarah was “platonic.” The good news: A British tabloid describes Steve as “a cross between Bobby Ewing and the Incredible Hulk.”
Okay, time to wrap this up. Dissolve to Robert’s mansion, still on River Oaks Boulevard. He’s inside. Lovely Laura is still by his side. His face shows some strain, but life goes on. He still has his wine, he still has his masterpieces. There’s no For Sale sign in his front yard. Pan down the street to Allington. It’s dark. It’s quiet. Like it’s lying in wait.
Get it, Mr. S? This fall! Wyatt v. Sakowitz: The Sequel!
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