The Transom imagined that the former vice president was thinking the following: What am I doing here again? Oh, yeah, my daughter Karenna married a Schiff and they’re big supporters of this charity—therefore, I have to be here or I’m a dick even though I won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for saving the planet. Say … that’s some porcupine.

Wearily, Mr. Gore shook our hand. “We’re not doing interviews tonight,” he said.

For comfort, we turned to his wife. Unfortunately, we greeted her not with our own name but with “Tipper Gore” and it came out all wrong—like we were reminding her who she was, or were trying to score points for recognizing her. Whatever it was, Ms. Gore had no interest telling us what animal she identified with the most.

Trial lawyer Ed Hayes was more forthcoming. “I hate to say this, but honestly, the animal that I relate to would be a wolf,” he said. “You know what else I love: zebras. I love the way they look.”

Writer and self-proclaimed zoologist Paul Gregory Speck bummed a cigarette. Mr. Speck, who looks exactly like Tennessee Williams (“they all say that”), said he identifies with leopards. “I love all of the great cats,” he said. “In fact, the little cats, too. I think they’re really the supreme beings among the animals.”

Later, after he’d chatted with Mr. Gore about energy conservation, Mr. Speck offered his opinion on the candidates: He said John McCain was most like a buffalo. (“Determined, indomitable, ferocious, stubborn.”)

“And we’ll give Obama ‘mountain gorilla,’” he said.

Was he sure about that?

“I was about to say spider monkey. Well, he does have certain simian movements and jungle fever—see, I think it’s going down the politically incorrect path. … Let’s say a bird, a bird might be better. Let’s say magpie. A magpie is a very talkative and intelligent bird, which is even capable of imitating sounds. A magpie is like a two-tone crow. It’s half-black, half-white.”

Interior decorator Mario Buatta told us he loves monkeys, and how when he was a kid, he’d go to the Staten Island Zoo and see Jocko the gorilla, a frequent masturbator.

“I like McCain. I think he’s a patriot, and he’s been through a lot,” Mr. Buatta said. “He’s old but he’s got experience. King of the jungle. An elephant.”

During dinner, we found a couple of fabulous socialites.

I’m like a mother lion,” said Muffie Potter Aston, who was wearing a pink silk dress. “I fiercely protect my children. I try to take care of my den and other people in the den, other peoples’ kids, anyone I love in my circle.”

Mr. McCain, she said, resembles a wolf, while Mr. Obama is like a horse.

“I’m a minx,” said Debbie Bancroft, wearing a diaphanous peacock-colored number. “I am some form of feline, because I am observant, selectively madly affectionate, clean and cool.”

And the candidates?

“I would think McCain is something sedentary. A black bear. Something that hibernates. I think it’s not a good thing. I think Obama is completely a sleek and observant and perceptive character and is awake in all seasons. Hillary has come and gone. I think she was a predator that missed her mark. Some form of feral cat that missed her prey.”

ggurley@observer.com

If you have to ask, he hasn’t done his job.

Mouthpiece, the title of his lively, entertaining and utterly unapologetic autobiography, makes him sound like a flak, but he’s actually a lawyer—a “big-city lawyer,” he likes to say—with a colorful history of high-profile clients who come to him because, as he repeatedly insists, he gets things done: “You have a problem, you call me, I’m there.” Hotheaded, tenacious and fabulously well-connected, he’s a shameless operator whose motto is “scheme, hustle, move, and score.” His biggest case pumped up the value of Andy Warhol’s estate by some $400 million; his clients include Anna Wintour, Allen Grubman and Daniel Libeskind; his friends include Si Newhouse, Robert De Niro and George Pataki.

His best friend, Tom Wolfe (who turns somersaults in a cheerleading introduction to Mouthpiece), used him as the model for Tommy Killian, Sherman McCoy’s hotheaded, tenacious defense attorney in The Bonfire of the Vanities—and dedicated the novel to him.

But who is Eddie Hayes?

He proudly calls himself “a neighborhood white boy”—to be precise, an Irish Catholic white boy, born in 1947, who grew up in Jackson Heights and Garden Bay Manor (that’s deepest, darkest Queens, for those of you who’ve never set foot in the valley of ashes). Ethnic, racial and sexual characteristics are very important to Mr. Hayes—they are, for him, the key to identity. Which means that Mouthpiece is not a book for the politically correct—or anyone, for that matter, with tender liberal sensibilities or an aversion to strong language. Here, for example, he explains why he volunteered as a poll watcher in Mississippi in 1972: “I don’t give a fuck about Mississippi or rights, and if I had a social conscience I would sell it. But the trip might be exciting ….” Note the present tense—it’s the only one Eddie Hayes deals in.

We all have a past, though, some kind of childhood. Eddie Hayes had a rotten one: His father was stewed in alcohol, and brutal; Eddie was the punching bag. He writes, “the most important thing I learned in the world dominated by my father’s sick, drunk conduct was that I could take a beating.” Eddie’s mother, of course, was a saint. She had the weird notion that her first-born son should go to college—and not just any college. She wanted him to go to the University of Virginia. And weirder still, that’s exactly what he did.

And then on to Columbia Law School, which he didn’t much care for, but where, at the dawn of his second year, he discovered an abiding passion: “Dominican women! Jewish women! Black women! For a ready guy who was not holed up in a library all day long, New York City in the fall of 1971 was full of spectacular opportunities.” After four years in the Bronx County District Attorney’s office, he struck out on his own in 1978, “practicing a harsh, unforgiving kind of law.”

Club owners, call girls, bouncers, drug dealers, gangsters—these are the clients he starts out with. (“I wouldn’t represent child molesters or rapists,” he assures us.) Then it’s newspaper reporters and columnists, among them Mike McAlary and Richard Johnson. “There were times,” he writes, “when I represented the editors of the Post and the Daily News at the same time. Conflict of interest? Catch me if you can!”

The best part of Mouthpiece is the account of the legal wrangling over Andy Warhol’s estate, which made Mr. Hayes rich and then promptly bankrupted him, a 10-year courtroom drama set to the music of that barbaric yawp, Counselor Hayes’ Queens accent. Along the way he discovers that “the universe of New York’s cultural elite, fancy auction houses, and slick corporate lawyers who represent them is even sleazier, more scheming, more conniving, and far more treacherous than anything I’ve encountered in the crime business.”

Yes, but who is Eddie Hayes?

A “completely self-concocted guy” who’s spent 30 years in therapy trying to understand his crying jags, who finally, age fiftysomething, resorts to the miracle of psychopharmacology so that at last he can enjoy the life (the lovely wife, the two lovely kids) he’s built from scratch.

How about an outside perspective? Andy Warhol came home from a party one night in the fall of 1980 and noted in his diary “a defense lawyer named Ed Hayes who looked like he was from Laverne and Shirley, like a plant that people invite to parties to wear funny clothes and jump around and make things ‘kooky.’ Sort of forties clothes, really crewcut, about twenty-nine. He said, ‘I can get ya outta anything.’”

As you’d expect from a man enthusiastically devoted to the “muscle” of patronage, Mr. Hayes has collected a lovely bouquet of blurbs for the back cover of Mouthpiece – former Police Commissioner William Bratton, for example, assures us that “Eddie Hayes walks, talks, and acts like a character created by Damon Runyon.” In fact, he’s just like a particularly foppish Tom Wolfe character: obsessed with his Savile Row suits and his custom-made shoes, painfully attuned to status, convinced that daily life is a dirty fight to the finish, partial to exclamation points, consistently provocative and great fun on the page.

Adam Begley is books editor of The Observer.

exalted in the media and knighted by the Queen of England. Always a formidable

figure, he has been all but unassailable since leaving office. Yet on the

morning of Feb. 26, five modestly dressed women sitting in a midtown lawyer's

office were less than 30 minutes away from a potentially hostile meeting with

Mr. Giuliani-and they were spoiling for a fight.

The five women were widows of police officers killed in the World

Trade Center attack.

"I'm ready for anything," said Jessica Ferenczy. Her collegues

nodded their assent. Their lawyer, Ed Hayes, engaged in a little last-minute

coaching, advising them to speak forcefully in order to make their demands

clear. And they were off.

As it turned out, the meeting later in the day turned out to be

mercifully anticlimactic. The family members were skeptical about Mr.

Giuliani's role in the distribution of funds raised for their benefit, but in

the end the former Mayor assuaged their concerns. He promised to increase their

involvement in the management of the fund and to distribute the funds within 60

days. The widows got what they wanted, but only after a struggle that

represented the first real public relations setback for Mr. Giuliani since he

became a private citizen.

At issue was $160 million donated from all over the world to the

city-run Twin Towers Fund to benefit the families of some 400 uniformed rescue

workers killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Giuliani, never

content to exit quietly from the public arena, wanted to retain control of the

funds by having the money transferred to a private charity, which would retain

the name Twin Towers Fund, under his direction. Then, according to the plan, he

would be able to parcel out the money at his discretion. In the meantime, his

allies would oversee the not-for-profit entity, with several of them receiving

six-figure salaries to do so.

Some of the widows-for whom the money was intended-were having

none of it, and they mobilized to stop the transfer of funds. On Feb. 20, they

announced that they would try to block a court order releasing the funds from

the Bloomberg administration to Mr. Giuliani's charity. The protests received

the backing of the Uniformed Firefighters Association and, more recently, the

Patrolmen's Benevolent Association of the Port Authority. They also attracted

the attention of State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who said he would review

the propriety of the maneuver.

After a week of mounting protest, the Feb. 26 meeting with Mr.

Giuliani in the charity's Fifth Avenue headquarters was surprisingly

diplomatic, with a few exceptions. Mr. Giuliani and several of his appointees

to the charity's board of directors, including former Police Commissioner

Bernard Kerik and former Deputy Counsel Larry Levy, personally welcomed the

widows and their lawyer.

According to people who attended the meeting, Mr. Giuliani said

that the disagreement was simply a misunderstanding. The former Mayor also said

that the timing of the payouts was not an issue, because he and his colleagues

already had resolved to distribute the money within 60 days. (Several family

members were skeptical, wondering aloud why they had not heard anything about

any such a commitment despite repeated inquiries and highly public protests.)

Mr. Giuliani also promised to give the intended recipients a

bigger say in how the organization is run. And, he said, the overhead costs,

including salaries, would not be taken from the existing fund, but would come

solely from funds raised for that specific purpose.

In the end, an agreement was reached to transfer the money,

providing that the conditions laid out at the meeting were included in the

court order allowing the deal to proceed.

The family members said they were happy with the result. "The

Mayor seemed to be sincere and upset at whatever problems we had," said Ms.

Ferenczy. "It remains to be seen if what he said will happen is going to

happen, but we're feeling pretty good about this." 

So was their lawyer. "They promised to give us everything we

wanted, and more," said Mr. Hayes, who played a lead role throughout the week

in orchestrating opposition to the unilateral transfer of funds.

A Clear Victory

It seemed to be a clear

victory for the families of the police officers, firefighters and other

uniformed rescue workers killed at the World Trade Center. After the uneven and

somewhat disorganized dispersal of the money raised at the end of 2001, the 60-day

time limit should ensure that the payments are sped, in large installments, to

their intended recipients.

For Mr. Giuliani, by contrast, the result was more complicated.

On one hand, he will be able to remain involved with New York's recovery

efforts, a cause he's embraced and has benefited from. On the other hand, the

pointed and often personal criticism of his actions by the people he was

professing to help represented the most painful sort of contrast to the

adulation he's received for his performance on and after Sept. 11.

Jonathan Prince, a spokesman for the Twin Towers Fund, said that

the apparent disagreements were only the result of miscommunication, and that

there were never any substantial differences between Mr. Giuliani's position

and that of the victims' families. "As the meeting progressed and a lot of

misinformation was cleaned up, it became clear that the Mayor was deeply

committed to getting money to the families as quickly as possible, and to

making sure that what he referred to as his moral obligation is met."

Mr. Prince also denied that Mr. Giuliani's agreement to a time

limit for payments was a reaction to the torrent of criticism leading up to the

meeting. "Mayor Giuliani has always been the one leading the charge to raise

money and distribute it rapidly," he said. "He said at the outset that he

wanted to distribute the money quickly, even if there was no hard number put on

it at the time. It's unfortunate that it wasn't communicated better to

families."

Some backers of the victims are unimpressed. "I've been a cop for

28 years, and as soon as I heard about this, my scam alarm went off," said Port

Authority P.B.A. president Gus Danese, who has feuded with Mr. Giuliani in the

past. "Where does Giuliani come off saying that because his friends donated to

the fund, he should control it? People would have responded even if Giuliani

wasn't the Mayor-he didn't do anything special to go out and raise that money.

He was concentrating on sticking his face in the camera."

Mr. Danese also rejected Mr.

Giuliani's insistence that he had a "sacred obligation" to the victims'

families to keep charge of the fund. "Nobody asked him to be guardian of the

fund, nobody wants him to be guardian of the fund," said Mr. Danese. "Why would

any victim want him to manage the fund, rather than just having the city divide

up the remaining money equally? Where did he come up with this information that

the family members wanted him to do this, and why didn't he share this poll

with everyone else?"

For now, though, the battle over the money seems to be over,

perhaps bringing a small measure of satisfaction to people still coping with

extremely grim circumstances. But the widows essentially proved that W.T.C.

family members are powerful in practice as well as in theory, perhaps

foreshadowing the role they intend to play when it comes time to discuss topics

from the reconstruction of lower Manhattan to reforms in the rules that govern

rescue workers.

"I think this increases their profile and their influence

hugely," said Mr. Hayes. "They wanted a dramatic move from Rudy Giuliani, one

of the most powerful and hard-headed individuals in the country, and they got

it."

Despite heavy pressure from these well-heeled Upper East Side residents, however, the Met has moved ahead with its 200,000-square-foot expansion project, which calls for the excavation of its sprawling entrance plaza. Now residents have found a new cause to rally around: the possibility of losing the two oval fountains flanking the museum's entrance staircase on the plaza.

"The fountains are the catalyst that's been uniting the whole community," said Anne Camuto, a Fifth Avenue resident who lives across from the museum. "What the museum is doing is outrageous."

Met officials say that if they're able to excavate beneath the plaza, as they hope to do, the fountains will have to go–and by the museum's own admission, their return is by no means guaranteed.

"From an aesthetic or an efficiency point of view, they are not the greatest fountains around," Met president David McKinney said. "It would probably not be smart to take the fountains away and put them back just the way they are." Harold Holzer, vice president for communications at the Met, said that "there's no geological reason to imagine that the excavation cannot go forward."

For months now, the Met has doggedly defended its plan, arguing that the expansion is vital to its survival as a world-class cultural institution. But nearby residents have come to view the Met as the Sherman tank of Upper East Side institutions: hulking, unwieldy and seemingly invincible. They have hired attorney Ed Hayes to represent them as they contemplate what comes next.

The twin oblong fountains have become their redoubt. Donated by Lila Acheson Wallace, co-founder of Reader's Digest , the fountains have occupied a significant part of Manhattan's physical and mental landscape since the balmy morning in April 1970 when then-Mayor John Lindsay stood before a crowd of several hundred and sent their 200 jets shooting skyward. Designed by Kevin Roche, they were part of a $7.5 million gift to the Met for the creation of the museum's front plaza and entrance hall. For the last three decades, they have been an urban crossroads for throngs of tourists, busloads of school kids and countless New Yorkers.

At the end of July, a team of engineers for the Met began probing the ground beneath the plaza for bedrock to determine the costs and time frame of the proposed excavation. Results of the borings will be available in the fall, and if the museum's trustees approve the excavation cost, work could begin as early as next summer. "We need the space, and we are very much hoping that it's feasible and we can do it," Mr. McKinney said, adding that the museum already has all city approvals for the excavation in place.

Squaring off with the museum's neighbors on Fifth Avenue, however, will be a challenge. "Everyone loses sight of the fact that we're a residential community," said Ms. Camuto. "We're doing our best, and because the Met is doing it in the name of art, they're getting away with it. They're a menace to the community."

For developers, finding common ground with preservationist-minded Upper East Siders has never been easy. Just last month, hundreds gathered to oppose a proposal by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to build a 440-foot research tower on East 68th Street, despite heartfelt pleas from such luminaries as Harold Varmus, Memorial's Nobel-laureate president. (The coalition fighting the Met plan, headed by Pat Nicholson, has now allied itself with 10021 Community Coalition, the group fighting the Sloan-Kettering plan.) And unlike less-affluent New York neighborhoods, Ms. Nicholson's coalition has substantial resources with which to fight back: In just seven months, they've raised $80,000.

"It's disgusting, it's horrible," said Benjamin Aryeh, a Madison Avenue art dealer who lives across from the Met and often plays ball with his three kids by the fountains. "The plaza and fountains are just a wonderful place to be. You can't go into the park at nighttime, but you're safe in front of the museum. Now they want to rip all of that up."

It hasn't helped that residents believe the Met has kept them in the dark on the specifics of the expansion, such as construction costs and timetables. "Removing the fountains would be a major architectural decision, and that only happens if they're going to make two extremely large holes on Fifth Avenue. If that's the plan, they have an obligation to tell the community sooner rather than later," said Mr. Hayes, the attorney for the Fifth Avenue coalition.

"When the [Met] brought the application to the community boards and Landmarks [Preservation Commission], no mention of removal of the fountains was made," said Teri Slater, an Upper East Side resident on the board of the Historic Districts Council.

Mr. McKinney asserted that the Met would get all necessary approvals and community feedback before proceeding with their plan. "I'm afraid somehow our neighbors have got the idea that we're trying to hide something, when we don't have our plans in place yet," Mr. McKinney said. "We'll talk about it when we do know." He was, however, uncertain about which city agency has jurisdiction over the fountains. "I'm sure that change to the fountains would require approval, from a scenic point of view, from Parks, but it's not absolutely clear that they're landmarked," he said. He added that the plan's architects, from Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates, have already discussed several alternative fountain designs.

Stern Wants Data

"It's the kind of thing the Landmarks Commission was intended to consider," said Henry Stern, commissioner of the Parks Department, which serves as the Met's landlord. Mr. Stern added that if the Met intends to remove the fountains, he wants to hear about it. "I remember when the fountains were put in, and they were sort of jarringly modern to some, but they've grown on people in the 30 years they've been there, and people would be sorry to see them go."

The Landmarks Preservation Commission, which approved the Met's plan in February, agrees. "It's always been clear that the museum was going to have to excavate to do their expansion plan, but the plan has always shown the fountains remaining. If they plan to remove the fountains, they will have to come through us," said Terri Rosen Deutsch, a spokeswoman for the L.P.C.

Attorneys for the Fifth Avenue neighborhood coalition are prepared to play hardball, if necessary. "The fountains are symbolic of the greater harm that's going to happen," said Elizabeth Shields, an attorney for the coalition. "If they proceed with this attitude which they've had, then we'll have to proceed with other action."

years ago, she never imagined that she would one day find herself feuding with

her neighbor across the street, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the

contrary-the Met was one of the neighborhood's prime attractions. During the

days, Ms. Gunther, an art lover, roamed the galleries. At night, she frequently

entertained friends in the Met's trustee dining room. "I'm retired and single,"

she said. "It makes life easier."

On warm afternoons, she watched the street theater on the

Met's front steps, right outside her living-room window. "The fountains," she

said, "are so beautiful."

Then, at 7 a.m. on April 7, construction crews showed up. Clang! Ms. Gunther awoke to the sound of

old file cabinets being thrown into a metal Dumpster. She didn't know what made

her more angry: the debris, or the fact that the Met had chosen the first

morning of Passover to remind her that it was about to embark on a 12-year,

$200 million renovation-and that a giant hole might soon take the place of her

beloved fountains.

Ms. Gunther is a bridge-player, not a political

activist-and, she hastens to add, a frequent donor to the Met. But when she

heard about the renovation project, she pulled out her checkbook and wrote out

a $250 donation to the Metropolitan Museum Historic District Coalition, a

two-month-old neighborhood group formed solely to rein in the Met's big plans.

Inspired by a similar uprising in neighboring Carnegie Hill,

leaders of the coalition boast that they've already raised $28,000. And if

their concerns run toward the mundane-they're worried about noise, dust and the

deleterious effects of an influx of construction workers (and their trucks)

into the neighborhood-the Met's executives have reason for concern. Their

neighbors are angry, they are rich and they have lawyers.

"They are my neighbors, and I'm acutely aware of that," said

David E. McKinney, president of the Met. In recent days, Mr. McKinney has

scrambled to meet with members of the coalition and their attorneys.

Not everyone is so diplomatic. Parks Commissioner Henry

Stern, who is technically overseeing the renovation because the museum lies

within Central Park, fairly scoffed when he heard of the neighbors' complaints.

"They're building a museum," he said, "not a slaughterhouse."

But the coalition leaders say they're serious. How serious?

They've already hired  the white-shoe

law firm Greenberg Traurig, as well as Ed Hayes, a nearby resident and a

seasoned manipulator of the city's levers of influence.

Pat Nicholson, a resident of 1016 Fifth Avenue and the

leader of the coalition, said there will be more money pouring into the group's

coffers. She won't identify all her privacy-minded donors-"We're not out to

show the world who we are," she said-but she says many of them are quite

well-known to the Met's fund-raisers. "One museum patron and top-level

gift-giver," Ms. Nicholson said, "is also a contributor to the coalition."

As the Met surely knows, any dispute with the locals is not

quite like most neighborhood spats in New York. Included among the residents is

Republican State Senator Roy Goodman, a resident of 1035 Fifth Avenue and a

noted patron of the arts. "I think we have a considerable amount of influence

with the museum," Mr. Goodman said with characteristic understatement. "We've

been very good to them."

But wait, there's more: Mr. Goodman is not the

neighborhood's only person of immense political influence. Last month,

officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority handed the Met a

logistical setback when they told the museum the M.T.A. would no longer allow

tour buses to pull up in the curbside bus lane to deposit and retrieve

passengers-a decision, coalition members believe, that will hamper the museum's

construction plans. "When David McKinney heard that, his face just dropped,"

cackled one of the coalition's lawyers, Elizabeth Shields. The neighbors, who

have been complaining about bus noise for years, credited incoming M.T.A.

chairman Peter Kalikow, a nearby Fifth Avenue resident, with the assist.

Mr. Kalikow's spokesman, Marty McLaughlin, said that when it

came to the Met, the M.T.A. president "supports his neighbors."

"He wants the construction done in a careful and sensitive

manner," Mr. McLaughlin said.

Mr. McKinney, who noted that he too lives across the street

from the Met, now sounds chastened. "We underestimated the need to communicate

with the community," he said. After meeting with Ms. Nicholson and her lawyers,

he said he saw some cause for hope. "There are some hard feelings right now,

but we hope to work through that," he added.

Time to Move On?

But it's hard to see where the two sides can find common

ground. Ms. Nicholson and her coalition are convinced that the Met has outgrown

the Fifth Avenue location it has occupied for more than 120 years and would

like to see it expand to new buildings-presumably in someone else's

neighborhood. The Met, on the other hand, says the 200,000-square-foot

expansion is vital to its future. The renovation will provide the museum with a

much-needed reconfiguration of several of its galleries, museum officials say,

as well as a new high-tech education center for children, additional office

space for museum staff and volunteers, and an 81st Street loading dock to

handle incoming art work. But because Met officials promised the Parks

Department they would not expand on the museum's "footprint"-its length and

width-they will instead build on the roof and excavate two stories below

ground. Residents fear this means the end of the fountains. (The Met maintains

that no final decision has been made about whether to uproot them for the

excavation.)

The fountains are the touchstone. One Fifth Avenue resident,

Shirley Sherman, wrote a letter of protest from her winter home in Florida.

"The city has too much concrete and asphalt," she wrote. "The beauty of the

fountains is our escape."

But Mr. Stern said the residents are demanding too much.

"[Met executives] are doing as well as they can," he said. "Some people just

don't like living across the street from one of the world's largest art

museums. The problem is, the museum was there before they were."

Indeed it was. Established in 1874 on a piece of farmland

far north of the stately mansions of Edith Wharton's Fifth Avenue, the Met has

been under renovation almost ever since. The Beaux Arts main building wasn't

constructed until the turn of the century; the last major addition, which

doubled the museum's size, was begun in 1971 and completed only in 1993, after

years of obstruction by neighborhood residents. That generation, like this one,

maintained that the Met should expand into buildings elsewhere.

For years, residents have complained about disruptive

nighttime lighting, noisy early-morning trash pick-ups, and the heavy stream of

tour and school buses flowing past the museum's entrance. The 1993 renovation,

they maintain, never really stopped. "I've lived here 11 years," said Alan

Brumberger, a merchant-banker who lives at 1016 Fifth Avenue, "and it's just

been one construction project after another."

Ms. Nicholson said her coalition was born on Jan. 30, at a

meeting of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, when the Met presented

its latest renovation plans. For years, Ms. Nicholson had nursed a gripe about

the Met's cooling system, which regularly belched large clouds of steam in the

direction of her apartment facing Fifth Avenue. When she and other residents

questioned whether the Met really had room for another expansion, they felt

they were put off in a dismissive manner by the museum's attorney, Shelly

Friedman. "He acted like we didn't even have a right to be there," said

Elizabeth Herz, a coalition member who was at the meeting. "He told us that

there was no point in going to the meeting, because we wouldn't be allowed to

speak."

Ms. Nicholson's husband, Roger Nicholson, is in real estate.

She knew neighbors were always tying up developments with protests and

lawsuits. "When [Met executives] said they were 80 percent of the way through

the approvals process," Ms. Nicholson said, "I realized immediately that we'd

need to catch up." At the end of the meeting, she asked all the residents there

to put their names and addresses on a list.

Ms. Nicholson began sending out homemade newsletters,

railing against the project and urging residents to organize. She frankly

acknowledged that she's had some trouble stirring people up: Some building

managers have refused to distribute the newsletters, and it's been difficult to

interest residents whose apartments don't look out onto Fifth Avenue. But Ms.

Nicholson said the movement has been picking up momentum in recent weeks. So

far, she said, she has donations from 30 individual families and the support of

co-op boards representing another 300.

Ms. Nicholson said that,

thus far, all of the fund-raising had been done by mail. " Coffee parties ? Maybe a block association could get away with

that," she said. "We're trying to approach this in a dignified way."

Really Deep Pockets

In her fund-raising appeals, Ms. Nicholson is urging those

with Fifth Avenue views-the slightly richer rich people-to "dig deeper into

[their] pockets" when making their donations.

"The callousness of it is that the Met is saying, 'O.K.,

we've destroyed your view, but we're allowed to do it,'" said Ms. Herz, a

25-year Fifth Avenue resident. "They've single-handedly brought down the value

of several billion dollars' worth of real estate."

Ms. Nicholson, however, maintains that her crusade is not

"just a bunch of privileged people trying to preserve their Central Park

views." It's about steam and trash and trucks and dust and noise, and all the

other unpleasant detritus that comes along with living next-door to a major

tourist attraction that's becoming a major construction project.

"We feel that no other museum has gotten away with what the

Met has gotten away with. The Met sits there saying they want to protect their

Da Vincis and they're raising $200 million for their expansion, so why can't

they come up with the money to address our issues?" asked Ms. Nicholson.

Not everyone along Fifth Avenue has been convinced. "I'd

rather get rid of the parades," said Toni Goodale, a fund-raising consultant.

"Neighbors always go crazy whenever this kind of thing happens. It's just

richer people this time."

Still, Ms. Nicholson has found enough fellow travelers to

raise $28,000. But even that fairly substantial war chest didn't get answers to

her questions. "Part of the problem is that we don't know who to trust … we may

not be smart enough to ask the right questions, and you'll always be able to

pull the wool over our eyes," she said. So she called Mr. Hayes.

"At first I thought, 'There's not a lot of better things in

life that a guy can have than to say, "I represent Fifth Avenue,"'" Mr. Hayes

said jocularly. "But when I saw the scale of the renovations, I realized it was

going to make a significant impact on this neighborhood …. They're going to dig

some big holes in the ground, and there's going to be a lot of big excavation

equipment and cranes, so it's not a small thing. The Met has to cooperate with the community."

Ms. Nicholson is angry the museum never did a traffic study

or conducted an environmental review, as is required before most major

construction projects. Mr. Hayes snorts at the Met's contention that it didn't

need to: "If you pay a lawyer enough money, he's going to tell you what you

want to hear. On a bad day, that's what I do, too," he added with a laugh.

"They are prepared to go to court, if that's what it takes,"

said Ms. Shields, another coalition lawyer.

Coalition members say they hope it doesn't come to that. "I

love the museum," said Ms. Gunther. "I really do. But the larger they get, the

more they need-it's just growing like a fungus. The way they handled this from

the first meeting was just arrogance.

"But now that we have lawyers, they're paying more

attention."

Less than a year later, on March 8, Mr. Govan welcomed Gov. George Pataki into one of the Dia's West 22nd Street gallery spaces, where the Governor pledged $2 million toward the $20 million renovation of the very same former Nabisco factory, which was donated to the museum by International Paper Company, its current owner, thanks to some prodding by the Governor. Also present was Leonard Riggio, chief executive of Barnes & Noble and the chairman of Dia's board, which will put about $10 million toward the renovation costs. The museum has also received $800,000 from other state agencies, Dutchess County and the city of Beacon.

Since 1994, when Mr. Govan took over as director of the museum, he has been trying to find a building to exhibit the entire Dia collection, a selection of offbeat, contemporary works by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Richard Serra, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, among others. To hear Mr. Govan tell the story, the deal for the upstate museum came together through a "mosaic of good will" and a series of unrelated events that coalesced in a mystical way that would have intrigued the Dia's founders, Philippa de Menil, a Houston oil heiress, and her husband Heiner Friedrich, who were both sufi converts. But there was a key player in the deal who was absent from the photo opportunity on March 8: lawyer Ed Hayes, who was hired by Mr. Govan because he has the Governor's ear.

"I hope I don't have delusions of grandeur," Mr. Hayes told The Observer . "But I think I was able to get through to the right people right away and have a lot of credibility with them. I mainly made phone calls. I called the Governor. I called the Governor's wife. I called Charlie Gargano," referring to Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Fund Corporation. "I am a mouthpiece," he continued. "Nobody comes to me because they want to draw up complicated legal documents. I call up guys and I say, I think this is a good idea, and I better be right. I knew who to call. I knew who to get involved. The main thing was that Pataki said do it and everybody fell into place."

It took Mr. Govan a little while to find Mr. Hayes. After his return from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and a few trips to the abandoned factory, Mr. Govan met with Michael Rips, a special counsel to Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom at the time, and Dia's lawyer. "At a meeting with Michael, I said, 'Isn't there a way of keeping this in New York?'" said Mr. Rips. "He said, 'Maybe, but we don't have the money to do it.'"

Mr. Rips set up a meeting for Mr. Govan with a friend who worked in the Governor's office. "I explained the project. I said, Here is a great building. It is in an area that needs help," said Mr. Rips. "It is in George Pataki's back yard. It is on the Hudson. He likes the Hudson River and the development on the Hudson River." Mr. Pataki lives in Garrison, N.Y., a nearby city, and was mayor of Peekskill, N.Y., another neighboring city.

By the end of April, Mr. Govan was sitting down with Mr. Gargano; Ed Arace, regional director of the Empire State Development Corporation in Dutchess County; and Earle Mack, who was then chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts.

"We made a major effort to get this done because the Governor wanted to get it done," said Mr. Arace. "The Governor has the power to make these kind of things happen. We went down to Dia and toured the museum, and saw that they were an institution that would be able to make a difference in Beacon. There were a number of factors that had to fit into place before it was a reality."

Mr. Rips did some digging for Mr. Govan and discovered that International Paper, which owned the building and is the state's largest private landowner, is also a client of Skadden Arps. Mr. Rips called Barry Garfinkel, a Skadden Arps partner who handles International Paper for the firm, and asked him to help. Mr. Garfinkel set up a meeting with some of the executives of the company. Mr. Govan knew that the building was on the market for $2 million and that several other parties were interested in purchasing it. He asked the company's officers about donating it to Dia.

"I just set up a meeting," said Mr. Garfinkel. "Michael Govan did all of the work."

Mr. Govan was largely taking advice from Mr. Rips, who had left Skadden Arps but continued on as counsel to Dia pro bono. Mr. Rips advised Mr. Govan to hire Mr. Hayes, the inspiration for Tommy Killian, the wily fixer in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities , to help shepherd the project to completion. "I am from Nebraska," Mr. Rips said he told Mr. Govan. "What do I know about New York Republicans?" Mr. Hayes has not been as visible in the art world since a panel of judges found that he ripped off the Andy Warhol estate by millions of dollars in legal fees. But he is not about to be kept down by what he views as a biased decision on the part of a couple of vindictive judges. Dia hired Mr. Hayes last September.

"Somebody had to deal with the Charlie Garganos," said Mr. Rips, referring to the temperamental director of the E.S.D.C. "There are various state agencies that would contribute to this project. … Once the basic structure was set, someone needed to follow it through. I thought Ed would be the right person to make sure that Pataki's initial commitment was realized. He is somebody Pataki likes, he is conservative, he is very smart, and he knows the art world. If Pataki wavered, he is somebody who could say, look, this is important art. I may be criticized for going to Ed Hayes to reinforce that, but I don't see other museum projects happening as quickly as this one."

"I like Charlie. The guy has taste," Mr. Hayes said. "Many people think of Charlie Gargano as a shady political opportunist. He is not. He is a classy political opportunist."

Mr. Hayes maintains that it was difficult to get Mr. Pataki to commit to the project. Mr. Govan was asking for $5 million; Mr. Hayes got him $2 million. "Remember, I came to Pataki at the last moment. He was like, 'Eddie, you are asking me for so much money,'" said Mr. Hayes. "I said, I promise you will make it back. He didn't know what I was talking about. He said, 'What museum?' I told him. He says, 'Everybody tells me that.' I said, 'I'm telling you the truth, this is going to be a good museum,' and he went with it. He was like, 'Eddie, are you out of your mind?' I said, 'This is a move-in deal.' I said, 'Listen, you are going to have bulldozers down there tomorrow. Guys will have a job. People will make a living. Tourists will be coming in and out.' He is crazy for the Hudson River. He likes anything close to that river."

Mr. Hayes also said that he did not try to convince Mr. Pataki to make the deal happen because it might be going to Massachusetts. "Pataki doesn't work that way. I didn't push the fact that it might be going to Massachusetts. You can't do that with Pataki. I just said it is a good project. I don't push the competition thing. I just say it is a good deal. You should do it. The art is there. It is very valuable."

Mr. Hayes did, however, use the argument that the Dia's presence in Beacon would make the town a major tourist destination because it is across the river from Storm King, a sculpture park in Mountainville, N.Y. "X number of people will come into an area to see one thing. But more people will come to see two things," said Mr. Hayes, who sounded almost convinced himself. "Then a lot of people will say, let's go. It is two things within one day. Within three hours, you can see some great art. I thought that would have a multiplying effect and I said that to the Governor."

Mr. Hayes' final appeal to the Governor was to get him to convince International Paper to donate the building. That took place in February, after all of the financing was committed from the other government agencies and the Governor had already committed $2 million to the project from his own discretionary fund.

Mr. Arace said the Governor was able to influence the paper company's chairman, John T. Dillon, who attended the press conference on March 8.

"What did the Governor say to them?" Mr. Hayes asked rhetorically. "He said, You are going to get a nice deduction and your name is going to be in the paper for doing a good thing."