Mr. Novogratz with U.S. Olympic team wrestler Jake Herbert.

"Wrestlers are tenacious, hard-working, no-nonsense, tough SOBs," Fortress Investment Group principal Mike Novogratz told The Observer over the telephone last Monday. It was the beginning of a hectic week. In one corner, Spanish banks were teetering their way to a fresh round of European bailouts. In the other, looming Greek elections led headline writers to wonder whether the region's monetary union would survive the fallout.

"I just got off the phone with a central banker, and he asked me the same thing," Mr. Novogratz said. "There's going to be a lot of pressure and nervousness until the elections, but I don't think Europe will let Greece out of the euro. There are too many cross-holdings and it becomes a Lehman moment if they leave."

But he hadn't taken our call to talk about Europe. In three days, Mr. Novogratz would turn Times Square into the epicenter of American wrestling, staging an exhibition between the U.S. Olympic team and a group of Russian grapplers to raise money for the local youth wrestling program whose board he chairs. Mr. Novogratz was on the line to talk about how he happened to become one of the foremost boosters of the sport. Also, why do former wrestlers keep rising to the pinnacle of Wall Street?

"Wrestling develops toughness and confidence," Mr. Novogratz said. "It's not bravado, it's from working your butt off. The dieting that goes into making weight alone takes so much will. I thought, if we can put that into the inner city, it can be a cheap way to have a transformative effect on a lot of lives."

Mr. Novogratz grew up in Alexandria, Va., in a family of overachieving military brats. His father, Robert Sr., wrestled and played football at West Point and won the Knute Rockne Award for the nation's outstanding lineman in 1958. His sister Jacqueline graced the cover of Forbes in December for her venture capitalist's approach to solving third-world problems as the chief executive officer of Acumen Fund. One brother, John, was a Virginia high school wrestling champion and now heads global marketing for hedge fund Millennium Partners. "We were probably a little crazy," said another brother, Bob, who Bravo viewers will know as the star of the reality TV show 9 By Design.

Mike Novogratz didn't win a state wrestling championship; he was runner-up. He captained Princeton's wrestling team, then piloted army scout helicopters. In 1989, he joined Goldman Sachs as a money-markets salesman before moving to Hong Kong to run a trading desk. In 2002, Mr. Novogratz joined Fortress as the principal in charge of the firm's global macro funds, and when Fortress went public in 2007, Mr. Novogratz became a billionaire twice over. In 2006, he bought Robert De Niro's Tribeca duplex for $12.25 million, then bought the apartment downstairs to carve out a triplex.

Around the time Fortress went public, Mr. Novogratz took a call from a former U.S. Olympic team honcho who'd taken it into his head to build a wrestling program in New York City. The pitch: Space wasn't a concern—you could start a wrestling team with a mat and a coach. Would Mr. Novogratz supply the mats?

"SMASH HIM," said Ray Brinzer, the barrel-chested drill sergeant running Beat the Streets' weekly Tuesday night workout in the old St. Anthony's gym on Thompson Street. "If you break him, good. If you get him on the ground, sit on him. And if I see you lying there for the whole two minutes, I'm going to come and step on your head because you shouldn't let him do that to you." For more than an hour, 30 high school wrestlers had alternated one-on-one drills with laps around the wrestling room and other feats of exertion—wheelbarrow races, anyone?—that nearly made us sick. They wore spandex singlets and basketball shorts tucked in at the cuff in rough approximations of loin cloths and neatly proved what people around the sport kept telling us: Although the old rubber suit in the sauna routine is now illegal, the best wrestlers tend to be a little bit nuts.

The efforts appear to be paying off. In 2007, the Public Schools Athletic League fielded 19 wrestling teams. This year, there were 64, and Beat the Streets was funding another 35 programs at the middle school level—in total, the organization says it helps support nearly 3,000 wrestlers, about 85 percent of whom qualify for free school lunches. Last summer, a Curtis High School junior named Rosemary Flores won titles in two age groups at the youth wrestling national championships. And a high school junior named Cheick N'Diaye finished runner-up at the New York State wrestling tournament this year.

Unless you hail from Pennsylvania, cradle to the country's best high school wrestlers, or Iowa or Oklahoma, the states that have long dominated the sport at the collegiate level, you may be forgiven for thinking of wrestling as a spectacle of piledrivers and body slams. But the amateur version of the sport has long been popular among future finance types.

"I wrestled as well as I could wrestle, and if I lost, that was my own fault," KKR's Henry Kravis once told an interviewer about what he learned from wrestling. "I had nobody to blame but myself." Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris wrestled at the University of Pennsylvania before deciding that making his 118-pound weight class didn't allow either the time or calories for the old "college experience." Former Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Stephen Friedman, an AAU champion who wrestled at Cornell, was known to challenge subordinates to impromptu matches. Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was a college wrestler, though Mr. Novogratz pointed out that Mr. Thain, now CIT Group CEO, wrestled at the Division III level.

"Wrestlers are quick to qualify how good a guy was," he said. Indeed: "Mike was a better wrestler than I was, but he never beat me," said Richard Tavoso, Mr. Novogratz's college roommate at Princeton, now the head of global arbitrage and trading at RBC Capital Markets.

Noel Thompson, a former Goldman Sachs trader who recently launched his own hedge fund, told us that wrestling was good training for traders because it taught them how to make the best of a bad position. "There's the discovery of pain," he said. "You learn how much you can take, and you learn how to cut your losses. You'd rather give up a takedown for two points than a throw for five."

"A lot of the Ivy League wrestlers wind up in New York, so you have a strong set of wrestlers in the financial community," said Martin Floreani, the proprietor of Flowrestling.org, the go-to website for American wrestling fanatics. "One of the things that Novogratz has done is to knit those guys together."

We'd come across Mr. Floreani on Thursday evening, leaning against the mat-side risers near 47th Street and Broadway. Easily a thousand wrestling fans had gathered to watch the U.S.-Russia exhibition under a cloudy sky and millions of shifting lights, spilling out of the bleachers and onto the sidewalks, climbing atop planters and police barriers and whatever else they could find. Dan Gable, maybe America's most famous wrestler, was there, as were John Smith, Cael Sanderson and a host of other gold medalists. An Ohioan named Logan Stieber brought the crowd to its feet with a last-second victory. Mr. Thompson donned a tuxedo and stars-and-stripes bow tie and hyped the crowd in a cheer of "USA! USA!"

"It's surreal," Mr. Floreani told us. "U.S. wrestling doesn't usually get to do these kinds of things."

Mr. Novogratz, dressed in a blue suit and purple tie, his bald head gleaming under the television lights, watched from a cross-legged perch on the edge of the mat, often zipping into the crowd to greet a friend, of which he appeared to have many. For the last four years, he's served as something called "Team Leader" for the U.S. national team, fundraising and traveling to tournaments from Cuba to Russia and beyond. Recently, Mr. Novogratz and fellow Beat the Streets board member Dave Barry began funding a program that pays wrestlers for making the podium in international medals.

"Mike's really injected a lot of energy into the program," said Mark Manning, the head wrestling coach at the University of Nebraska and an assistant on the U.S. national team, adding: "He's someone the guys can relate to. Would they like to get him on the mat and rough him up a little? Probably, but so far he hasn't let them."

Asked whether Mr. Novogratz had ever climbed into the ring with him, Mr. N'Diaye said he'd come close. "He tried to once, but I didn't want to," the teenager told us. "I'm bigger now. If he wants to step to me, I'll step to him."

Later that night, Mr. Novogratz mounted the stage at Roseland Ballroom, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck, his tie aggressively loosened. "Bartenders, shut the bar down," he said into the microphone.  "Every year we get complaints that people keep talking through the awards ceremony, so this year we're going to shut the bar down."

The club resembled the meeting of some secret society. A busted nose or mangled ears would make you feel at home, failing that, an awful lot of money. On the dance floor, men with bodies like upside-down anchors jangled from foot to foot, hanging meaty forearms on their compatriots' shoulders. Cheryl Wong, a former Olympic trials qualifier who runs Beat the Streets' girls' program was there, along with a handful of women wrestlers, but for the most part, this was a masculine affair.

Despite Mr. Novogratz's pleas, attendees chattered away, executing five-point throws on imaginary opponents. Eventually, Mr. Novogratz got on with his awards presentation. "I told all my friends who aren't wrestlers that no one parties like a bunch of wrestlers," he said. "So I hope you'll stick around."

As a live band took the stage and the bartenders returned to action, one could almost forget that the world economy was still in a stranglehold. Fortress shares were trading in the $3 range, down from a post-IPO high of $24.40, and Mr. Novogratz's worth had fallen with it, down to about $500 million the last time Forbes checked.

"Our stock price has languished," he admitted, "and I have a responsibility to my partners and shareholders to do well and get the stock price up."

Mr. Novogratz was asked how long he intended to stay in the game. "If you were my best friend, maybe I'd tell you," he said. "I'm going to run money for a while."

pclark@observer.com

Questions for Jamie: Andrew Ross Sorkin has some questions for Jamie Dimon ahead of the JPMorgan chief executive's visit with the Senate Banking Committee on June 13. The hearing should be used as an opportunity to draw out information on the risks in the U.S. banking system, and not merely another performance of "Washington Gotcha Theater."

JPMorgan may report a second-quarter loss of $4.2 billion in its chief investment office, ISI analyst Ed Najarian said in a research note.

Whither Europe: A Spanish budget minister urged European leaders to move faster to support Spain's floundering banks, noting that spiking borrowing rates left Spain effectively locked out of capital markets.

Shall we lunch? Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testified in the insider trading trial of former-McKinsey & Co. boss Rajat Gupta yesterday, but The Times reports the testimony was largely uneventful. The lone bright spot? Mr. Blankfein asked if the court would schedule the continuation of his testimony around a lunch the bank boss had planned for his daughter's high school graduation. The Blankfeins' reservation was for a restaurant in Yonkers, where Judge Jed Rakoff lives. Did His Honor know the place? “If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I can’t afford it,” Judge Rakoff said.

KKR brass tops list: Henry Kravis was the most highly paid executive at large U.S. financial firms last year, earning $30 million in salary and other compensation, while partner George Roberts was second at $29.9 million, according to Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Mr. Kravis and Mr. Roberts, founding partners of KKR, the private equity firm that went public in 2010, took home an additional $64.2 million in dividends and other distributions accrued to their stakes in the company.

Emerging market: Steve Wynn's newest Macau casino will cost $4 billion to build, even as the island-gambling destination reported slower revenue growth.

Banker passes: Marion O. Sandler, the pioneering Wall Street woman who built Golden West Financial into one of the largest thrifts in the country, is dead at 81. Ms. Sandler and her husband Herbert sold Golden West to Wachovia in 2006, and came in for a share of blame when the bottom fell out of the U.S. housing market. The Sandlers sank much of the $2.4 billion they reaped from the Golden West sale into charities, The Times reports, including ProPublica, the investigative journalism outfit.

Drew Friedman, whose wildly good work for The Observer over the years has covered Obama, Spanx, Peter W. Kaplan, David Paterson and also Faulkner, illustrated the strange scene for this week's paper. Click on it to see more.

From Mr. Friedman's caption: "On Tuesday, Oct. 12, one of the biggest collections of New York power players in recent memory gathered at the Grill Room of the Four Seasons to salute one of their own: Steven Rattner, former investment banker and current financial adviser to our current mayor. Mayor Bloomberg and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, co-hosted the event, attracting swells ranging from Tina Brown to Henry Kravis and Barry Diller. Mr. Rattner thanked his agent (his new book about the car business is just out) and his hosts, but left one thing out--that he had just reached a settlement with the S.E.C. over a pay-for-play scandal involving the New York pension fund. Mr. Sulzberger's Times would run a front-page piece, the morning after the party... As for tonight, cheers!"

The work adds to a growing New York Observer Rattner oeuvre. Be sure to check out this for Barry Blitt's happier portrait of the czar, and this for another perspiring Steve Rattner from Edel Rodriguez.

Public broadcasting exec Sharon Rockefeller strolled into the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday night, May 26, alongside the artist Jack Shear, both laughing, with cocktails in hand after sitting down to a sensible dinner.

“We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” quipped Mr. Shear.

“And salad,” added Ms. Rockefeller.

“You had lobster,” Mr. Shear pointed out.

“It’s economic savvy times!” Ms. Rockefeller declared.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, real estate mogul Jerry Speyer, and actress Glenn Close, among others, had also turned out for the museum's annual Party in the Garden.

The venue, outfitted with white tents, resembled an outdoor bar on Miami's South Beach and seemed as crowded as the No. 6 train during rush hour.

Party supplies didn't last. Guests who approached the bar after 9 p.m. were informed that the museum had entirely run out of tonic, club soda, lemons and limes. "I guess that means more alcohol for all of us!" noted one high-spirited guest.

Many high-profile attendees, including investor Henry Kravis and his wife, Marie-Josee, bolted promptly after dinner. "We'd better run," the couple told the Daily Transom on their way out.

Those who stuck around, such as the artist Brice Marden, were treated to a special performance by the singer Estelle. "I heard the artist was pretty good," said Mr. Marden, sporting a blue beanie and black jacket.

"We think New York City is the best place in the entire world," said Ms. Rockefeller, a museum trustee, who nonetheless spends much of her time in and around Washington, D.C. (her husband is U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia), as she headed toward the dance floor. "It really is. People should come, have a good time, and come to MoMA. We have great art coming up."

CORRECTION: The original version misspelled the name of the artist Mr. Marden. The Observer regrets the error.

Ms. Kravis, wearing a gold coat with a fur neckline, walked slowly through each room, looking on as her husband occasionally wondered off to see the paintings and sculptures up close.

“The importance of this artist is incontestable,” Ms. Kravis told the Daily Transom. “I saw many stages of the show as it came together; I think it came out very well. When you see an artist like Kippenberger, and you see the variety of the production and the quality of what he did, it’s just such a wonderful inspiration.”

At the center of the room, the museum’s new chief curator of painting and sculpture Ann Temkin--appointed in September following a six-month search to replace John Elderfield—was greeting guests as they arrived.

“You could have done this show 100 different ways,” Ms. Temkin said, looking around at the works. “This is probably only five or 10 percent of his work. You can decide to present what you think is the greatest or you can present variety, and Ann Goldstein, who’s the curator from the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. who originated the show, chose variety. An important part of Kippenberger’s work was bad art and if we just showed the beautiful amazing works, it would’ve been a distortion.”

In fact, Ms. Temkin thinks that today’s artists could learn something from Kippenberger, who died in 1997—something especially relevant to the current economic climate.

“I tend to believe that the high commercial emphasis of everything is a good thing to lose a little bit,” she said. “When Kippenberger first came on the scene, it was a heavy commercial art boom of the '80s. His art was really reacting against that and trying so hard to prove that art can be unappealing. And it’s true that in a time when there is plenty of money, a lot of artists can be distracted by it.”

Ms. Temkin’s attention was drawn across the room.

“Oh, look, it’s Amy Cappellazzo!” she said, spotting the Christie's senior vice president and international co-head of postwar and contemporary art.

Ms. Cappellazzo had just returned from the auction of Yves Saint Laurent’s art collection in Paris, which had brought in $262 million.

“There was like this chair that was kind of rounded and it had the horns and a sun and moon on each of the handles. It was estimated at $4 to $6 million,” Ms. Cappellazzo told Ms. Temkin. “You know what it made today? $28 million!

“We all had a feeling that it was going to be successful and we knew that it was a special kind of sale,” Ms. Capalazzo told the Daily Transom. “Yves Saint Laurent was a special person with special tastes.”

And who were the buyers?

“This was a pretty active global event,” she said. “It was people across the board.” (Nice dodge!)

We wondered if Ms. Kravis and Ms. Temkin found the Paris auction figures encouraging.

“It’s such a one-shot occasion, like the Jacqueline Onassis Sotheby’s sale,” replied Ms. Temkin. “It’s as much about the sociological situation as it is the aesthetic one. But it certainly gets people into a good mood.”

Ms. Kravis was less enthused. “Well, we’re not in the auction market,” she said.  

The event was presented as a benchmark accomplishment for all of us, not just for mega-capitalists, something above the mere making of money, something more like an act of disinterested statecraft. The $45 billion deal was made to seem like a rescue operation in which Mr. Kravis and his associates were taking over TXU to prevent the public utility from building 11 coal-fired generating plants, which would dump hundreds of thousands of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The deal had been done, viewers of the PBS News Hour were led to believe, thanks to the major money interests finding common ground with two responsible, mainstream environmental organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense. Sensible billionaires and rational environmentalists had teamed up to invent a way to help stop global warming, even as capital earned its just return. Thank God, the polar bears were going to be saved.

There was to be one of those 10-point plans in which the newly purchased TXU would spend $400 million on an energy-conservation program, and there was also a promise to roll back TXU’s carbon-dioxide emissions to their 1990 levels within the next 13 years. At the same time that the press releases were making their way around the world C. John Wilder, the present and future head of TXU, was being a lot less green in his statements. Those 11 carbon-dioxide-belching, coal-fired, climate-heating plants would not be built, he said, “unless our customers face reliability issues, shortages leading to higher prices, or our competitors propose plants that are expected to have a meaningful impact on market dynamics.”

As for the $400 million fund for energy conservation, TXU, under its new ownership, will be about $35 billion in debt. Since it has already promised its customers a rate cut, it will hardly be in a position to make good on this or many other of its promises.

It’s not exactly clear to whom these promises were made, although from what has been made public, it is obvious that they are not binding on the new management. You might call them a list of pious intentions. They are nothing that you can go into court with if you are, for example, a North Dakota farmer suffering from climate-warming-induced drought, and get an order forcing TXU to live up to its promises.

Another question of more than passing importance is: Who are these green organizations with whom Mr. Kravis and his fellow capitalists have made this agreement? The agreement is of significant value, we assume, because it carries with it the implication that environmentalist organizations will not try to stop TXU from doing whatever TXU may decide to do in the next few years, because TXU has been officially stamped “green” and therefore gets a pass.

They need that pass, too. The Kravis organization was rebuffed by the state of Arizona when it tried to buy Unisource Energy. Texas Pacific, Kravis’ partner in the TXU deal, was likewise rebuffed in Oregon when its push to gain control of Portland General hit a wall of opposition. In the changing climate of opinion about environmental questions, green front groups may be indispensable for getting deals though in which the generating, fueling or consuming of energy is an important element.

Doubtless there is much to come out about how KKR and Texas Pacific got its green endorsement, but we know a little. We know that a telephone call was made by one William K. Reilly, an employee of Texas Pacific and a former administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush.

We know the call went to one Fred Krupp, the top man at Environmental Defense, an organization with a $65 million budget. Mr. Krupp’s group takes no money directly from the corporations with which it works—but indirectly is another matter. The men and women who run the corporations are encouraged to make donations. Sam Walton of the Wal-Mart Waltons sits on the board, which should give an idea about what level of society Mr. Krupp likes to hang with.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (annual budget: $55 million) also put its stamp of approval on this deal. The NRDC maintains its place in the limelight with people such as Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio on its board. As information about the TXU deal oozes into public view, it’s becoming obvious that a number of these well-known environmental organizations are full of rich people at the top.

For people who follow environmental politics closely, none of this can be news—but for those of us who do not, it comes as a bit of an eye-opener to learn that Texas Pacific’s co-founder, David Bonderman, is a World Wildlife Fund board member, and that Henry Paulson—ex-boss of Goldman Sachs, now the Secretary of the Treasury—was chairman of the Nature Conservancy. Goldman Sachs is one of the line-up of Wall Street honey bears getting ready to dip their paws into the TXU deal.

A clubby little green world these people would appear to have going for themselves, which must make it easier to come to terms on questions like TXU. It is a way of doing business, Mr. Krupp has been quoted as saying, which “recognizes the realities of the world and deals with them. It harnesses market forces and incentives so companies are rewarded in the court of public opinion or in the emissions-trading system.” Others might say this is corporate schmooze talk about activities which amount to a fancy form of old-fashioned self-dealing.

For a generation, big business interests scoffed at, laughed at and sabotaged the scientists who were trying to warn us that those slowly rising little red lines in our thermometers presaged doomsday for humanity—and now they are going to be making policy on global warming? Now they are going to be allowed to decide life-and-death environmental questions?

Permission to buy, sell or alter TXU must soon be reserved for a national governmental body acting on an overall timetable and plan best calculated to give our young people a shot at a sustainable life.

One more item: As if the TXU business were not thick enough with noxious particulates, the Securities and Exchange Commission is charging that persons unknown used inside information of the TXU deal to make a killing. Nothing big—only four or five million, or enough for a smallish Upper East Side co-op.

The arm-twisting--or, if you prefer, diplomacy--came courtesy of figures like Sandy Weil, Henry Kravis and Jerry Speyer, who all serve on boards of universities and hospitals around the city that had to agree to form a consortium first.

"In other places around the country, there are fewer institutions to get together. It was actually harder here in New York because they are used to competing with one another," said Kathy Wylde, the CEO and president of the Partnership for New York City. "Some of my members were able to approach their institutions and get them interested in collaborating."

Alexandria, which will build 870,000 square feet across three buildings, will pay the city $3.1 million a year, including payments in lieu of taxes on the land it will occupy at the northern end of Bellevue between 28th and 19th streets along the FDR. But a special incentive district on the property extends the same benefits that developers usually only get north of 96th street or in the boroughs: a 16-year abatement on the taxes for the buildings themselves. In addition, the Partnership for New York City's investment fund has committed $10 million to lure small and medium-sized companies to take space in the complex, dubbed the East River Science Park, once it opens, starting in 2008.

- Matthew Schuerman

The new campaign, which hasn't been publicly announced, will add the voices of the city's most influential business leaders to the chorus of New York elected officials who have been demanding more homeland-security funds. These business executives-many of whom are major donors to both political parties-are growing frustrated with Washington for failing to provide adequate funding for the security needs of New York.

The campaign, which has resulted in an unusual alliance between the city's business elites and its police force, reflects a recognition among business leaders that New York finds itself in extraordinary straits. At a time when the city is reeling from the worst fiscal crisis in a generation, it is struggling to find the money to defend itself against threats from abroad during wartime.

"We have a budget crisis in the city, and protecting our community from attack is a federal responsibility," Henry Kravis, a co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Company and the co-chairman of the Partnership for New York City, told The Observer . "The fact that federal funding allocations put New York at the bottom of the list when it comes to per capita funding for security, first responders and intelligence is incomprehensible."

The funding formula Mr. Kravis was referring to was unveiled several weeks ago by the Bush administration. The plan, which is under consideration in Congress, would designate about $4 billion to defend the nation against future terrorist attacks. Half the money would go to federal agencies and the other half to municipalities. By most estimates, New York City would get around $25 million. This is a less-than-reassuring sum, to say the least, since the Bloomberg administration has estimated that the cost of increased security for the city-including new training, equipment, counterterrorism, intelligence and emergency preparedness-will be more than $1 billion.

Indeed, in one measure of just how badly the city's finances are being strained by the demands of civil defense, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has quietly undertaken a fund-raising drive designed to bring in money for the department from private benefactors.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that New York City's police commissioner has to spend his time passing the tin cup for private contributions to support the technology, equipment and other needs associated with protecting the city from further acts of international terrorism," Mr. Kravis said. "New York City is at the highest risk, and our Police Department plays an important role in providing intelligence information and security for the country."

The Bush plan has been assailed in recent days by New York elected officials-Republicans as well as Democrats-who argue that it would provide New York with less federal security money per capita than every state except California. Mayor Bloomberg has been lobbying for more money and, in recent days, Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton have been leading a drive to amend the Bush plan to provide more than a billion dollars in additional security aid to New York and other "high-risk" cities. A vote on the Schumer-Clinton amendment, Congressional sources say, may come as early as tomorrow, and a vote on the overall bill is expected within two weeks.

Now, for the first time, New York's business leaders are publicly joining the campaign to wrest more security funding from Washington. On April 4, dozens of executives from major New York companies will meet in Washington to plot their lobbying strategy, along with representatives of the Mayor and Governor George Pataki. The companies that will be represented at the strategy session and will be lobbying the federal lawmakers and policymakers in coming weeks are Ernst and Young, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Company, Goldman Sachs, the New York Stock Exchange, J.P. Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services, among many others.

Organizers of the partnership's campaign are hoping that it won't be lost on Congressional leaders that these companies are among the most generous contributors to political campaigns across the country.

"New York's corporate citizens are going to be calling in some of their chits in Washington to get more money to fund our anti-terrorism and security needs," said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the partnership, which is organizing the effort. "This is a priority for every major employer in New York. Our members funded the campaigns of virtually every member of Congress, so we hope they will be receptive to our message."

Business Angle

The key to the coming campaign, organizers say, will be to give a business cast to the argument over homeland security. Some of the city's most influential business leaders will be arguing that the future of the city's economy-and, by extension, that of the nation-will depend on the city's ability to guarantee that it's a safe place to shop, visit or establish new businesses.

In coming weeks, many of these business leaders will be making private calls to members of Congress with whom they have personal relationships. They will be working with staff members for the Mayor and Governor to develop the message that they will deliver to lawmakers, both in private conversations and at fund-raisers.

"We intend to take direction from the Mayor and Governor with regard to the Washington strategy," Ms. Wylde said. "It's essential, if the city's going to be successful, that we all speak with one voice."

On another, separate front, the Association for a Better New York, a powerful civic group, has launched a letter-writing campaign targeting the Congressional leaders of both parties. "It is critical that New York receives its fair share of the appropriated money to allow Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly to continue their efforts to keep our City safe from further attacks," argues the letter, which was sent out on April 1.

The city's security plan, known as Operation Atlas, is costing the city $5 million a week. And there are millions of dollars in additional expenses, such as counterterrorism initiatives and other measures.

The business community's campaign comes at a time when many New York companies have been forced to pick up increased security costs themselves. These companies, many of which house thousands of employees in vulnerable skyscrapers, have spent millions of dollars on everything from outfitting their lobbies with sophisticated new weapons-detection equipment to hiring their own anti-terrorism experts to oversee security.

The executives' new campaign is likely to create political complications for Republican leaders in Washington. The White House, which bills itself as pro-business, will have a tougher time dismissing arguments for more security money when they're being advanced by some of the most powerful business leaders in the country.

"This really enhances the message, because it's coming not just from elected officials whose job is to deliver funds, but from business leaders who represent a powerful wing of the Republican Party," said political consultant Richard Schrader. "These are people who have enormous influence over major investment decisions, and they're saying that the Bush administration has failed to give us the resources to get our economy going again."

Ms. Roehm was opening mail with an assistant–she has two. Her long hands were laden with cards and letters. "I really can't believe we're still receiving them–about 90 this week," she said, delighted. The missives come in a weekly dispatch from Harper Collins, publisher of her 1997 book, A Passion for Flowers . There was a card from a reader in New Jersey, another from a woman in Germany. From Jasper, Ind., a lady wrote, "Your book is my adviser and companion. The other day I was sad so I put on Pavarotti and read your book and my day got better."

A nice kick from a coffee table book with a price tag of $50. Indeed, in its genre, the beautiful book is some kind of record setter. Now in its sixth printing, it has begotten a Carolyne Roehm cottage industry: The former fashion designer lectures around the country, judges flower shows, appears on Good Morning America and recently made a pilot garden show with Meredith Corporation's Country Gardens magazine. Worldvision Enterprise Inc. is handling the syndication, which according to Ms. Roehm is going well. At least 60 percent of the 121 target markets have been sold and the weekly series is expected to air later this year.

In April, Harper Collins will publish Summer Notebook , the first of four seasonal, 100-page, spiral-bound notebooks by Carolyne Roehm. Expanding on themes from A Passion for Flowers , Summer Notebook includes chapters on roses, tomatoes–"a very big story with me," Ms. Roehm said–corn, and peaches. A coffee table book on entertaining will be published in late fall.

"We're having a vegetable salad with a crab salad," Ms. Roehm said, putting her mail aside and settling herself at the table in front of the dazzling river view. Crammed, but cozy, like a tight shot in Ms. Roehm's book, the table was topped with yellow daffodils and two antique globes flanking a bronze bust of Marcus Aurelius on a marble stand.

A maid brought the food. "I don't know what's happening in fashion anymore," said Ms. Roehm, who was a clothing designer for nearly 10 years. She was much more inclined to talk about gardens and food, or the daffodils arranged throughout the saffron-colored room. "Just two or three cut daffodils in a simple glass will improve the quality of one's life and is a fail-safe activity even for the most horticulturally challenged," she said.

Ms. Roehm apologized if she looked puffy–she didn't–"but I finally saw Life Is Beautiful last night and couldn't stop crying." She was headed to Paris that evening for the christening of a godchild. In 1994, when she and Mr. Kravis ended their marriage–on friendly terms as these things go–Ms. Roehm closed the struggling catalogue business she had gotten into after leaving Seventh Avenue in 1991 and went abroad. First she studied literature at Oxford, and later, decorated an apartment in Paris on the Left Bank. She took cooking classes and apprenticed with Henri Moulie, one of the most respected florists in Paris.

The daughter of educators from a small Missouri town, she has loved flowers since she was a child. Fresh blooms remind her of summer days on her grandmother's farm. Even when she was an assistant to Oscar de la Renta, earning $126 a week in the mid-1970's, she always budgeted for a few flowers.

Ms. Roehm paused when asked about Weatherstone, her treasured 1850's stone house in Sharon, Conn., where she has spent the majority of her time since 1996, photographing and producing her books for Harper Collins. On Jan. 22, Weatherstone combusted in a freak fire and burnt to the ground. The first flame caught hold of a sofa and 10 minutes later the roof of the house caved in.

"I was in town," Ms. Roehm recalled. "I'd just come out of a meeting at Harper Collins and I saw my driver waving frantically. 'The house is on fire,' he told me. My first reaction was, 'Well, we better put it out.' When I realized what he was telling me, he had to catch me."

She still doesn't know what caused the fire, although an electrical short is suspected. Two people working in the house tried to extinguish the fire when it was just flames on the sofa, but it had already caught inside the wall and then shot up to the roof. Luckily, no one was hurt and her three dogs were gotten out of the house in time. Ms. Roehm is living in a cottage on the property.

Antiques and paintings were lost as were most of her clothes and all of her Carolyne Roehm archives, the dresses she designed in her fashion days. "There are one or two Lesage embroideries I'd like to have, but I really never want to have that much stuff again," she said. "After the fire, I went to Banana Republic and bought a few pairs of pants and some white shirts. I had a few things here in the apartment as well." One of the very few things salvaged was a portfolio of watercolor sketches of her dogs. "I think this was an omen," she said, "to rebuild." But Mr. Kravis still owns the property and, under the terms of their divorce, Ms. Roehm only has lifetime rights to live there. Weatherstone will eventually revert to his estate. Will he rebuild?

"I hope so," Ms. Roehm answered.

"Do you know, I actually watched Gone With the Wind soon after the fire," she said. "Not because I identify with Scarlett, but because so many friends said I should leave this place. But I still love it. The former owner told us he believed there was a ghost, but I always thought she was friendly and a frustrated decorator because we'd always find furniture moved which no one could ever explain." She said Mr. Kravis rolled his eyes with disbelief when the previous owner of Weatherstone told him the house had a ghost. "Well, I don't want to sound like Shirley MacLaine myself, but I guess I'm preaching to the choir today."

The maid returned bearing vanilla ice cream in powdered chocolate. "I'm going to be very brutal," Ms. Roehm warned her, "just get that ice cream away from me!" She laughed. "Just because I have skinny arms, people think I am skinny. I've gained so much weight, but it's O.K. I was too bony, I think, in the 1980's. Oh, I ate. I was a nervous person who ate like a horse and ran like a lunatic. Nowadays," she smiled, "I like to think I'm learning not to push the river."

Billy's List: Quiz time!

1. Six and half million dollars is:

a. the amount the Queen Mother supposedly has overdrawn from her royal accounts.

b. the amount of money raised at the Vogue -Christie's sale of Oscar dresses March 18.

c. Tom Ford's bonus last year from Gucci.

2. What product was advertised on the wind-lashed banner that wreaked havoc in Times Square on March 18?

a. Izod Baby.

b. Calvin Klein mesh thongs.

c. Nokia cellular phones.

3. What did Stella McCartney wear when she attended her father Paul McCartney's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15?

a. A pretty floor-length skirt and a T-shirt that said, "About Fucking Time!"

b. A Chloe gown with a Lesage top that read, "No More Fur!"

c. One of her mother Linda McCartney's vintage Yves Saint Laurent couture smoking jackets and pants.

Answers: (1) a; (2) c; (3) a.