Roy Cohn has a problem. It is mid-November, a peak month for New York hotel bookings, and an out-of-town client of his law firm, Saxe, Bacon & Bolan, is stuck for a room for the night. Another lawyer might tell the fellow to hike his grip down to the "Y," but Cohn is known around town as a fixer of sorts, a reputation that must constantly be nurtured by small favors. He decides to call another client, who happens to own two hotels in the city, the Grand Hyatt and the Barbizon Plaza. In the powerful New York triangle of politics, law, and real estate, the two men have what passes for a friendship. It is 8:30 in the morning, but the voice on the other end of the phone is full of brio. "Roy M. Hi. What's up? Who? Sorry, Roy, I think the Grand Hyatt is full. But how about the Barbizon? Hold on. Let me find out." There follows a partially muffled shout to an assistant in the next office to line up the room, then he's back on the phone. "Okay, I think we can book him into the Barbizon. Only for you, Roy."

Only for you, Roy. Or you, Hugh. Or Abe or Ed or Mario. Meet Donald Trump. Age 38. Eyebrows by Henry Luce. The sandy hair—longish on the sides in a Chamber of Commerce sort of way and brushed flat over the ears—by George Steinbrenner. The six-foot-two-inch frame is trim but well-nourished. The hands small and neatly groomed. The suit is blue and stylish—maybe a little too flared in the leg for someone who lives east of the Hudson. About the only thing that gives away this striver from an outer borough are his cuff links: huge mollusks of gold and stone the size of half-dollars.

On this brisk, fall morning, a visitor making one of many journeys to Donald Trump's offices on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan gets out of his cab in front of the building. Double-parked outside is a half-block-long Cadillac stretch limo with "DJT" vanity plates.

Upstairs, not surprisingly, Trump is on the horn. "Yeah, eleven-thirty would be much better, Ben. I'll cancel somebody else and move them around a little bit. Okay pal. See you then." He swivels around to greet his new arrival. "That man is the head of an insurance company, a major one. He's having some people from California come to New York tomorrow, and he wants to show them some real estate. They represent a $4 billion account, and the only real estate they want to see is Trump Tower. That's all they want to see. It's crazy."

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Such is the newfound fame of Donald Trump. Not too long ago he was dismissed by the real estate establishment as little more than a mauve-suited sharpie with a big mouth. He got rid of the suits. Then, with a style that was considered bold in some quarters and smarmy in others, he cut a broad swath through prime blocks of Manhattan real estate, plastering the family name on any blank surface that rose and shined and, not incidentally, building more in the city of New York than anyone else in the past five years. Trump refurbished the bankrupt Commodore Hotel adjacent to Grand Central Station and turned it into one of the city's more spectacular new luxury hotels, the 1407-room Grand Hyatt. To tidy up the view, he cleaned and caulked the Forty-second Street facade of Grand Central, then leased and renovated the old Vanderbilt Athletic Club and renamed it The Tennis Club. Trump optioned a twenty-five-acre site of decaying waterfront property from the defunct Penn Central Railroad and then talked the city into using the site for its $450 million Convention Center. In May 1983 he finished Trump Tower, and last March opened Trump Plaza, a new, forty-story cooperative development on New York's Upper East Side, a block away from Bloomingdale's. Another project, Harrah's at Trump Plaza, the largest casino in Atlantic City, opens this month.

To the gray world of New York real estate, ruled for so long by the Tishmans, the Fishers, the Rudins, the LeFraks, and now the Reichmanns, Trump has infused a brand of freewheeling self-aggrandizement not seen since the days of the late, great Bill Zeckendorf. "My projects now sort of self-promote," says Donald. "And if there's a reason I'm good promotionally, it's that I know what people want. I am good in challenging situations. What I like is for people to tell me something can't be done when I think it can. In real estate, you deal with some very smart, very devious people. They're the sharpest wolves in the world. I've competed against them and I've come out fine."

Nowhere is this mix of real-estate hard sell and showbiz brashness more apparent than in Trump Tower, the trim, bronze, sixty-eight-story office, retail, and condominium complex that opened last year on the site of the old Bonwit Teller building at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street.

There are only two types of people who live on Fifth Avenue in midtown: homeless derelicts, who sleep over the hot-air grates in front of Saks, and well-groomed members of the cabaret set, who prefer to set down roots in a neighborhood where groceries or even a bar of soap are a taxi ride away. The latter have decided to call Trump Tower's 268 condominium apartments home. (Trump has sold the apartments in the building as condominiums rather than co-ops. It ensures that no one with the right amount of money, regardless of its origins, will be given the heave-ho by a snooty co-op board.) For most new tenants, like Johnny Carson, Paul Anka, Sophia Loren, and Steven Spielberg, Trump Tower will serve as a New York pied-à-terre. Across the hall from Johnny's new digs, the folks about to move in have been busy installing a swimming pool in their apartment. "It's actually three apartments—one's a duplex," says Trump. "Two for living in and one just for the pool. Lots of saunas. It's strange. It's an unbelievable situation. There are some people that won't be here more than a week a year. It's crazy."

That may be an understatement. Try $600,000 for a cramped, L-shaped one-bedroom. The price is a million or more for the ninety-one larger apartments. When even the European cognoscenti balked at paying $12 million for the penthouse triplex, Trump took the place for himself.

Down below on street level is where the rabble is supposed to ooh and aah. Entering the foyer, with its peach marble floor, ceiling and walls, produces a sort of vertigo. On rainy days, a spectator sport develops near the entrance where, unbeknownst to the first-time visitor, the floor cants somewhat to the six-story shopping atrium. There, with the marble greased by the water, tanned lady shoppers hit the incline, pick up speed and momentarily hydroplane before skittering to flat ground and safety.

Ah, but for the nimble of foot and the stout of pocketbook, Trump Tower's atrium is a veritable EPCOT for the advanced shopper. Retail tenants, says Trump, were chosen largely for their moneyed cachet. And indeed, shops such as Loewe, Asprey, Harry Winston, Cartier, and Buccellati can tame even the most hearty of spendthrifts. So intimidating are these outfits that at Christmastime last year, a number of tourists were seen tentatively peeking in through the window of the atrium's smoke shop, apparently afraid to enter this hallowed purveyor of magazines, cigarettes, and gum. "It's the greatest group of stores ever assembled under one roof," says Trump. "Well, it's probably the most expensive set of stores, certainly. And the greatest.