The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  “The City Light doesn’t consider wives glamorous unless they’re unfaithful,” said Fallow. “We save our enthusiasm for Other Women.”

  Then everyone began to speculate about the Foxy Brunette, and Billy Cortez, casting an eye toward St. John, said he had heard of men taking their little tarts to out-of-the-way places to avoid detection, but, really, the Bronx indicated rather advanced paranoia, and Fallow ordered another vodka Southside.

  The hubbub was warm and happy and English, and the orange and ocher glows of Leicester’s were mellow and English, and Caroline was staring at him quite a lot, sometimes smiling, sometimes looking at him with a smirk, and it did make him curious, and he had another vodka Southside, and Caroline got up from her place and walked around the table to where he was and leaned over and said into his ear, “Come upstairs with me a minute.”

  Could it be? It was so very unlikely, but—could it be? They went up the spiral staircase in the back to Britt-Withers’s office, and Caroline, suddenly looking serious, said, “Peter, I probably shouldn’t tell you what I’m going to tell you. You really don’t deserve it. You haven’t been very nice to me.”

  “Me!” said Fallow with a jolly laugh. “Caroline! You tried to spread my snout all over New York!”

  “What? Your snout?” Caroline smiled through a blush. “Well, not all over New York. In any event, after the gift I’m about to give you, I think we can call it even.”

  “The gift?”

  “I think it’s a gift. I know who your Foxy Brunette is. I know who was in the car with McCoy.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “All right—who?”

  “Her name is Maria Ruskin. You met her that night at the Limelight.”

  “I did?”

  “Peter, you get so drunk. She’s the wife of a man named Arthur Ruskin, who’s about three times her age. He’s a Jewish something-or-other. Very rich.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Do you remember my friend the artist? The Italian? Filippo? Filippo Chirazzi?”

  “Ah yes. Couldn’t very well forget him, could I?”

  “Well, he knows her.”

  “How does he know her?”

  “The same way a lot of men know her. She’s a slut.”

  “And she told him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God, Caroline. Where can I find him?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t find him myself. The little bastard.”

  25. We the Jury

  This is nothing but the Establishment looking after its own,” said Reverend Bacon. He was leaning back in his chair at his desk and talking into the telephone, but his tones were official. For he was talking to the press. “This is the Power Structure manufacturing and disseminating its lies with the willing connivance of its lackeys in the media, and its lies are transparent.”

  Edward Fiske III, although a young man, recognized the rhetoric of the Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Reverend Bacon stared at the mouthpiece of the telephone with a look of righteous anger. Fiske slumped down a little farther in his chair. His eyes jumped from Reverend Bacon’s face to the swamp-yellow sycamores in the yard beyond the window and then back to Reverend Bacon and then back to the sycamores. He didn’t know whether eye contact with the man was wise at this point or not, even though the thing that had provoked the anger had nothing to do with Fiske’s visit. Bacon was furious over the piece in this morning’s Daily News suggesting that Sherman McCoy might have been escaping from a robbery attempt when his car hit Henry Lamb. The Daily News intimated that Lamb’s accomplice was a convicted felon named Roland Auburn and that the district attorney’s entire case against Sherman McCoy was based on a story concocted by this individual, who was now seeking a plea bargain in a drug case.

  “You doubt that they stoop so low?” Reverend Bacon declaimed into the mouthpiece. “You doubt they can be vile? Now you see them stoop so low, they try to smear young Henry Lamb. Now you see them vilify the victim, who lies mortally wounded and cannot speak for himself. For them to say that Henry Lamb is a robber—that’s the criminal act…see…That’s the criminal act. But that is the twisted mind of the Power Structure, that is the underlying racist mentality. Since Henry Lamb is a young black male, they think they can brand him as a criminal…see…They think they can smear him in that way. But they are wrong. Henry Lamb’s life refutes their lies. Henry Lamb is everything the Power Structure tells the young black male he is supposed to be, but when the needs of one a their own demand it…see…one a their own…then they think nothing of turning around and trying to destroy the good name of this young man…What?…Say, ‘Who are they?’…You think Sherman McCoy stands alone? You think he is by himself? He is one a the most powerful men at Pierce & Pierce, and Pierce & Pierce is one a the most powerful forces in Wall Street. I know Pierce & Pierce…see…I know what they can do. You heard a capitalists. You heard a plutocrats. You take a look at Sherman McCoy and you’re looking at a capitalist, you’re looking at a plutocrat.”

  Reverend Bacon eviscerated the offending newspaper article. The Daily News was a notorious toady of the corporate interests. The reporter who wrote the pack of lies, Neil Flannagan, was a lackey so shameless as to lend his name to such a disgusting campaign. His font of so-called information—referred to coyly as “sources close to the case”—was obviously McCoy and his cabal.

  The McCoy case was of no interest to Fiske, except as ordinary gossip, although he did know the Englishman who had first exposed the whole situation, a wonderful witty fellow named Peter Fallow, who was a master of the art of conversation. No, Fiske’s only interest was in how much Bacon’s involvement in it was going to complicate his task, which was to retrieve the $350,000 or some part of it. In the half hour he had been sitting here, Bacon’s secretary had buzzed in with calls from two newspapers, the Associated Press, a Bronx assemblyman, a Bronx congressman, and the executive secretary of the Gay Fist Strike Force, all concerning the McCoy case. And Reverend Bacon was now talking to a man named Irv Stone, from Channel 1. At first Fiske figured his mission was (yet once again) hopeless. But behind Reverend Bacon’s baleful orotundity he began to detect a buoyancy, a joie de combat. Reverend Bacon loved what was going on. He was leading the crusade. He was in his element. Somewhere in all of this, at last, if he picked the right moment, Edward Fiske III might find an opening through which to retrieve the Episcopal Church’s $350,000 from the Heavenly Crusader’s promiscuous heap of schemes.

  Reverend Bacon was saying, “There’s the cause and there’s the effect, Irv…see…And we had a demonstration at the Poe projects, where Henry Lamb lives. That’s the effect…see…What happened to Henry Lamb is the effect. Well, today we gonna take it to the cause. We gonna take it to Park Avenue. To Park Avenue, see, from whence the lies commence…from whence they commence…What?…Right. Henry Lamb cannot speak for himself, but he’s gonna have a mighty voice. He’s gonna have the voice of his people, and that voice is gonna be heard on Park Avenue.”

  Fiske had never seen Reverend Bacon’s face so animated. He began asking Irv Stone technical questions. Naturally, he couldn’t guarantee Channel 1 an exclusive this time, but could he count on live coverage? What was the optimal time? Same as before? And so forth and so on. Finally he hung up. He turned toward Fiske and looked at him with portentous concentration and said:

  “The steam.”

  “The steam?”

  “The steam…You remember I told you about the steam?”

  “Oh yes. I do.”

  “Well, now you gonna see the steam coming to a head. The whole city’s gonna see it. Right on Park Avenue. People think the fire has gone out. They think the rage is a thing of the past. They don’t know it’s only been bottled up. It’s when the steam is trapped, you find out what it can do…see…That’s when you find out it’s Powder Valley for you and your whole gang. Pierce & P
ierce only know how to handle one kind of capital. They don’t understand the steam. They can’t handle the steam.”

  Fiske spotted a tiny opening.

  “As a matter of fact, Reverend Bacon, I was talking to a man from Pierce & Pierce about you just the other day. Linwood Talley, from the underwriting division.”

  “They know me there,” said Reverend Bacon. He smiled, but a trifle sardonically. “They know me. They don’t know the steam.”

  “Mr. Talley was telling me about Urban Guaranty Investments. He said it’s been highly successful.”

  “I can’t complain.”

  “Mr. Talley didn’t go into any details, but I gather it’s been”—he searched for the proper euphemism—“profitable right from the beginning.”

  “Ummmmmm.” Reverend Bacon didn’t seem inclined to expand.

  Fiske said nothing and tried to hold Reverend Bacon’s gaze with his own, in hopes of creating a conversational vacuum the great crusader couldn’t resist. The truth about Urban Guaranty Investments, as Fiske had in fact learned from Linwood Talley, was that the federal government had recently given the firm $250,000 as a “minority underwriter” for a $7 billion issue of federally backed municipal bonds. The so-called set-aside law required that there be minority participation in the selling of such bonds, and Urban Guaranty Investments had been created to help satisfy that requirement of the law. There was no requirement that the minority firm actually sell any of the bonds or even receive them. The lawmakers did not want to wrap the task in red tape. It was only necessary for the firm to participate in the issue. Participate was broadly defined. In most cases—Urban Guaranty Investments was but one of many such firms across the country—participation meant receiving a check for the fee from the federal government and depositing it, and not much more. Urban Guaranty Investments had no employees, and no equipment, just an address (Fiske was at it), a telephone number, and a president, Reginald Bacon.

  “So it just occurred to me, Reverend Bacon, in terms of our conversations and what the diocese is naturally concerned about and what remains to be worked out, if we are to resolve what I’m sure you want to resolve just as much as the bishop, who, I have to tell you, has been pressing me on this point—” Fiske paused. As often happened in his talks with Reverend Bacon, he couldn’t remember how he had begun his sentence. He had no idea what the number and tense of the predicate should be. “—pressing me on this point, and, uh, uh, the thing is, we thought perhaps you might be in a position to shift some funds into the escrow account we mentioned, the escrow account for the Little Shepherd Day Care Center, just until our licensing problems are worked out.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Reverend Bacon.

  Fiske had the sinking feeling he was going to have to think of some way to say it again.

  But Reverend Bacon bailed him out. “Are you saying we ought to shift money from Urban Guaranty Investments to the Little Shepherd Day Care Center?”

  “Not in so many words, Reverend Bacon, but if the funds are available or could be loaned out…”

  “But that’s illegal! You’re talking about commingling funds! We can’t shift moneys from one corporation to another just because it looks like one of them needs it more.”

  Fiske looked at the rock of fiscal probity, half expecting a wink, even though he knew Reverend Bacon wasn’t a winker. “Well, the diocese has always been willing to go the extra mile with you, Reverend Bacon, in the sense that if there was room to find some flexibility in the strict reading of the regulation, such as the time you and the board of directors of the Inner City Family Restructuring Society made the trip to Paris and the diocese paid for it out of the Missionary Society budget—” Once again he was drowning in the syntactical soup, but it didn’t matter.

  “No way,” said Reverend Bacon.

  “Well, if not that, then—”

  Reverend Bacon’s secretary’s voice came over the intercom: “Mr. Vogel is on the line.”

  Reverend Bacon wheeled about to the telephone on the credenza: “Al?…Yeah, I saw it. They’ll drag that young man’s name through the mud and think nothing of it.”

  Reverend Bacon and his caller, Vogel, went on for some time about the piece in the Daily News. This Mr. Vogel evidently reminded Reverend Bacon that the district attorney, Weiss, had told the Daily News there was absolutely no evidence to support the theory of a robbery attempt.

  “Can’t depend on him,” said Reverend Bacon. “He’s like the bat. You know the fable of the bat? The birds and the beasts were having a war. As long as the birds were winning, the bat says he’s a bird, because he can fly. When the beasts were winning, the bat says he’s a beast, because he got teeth. That’s why the bat don’t come out in the daytime. Don’t nobody want to look at his two faces.”

  Reverend Bacon listened for a bit, then said, “Yes, I do, Al. There’s a gentleman from the Episcopal diocese of New York with me right now. You want me to call you back?…Unh-hunh…Unh-hunh…You say his apartment’s worth three million dollars?” He shook his head. “I never hearda such a thing. I say it’s time Park Avenue heard the voice of the streets…Unh-hunh…I’ll call you back about that. I’ll talk to Annie Lamb before I call you. When you thinking about filing?…About the same, when I talked to her yesterday. He’s on the life-support system. He don’t say anything and don’t know anybody. When you think about that young man, there’s no amount can pay for it, is there?…Well, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  After he hung up, Reverend Bacon shook his head sadly, but then looked up with a gleam in his eye and just a trace of a smile. With an athletic quickness he rose from his chair and came around the desk with his hand out, as if Fiske had just announced he had to leave.

  “Always good to see you!”

  Reflexively, Fiske shook his hand, at the same time saying, “But, Reverend Bacon, we haven’t—”

  “We’ll talk again. I got an awful lot to do—a demonstration right on Park Avenue, got to help Mr. Lamb file a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against Sherman McCoy…”

  “But, Reverend Bacon, I can’t leave without an answer. The diocese has really reached the end—that is, they insist that I—”

  “You tell the diocese they’re doing fine. I told you last time, this is the best investment you people ever made. You tell ’em they’re taking an option. They’re buying the future at a discount. You tell ’em they’ll see what I mean very shortly, no time at all.” He put his arm about Fiske’s shoulder in a comradely fashion and hastened his exit, all the while saying, “Don’t worry about a thing. You’re doing fine, see. Doing fine. They’re gonna say, ‘That young man, he took a risk and hit the jackpot.’ ”

  Utterly befuddled, Fiske was swept outside by a tide of optimism and the pressure of a strong arm across his back.

  The noise of the bullhorn and the bellows of rage rose up ten stories from Park Avenue in the heat of June—ten stories!—nothing to it!—they can almost reach up!—until the bedlam below seemed to be part of the air he breathed. The bullhorn bellowed his name! The hard C in McCoy cut through the roar of the mob and soared up above the vast sprawl of hatred below. He edged over to the library window and risked looking down. Suppose they see me! The demonstrators had spilled out onto the street on both sides of the median strip and had brought traffic to a halt. The police were trying to drive them back onto the sidewalks. Three policemen were chasing another bunch, fifteen or twenty at least, through the yellow tulips on the median strip. As they ran, the demonstrators held a long banner aloft: WAKE UP, PARK AVENUE! YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM THE PEOPLE! The yellow tulips fell before them, and they left a gutter of crushed blossoms behind them, and the three policemen came pounding through the gutter. Sherman stared, horrified. The sight of the perfect yellow spring tulips of Park Avenue falling before the feet of the mob paralyzed him with fear. A television crew lumbered along out in the street, trying to catch up with them. The one carrying the camera on his shoulder stumbled, and down he went,
crashing to the pavement, camera and all. The mob’s banners and placards bobbed and swayed like sails in a windy harbor. One enormous banner said, inexplicably, GAY FIST AGAINST CLASS JUSTICE. The two s’s in CLASS were swastikas. Another one—Christ! Sherman caught his breath. In gigantic letters it said:

  Sherman McCoy:

  We The Jury

  Want You!

  Then there was a crude approximation of a finger pointing straight at you, as in the old UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU posters. They seemed to be holding it at an angle, just so he could read it from up here. He fled the library and sat in the rear part of the living room in an armchair, one of Judy’s beloved Louis-Something bergères, or was it a fauteuil? Killian was pacing up and down, still crowing about the article in the Daily News, apparently to buck up his spirits, but Sherman was no longer listening. He could hear the deep ugly voice of one of the bodyguards, who was in the library answering the telephone. “Stick it up your face.” Every time one of the threats came in over the telephone, the bodyguard, a small swarthy man named Occhioni, said, “Stick it up your face.” The way he said it, it sounded worse than any of the classic vulgarities. How had they gotten his private number? Probably from the press—in the open cavity. They were here on Park Avenue at the door below. They were coming in over the telephone. How long before they burst in, into the entry gallery, and came screaming across that solemn green marble floor! The other bodyguard, McCarthy, was in the entry gallery, sitting in one of Judy’s beloved Thomas Hope armchairs, and what good would he be? Sherman sat back, his eyes cast downward, fixed upon the slender legs of a Sheraton Pembroke table, a hellishly expensive thing Judy had found in one of those antique shops on Fifty-seventh Street…hellishly expensive…hellishly…Mr. Occhioni, who said “Stick it up your face” to everyone who called threatening his life…$200 per eight-hour shift…another $200 for the impassive Mr. McCarthy…double that for the two bodyguards at his parents’ house on East Seventy-third, where Judy, Campbell, Bonita, and Miss Lyons were…$800 per eight-hour shift…all former New York City policemen from some agency Killian knew about…$2,400 a day…hemorrhaging money…McCOY!…McCOY!…a tremendous roar from the street below…And presently he wasn’t thinking about the Pembroke table or the bodyguards anymore…He was staring catatonically and wondering about the barrel. How big was it? He had used it so many times, most recently on the Leash Club hunt last fall, but he couldn’t remember how big it was! It was big, being a double-barrel 12-gauge. Was it too big to get in his mouth? No, it couldn’t be that big, but what would it feel like? What would it feel like, touching the roof of his mouth? What would it taste like? Would he have trouble breathing long enough to…to…How would he pull the trigger? Let’s see, he’d hold the barrel steady in his mouth with one hand, his left hand—but how long was the barrel? It was long…Could he reach the trigger with his right hand? Maybe not! His toe…He’d read somewhere about someone who took off his shoe and pressed the trigger with his toe…Where would he do it? The gun was at the house on Long Island…assuming he could get to Long Island, get out of this building, escape from besieged Park Avenue, get away alive from…WE THE JURY…The flower bed out beyond the tool house…Judy always called it the cutting bed…He’d sit down out there…If it made a mess, it wouldn’t matter…Suppose Campbell was the one who found him!…The thought didn’t reduce him to tears the way he thought it might…hoped it might…She wouldn’t be finding her father…He wasn’t her father anymore…wasn’t anything anyone had ever known as Sherman McCoy…He was only a cavity fast filling with hot vile hate…