The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

He swung to the side in an arc, but she swung around behind him like a college wrestler looking for a takedown. He got a glimpse of her face. Halfa smile—half a furious scowl—an ugly dawn breaking.

  He spun and broke free. She confronted him head on.

  “Sherman!” Shuhmun. A quizzical smile, waiting for the right instant to break into a howl of accusation. Slowly: “I want to know…what’s’at on your back.”

  “For God’s sake, Maria. What’s gotten into you? It’s nothing. My suspender buttons maybe—I don’t know.”

  “I want to see, Sherman.”

  “What do you mean, see?”

  “Take off your jacket.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take it off. I want to see.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “You’ve taken off a lot more than that in here, Sherman.”

  “Come on, Maria, you’re being silly.”

  “Then humor me. Let me see what’s on your back.”

  A plea: “Maria, come on. It’s too late in the day to play games.”

  She came toward him, the terrible smile still on her face. She was going to see for herself! He jumped to one side. She came after him. He dodged again.

  A would-be game-like giggle: “What are you doing, Maria!”

  Beginning to breathe heavily: “We’ll see!” She charged at him. He couldn’t get out of the way. Her hands were on his chest—trying to get at his shirt! He covered himself like a maiden.

  “Maria!”

  The howl began: “You’re hiding something, aren’t you!”

  “Now just hold on…”

  “You’re hiding something! Whaddaya got under your shirt!”

  She lunged at him again. He dodged, but before he knew it, she was behind him. She had her hands under his jacket. She had a grip on the tape deck, although it was still under his shirt, and his shirt was still tucked into his pants. He could feel it coming away from his back.

  “And a wire, Sherman!”

  He clamped down on her hand with his own, to keep her from pulling it out. But her hand was under his jacket, and his hand was on top of the jacket. He began hopping around, holding on to this writhing red-angry mass under his jacket.

  “It’s—on—a—wire—you—bastard!”

  The words were squirting out in awful grunts as the two of them hopped about. Only the exertion kept her from screaming bloody murder.

  Now he had her hand by the wrist. He had to make her let go. He squeezed harder and harder.

  “You’re—hurting me!”

  He squeezed harder.

  She gave a little shriek and let go. For a moment he was paralyzed by the fury in her face.

  “Sherman—you rotten, dishonest bastard!”

  “Maria, I swear—”

  “You—swear, do yuh!” She lunged again. He bolted for the door. She grabbed one sleeve and the back of his jacket. He tried to wrench free. The sleeve began tearing away from the body. He plowed on toward the door. He could feel the tape deck bouncing on his buttocks. It was hanging out of his pants by now, out from under the shirt and hanging off his body by the wire.

  Then there was a blur of black silk and a thud. Maria was on the floor. One of her high heels had buckled and her legs went out from under her. Sherman ran to the door. It was all he could do to open it, because his jacket was pulled down over his arms.

  Now he was out into the hallway. He heard Maria sobbing, and then she yelled out:

  “That’s right, run! Drag your tail between your legs!”

  It was true. He was hobbling down the stairs with the tape deck dangling ignominiously down his backside. He felt more shameful than any dog.

  By the time he reached the front door, the truth had hit him. Through stupidity, incompetence, and funk he had now managed to lose his one last hope.

  Oh, Master of the Universe.

  30. An Able Pupil

  The grand-jury rooms in the island fortress were not like regular courtrooms. They were like small amphitheaters. The members of the grand jury looked down on the table and chair where the witnesses sat. Off to one side was the clerk’s table. There was no judge in a grand-jury proceeding. The prosecutor sat his witnesses down in the chair and questioned them, and the grand jury decided either that the case was strong enough to put the defendant on trial or that it wasn’t and threw the case out. The concept, which had originated in England in 1681, was that the grand jury would protect the citizenry against unscrupulous prosecutors. That was the concept, and the concept had become a joke. If a defendant wanted to testify before the grand jury, he could bring his lawyer into the grand-jury room. If he was (a) perplexed or (b) petrified or (c) grievously abused by the prosecutor’s questions, he could leave the room and confer with a lawyer outside in the hall—and thereby look like someone who was (b) petrified, a defendant with something to hide. Not many defendants took the chance. Grand-jury hearings had become a show run by the prosecutor. With rare exceptions, a grand jury did whatever a prosecutor indicated he wanted them to do. Ninety-nine percent of the time he wanted them to indict the defendant, and they obliged without a blink. They were generally law-and-order folk anyway. They were chosen from longtime residents of the community. Every now and then, when political considerations demanded it, a prosecutor wanted to have a charge thrown out. No problem; he merely had to couch his presentation in a certain way, give a few verbal winks, as it were, and the grand jury would catch on immediately. But mainly you used the grand jury to indict people, and in the famous phrase of Sol Wachtler, chief judge of the State Court of Appeals, a grand jury would “indict a ham sandwich,” if that’s what you wanted.

  You presided over the proceedings, you presented the evidence, questioned the witnesses, gave the summations. You stood up while the witnesses sat. You orated, gestured, walked about, spun on your heels, shook your head in disbelief or smiled in paternal approbation, while the witnesses sat properly in their seats and looked up at you for direction. You were both the director and the star of this little amphitheater production. The stage was all yours.

  And Larry Kramer had rehearsed his actors well.

  The Roland Auburn who came walking into the grand-jury room this morning neither looked nor walked like the hard case who had popped up in Kramer’s office two weeks ago. He wore a button-down shirt, albeit with no necktie; it had been enough of a struggle to get him into the lame Brooks Brothers button-down shirt. He wore a blue-gray tweed sport jacket, of which his opinion was roughly the same, and a pair of black pants, which he already owned and weren’t too bad. The whole ensemble had nearly come apart over the issue of the shoes. Roland had an obsession with Reebok sneakers, which had to be new-right-out-of-the-box snow white. At Rikers Island he managed to get two new pairs per week. This showed the world that he was a hard case worthy of respect inside the walls and a shrewd player with connections outside. To ask him to walk out of Rikers without his white Reeboks was like asking a singer to cut off his hair. So Kramer finally let him leave Rikers with the Reeboks on, with the understanding that he would change into a pair of leather shoes in the car before they arrived at the courthouse. The shoes were loafers, which Roland found contemptible. He demanded assurances that no one he knew or might know be allowed to see him in this lame condition. The final problem was the Pimp Roll. Roland was like a runner who’s been running marathons too long; very hard to change the stride. Finally Kramer had a brainstorm. He had Roland walk with his hands clasped behind his back, the way he had seen Prince Philip and Prince Charles walk on television while inspecting an artifacts museum in New Guinea. It worked! The clasped hands locked his shoulders, and the locked shoulders threw his hip rhythm off. So now, as Roland came walking into the grand-jury room, toward the table at center stage, in his preppy clothes, he could have passed for a student at Lawrenceville ruminating over the Lake poets.

  Roland took his seat on the witness chair the way Kramer had told him to; that is, without rearing back and spreading his le
gs as if he owned the joint and without popping his knuckles.

  Kramer looked at Roland and then turned and faced the grand jury and took a few steps this way and a few steps that way and gave them a thoughtful smile, in such a way as to announce, without saying a word: “This is a sympathetic and believable individual sitting before you.”

  Kramer asked Roland to state his occupation, and Roland said softly, modestly, “I’m an artist.” Kramer asked him if he was currently employed. No, he was not, said Roland. Kramer nodded for a few moments, then began a line of questioning that brought out precisely why this young man of talent, this young man eager to find an outlet for his creativity, had not found the proper outlet and was, in fact, currently facing a minor drug charge. (The Crack King of Evergreen Avenue had abdicated and become a mere serf of the environment.) Like his friend Henry Lamb, but without Henry Lamb’s advantages in terms of a stable home life, Roland had challenged the crushing odds against young men in the projects and emerged with his dreams intact. There was just this matter of keeping body and soul together, and Roland had drifted into a pernicious commerce but one not at all uncommon in the ghetto. Neither he, the prosecutor, nor Roland, the witness, was attempting to hide or minimize his petty crimes; but given the environment in which he had lived, they should not impair his credibility among fair-minded people in a matter as grave as the fate of Henry Lamb.

  Charles Dickens, he who explained the career of Oliver Twist, couldn’t have done it any better, at least not on his feet in a grand-jury room in the Bronx.

  Then Kramer led Roland through the narrative of the hit-and-run accident. He lingered lovingly on one particular moment. It was the moment at which the foxy-looking brunette yelled at the tall man who’d been driving the car.

  “And what did she say to him, Mr. Auburn?”

  “She say, ‘Shuhmun, watch out.’ ”

  “She said Shuhmun?”

  “That’s what it sound like to me.”

  “Would you say that name again, Mr. Auburn, exactly the way you heard it that night?”

  “Shuhman.”

  “ ‘Shuhmun, watch out’?”

  “That’s right. ‘Shuhmun, watch out.’ ”

  “Thank you.” Kramer turned toward the jurors, and let Shuhmun float there in the air.

  The individual sitting in that witness chair was a young man of those mean streets whose bravest and best efforts had not been enough to save Henry Lamb from the criminal negligence and irresponsibility of a Park Avenue investment banker. Carl Brill, the gypsy-cab operator, came into the room and told how Roland Auburn had indeed hired one of his cabs to rescue Henry Lamb. Edgar (Curly Kale) Tubb told of driving Mr. Auburn and Mr. Lamb to the hospital. He could remember nothing of what Mr. Lamb said except that he was in pain.

  Officers William Martin and David Goldberg told of their dogged police work in tracing part of a license number to an investment banker on Park Avenue who became flustered and evasive. They told how Roland Auburn, without hesitation, identified Sherman McCoy from a lineup of photographs. A parking-garage attendant named Daniel Podernli told of how Sherman McCoy had taken his Mercedes-Benz roadster out on the night in question, during the hours in question, and had returned in a state of dishevelment and agitation.

  They all came in and sat down at the table and looked up at the forceful but patient young assistant district attorney, whose every gesture, every pause, every stride said, “We have but to let them tell their story their own way, and the truth makes itself manifest.”

  And then he brought her in. Maria Ruskin came into the amphitheater from an antechamber, where a court officer manned the door. She was superb. She had struck just the right note in her wardrobe, a black dress with a matching jacket edged in black velvet. She had not dressed up, and she had not dressed down. She was the perfect widow in mourning who had business to attend to. And yet her youth, her voluptuousness, her erotic presence, her sensual self seemed ready to burst forth from those clothes, from that stunning but composed face, from that full flawless head of dark hair ready to be tousled with mad abandon—at any moment!—on any pretext!—with the next tickle!—the merest wink! Kramer could hear the jurors rustling and buzzing. They had read the newspapers. They had watched television. The Foxy Brunette, the Mystery Girl, the Financier’s Widow—it was her.

  Involuntarily Kramer pulled in his midsection and flattened his abdomen and threw back his shoulders and his head. He wanted her to see his powerful chest and neck, not his unlucky pate. Too bad he couldn’t tell the jury the whole story. They would enjoy it. They would view him with renewed respect. The very fact that she had walked through that door and was now sitting at this table, right on cue, had been a triumph, his triumph, and not merely of his words but of his particular presence. But of course he couldn’t tell them about his visit to the Foxy Brunette’s apartment, to her containerized palace.

  Had she decided to support McCoy in the story he had concocted about a robbery on a ramp, it would have been very much a problem. The whole case would have been thrown back on the credibility of Roland Auburn, the erstwhile Crack King who was now trying to leverage himself out of a jail term. Roland’s testimony provided the foundation for a case, but not a very solid one, and Roland was capable of blowing it at any moment, not by what he said—Kramer had no doubt that he was telling the truth—but through his demeanor. But now he had her, too. He had gone to her apartment and looked her in the eye, her and her Wasp retainers, too, and he had put her in a box, a box of irrefutable logic and dread of the Power. He had put her in that box so quickly and securely she hadn’t even known what was happening. She had swallowed—gulped—gulped her multimillion-dollar gulp—and it was all over. By nightfall Messrs. Tucker Trigg and Clifford Priddy—Trigg and Priddy, Priddy and Trigg—oh, ye Wasps!—had been on the telephone to make the deal.

  Now she was seated before him, and he looked down at her and let his eyes fasten upon hers, seriously at first and then with (or so he imagined it) a twinkle.

  “Would you please state your full name and address.”

  “Maria Teresa Ruskin, 962 Fifth Avenue.”

  Very good, Maria Teresa! It was he himself, Kramer, who had discovered her middle name was Teresa. He had figured there would be a few older Italian and Puerto Rican women on the grand jury, and sure enough there were. Maria Teresa would bring her closer to them. A touchy matter, her beauty and her money. The jurors were staring ropes. They couldn’t get enough of her. She was the most glamorous human being they had ever seen in the flesh. How long had it been since anybody had sat in a witness chair in this room and given an address on Fifth Avenue in the Seventies? She was everything they were not and (Kramer was sure) wanted to be: young, gorgeous, chic, and unfaithful. And yet that could be a positive advantage, so long as she behaved in a certain fashion, so long as she was humble and modest and seemed slightly abashed by the scale of her own advantages, so long as she was little Maria Teresa from a small town in South Carolina. So long as she took pains to be one of us at heart, they would feel flattered by their association with her in this excursion into criminal justice, by her success and celebrity, by the very aura of her money.

  He asked her to state her occupation. She hesitated and stared at him with her lips parted slightly, then said, “Umm…I’m a”…Um-uh…“uh guess um-uh housewife.”

  A rush of laughter ran through the jurors, and Maria cast her eyes down and smiled modestly and shook her head slightly, as if to say, “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know what else to say.” Kramer could tell by the way the jurors smiled in return that so far they were on her side. They were already captivated by this rare and beautiful bird who now fluttered before them in the Bronx.

  Kramer took this moment to say, “I think the jurors should be made aware that Mrs. Ruskin’s husband, Mr. Arthur Ruskin, passed away just five days ago. Under these circumstances, we are indebted to her for her willingness to come forward at this time and cooperate with this jury in these
deliberations.”

  The jurors stared at Maria all over again. Brave, brave girl!

  Maria lowered her eyes again, quite becomingly.

  Good girl, Maria! “Maria Teresa”…“Housewife”…If only he could give these worthy jurors a little exegesis of how he had coached her in these small but telling points. All true and honest!—but even truth and honesty can disappear without a light. So far she had been a bit cool toward him, but she followed directions and thereby signaled her respect. Well, there would be many sessions to come, when they went to trial—and even at this moment, in this room, under these austere circumstances, at this plain dock of justice, there was something about her—ready to burst forth! A crook of the finger…a single wink…

  Calmly, quietly, to show how difficult he knew this must be for her, he began to lead her through the events of the fateful evening. Mr. McCoy had picked her up at Kennedy Airport. (No need, for the purposes of these proceedings, to say why.) They get lost in the Bronx. They’re a bit anxious. Mr. McCoy is driving in the left lane of a wide avenue. She sees a sign over on the right indicating a way back to an expressway. He suddenly veers right at a high speed. He’s heading straight for two boys standing on the edge of the pavement. He sees them too late. He grazes one, nearly hits the other. She tells him to stop. He does.

  “Now, Mrs. Ruskin, would you please tell us…At this point, when Mr. McCoy stopped, was the car on the ramp to the expressway or on the avenue itself?”

  “It was on the avenue.”

  “The avenue.”

  “Yes.”

  “And was there any obstruction or barricade or any kind of obstacle that caused Mr. McCoy to stop the car where he did?”

  “No.”

  “All right, tell us what happened then.”

  Mr. McCoy got out to see what had happened, and she opened the door and looked back. They could see both youths heading toward the car.

  “And would you please tell us your reaction when you observed them coming toward you?”