Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “How are the kids?” he was saying.

  “Fine.” With pubescent children on the premises, I had felt it would be a mistake to offer him my bedroom at the apartment before we were married, and Scott had agreed to spend the last days of his bachelor life at a suite at the Carlyle. I had offered him my private apartment, but Scott had preferred the convenience of the hotel’s room service.

  “And your father?”

  “Oh, he’s okay. Darling, I can’t wait to show you the changes I’ve made in the apartment—I’ve had the master bedroom completely redecorated, and the dressing room has been converted into a retreat for you …” I was intertwining my fingers with his as I spoke; it was hard to believe he was so near. Every bone in his hand seemed important, and every movement of every finger seemed vital.

  “It sounds wonderful!” he said, smiling at me. “I can’t wait to see it all!”

  I felt dizzy with relief again, although I wasn’t sure why. “You’re so relaxed,” I said. “So calm. I think I expected you to be as tense as I am.”

  “But why? I’ve finished with Europe and you’re almost my wife and here I am back in New York! If ever there was an occasion for relaxing, this is it!”

  “Of course! How silly I’m being. … It’s just that the last months have been so awful—the decorators running wild in the apartment, Donald Shine running wild on Wall Street …”

  “Poor old Don!” said Scott indulgently. “So the Eastern Seaboard finally taught him that chutzpah doesn’t necessarily conquer all—a bitter pill for him to swallow! I guess he became overconfident once he got Jake’s support in the Trust takeover.”

  At first I thought I’d misheard him. “I’m sorry—could you say that last part again?”

  He said it again. My heart started to thump against my ribs.

  “But Scott,” I said, “Jake wasn’t supporting Shine.”

  “Why, sure he was! Shine needed to be thoroughly briefed about the Trust, and Jake was the obvious route to the information he needed. Jake knew all the board of the Trust, and there must have been at least one member he could have bent to suit his own purposes. Now that Jake’s dead, I doubt if we’ll ever know who that member was, but I guess Harry Morton has to be allowed his witch-hunt and his therapeutic purges. I must ask your father how the inquiry’s going, although personally I think it’s a waste of time … Hey, what’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that? What’s wrong?”

  I said unsteadily, “Just about everything. Jake was the informer, but he was on our side. That’s why we won. He slipped the word to us way back in September that Shine was after the Trust.”

  There was a silence broken only by the remote hum of the Cadillac. We were leaving the airport and heading for the Van Wyck Expressway. Beyond the tinted windows the sky was a distorted gray.

  “Did no one tell you?” I said. “No one at all?”

  “No.” He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he said, “But that’s not so odd. I was very cut off over there in London, and some things are better not discussed over the transatlantic phone. Also, I can hardly believe … Honey, are you sure you have your facts right? Jake was Shine’s obvious ally. He’d hated your father for years.”

  “At the end, when he was dying, none of that mattered anymore.”

  “But even so … Are you sure—quite sure …?”

  “Scott, you’ve been away so long you’ve no idea how strongly the conservatives of Wall Street felt about a smart young operator like Shine muscling in on the financial community! Jake acted in character. Like all the old guard, he viewed Shine with prejudice, anger, and just plain revulsion.”

  “But then if Jake didn’t brief Shine, who did?”

  I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. Isn’t that why Harry’s in the middle of this postmortem at the Trust?”

  “God knows what Harry can be up to. I don’t understand any of it, and I still can’t believe this story about Jake. Where did you get it from?”

  “Harry himself.”

  “Did he talk directly to Jake?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you are! The whole story’s some kind of crazy rumor—you’d be amazed at the kind of rumors that get around after a crisis like this. I wonder where Harry picked up the story. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have been so gullible.”

  “Harry got it from my father.”

  “Your father?”

  “Jake talked to Daddy on the phone before he died.”

  “But that’s impossible! They hadn’t talked directly to each other for over ten years!”

  “I was in the room when my father made the call. Jake used me to persuade my father to contact him. It’s all true, Scott. It’s no rumor. It’s all true.”

  He stared at me. He said nothing. Then he turned to stare out of the window at the ugly Long Island suburbs.

  “Of course,” I said, “although I was in the room, I couldn’t hear a word Jake was saying over the phone, and my father gave nothing away. He was upset afterward, but I thought that was just because of Jake’s illness. It never occurred to me at the time to think they were talking about … well, never mind what they were talking about, what does it matter now, I don’t care. The Trust’s safe and Shine’s withdrawn and that’s that. Oh, Scott, please! Let’s forget the whole thing! Can’t we talk about something else?”

  “Sure.” He was motionless, still staring out of the window. His face was without expression. At last he said, “Yes. I’m sorry … tell me more about the kids. What was Paul’s final verdict on his first semester at Choate?”

  I started to talk about Paul. I was wondering whether I should tell him about Eric’s decision not to go into the bank, but in the end I was so loath to discuss any subject connected with One Willow Street that I said nothing. I talked instead about my plans for a family Christmas, and as I listened to my voice chattering on and on, I saw the jagged towers of Manhattan pierce the steel skies beyond the concrete ribbon of the freeway.

  When we reached his suite at the Carlyle, all I wanted was to go to bed and bolt the door against the world for a few precious hours, but Scott merely said, “Why don’t you order up some drinks while I take a shower?” and left me alone in the sitting room.

  Dialing room service, I ordered six Cokes, a bucket of ice, and one double martini. Then I went on sitting in the living room and staring at the closed bedroom door. Some time passed, but eventually the bell of the telephone nearby stirred softly and I knew Scott had picked up the extension in the bedroom.

  I told myself I wouldn’t listen. But I did. I couldn’t stop myself. A second later my burning cheek was pressing against the panels of the bedroom door and I heard Scott say abruptly, “Is he there, please? Okay, could you have him call Scott Sullivan at the Hotel Carlyle? Thanks.” The receiver clicked, and by the time he was opening the door I was already some distance away by the window.

  He had changed not into casual clothes but into another suit with a fresh shirt and tie, and I was just about to ask him in surprise why he felt he had to be so formal when the room-service waiter arrived with the drinks.

  The telephone rang just as Scott had produced a tip.

  “Shall I get it?” I said, but he was already reaching for the receiver.

  “Hello?” he said, but evidently it was not the call he expected. I saw him relax for a moment, but suddenly he was tense again, and as I watched, he turned away as if to exclude me from the scene. “Sure,” he said into the receiver. “I’ll come right away. No problem. How are you doing, Cornelius?”

  But the receiver went dead in his hand. He stood looking at it for a moment before turning back to face me with a shrug. “That was your father,” he said. “Some new crisis. He wants to see me right away.”

  “Oh, but …” I ran out of breath. It was so odd. My lungs seemed to have forgotten how to work rhythmically. I wondered if I were belatedly developing my father’s asthmatic weakness.<
br />
  “Yes, of course he’s being outrageous,” said Scott quickly, “but what can you do with despots but humor them? I know better than to argue with your father once he decides to play the great dictator! Look, honey, I’ve no idea how long this’ll take, but why don’t you go home and I’ll join you there as soon as possible?”

  “Okay.” I was breathing again, but every breath hurt. I sank slowly down on the edge of the couch. “You go ahead. I’ll just have my drink.”

  “Sure.” He stooped to kiss me, his lips brushing my forehead, and the next moment he was gone.

  I drank my martini, but it seemed to make no difference to the tightness in my chest. I had just realized I’d never been so frightened in my life when the phone rang a second time at my side.

  I was so terrified that several seconds passed before I could nerve myself to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello?” I whispered.

  A man’s voice said cautiously, “Vicky?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, hi, beautiful—I thought it must be you! This is Donald Shine.”

  II

  “Hey, is Scott there?” he said. “I just checked with the office, and when I heard he’d called me, I realized I was only a couple of blocks from the Carlyle, so I decided to stop by. I’m downstairs right now in the lobby. Can I come up?”

  In those brief moments while he spoke, I lived through an entire lifetime of love, hate, rage, and grief, but when I spoke, my voice was expressionless.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?” And then, cutting the connection, I went to the door to wait for him.

  He was looking very smart in a well-cut dark green suit with an olive-green striped shirt and a color-coordinated patterned tie. His hair, still as bright and floppy as if it had been newly washed, was longer than ever and waved attractively over his ears. Despite his recent setbacks, his brown eyes had lost none of their zest, and as soon as he walked into the room I saw that his buoyant manner too was unchanged.

  “Hi!” he said, sauntering across the threshold as if he had bought the entire hotel seconds earlier. “Where’s Scott?”

  “He’s not here. But I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Donald Shine, swiveling abruptly to face me.

  The pain had gone from my chest. Now that I knew the truth, I could no longer be paralyzed by my fear of facing unbearable facts, and suddenly it was easy to be cool, just as easy as it was to say in my politest voice, “Please sit down, Mr. Shine.”

  “Now, wait a minute? If you’re going to bitch to me about the Trust, I think I’ll keep on my toes! Look, the Trust is buried six feet deep as far as I’m concerned, and even if it wasn’t I wouldn’t discuss it with you after the hand you dealt me!”

  “The hand I dealt you? What the hell do you mean?”

  “Well, it was you, wasn’t it? You committed pillow talk, as Doris Day said to Rock Hudson before she lost her virginity. Or did she lose it? I don’t think I ever saw that movie.”

  “Are you trying to tell me—”

  “Ah, come on, Vicky! Come clean! Scott trusted you when he should have kept his mouth shut—right? And then you ran straight to Daddy with the bad news as soon as Scott’s back was turned! How else would Cornelius Van Zale have found out about my plans so well in advance? Hell, I’m surprised Scott’s still going with you, but I guess he figures you’re the safety net—he’s taken a bad fall on the high wire, but so long as he marries you, he’ll still wind up president of an incorporated Van Zale’s one day after the old man’s kicked the bucket!”

  “But …”

  “And goddammit, why shouldn’t he marry you? You’re so pretty that even I can’t feel mad at you anymore! Scott’s a lucky s.o.b., and you can tell him I said so!” He smiled good-naturedly and moved back toward the door. “Well, if you’ll excuse me …”

  “I wasn’t the one who tipped off my father,” I said. “It was Jake Reischman.”

  As he swung round, I noticed that there were flecks of green in his dark eyes and that the pupils seemed to dilate as all the buoyancy drained from his face. He said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No. He told me personally that old friendships meant more to him than new business ties.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Well, shit,” said Donald Shine at last. “Well, shit.” He pulled open the door, but then overcome with the desire to express his rage, he shoved it shut again and spun to face me. “If that story’s true,” he said violently, “that lover of yours is in big trouble. Jake knew everything. He knew Scott suggested to me last May that my next target should be the Trust, and he knew Scott gave me all the information I needed. There was nothing I didn’t tell Jake about the whole deal.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure that was exactly what Scott wanted to find out when he called you just now. Good-bye, Mr. Shine.”

  “And you can tell that father of yours—”

  “The door’s right behind you. Please go.”

  “The hell with you—the hell with the whole goddamned lot of you, you fucking snobs!” yelled Donald Shine as he walked out of my life, and then, as the door slammed, I found myself alone at last with all the terrible wreckage he had left behind.

  III

  Blundering downstairs, I grabbed a cab and told the driver to take me to Willow and Wall. My moment of calm had passed, and now the fear was smothering me again, pushing me to the brink of panic. I knew nothing except that I had to get to Scott as soon as possible.

  “Yes, ma’am?” said the new young security guard at the bank’s entrance. “Can I help you?”

  “I want to see Mr. Sullivan, one of the partners—a tall dark man in his forties—he would have arrived here about half an hour ago.”

  “Oh, he left, ma’am. He didn’t stay long.”

  “Left? Left, did you say? Are you sure? All right, I’ll see my father—Mr. Van Zale.”

  “Mr. Van Zale’s left too, ma’am. He left in his car shortly after Mr. Sullivan.”

  “I see. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to sit down. I’m not feeling well. Is there a chair?”

  He hastily showed me into the inner lobby, where I sank down on a chair facing the pillars which framed the great hall, but before I had time to fight my nausea, one of the partners rose from his desk in the distance and hurried over to me.

  “Vicky! Are you okay?”

  “Peter … No, I’m feeling awful. Is there any brandy somewhere? Perhaps my father’s office … I know he’s left for the day, but perhaps if I could just sit in his room quietly for a while …”

  “Sure. I’ll take you there myself. Should I call a doctor?”

  I somehow found the words to tell him this was unnecessary.

  We were walking through the great hall and I was staring at the floor so that I didn’t have to acknowledge the other partners whose desks I passed. My father’s office lay off the back lobby, and once I was there I got rid of my escort, drank the brandy he had poured me, and slumped into the chair behind my father’s desk. There were several phones on the desk. I tried the black one first and after some delay obtained an outside line.

  The receptionist at the Carlyle said Scott had not yet returned, and although I dialed the hotel a second time five minutes later, there was still no answer from the suite. Then I dialed the number of my father’s apartment.

  He had just stepped into the hall.

  “Vicky?” he said as the butler passed him the receiver.

  “Yes.” I couldn’t go on.

  “Where are you?”

  “Willow and Wall.”

  “Have you talked to Scott?”

  “No. To Donald Shine.”

  My father said curtly, “I’ll come at once. Stay where you are, please. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Daddy …”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Everything. Oh, God, everything.”

  “Then you’ll understand that I had no choice but to—”


  “No … no, you didn’t fire him … please, please say you didn’t—”

  “It wasn’t just my decision, Vicky. I don’t have the power on my own to fire Scott before the new year, but of course once all the partners knew just how grossly he’d misconducted himself, jeopardizing not only the Trust but the entire firm at Willow and Wall—”

  “Daddy, you can’t do this. You mustn’t. You must reinstate him. It’s all been the most terrible mistake—he would never have messed around with Shine if he hadn’t been under this delusion that you intended to cut him out altogether!”

  “Now, hold it, Vicky! Take it easy! The situation’s not as bad as you think. Of course Scott realized I had no choice but to fire him—he came to me fully prepared for the worst, even resigned to it. There was no big melodramatic scene. Quite the contrary! We had a calm reasonable discussion and I offered to do everything in my power to see he was offered an equivalent partnership elsewhere. I also made it clear that although it was impossible for me to retain him as a partner, I was anxious for your sake that we should remain on friendly terms. Things’ll work out, Vicky. This has been a catastrophe, I won’t deny that, but we’re all going to get over it. Do you hear me? Are you listening? We’re all going to get over this, Vicky. It’s all going to—”

  I hung up on him and dialed the Carlyle, but still no one picked up the phone in Scott’s suite. I knew I should rush there immediately, but when I stood up, black spots danced before my eyes and I had to sit down again. I poured myself some more brandy, and as I continued to sit numbly in my father’s chair, one thought detached itself from the jumble of impressions tormenting me and revolved round and round in my mind. I thought: I don’t believe my father. I don’t believe one single word he says.