I set down the bottle of rye. “He called me this morning,” I said. “I was staying in the city. He invited me over for a swim and we had breakfast together. …”
My voice recited the facts, but my memory saw beyond them to a scene I could never have described to her. I was in the pool, the famous indoor Van Zale pool with the gilded skylights and the miniature palm trees and the gallons of heated water glinting beneath the central chandelier. Paul and I had had a race and I had beaten him by half a length. That was when I knew he had to be sick, and the next moment he proved it by starting to talk like a maniac.
He said his world was falling apart, that his life was finished and that he had no future. Somehow I got him out of the pool and into the changing room. I could hardly believe that this was Paul, smooth, efficient, well-organized Paul Van Zale who arranged his personal life with the fluency of a fast pool operator jacking up the price of shares on the ticker. Then he revealed the final horror. He was out of his middle-aged mind over this expensive little jazz-baby with the plump hips, the classical education and the keep-your-hands-off-me-you-brute English manners.
He poured out the whole story. I was so appalled I just stood there like one of those dumb Greek statues he used to like so much. It was only when he said he was going to throw up everything and run after her that I gasped for air, found my voice and ripped into him for all I was worth.
“You’re crazy!” I shouted. “Insane! This goddamned little girl runs three thousand miles when Elizabeth Clayton mentions the word ‘epilepsy’—she doesn’t want to know you, Paul!”
“She’d been-deceived—she was hurt and shocked—but if I were to go after her …”
He was white. His hands were shaking. I wondered if he was going to be ill, but I knew I’d be doing him no favor if I softened my attack. I had to dam up this craziness and bludgeon him back to his senses.
“So go after her!” I yelled. “But what about Sylvia? What are you going to tell her? What are you going to say? What do you think it’ll do to her? What about Sylvia, Paul?”
He broke down. He sat stark naked on the bench in the changing room, put his hands over his eyes like a little kid and shuddered with sobs. I’d never been more shocked in all my life.
“You poor bastard.” I draped a towel around him awkwardly and lit him a cigarette. “Here, have a smoke.”
He took a puff and choked. He wasn’t used to cigarettes. “I love Sylvia,” he said.
“Of course you do,” I said, “and she’s the right wife for you, as you’ve been busy telling me for God knows how many years. Now listen, Paul. You’re going to get over this. Remember your smart sane sensible advice to me and all your other people on the subject of women.”
“All that trash I talked!” he said, the cigarette shaking in his fingers. “All that shit!”
I was glad to hear him use an obscenity. It meant he was toughening up.
“Let’s get dressed,” I said. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had some breakfast.”
“I can’t eat.”
“Crap. Stop behaving like a half-baked poet. You’ve got to eat or you’ll be ill.”
I shoved him into his clothes, pulled on my own and marched him off to eat in the huge dining room which was littered with dark sideboards and yards of velvet drapes and the Sargent portrait of his daughter Vicky smiling down at the Tudor banqueting table. I had half a melon, three eggs sunny side up, bacon, sausage, rolls and coffee. He had a slice of unbuttered toast and a cup of tea, but halfway through the slice he said, “Sorry I made such an exhibition of myself,” and I knew he was on the mend.
He had just put some butter on the remaining half of his toast when Sylvia came in and ruined everything.
“Oh, Paul—excuse me, Steve—why is Wilson waiting outside with the car? You promised me you wouldn’t go to the office this morning!”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Oh, but—” She broke off, harassed. She was one of those women who look like an illustration out of some old-fashioned storybook for ladies, all pastel colors and pure thoughts and washed-out delicate features. I liked her; she was a nice lady, but she rang no bedroom bells on my particular switchboard. My wife Caroline used to make great capital out of the fact that Sylvia was the one woman Paul would never discuss with me, but in my opinion the reason for that was obvious: there was nothing to discuss. In bed she would be placid and passive, dull and dutiful, and as I considered this picture with a yawn I found it easier to understand why Paul had dabbled with a red-hot, smart-aleck little go-getter like Dinah Slade.
“Paul, you promised!”
“My dear, there’s no need to get hysterical over an anonymous phone call! Steve, reassure Sylvia I’m in no danger of assassination, would you?” He was upset again, his fingers drumming on the table, his eyes glancing at the clock as if he longed to escape. I saw at once that he felt so damned guilty in her presence that he hardly knew how to remain in the room, and I tried to cut off the conversation as swiftly as possible.
“Forget it, Sylvia. The police know all about the parade, and Bob Peterson and I’ll be with Paul.”
“But—” The wretched woman was going to persist. I jumped to my feet. “Come on, Paul!” I said. “Time to go!”
“Paul …” She clung to him. “Please don’t go.”
For the first time since she had entered the room he looked at her directly. I saw his face soften.
“I want to,” he said.
“But you don’t have to!”
“It’s what I want.”
They stood together for a moment and then she draped her arms around his neck. Rolling my eyes despairingly at the ceiling, I walked out into the hall.
I thought he’d give in to her, but he didn’t. He crawled wearily after me into the car, and as we set off down Fifth Avenue he pulled a letter out of his pocket and started turning it over and over in his hands. I glanced down at the envelope and saw the single word “DINAH” printed on it. I could have groaned out loud.
“I wrote this last night when I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I thought I’d give it to her when I saw her off. Her ship sails this afternoon.”
“Uh … yeah. Paul, don’t you think it would be smarter if—”
“Maybe I should keep it for a few days,” he said uncertainly. “I wrote it when I was very upset.”
I wanted to tell him to tear it up but was afraid he would immediately rush to give it to her.
“That’s a sensible decision,” I said. “Lock it up for a couple of weeks and then see if you still want to mail it.”
There was a silence. Together we looked down at her name, and against all my better judgment I was fascinated. No woman ever told Paul Van Zale goodbye, and suddenly I had a hint of her glamour, although just what that glamour was I was damned if I could decide.
The car purred on downtown. Somewhere south of Canal Street Paul said, “What a wonderful summer it was!”
“Hell, it’s not even over yet,” I said, conscious of the sweat beneath my collar. The air was so humid that a sheet of blotting paper would have fallen apart, and the temperature had to be well on the way to ninety.
“Oh, I didn’t mean this summer,” he said. “I meant the summer of ’22. My summer at Mallingham.”
“Hm.” I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was best to let him be maudlin or whether I should clamp down on the sentimentality right away. The car swung off Broadway unexpectedly into the network of streets north of Wall and I remembered we were heading for the bank’s back entrance in Willow Alley.
The alley was teeming with police, and when the car stopped outside the door set in the high spike-topped wall Bob Peterson jumped out with Paul’s keys. The triple locks clicked, the door swung wide, Peterson and the police took a final glance around the rooftops for any sign of a sniper, and I got out of the car.
“All clear, sir,” said Peterson to Paul.
Paul stood in that grimy sweltering little alley. It
was almost as if he was waiting for the sniper who wasn’t there.
“Let’s go, Paul,” I said, touching his arm.
We went through the door in the wall and crossed the patio to the garden doors of his office. Bart Mayers was already holding them open for us and we walked through into the library. The other half of the double room, the drawing room, was closed off to keep the library cooler.
“How are the Citizens for Militant Socialism, Mayers?” said Paul to his personal assistant as his chief secretary, Miss Schulz, entered with the coffee pot.
“Lively, sir,” said Mayers, who was a nice kid not long out of Yale. He was supposed to be bright but he was always forgetting to do things, and I suspected that the only reason he had lasted so long in the job was because Paul had found his fresh-faced innocence such a pleasant change from Terence O’Reilly. “They paraded down Wall Street as scheduled and now they’re milling around on the corner of Willow with their banners.”
“Mr. Clayton hasn’t been arrested, I hope? Good. All right, Mayers, that’s all for now.”
After Paul arrived at his office he followed a set routine. He would spend ten minutes drinking coffee while he inspected his mail, and then he would summon his assistants and deal with as much business as possible before the partners’ meeting at nine-thirty.
“God, it’s hot!” I muttered again, trying to summon the energy to tackle the stairs to my office.
“If it’s as hot as yesterday we’ll have to send everyone home early. Yes, what is it, O’Reilly?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Paul’s fixer, pussyfooting into the room, “but one of the marchers has just hurled a brick through the front window and Bruce Clayton’s so upset that he wants to see you in person to apologize. Shall I send him in?”
“Of course! I’m never too busy to see Bruce.”
“I’ll get hold of Peterson,” I said at once. Peterson was always dismissed as soon as Paul had arrived at the office. “In the circumstances you shouldn’t see Bruce alone, Paul.”
“Oh for God’s sake, stay yourself if you’re so worried about me! Anyway, you may as well stay because I want to go over that memorandum for the Goldman, Sachs meeting at eleven. Pull up a chair.”
O’Reilly was stock still by the door. “Pardon me, sir, but before you discuss the memorandum I wonder if I could just get Steve’s approval on the latest brochures for the investment trust. They have to be at the printers’ by ten.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Paul found Terence O’Reilly just as irritating as I did. “All right, let’s keep the printers happy, but come back right away, would you, Steve? We’ve got to go over that memo.”
“Sure, Paul.” I looked back at him as I left the room, but he didn’t look up. He had taken the letter to Dinah Slade from his pocket again and was turning it over and over in his hands as if he still couldn’t decide what to do with it.
“Come on, Steve,” said Terence O’Reilly, laying some long thin fingers determinedly on my arm.
I shook him off, strode ahead of him across the back lobby and bumped into Bruce Clayton coming the other way. He muttered something to me. Not bothering to hide my distaste, I grunted an acknowledgment. He was looking pale, but those intellectuals with their high white foreheads and soft delicate hands never look as if they get any exercise.
“Mr. Van Zale will see you, Bruce,” said O’Reilly, and he added to the guard who was sticking to Bruce like glue, “You can wait out here.”
“Has he been searched?” I demanded.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Steve. Bruce wouldn’t carry a gun if you paid him. Do you want coffee in my office?”
“No. What’s this big deal about the brochures anyway?” I said annoyed. O’Reilly was officially in charge of advertising and public relations, but that was just a front. Unofficially he was still in charge of the public relations which had to be kept private. Paul never dealt directly with gangsters, but inevitably in big business there were times when we had to pick our way along their little primrose paths.
“Well, you’re the one who’s been making the big deal about the brochures,” said O’Reilly, “and we all know the investment trust’s your baby. You’d be the first to complain if the stuff went to the printers without your approval.”
We went into his office, which was just by the stairs on the third floor. I flung myself down in a chair.
“That’s odd,” he said. “Where did I put that file?”
I was just about to tell him that I didn’t have all day to waste watching him play hunt-the-file when all hell broke loose below us. The drowsy silence was split by a storm of gunfire, and a second later Miss Schulz started to scream.
III
The blood was everywhere, soaking the carpet, drenching the desk, spattering the white marble fireplace. I knelt by his body and the blood was staining my clothes, smearing my hands, even seeping under my fingernails as I searched for the heartbeat. The room seemed to swim in blood and the blood became a red mist which thickened before my eyes.
Bruce Clayton was shivering against the wall.
“You sonofabitch!” I shouted, out of my mind with shock and pain, and rushed forward to beat him to pulp.
I never reached him. I fell over a second body and crashed into another pool of blood. Over by the wall Bruce Clayton started to retch. Outside, Paul’s secretary was screaming again. People were moving like stricken shadows in the doorway. Someone said, “Oh, my God …” Someone else vomited. Someone kept saying, “Call the police! Call the police!” and the guard who had been waiting for Bruce waved a revolver impotently. As I struggled to my feet I saw Bob Peterson, dumb with the agony of his failure, kneeling beside Paul’s body.
The cops came crashing in.
Nobody could figure out what had happened. Bruce Clayton was dragged backward and forward. Someone passed around some brandy. Some unknown time later I found myself in the other half of the double room with my five surviving partners, two police lieutenants, one precinct captain and Bruce. The folding doors had been closed to blot out the blood. It was hotter than high noon in Death Valley.
“I’m innocent,” said Bruce Clayton, teeth chattering. “I want to call my lawyer.”
“But who the hell’s the second corpse in there?”
“A man called Krasnov.”
“But who shot who?”
“Don’t answer that, Bruce,” said my partner Charley Blair.
The police let Bruce call his lawyer. By that time the press were howling on the doorstep, and after a rapid partners’ conference Lewis Carson, whose Hollywood profile always photographed well, was dispatched to make some kind of statement. The other tasks were less easily assigned, but within minutes Charley had agreed to calm down the employees, Clay Linden had volunteered to be the liaison man with the police, and Martin Cookson and old Walter Maynard had offered to handle the important incoming calls from the famous names of Wall Street.
I got the dog’s job of breaking the news to Sylvia.
I balked but was overruled. I had been the partner closest to Paul and one of his earliest protégés. As far as my other partners were concerned I was as good as one of the family.
I went uptown.
I tried to think clearly but could get no further than the basic assumption that Paul had been shot by the Bolshevik, who had in turn been shot by Bruce. What Bruce, who supposedly abhorred violence, was doing toting a gun only his lawyer now knew for sure. And how Krasnov had managed to get into the building was a mystery which I suspected was already scaring the pants off us all. Paul killed by a lone assassin was just another sensational news item. Paul killed by a crazy Bolshevik who had got into the building with inside help was an investment banking house’s kiss of death. I knew, just as we all knew, that Van Zale’s couldn’t survive another scandal like the Salzedo affair.
I was on Paul’s doorstep before I realized what a state I was in, with brandy on my breath and blood on my clothes. I still had no idea what I was going to say to Sy
lvia and could only pray she wouldn’t have hysterics. I didn’t even have a clean handkerchief to offer her.
The butler let me in, and one look at his face told me some punk of a journalist had already broadcast the news from the rooftops. He said the rumor had reached the house ten minutes before and Sylvia had just spoken to Charley Blair to confirm the story.
I waited. She came. She was very still and tearless. I was the one who cried.
She was really nice about it. She was such a lady, I’d always liked Sylvia. I knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, knew she’d never mention it again. It made me feel close to her.
“Oh, Steve,” she said when I tried to apologize, “can’t you see how glad I am that there was at least someone who genuinely cared for Paul?”
After a while we mentioned Bruce.
“He’ll get off,” I said. “The Claytons can buy the best lawyers in town. He’ll claim he shot the Red in self-defense.”
“And did he, Steve?”
We looked at each other. “Well, if it wasn’t self-defense,” I said, “he was firing to avenge Paul’s murder.”
“There’s another possibility,” she said.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Definitely not. No other possibility. None.”
“If Bruce killed the man to silence him—if there was a conspiracy—”
“No, Sylvia. That just can’t be. Out of the question.”
“But she said they were all in it—”
“She? Who, in God’s name?”
“Oh, Steve, I told Paul the call was anonymous because I didn’t want to mention her name, but—”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “not Dinah Slade …
IV
“… So I didn’t mention Terence’s name to Sylvia,” said Dinah Slade abruptly, “and I didn’t mention the letter linking him to Bruce’s parade. The only name I dropped was Greg Da Costa’s.”
The Rich Are Different Page 41
