19 Purchase Street
Page 53
Say thank you. “Thank you.”
“Rodger, Rodger, Rodger,” Bidwell said with a tinge of reprimand, and then to Leslie. “You don’t want a large funeral, do you?”
Say no. “No.”
“Good. Better all around. He was killed instantly when a huge earthmover toppled over on him while he was inspecting that project of his in Táchira.”
“Where’s Táchira?”
“Venezuela.”
Leslie felt as though she also had to clear her throat. A lump was in it, deep sorrow gathering. There was too much feeling and water in her head, and the water was coming from her eyes. In her own way she really had loved him.
“That’s the story the Times and everyone else will get,” Bidwell went on. “The truth is, Rodger was killed by a sailor in Caracas. We don’t know the identity of the sailor nor will there be much of an effort to find out. You understand.”
At least Rodger went out swinging, Leslie thought.
“For the past forty-five minutes or so I’ve been going over Rodger’s estate, but I doubt you feel like getting into that now?”
Leslie tried to swallow the lump. “Go ahead,” she said.
“I’m named executor, of course,” Bidwell said, “so there won’t be any surprises. I’ve always made it my business to know Rodger’s financial picture.”
Leslie’s gaze fixed on the tower of the Sherry Netherland hotel across the way, pigeons perched on it like they owned it. “What is it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Rodger’s financial picture.”
“Assets and holdings come to …” he opened a portfolio on his desk, flipped past a couple of pages “… five and a half billion dollars.”
“That much?”
“Not all his, of course. There are a number of limited partners and individual shareholders, considerable corporate intricacies, both here and overseas. I should think the last thing you’d want was to get involved with that mishmash.”
Smile, Leslie. A faint, grateful smile.
“Your concern should be with his personal estate,” Bidwell told her. “Naturally, we have always tried to keep that as minimal as possible.”
“Naturally.”
“Let’s see …” Bidwell did some figuring on the back of one of the pages in the portfolio.
“A few million?” Leslie said.
Lady Caroline told her to keep still.
Bidwell glanced up at Leslie, thought this woman wasn’t going to be a problem, not at all. He could assure Boston of that. “After all the necessary reductions,” he told her, “what you should end up with—and mind you, this is only a rough figure—is about four hundred million.”
Rich me.
She stood a bit wobbly. “I don’t have my car,” she said.
“I’ll have my driver take you. Will you be home if I need to reach you?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you will be in New York.”
“Yes.”
She arrived home at twenty to three. She immediately tried to phone Gainer, and while she had the Dolder Grand on one line a call from him came in on her other line. He was at a pay phone at Flughafen Floten about to board a flight to Paris, where he’d connect with a Concorde flight home. He’d be landing at Kennedy around eight o’clock. He had a great surprise for her.
She didn’t press him to tell her what the surprise was but he couldn’t keep it to himself.
The three million he was bringing home.
To her.
He was so enthusiastic about it, so happy. He told her his prodigal attitude toward it and some of the extravagant things they would do. She hardly had a chance to get a word in, and then he would miss his flight unless all they said was I-love-you.
LESLIE was at Kennedy at a quarter to eight, had the driver take her in one of the Rolls. She waited in the International Arrivals building and right up to the moment when she saw Gainer coming through—him with a here-I-am, isn’t-it-great-to-to-see-me spirit to his step, she hadn’t yet decided how she was going to break it to him about the four hundred million. That news was right there in her mouth practically crying to be said.
But she didn’t want it to dampen his enthusiasm, diminish his high. She didn’t want it to make him feel inadequate, not ever. Didn’t want it to make him feel, well, self-conscious that he hadn’t earned their money or stolen or inherited it. Didn’t want it to make him have the slightest qualm whenever she was being extravagant with him in Rome or somewhere. Or when they were at Tiffany’s or having their fifteen room Trump Tower apartment done over or when he had it in his heart to buy a new Rolls Corniche for her. Should she keep her mouth shut? She didn’t want all that money to come between them and their happiness for a second.
It didn’t.
EPILOGUE
IN November of that year the oldest, most established realtor in Greenwich pulled one off. The largest residential transaction in a decade.
He sold the Rakestraw estate on Round Hill Road.
Forty-seven acres with a thirty-six room main house. A ten foot spike-topped wall around it all.
The man who bought the Rakestraw place was R. Hamilton Ward. Like Edwin Darrow had when he bought 19 Purchase Street, Ward paid cash, rumored to be in the neighborhood of twelve million. Ward was a graduate of Princeton Law and qualified to practice in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Retired now, however. Originally, he was from Maryland, a shore family.
The Rakestraw estate had not been occupied for several years. It would take a great deal of renovating to get it to where it suited its new owner’s tastes and purpose. And even then, it would require a lot of upkeep. Coming and going.
Gordon Winship is still alive.
About the Author
Gerald A. Browne is the New York Times–bestselling author of ten novels including 11 Harrowhouse, 19 Purchase Street, and Stone 588. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and several have been made into films. He attended the University of Mexico, Columbia University, and the Sorbonne, and has worked as a fashion photographer, an advertising executive, and a screenwriter. He lives in Southern California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“She’s Always a Woman” by Billy Joel is reprinted courtesy of Impulsive Music, 375 Broadway, Hicksville, N.Y. and April Music Inc., 1801 Century Park West, Los Angeles, California.
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Copyright © 1982 by Bright Star Productions, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2092-4
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