The Stark Truth

by Peter Israel

  This I hadn’t known. They’d pushed him to retire, he said, and he’d fought them, but in the end he’d had to agree to a much smaller slice of the annual pie.

  “But the real killer,” he said, “is that Braxton’s just upped my margin requirement. Can you tie that? After all these years? Hell, Charlie Braxton and I went to school together! I was an usher at his wedding, I was toastmaster at the party when he took over from his old man! When this first came up—that was a while ago—I blew my cork. I went to Charlie. I told him I was going to pull every last penny out of Braxton’s and not just my last penny. And they backed off. But now they’re saying they can’t cover me anymore, and I think they mean business this time. The market makes them nervous. Hell, who isn’t nervous about the market these days? Present company excepted, from what I hear.”

  He looked at me, eyebrows raised, leaving an opening for me to comment. I had nothing to say.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “they’ve given me until the end of the week to cover, else they’re going to start selling me off. And that, sir, given the sorry state of Wall Street right now, is likely to be the final nail in my coffin.”

  Again the pause, the opening, but again I didn’t take it.

  “I think what really happened,” he said, “is that they’ve heard how precarious I am. How, I don’t know, but word gets around. Probably the only person who doesn’t know by now is Karen.” Karen was his fifth wife. “I haven’t had the heart to tell her. She thinks we’re going to Europe in a couple of months to celebrate my eightieth birthday. How am I supposed to tell her I can’t pay for the plane tickets?”

  We finished lunch and walked into the library for coffee. It was a splendid old room, hung with some fine portraits of illustrious members past, mostly from the nineteenth century, and a small but apparently very valuable collection of rare books and manuscripts in glass cases. We sat at right angles to each other in high leather armchairs, and since my father wouldn’t or couldn’t bring himself to ask the question, I finally did.

  “What brings you to me?” I said.

  “Well, you’re family, aren’t you? My only son and heir?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said, but if he caught my irony, he didn’t show it.

  “I need a loan, Tommy. A bridge loan, really. I think I can hold Braxton’s off with as little as sixty thousand dollars cash. Say seventy thousand to be on the safe side. Then something on the side to take care of a few nuisance situations, like my arrears here. Five thousand dollars ought to take care of it, but ten thousand would make me comfortable. With ten thousand, I could even float the plane tickets. Eighty thousand dollars, then, in round numbers. And short term, mind you. Just to tide me over. A bridge loan.”

  Later I might ask myself: a bridge from where to where? But on the spot, in those elegant surroundings, with the Senator tapping a new cigarette against his thumbnail the way they did in the years before filters, I was totally at a loss. Didn’t he realize that not very long before, in my state of shabby gentility, eighty thousand dollars would have represented over half a year’s salary to me? Why had he come to me, anyway? Was it that he’d tried everywhere else and been turned down? And what of that sacred Council which managed the family hoard and to which I still sent a monthly check on the house my children lived in?

  How much he read of my embarrassment I can’t say—embarrassment for him that, at his age, he had to turn beggar, embarrassment for myself that I’d been put in the position of turning him down. But he must have seen something.

  “You’re too much of a gentleman ever to have said it, son, but I know you don’t think much of me as a father. Maybe you’ve done better at it than I have. I’ve tended to lead my own life. On the other hand, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve always been there when you needed me. It was I, remember, who got you into the firm in the first place, even though there was an unwritten rule against nepotism. Once you were there, there was obviously precious little I could do for you. In fact, I never expected you to stay so long. I thought you’d leave as soon as you got your bearings. Anyway, that’s water over the dam. I’m delighted by your success and not at all surprised. But now it’s my turn to ask you for help.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said stiffly, thinking what water over what dam, “but if you’re claiming some kind of indebtedness on my part, I don’t accept that.”

  “Who’s talking about indebtedness?” he said airily, gesturing with his cigarette. “You don’t owe me anything, son. I want us to put this on a very businesslike basis—a formal loan agreement, market rate of interest, and so on. Beyond that, well …” He paused, for effect, presumably, and because he seemed to enjoy holding on to something just a moment longer. “I’ve something to offer you in exchange. By way of inducement, so to speak.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My place on the Council,” he said. “I mean, the family Council.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s right. As you probably know, the way we used to do it, a member kept his place on the board till he died, and then the senior member of his branch of the family automatically took over. But several of us are getting on in years, and we’re considering stepping down now and appointing our own successors. It may come as no surprise to you, but the Funds hasn’t been doing that well lately from an investment standpoint. Not that we’re actually losing money, of course, but there’s growing sentiment that we’re out of touch, that we need to bring in younger people who know how to make money in today’s world.”

  He talked as though I knew much more about it than I did. The Council existed, yes; he himself, I’d gathered, was a member; its role was to manage the so-called Funds, i.e., the Stark-Thompson fortune. But to what end or purpose, or how they went about it, I had no idea.

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite see where the inducement lies. I mean—”

  “I shouldn’t have called it that, Tommy. The eighty thousand dollars? That’s a straight business transaction between us. The board’s more of an honorary thing. Of course, there are certain material advantages I can’t really go into. The only one who has to do any real work is the Trustee, whom we choose from among ourselves, but he’s very well compensated for it.”

  “Who’s the Trustee now?” I asked.

  “My first cousin Corky. I guess that makes him your second cousin, doesn’t it?”

  Corcoran Stark, whom I vaguely remembered from one or two family reunions during my childhood, had to be a few years senior to my father.

  “Not to worry,” he went on with a smile. “Corky’s the first one to want out. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you proved the most likely replacement for him. Apropos, though, in case you’ve been wondering if I’ve applied to the Funds myself, in re my, uh, small personal problem …?”

  “The thought’s crossed my mind,” I replied.

  “Well, the answer is that I haven’t. It’s a little awkward, you see, since I still wear a director’s hat myself. Then, too, it’s really not our kind of thing … awfully small potatoes …”

  But neither too small nor awkward, I remember thinking, for you to hit up your own son.

  To my astonishment—but why should I have been astonished?—he stood then, brushing some imaginary crumbs from his lap. It was as though the interview was over and its outcome a fait accompli, as though all he’d had to do was explain the situation and, utterly reasonably, he’d walk off with a check for eighty thousand dollars in his pocket!

  I was tempted, to be sure, to refuse him on the spot. But seething as I may have been inside—hell, I was burning! At his presumption among other things!—I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. I told him the best I could do was take his request under advisement. He accepted that readily enough—“Who in his right mind these days would keep eighty thousand dollars lying around in loose change?” But, he reminded me, there was a small urgency involved, he ought at least to know where he stood by Friday.

  Would he hear from me before Friday?<
br />
  Yes, he would hear from me before Friday.

  We shook hands outside the club. He thanked me most courteously, even formally, then wheeled and headed east, erect under the homburg, his stride nimble for his years, even jaunty, and never would anyone passing by have guessed that here was a man who didn’t have a nickel in his pockets.

  In any case, that Friday morning a messenger from the firm showed up at my office to pick up the check and the loan agreement, which called for a five-year payback at prime.

  That was your doing, Kitten. I must give you full credit.

  I even remember the conversation, also the transformed atmosphere in which it took place.

  What should I call the atmosphere? Thaw? Détente? Honeymoon?

  Whereas, that night after Wanda Russell’s party, I’d finally gone home, alone, beset by persistent anxieties, Kitty had apparently undergone a profound sea change. She herself, when she called me the next afternoon, ascribed it to her having revealed so much of her past to me. It was something she never talked about, particularly with men. Too painful, she thought. After all, it had been years out of her life. The fact that she’d told me about it scared her a little. At the same time, she wanted to see me. Wanted to see me very badly.

  The same change affected our lovemaking. Gone, at least temporarily, was that desperate rapacity, in its place a gentler and mutual attentiveness. And we talked incessantly, talked about everything, talked even about Thorne.

  Yes, she’d had an affair with him, but to all intents and purposes, she said, it had been over by the time she and I had met. At least over for her. The night she’d picked me up at the Christmas party was, she said, an anomaly—it wasn’t like her, picking up a total stranger, not her style at all. But she’d used me at the time, used me shamelessly, as her means of escaping from Thorne.

  He wasn’t, she said, a very nice man. Not nice at all.

  Their business relationship had survived the affair. It hadn’t worked the way ours did. Essentially she’d sold him information on a restricted-use basis, for a flat fee. But that, too—the business relationship—was over.

  So Thorne wasn’t her Deep Throat?

  No, Thorne wasn’t her Deep Throat.

  But she’d given him Safari, hadn’t she?

  No, she hadn’t. In fact, she’d been as surprised as anyone to hear that he’d made money on Safari.

  Then where had he gotten the information?

  He must have bought it elsewhere. Given the heavy volume of trading in Safari, we’d hardly been the only ones who knew about it.

  “Well, then,” I said, “that leaves the million-dollar question, doesn’t it? Who is our source?”

  “Darling … my darling Tom,” Kitty replied, “I still think that’s best left unanswered. I wish like anything I could convince you it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, or love you less. I’ll tell you this much. We’re part of a group, a network. I buy us certain information, and we exploit it. If the crunch ever comes, isn’t it obvious that the less any one link knows, the better?”

  “What you’re saying is that I could give you away but not the person above you?”

  “That’s right. But remember, darling, that cuts both ways.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Simply that ‘the person above me,’ as you put it, could give me away but not you.”

  I hadn’t, in point of fact, thought about it that way.

  “You know,” I said, “there’s a way of making that link even tighter.”

  “I don’t see what you’re saying.”

  “No?” I raised my eyebrows. “Think about it for a minute. What’s the one way you and I could protect ourselves from ever giving each other away? Perfectly legal, mind you. It happens all the time.”

  She hesitated, then started to laugh. Then stopped and gazed at me wide-eyed, chin propped on her hand.

  “I assume that’s a joke, Mr. Thompson,” she said, “and not a proposal.”

  “It’s not a joke,” I answered.

  She looked away then, her hand half covering her mouth. Eyes averted, unblinking. That chiseled expression, which someone who didn’t know her would have taken for anger or hurt. But when she turned back, her dark eyes were wet with tears.

  “You’re quite wonderful, Tommy,” she said, studying me. “The problem isn’t you; it’s what’s in me. Underneath this tough exterior, you see, hides a very timid woman. But I love you for asking, and in your funny way.”

  It was in this climate that we discussed my meeting with my father. I had long since told Kitty what the relationship consisted of, and didn’t, but she still didn’t see anything unusual in his having come to me for money. That’s what parents did, she said, when they had nowhere else to turn.

  “But he had somewhere else to turn,” I pointed out. “He had the Funds, so called.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure that he didn’t go there.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It would have been the logical thing for him to do. But the family, at least to judge from your own experience over your house, would have insisted on some form of collateral. It could be that he has none to offer, couldn’t it?”

  Yes, it could, I thought. It could also be that the Council had turned him down.

  “But then why did he lie to me about it?” I asked.

  “Come on, Tommy. Would you really have expected him to grovel at your feet? A man like that?”

  Hardly, I thought.

  “Look,” she went on, “it’s your decision, not mine. But it’s not so uncommon for children to help their parents out financially, even when there’s no love lost between them. Who do you think has taken care of my mother all these years, in Florida? Teddy and me. Yet she begrudged everything she gave us when we were little, and I’m not just talking about money. I had more to do with bringing up Teddy than she did. You can say we’re suckers—a part of me does every month when I write out the check—but I’d rather do that than know she’s destitute.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “I don’t happen to have eighty thousand dollars to throw out the window.”

  “Oh yes you do,” she said blithely. “In fact, you already threw it out the window once, remember? It was more like one hundred twenty-three thousand dollars. You cut it into little pieces and sent it back to me. But it’s still yours.”

  “I don’t agree with that.”

  “Don’t agree, then. But I’ve no objection to your taking the money out of the firm. Who knows? He might even pay it back. Or his seat on this Council of yours might turn out to have some value.”

  “Yes, and if pigs had wings—”

  “I’ve heard of worse investments. Besides, from what you tell me, the Senator’s a proud man, and proud men have a way of doing terrible things as a last resort.”

  “Meaning …?”

  “Meaning that they’ve been known to kill themselves.”

  “That sounds pretty melodramatic to me. I don’t think he’s capable of it, either.”

  “You’re probably right. But knowing you, darling, I’d hate for you to have to live with it in case you were wrong.”

  Still, I dillydallied over it. Among other things, I found it hard to believe that I was his last resort, even though he repeated same when he called me again, to find out what I’d decided.

  I put him off one more time. But when I told Kitty, she landed on me.

  “Frankly, I think that’s cruel, Tommy. If you’re not going to do it, you at least ought to have told him so.”

  “All right. But let me ask you this seriously: Given all the givens, what would you really do in my place?”

  “I thought I’d already told you that. I’d give him the money, and I’d do it exactly as he wanted you to—as a loan, with interest and payments. And his place on the Council. I’d even push him to make you Trustee.”

  “I doubt he has the power to do that.”

  “No, but you know what I mean.”

  “And then hope f
or the best?” I said.

  “Yes, hope for the best.”

  I still didn’t know entirely why I did what I did. But I did it.

  True to form, I heard nothing from him. The loan agreement was returned to me signed, and the check passed through my bank account. A few months later, however, I received a formal letter from the Stark-Thompson Family Council, announcing my father’s resignation and inviting me, with suitable congratulations, to their next meeting.

  14

  The trouble came between, in two parts.

  I’d been expecting the first for some time: a letter from Susan’s lawyer, referring me to our divorce agreement, which called for a renegotiation of child support and alimony in the event of a “drastic” change in my circumstances. Such a change having apparently occurred, for which the lawyer offered me her personal congratulations, I was invited to come forward and renegotiate in good faith.

  I wondered how and where Susan had gotten her information. I, in turn, had been working on information of a different sort. The divorce agreement also stipulated not only an end to alimony should Susan remarry but a reduction in same should she take up “seriously” with another man. I decided not to answer the lawyer’s letter until the private investigator I’d retained delivered his final report.

  Part II came in the form of a phone call, then a visit, and totally out of left field.

  The phone call:

  “This is Henry Angeletti, Mr. Thompson. In Mr. Thatcher’s office? I’d very much like to see you personally, if you could spare me some time.”

  I think I mentioned that Thatcher had several young MBA types working for him. Henry Angeletti was one of them, a tall and lugubrious analyst whose hair had already receded halfway back on his skull even though he couldn’t have been more than thirty. I knew him only slightly, for Thatch kept client contacts to himself.

  “What’s the problem, Henry? Is your boss out on the links this week?”

  “Who? Mr. Thatcher? Oh no, he’s in his office. This is more in the line of a personal matter.”