by Peter Israel
“I think you worry too much about Corky,” Cranny Sr. said with irritation. “What I’m telling you, even though I shouldn’t be, is that as far as the payback is concerned, you can pretty much name your own timetable.”
I decided, with the Flys as with the others, to keep to myself my discovery that Corky had been cheating us. I was sure no one had ever noticed—I myself had only happened on it by accident—but there were instances, usually involving the selling of certain assets and the shifting of the proceeds, when very considerable sums flowed through Corky’s hands, en route, as it were, from one account to another. Cash in and cash out always matched, and that was the problem. There should have been interest on the float—sometimes only a day’s worth, sometimes a week’s or longer, but sometimes too with millions of dollars in play. But I could find no record of it in Corky’s accountings, and the longer I looked for it, the more I became convinced that he had simply pocketed it.
I wasn’t at all sure, though, that the others would look on this as cheating. Furthermore, assuming they approved my continuing to operate just as Corky had, I didn’t want to rule out the possibility of doing the same thing myself.
Along the way, I kept Kitty informed. Or tried to. We were both on the road so much in those weeks. The rare nights we spent at home, and the rarer days, seemed like a respite, the eye of the storm, Kitty said, when the last thing she wanted to do was talk business. I knew, too, that she was preoccupied by Katherine Goldmark Enterprises, by its very success and the success of her summer’s campaign. That September she began negotiating the licensing of a line of gourmet foods and products bearing the Kitty Goldmark label, and she’d been approached by two rival chains in the up-market kitchenware and gadget business to act as their national spokesperson. Some nights she stayed in the city; when she was home she seemed to spend half the time on the phone. Preoccupied, distracted, she was even, I discovered, insomniac, and she’d taken to keeping a bottle of Valium by her bedside. She looked tired, too, with the ever-present sunglasses off. But whenever I counseled her to slow down, she’d snap back that there was no way for her to stop now.
So, in any case, did I explain away her indifference to what I was up to. In a way, she even disparaged it. She knew I would succeed, anyway; the people I was dealing with were idiots to begin with, and half of them were probably senile. Manipulating them was like shooting fish in a barrel, wasn’t it? So what was I worried about?
“I’m worried about Corky Stark,” I would say.
“He’s the crooked one, isn’t he?” she’d reply, for I’d described Corky’s float to her. “Well, don’t worry about him. You’ll know how to deal with him when the time comes.”
The only point on which she expressed an opinion was the cash. She thought I was crazy to go to Corky, or the Council, or whoever, with anything on my father’s debt.
“Didn’t you say they’d told you you could be flexible about it? That you could decide your own schedule?”
She had, it seemed, been listening after all.
“That’s right.”
“Well, there you are. Why don’t you take them at their word?”
“Because I think it’d be a mistake, psychologically.”
“Well, I don’t. I think you’d be a fool for doing it. But suit yourself, it’s your money.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said back, reminding her that anything I pulled out of the firm was half hers.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Do you want my permission?”
I didn’t answer, and seeing my incomprehension, she added, “Look, Tommy. Just do it. Just do what you have to do.”
And leave me alone, I added mentally for her.
In the spirit, if not the letter, of confession, let me not stack the deck too heavily. If I failed to understand what was going on in Kitty, part of it had to do, I’m sure, with the fact that I myself wasn’t looking. Martine Brady said as much, though in a different context.
“And why shouldn’t you be doing what you’re doing?” she said (arms akimbo, in that strutty, leggy way she had). “How do you know Kitty’s not doing the same thing? Wives do, you know. How can you be sure she’s not playing around on the side? Didn’t she keep her old apartment? You say she’s too tired, works too hard, but how do you know she’s not using her business as a beard?”
In the same confessional spirit, yes, I had a dalliance with Martine that season. Dalliance was apt, for I knew nothing would come of it, which is why I think it happened at all. We had run into each other at Kitty’s party. Then, on a whim, I’d called her after the detective’s visit, and one whim, so to speak, had led to another. Martine, at least at that stage, was anti-marriage. All she wanted out of life was money and fun, not necessarily in that order. Thanks to Thorne’s death—and no, she assured me, she hadn’t been involved, not that she hadn’t thought it was a good idea—she had the money. At the moment, I represented the fun.
Another apt word. Sex with Martine was fun. After almost two years of a kind of mutual ravaging, culminating in total physical exhaustion, I had forgotten that sex could also be amusing, adroit, and—above all—relaxing. Being with a woman who made no demands on me, as I made none on her, was perhaps just the respite I needed. It was what it was. It meant nothing. It wouldn’t last.
And as for Kitty? No, Martine was wrong, had to be. I knew what turned my Kitten on. Money. Money, or its pursuit, was what was sexy. And the closest I came that season to understanding what was really going on for her was the fleeting thought that maybe, just maybe, my money wasn’t as sexy as hers.
20
Corcoran Stark died at the end of September in his eighty-fourth year, the result of drowning. It happened in the early morning hours, in his own swimming pool—the outdoor one where the water, though heated, was yet icy to the touch—and during the brief ensuing investigation, his personal physician confirmed that he had repeatedly warned the patient against overdoing. To no avail, it appeared, Corky being Corky.
Actually, I’m obliged to say, the event was a virtual consequence of the Stark-Thompson Council’s quarterly meeting, which preceded it by a little less than a week.
We met once more in Corky Stark’s dining room. The participants in the throne chairs were the same as before, except for Crandall Thompson Fly Sr., who had resigned. The weather was cooler. Fall comes early up along the Hudson.
The new Chairman, Arthur Hallandale (“Hall”) Thompson of Saddle River, New Jersey, and Palm Beach, Florida, opened the meeting with a brief speech of welcome. The minutes from the previous meeting were read and approved. The Trustee then presented preliminary figures for the first six months of the current year’s exercise, which were also approved, and the Chair opened the floor to new business.
Silence.
I had the impression, in those few seconds of absolute and awkward quiet, that nobody dared so much as look at anyone else. Heads down, eyes fixed before them, they waited like so many children in some strict patriarchy, staring at their empty plates.
Then I stood up and asked for permission to address the Council.
Permission granted. My fellow members shifted in their chairs and lifted their eyes toward me.
I paid due homage to Corky Stark, his lengthy service to the Funds, the tremendous growth in its assets during his tenure. I was honored, I said, to have been chosen to succeed him by, unless I was mistaken, all of them, Corky included, and I was personally grateful to him for his generosity and his time in reviewing his activities with me. Certainly, as long as he himself would permit it, I would want to turn to him for guidance in the management of our assets.
Et cetera. Et cetera.
“However,” I said, “I find myself put in a most awkward, indeed untenable, kind of limbo. While all of you, Corky included, have expressed full confidence in me in the many conversations we’ve had, the truth is that you, Corky, have exhibited little inclination to step down. Believe me, I respect your right to so decide, as I respect the tradition of the Counc
il that you should do so of your own free will and choice. But under the circumstances, and assuming you and the Council wish and choose to preserve the status quo, then I wish to withdraw my name from candidacy as of today and to go about my own business.”
I noticed that Corky Stark had kept his eyes straight in front of him and his head down while I spoke. The others, too, one by one, had begun to avert their gaze—a bad sign, I thought, and I had to fight the irritation it inspired.
“Finally,” I said, “there is one other matter I must mention. It would not normally be a Council matter, I’m told, but each of you is aware of it, and it is important to me that it be resolved in a mutually acceptable and honorable way. I’m referring to my father’s indebtedness to the Funds. As a sign of my own good faith, and even though our bylaws in no way oblige me to do so, I have brought with me a check for one million dollars, with promissory notes to cover the balance due over a five-year period, all payable to the Trustee. I am ready to hand these over to the Trustee at the end of this meeting. All I ask in exchange is that the question of the Trusteeship be resolved today.”
Needless to say, I’d wrestled over this last. The family scarcely needed the money, and the sense of my private discussions was that all of them except Corky looked on it strictly as a side issue. On the other hand, they clearly needed to be pushed—I’d calculated that the chances were strong that if I could force an either-or decision at the meeting, they would decide in my favor—and I wanted to remove as much ammunition as possible in the event that Corky dug in. It could backfire; I knew they wouldn’t like being forced to the wall. But that was a risk I’d decided to run.
As soon as I sat down, Corky rose.
His speech was short and delivered with his head down.
“I am ready to resign the minute this Council instructs me to,” he said. “Otherwise, I will continue to fulfill my duties as long as I am able.”
And that was that.
I took what he said as an important step forward. In effect, he was no longer refusing to resign under any circumstances. He was simply asking to be pushed.
But whether my fellow members got the same message I couldn’t immediately tell. After considerable coughing, throat-clearing, chair-scraping, and other manifestations of communal uncertainty, the Chair determined that, given the awkwardness of the situation—unprecedented in his experience on the Council—he would invite Corky and me to leave the room, allowing the rest of them to debate the issue freely. Did this require a formal motion? he asked the Secretary. The Secretary thought not. Did either Corky or I object? Neither of us did. Did anyone else? No.
Where Corky went, I’ve no idea. It was his house. As for me, I paced the grounds outside, alternating between expectation and frustration. I had put my very fate in the hands of a group of people I scorned. I scorned them not because they were rich but because they were self-satisfied, self-righteous, and incapable of making the least decision. (Did it require a formal motion what we should eat for lunch? No, probably not, but then on the other hand, what do you think? And need we all eat the same dish? Yes, probably we should. But then on the other hand …) The worst kind of social elite, in sum, but right then, even as I inveighed against them, they were deciding whether or not I should have three million a year, base income, and with—whether they knew it or not—an open license to steal!
I wanted that three-million base. Yes, I wanted that. And in some almost palpable way, I thought it was my due.
They debated, or talked, or sat, or stood, or all of the above, for a long time. Luncheon was even delayed beyond the usual time—a fact duly noted by the Chairman when we reconvened. But finally, near one o’clock, I saw Cranny Jr., their emissary to me, calling from the house, and I headed back to that heavy, forbidding room, asking him how we were doing as we went.
No comment from Cranny Jr. Lips sealed.
I took that as a bad sign.
“Gentlemen and lady,” the Chairman said, “my apologies to one and all for the inordinate length of this meeting. I promise we won’t do it again. But we have decided in the end not to decide. It is the consensus of this Council that the Trusteeship question be tabled until our next meeting in January. If there’s no further business, I will gladly entertain a motion that we adjourn for lunch.”
Motion made, seconded, passed.
I learned then, from Cranny Jr., that there had been no way to budge some four or five of the old guard. Sympathetic as they might be to the needs of the Council, they’d remained intransigent when it came to firing Corky. They’d voted three times. The closest I’d come was 12 to 4. They’d even voted twice on the unanimity issue, i.e., whether it should apply. The vote there had come out even, 8 to 8.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this much,” Cranny Jr. said, “but it’s really the old guard against the new. I think my father, and yours, started a trend. They may even all be gone by January, or early next year. We have to bring the Funds into the twentieth century before it’s over.”
“What about my father’s debt?” I said.
“Oh, that? We didn’t even discuss that.”
Cranny Jr. counseled patience—like Corky himself, I realized—and I forced myself to take his advice at least for the duration of the luncheon.
(No hard feelings, Tommy, old man? No, of course not, no hard feelings.)
I won’t pretend either that the idea waited for that day to occur to me. But that was where it took root and flowered suddenly, on Corky’s terrace, while I beheld my no-hard-feelings colleagues who had just deprived me of three million a year.
Because what difference would it make to them? To any of them? After the fact, would the truth even occur to them?
Besides, they were moribunds themselves, weren’t they? With their canes and hearing aids and failing glands, and all the ailments and illnesses which took up most of their attention when they weren’t simply eating and awaiting death? When you looked at the question that way, head on, didn’t their continued presence in the world only hold the world back? At the world’s expense?
And what of Corky Stark himself, the Great Accountant, Beloved Trustee, with his three million a year and his penny-ante cheating, who needed to be helped up the stairs to his room? What right did he have to keep me from what was rightfully mine? Did the spite of an old man constitute a right?
I hadn’t talked to him that day, hadn’t so much as met his eyes during the meeting or the luncheon, and he’d left the terrace before I did. But when I went out the front door to my car, there he was, waiting for me.
No hand extended, just standing, stooped, eyes heavy-lidded.
“You thought you could end-run me, didn’t you,” he said, his voice making a statement out of the question.
“I did what I thought was best for all concerned,” I answered noncommittally.
“Best for all concerned?” he said, coughing. “There’s a good one.” Then his face went all wizened, like a nasty and vindictive child’s. “Best for you, you mean. Best for Tommy. Well, let me tell you something, sonny. As long as I live, you’ll never get your hands on the money, not after your grandstand play today. I advised you to be patient. You didn’t listen. Well, now I’m going to teach you what patience is really all about.”
I think that was all he said, and I think I gave no reply. I remember getting into my car and starting the engine, but beyond that, the roaring in my ears must have been too loud for me to hear.
The deed itself was too banal to warrant description—except, perhaps, for one moment of it.
I got up in the middle of the night and dressed in gray hooded sweats over my bathing suit. Sweat socks and Reeboks. The only other equipment I needed was a towel. I drove north and, before dawn, parked a mile or so past Corky’s house. I made my way back in near darkness. The early morning air was cold on the exposed parts of my skin, but I was sure (not that it mattered) that it would have taken a snowstorm for Corky to have moved to his indoor pool before the first of October.
And I was right.
Silently I skirted the pool area on the side away from the house, keeping in shadow, until I spotted him doing the crawl up the pool toward the deep end, virtually without a sound and at a rhythm so slow the surface of the water barely stirred. From where I stood, I could see lights on the ground floor of the house. The kitchen, I thought, probably some of the staff. But otherwise nothing.
I stood stock-still, senses sharp in the dim light. I could hear a humming, whirring sound—the pool filter, I thought, and its heating system—and then, more faintly, a lap-lap from the water itself.
I stripped to my bathing suit in the cold air and, advancing to the edge of the pool, slipped into the shallow water. It was considerably warmer than the air. I waited for him to pass me one time—even though he was breathing on the side away from me, I believe his eyes were closed—and then, as he came out of his turn, his head still underwater, I seized him by the shoulders to either side of his neck and forced him under. He struggled briefly, feebly. I’m not sure he even knew what was happening to him. Maybe he mistook it for a dream. I held him under for a very long count, long after he seemed to have stopped bubbling, then released his body and climbed out of the pool.
And then it came, without warning. Suddenly, having taken off my bathing suit and standing next to the pile of clothes, towel on top, I found myself unable to move. I had begun to shake from the cold, and though the longer I stood there, the sooner someone might come looking for him, I was shaking so violently, from the inside out, incapable of doing anything else, telling myself I had to stop because I thought I’d heard something and my own teeth were chattering.
The practical explanation might be that the abrupt transition from the heated water of the pool to the cold air had taken my system by surprise. Were I a religious man, I …
