People Like Us

by Dominick Dunne

  Bulbenkian had heretofore paid no attention to his dinner companion, casting looks instead at the table where the Renthals were seated, in the hopes of catching Elias Renthal’s eye to wave a greeting to him. Now, furious, he turned to Yvonne, picked up her place card to familiarize himself with her name, and saw that she was a baroness. Thereafter he gave her his full attention, not only to quiet her enthusiasm over his toupee, which he thought no one, not even his wife of thirty years, had ever detected, but because Baroness Lupescu proved to be an enchanting dinner companion, whose diamond-ringed fingers found their way to the bulge between his legs beneath Maisie’s pristine white tablecloth at the same time that she was telling him stories of her grandmother in the court of King Zog of Albania.

  At Maisie’s table, Ruby Renthal held her dinner companions in her thrall. “At the White House the other night, the First Lady seated me next to the Vice President,” she said to the table at large. “I said to him, ‘You’ve got to change your glasses, sir. No one is ever going to be elected President of the United States who wears rimless glasses.’ ”

  “You didn’t say that to the Vice President?” asked Maisie Verdurin, aghast, as the rest of the table laughed at the audacity of the beautiful Mrs. Renthal.

  “Oh, I did, and he’s going to change them. You mark my words, Maisie. Just keep watching him on the news.”

  “How was the White House?” asked Maisie, wistfully. She longed to be invited there.

  “So pretty, the whole thing,” said Ruby. “The First Lady had rose geranium in the finger bowls, Maisie. We must all try that.”

  Looking across the table, Elias Renthal caught Ruby’s eye and winked at his wife. She smiled back at him. What Elias knew, as surely as he knew that he was the fifth richest man in the United States, was that he had married the perfect wife. When he had been married to Gladyce, and before that, when he had been married to his first wife, Sylvia, his social life in Cleveland was confined to an occasional party for a special event, or dinners in restaurants with business associates and their wives. Being in society, as he now was, was a different thing altogether. He and Ruby were out every night, usually “dressed to the nines,” as he put it, and, although he grumbled about never staying home, he liked being invited everywhere almost as much as Ruby did. Ruby, who was born for society, had taken on the airs of someone who had always been rich. She understood the intricacies of the overlapping groups in the two thousand people who went out to dinner every night. With neither Gladyce nor Sylvia could he have risen to the heights that he had risen to with Ruby by his side.

  Ruby had not resisted earlier that day when Elias told her he had settled a portion of his fortune on her. That way, he told her, in the unlikely event of adversity, the money that was in her name would be secure.

  “We are a team,” he said to her.

  “A great team,” she agreed. At that moment in time, she was the happiest that she had ever been in her life, and no man could have attracted her in the way that her husband did.

  Although Ruby claimed not to understand a thing about business, she had taken to reading the financial pages with the same relish with which only last year she had read the society columns. She would have been able to tell anyone, if anyone had thought to ask her, which they didn’t, that Sims Lord & Co. had closed at thirty-seven and an eighth the day before the takeover, fallen immediately to twenty-four, and then risen to forty-six, and that Elias, even on that relatively small buyout, had profited by twenty-four million dollars.

  Maisie Verdurin, the evening’s hostess, had been struck dumb by the grandeur of Ruby Renthal’s conversation about the White House. She waited an appropriate length of time while Elias Renthal, on her right, explained to the table the modus operandi of his takeover of Sims Lord & Co., the kind of conversation that usually took place at Maisie Verdurin’s tables. When Justine Altemus Slatkin, who had been unusually silent throughout the evening, accidentally knocked over a glass of red wine and the waiters came scurrying to place napkins over the wet tablecloth, Maisie, unconcerned about Justine’s accident, said casually to Elias, “I didn’t realize Ruby was so friendly with the First Lady.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Elias proudly. “The First Lady is very fond of Ruby, ever since Ruby’s gift to the White House.”

  “Her gift?” asked Maisie.

  “She gave her console tables, the ones she bought at the Orromeo auction in London, with the inlaid rams’ heads, to the White House for the redecoration of the Green Room.”

  “My word,” said Maisie.

  “After the First Lady came to lunch at the apartment, Ruby just gave them to the White House. She said the country had been good to her and she wanted to give something back to the country.”

  “The First Lady went to Ruby’s apartment for lunch?” asked Maisie.

  “If I tell you a little secret, Maisie, you won’t let on to anyone, will you?”

  “Me? Never!” said Maisie.

  “Because if this got out—”

  “My lips are sealed. Talking to me is like talking to the dead,” said Maisie.

  “The First Lady might, just might, come to the ball, if she can readjust her schedule so that she can visit an orphanage in Harlem on the same day.”

  “My word,” said Maisie.

  Of all the news that went around Maisie Verdurin’s tables that night, the death of Baron von Lippe in Brussels from AIDS, the divorce of the Herkie Saybrooks, the death by overdose of the Wagstaffs’ daughter, and the rumored merger of the airline and the petroleum company, whose CEOs had graced Maisie’s table, none was more repeated the next day than the news that the First Lady might, just might, be coming to the ball of the Elias Renthals.

  32

  In the Ambassadors’ Club of the airline, Gus watched as the film star Faye Converse entered, causing excitement and stir, even among the corporate executives waiting for their planes. Faye Converse, a star for as long as most people could remember, still created a glamorous havoc in her wake, although her screen appearances had dwindled to the occasional mini-series on television. Finally, seated, a soft drink brought to her, she engaged in conversation with a young companion, probably a secretary, Gus thought, who nodded assents and occasionally wrote something down on a list.

  “Is that you, Gus?” Faye called out, having caught his eye.

  “Hello, Faye,” said Gus, rising to go over to her.

  “Leave it to you not to make a fuss over me,” she said.

  They both laughed.

  “You look great, Faye,” he said.

  “That’s better,” she said. “You know how I like compliments. If I hadn’t spotted you, I bet you wouldn’t have gotten up to speak to me.”

  “Oh, yes, I would have. I was just waiting for your usual hubbub to quiet down.”

  “You going to L.A. or Europe?”

  “L.A. For a day.”

  “I liked that piece you wrote about me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Still off the sauce, you see,” she said, holding up her soft drink.

  “Same here,” he said, holding up his.

  “This is my secretary. Brucie Hastings. Gus Bailey.”

  “Oh, I read your piece on Faye,” she said.

  Gus shook hands with the young woman. Her handshake was gentle.

  “Are you working?” asked Gus, turning back to Faye.

  “I’m going to be in Judas Was a Redhead. Have you read it? Marvelous book.”

  “Nestor Calder’s a friend of mine,” said Gus.

  “I’m playing Magdalena, the old hooker with the heart of gold,” she said.

  “Perfect,” said Gus.

  “How do you like that, Brucie? Did you hear what this son of a bitch said to me? I tell him I’m playing a hooker with a heart of gold, and he says ‘perfect,’ like in perfect casting.”

  Brucie laughed. She appeared fragile to Gus.

  “Are you in first class, Gus, or are you still riding back in steerage?”

&nbs
p; “Steerage.”

  “Here, give me your ticket. Brucie, take Mr. Bailey’s ticket over to that nice lady at the desk, Robin I think her name was, the one I gave the autograph to, and ask her to upgrade Mr. Bailey to first class and seat him next to me, and you sit in his seat in steerage. There are a few things I want to talk to Gus about.”

  “I don’t normally sign autographs in planes, but I’ll make an exception this time,” said Faye to the woman who interrupted her conversation with Gus when the plane was aloft.

  “Oh, thank you, Miss Converse,” said the woman. “Will you sign it to Darlene?”

  “She looked like a Darlene, didn’t she?” said Faye, when the woman had gone back to her seat. Gus laughed. “I bet you were an only child, Gus,” said Faye. They were drinking Perrier water.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You seem like you were an only child. That loner thing about you.”

  “One of four, as a matter of fact.”

  “New England, right?”

  “Hartbrook. A little town on the Connecticut River that you’d have to be born in to know about.”

  “Where’s the rest of the four of you?”

  “Two dead. One suicide. One cancer.”

  “The other?”

  “A brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Boston, I think. We don’t keep in touch.”

  “What does he do?” asked Faye.

  “Designs condominiums in New England resorts, to the great displeasure of the Old Guard and the environmentalists,” said Gus, shifting in his seat. “This isn’t why you kicked Brucie out of her first-class seat to sit back in steerage, is it, so you could ask me about my background?”

  “No. I was just vamping.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  They laughed again.

  “You know someone called Elias Renthal, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I know him, kind of. I interviewed him and his wife.”

  “I read it,” said Faye.

  “I see him at parties. The last time I saw him, he said, ‘Hi, Bus,’ and I said, ‘It’s Gus, not Bus,’ and he said, ‘That’s what I said.’ That’s how well I know him. Why?”

  “He’s rich, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s rich.”

  “Very rich?”

  “We’re talking big bucks here.”

  “Generous?”

  “What are you getting at, Faye? I don’t think he’d finance a movie, if that’s what you’re interested in.”

  Faye shook her head no. She looked out the window of the plane. Then she said, “Brucie, my secretary.”

  “In steerage.”

  “She’s dying.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “She’s got the dread disease,” said Faye.

  “God almighty,” said Gus.

  “She’s married to a dancer on the Larkin show. He has it too. Get the picture?”

  “Got it,” said Gus.

  “I’m trying to raise money for the disease, a lot of money, big money. Do you think Mr. Renthal would help me out?”

  “I don’t know. He gives to the opera. He gives to the ballet. He gives to the museums. I don’t know about disease. I especially don’t know about that disease. He’s still on the make. So far he only does the social-advancement charities.”

  “All I want, Gus, is an introduction to Mr. Renthal, and I can handle it from there,” said Faye.

  “Faye, you’re a famous woman. You can get to anyone in the world you want to get to. You don’t need me to meet Elias Renthal.”

  “He didn’t return my call.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “He didn’t return my two calls.”

  “What did the secretary say?”

  “ ‘Will he know what this is in reference to?’ she asked.”

  Gus shook his head.

  “I could do a fund-raiser,” said Faye. “But it takes time. And time is not on our side.”

  “Elias Renthal’s wife is the key,” said Gus. “He does whatever she tells him to do. Her name is Ruby Renthal.”

  “I’ve seen her picture in the magazines. Pretty.”

  “Very pretty,” said Gus. “And nice, too.”

  “Can you set it up for me to meet her?”

  “I think so. She liked the piece I wrote on her. I’ll set up a lunch.”

  “At Clarence’s. I’ve always wanted to go to Clarence’s.”

  “Okay, I hope.”

  “Thanks, Gus. Will you have time for dinner while you’re in L.A.?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You out on an article?”

  “Family stuff,” said Gus.

  “Listen, Gus. I’m sorry about what happened to you and Peach. I mean, about your daughter.”

  Gus nodded.

  “I was doing a picture in Italy at the time, or I would have written,” she said.

  Gus nodded.

  “I don’t know how you behaved so well under the circumstances. If that had happened to me, I would have shot the son of a bitch.”

  Gus nodded. It was the sort of thing that people said to him.

  When Gus stepped into the dark bar after the bright sunlight of Studio City, he was temporarily blinded and waited for a minute at the entrance until he got his bearings. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the bar was empty except for a young woman sitting on a stool behind the bar adding up receipts at the cash register.

  “Help you?” she asked, when Gus settled himself on a stool.

  “Perrier,” he said.

  “Out of Perrier,” she said, not moving from her stool.

  “Coke?” he asked.

  She rose, put her receipts on the cash register, picked up a beer mug, filled it with ice, and from a spigot filled the mug with the soft drink.

  “It’s Pepsi,” she said, putting it in front of him. She was pretty, under thirty, Gus figured, and stared at him as if she knew the purpose of his visit was not to drink a Pepsi Cola at two o’clock in the afternoon. Her blouse was made of a thin material, through which the shoulder straps of her undergarments could be seen.

  “Are you Marguerite?” Gus asked.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, without answering his question.

  “I wanted to ask you a question.”

  “About what?”

  “Is it true that you are engaged to marry Lefty Flint?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Is it?”

  “What the hell is it to you?”

  “The man is a killer. The man has taken a girl’s life.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I am the father of the girl he murdered.”

  “He was drunk when he did that. Now he doesn’t drink anymore. That was a one-time thing. He explained all that to me.”

  “You know then what he did?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And you’re still going to marry him?”

  “You better get out of here, Mr. Bailey.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” said Gus. He was drained, white, shaken. For an instant their eyes met.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  “Good-bye,” she answered.

  “Look,” said Gus.

  “What?”

  “Here’s a telephone number and name. If you ever are in trouble of any sort, ring it.”

  “Whose number?”

  “It’s not mine. It’s just if you’re in trouble. Keep it.”

  “I’m not going to be in any trouble, Mr. Bailey.”

  “I hope not, Marguerite. With all my heart, I hope not.”

  He turned and walked out of the bar.

  Marguerite picked up the card that Gus had dropped on the bar and read it. On it was the name and telephone number of Anthony Feliciano.

  “May I go down into your storeroom?” asked Gus.

  “For what?” asked Peach. Divorced, with her own house, which was not the house of their marriage, Peach someti
mes objected to Gus’s use of her home.

  “I’m looking for something I might have left behind when I moved out,” he answered.

  “All your things were packed up and sent to New York,” said Peach.

  “There’s something I can’t find.”

  “What?”

  “Some letters that my father sent me during the war,” he answered.

  “All right,” she said.

  Somewhere, not lost, but long out of sight and reach, in a box, or trunk, or drawer, was a black Leatherette box, lined with satin, on which rested a medal and ribbon, commemorating an act of bravery in a war. With it was a Luger, taken off the body of a dead soldier.

  In the gun shop, he waited until a customer had finished his business and the shop was empty before he ceased looking at the racks, as if he were planning on making a purchase.

  “Help you?” asked the salesman.

  “I have a German Luger from World War Two,” said Gus. He opened his briefcase and took out the gun, which was still wrapped in a brown paper bag grown soft and greasy through the years.

  The salesman watched as Gus unwrapped the paper on the glass counter and picked up the gun.

  “A beauty,” he said. “Worth a bit of money, you know. They don’t make them like this anymore. Is it for sale?”

  “No,” replied Gus. “I wanted to get it put into working order. Could I get that done here?”

  “How much of a hurry are you in?”

  “I’m not in a great hurry,” said Gus.

  “A week? Ten days? It’s a busy time here with hunting season underway.”

  “That’s all right. I live in New York, not here, but I’ll be back out in a month or so, and I can pick it up then.”

  “I’ll need a deposit.”

  “How much?”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “Okay.” Gus reached in his pocket and brought out some money.

  “Is it registered?”

  “No.”

  “Name?”

  “Mertens. Gene Mertens.”

  33

  With the invitations to the Renthals’ ball in the mail, addressed by Mrs. Renthal’s calligrapher, and supervised by Mrs. Renthal’s social secretary, it quickly became the most highly anticipated party in New York in years. Ezzie Fenwick, who had taken upon himself the role of champion of Ruby Renthal, told certain people that he would be able to secure invitations for them, implying, not quite honestly, that he advised Ruby on her list. Those who had not been invited, and thought they should have been, planned earlier than usual migrations to their houses in Newport and Southampton, their ranches in Wyoming, their cottages on the coast of Maine, or elsewhere.