‘Another thing that disappeared was a Bill Haley record that I played to death. Never knew what happened to it. Alice was always so sweet about these things. She’d help you look. And so you trusted her, you’d confide things to her in total confidence, and they’d rebound and smack you in the face and smash your teeth. After a while – but it’s hard to believe, looking back, how long it took – we all put two and two together. We all became scared of her. Dead scared. Things stolen from tourists might show up in your room, under your mattress, in your dresser drawer. The Biltmore manager would get an anonymous tip. People got fired. They just vanished like our keepsakes did. One day you’d see them at the staff meeting, next day they were gone.’
‘Is that what happened to you?’
‘No. It was different, the way we got kicked out. In one of my stupid stages of thinking how sweet Alice was – it was after she helped me search for my Bill Haley record – I told her I was worried sick about my mother. I told her my mother was depressed and that I’d begun to find whiskey bottles under her mattress. The estate manager got an anonymous note and my mother was fired.
‘Alice and I were sixteen when that happened. There was a movie star visiting Biltmore. I’ll call him Jason because we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I can tell you that Jason seduced just about everyone in skirts while he was there. Alice got pregnant, but the pregnancy magically disappeared before anyone noticed except me. She married Tom Boykin pretty quick after that, but the rumour was that Alice had paid someone to take photographs of her and Jason in bed and someone sent them to Tom. In my mind, there’s no question that the person who sent him the pictures was Alice herself. Of course she waited until after the wedding.
‘She could spin rumours and float them out to the world like poisoned dandelion puffs. Poor Tom, he was suckered from the git-go. If you ask me, I think he killed himself after he found out about the baby and the abortion and the Kodak porn. Alice took off for New York and I don’t know what happened to her after that and have never wanted to know.’
3.
In a Holiday Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, Marlowe lies on the queen-size bed, propped up by pillows. He takes from his briefcase a folder that is labelled in black felt marker, his own handwriting, or rather hand printing, rather clumsy, all block letters, upper case: CV FILE
It is fourteen days since the verdict, but only two days since he printed off the contents of the dossier and had one of his contacts decrypt his wife’s file. He could have copied it onto his laptop but he is all too aware that he would then be vulnerable to hackers. Oddly enough there are times when paper is the only safe route.
For reasons only partially clear to him, partially obscure, he has not yet read the contents in detail. He has skimmed. As soon as the shock of realisation hit him – that he had been outplayed and out-conned, that he was married to a Master of the Game far more cunning and more devious than he himself – he was overcome by an onslaught of anxiety so intense that he had to hide the folder from himself. He jammed it into his briefcase and hid his briefcase in the safe in his office, the lavishly furnished shadow office for his shadow investment company. He alone had the combination for that safe. He had read enough. He knew she knew. She knew his fortune was smoke and mirrors and she was making plans to jump ship, but she would take him down before she jumped. Already she had initiated leaks to the tabloids and the SEC.
It was checkmate. Parachute time.
Well, two could play that game. He is a master player himself, but first he needs to study the board. He needs to know all the pieces that are still in play and where they are.
The legal-size manila folder feels radioactive. He sets it down again, quickly, on the quilt on the unoccupied side of the bed, and goes to the mini-bar to pour himself a Scotch. The bottles are tiny so he adds a second one to his glass and from the ice bucket scoops a few cubes. At the window he takes several quick gulps to calm himself. The window has a gloomy view of the parking lot. He pulls the drapes closed. They are lined with canvas, thick and heavy and off-white, the drapes themselves the colour of dirty sand erratically crisscrossed with black rectangles that interlock with red squares. They are hideous but they do shut out the light. Even though he has asked for a smoke-free room, the drapes stink of stale cigarettes.
It is not so easy, he thinks, to erase evidence of earlier regimes.
Fortified and calmed by the Scotch and by the murk of the room, he returns to the bed, switches on the bedside lamp, and picks up the folder.
It is full of letterhead correspondence that dates from the time of priority registered mail and paper, has later been scanned and encrypted, and now – through hacker archaeology – has been returned to paper again. Marlowe does not doubt that the original hard-copy correspondence has been destroyed. He feels like Schliemann excavating the ancient city of Troy, or like Howard Carter discovering King Tut’s tomb. It is not easy, he thinks, to dig up the past, but it is even harder to erase every trace.
His memory, like a spooked horse bolting between the shafts, returns to Dryden and Harvard, to Shelley and Keats. He feels like a traveller from an antique land who stumbles, in the middle of the desert of his life, on two humungous legs of stone:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
He feels like some addled watcher of the skies when a distant galaxy, older than time, swims into the telescope’s eye. He feels like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes / He stared at the Pacific … Silent upon a peak in Darien.
Silent upon his queen-size Holiday Inn bed, Marlowe leafs through pages. The file contains hundreds of items, mostly correspondence, sometimes invoices, sometimes receipts or photocopies of cheques, the earliest dating from 1976. All the correspondence was originally on letterhead paper – well, perhaps not the most recent communications, which may have been born in binary codes – and the letterhead is either that of Celise Vanderbilt (with assorted office addresses and assorted honorary titles) or that of a legal firm with offices in Washington, Baltimore and New York: Willson Williams & Walter, Attorneys at Law. Marlowe is familiar with the firm, which is well known for its high-priced and highly successful defence of people charged with criminal violence. It is rumoured – and certainly widely known in intelligence circles – that the firm will make discreet arrangements at arm’s length for clients whose needs might put them at risk of such charges. It is public knowledge that the firm has rendered exemplary service to such demonised groups as the Mafia.
The missives from Celise far outnumber those from her attorneys. Marlowe skims through the pages, all communications from his wife being pared to essentials, all responses legally careful.
November 5, 1976
Stanley Willson
Willson Williams & Walter
Attorneys at Law
Dear Stanley,
I enclose a clipping from the New York Post re: letter sent to the Vanderbilt countess. Could signal brewing of a fraudulent claim or something more serious. Evidence is far-fetched but if the son is indeed alive it is crucial that he be located. I don’t want the heir, or someone posing as the heir, crawling out of the woodwork a decade from now to challenge what Billy and I will inherit. Please undertake all necessary research in Australia, in France, among Vietnam veterans. Your expense account will be unlimited.
Sincerely,
CV
June 8, 1977
Dear Ms. Vanderbilt,
We have examined the passenger and crew lists of every Australian naval vessel leaving the Philippines shortly before or after the fall of Saigon. None had any rescued boat people or former combatants on board. We did ascertain that a cargo ship from Manila docked at Darwin before proceeding on to Perth …
Tracking down just what route these vagrants took and where th
ey are now is like searching for needles in haystacks. On a cost-benefit analysis, we recommend that you accept the probable conclusion that the Vanderbilt heir drowned in the South China Sea and is therefore no threat.
We enclose an itemized list of expenses incurred in this search.
Yours sincerely,
Stanley Willson
Willson Williams & Walter
Attorneys at Law
June 15, 1977
Dear Stanley,
Your expenses seem extraordinarily high but I’m sure they are warranted …
Please spare no expense in recruiting skilled farmhands as informants. You should have ears and eyes on every cattle ranch between Darwin and other Australian cities.
Let no stone be unturned, no drunken gossip unrecorded.
Should you find a possible candidate for the heir, I trust you will proceed with all due discretion as instructed, especially with regard to the subcontracting of any necessary tasks …
Yours sincerely,
CV
Marlowe added another mini-bottle of Scotch to his glass and skipped a few sheets of paper, a few years. He settled on February 1978, when Billy was killed. He found an expense account entry for fifty thousand dollars and a brief letter.
February 20, 1978
Dear Stanley,
Thank you for prompt dispatch and absolute discretion …
Yours sincerely,
CV
February 26, 1978
Dear Ms. Vanderbilt,
I regret to inform you that a stable groom is proving difficult. It may be necessary to have him charged with criminal negligence. On the other hand, such action may incite further attention and be counter-productive, especially if a jury trial is involved. Either route involves risk. It is our legal experience that payment for silence never ends with the first demand.
I await your instructions.
Yours sincerely,
Stanley Willson
March 3, 1978
Dear Stanley,
Charges should be laid, unless and until other more definitive means can be found.
Meanwhile I require you to draw up a pre-nuptial agreement for my impending remarriage. I can assure you there will be no shortage of funds …
Sincerely,
CV
June 15, 1978
Dear Stanley,
The pre-nuptial agreement is entirely satisfactory. Thank you … Now that new and unlimited funds are at my disposal, please focus close investigative attention as follows:
a) V penthouse, doormen, delivery men, etc.
b) LJ, so-called; investigate questionable political activity.
c) Goldbergs, art collectors and donors; close ties with LJ; sponsors of questionable political activity.
d) Find informants in village of St Gilles in Loire Valley; pay them well.
Yours sincerely,
CV
Marlowe flipped through lists of expenses paid to delivery men, packages taken to the Fifth Avenue penthouse and to the Goldbergs’ building on Madison Avenue, detailed plans of the arrangement of rooms in the penthouse, photographs (photocopies of photographs) of the interiors of the rooms, of paintings, of antique furniture, of armoires, of fauteuils, of prie-dieux. There were numerous invoices and disbursements to cattlemen and truck drivers in Outback Australia, to the families of Vietnam vets all over the country, to small-business owners and farmers and vineyard owners in St Gilles and all along the valleys of the Vienne and the Loire.
Marlowe skipped through pages of documentation on Sotheby’s private art deals, on Lilith’s collection of evidence on the side, on her border detentions, on her Cabot liaisons, on her movements between Boston and New York. He skipped all the way to the death of Lawrence Gwynne Vanderbilt in October 1994.
November 1, 1994
Dear Stanley,
You will appreciate the increased urgency of the search since the death of the patriarch. Please redouble your efforts.
Sincerely,
CV
And then:
October 15, 1995
Dear Stanley,
Your subscription to Natural Farming was innovative and brilliant. Spare no expense on camera crew and script. The video should be professional and polished to the nth degree. Make title striking: The Claimant. Fix the idea of grasping in the public mind. We will use it in court.
Sincerely,
CV
November 5, 1995
Dear Stanley,
Whatever you paid the informant at Sotheby’s was worth the cost. The eagle has landed. We have proof of contact between claimant and bait in Australia.
Sincerely,
CV
February 12, l996
Dear Ms. Vanderbilt,
We regret to report that though considerable inducement of various kinds has been tendered, neither the villagers of Dayboro, Queensland, Australia nor those of St Gilles in the Valley of the Loire, can be persuaded to talk to strangers. On a cost-benefit analysis we recommend that these avenues of research be discontinued. It is clear that those who live in St Gilles know something and are afraid. They will not talk, not even to the priest in confession (and we did make discreet arrangements to ascertain what was said in those conditions).
On the other hand, LJ’s illicit political activity is escalating and has proven more fruitful. There are many mid-level bureaucrats in unstable countries who will pass information both ways. For adequate compensation, they could arrange incidents of a definitive kind and are more than willing to do so.
Sincerely,
Stanley Willson
February 27, 1996
Dear Stanley,
The disbursement to the butcher and his son in St Gilles seems exorbitant …
Ensure that you have a camera crew as sophisticated as the one you used in Queensland.
Pay whatever you need to pay for the photograph. We should be able to recoup expenses by selling the video to one of the cable channels.
Sincerely,
CV
March 1, 1996
Dear Stanley,
Please schedule the claimant video to be shown in court next week.
Place teaser announcements in the New York Post. Claimant video needs to be widely seen and commented upon before the video of French butcher is released.
On other matters: It may be time to move on to a new funding source. I have intimations that the current supply may be shaky. Can you investigate further? You should bypass the SEC. Waste of time. You could sell snake oil and the Brooklyn Bridge to the SEC. Go direct to clients, take them out to dinner, keep tally of those who have already withdrawn their winnings and those who have not, keep tally of duration of time between investment deposit and withdrawal.
Sincerely,
CV
September 20, 1996
Dear Stanley,
Excellent work tracking movements in Australia. Once reasonable estimation of date of final week of trial can be made, arrange delivery to Sotheby’s office of round-trip air tickets from Sydney to New York and make hotel reservations to ensure that bait attends trial and is on hand for incident to be arranged to benefit of highest bidder.
Canvass possible buyers and sellers of information re: political activities of bait. Encourage competition and bid prices up.
After verdict has been declared, begin releasing to tabloids information re: 1960 events in St Gilles. When interest is highest, sell video to FOXNews.
Sincerely,
CV
October 30, 1996
Dear Stanley,
Jury verdict a great success and buys time. Video of French butcher will buy more time. Trial by media (cold-case murder; subversive politics) will gut and delay appeal of claimant case, but it will not eliminate risk.
We have perhaps opened a can of worms: unintended consequences, more tenacious investigative journalists than we bargained for, hordes of them. Now that we have done all the legwork, they are riding our coat-tails. Once they get DNA, game�
�s over, and sooner or later someone will. We are looking at a ticking time bomb which must be defused. In duplicate. I trust you to make arrangements that will be as discreet and untraceable as they are final.
Sincerely,
CV
November 5, 1996
Dear Stanley,
Investigation into current funding source confirms suspicions. Vaporization and vanishing point imminent. Generate media melodrama on scope of fraud, but begin arrangements for quiet terminal exit. According to unconfirmed reports, etc., disgraced financier suicidal, etc. A substantial sum has been deposited to your account to cover cost of arrangements.
Sincerely,
CV
On the final page of the folder there was nothing but a black-and-white photocopy of Tenniel’s illustration of the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I tried to warn you, the Cheshire Cat grins. Remember?
Its eyes gleam in the dark. You are finished, you know, the cat says, but your stage exit will be as graceful and mysterious as mine. Starting with the tip of its tail, the Cheshire Cat begins to disappear until only its grin is left. You thought you were the cat’s meow, the grin says, but you were wrong. You are not a Master of the Game, but only a second-rate player.
The Claimant Page 51
