by Peter Israel
She took off her glasses as though she was going to wipe them, then seemed to think better of it and put them back on again. A pulling-herself-together gesture.
“What precisely is it you want to know, Mr. Revere?”
“Everything,” I said, pushing the advantage. “What the S.O.W. Fund is, or was. When it got started. How it works. What those conditions are you mentioned. Most important, who gets the money.”
She sighed, shook her head.
“I’ll have to ask you to come with me,” she said, standing up.
She said it in a way that suggested failure, or resignation, or both. She led me out of the conference room and out through some more of the modular affairs, where Upton Fiduciary employees were laboring at computer consoles. But quietly—you couldn’t hear your own footsteps on the carpeting, and the telephones didn’t ring. Gwendolyn Graw walked in front of me, her head down. Her stride was purposeful, but you could tell the barge was too heavy for her alone.
She led me to a large and permanent-looking office, where the walls went all the way up to the ceiling, in what must have been the northwest corner of the tower. It belonged to one Pierce Upton III. You could tell from the plaque on the door.
Ms. Graw knocked, then entered without waiting. After a brief introduction, she left me there. She shut the door behind me.
The view, you’d have to say, was spectacular, and the man behind the desk seemed to have been staring at it, his hands pursed in a steeple, when I came in. That must have been Hoboken across the river, and Jersey City behind it, and they didn’t look half bad from that height and distance. Probably on a clear day you could see Bashard’s, but it wasn’t a clear day. A bank of summer haze blurred the horizon.
What Pierce Upton III was doing, surveying New Jersey, I’ve no idea. Maybe he owned it.
He swung around in his swivel chair when I entered and eyed me across his desk. He didn’t stand up, didn’t offer his hand, and the polished wood expanse of his desk was virtually empty. I spotted a small white oblong near him—my card, as it turned out.
I sat down, uninvited.
He was younger than you’d expect, about my age in fact, blond and blue-eyed. Unlike the rest of the World Trade employees I’d seen, he wore an olive-colored gabardine summer suit, a yellow oxford button-down, and a repp tie that probably signified some school or club, but I couldn’t tell you which one. Not a strand of his blond hair was out of place, not a crease, not a drop of sweat. Wasp America, in sum, which his accent confirmed. Money, sure, but Old Money, and I’d have bet the house he drove a beat-up old Chevy when he could have afforded a string of stretch limos.
He picked up my card, looked at it, put it down.
“How can I help you, Philip Revere,” he said.
I repeated substantially what I’d said to Gwendolyn Graw. I may have emphasized the bad-publicity part. My experience with the Ill’s of this world is that the last thing they want is publicity, good or bad. TV lights make you sweat, after all.
“I see your point,” he said when I’d finished. “You ought to realize, though, the problem this gives me. We at Upton Fiduciary have built our reputation on qualities like integrity, probity, confidentiality. Maybe they’re old-fashioned and out of date, but that’s what our clients seem to want. We’re a very conservative company. However, in certain exceptional circumstances, maybe we have to learn to be a little more flexible. The decision I have to make now is whether this circumstance is sufficiently exceptional.”
He paused. I guess he was deciding. Probably he was deciding what Pierce Upton I would have done.
“In addition,” I put in to be helpful, “the S.O.W. Fund is being dissolved. Once it’s gone, there’s no more money you can make on it, is there? So why not?”
Clearly I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have remembered that Old Money doesn’t like to be reminded of profits, at least not by the riffraff. Pierce Upton III’s mouth tightened, and for a moment I thought I’d blown it. What I got instead—I kid you not—was a lecture on the meaning of the word fiduciary. It comes, I learned, from the Latin fidus, an adjective meaning “faithful” or “trustworthy.” Pierce Upton III, I figured, must have endured the lecture himself from his forebears, and this was his revenge.
All it cost me in the end, though, was time.
“I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your firm,” I said when he’d finished. “If that’s what it sounded like, I apologize. But I still need the information.”
“All right,” he answered, clasping his hands on the bare wood surface in front of him. “The S.O.W. Fund, when we took it over some years ago, had only very modest capital. In fact, I doubt we would have touched it today. But under our investment management, and with growing contributions over the years, it now constitutes … well, quite a reasonable portfolio for the beneficiary.”
“There’s only one beneficiary then?” I asked.
“Yes, only one.”
“But how does that work? I mean, did it name just one beneficiary?”
“No,” he said. “It was constituted as a pool.”
“And Raul R. Bashard was one of the contributors?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered. “As far as Upton Fiduciary was concerned, the contributions were anonymously made.”
True enough, I knew, from what Arthur Trout had reported.
“But what about the beneficiary?” I persisted. “How was he, or she, to be chosen?”
“Originally there was a list. I believe there were six in all.”
“But now there’s only one, right?” I continued for him. “It was set up by six people and kept going until only one of them was still alive, wasn’t it? Winner take all?”
“More or less.” He nodded.
I was warm, all right. Hell, the griddle was sizzling.
“Then who’s the survivor?” I asked, standing up.
“I can’t tell you that,” he answered.
“You don’t have to,” I told him. “All you’ve got to do, Mr. Upton, is nod your head when I give you the right name.”
I ran them down for him then, Bud Fincher’s list and mine, all our friends and neighbors from the second floor of the annex at the BashCon: Price, Brinckerhoff, Frankaman, Latham, Hermatius, Wright, Whitefield, Varga, Morgan.
But he didn’t bat an eyelash.
“What about Raul Bashard himself? Wasn’t he on the list of eligibles?”
“No,” said Pierce Upton III, “he wasn’t on the list.”
I didn’t get it then. Unless …?
“What about Mackes? Leo Mackes?”
Stone time.
“Viola Harmel?”
Hands clasped.
And for me, caution to the winds.
“Look, Mr. Upton,” I said, shouted maybe, jabbing the rarefied air at him, “don’t tell me if you don’t want to, don’t tell Charles Camelot either, but it’s going to be squeezed out of you—and the longer you wait, the more it’s going to hurt!”
Plus a few dozen more ill-chosen words, to this effect.
He looked at me when I was done like I was a disagreeable smell, and he managed it without even wrinkling his nostrils.
“Sit down, Revere,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you the time of day, if I don’t want to. You can stand here and read me the telephone book, and just because you tell me to nod my head at the right time, it doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
“We all make our choices,” I said, still standing. “Sounds like you’ve just made yours.”
“Sit down, Revere,” he repeated.
Slow progress, like I said.
I sat down.
“It so happens,” Upton went on, “that there’s an outside trustee to the Fund. I’m not going to stand in the way if the outside trustee wants to identify the beneficiary for you.”
Cover your ass, Pierce Upton, I thought.
“Then get him here,” I pressed.
“I’ve already called him,” he said. He leaned
left and pushed a button on his telephone console. “Please put that call through now,” he ordered to the unseen secretary.
Pierce Upton III didn’t have a telephone receiver in sight, just one of those squawk boxes you can talk at while trimming your fingernails. The call went through fast, and a male voice said hello. Pierce Upton III introduced himself, then me, and asked me to repeat what I’d just told him.
“Who am I talking to?” I said in the general direction of the box.
“That doesn’t matter now,” the voice answered. “Let me hear what you’ve got to say, please.”
I didn’t recognize the voice, I thought. It had a rasp to it, or rale, like older people usually do, and it was male, but that still left about twenty-five percent of the population.
I ran through it one more time for my unknown listener. I said we hadn’t taken what we knew to the police yet, but that we would have to shortly. I said that sooner or later the details of the S.O.W. Fund were going to have to come out.
There was a silence when I’d finished.
Pierce Upton III had swiveled in his chair and was gazing at New Jersey again.
“Revere, this is Sam Wright speaking. I think we’ve met. In view of what you’ve said, I think it’s time I had a talk with Charles Camelot. I’ll be at his office at two o’clock this afternoon. Can you arrange that?”
I glanced at my watch. The sooner the better, I thought, but then there was the Counselor’s luncheon to worry about. At the same time I was trying to remember what I knew about Sam Wright. I’d met him at the BashCon. Bud Fincher had interviewed him; various people had mentioned him.
“Two o’clock, Revere,” Sam Wright repeated. “Can you arrange that?”
I told him I would and heard him break the connection.
Pierce Upton III swung around in his chair, pushed a button on the console, and stood up, facing me. No hand extended.
“One other thing, Mr. Upton,” I said. “If I were you, I’d put a freeze on the S.O.W. Fund. I wouldn’t pay out a nickel right now.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to run my affairs,” he answered coldly.
“I’m sure you don’t,” I said. “Just a thought.”
I left him with it. But before I took off from Upton Fiduciary, I put in a call to the Counselor. It gave me some small pleasure to use Pierce Upton’s quarter.
By the time I drove uptown, parked the Fiero and got to the office, the Counselor had already left for La Gonzesse. I brown-bagged it at my desk. I had a Revere special—Muenster and tomato on a bagel, lightly toasted, mayo, a bottle of Moosehead, and two cups of Roger LeClerc’s special-blend coffee. I found Bud Fincher and compared notes with him on Sam Wright. Bud Fincher wanted to know when we were going to reschedule Price. I told him it would have to wait. Then I listened to the tapes of two calls from Grace Bashard. The first was from New Jersey; she was about to leave; she still loved me. The second was from New York; she’d just gotten in. For some reason the calls made me think of the Counselor’s Wife and what she would have to say about my dalliance with Grace. Or maybe it was Muffin who made me think of the Counselor’s Wife. The cocker bitch hung out outside my door all during lunch. In case, I guess, I got tired of the sandwich.
I remembered Sam Wright as an elderly man, short and bald and jolly. He’d been introduced at the BashCon as “Mr. S. F. Con,” meaning, I’d gathered, that some of the conventions were his doing and, probably, that when there was a deficit he picked it up. I’d more or less lumped him in the same category as Richard Brinckerhoff. Someone had told me Sam Wright had a rich bitch of a wife, and Bud Fincher had described a fancy penthouse in the Sutton Place area, with a view of the East River.
Shortly before two, the Counselor returned and summoned me to his office. I briefed him on what we knew of Wright and what I suspected. He listened, his chin down toward his chest. Then, looking at me sideways, he said he was glad I’d decided not to resign.
I didn’t have time to find a retort. Ms. Shapiro buzzed. A Mr. Wright and a Ms. Morgan were there.
“Ms. Morgan?” the Counselor said to me, his eyebrows raised.
“Cyn Morgan?” I said. “He didn’t mention anything about her.”
But Cyn Morgan it was. The last time I’d seen her, she’d had a decidedly Bohemian, downtown look. Now she looked more like she was going to a funeral. Black skirt, black-figured shirt under a natural linen jacket. Her face seemed drawn, unanimated.
Sam Wright was sweating in a seersucker suit. Even in the Counselor’s air-conditioning, he mopped often at his forehead. He was as round as I remembered him, and ruddy, and his bald head seemed to rise to a point which gave his face, head-on, a kind of teardrop effect.
“We’d prefer to talk to you alone, sir,” he said to the Counselor when he saw me there.
The Counselor shook his head.
“Phil Revere here is privy to all our secrets,” he said, “particularly insofar as Raul Bashard is concerned. If it’s confidentiality you’re concerned about, you can tell him everything you’re willing to tell me. I, in turn, am curious as to why Ms. Morgan is here.”
“There’s a good reason,” Sam Wright said.
“I’m sure there is,” the Counselor agreed.
Wright and Cyn Morgan sat down facing the Counselor, I in my usual chair to his left.
The Counselor waited, head down, his eyes watching Sam Wright.
“All right,” Sam Wright began. “Some years ago, I was asked to become trustee to a special fund, which, as you now know, is administered by a company called Upton. My role was to make sure certain conditions were fulfilled when the time came for the fund to be dissolved. It was left to me, if I felt it necessary, to appoint a replacement. That’s why Cyn is here.” Wright smiled, turning his already round face into a full moon. “I’m getting old. About a year ago, when I was in poor health, it seemed the fund might well outlast me. I asked Cyn to be ready to take over.”
“I’m glad to see that hasn’t proved necessary,” the Counselor said.
“Yes,” Sam Wright said. Then he added, cryptically: “And no.”
“Let’s go back a moment,” the Counselor said. “I assume we’re both talking about the so-called S.O.W., or Sow, Fund.”
“That’s correct.”
“What does Sow stand for?”
Wright smiled again.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the foggiest,” he said.
“When exactly did you become involved with it, Mr. Wright?”
“About fifteen years ago. Almost to the day.”
“But the fund predated your involvement, didn’t it?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then why were you brought in?”
“I came in at the same time as Upton Fiduciary. I was asked to.”
“Why?”
Wright shrugged, and mopped. “I never knew,” he said. “I always supposed it was because the money in the fund began to take on significant proportions.”
“Which coincided, didn’t it, with the period when Raul Bashard began to make real money as a writer?”
“I guess that’s right.”
“But Raul was the one who brought you in, wasn’t he?”
“No,” Wright said. Then, “Not officially anyway. Officially, it was Upton.”
“But you suspected, at least, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But why?” the Counselor asked. “The contributions were made anonymously, I understand. If it was Upton, not Raul, who brought you in, how did you know?”
Sam Wright wasn’t the squirming type, but you could tell from his silence that the Counselor had maneuvered him into a corner.
“All right,” the Counselor said. “The Sow Fund existed, whatever Sow stands for, and through contributions and investments it was big enough to warrant bringing in a management firm. But why you? I assume it must have had to do with the beneficiaries, isn’t that right?”
“More or less.”
“With certifying the beneficiary, or beneficiaries?”
“Yes.”
“Was Raul a beneficiary? I mean, a potential beneficiary before he died?”
Wright hesitated. I remembered putting the same question to good old Pierce Upton III.
“There was a list of beneficiaries,” Wright said. “Or potential beneficiaries.”
“Which you had?” the Counselor asked.
“Yes.”
“Was Raul one of them?” Wright hesitated again. “Come on, Mr. Wright, you’re not under oath here.”
I saw Sam Wright glance at Cyn Morgan. I, too, looked at her, at her small and tired face. Now she did match her age, and I remembered suddenly her last words to me, that day outside her apartment, to the effect that she thought I’d find out who’d killed Bashard but she hoped I wouldn’t. And now I began to see why.
“Mr. Camelot,” Wright said stubbornly, “I’m prepared to give you the name of the surviving beneficiary, but nothing more. At least not without my attorney’s advice. Is that clear?”
The Counselor didn’t answer. He sat impassively, chin down in his listening pose.
“Viola Harmel,” Sam Wright said. Then: “Viola T. Harmel, to be precise.”
Goddamn! And, a moment later, double damn. Because the Counselor, reaching for a pipe and glancing at me, said gently: “Never mind, Sam. You don’t have to tell us who that is. We already know.”
CHAPTER
13
All right, I’d missed it. I’d missed it that day I sat at Bashard’s computer and first saw the names, and I’d missed it ever since. It had blown right past me.
I don’t know how many times I’d seen the names, thought them, written them down. Leo Mackes. Viola T. Harmel.
And Bud Fincher likewise, and Fincher’s people, and Squilletti, and God knows who else. All of us had missed it.
Including, I should add, the Counselor.
Maybe the Counselor said to Sam Wright, You don’t have to tell us who it is, we already know, like the poker player turning over the ace in the hole and reaching for the pot. But the truth was, as I found out, that the Counselor had missed it, too, had missed it right up till just before lunch that morning.
The truth, much as it pinches, is this: The person who figured it out was none other than the Counselor’s Wife.
