The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Mr. Auerbach continued: “A vast change is taking place in American society as we approach the quarter-mark of this century. The war and related industry have brought hundreds of thousands of colored citizens out of the rural South into our major cities in search of employment. Where this has been found, however, it has been at the lowest level of manual labor. Here in Chicago, thousands of decent, hardworking colored folk have come to find their hopes dashed. To find the bare, unheated shanty of Georgia and Alabama replaced by the bare, unheated, rat-infested tenement of the South Side. To find a white-dominated public school system that is overworked and uncaring. To find a judicial system that is suspicious and unfriendly, and is quick to blame the influx of Negroes for a rising crime rate. And to find an affluent white majority which prefers to look the other way and to leave the Negro to his plight.”

  Mr. Auerbach then proceeded to announce a three-point program which his Auerbach Fund will underwrite: A program to improve the quality of education in schools in Negro neighborhoods; a program to provide training in industry for Negro adults; and a program to provide better housing for colored people.

  The occasion for last night’s dinner was a meeting of the Rotary Clubs of Greater Illinois.

  In a hastily called press conference after his remarks, Mr. Auerbach described his newly created Fund as “unique, and uniquely needed.” His initial contribution, he revealed, will be $2,000,000.

  “Hans,” she said, “I want to give you the afternoon and evening off. You’ve been working very hard.” Working, she thought to herself, primarily on his muscle-building equipment.

  “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  “And before you come back tomorrow, pick up a few cans of tennis balls, will you?”

  The pale eyebrows on his normally blank, blond German face came together in a frown. He stood there, solidly and sullenly, the outline of his service revolver bulging beneath his jacket. “Sorry, Ma’am,” he said finally, “but Mr. Auerbach gave orders—no more tennis balls.”

  “Well, Mr. Auerbach is leaving for California tomorrow, and he’ll never know the difference. The children can’t very well play tennis without balls, and if he wants to teach them the value of money, let him pick some sensible way to do it.”

  “I don’t know, Ma’am—”

  She smiled her best smile at him. “You take care of the tennis balls, and I’ll take care of my husband. In the meantime, it’ll be our little secret. All right, Hans? Hans—I think of you as Hans for Handsome. This is for you to take your best girl out for a night on the town.” She reached for his hand and pressed a folded bill into it. “And for new tennis balls,” she said.

  One of the most popular men in Reno was a young fellow named Arthur Litton. Good-looking and glib and always well turned out, it was said that he was the young scion of some vaguely defined Eastern fortune. At Harold’s Club, the croupiers liked him because, when he won, he always tipped them generously. He had been known to win as much as forty thousand dollars during an evening at the tables, and he had also been known to lose as much. He accepted his losses and his winnings with equal, gentlemanly good sportsmanship and aplomb. He had, as the gamblers say, heart, and on his arm, most evenings, there was a good-looking young woman, for whom he always bought a tall stack of chips. Lately, Arthur Litton’s escort had been a pretty girl named Daisy Stevens. Daisy Stevens was then eighteen.

  Daisy Stevens’s story was, perhaps, a familiar one of the era when the whole world, it seemed, was determined to go off on a prolonged debauch, or toot, the minute the great guns in Europe ceased firing. The daughter of a Columbus, Ohio electrician, Daisy had been told in high school that she was pretty enough to be in movies. And pretty she was, with ash blond hair that she wore short and coiffed in a kind of helmet shape around her face, and a figure that lent itself to the fashion craze for rising hemlines. But she was not technically beautiful, with a nose that tipped up at the end and gave her a saucy, rather than a sultry look. During the war, when the motion picture companies began moving to Southern California, Daisy had followed them there, looking for work as an actress.

  Her success had been mixed—a couple of roles in low-budget films, some work as an “extra,” some modeling in fashion shows for Bullock’s and Robinson’s. To help her out, her parents sent her a small monthly check, convinced that at any moment Daisy would become a great star—she tended to exaggerate the importance of the few small parts in her letters home to them—and that their retirement worries would be ended forever. But Daisy herself was not stupid, and she knew that her acting career was turning out to be considerably less than meteoric. At the time that we meet her in Reno, she had just been dropped by her agent.

  Also, Daisy Stevens considered herself a good girl. She would not, as some of her sisters in Hollywood had done, accept money from men for her favors. On the other hand, she was not above, when someone like Arthur Litton came along, accepting little gifts and little trips, and when he had proposed an extended holiday in Reno, she had quickly agreed to go along. He had taken her to Magnin’s, bought her a few fashionable frocks, and they were off.

  Tonight had been a good night for Arthur. A fat stack of cash lay on the dresser in their suite at the Hotel Nevada, and Daisy, too, had been lucky with the chips he had given her. They had quit about one in the morning, gone back to the hotel, ordered champagne, and now, after a very happy bout of lovemaking, they lay together in the big bed where Daisy smoked a Murad cigarette.

  “You must be very rich, Arthur,” she said.

  “Well, I guess I’ve done all right.”

  “It must be wonderful to have all that money. Where is it from—your family?”

  “The company’s called Eaton and Cromwell. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  “Oh, my goodness yes. You own that?”

  “Used to. At least part of it. I sold out a couple of years ago. Now my brother-in-law, who owns the company—he’s really rich.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jacob Auerbach.”

  “The Jacob Auerbach?”

  “One and the same. He’s married to my sister Essie.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In Chicago.”

  Daisy Stevens twirled the end of her cigarette ash against the rim of the ashtray she had propped on her stomach, shaping the end of the ash carefully. “I’d love to meet Jacob Auerbach, Arthur,” she said idly. “I really would.”

  The burnished black face of the agent at the Eastern Airlines ticket counter is of a tone that might almost be described as blueberry, and with her high cheekbones, perfectly formed eyebrows, and full lips shining with blood-red lipstick, she has a Nefertiti beauty, and one senses that she knows it as her slender fingers, long nails painted the same blood-red, move rapidly about the keyboard of her computer console. Now she frowns slightly, says, “Excuse me,” and repeats some process of her keyboard ritual. She frowns again. Finally, she looks up and says, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Auerbach, but the computer declines your American Express card.” Her voice is low, cool and sympathetic, each syllable carefully correct.

  “I beg your pardon,” Joan says. “What do you mean?”

  “Has your card been lost or stolen recently?” She returns the green-and-white plastic card to Joan.

  “Certainly not.”

  “I’m getting a non-okay on this account.”

  “Look. Professionally, I’m known as Mrs. Joan Auerbach. In private life, I’m Mrs. Richard McAllister. Perhaps that’s the mixup.”

  “Well, for some reason American Express is declining this credit card.”

  “What do you mean ‘declining’?”

  “Will not accept—”

  “Ridiculous. Call American Express.”

  “Our computers are stocked with American Express data, Mrs. Auerbach.”

  “Do you mean Eastern Airlines won’t accept my credit card?”

  “It’s not Eastern, Mrs. Auerbach. It’s American Express which is declining.”<
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  “Well, obviously your computer isn’t working. Frank Borman is a personal friend of mine. Get him on the phone.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Auerbach. Perhaps you have another credit card. Visa or Mastercard?”

  “Well,” Joan says, fishing in her alligator bag, “I do think I have a Visa. But honestly, this is too annoying. This is the first time that this has ever happened. Here,” she says, producing the Visa card.

  “Ah,” the beautiful black woman says, smiling radiantly and showing perfect white teeth. “Thank you, that’s all I need.” Once more her long fingers dance over the keys of her machine, and Joan adjusts the collar of her black mink coat about her shoulders. She is wearing large, wrap-around sunglasses so as not to be recognized, and to avoid repetition of an unpleasant episode that occurred on her trip out of LaGuardia, when her cab driver kept studying her through his rearview mirror and insisting that she was Rose Kennedy. And as she waits, the black woman’s smile fades, and now her expression is one of utter sadness, as though she is about to break the news of a death of a close relative to a dear friend. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, “but Visa also declines.”

  “This is nonsense,” Joan says crossly. “It’s important that I get to Miami this afternoon. Get me Mr. Borman.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Auerbach—”

  “Let me speak to your supervisor.”

  “I am a supervisor of ticket sales, Mrs. Auerbach.”

  From behind her, Joan hears a man with an unpleasant voice mutter something about having a plane to catch and, behind him, another young man seizes his briefcase and moves to the end of another line.

  “This is preposterous. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Perhaps cash, Mrs. Auerbach?” the black woman suggests.

  “Oh, very well,” Joan says, and reaches in her bag again, extracting her checkbook.

  “Ah, I’m sorry,” the girl says, holding up her hand, her expression sad again. “But I can’t accept a personal check, Mrs. Auerbach.”

  “What do you mean?” Joan cries. “Do you realize who I am?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Auerbach, it’s company policy. Not without some form of credit verification.”

  “I am Joan Auerbach, president and publisher of the New York Express.” Behind her, she hears the unpleasant-voiced man say distinctly, “Fuck this shit,” and he too moves to another line.

  “I could make you and your airline look very foolish in my newspaper.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Auerbach. It’s not me, it’s company policy. All the carriers have the same policy, I’m afraid. Not without credit verification. Perhaps—”

  “I’m astonished at you. You seem totally unaware of who I am.”

  “Can you pay for this ticket in cash, Mrs. Auerbach?”

  “Well, how much is it? I rarely carry cash.”

  “Did you still wish to travel first class?”

  “How much is whatchamacallit—economy?”

  “The round trip coach fare is two hundred and seventy dollars.”

  In her open bag, Joan finds her wallet, and produces three hundred-dollar bills. “Well, you and your airline are very fortunate,” she says. “I don’t usually carry this much cash.”

  “Ah,” the black woman says, and the extraordinary smile reappears. She accepts the cash, and begins again the finger-work at her machine that will produce the ticket.

  “And I must say this is all very inconvenient,” Joan says. “This will leave me very short of cash until I can get to a bank.”

  The relentless smile continues as the crimson fingertips glide across the keyboard as a weaver might move a shuttle across a loom.

  “I’m astonished that Eastern Airlines would question my credit. My credit is good everywhere. I can show you Saks, Bergdorf’s, Bonwit’s—”

  “Eastern Airlines does not accept credit cards from department stores, Mrs. Auerbach. Nor do any of the other carriers.”

  “And I’m astonished that you don’t know who I am. Have you ever heard of my father, the late Jacob Auerbach? He did a great deal for your people, you may recall.”

  The smile is unchanging. “I can give you a center seat in the nonsmoking section of the aircraft.”

  “I prefer smoking, please, and on the aisle.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Auerbach, but I only show one seat remaining, a center seat, in the nonsmoking section of the cabin.”

  “This is absolutely preposterous,” Joan says.

  “Perhaps, as you board your aircraft, if you speak to one of the flight attendants, he or she may be able to change your seat assignment.”

  “Mr. Borman is definitely going to hear about this!”

  Still smiling, the young woman hands Joan a ticket envelope and three ten-dollar bills. “Flight number two-seven-five to Miami will be departing from gate thirty-three at four twenty-five. Please be in the gate area at least fifteen minutes before departure time. Thank you for choosing Eastern, and have a nice day.”

  Outside, the March night is very cold, so cold that icy patterns have formed on the windowpanes of Essie’s apartment on Park Avenue, but Yoki has drawn the heavy drapes snugly closed, and built a fire in the library fireplace, where the Chandor portrait of Jacob Auerbach stares sternly down at Essie and Charles Wilmont. Charles rises to refill their glasses from the decanter at the bar.

  “I hope you’re right,” Essie says.

  “I’m sure I am. I trust Abe.”

  “I’ve never trusted him!”

  “It’s an honor-among-thieves thing with him, Essie. He made a deal with you years ago. It may have been a dishonorable deal, but it was a deal, and he’ll have the honor to stick to it.”

  “But Abe’s an old man now, Charles. Suppose he gets weak in the knees? The way I sometimes get weak in the knees these days.”

  He hands her her glass. “It used to be me who got weak in the knees—remember?”

  “But never for long,” she says.

  “You helped me then.”

  “Ah.…”

  A distant siren from a police car or an ambulance whines from the street below. Some day soon, Essie thinks, an ambulance will come whining through the night for her. The Life Squad. It is a term that has come into use rather recently, it seems, and Essie dislikes it very much. It has a military ring, it sounds obscene. It shouldn’t require a squad to save a life. A life isn’t worth a squad in the end. It reminds her of a Riot Squad, soldiers with nightsticks and teargas come to put down a violent rebellion. A life, at the end, shouldn’t be defended with nightsticks and bombs. “It isn’t so much me,” she says. “I don’t care—at this point—how I get judged. That really doesn’t matter. But it’s the other children. And the grandchildren. Young Josh. And Linda. I don’t want to see them hurt. Difficult as some of them may be, I just don’t want to see them hurt.”

  “Essie, I assure you Abe will tell Joan nothing—if, in fact, he’ll even see her. She’s on a wild-goose chase. All the secrets are safe.”

  “Again, I hope you’re right.” A silence. Then she says, “Two. Two of them. Joan and Abe. It takes two people to make trouble. One person can’t make trouble by himself. It was something Jake used to say.”

  “Look,” Charles says, “I’ve dealt with Abe before. Do you want me to try to deal with him now? Call him? I will, if you want me to.”

  Essie consults her watch. “It’s late now. I don’t think we should call him this late at night. He’ll think we’ve panicked. Never let them know you’re running scared. ‘If they smell your fear, they’ll attack, just like a dog.’” She looks up at the portrait. “Another great piece of wisdom from the late, great Jacob Auerbach. Maybe call him—very casually—in the morning.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She rises, a little stiffly, from her chair, drink in hand and goes to the window and parts the curtains. Outside, a flurry of tiny snowflakes blows in the wind. Der shtrom fun menshenz maysim bayt zikh finer.…

  “Charles,” she says
, “it’s horrid out. Why don’t you spend the night here? Will you spend the night with me?”

  “Of course,” he says.

  The affair with Daisy Stevens ended, as these things usually did for the newly styled Arthur Litton, when he gave her a return ticket to Los Angeles, and announced that he would be staying on in Reno for an indefinite period. Daisy converted her ticket to a ticket to Chicago, on the theory that, if nothing worked out there, she would only be a short hop from Columbus, and home. On the train, she read with interest of Jacob Auerbach’s benefactions.

  “There’s a Miss Stevens on the telephone,” Jake’s secretary said to him.

  “Miss Stevens? Who is she?”

  “She says she’s a friend of your brother-in-law’s.”

  Jake hesitated. “Very well. I’ll talk to her,” he said. He picked up the phone and answered it with a guarded “Yes?”

  “Oh, Mr. Auerbach,” Daisy said in her brightest voice. “How nice to talk to you. I’m a friend of your brother-in-law, Arthur Litton, and he asked me to call you when I got to town.”

  “My brother-in-law is not named Arthur Litton,” he said.

  She laughed. “He is now,” she said. “He changed it. He told me you’d know him as Abe Litsky.”

  “What does he want? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  Daisy had not been prepared for this sort of question, and yet she was somehow not surprised by it, and knew intuitively how to answer it. “I must see you,” she said.

  “Very well,” he said, and looked at his watch. “Come to my office at three o’clock.”

  At three o’clock, Daisy Stevens was in the great philanthropist’s office, looking her best. He rose to greet her, but did not immediately ask her to sit down, nor did he offer her his hand.

  “Tell me what this is all about,” he said. “What’s he up to now?”

  “It’s not that he’s in trouble—yet,” she said carefully. “It’s just that I’m afraid that he will be before long.”

  “What about?”

  “He’s become a very heavy gambler. When I left him, he was in Reno. Reno is not very nice to people who don’t pay their gambling debts. There could be trouble—with the authorities.”