Party Of The Year

by Inconnu(e)

  “I read,” said Cassidy. Almost impossible to avoid reading. Even in the Times.

  “They killed him after we paid the ransom. Seven and a half million dollars. They’re killing my friends in Italy—one by one—or kidnapping them. Now do you understand?”

  “No,” said Cassidy bluntly. “You’re not in Italy now. This is New York. We’ve had none of that here.”

  “Well, that is the situation, Professor.” Clipping the words off and spitting them at him like bullets. The blue eyes glittered like sapphires, and the Principessa got much older, hard as cement: “I don’t propose to waste away with worry while the child is at school. That’s why you’re here, Professor, why I summoned you above all others. I wanted not only an instructor but a protector. You had special qualifications the others didn’t have. Your work in the CIA . . . ”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I have sources of information.” The monied always had sources of information. That’s why they’re monied.

  Cassidy bared his teeth: “You’re quite rich enough to hire two people, Principessa—one to instruct, one to protect. What you need is some lout like that eight-foot doorman to protect. And a dormouse to instruct.”

  The Principessa put down the scissors and faced him, arms across her chest, imperious as a Chinese empress. “I wish you’d stop telling me what I need and what I don’t need. I want one man for both jobs because it’s going to be hard enough for Lucia to accept even one man. She’s a willful, stubborn, dreamy child—much like her father. She would not abide either a dormouse or an eight-foot lout. The big question is—will she like you?”

  Cassidy rubbed his nose and shifted his tactics. Quite unexpectedly the job was inviting. He wanted it badly. Neither twelve-year-old girls nor protection were his specialties, but the combination of the two things he found appealing. He turned on all his Irish charm and swept the Principessa a low bow like Douglas Fairbanks in The Three Musketeers—all gallantry and grace. “Well, there’s only one way to find out, Madame. Let’s go ask the young lady.”

  • 2 •

  After the brilliant sunshine of the conservatory, the nursery was dark and cheerless, its curtains drawn tight. The only light came from a bedside lamp which cast most of the room into deep shadow.

  “Ecce,” hissed the Principessa, suddenly very European. She drew the curtains, letting in the north light. A big room with wallpaper of butterflies and birds and trees in soft colors. In that north light they’d never see the sunshine, Cassidy noted.

  Lucia sat cross-legged on the floor before a huge replica of a medieval castle, moat, turrets, drawbridge, and all. In her right hand the child held a belted knight in armor with the shield of de Lessey, white plumes surrounding a boar’s head. The coat of arms Cassidy knew well.

  “Why is this room always so gloomy?” cried the Principessa.

  “We’re playing nighttime, Mama.”

  Lucia was dark-haired, unsmiling, plain, and withdrawn. Thin as a willow.

  “Titi, playing nighttime, you must not let her do it.”

  “Sorr-ee, Principessa.”

  The Nanny was crouched before the castle on all fours like a dog. She was dark complected and wore a bright red scarf on her head, peasant style, and the rest of her was encased in jeans and a sweater. Cassidy had expected a proper English nanny—tweeds, middle-aged, thin-lipped disapproval—like the other rich kids. This one looked no more than eighteen. Untamed as a beast of the forest. She sounded not at all sorr-ee. The two of them, Cassidy guessed, in league against the Principessa.

  “Lucia, this is Professor Cassidy. I’m trying to persuade him to be your tutor.”

  That was stretching the facts a bit. Never mind. Cassidy’s eyes were on the girl.

  A look of anger and stubborn pride crossed the plain face and disappeared into one of resignation. The girl scrambled to her feet and bobbed a curtsey—swift, practiced, totally unself-conscious, as European children do. Eyes on the floor, avoiding his. This wasn’t going to be easy, thought Cassidy.

  “How old are you, Lucia?” he asked, feeling like something out of Charles Dickens.

  “Twelve, sir.”

  Lolita’s age. Nothing but trouble.

  “The age of awakening,” he said mellifluously. (Playing Charles Laughton now.)

  “Lucia awakened the day she was born,” commented her mother dryly. “She’s her father’s child. Every inch.” the Principessa plucked the belted knight from the girl’s hand. “As I told you, medieval literature is one subject she doesn’t need. Her head is already too full of it. You must teach her to live in the present like the rest of us.” The Principessa sounded defiant as if she found the present not much to her liking either.

  She handed the belted knight to Cassidy peremptorily. “Titi, come along. We’ll leave them alone.”

  The girl didn’t like the command. She rose from all fours reluctantly, and skulked out, glowering.

  The door closed behind the Principessa and Nanny, leaving Cassidy and the girl facing one another.

  Not a situation of his choosing.

  The girl stood there, still as a mountain lake and as deep. What do I know of twelve-year-old girls, Cassidy was thinking. Nothing. He was dismayed at his nervousness and even more at her lack of it. He was out of his area.

  “How many languages do you speak, Lucia?”

  “Four.” Negligently.

  “English and Italian and what else?”

  “French and German.”

  Doesn’t everyone? Cassidy was losing this contest.

  “No Spanish?”

  “Oh, Spanish.” Scornfully. “I can get along in Spanish.”

  Spanish was not a language to be taken seriously. Two falls to nothing, Cassidy was thinking.

  “Latin?”

  “I hate Latin.”

  Aha, thought Cassidy, pinning her. “You will never truly understand this knight”—holding up the lead soldier—”without some Latin in your little skull because he is a true descendant of the Roman Empire—and so are you with that Latin nose and Mediterranean eye.” Then, bellicose. “Not me. We Celts have stayed out of reach of the Romans to this very day. We are poets first and bridge builders second.” If at all. Had any Irish bridge ever withstood the first snowfall?

  She had nothing to say to that but the tilt of her head suggested defiance. I displease her, he thought. Good. He took pleasure in her displeasure like the connoisseur that he was. If she’d been all dimples he’d have been bored.

  He was on his knees now next to the castle. “Where did you get this thing?”

  “Mama bought it. At F.A.O. Schwarz.”

  So. Mama disapproved the Middle Ages but bought her child medieval fortresses at F.A.O. Schwarz.

  “It’s not very good, you know,” said Cassidy, trying her out. “The curtain walls are too thin and the bailey is much too low. The Saracens would overrun such a thing in half an hour.”

  She wasn’t buying it. “You’re too old to be my tutor,” she said, plunging it into his heart like a stiletto, the face rigid with dislike.

  Cassidy rose from his knees, awkward as a camel, and bent a wintry smile on the mutinous child. “How many tutors have there been, miss?”

  “I’m not a miss. I’m a contessa.”

  Cassidy’s wintry smile grew broader: “How many?”

  She sniffed an aristocratic sniff at that and set her jaw.

  “They all left,” said Cassidy, “because they wouldn’t put up with you, eh?” He was hunching into his worn black coat now, using it as a prop to cover his exit.

  “Haven’t you got a nicer coat than that?” she asked.

  “That’s an impertinent question, miss.”

  “I’m not a miss. I’m a contessa.”

  The Principessa was in the plant room, watering the ferns. “I’ll take the job,” said Cassidy.

  “I haven’t offered it yet.”

  “You will,” said Cassidy. “Not many others will put up with her. I�
�ll want two thousand a month—one thousand as instructor, one thousand as protector.”

  “Fifteen hundred for both,” said the Principessa, not even looking up from her plant. “And room and board. You’ll have to live here, you know.”

  “I’ll want fifteen hundred in advance, and tomorrow is the earliest I can move.” He bowed, heavy hearted. Why was it every time he landed a job he wanted to run? At his age he hadn’t the breath left to run. “You didn’t tell me the child was a contessa, Madame. That makes it harder to civilize her.”

  “Oh,” said the Principessa. “Every other child in Italy is a contessa. Lucia has other liabilities—much worse than that.”

  “Like what?” The Principessa eyed him malevolently: “She’s rich. Filthy rich.”

  • 3 •

  Cassidy took the Lexington Avenue subway at Eighty-sixth, huddling in his black coat, eyeing the svelte black girls lustfully. These last ten years the blacks had got so elegant—and so visible—where once their complaint had been invisibility. Now it was the rich who craved invisibility to keep from being kidnapped or murdered. Visibility had changed hands.

  I am a discordant note in that household, thought Cassidy bleakly. Why me? “I have sources.” Alison? Alison had thrown him bones in the past not altogether out of fondness. Alison’s moves were always dictated by something a little more self-serving than affection. Wanted to keep Cassidy occupied, probably. Prevent him from getting into mischief. Like writing books about the CIA, which everyone else was doing.

  At Times Square, Cassidy slipped a dime in the pay phone and called Robins in the Times library. “I’m a block away. Can I come up?”

  A hesitation. “We’re pretty full, Horatio. How long will it take?”

  “di Castiglione. The whole family.”

  “Jesus, Horatio! The murder alone is four folders thick.”

  “I’ll be quick,” said Cassidy and hung up immediately so Robins wouldn’t have a chance to say no. The CIA was no longer popular in newspaper offices. Once they’d had the run of the place from the publisher right down to the office boys. Not any more. He wasn’t even in the Company now, which made him less welcome.

  Robins had the di Castiglione files clutched in his arms when Cassidy walked into the Times library. A little ferret of a man who’d covered City Hall until an ulcer forced him into desk work.

  “Why do you want to rake up the di Castiglione thing?” said Robins, the ferret eyes gleaming with pure curiosity, strong as whiskey.

  “That is classified information,” said Cassidy.

  “A crock of shit. You’re not with the outfit any more.”

  “I’ve been hired as nursemaid,” cried Cassidy harshly. “The little di Castiglione girl. Age twelve.”

  “Jesus,” said Robins, his voice full of pity. He handed over the thick folders. “Take your time.”

  Cassidy took four hours, poring over each clipping, taking no notes, arranging the thing in his head. He lingered longest over the Principessa’s clippings. Schoon was her maiden name. One of the old Dutch families. Elsa Schoon. Brearley School, Wellesley, cotillions, Southampton. All the usual upper class watering holes. Later a working girl. Was the family down on its luck? The Schoons hadn’t been heard from in years, though they’d once been rich, powerful, and very social.

  The marriages had been a string of disasters. First Horace P. Loring IV, polo player and drunk. Two car crashes, three drunken brawls, had made the papers which meant there had been lots of ones that hadn’t. Eight years married to Loring. No children. Then Gregory Forge, cowboy star. Four years for that marriage, which was probably two more years than it had really worked. No children.

  Finally the Prince di Castiglione, one of the great names. Rich, too. Why? The Italian aristocracy didn’t marry Americans unless they were broke. The Prince was as rich as they come, and Cassidy doubted Elsa Schoon had any money at all. Perhaps she was a great lay. No. Italian aristocrats didn’t marry the great lays. Wives were for breeding purposes.

  There was no mention of Lucia in the clippings until the kidnapping and murder, after which her name and photograph made the papers often. Lucia, head lowered, ducking out of her Rolls-Royce (bullet proof) and into her palazzo in Rome. Lucia running the gauntlet of press photographers to get to school—until she’d been taken out of school. Lucia arriving in New York—always head down, face averted.

  Cassidy went over the kidnapping and murder, clipping by clipping, separating the crap from the real with experienced skill. A vicious killing never explained, though many had tried. The Red Wind had wanted publicity, which it had got. It had wanted money, which it also got. Why kill the Prince, casting an unpopular playboy into the role of martyr? It didn’t make sense.

  Many photographs of the Prince. A beautiful Italian. No other word for it. He looked, in fact, like some of those paintings of Italian landed aristocracy in the di Castiglione hall. A man with a scornful eye and sensual lip, over all the physiognomy a sort of imperious sadness. Just like the Donatello David. What’s left? Is this all there is? Or perhaps I’m reading a little more into the Prince than is there, Cassidy thought. The Prince was not generally admired. At Oxford, he’d played with the richest and most useless English. In Rome he’d led La Dolce Vita conspicuously and wastefully. Finally he’d been kidnapped and killed. Not much to admire there but apparently some had. His parties and presence were legendary and had been sorely missed.

  Cassidy bundled up the clips and took them back to Robins. “Let me do something for you some time,” he said with his expansive smile. (Because who knows when he’d need Robins again?)

  “Yeah,” said Robins skeptically. “Get me an invitation to one of the Principessa’s parties.”

  “Parties?” said Cassidy. “Does the Principessa have parties?”

  “The press is not invited. Not even the Times.”

  Cassidy went up the backstairs in order to avoid the dragonfly who guarded the editorial offices at the front. The foreign desk was behind a glass screen, sheltering the deep thinkers there from the more ordinary scribblers who covered ship sinkings and horticultural shows. Feinberg was editing a wire story when Cassidy slipped into the seat next to him.

  “Cassidy,” said Cassidy mellifluously, as if announcing the entrance of the Pope.

  Feinberg, an orotund intellectual, with gold-rimmed glasses that emphasized the enormous intelligence behind his eyes, looked at Cassidy with total absence of welcome.

  “We met in Beirut in 1954,” said Cassidy, overflowing with Irish bonhomie. “At the Ambassador’s cocktail party for Nehru. An affair brimful of explosive implications which you wrote about with such prescience and self-confidence.”

  Feinberg was not amused. “Where did you come from just now? Through the roof?”

  “The floor. You don’t remember?”

  “My God, a cocktail party over twenty years ago. Oh, wait. Yes! You were . . . cultural attaché or some such malarkey which was just a cover for . . .

  “I’m not with that group any more,” said Cassidy, his arm describing an arabesque in the air, wiping out the CIA altogether. “My role in life has seriously diminished since those days. You might say I’m operating on a more human scale. To put it in a nutshell . . .” Cassidy scratched his head and made a clown face and shrugged, all at once. (Only Jack Lemmon could get away with all those gestures at the same time.) “I’m running security for a certain Contessa di Castiglione who—I think—you once knew.”

  “Never laid eyes on her. I knew her mother and father.”

  “I need information. You covered the kidnapping.”

  “It’s all in the clips,” Feinberg sat erect in his creaky swivel chair impatiently.

  “There were a lot of rumors that didn’t make the papers.”

  “Oh rumors,” said Feinberg. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them on his shirt ends. “If you wanted all the rumors about Nicky and Elsa di Castiglione you’d be here a week—and I haven’t time. The scandal
s about those two—sexual, financial, social—ran the gamut. Much of it crap. Some people even said he arranged his own kidnapping and it went wrong and he got himself killed by accident. Wild stuff like that.”

  “You covered the kidnapping and murder. What did you think about those rumors?”

  “Look,” said Feinberg impatiently, “you were in the information business yourself. You know rumors. They’re never all wrong or all right. The di Castigliones were rich and glamorous and beautiful. Sexually they were both swingers. Stories grew like weeds even before the kidnapping.”

  “You knew them well.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I went to their parties—but in those days that wasn’t hard. Everyone went to their parties. You ran into them at other parties, too, and they glanced off you like—sunshine. They were a dazzling pair, beautiful and rich and witty and bright, though, God knows, not very useful.”

  Feinberg rubbed his nearsighted eyes, remembering: “He was a physical fitness freak. Did karate and things like that. He could throw you on your back with a twist of his wrist. That kind of thing. Did it to me once.”

  Cassidy bored in here: “There was rumors the Mafia wound up with the kidnap money. Took it away from the Red Wind.”

  “Rumors,” said Feinberg dismissing it. “I even heard the opposite—that the Mafia kidnapped the Prince and the Red Wind stole the money from them. In Rome you can hear anything.”

  “Do you see the Principessa now?”

  Feinberg shook his head: “She won’t talk to newspapermen any more. She blames us for the whole thing, as if it was our fault they were so conspicuous. I haven’t laid eyes on Elsa di Castiglione for six years.”

  Cassidy leaned forward diffidently: “One last question. Did you like him—the Prince?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Feinberg smiling. “Everyone liked him. He was thoroughly reprehensible and thoroughly likable.”

  “Thanks,” said Cassidy and rose abruptly.