Party Of The Year

by Inconnu(e)

  Hell and damnation! (Not only strong words for Cassidy but altogether ridiculous since he believed in neither.)

  He took off his robe.

  I am only human, he said. I have been weakened in my resolve by circumstances beyond my control, Your Honor (not believing in God he had to set the scene in a sort of mythical higher court in Upper Ruritania). I plead guilty with extenuation.

  He took off his pajamas, first top, then the bottom, continuing his defense to the Magistrate. It is the last night, and there is much to discuss. Much misunderstanding to be cleared up, Your Honor.

  In short, it wasn’t sex exactly. Or anyway, not primarily. It was to be a meeting of minds, not bodies. If bodies got mixed in to this encounter it was only parenthetically, ex parte nolte, summa extenuensis, if you see what I mean, Your Honor.

  Stark naked, he slipped into bed with her.

  She awoke slowly, painfully, bringing herself out of the depths of sleep like returning from the nether world of the dead—an interminable process during which Cassidy was impaled on the knowledge of his own perfidy.

  “Professor,” she said, the voice unsurprised, languorous with sleep.

  “How would you know,” asked Cassidy, surprised and pleased, “among all the naked bodies of your experience that this one was mine?”

  The bed shook with her laughter, soft as feathers: “Yours has an odor of Irish sanctity about it, Professor, quite unmistakable. As a lover, you’re an anachronism, Cassidy, altogether in the wrong century.” With a touch of sadness. “And the wrong time. You should have come into my life long ago.”

  “How many of your lovers have you used that line on, Madame?”

  “I think only six,” she said. “Shall we fuck, Professor?”

  “Let’s talk. We can do that other thing later.” She was slipping out of her silk nightgown: “The greater urgencies come first in an ordered world, Professor.”

  Afterward, she fell instantly asleep, precluding talk.

  Cassidy lay awake, caressing her nakedness absently! “I wanted to talk about your loyalties and motivations in this affair, Elsa, which remain shrouded in mystery. Your father died leaving you the legacy of aristocracy and no money. Therefore the marriage to a drunken moneybags of good family was fairly comprehensible Even the marriage to a cowboy movie star who had a few dollars and great sex appeal makes sense. But why Nicki? Everyone thought you married for the title, but I think it was some other more basic urge.”

  These musings in the stillness of the night were interrupted by a soft click followed by a sssshing noise—like velvet on velvet. C:assidy snapped on the bedside light just quickly enough to catch the sight of the bit of ceiling directly over the Principessa’s bed, which was rimmed with ornamental plaster in the shape of flowers and leaves, sliding back into place. Just for a moment, he looked directly into the blackness of a hole and saw the lens of a camera. Then the bit of ceiling settled into place and all was still.

  Cassidy slithered out of the bed, as if stung by a rattlesnake. He groped his way into his pajamas, eyes thunderous. Cameras, he was thinking, can operate in almost total darkness now and it was not totally dark in the room. Manhattan’s never-ending street lights cast a faint glow over everything. Plenty of light for hypersensitive cameras, both moving and still.

  Cassidy snapped out the bedside lamp and made his way back to his room, his mind in a torrent.

  • 27 •

  The crowd stretched clear around the block from Fifth to Madison down both side streets. Thousands of the curious stood ant-like under the floodlights put there at the insistence of the police over the loud objections both of Cassidy and the Principessa.

  “Nothing like a little light to scare away the hoods,” said Inspector Kilpatrick heartily, six foot four inches of Irish cop. (Every inch brainless, said Cassidy.)

  The police had penned the crowd against barriers across the streets from the Windletop, pushing the Fifth Avenue onlookers almost into Central Park. They stood in the cold air, rows of silent eyeballs, drinking it all in.

  “It’s not like it was movie stars,” said Inspector Kilpatrick jovially. “Not even one of them rock stars. Just a bunch of furriners. What the devil are they staring at?”

  “Floodlights,” said Cassidy. “Turn out the lights, and they’ll all go home. And you could go home, too, Inspector.” The two men stood in the center of an empty Fifth Avenue just to the left of the canopy under which the guests got out of their cars.

  “You can’t combat terrorists if you can’t see ’em,” said the Inspector, chuckling at his own cleverness.

  “Have you any backup, Inspector?” asked Cassidy.

  “Forty of the finest,” said the Inspector. “Enough firepower here to quell the Middle East.”

  A comedian, thought Cassidy. Another limousine was pulling up to the canopy. Out stepped Feinberg, and then Jane Atchison, dressed to the vines in red velvet and ermine.

  “Don’t shoot any innocent bystanders, Inspector,” said Cassidy, “unless you’re quite sure they’re white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” He stepped quickly to the sidewalk and slipped his arm in Feinberg’s. “This way.”

  Next to the elevator stood Phoebe Cass, her welcoming smile thin and strained. At sight of Feinberg and Atchison, neither of whom she expected, the smile sagged.

  “Security,” muttered Cassidy into Phoebe Cass’s ear. Aloud he sang out: “You look like a new rose in the mornin’ light, my dear.” Phoebe Cass blushed scarlet.

  The elevator door closed behind them, and they started up, Cassidy shaking his head at Feinberg and Atchison to keep them buttoned up in the presence of the elevator operator.

  Conversationally, he said: “Not many here yet. There’s dinner parties all over Manhattan. They’ll be converging here in about half an hour. The Principessa is still presiding over her own dinner party in her own apartment.”

  The three of them stepped out on the landing of the Windletop Club. Robert stood there with his list and his frozen smile.

  “Security,” barked Cassidy.

  Robert was not so easily intimidated as Phoebe Cass. “I have not been told about two more . . .”

  Cassidy cut him off sharply: “Robert, the world is full of things you have not been told about. You’d better get cracking if you’re ever to catch up with the rest of us.” He pushed Feinberg and Atchison ahead of him into the gloom of the restaurant.

  “Oh!” gasped Jane Atchison. “It’s beautiful!” She was a thin bony blonde, not very intelligent but pushy and ambitious, which counted for more than brains in society journalism.

  “No expense has been spared,” said Cassidy.

  The roof top restaurant was candlelit like the eighteenth century, every inch of it. Three great chandeliers from the di Castiglione collection had been hung from the ceiling in place of the usual electricity. The tables—all but one empty—were set in pink damask with oceans of silver bearing the di Castiglione crest in gold. Each table carried a crystal vase with fresh flowers and blazed with candlelight from silver candelabra all carved by Fironi in the seventeenth century expressly for the di Castigliones.

  Set against the walls farthest from the entrance lobby was a vast refectory table made for a mountaintop monastery in Tuscany in the twelfth century, lit by enormous, many-armed, Meissen candelabra and bearing the lobsters, the caviar, the truffled eggs in glaciers of cracked ice—presided over by the immense swan carved out of pâté de foie gras by Angeli.

  “Christ,” said Feinberg, eyes glittering. “I’d forgotten all about the swan. Nicki and Elsa had that swan at all their parties.”

  “The ship is sinking with all guns firing,” said Cassidy.

  On the dance floor, a single couple was doing the Gargle—badly. “John Spaulding,” announced Jane Atchison. “He always arrives first.”

  “A bore,” said Cassidy. “I speak from hearsay.”

  “Not in bed,” said Jane Atchison. “I speak also from hearsay.”

  Well back from
the dance floor, at the only occupied table, sat an ancient couple, skins like parchment in the candlelight, their bodies bolt upright, their ancient lineaments stiff with disapproval—not only of this scene but of everything in the modern world—disapproval that looked as if it had been imprinted on their faces and passed on down the centuries like hemophilia.

  “Prince and Princess di Rapallo,” said Jane Atchison, delighted with her recognition.

  “They flew all the way from Venice for this party,” said Cassidy, “and they’re hating it.”

  “All the old Venetian aristocracy look that way,” said Jane Atchison. “They’ve hated everything that’s happened since 1524.”

  The scene was immensely ominous, Cassidy was thinking. The single couple dancing frantically and badly, a modern dance they didn’t understand, a lone couple watching and hating. All around them a sea of empty tables, candies flickering and smoking. Over the stereo system the Renegades screeched. The Principessa might have hired the Renegades to shriek the song out in person, but this year it was more chic to play the records. Next year, who knows? Maybe there wouldn’t be a next year.

  “Fellini would love the scene,” murmured Feinberg, eyes glittering behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. “Especially the faces on that Venetian couple. He’d zero in on that pâté swan with his camera while that awful music played.”

  “What’s so awful about that music?” complained Jane Atchison. “I think the Renegades are absolutely delightful.”

  “The difference in our generations, my dear,” said Feinberg.

  Cassidy propelled them through the gloom to the security table, which was pushed against the wall next to the entrance from the kitchen, well back in the darkness. Fingertips sat there drinking a glass of water, his brown eyes mournful. “Fingertips,” introduced Cassidy. “Atchison and Feinberg.” Apologetically, he added. “The New York Times deserves better, Alvin, but all those tables out there bear place cards at every seat, and your name is not among them. You can watch the action from here without being seen—at least I hope so.”

  “If we are seen . . . ?”

  “Blame it all on Cassidy. I’ll leave you now.”

  Dinner was over, and the dinner guests were scattered across the vast sitting room—first time Cassidy had ever seen the room decently used. He stood in the hall behind the ebony screen of carved acanthus leaves which had taken a Cambodian monk twenty years to complete—the spaces between the leaves providing excellent eyeholes to count the house.

  The Principessa was standing, slim and straight, in the center of the room, listening to Jeremy Wild, who wore a satyr’s smile while holding forth on Crispin’s latest movie: “It’s quite clear he thinks he’s Chekhov. It’s also quite clear he isn’t.”

  The Principessa laughed her easy enchanting hostess laugh, eyes never leaving those of the celebrated writer. She was a marvelous listener, absorbing the words with her whole body, appreciating the wit, the thought, the syntax, as if savoring a meal. She was dressed in a simple sheath of sapphire blue velvet with a white lace collar that covered the neck (very important, covering the neck at her age) and long bouffant sleeves which muted the aging arms, the gown displaying to fullest advantage the slender body and radiant face.

  Under the radiance the face looked a little tired.

  Lounging like a question mark on the onyx loveseat with its sphinx-faced ends was the Earl of Canossa, who was twenty-six and enjoyed—so they said—both sexes. He was deep in talk with Jessica de Angelis, the Flying Duchess, who was slim and restless as a racehorse, eyes darting about the room as if worrying she was missing something somewhere, not listening at all. With Gogo Canossa it hardly mattered. He was listening to himself talk, admiring the flow of his own discourse with great self-appreciation, a form of masturbation for which he was famous.

  Standing next to the window was a fleshy, white-haired man with eyes that had seen everything and condoned everything, a Middle European face, exquisitely accommodating. George Luvacs, once Prince Luvacs, had adjusted with Middle European agility to his change of circumstances. He’d aged since their last meeting, thought Cassidy, but then perpetual accommodation must be a tough life. He was listening to Bibi Pilenski with his air of tired languor. She was talking about the old days in Poland with intense regret. “I miss the shooting. So simple, so natural! Shooting in the old forests. Now they raise the bird for slaughter! So positively indecent!”

  “Youth is what you’re missing, Bibi,” said George Luvacs.

  “So painful my youth, so boring my middle age. Life is a disappointment, George.”

  “You must lower your expectations, Bibi. That’s the latest American craze—lowered expectations. They play it like parchesi.”

  Cassidy walked to the Principessa, a long walk, her cool glance on him all the way. “Ten thirty, Principessa,” he said.

  “Oh . . . yes,” she said with an abstracted smile. She plucked at Cassidy’s sleeve and led him a little way from Jeremy Wild, the face not changing expression by so much as a hair. Sotto voce, she said: “Trouble! Titi’s disappeared! Lucia’s in hysterics!” Cassidy was struck foremost not by the bleak facts but by the total control of the Principessa in giving them to him.

  “Do something!” commanded the Principessa quietly.

  “Immediately, Madame,” said Cassidy—and made his exit, thinking: It’s started. Behind him he could hear her rounding up the others in her hostess voice, charming them with her beauty and brains,.grace under pressure they knew nothing about.

  “I hate you!”

  It was worse than he imagined because it was unexpected.

  Lucia was in her blue ankle-length Heidi-like ballgown that ballooned around her like a picture out of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy story, her face contorted in the same expression Cassidy had seen there once before—when she’d beaten at her mother’s face with little fists.

  “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

  There was something very peculiar about this rage. As if it were an old rage that had lost some of its steam through repetition, a rehearsed rage that didn’t quite come off.

  “Where’s Titi?” asked Cassidy.

  Lucia dissolved into tears, her face crumpling, and this emotion, Cassidy felt, was genuine. “She’s gone!” A long woebegone wail, as if this was something beyond her understanding. Lucia knelt on the floor and buried her face in the Heidi-like blue dress, sobbing. Cassidy couldn’t resist. He leaned over the girl and caressed her arched back. She reacted like a scalded cat.

  “Don’t touch me, Lover Boy!”

  Lover Boy! Cassidy saw again in his mind’s eye the camera disappearing behind the moving ceiling.

  He straightened up, trying to think straight. You should never get emotionally involved. It fries the brains.

  Calmly, he asked: “When did you last see Titi? It’s important.”

  “Hours and hours ago!”

  A child’s hours could mean anything.

  “When exactly, Lucia?”

  “I don’t know . . . Maybe eight o’clock. I’ve been here alone for hours.”

  Cassidy looked at his watch. 10:35. Two hours and a half. The operation had begun at about the time he’d expected, but not in the way he’d expected. Certainly, not Titi’s disappearance. That was really throwing it right into his face, jeering . . .

  “How did she disappear exactly?”

  Lucia’s voice was tear-drenched: “She went to the laundry room to do her stockings. She never came back. She’s never coming back! Not ever!”

  “Well,” said Cassidy, “I think you’ve outgrown your pet mouse. Get off the floor, Lucia. It’s time to go to the party.”

  “I don’t want to go to the party!”

  Cassidy knew her better than that. She did want to go to the party. She wanted very badly to go to the party. She wanted to be urged. That was what she wanted. Then she would say no and be stubborn. Cassidy didn’t have time for these games. Not with the operation already underway.
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  “All right,” said Cassidy. “We won’t go to the party. I’ll stay with you.”

  A gamble.

  “I don’t want to stay here alone with you, Lover Boy,” snarled Lucia.

  “It’s either that or go to the party. I can’t leave you here alone.”

  That settled it. Lucia got off the floor and removed herself to the bathroom to repair her face.

  Where in hell was Titi? She couldn’t have left the building. Or could she? Cassidy pulled the Radox from his inner breast pocket and pushed the Number 3 button. The Gypper came on immediately. “Yeah, man,” said the Gypper which was as close to radio discipline as you could get the Gypper. Cassidy had positioned him in the lower lobby just inside the entrance. “Gypper, has Titi left the building?”

  “No boss. None of our group has gone out this door.”

  “Okay, Gypper, listen, it’s started. Come up to the restaurant in five minutes. Repeat, back over.”

  “Restaurant in five minutes. Got it.”

  Cassidy slipped the gadget back into his breast pocket, beating Lucia’s reappearance by an eyelash. He’d have to check with Rooftop at the rear entrance later. Titi knew all the entrances and too many of the procedures. The possibilities were endless and dreadful.

  Lucia stood before him, tear stains wiped off, the plain face sullen but not mutinous. “I’m ready,” she said.

  Cassidy marched her out of the nursery but not, as she expected, to the elevator. Instead they went to his room where he pushed her on to the bed.

  “I’m under age, Lover Boy,” yelped Lucia.

  “You’re under-witted, too,” snapped Cassidy. He was reaching under the mattress drawing out the little .22, unscrewing the silencer from the muzzle. That made it in to quite a small handgun. “It could save your life, Contessa,” he said.

  Roughly he pushed up her skirt with its bouffant petticoats and taped the little gun to the outside of her right thigh where the petticoats would conceal it.