Deadly Rich

by Edward Stewart

  “It’s a riot to see him on the talk-show circuit, pushing the book about his breakdown, because the one detail he leaves out of his confession is speed—the doctors got him out of his depression with Swiss synthesized crack and now he lives on it.”

  Leigh heard a woman cackle loudly, and it was not a kindly cackle at all.

  “In theory,” the young man was telling Leigh, “the goose shits the pearls out clean. But Mrs. Astor’s pearls killed Carrier’s best goose. Lloyd’s of London insisted on an autopsy, and what do you think they found? Malaria. Mrs. Astor’s sweat had infected her pearls!”

  “Malaria.” Leigh stretched a smile over her uncertainty. She reached for some kind of comment.

  Dick Braidy’s voice cut in from behind her. “Lulu Rockefeller’s leg was crushed. Smithereensville. They helicoptered her to Columbia Presbyterian because it’s the closest place where they do decent microsurgery.”

  “Your glass is empty,” the young man said. “What are you drinking?”

  Leigh glanced at her empty glass. She felt the need to get much farther down the slope of uncaring than Perrier with ice and lime could ever take her. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, if I had enough courage or weakness, or whatever it takes, to ask for Johnnie Walker and diet Pepsi. She remembered the analyst who had told her it showed low self-esteem to put Pepsi in Johnnie Walker.

  “Sparkling water with a little lime.” She handed the young man the glass. “Thank you.”

  Watching him pry his way through the crowd, she felt invisible, as if all the people around her were connected with one another by waves of insider trivia, and she was just so much spillover.

  A hand touched her shoulder. She turned and saw Dizey Duke in royal blue and too much jewelry, looking like a Christmas tree that had intercepted a flying blond wig.

  “Leigh hon,” Dizey said. “Keep your sunny-side.”

  “Sorry?” Leigh said.

  “Up.”

  Leigh met Dizey’s gaze. A fine glaze of sweat had begun to highlight the soft ridges of Dizey’s face. It was a round face, plump and as eerily unwrinkled as a pumped-up balloon.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you,” Dizey said. “You’re a real sport.”

  “Because I haven’t thrown my drink in Avalon Gardner’s face? Hang around. The evening’s young.”

  Dizey shrugged. “Who cares about Avalon Gardner?”

  “I care about anyone who defends Jim Delancey.”

  “Oh, Avalon’s a senile old pussy.”

  “Then why have you been printing his senile remarks in your column?”

  “Journalists don’t take sides.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “You don’t seem to be taking sides either. You spent a good ten minutes being polite to Ron Zaporta. Everyone was commenting.”

  “Ron who?”

  “The hair colorist at the Pierre. You were just talking to him.”

  “Is there some reason I shouldn’t talk to him?”

  “Well, it’s up to you—but he is Honey Ogilvie’s beard.”

  “Dizey, I hate it when you use this tactic. You’re acting as though I know or care who Honey Ogilvie is or why she needs a beard.”

  “Honey Ogilvie directs New York City Outreach to the United Nations Commission on the Homeless.” There was something openly probing, almost malevolent about the gaze Dizey was aiming at Leigh. “I hope I’m not telling you anything you didn’t know. She’s here with Waldo.”

  “No, Dizey. I’m here with Waldo.”

  “You’re the official story, but—” Dizey’s pale blue eyes glanced significantly toward the corner of the living room.

  Across the sea of bobbing tuxedos and tanned shoulders, Leigh saw Waldo. He was seated on the piano bench, playing the right hand of “Chopsticks.” A young blond woman with overexposed breasts and very fake eyelashes was seated close beside him, playing the left hand. They were both laughing.

  Beneath moussed gray hair Waldo’s lean but placid face had the red glow of a Santa Claus in a liquor ad. He lifted the young woman’s hands from the keyboard and placed them carefully in her lap. The young woman moved them to Waldo’s lap and tickled.

  A wave of denial passed over Leigh like ice water. She knew Waldo had affairs, but she’d assumed he was too much a gentleman to embarrass her by appearing publicly with a playmate.

  “That looks pretty with to me,” Dizey said. “They’ve been having long lunch hours three times a week at the Carlyle, and it’s been going on a month. Annie seated them together.”

  Leigh’s attention flicked to the gold-and-diamond necklace around Honey Ogilvie’s neck. She had seen that necklace advertised in the New York Times Magazine two Sundays ago. It had cost somebody fifty thousand, and she had a hunch the somebody was not Ms. Ogilvie.

  “Where does Waldo get his babes from,” Dizey said, “a call service?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question, Dizey? Because I could ask where you get your information from, the wall of the ladies’ john at ‘21’?”

  “Come off it, Leigh. Everyone knows you don’t give a damn—you and Waldo have an arrangement.” Dizey was watching Leigh for a reaction, alert as a dog on the scent of shot game. Leigh realized that Dizey didn’t know for sure, and not knowing was killing her. Leigh was determined to keep at least one aspect of her private life private. She focused on Honey Ogilvie’s hair—a modified Sixties-revival beehive threaded with beads and chrysanthemums and trailing dozens of tightly coiled wisps that seemed to have been dipped in oil. “And does everyone know that Honey’s beard does her hair?”

  IN THE DINING ROOM Annie paused to admire the centerpieces of blue begonias. Then she glanced toward the kitchen and decided on a last-minute check to make sure the caterers had the first course ready to go.

  Tonight’s appetizer was delicate, ancienne cuisine portions of herbed mushrooms on toast croustade with a side garnish of miniature glazed chestnuts. Like the entire meal it was microwave warm-up food, the ultimate fail-safe cuisine.

  But you never knew. Annie pushed open the pantry door.

  And stopped dead in her tracks.

  At first she thought a bag lady had somehow gotten into the apartment and was stealing her dinner rolls. And then she realized that the slouched figure attacking the bread basket was her own daughter.

  Annie strode forward. “And just what the hell, young lady, do you think you’re doing? Those rolls are for the guests, not for you to make a pig of yourself!”

  Gabrielle looked up with the startled eyes of a wounded animal. A butter knife clattered to the counter. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I was hungry.”

  “Hungry! You’re in what could be the richest and most productive period of your life—and instead of taking advantage of it you’re binging on carbo-fat! Now, get out there and mix!”

  Gabrielle stood there blinking. Tears began running down her face. “I’m an outsider, Mother. I don’t fit in. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be fitting into.”

  “Well, find out and find out fast. It’s not as though you had years in front of you. Get off your butt while there’s still a chance. Make your life start happening! Stop being a nobody!”

  Annie whirled and strode through the pantry door back into the dining room.

  The servants had announced dinner, and guests were flowing past the circular tables, searching the place cards for their names.

  EIGHTEEN

  “FACE IT,” DICK BRAIDY was saying between mouthfuls of Annie MacAdam’s Provencal goose. “If you’re talking bodyguard, you’re talking law-breaker. Because the only thing that scares a criminal is a bigger criminal.” The goose was marinated with calvados, mandarins, and white peppercorns, and served with grilled kiwi, and Dick Braidy carefully separated out the peppercorns with the tip of his knife. “Every one of the bodyguards in this apartment,” he said, “has a rap sheet.”

  “There aren’t bodyguards in the apartment!” Cybilla deClairville protested. She was seated
on Dick Braidy’s right, and she gave him a joking little jab with her elbow.

  “Didn’t you see those goons out there in the foyer? And in the hall and in the lobby?”

  “I thought they were well-dressed delivery men.”

  “Well, they’re not, and you’ll probably be hiring one yourself as soon as you get scared enough.”

  “What’s there to be scared of?” One of Cybilla’s beautifully manicured fingers kept touching the rose quartz-and-gold dividers of her pearl necklace. “Society Sam is ninety percent publicity. The people who hire bodyguards are doing it on expense accounts to publicize themselves. Who’s got the biggest and meanest bodyguard—that’s all the columnists are writing about nowadays.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Dick Braidy said. “And every one of those lugs is a dope dealer on the side. As well as a user. Don’t tell me they don’t take coke and crack and ice to stay alert.”

  “A lot of servants do coke,” said Gwennie Tiarks, joining the conversation from Dick Braidy’s left. “I’m having to send my cook to CokEnders.” Gwennie was wearing her gray hair bobbed, like a Jazz Age flapper.

  “The dream bodyguard,” Dick Braidy said, “is a certified killer who got off on a technicality. Socialites are flocking to defense lawyers and begging for their bloodiest clients. Last year the cry was victims’ rights, and this year the cry is Get me a good victimizer—with a track record.”

  “It makes sense,” Gwennie Tiarks said.

  “Dick, you’ve just given me a brainstorm,” a woman across the table said. She had curly red hair and she dressed like Alice in Wonderland with too many diamonds; her name was Kristi Blackwell. “You should write an article about society bodyguards.”

  Kristi Blackwell edited Fanfare Magazine, and she wielded a power in the city second only to Dizey Duke’s. She was invited by hostesses who wanted to be written up, which was just about everybody these days; and she stalked the corridors of fashion, spitting out grenades and reporting the casualties. “Who here would you say has the most expensive bodyguard?”

  Dick Braidy was thoughtful for only a moment. “I’d say Nancy Guardella.”

  “Senator Nancy Guardella?” Cybilla deClairville said.

  Dick Braidy nodded. “If you lean this way, you can see her. She’s sitting at the table in the hallway. They say her bodyguard beat a triple-homicide rap, and he was guilty as hell.”

  “Who did he kill?” Kristi Blackwell asked.

  “A family in Hicksville.”

  “Hicksville,” Cybilla deClairville said. “How awful.”

  “The rumor is,” Dick Braidy said, “our senator is dipping into the taxpayers’ pockets to the tune of two thousand dollars a day for this man’s services.”

  “The other rumor,” Cybilla deClairville said, “is that Treasury agents are examining Senator Guardella’s books. I heard she’s been laundering dope money through co-op foreclosures.”

  “Guardella’s dope link,” Dick Braidy said, “is a Republican canard, and it comes out quacking every election year.”

  “All the same,” Gwennie Tiarks said, “those are two good reasons to have a decent bodyguard.”

  A LITTLE DRUM of uneasiness was pulsing at the base of Leigh Baker’s neck. She took a tiny nibble of her ginger mousse, separating out the candied Amazon orchids, which looked too pretty to eat. She couldn’t taste the ginger.

  On her left Tina Vanderbilt, doyenne of New York society, with her waved white hair and her diamond collar, was telling the table about her financial adviser at United States Trust. “He says real estate, merger stocks, and defense industries have to adjust down after the boom years. He’s moved me entirely into utilities, except for one trust I set up for the Crippled Children and Burns Hospital.”

  “How terrific,” Leigh said. “I love children too.”

  “I don’t like children at all,” Tina Vanderbilt said.

  As Leigh stared at Mrs. Vanderbilt a dark current of unreality seemed to flow between them. She knew the old woman had been having strokes, and she had a premonition that some awful remark was going to pop out of her.

  “One has to help somebody,” Tina Vanderbilt said, “and I feel sorry for children. Especially if they’re burned or crippled. Though, mind you, I’ve met some children who ought to be burned—and some who deserve a good, crippling toss from the roof.”

  The others at the table heard. Silence struck.

  “Excuse me.” Leigh rose from her chair.

  A flashbulb popped in her face.

  “Sorry.” A heavily cologned little man with a camera was shoving a fresh multiflash into his Minolta. He wore an Yves Saint Laurent ecru dinner jacket that hung like a zoot suit from his narrow frame, and Leigh recognized Avalon Gardner, self-appointed defender of her daughter’s killer and Fanfare Magazine’s top photographer.

  “Be a darling, darling. Let me have just one more of you and Tina engrossed in chitchat.”

  “I’m sorry, Avalon, I have to go to the ladies’ room.” Leigh pushed past him.

  Guests had finished their dinner and were beginning to circulate again. There were collisions, and Leigh gave appropriate little cries of pretend-recognition and said, “We must get together, do give a ring,” and she forced herself to smile. All the while rage was thudding through her veins. How could Tina have said that? Even if she’s gaga, how could she have been so cruel? And Avalon—pretending we’re still friends.

  Somehow Leigh found herself not in the ladies’ room but in an empty pantry. An open bottle of wine sat on the counter. She poured a glass and lifted it halfway to her mouth.

  She suddenly saw what she was holding. Her hand stopped. What the hell am I doing?

  She tossed the wine down the sink and quickly rinsed the glass.

  AVALON GARDNER AND TINA VANDERBILT were standing in

  Annie MacAdam’s dressing room, just the two of them, with the door shut.

  The door was mirrored, and Avalon saw that a horseshoe of gray stubble was beginning to grow back on his shaved head.

  He took out his little Cartier pillbox of coke and held out a tiny rounded silver spoonful. “Just say no?” he offered.

  Tina Vanderbilt shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m trying to cut down.”

  “For God’s sake, Tina. It’s a party. Fuck your diet for one night.”

  “Gwennie Tiark’s cook has been taking me to CokEnders. I can’t let her down, she’s such a dear. I have three days clean.”

  “C’m’on, Teeny girl, this is coke classic. Uncut blow.”

  Tina Vanderbilt changed her mind and bent a nostril toward the spoon. Avalon Gardner reloaded the spoon and took a hit.

  There was a knock on the door and a woman’s voice called, “Anyone in there?”

  Tina Vanderbilt clutched Avalon’s arm. He opened the door.

  A blond woman stood there in a gray evening dress. The small diamonds at her ears looked real, but the large diamonds around her neck did not. She was holding up a deck of slightly oversized cards, smiling brightly. “Tarot, anyone?”

  “Nan Shane!” Avalon Gardner cried. “Just the woman we need!” He pulled her into the dressing room. “Tina, Nan. Nan. Tina.”

  Tina Vanderbilt, flying now, returned Nan Shane’s hello with a merry giggle.

  Avalon Gardner pointed a finger at the floor. “Nan, deal me a good one.”

  Nan Shane kicked her shoes off and sat down on the rug. With the agile hands of a professional gambler she began rapidly shuffling her cards. Avalon settled down comfortably beside her.

  She handed him the deck. “Cut three times,” she said, “and concentrate on the question you want to ask the cards.”

  “I SEE THAT EVEN A PARTIES have their B rooms,” Gloria Spahn said, “and it looks like we’re it.”

  She had the kind of voice that Zack Morrow had always found attractive: educated, smoldering. It went with her dark hair and huge gray eyes. Her tanned breasts were practically tumbling out of a dress of mauve silk strewn wi
th tiny rubies. He had never been seated next to her at a dinner before, and it was like meeting someone entirely new.

  “I wouldn’t say this is the B room.” A smile slipped across Zack’s face. “We’ve got Dick Braidy and Kristi Blackwell at our table, you can’t get more A-list than them.”

  “So how does the A-list wind up seated in the bedroom?”

  “Would you really call this a bedroom? Isn’t it more a day room?”

  Gloria Spahn nodded at the space beyond her tanned, bare left shoulder. “No matter how many Provençal-chintz throw pillows you pile on, a bed is a bed is a bed. Now, there’s nothing wrong with eating in the bedroom, but I can think of bedrooms a little more apropos.”

  Zack set down his wineglass. In the time that it took him to decipher the expression on Gloria Spahn’s face, that face became the most important thing in his life. He realized that her eyes were flirting with him, and he was riveted. “How long have you and Annie been friends?”

  Gloria Spahn lifted a cup of Annie MacAdam’s after-dinner demitasse to her mouth. He watched her lips kiss the porcelain rim. The lips were smiling.

  “What’s so funny?” Zack said.

  “The only thing Annie MacAdam hates worse than my guts is my husband’s.”

  “Then why does she invite you to dinner?”

  “Ten years ago Stanley and I hired a personal publicist—Robbie Danzig. Annie owed him a favor and he called it in.”

  “You used a publicist to meet Annie?”

  “We were untouchables. We wanted in. Annie is the express to the fast track. We figured it was worth the thirty thousand. So did quite a few other people here. It’s ironic. You work all your life to get out of the ghetto, and then when you reach the top you meet all the same people you wanted to leave behind. And of course they feel just the same thing about you.”

  “And are you from a ghetto?” Zack asked.

  “Of course.” Gloria Spahn raised her long eyelashes and gave him another lingering look. “Can’t you sense it?”