Dick Braidy was wearing lightweight mocha silk slacks by Ernanno of Milan. He was wearing hand-dyed goatskin loafers by Horst of Lyons. He was not wearing socks. He was the only man in Le Cercle at that instant not wearing socks, and his bare ankles were East Hampton-tan, and proud.
He was setting a trend, and he knew it. Sockless lunch at Le Cercle.
Social collisions were hectic and free-spinning, and he negotiated them smoothly, dodging busboys at just the right moment, aiming the right smile at the right face, landing the right kiss on the right cheek. One right move after another brought him, finally, to Gloria Spahn’s table.
Gloria was sitting at her usual corner table with Annie MacAdam. They made a high-contrast couple—Annie with her hennaed hair, looking like a chubby woman yearning to be anorectic, and Gloria overbejeweled and bizarrely made up in a way that you knew would be chic two months from now.
“Hi, gals.” Dick Braidy helped himself to a chair. “Mucho poop.”
A cigarette dangled from Gloria’s make-this-quick-and-make-it-good scowl. Dick Braidy gave her a light.
“I advise you to get a good look at Kristi Blackwell over there,” he said.
Gloria and Annie turned to look. Kristi was sitting with the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs at table four, by the north pillar. Four was the President’s table, Jackie’s table, Liz’s table.
“You’re not going to see our little Kristi at the star table much longer,” Dick Braidy said. “She’s about to be a dead woman.”
“Promises, promises,” Gloria said without interest.
“Kid you not,” Dick Braidy said. “A big expose is in the works.”
“Who’s exposing her?” Annie said.
Dick Braidy pointed a thumb at himself. “Moi. How’s that for hot?”
FIFTY-THREE
Thursday, June 13
ZACK’S SECRETARY, MINNIE SIMPSON, buzzed on the intercom. “Annie MacAdam Associates is still busy, sir.”
“All the numbers?” Zack said. It had been forty-eight hours since Annie had promised him that key. It seemed like an aching century since he’d last seen Gloria Spahn.
“All of them, sir.”
“That’s not possible, not even with her mouth. Check with the operator. Maybe there’s trouble on the line.”
Minnie buzzed him again. “The three lines are out of order, sir.”
“Christ—this town’s infrastructure is rotting.”
Zack went to his desk and picked up tomorrow’s editorial page. To Restore Free Enterprise and Civic Self-Respect—Repeal the City Income Tax. His eye skimmed the cooked figures from the mayor’s office that Rad Rheinhardt had mixed in with Ayn Rand outtakes.
An image took shape on the retina of his mind. It was Gloria Spahn’s breasts, floating weightlessly above the low, cupping bodice of her evening dress.
The intercom buzzed.
He laid the page down. “Yes?”
“Annie MacAdam to see you, sir.”
All the tension drained out of Zack, and he took his first real breath of the day. “Send her in.”
The door opened.
The woman who glided into his office was not Annie MacAdam.
Considering that she couldn’t have been taller than five feet one and she must have weighed close to two hundred pounds, she moved with astonishing speed and lightness. She had pinned her dark hair back from her forehead, and she had made her eyes up with heavy accents of green and purple and blue. She wore an East Indian silk paisley shawl, and a brightly patterned maxiskirt swirled around her red calf walking boots.
She was smiling at him, and the energy of that smile took over the office immediately.
“Mr. Morrow? I’m Annie MacAdam’s daughter, Gabrielle. Mother apologizes, but really Con Ed should do the apologizing, because they blew up our phone lines.”
Zack blinked. It was the right size to be Annie’s daughter, it was the right shape, but it was the wrong style. That little fatty had been a sick dog, but this little puppy had bounce.
“Mother asked me to bring you a key.”
Zack came around the desk and thrust out a handshake. “Please call me Zack.”
“If you’ll call me Gaby.”
“Hi, Gaby.” Cute nickname, he thought.
“You know, Zack, we’ve met many, many times at Mother’s dinners, but we’ve never had a chance to say a real hello. So—hello at last.”
She took his hand. A key ring pressed with a cool little shock into his palm, and he felt inexplicably charmed.
“I wish I could stay and chat and get to know you,” she said, “but I have another viewing. The address is on the key tag. It’s Oona Aldrich’s old town house.”
“I know the place.”
“Then do you think you could manage by yourself? Mother will be through showing it after four, so the place will be all yours from then on.”
“I could manage.” Zack returned her smile, thinking how sweet she was to have come all this way just to give him a key. “Sure. I think I could manage that.”
IN THE BACKSEAT OF THE LIMO, the car phone rang.
Gloria Spahn felt a spasm in her intestine. It had to be Stanley calling from the heliport to ask why she was late. She still hadn’t told him she didn’t want to come to his boys’ graduation. Usually she had no trouble telling Stanley no. But this time it had been bothering her, and for two days she hadn’t been able to say the four simple words I am not going.
She lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Gloria, that you? Dick Braidy.”
“I’m kind of in a rush, Dick.”
“If you’re rushing to the rector’s dinner at Groton, I’m glad I caught you, because do you know who else is going to that dinner?”
Gloria wondered how the hell Dick found out about these things. “Stanley may have told me. I forget.”
“Ruthie Sears is going.” Ruthie was Stanley’s ex-wife, the boys’ mother. In the Eighties Ruthie and her third husband had served as coambassadors to Trinidad and Tobago. “She’s guest speaker at the commencement exercises tomorrow.”
“Christ. Does Stanley know?”
“Does the Pope speak Polish? The information is printed on the commencement program I am holding in my hand even as we speak.”
“That bastard.” Gloria made her fist tight around the receiver and willed the rage in her mind to slow. “Thanks, Dick. I owe you one.”
The buildings along Lower Broadway glided past with a machine-tooled smoothness. The drone of traffic came through the smoked glass like waves of a faraway ocean. As the age-blackened tombstones of Trinity Church graveyard came into view, the limo swung east.
Gloria felt her nerves fraying and snapping one by one. Since seven o’clock last night she’d been caught in a scheduling logjam. She hadn’t stayed for dinner—she didn’t trust Splendiferous Eats’s catering—but she couldn’t be rude to Helen Hayes and she’d stayed much too long at Jackie O’s fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum costume collection. Then that crazed dash across town to River House for Lady Churchill’s dinner in honor of Princess Di. The pheasant had been undercooked, but supposedly the prince had shot it and supposedly Ted Turner had flown it over in his corporate jet, so Gloria had had to smile at Lord Weidenfeld as she swallowed every detestable pink mouthful.
God, she thought, I hate raconteurs.
Even though the Peruvian ambassador lived just around the corner from River House at Sutton Place, it had still been a rush to get there in time for dessert. In the confusion she’d somehow managed to lose her only gold shawl. She loved that shawl—it had been a gift from Franco’s widow. She was certain she’d left it in the Aga Khan’s limousine, but this morning Karim’s secretary had said the chauffeur swore she had not.
I never trusted that chauffeur of Karim’s.
Then at lunch today, in the Grill Room at the Four Seasons, Donald Trump’s new mistress had walked in wearing Gloria’s shawl, not a similar shawl, but the very s
ame shawl, with a Bulgari diamond brooch as big as a fist stuck right through it, and Gloria had turned to Philip Johnson and said, “That’s it—there goes the city.”
She’d been in a bad mood all afternoon, hadn’t been able to concentrate on the horse show, hadn’t thought Jeanie Vanderbilt’s box was all that great for viewing the jumps, had barely managed to hold up her end of conversation with the First Lady.
As she thought back on it she realized these last twenty-four hours had left her drained, and she was in no mood to cap them off with cheddar cheese and stale crackers in a New England rectory.
Let Stanley try to give me an argument, she thought. Let him just try.
The limo came to a stop at the heliport. The uniformed driver stepped smartly around the limo, touched a finger to the brim of his cap, and held the passenger door. Gloria took her dark glasses from her pocketbook and slipped them on.
Stanley came striding toward her across the tarmac. “You’re late. Where’s your bag? Why aren’t you dressed?”
“I’m not going to Groton.”
Stanley’s face held like a struck mirror determined not to break apart. “When the hell did you decide this?”
“When the hell did you learn Ruthie was going to be there? No way I’m going to sit and watch that bitch in a pink Scaasi cozy up to the rector.”
“Do you object to the color pink or to Scaasi?”
“She always wears Scaasi when we’re anywhere near each other, she does it to humiliate me.”
At the end of the pier a helicopter engine roared to life. The rotors picked up spin, throwing off stroboscopic glints of fractured sunlight.
“Do you expect her to wear one of your designs?” Stanley shouted.
“I married you,” Gloria shouted, “not your kids or your ex-wife! And I resent your using me like a red flag to wave in her face!”
“And I resent your not being by my side at this event!” Stanley clamped a hand on his head to steady the toupee. “And I resent your canceling forty-five minutes before we’re expected at cocktails!”
“You and Ruthie can go have sherry with those Episcopalians! I’d rather do something important! Like work!” She turned on her heel and stepped back into her limo. “Bon voyage, big boy!” She only called him big boy when she was deeply annoyed with him.
Stanley gave her the finger. She gave him two fingers back, one with each hand.
The driver shut the door.
A moment later, peering through the window, Gloria saw Stanley’s Sifcor helicopter rise from the end of the pier without her.
ZACK MORROW LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. Six o’clock. She was an hour late.
He opened the French window and stepped out into the silent, empty heat of the terrace. He crossed to the wall. He looked down five stories into a community garden. Boxwood hedges and inlaid paths of little flagstones outlined a neat mandala pattern. Through a wrought-iron fence, he could see the street.
His eye went to a grouping of wrought-iron garden furniture on the other side of the terrace. Chairs with circular pillows covered in waterproof blue canvas had been set around a square glass-topped table.
He pulled one of the chairs over to the wall. He sat, watching street traffic move past the garden fence.
AT NINE-FIFTEEN ZACK MORROW TOOK a little burgundy velvet jeweler’s box from his pocket. He raised the little hinged lid. He lifted the cabochon-cut ruby-and-diamond ring from its velvet nest and held it up to the night sky, seeing it against the dense sprawl of the city.
After four hours he was still waiting, still alone.
He put the ring back in the box.
At nine-sixteen he saw movement down in the street. A white stretch limousine slowed to a stop at the curb. It’s her, he thought.
The driver sprinted nimbly around and opened the passenger door. A woman got out.
Zack’s stomach clenched when he saw she was not Gloria Spahn. She gave quick glances right and left, as though to be sure no serial killer was lurking. She hurried into the building next door.
In the hour since sunset all Zack’s hopes and plans had dissolved in a kind of slow motion and now, suddenly, they weren’t part of him anymore. It was obvious that Gloria Spahn was not going to keep their date.
When he lifted his gaze to the silvergray skyline, he saw a city that was no longer worth owning.
He lifted a half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya from the terrace floor.
We could have been enjoying this Stoli.
He took a long, stinging belt of vodka from the bottle. He rose unsteadily from the chair and crossed the terrace. Inside the house he stepped into a bedroom decorated in muted tones of brown and red. He stared at the canopied bed.
We could have been enjoying that bed.
In the little bathroom, silver-backed brushes and mirrors and combs had been laid out on the little counter by the sink.
From his pocket he brought out the jeweler’s box. He set it on the sink. He felt his pockets again and brought out a pillbox of uncut Bolivian flake.
We could have been enjoying this coke.
He dipped a coke spoon into the white powder. He fed one nostril, dipped the spoon again and fed the other. While his head orbited, he braced himself against the tiled wall and took a long, messy piss.
A dish of lemon-shaped soaps sat on top of the commode, scenting the air. He took one of the soaps and washed his hands. As he put the soap back he accidentally knocked the jeweler’s box. It clattered to the floor.
Zack stood swaying, thinking about bending over and picking the box up. As he ran all the steps through his mind, he felt an exhaustion greater than any he had ever known.
No, he decided. He wouldn’t bend. He wouldn’t stoop. Leave it there. He’d done enough for her.
AT QUARTER PAST ELEVEN, the question Gloria Spahn was trying to resolve was this: Can the same eighteen-thousand-dollar cocktail dress attend a thé dansant in Cleveland at four-thirty in the afternoon, enjoy a presymphony lunch in Chicago at twelve-thirty the next day, and reach San Francisco in time for eight o’clock dinner at the Bohemian Club?
The answer, if the girl fielding phone calls for United Airlines weren’t such a bimbo, would have been and should have been yes.
“I’m still entitled to forty-four-hundred miles on my frequent-flyer discount,” Gloria told the girl.
“I understand, ma’am.” The girl had a strong Texas accent that almost smelled of barbecue. “But that’s a personal frequent-flyer account you’re quoting.”
“It’s a company frequent-flyer account. I never fly anywhere personally.”
“I’m sorry, but unless you yourself are flying we cannot prepay this booking on that account.”
Gloria was speaking into the cellular phone. It allowed her to go from room to room, shutting off lights. “I’m not getting off this phone till you give me a confirmation number for this reservation.”
“Then you’re going to have to give me the number and expiration date of a valid major credit card and the name of the person who will be flying.”
“I don’t know who’ll be flying.” Gloria repinned a linen jacket sleeve on a tailor’s dummy. “It’ll be someone from my office.”
“FAA regulations do not permit us to reserve seats on flights without the passenger’s name.”
Gloria had ordered in a timbale de légumes, a cold half of applewood-smoked chicken and a split of Piper. She rewrapped the uneaten portion of the chicken and slipped it into the refrigerator. “They’ve allowed it for the eight years that I’ve been flying my messengers United.”
“Would you care to open a messenger account with us?”
Gloria rinsed the empty Piper bottle and put it in the rack beside the sink to drain. “I would care to speak with your supervisor.”
A Texas sigh came across the line. The phone began serenading her with Muzak.
While Gloria waited she neatened her desk. The employees had gone home at six, and she was the last to leave today. She often worked b
est in the evening, when she could work uninterrupted.
A voice cut into “Begin the Beguine.”
“May I help you?”
Thank God—a man. “I know you could and I wish you would. This is Gloria Spahn, of Gloria Spahn Designs, Ltd.? I’d like a confirmation number on a reservation.”
One minute and eighteen seconds later Gloria laid the phone in the recharging unit on her desk. She had her confirmation number, and the dress was set to fly Monday with a frequent-flyer discount.
She took one last look around the office to make sure she hadn’t left anything running that shouldn’t be. She crossed the showroom, tapped her code into the burglar alarm, turned off the lights, and let herself out.
In the hallway she pushed the elevator button. There were two elevators, and neither of them came. She pushed again, leaning hard on the button this time. Elevators were like people: It didn’t pay to treat them subtly. Somewhere down the shaft she heard a buzz.
Two other businesses—Saul MacGuire Skin Care and Marianna Cosmetics—shared the floor with Gloria Spahn Designs, Ltd. There were no lights under either of their doors. Gloria checked her watch. The little platinum watch hands formed a tilted right angle that spelled eleven-twenty.
Gloria felt proud of herself. She hadn’t wasted a thought on Groton, or Stanley, or the ex-Mrs. Siff, for more than four hours.
She leaned an ear against the door of the north elevator. The machinery could have died and gone to heaven. Not even a hum.
She listened at the door of the south elevator. The loudest sound was her own heartbeat.
She pushed the button and waited, waited and pushed the button.
What the shit is wrong with these elevators? With the service fees we pay the contractor, they can’t both have crapped out at once …
But obviously they had done exactly that.
Gloria considered her options. No one was going to come to her rescue at this hour. She was the last person on the floor, possibly the last person in the building. From the ninth floor to street level was a walk down eight flights of stairs.
“Fuck.”
Deadly Rich Page 44
