“Kissing asses,” he said.
“Yes.”
“But you want to know what I think?”
“What?”
“I don’t think your director ever showed your presentation to the board of trustees.”
“Really, Noah? What makes you say that?”
“I think he decided it didn’t make him look good. I think he decided it would look like sloppy housekeeping on his part. All that valuable art lying around in warehouses, and he didn’t even know it existed. He killed your idea to cover his ass.”
She hesitated. Then she said, “You know something, Noah? I think you may be right.”
“I’m sure I’m right. Think about it for a minute. He’s the chief honcho of the Met Museum. And suddenly all this important stuff he’s supposed to be in charge of gets turned up by a mere—woman.”
“And a mere volunteer,” she said. “Of course.”
“Kissing asses. Covering asses. That’s what business is all about.”
She lay in silence, thinking about this. Then she heard him rise from the bed next to hers. She felt him pull back the sheet and coverlet from her bed, and kiss the hollow between her bare breasts. “Uncovered treasures,” he said.
8
A Delicate Matter
You may have got the impression, from the story thus far, that Cyril is something of a cipher in the Liebling family. He is in some ways, but in some ways he most definitely is not. Certainly Cyril himself does not think of himself as a cipher. In fact, Cyril often reminds himself, if it were not for Cyril, his younger brother would never have attained the position he did. One could go even further and point out that if it were not for Cyril (and Cyril’s misdeeds in his father’s eyes), there might never have been a Noah Liebling at all. Without Noah there would have been no Carol. Without Noah and Carol there would have been no Anne; without Anne there would have been no Melody Richards; without Melody, William Luckman would never have come into any of their lives, and none of these people would have come together so explosively as to create a homicide case, as became clear at the trial.
Looked at this way, Cyril becomes the pivotal figure in the ennead. And so, though it involves a matter of some delicacy, Cyril’s story deserves to be told fully and honestly.
Cyril’s engraved business letterhead reads:
CYRIL DE R. LIEBLING
Public Relations
1000 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10028
The “de R” is something of an affectation. Cyril’s actual middle name is David. But Cyril does not object too strenuously if some of his clients suppose that “de R” stands for de Rothschild, and that Cyril is somehow connected to the European banking family. Cyril is not above inventing relatives. He might say, “My cousin, Baron Guy de Rothschild …” Just as often he will say, “My sister, the Princess di Pascanelli …” This is all right. This is all part of what is called public relations.
Which brings us to the matter of clients. If you ask his mother, she would no doubt snort and say that Cyril doesn’t have any clients. Where his mother is concerned, Cyril encourages this view. Living, as he does, on the upper floor of what used to be her duplex apartment, Cyril does his best to keep his mother’s nose out of his business. He will often speak mysteriously of having to leave for “an important client lunch” or “an important client dinner.”
“Who’s the client?” Hannah will demand to know.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Huh!”
Actually, he has several clients. One is a young dress designer whom Cyril is trying to establish as a fashion force. Another is a hair stylist from France who calls himself simply “Philippe,” and whom such powerful and important New York women as Patsy Collingwood and Pookie Satterthwaite and, more recently, Georgette Van Degan have begun to use. Cyril’s plan for Philippe is to help him launch his own line of hair products. That’s where the money is in the hair business, not in doing comb-outs. Cyril has promised to make Philippe the next Vidal Sassoon. Or at least to try.
In 1956, however, Cyril was involved in a much graver matter. It was a summer Sunday evening in Tarrytown, at Grandmont, and Hannah, Jules, and Bathy were gathered in what was called the music room—watching The Ed Sullivan Show. Just a month earner, Ruth Liebling had run off and married the Brazilian copper heir Antonio Fernandez-Just, much to her father’s displeasure. There had been much publicity about this, mostly centered on the fact that Ruth was only eighteen, while Sr. Fernandez-Just, who had had four previous wives, was fifty-seven. Jules had been spending quite a lot of time on the telephone to Sao Paulo, trying to persuade Ruth of the unwisdom of this union, but without success, and so this was not the most relaxed of times in the Liebling household. Still, The Ed Sullivan Show was one of Jules’s favorites, and the three of them had planned to spend a quiet evening at home.
Cyril, who was twenty-two, had taken his car to join a friend and drive to Manhattan to see a performance of My Fair Lady. Little Noah was in his room being read to by his governess. The other servants had been given the afternoon and evening off, as they always were every other Sunday. One of Ed Sullivan’s guests was a trained chimpanzee, and Jules was laughing at its antics. Hannah was passing a bowl of fresh popcorn that her cook had made earlier in the day. And in the middle of this almost tranquil scene, the telephone rang. Jules, thinking that it might be Ruth ready to capitulate, picked it up on the first ring, and Bathy reached out and lowered the volume on the TV set.
“Pop!” he heard Cyril’s voice shout. “Pop! I’ve been kidnapped!”
“Kidnapped? What do you mean? Where are you, Cyril?”
At the word “kidnapped,” the others in the room froze. Hannah dropped the bowl of popcorn, and it scattered across the carpet. Bathy jumped to her feet and turned off the television. It had been one of their worst fears, not so much for Cyril, their grown son, as for little Noah.
“Tell me what happened, Cyril.”
“Two men. I was coming down the drive, headed for New York to pick up my friend and go to the show. When I got to the gate, there was a car parked across the drive.…”
“What kind of a car?”
“I don’t remember. I think it was black. I got out of my car to see what the matter was.… It was dark, I couldn’t see …”
Bathy stepped quickly to the phone and whispered to Jules: “Keep him on the phone as long as possible. I’ll call from the other line and see if they can trace this call.” Jules nodded, and Bathy ran to the next room.
“And then what happened?”
“Two men came out of the bushes. They were wearing ski masks. They had guns. They grabbed me. I tried to fight them off, but they knocked me down in the gravel. I struggled, but one of them put his gun at my head and told me not to move. Then they tied me up, put a blindfold on me, and put a gag on my mouth. Then they carried me, and threw me in the backseat of their car.…”
“Where did they take you, Cyril?”
“I don’t know. They drove a long time—maybe a half hour. We crossed two bridges. At least it sounded like we crossed two bridges. So I don’t think I’m in Westchester County anymore.”
“You don’t know where you are?”
“I’m in this room, Pop! I don’t know where it is. There’re no windows. I can’t see out. They carried me up two flights of stairs to get me here, I know that.…”
“Can you describe the room, son?”
“Pop, they’re right here! They’re here in this room with me. They’re both sitting right here with me. Pointing guns at me. Wearing ski masks. They’ve got me tied to a chair. One of them is holding the phone so I can talk to you.…”
“Does either of these men wish to speak to me?”
He heard his son’s voice say, “My father wants to know if you want to talk to him.”
Then a man’s voice came on the line. “Mr. Liebling?” the voice said. “We have your son. He is quite safe, for now,” and Jules thought he detected a for
eign accent.
“What do you want?”
“For your son’s release, we want two-point-five million dollars. The terms of his release, and how the money is to be delivered, will come to you by mail. Until the money is paid, your son will be unharmed. We will give him food and water.”
“And if I can’t pay? Don’t pay?”
“Your son will be—dispatched.”
“What do you mean, ‘dispatched’?”
“Exactly what I say. No more questions now, Mr. Liebling. Wait for your instructions in the mail. Everything will be made quite clear in our instructions, Mr. Liebling. Do you wish a final word with your son?”
“Yes, please,” Jules said.
Then Cyril came on the line again. “Please, Pop,” he said. “Please pay them what they want, Pop. I’m scared, Pop! I’m scared they’re going to kill me, Pop! Help me, Pop!” Then Cyril began to cry, and the line went dead.
Bathy stood at the music room door. “Any luck with tracing the call?” he asked.
She shook her head. “The phone company needs at least an hour to set up tracing equipment.”
“Have them set up tracing equipment on every line coming into this house. Also the New York apartment. Also my office lines.”
“Already done,” Bathy said.
“Also I want tape recorders set up on all these lines, so we can tape all incoming calls.”
“Already ordered,” Bathy said. “They’ll be installed in a half hour.”
Jules reached for the phone again.
“Who are you calling?”
“The FBI.”
“Don’t,” she said, reaching out and pressing the receiver buttons down. “If you call the FBI, that’ll mean the police, and the police will mean the press. The press will make a circus out of this, particularly after the business with Ruth. I think we should try to deal with the kidnappers on our own.”
“She’s right, Jules,” Hannah said. “If the press gets wind of this, it could frighten them. They might try to—”
“They might decide to kill Cyril,” Bathy said evenly. “It’s happened before. I have a friend, Kevin Shaughnessy, who’s a private investigator.”
“Call him.”
“I already have,” she said, demonstrating the quick efficiency that was already making her such a valued member of Jules Liebling’s business team. “He’s on his way to Tarrytown right now.”
Jules stood by the telephone muttering, “Trouble … trouble. Nothing but trouble. First the St. Anselm’s thing. Now this.”
“Oh, Jules!” Hannah cried. “You can’t blame Cyril for this!” Then she burst into tears.
“Surely you have the money, Jules,” Bathy said, almost contemptuously. “Surely two and a half million dollars isn’t too much to pay for your son’s life!”
“Cyril’s car must still be at the foot of the drive,” he said. “Somebody should get that and put it back in the garage.”
“I’ll do that,” Bathy said. She hurried out of the house and down the long drive. At the turning, she saw the headlights of Cyril’s yellow Mustang facing her. Its convertible top was down. Both doors hung wide open. Its engine was running. Just beyond, the heavy iron gates to Grandmont, with their scrollwork of reversed L’s, were closed. She jumped into the car, closed both doors, taking care not to touch any areas that might contain fingerprints, threw the Mustang into gear, drove it back up the hill to the house, and parked it in its regular space in the garage. Then she removed the keys and locked the garage doors.
In the music room, still weeping, Hannah knelt on the carpet, picking up the spilled popcorn, piece by piece. Suddenly, to her surprise, her husband was kneeling on the floor beside her and took her into his arms.
Kevin Shaughnessy, age thirty-eight, a former Pinker-ton man, turned out to be a heavyset redheaded Irishman who exuded an air of solid authority. He had driven immediately to Grandmont from his home in Yonkers, and had spent a half hour scouring the grounds of the estate with a powerful flashlight. It was nearly ten o’clock when he sat down opposite Bathy and the Lieblings in the music room. A bulge under his jacket indicated where he carried his service revolver in a shoulder holster, and as he hitched up his trouser legs, a second bulge in his left sock revealed where he carried a second weapon.
“There’s really nothing more we can do until we hear from the kidnappers again,” he said. “But there are a couple of aspects of this case that puzzle me a little. Mind if I smoke?”
“Certainly not,” Hannah said.
He lighted a cigarette, igniting a wooden kitchen match with his fingernail. “So let’s talk about those aspects. To begin with, there’s the position of the Mustang. Your son told you that he was driving down the drive, toward the gate, when he saw another vehicle, just beyond the gate, blocking him. And yet when Miss Sachs found the vehicle, with its motor running, it was headed back up the drive, away from the gate, toward the house. Any explanation for that?”
“Perhaps they turned the car around.”
“Perhaps. But why?”
“To throw us off?”
He inhaled deeply and blew out a sharp stream of smoke. “Perhaps,” he said again. “But again—why?”
No one said anything.
“And then there’s the position of the car doors. Both doors were open, on the passenger’s and on the driver’s side. Your son told you he got out of his car to see what was the matter. Assuming he got out on the driver’s side and left that door open, why were both doors opened when Miss Sachs found the car?”
There was another silence.
“Now, your son indicated that he was attacked outside the gates. That would mean the gates were open. And yet when Miss Sachs found the vehicle, the gates were closed.”
“They could have closed the gates behind them when they left.”
“Yes, but most kidnappers are in a big hurry, Mrs. Liebling. They don’t take the time to close gates behind them, or to reverse the direction of the victim’s car. And here’s another thing. Your son says he struggled with his assailants on the drive. I assume this would have happened just outside the gates. Your drive is composed of fine, loose gravel. Long Island grit, I believe it’s called. I found no signs of a struggle in the gravel outside the gate—or inside it, for that matter. Or in the grassy areas alongside the drive, on either side. Odd, don’t you think? What’s more, a car passing along on a gravel drive like yours leaves tread marks. And yet when I examined your drive just now, the only tread marks on it were the ones made by Miss Sachs when she drove the car back up to the garage. There were no tread marks from any second vehicle, either inside or outside the gate.”
“This isn’t rescuing my son!” Hannah said angrily. “Talking about tread marks!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Liebling,” he said. “But we don’t know where your son is yet, or who’s got him, or how we’re going to get him back. Right now I’d like to get to the bottom of some of the puzzling aspects of the case.”
“He’s right, Hannah. Let him talk,” Bathy said.
“Now, let’s talk about the time of day,” he said. “You said you were watching The Ed Sullivan Show. That comes on at eight, and the trained chimp was in the first segment. That means that your son’s call came through at about seven or eight minutes past eight—correct?”
“Correct,” Jules said. “In fact, I looked at my watch.”
“Your son said he had been driven by his assailants in their car for about a half hour. That means the kidnapping must have occurred at around seven-thirty, or a little after. Today is July twenty-ninth. Your son said that he couldn’t identify his assailants’ car because it was too dark. But the sun doesn’t set as early as seven-thirty this time of year. There would have been at least another hour of sunshine this afternoon. The kidnapping must have occurred in broad daylight.”
“He was probably terrified. He could have easily been confused.”
“Of course. And yet when Miss Sachs found the car, its headlights were
on. Odd, don’t you think?” He pronounced the word “odd” with a Down East vowel sound: Awed.
“Yes,” Jules said. “Very odd.” His face was grim.
“Now, let’s turn for a minute to the conversation you had with the kidnappers,” Shaughnessy said. “Admittedly, this was very brief, but a couple of things interest me. To begin with, you said the man had what sounded like a foreign accent.”
“Yes.”
“Any clue as to what kind of foreign accent?”
“French perhaps. Or Italian. I can’t be sure.”
“And when he mentioned the ransom figure to you, he used the expression ‘two-point-five million.’ Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd, Mr. Liebling?”
“No. What’s odd about it?”
“Two-point-five million. Not two and a half million, or two million five hundred thousand. Two-point-five million sounds like the way an accountant would talk. Or a real estate man.”
“What the hell difference does it make?”
“You see, what I’m trying to do, Mr. Liebling, is to draw up a psychological profile of the perpetrators, from what little evidence we have. And when you told him that you might be unable to pay, or be unwilling to pay, such a sum, he responded that in that case it might be necessary to have your son ‘dispatched.’ He used that word. You’re sure of that.”
“Absolutely. I remember it distinctly. I asked him what he meant.”
“Odd word. Dispatched. Such a—such an almost dainty word. He didn’t use the word killed, almost as though he was afraid to use it. You see, Mr. Liebling, if it’s any comfort to you, I’m beginning to get the impression that our abductors here are not men who are essentially dangerous. I feel that these people are amateurs, not professionals, which could be to our advantage. They want to extract money from you, of course. But I get the strong feeling that they definitely don’t want to harm your son, and won’t, unless—”
“Unless we do something that causes them to panic,” Bathy said.
“Correct.”
“That’s why we wanted someone like yourself to handle the initial negotiations,” Bathy said. “Without notifying the police, or alerting the media.”
The Wrong Kind of Money Page 18
