I Come as a Theif

by Louis Auchincloss

  “Oh, damn it, Tony. The first guest. I don’t know if I should believe you, but I’m going to. I’ve got to.” And suddenly, as she rose, she knew that she did believe him. “Oh, Tony,” she murmured as she saw two figures behind Len, “don’t leave tonight until they’ve all gone. Don’t leave me.”

  Now he did take her hand, publicly, gravely, in front of the approaching couple.

  “I promise.”

  ***

  Tony outstayed all the guests and went to Joan’s bedroom after the household had left and Len had turned out the hall lights. It was not very satisfactory, for Joan was fuzzy with drink, but it was wonderful that he spent the whole night with her, holding her in his arms. In the morning she did not even ask him how he would explain his absence to Lee. She felt sure now that he could explain anything. Or that he did not have to. She telephoned Dr. Reid to say that she was ready to go to the hospital.

  5

  Nothing that Max Leonard was hearing on the telephone matched the bright yellow cheerfulness of his Madison Avenue office in Lowder, Leonard, Bacon & Shea (or Leonard, Bacon & Shea, as they would have to call it now that Tony had gone into government). Nor did the news that his broker offered fit with the colorful marine prints on his walls: the Monitor firing away at a hulky Merrimac and the Constitution in full sail on a blue, blue sea. Or with the silver-framed photographs of Max and the great, sometimes in color, of Max, young, blond and smiling, always the boy, seen behind Mayor Lindsay on a platform, or by Tony at Madison Square Garden, or dancing at a fund-raising dinner with Sophia Loren. Or with the certificates of all the courts to which Max had been admitted or with the page, extracted and framed, from the Williams College yearbook of eighteen years back showing Max, looking only slightly younger, over a legend that represented the verdict of his peers: “If Max strikes you as only a good time Johnnie, watch out! The guy’s a dynamo disguised as sugar candy!”

  “I’m sorry, Max,” Bob Everett went on, “things are tough all over. Do you think you’re the only margin buyer who’s been caught in this recession? Herron Products is still down, and I still need twenty g’s to cover you and Tony.”

  “Where am I supposed to get it?”

  “What about that limited partnership you went into? The Jersey restaurant deal?”

  “Alrae? If we don’t get a bank loan before the end of the month, that’s down the drain, too.”

  “What about your law firm?”

  “Joke? When did small law firms have that kind of cash?”

  “Can’t Tony go to the Conways?”

  “Tony won’t go to the Conways. She’s sick. He says he’s been to everybody he can go to.”

  “Then he can go broke.”

  “Jesus, Bob! You know how close we are to a breakthrough. Why can’t you see us through yourself?”

  “Myself! Hell, man, I’m in the same boat!”

  “Sometimes I wonder if we couldn’t get an injunction to make Nixon stop this crazy war that’s scaring the market.”

  “You do that. You do just that. In the meantime I’ll be selling you out.”

  “Give me at least till Monday, for God’s sake.”

  “Why? Will you have it Monday?”

  “I’ve always had it before, haven’t I?”

  There was a long pause, followed by Everett’s sigh of exasperation.

  “Okay. Till Monday. But you know I shouldn’t.”

  Max folded his hands in quiet misery as he stared into the big empty crystal inkwell above his blotter and cursed the war, the government and the bad luck of Max Leonard. He felt suddenly depleted, as if a lifetime of running just ahead of due dates had at last presented him with the bill. But hadn’t he always known it would? That his luck couldn’t hold forever? That the whole hysterical forty-year cycle of being something one was not—or at least never quite—the brightest and most popular boy in his class, the proud young husband of the prettiest girl in hers, the brilliant lawyer, and fixer, the handler of situations, the manager of the rising spokesman of liberals—had to end when the energy, or daring, or capacity of self-delusion, or, again, the possible just plain luck, ran out? He had been able to pay off the creditors of youth who had backed him through law school and marriage to Elaine by the unanticipated early death of his mother, who had left him just enough. He had been able to pay off the second group, those who had staked him to the handsome law office that had enabled him to lure Tony Lowder from Hale & Cartwright by going behind Tony’s back to Tony’s client, Joan Conway. But there was such a thing, obviously, as the end of the road. And yet. It was like a dream where you run and run and run, and there it is, the goal, the rostrum, the prizes, the hum already of the applause, but you can’t quite reach it, you can’t ever reach it. Tony in politics at last, and just as Max had seen and planned, a hit, and the money almost theirs—the very brink of glory—and now this. Max would have to look for a job as a wretched law clerk. At best.

  He looked resentfully at Elaine’s heart-shaped face and lustrous hairdo on the other side of the empty inkwell. Elaine’s marriage vows had been strictly for richer or richer. She would not even try to understand failure. Well, let her go. Let her take the children and go back to her snippy old mother. That was the least of his worries. The one insane error of his whole career had been to marry a poor girl, and yet it had seemed logical at the time, indeed imperative. For Elaine had been herself just as much the symbol of success as the money that he had wanted. What was the good of one without the other?

  But what was the good of either? Might there not be an actual relief in failure? That was the way Tony sometimes talked. Tony talked to him about Max Leonard as if Max Leonard did not understand the contradictions of his own nature. This was absurd because crazy people usually know they’re crazy. Max was utterly aware of his own craziness, aware of it from minute to minute, aware of all his drives and compulsions, aware of the hopelessness of it all. He knew that the brief dizzy moments of joy when one of his plans worked out were hardly worth the fuss. But what else could a man do? He picked up the ringing telephone.

  “What is it, Miss Jordan?”

  “It’s that man again, sir. The one you spoke to yesterday who wouldn’t give his name.”

  “I’ll take him.” He quickly pressed the white button. “Good morning, Jerry.”

  “Okay, fella, where is it?”

  “I haven’t got it.”

  “I didn’t ask you that. I asked, where is it?”

  “I need time, Jerry.”

  “I don’t give time. You know that.”

  “What can I do then?”

  “You guess what I can do, fella. You guess.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  After a pause, Jerry Lassatta’s voice was the least bit flatter. “Guess.”

  “Jerry, I’ve got a client waiting. Can I call you back?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, seriously. It’s a client I might get some money out of.”

  “See that you do. I’ll call back in an hour.”

  When he hung up, Max was so frightened that he thought that he was going to vomit. Then he struck out wildly with his fists as if his fear were an antagonist that could be pushed away. He had to jump up when Miss Jordan came suddenly into the room with the mid-morning mail.

  “Get out!” he shouted.

  “Well! I certainly will!” she retorted. She would probably leave now. He didn’t care. He didn’t even mind alienating and losing a perfect secretary. He slammed his door after her and locked it.

  Fear nullified life, stripped out the lining and the color, made love and laughter mockeries. He remembered reading of a crewman in a bomber who had tried to jump from the plane under antiaircraft fire because he preferred death to the fear of death. How he understood that now. It had never occurred to him, when he had started borrowing from Jerry Lassatta, that he would ever be treated as the debtors of loan sharks are treated. He was too grand. Lassatta was too grand. For Lassatta, he had kn
own from the start, was far more than the president of a truckers’ local. That was only a front. Lassatta, whom he had met while canvassing labor leaders for Tony, was a power in the underworld, in the Mafia…

  “Guess,” Lassatta had said.

  Would ugly, bullet-headed men be seen lurking about the house in Vernon Manor? Would Elaine be troubled with odd telephone calls, with strangers in the street who addressed her with unbecoming familiarity and asked her how “Maxy” was? Would he be tripped up at night and beaten to pulp? Would he be flung in the East River, his feet in a cement box? No, no, probably not—it was all too ridiculous—but how would he ever feel safe again, and what was life worth under the hair shirt of this hideous fear? Maybe he would be safe in Tony’s apartment, with Tony. In Tony’s arms. What an image! But now he was crazy, crazy with fear! Tony, of course, did not know what fear was. Fear might not exist in the presence of the fearless. Oh, why had Max been born such a miserable thing as a man, a man whom a boy had to grow into or die, a man who had to be always doing something or feeling something—or not feeling something, not feeling fear? Why could he not have been a girl, a pretty girl like Elaine, or like Lee, and turn from a terrible world into the wide, dark, enfolding embrace of Tony Lowder?

  Tony, Tony, save me!

  Miss Jordan’s pouting voice sounded on the telephone. “That man’s on the wire again.”

  “Yes, Jerry?” he said into the instrument. “Can’t you even give me an hour?”

  “I’m at Canal Street. Meet me at Gridley’s Bar. Don’t sweat. I’ve got a proposition.”

  Half an hour later, from the doorway of the dark bar and grill, Max spotted Lassatta across the room. The latter did not seem to be watching for anyone. Indifferent, impassive, oddly gentle looking, he smoked a cigarette and stared straight ahead. He still looked the friendly soul he had once seemed, short and stout with round, bland face, stubby, curly black hair and eyes that were humorous when they were not suddenly opaque, remote. Jerry could talk on any topic in the world, but he talked like a man from Mars, not really concerned. He could be amused, cynical; he could be occasionally funny, but he never seemed to regard the subject—be it war, peace, prosperity, depression—as having anything essential to do with him, Jerry Lassatta, or with reality. Max closed his eyes and prayed for the Jerry he had first known.

  Then he walked across the room and sat down at the table. Jerry smiled.

  “Hi, pal,” he said. “What’ll you drink?”

  6

  Tony had been silent for ten minutes, standing by the window in Max’s office, looking down at the long, gray, slug-like bus tops that nudged their way to the curb. When he spoke, his tone was the least bit mocking.

  “So here we are already. On the threshold of crime.”

  Max glanced toward the closed door. “You mustn’t shout about it. I’m not even sure it’s a crime. It’s quite unprovable, anyway—a nonfeasancy kind of thing.”

  “I won’t insult your legal intelligence by bothering to repudiate that. I’ll simply attribute it to the pressure you’ve been under.” Tony strolled over to Max’s desk and looked down at him. He felt the same detachment that he had felt in the Settlement House, the same mild contempt. “Gosh, man, you do look done in. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen circles under those famous boyish blue eyes. You should be more careful. Your juvenile charm is one of our trademarks.”

  “Can it, Tony. This is serious.”

  “What’s so serious about it? Why, your hands are actually trembling! What are you afraid of, pal? You don’t think these thugs will actually do something to you?”

  “Well, they’re not renowned for their gentleness.”

  “You’re afraid they might rough you up? Forget it. That’s the kind of treatment they reserve for the two-bit store-keeper who’s lost his interest money playing the horses. Lassatta didn’t lend you money because he wanted your thirty percent. That was just an incidental benefit. He lent you money to get you in a hole so he could get at me.”

  “But I’m still in the hole, aren’t I?” Max looked down at his shaking hands. “Tony, please let’s do it and get out of this mess. Please, Tony!”

  “Take it easy.”

  “You don’t know these guys. They’re not afraid of anyone or anything. They’d bump off John Lindsay himself if he was in their way.”

  “Oh, Max!”

  “They would! But, all right, don’t think of the negative aspect. Think of the positive. Look at it this way. We get the time we need. We get the money. With any luck at all, we’ll break through into some kind of real dough. And you don’t have to do anything. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to take any risk or commit any crime. You leave everything to me. Isn’t that simple enough? And in six months’ time you’re on your way to becoming … well, you name it, Mr. Commissioner.”

  Tony walked slowly back to the window where he stood looking out again, stroking his chin. He had a funny feeling of being excited all around his heart—so that the muscles in that area seemed painfully tightened—and at the same time of being calm, even numb, in all other parts of his body. The great thing had to be not the money, but the experience. Yet what value could there be in any experience that had to be shared with anyone as spiritually degraded as Max now seemed? “I concede the beauty of the plan,” he said at last. “It’s quite admirable, really. Let me go over it again, step by step, to be sure I have it all straight.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Menzies, Lippard and Company are in trouble. They’re undercapitalized by a million and a half. If they don’t meet the SEC requirements by a week from Friday, they’re suspended from trading on the stock exchange. That means they’re shut down. Finished.”

  “And the Menzies case is on your desk.”

  “Obviously, it has to be. Now let me go on. Lassatta owns or represents a good piece of Menzies, Lippard. We’re not sure which. Perhaps he’s a limited partner through a front name. Perhaps the chief of his Mafiosan family is. It doesn’t matter. The point is that Lassatta stands to lose heavily, personally or as a representative, if Menzies shuts up shop next week. But if I manage to sit on the case so as to give them more time—for two more weeks to be exact—which is all Menzies thinks he needs to raise his money—then forty g’s of crisp new bills will be slipped to Max Leonard in an envelope while he is urinating in some washroom.”

  “The graphic details are yours.”

  “Ah, yes, something must be, I suppose. As you say, I am to take no risk. I don’t even have to arrange the delay. All I have to do is not do anything about the Menzies matter for two weeks. It would look, at worst, like simple laziness. Or, at best, like the exercise of enlightened judgment. I shall have used my discretion to avoid the disastrous failure of a distinguished brokerage house. I might even be a hero.”

  “You’re very funny.”

  “I’m very grave.”

  Max leaned forward and covered his face. “Can’t you ever be serious?”

  “Don’t despair, my friend. I haven’t turned you down yet. But in a matter like this I insist on dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’. What kind of a devil are you if you won’t let a man discuss the soul you’re trying to buy? If I am to become a bribed civil servant, Max Satanicus, I am going to become it with my eyes very wide open.”

  “But I know you when you take that tone,” Max retorted wearily. “It always means you’ve decided against something.”

  “Do you know me? If you did, you’d know that your proposition intrigues me. It intrigues me immensely. If I’m ever to commit a crime, it strikes me that this might be the right one.” Tony paced up and down the rug as he worked it out. “Look at each aspect of it. Where is the wrong? Where is the hurt? Start with the bribe money. Where does it come from? The public? No. The government? No. It comes from the Mafia. Whatever you and I did with it would be at least as socially valuable as what they would. So no loss there. And if Menzies, Lippard is saved from closing, is that not for t
he public benefit? Are not hundreds of innocent investors saved from possible insolvency? So far so good. But what about Lassatta, or whoever he represents? Wouldn’t it be better if they lost their investment in Menzies? Not necessarily. Because this is probably a retirement account. The Mafiosi, like other prudent persons, save for rainy days and senility and terminal ailments. And if they lose their savings, don’t they have to go back to robbing and killing for more?”

  For the first time in their session Max seemed to be thinking of something besides his own panic. “You don’t have to go so far as to make out that we’re public benefactors!”

  “Why not?” Tony exclaimed. “If everything comes out for the better? Now, let us consider the intangibles. Do we, by taking this bribe…”

  “I take the bribe.”

  “Nonsense, Max. I’m the public officer. Do we, by taking this bribe, decrease respect for the United States Government? No, because nobody will know of it but a couple of crooks who have no respect for government anyway. And, as far as you and I are concerned, you will have been relieved of a cruel anxiety, and the temptation to do further wrong, while I shall have been placed in possession of means through which to become a better public servant.”

  “So what is lost?” If Tony had to be humored, Max’s expression seemed to say, well let him be humored.

  “‘Nothing but honor,’ as Jim Fisk put it. That, of course, is lost forever. And I won’t try to delude you by quoting Falstaff. We should have indeed lost something when we have lost honor. But precisely what that amounts to is for us to decide. We should have made a choice, of our own free will, and for motives that we have thoroughly explored, to commit a criminal act. We should be in charge of our destiny.”

  “You mean you’d do this thing as some kind of an intellectual game?”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  Max shook his head and sighed. “You’re only playing with me. You’ll never go through with it.”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Oh, but you have.”