Bluff

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Sklar is humble and super cooperative with the cops. He’s a chameleon, able to gauge the colors of those he’s dealing with and blend into their sensibilities. He tells detectives, “That bullet was meant for me. I know it was. Truthfully…? I’d give anything to change places with Sun. I love the man.”

  The cops don’t comment. They listen. Sklar continues talking to them earnestly, making eye contact with each man, impressing upon them that he knows they have a job to do and can see they are both excellent officers of the law. Sklar is usually very adept at creating camaraderie with people by seeming to put himself in their shoes, however costly or cheap those shoes may be. But right now, his folksy approach doesn’t seem to be working. The cops are looking at him like they suspect there’s something he’s not telling them. Time to crack a joke to get them in his corner.

  “Candidly, guys? You know the world’s gone completely nuts when you’re safer in Syria than at The Four Seasons.”

  That gets a chuckle out of them. And don’t they know it too. The world is nuts, all right, full of people who think they can get away with all kinds of shit.

  And do.

  Chapter Three

  As the train rumbles toward D.C., I can’t believe I actually escaped from that restaurant. Forget The Invisible Man. Older women are invisible and we don’t even have to disappear. No one gave me credit for being the shooter. That’s why I was able to calmly walk out of there. It used to bug me that I was beyond the gaze of men, overlooked and underestimated. But right now, I’m quite happy no one on this train is paying the slightest bit of attention to me. If they’re focused on anyone other than themselves, it’s the millennial blonde in the front of the compartment.

  As the train rolls on, I replay the scene in my mind. I was pretty cool and calm walking up to that table because I’d rehearsed it so much. But I did get rattled when Sunderland blurted out, “Lois, no! We killed you!” like he’d seen my mother’s ghost. I must look a lot more like my mother than I thought. I wonder if she’d be pleased to know that. Doubtful. Mummy so loved being one of a kind.

  I close my eyes and think, am I really that same prep school girl whose life was laid out before her like a magic carpet of privilege? Was I ever that innocent young debutante who curtsied to New York Society at the New York Infirmary Ball, then went on to marry the very suitable young man of my parents’ dreams? It’s hard to recognize myself now. God knows that naïve young girl could never have imagined that in her middle age she’d be sitting on a train wondering if she’d killed a man—and worse—not really caring.

  Chapter Four

  Greta Lauber is with her chef, going over the menu of tonight’s dinner party in honor of her dear friend Sun Sunderland when the phone rings. She lets her assistant get it. She has no time to chat. She’s much too busy with last-minute details. Greta plans dinner parties the way generals plan battles. Like a social Napoleon, she understands that guests march on their stomachs.

  Greta is a famous hostess in New York, known as a grand acquisitor of paintings, porcelain, and people. She has an eye for quality, in life and in art. No “Paperless Post” for her. Invitations to her “small dinners,” as she calls them, are handwritten on ecru cards, and much sought-after because, along with the elegant apartment, gourmet food, vintage wines, and glittering table settings, there is always interesting company. Greta coined the phrase, “You are who you eat with.” She has a knack for finding new people, young people, people of the moment, who add spice to the stew of old regulars. But the thing that has cemented her reputation as a hostess with the mostest are the dinners she gives for really powerful people—politicians, movie stars, media moguls, billionaires—like the one she is giving tonight in honor of Sun Sunderland, who has just donated one hundred million dollars to New York Hospital for a new cardiac research wing.

  Greta has recently noticed that many of her wealthiest friends have become as obsessed with science as they once were with art. The big collectors who used to bring gallerists and fashionable artists to her soirees now bring doctors and research scientists. She attributes this to the fear many of her aging friends have of being themselves collected by the Great Connoisseur in the sky.

  Through her long career in the financial capital of the world, she has observed one thing: Money exaggerates who people are. If they are good, they will be better. If they are bad, they will jump right down on the devil’s trampoline. If they are fearful of death, they will fund research into the disease they believe they are most likely to die of. Hence, The Sun Sunderland Cardiac Research Center at New York Hospital. She has no idea her august guest of honor is fighting for his life in the very hospital he has just endowed with a fortune. He is not dying of heart disease, as expected, but of a gunshot wound. What are the odds?

  Ms. Ellis, Greta’s crackerjack assistant, comes into the dining room wearing a long face.

  “Mrs. Lauber, Mrs. Hartz is on the telephone. I told her you were busy, but she says it’s extremely urgent. She sounds distraught.”

  “She always sounds distraught,” Greta mutters heading for the library to take the call.

  “Magma, sweetie, I really can’t talk now. What’s up?”

  “You haven’t heard.” Magma the Magpie, as she is affectionately known, falls uncharacteristically silent. It is the calculated silence of someone who enjoys the glide before impact.

  “What?” Greta says impatiently.

  Wait for it…

  “Sun’s been shot.”

  “What do you mean shot?”

  “I mean shot. With a gun. That Mad Maud Warner walked into The Four Seasons at lunch and shot Sun point-blank. And she got away! I was there! I saw the whole thing! The police questioned me!”

  “Dear God…!” Greta says, plopping down on the couch.

  As Magma Hartz is recounting the drama in detail, Greta grabs the remote and switches on the TV. The five o’clock news is just coming on. The screen blooms with the chaotic scene outside The Four Seasons earlier that day. The shooting is the lead story. A perky blond reporter is on camera giving a breathy account of the incident. Greta turns off the sound. She has no need of media commentary when she’s hearing all about it from an eyewitness.

  The crime is so bizarre on so many levels that Greta cannot quite comprehend it. First of all, what are the odds that one of your guests would have witnessed the shooting of your guest of honor—even if it is a small world, like people always say? Second of all, she can’t believe that Maud Warner, a woman she’s known for years, could possibly be capable of such a depraved and brazen act.

  Greta feels terrible for Sun, now in intensive care, as well as for his wife, Jean, who is one of Greta’s very best friends.

  “I should probably cancel the dinner,” Greta muses.

  “Absolutely not,” Magma cries. “People want to be together in time of tragedy. Trust me, discussing it will be helpful for everyone.”

  Greta understands better than anyone that what separates a good hostess from a great one is her record of providing memorable parties. This dinner will be memorable, all right, especially with Magma, an eyewitness, right there to be questioned. On that account alone, she feels she must go through with it.

  Greta hangs up and rushes to the dining room. She surveys her round table which is set for sixteen, the most it can accommodate. She instructs Martyn, her butler, to remove two places, which is not as easy as it sounds. Greta’s famous round table is known for its elaborate place settings. She likes to create a feast for the eye as well as the palate. Martyn removes two places, then rearranges the wineglasses, the water goblets, the champagne flutes, the crystal vodka shot glasses, the sterling silver placemats and cutlery, the individual Georgian salt cellars, the candlesticks, and Greta’s collection of little precious jewel flowerpots which sparkle against the dark mahogany. It’s time-consuming, like striking a stage set.

  Greta thinks about
the new generation of baby billionaires who wouldn’t be caught dead setting up a dinner like this, even if they had all the accoutrements. While most dinners today are happily casual, with food and dress to match, Greta clings to her formal entertainments like a passenger aboard a sinking yacht.

  Greta doesn’t really expect to hear from Jean Sunderland to say she’s not coming. But she thinks someone from Sunderland’s office should have had the grace to let her know. She reflects sadly that basic etiquette has gone the way of bustles and buggy whips, despite the fact that good manners are the only thing people have entirely within their own control.

  As she soaks in the tub, Greta wonders if she should wear the stunning new Michael Kors black crepe dress she bought just for this occasion. Black crepe is always fashionable—except when death is hovering so close.

  “I don’t want to look like a prediction,” she thinks.

  No, she’ll wear the cheery green taffeta Oscar from last year. She hopes no one will remember she’s worn it several times before—not that people care about such things anymore. The world has changed, she thinks. Definitely not for the better.

  Chapter Five

  I check my iPhone. The news is all over the web. Sunderland’s in the hospital in intensive care. He’s had heart attack as a result of the shooting. They now know I’m the shooter. But so far they’ve only managed to dig up an old photo of me from my deb days. No chance of me being recognized now. I call Billy Jakes.

  “Maudie! What the hell?! Are you nuts? You know the whole world’s looking for you, right?”

  “At last. They’ve ignored me for the past ten years.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Never mind. Can you meet me at the Shoe?”

  “Jesus…” He hesitates. “Okay. But I can’t get there ’til late. The game.”

  “See you there.”

  I put on my sunglasses and get off in Baltimore. I ditch the phone after removing the sim card. I take a taxi to the Horseshoe Casino, which just opened in August. No one there knows me yet. I figure a casino is the perfect place to hide. There are no clocks. No windows. No one’s checking the news. People don’t care who you are. They just want your money. I can play poker until Billy shows up.

  The minute I enter, I hear the cards singing to me like the Sirens over the jingle-jangle of the slot machines, beckoning me upstairs to the poker room.

  “Love the cards and the cards will love you,” my grandmother used to say as she taught me poker games like five card stud, seven card high low, and draw.

  And I do love the cards. The cards are my dangerous friends.

  I take the escalator upstairs to the poker room and buy into a two-dollar/five-dollar No Limit Hold’em game. I’m at a table full of men, as usual. When I was young guys used to look at me and think, How do I get her into bed? Now they look at me and think, How do I get into her chips? I’m an older lady who’s supposed to play Old Lady Poker. Little do they know.

  This particular table is filled with mopes with beer breath and sour attitudes who seem to know each other. As I’m arranging my chip stack on the felt, I see one of them wink at his buddy and whisper, “Cha-ching!” like I’m a payday. So I’m thinking, you guys can’t even imagine I could outplay you any more than you can imagine you’re sitting here with the most wanted woman in the whole freakin’ country.

  I win the first pot I play.

  Cha-ching!

  Chapter Six

  Jean Sunderland paces the waiting room of New York Hospital. She has been in that sterile hell waiting for updates on her husband’s condition ever since a distraught staffer burst into her board meeting at the Museum of Modern Art and blurted out the news he’d been shot. It’s hard to believe. Things like this simply don’t happen to people like them—not to the wealthy, socially prominent, well respected Sunderlands. If a man like Sun Sunderland ever did get shot, it should be the result of a terrible accident at a pheasant shoot on some grand estate, not at lunch at The Four Seasons.

  Jean is a fashionably thin, crisply turned out woman in her mid-fifties. Her attractiveness comes from a combination of meticulous grooming and a lively intelligence. She exudes an aura of competence. She’s a person who can be trusted to get things done, and done well. Having been successful in business, she’s weathered many a crisis in her life, but nothing near the likes of this current situation.

  Burt Sklar was already there when Jean arrived at the hospital. He stayed awhile to keep her company and bond with her in their mutual hour of grief. She finally Garboed him—“I want to be alone”—politely telling him to get lost. Jean has always been wary of Burt Sklar. She has never been able to figure out why her husband liked him so much. She doesn’t trust him. In the early days of their marriage, she asked her husband to drop Sklar. Sun defended his old friend, saying, “Jeanie, you just don’t get Burt. He’s stuck by me through thick and thin. I never forget loyalty.”

  Sunderland and Sklar have been close friends for years—way back when they were each married to their first wives. Sunderland was married to Pam. Sklar was married to Sylvia. They had many happy times, dining and vacationing together, just the four of them. A tight-knit group. Halcyon days. That is, until Pam ditched Sunderland for her exercise teacher—a woman.

  Sunderland was devastated by his wife’s betrayal. He didn’t know which was worse: the abandonment, or her choice of a female partner. Wherever Sunderland went, he imagined hearing the snickers of his enemies and friends alike. That a powerful man like Sunderland had been left by his wife for a woman was simply too delicious a morsel for the gossips not to chew on. You couldn’t cut the schadenfreude with a chainsaw.

  It was Sklar who stepped in to help Sunderland navigate that terrible period in Sunderland’s life when his battered manhood was nailed up like a ragged pelt for all the world to sneer at. Grateful for his friend’s loyalty, Sunderland confided in Sklar over many a drunken dinner. He told Sklar about certain sexual appetites he had. He described kinky, stamina-requiring episodes which proved he was a strong and virile man, not some wimp whose wife left him for “Daisy Dyke,” as he referred to his wife’s paramour. Sklar, who knew things about Sunderland that no one else knew or could have imagined, didn’t judge; he listened. Sklar was a discreet, supportive, and sympathetic ear. You don’t forget a friend like that. You can’t. He knows too much.

  Eventually, Sunderland met and married Jean Streeter, the creative director of Streeter/Greene, the enormously successful advertising agency she helped build. Jean was a force in New York’s ultra competitive world. She was considered a great catch. Their marriage helped erase Sunderland’s past humiliation. Over Jean’s objections, Sunderland picked Sklar to be his best man in their cozy wedding at Greta Lauber’s house.

  Later on, Jean was one of the few people who actually paid attention to Maud when she accused Sklar of embezzlement, and worse. Jean warned her husband, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fraud.” Sunderland defended his old friend, assuring his wife that Maud’s accusations against Sklar were nothing more than the deranged rants of a bitter divorcee with money problems.

  “You know why she hates Burt? Because Lois Warner trusted Burt more than she trusted her own daughter. Simple as that. All our friends love Burt. Hell, he represents half of them!” Sunderland crowed to Jean.

  Still, something told Jean that her husband’s continued association with Sklar would bring him trouble one day. And now this!

  She leaves the waiting room to call Greta.

  “Jeanie, darling! You’re an absolute angel to call. How is Sun?”

  “He’s going to pull through, Greta. I’m sure of it,” Jean replies, not because she knows anything from the doctors, but because positive thinking has always been her forte.

  “Thank God! Do you want me to come to the hospital?”

  “No, sweetie. I’m okay. Besides, you still have your dinner party, ri
ght?” Jean says, unsure.

  “Yes. And all our thoughts and prayers will be with you, my dear, brave friend. We’ll drink a toast to Sun’s full recovery,” Greta says, figuring it’s best not to mention that their mutual friend Magma the Magpie will be there to spice up the evening with her eyewitness account of the crime.

  Jean hangs up, touched by Greta’s offer to come to the hospital. Still, she can’t help wondering if there are places on earth where dinner parties are canceled when the guest of honor gets shot.

  Chapter Seven

  Greta Lauber’s guests arrive at her apartment in varying states of shock and dismay. Greta greets them all with her usual upbeat charm: “I just spoke to Jean at the hospital. She says Sun’s going to pull through!”

  Greta feels like an archangel bringing tidings of comfort, if not joy. People are clearly disturbed that one of their own has been shot by one of their own. Everyone needs a drink, and not just those decorous flutes of pink Cristal champagne which are a Lauber party staple. Tonight, everyone who isn’t in recovery wants the hard stuff. Greta breaks out the coveted seventeen-year-old double wood Balvenie scotch which was the preferred drink of her late husband, Jake Lauber, the distinguished publisher.

  As the guests mingle in the living room, all anyone can talk about is the shooting and how Maud managed to get away. Many of them knew Maud when she lived in New York. They remember her bookshop with fondness. She was quite social and well liked before she went around town like some Park Avenue Cassandra, warning people that Burt Sklar was a crook. Maud’s been nuts for years. But this nuts? Who knew?

  Several people at this very dinner party are clients of Sklar. Sklar looks after them by taking care of all their finances—doing their taxes, paying their bills, overseeing their investments and real estate interests, setting up trusts for their kids, etc. He’s a nanny accountant, a mensch money manager, constantly reassuring his brood that they are in great financial shape.