Bluff

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “I can’t go into details now. But I will tell you this: You’re going to be a very, very rich woman if you just do exactly as I say.”

  “But—”

  He cuts her off. “Just trust me, Dany. I’m sending you back to D.C. in a limo. Go home and wait to hear from me. And for Christ’s sakes don’t talk to anyone.”

  “As if I had anyone to talk to. I wasn’t allowed to have any real friends.”

  “I’m your real friend, baby.” He reaches for her hand across the table.

  “I hope so,” she says, as he clasps her hand tight.

  “No one knows anything yet.”

  “No one except Jean,” Danya scoffs.

  “I’ll deal with Jean,” Sklar says. “Eat your sandwich. It’s a long drive.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  FYI: Tolstoy had it wrong when he said all happy families are alike. Trust me, all unhappy families are alike. I ought to know because any time miserable grown-ups get together we sound like miserable kids, complaining about our rotten parents and childhoods, or lack thereof. Happy families have individual memories. Unhappy families have collective amnesia. Just as a poker pro knows there’s no weaker target than a fish, a con man knows there’s no weaker target than an unhappy family. When I met Burt Sklar, our family was misery on a stick, ready to be gobbled up by a hungry predator.

  Mummy and I had a fractious relationship because she hated my real father even more than she hated the presence of a growing daughter reminding her of her age. My stepfather, Sidney Warner, had a rapidly advancing case of Parkinson’s disease which, understandably, made him depressed and cranky. He refused to use a wheelchair and often stood in doorways for hours, unable to move, refusing all help. My younger half brother, Alan, was transitioning from marijuana to more potent drugs, a fact he managed to hide from everyone but me—though he denied it. On any given day, our house had more drama than a Broadway season. It was into this mightily dysfunctional household that I introduced Burt Sklar to my stepfather because “Siddy,” as I called him, needed a new accountant.

  The afternoon I brought Sklar over to the apartment for the first time, Siddy was having a relatively good day. He managed to walk to the library without stopping for fifteen minutes every other step. He even made a joke about his “pesky Parkinson’s.” I’d prepped Sklar about Siddy, and Sklar got the ball rolling with an admiring comment about Siddy’s collection of first editions, displayed in floor-to-ceiling brass bookcases. I poured the coffee set up on a silver tray, then sat off to one side as the men began their conversation.

  Sklar’s entire demeanor changed with Siddy. With me, Sklar had always been avuncular and relaxed, a benign authority figure, and an easy talker. But with Siddy, Sklar assumed the air of a disciple at the feet of a great man. He only spoke to ask Siddy questions.

  For all his success and wealth, Sidney Warner was a shy soul. Sklar instinctively sensed that Siddy was aching to tell his story to someone who would listen and truly appreciate his rags-to-riches tale. I knew from experience that no one listened better than Sklar. With Sklar’s expert prodding, Siddy regaled Sklar with his life story: How he’d grown up dirt poor in Brooklyn where his father sold cigars and his mother took in washing; how he’d studied to be a pharmacist, but instead went into the sugar business where a man’s handshake was more powerful than a contract, then the toy business where he saw Japanese ingenuity firsthand, and finally, the electronics business, where he hit the mother lode.

  After a while, he started telling Sklar the more intimate stories of his single life in Paris in the fifties—a life of models, artists, writers, exhibitions, great food, and wonderful conversation. I’d heard all these stories before, but Siddy rarely shared them with others. He clearly liked Sklar a lot.

  Their thirty-minute appointment stretched to two hours, at the end of which Siddy asked Sklar if he’d be interested in becoming our family accountant.

  “There’s just one little hitch,” Siddy said. “My wife, Lois, has to approve.”

  The next day when Sklar stopped by my bookshop to thank me, I told him frankly, “Siddy’s worried my mother might not like you.”

  “How come?”

  “My mother doesn’t like anyone.”

  Sklar asked me to tell him the one story about my mother that really encapsulated her. I didn’t hesitate. I told him about Chock Full O’ Nuts.

  Mummy called me up one day in a panic and asked me if I’d heard about a gruesome freak accident that had occurred earlier that morning. A gust of wind had blown a stop sign through the plate glass window at the Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee shop on Madison Avenue and decapitated a waitress. It was all over the news and I’d heard about it. But I let her think she was the first to tell me because Mummy loved nothing better than informing people of disaster.

  “How horrible!” I exclaimed.

  “Maud, I was there!”

  Now I was alarmed. “Oh, my God, Mummy! You saw it?”

  “No. But I was there during Christmas shopping, sitting at that very counter, having a sandwich! And it was very windy that day.”

  I paused because I didn’t really want to say what was on my mind. But the Imp of the Perverse made me blurt it out.

  “Mummy, Christmas was months ago.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Maud! Don’t you understand…? It was windy that day! That could have been me!” She hung up, outraged by my lack of sympathy.

  I told my brother, Alan, about Mummy’s crazy call. From that day on Alan and I alerted each other to our mother’s insane mood swings and distortions of facts with the code words: “Chock Full O’ Nuts, incoming…”

  Sklar got a laugh over that story, as anyone who ever heard it did. However, Mummy’s desire to cast herself as a constant victim, to get attention by placing herself at the center of every tragedy, no matter how far removed, turned out to be valuable information for Sklar. I know he filed away that story, along with other things I told him, like a spy amassing a dossier on a country he intended to invade.

  Knowing Mummy would probably loathe Sklar on sight, I armed him with a secret weapon.

  Alan and I were there when Siddy introduced my mother to Sklar. Mummy looked him up and down like he was a homeless person who’d just wandered in off the street. Sklar stepped forward to shake her hand with the eagerness of a hopeful fraternity pledge. She evaded his grasp and said, “Won’t you sit down?” in a theatrical English accent.

  Alan whispered to me: “Oh-oh, she’s in dowager duchess mode. You know what that means.”

  “Yeah. She hates him. But I gave him a secret weapon,” I whispered back.

  Mummy saw everything around her as a reflection of herself in some way, from furniture to people. I knew what she was thinking: This dreary man, in his ill-fitting gray suit, sad tie, and thick-soled shoes, is “common,” an adjective Mummy used to described people who were not worth consideration. Sklar was common to the core.

  Sklar sat facing my mother across the Chinese lacquer coffee table in the library where refreshments were once again set out on a silver tray. Siddy, Alan, and I all sat on the couch. I poured everyone a cup of coffee from the silver coffeepot—everyone except Mummy, who helped herself to her special tisane de verveine from her favorite Sevres porcelain teapot. In the silence, the pouring liquids sounded like Niagara Falls. Sklar then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pretty miniature-size book and offered it to my mother. I nudged Alan and surreptitiously pointed at the book.

  “What’s this?” Mummy said, hesitating before accepting it.

  “A limited edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets with illustrations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I understand you love Shakespeare as much as I do. I thought you might like to have it.”

  Mummy’s face softened in appreciation. She loved presents. She loved Shakespeare. She loved Rossetti. Most of all she loved the fact that Sklar knew
of her deep affection for the Bard’s work, as if her likes and dislikes were subjects of universal interest. It never occurred to her that I’d supplied him with the book so he could win her favor. In that one simple gesture, my mother’s resistance to Burt Sklar melted like spring snow, as I knew it would. As Mummy relaxed in Sklar’s presence, Siddy left for work. Alan excused himself because he knew what was coming. I stuck around to watch Sklar and Mummy interact.

  For the next hour, Mummy recited entire sonnets to Sklar by heart. He applauded her efforts with effusive claps. She was a wonderful actress with a melodic voice. It gave me a pang to think she felt cheated out of her career for a family life that was so obviously disappointing for her. When she ran out of sonnets, she regaled Burt with tales of her difficult youth, a subject of which she never tired. Once Mummy got going, she was on an Olympic luge, careening down the travails of her childhood as fast as the words would take her.

  She told Burt the one story she told everyone she ever met, including manicurists and taxi drivers—namely, that her father, a prosperous import-export merchant, had been swindled out of all his money by his cousin who persuaded him to sign a Durable Power of Attorney. The cousin promised he would take care of the family if anything happened to my grandfather. Instead, the cousin embezzled all the family’s money.

  I listened to Mummy describe for the umteenth time how she was yanked out of Brentwood Convent on Long Island when she was only sixteen years old because the family could no longer afford to keep her there. Blessed with great beauty, she got a job in the Garment District modeling hats. From there, she tried her hand at acting but got nowhere until she bribed her way into a part in an off-Broadway play by telling the producer she could get him all the costumes free. She used her contacts in the garment industry to make good on her promise. But the producer went back on his word and fired her before the play opened. She got her revenge by landing the part of Ophelia in a more prestigious production. These were the formative events of my mother’s youth, tattooed on her psyche forever, enabling her to elevate victimhood to an art form.

  “So don’t you ever dare ask me to sign a Durable Power of Attorney!” she said, wagging a playfully scolding finger at Sklar, who laughed.

  I left the room when Mummy started trashing my real father, whom she still hated with a homicidal passion, despite the fact he was dead.

  When I came back that evening to find out how she liked Sklar, I was shocked to find he was still there. He and Mummy were in the library right where I’d left them. Mummy was sitting next to him, sobbing on his shoulder.

  When I came in, she looked up at me and said, “Maudie, I love this man. He’s like a father to me!”

  This was odd, not only because Burt was thirty years her junior, but because Mummy had often hinted that her father had abused her as a child and that’s why she was sent away to a convent at the age of eight. It should have been a clue that she was about to relive her early victimhood.

  With my mother’s wholehearted approval, Siddy made Sklar our family accountant. After Siddy died, Sklar took over the family finances. Eventually, Sklar swindled my mother out of all her money, just like her father before her had been swindled out of all his money by an accountant. I think about the patterns which govern families without their recognizing them until it’s too late. I wonder if there were ever any murderers in my family. Or have I the dubious distinction of being the first?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jean Sunderland has read the document in front of her twice.

  “I still don’t understand what this means,” she says softly, fearful that she understands all too well.

  Burt Sklar is seated across from her at the long, polished mahogany conference table. Sitting beside him is his lawyer, Mona Lickel, a prim, gray-haired woman with smug eyes and red lips thin as knife slashes.

  “Truthfully, Jean…? I know how difficult this is for you on a helluva lotta levels,” Sklar says.

  Jean suppresses the urge to scream at Sklar, a man whom she’s always detested. She glances at her lawyer, Squire Huff, who is seated beside her wearing the grim face of a wartime sentinel.

  “Thank you, Burt, for your understanding. But I’m unclear…That is, I can’t quite grasp…Oh the hell with it! What in God’s name does this thing mean?” she cries, waving the piece of paper in front of her.

  Sklar clears his throat. “Jean, I believe that document is self-explanatory,” he says with a condescending air.

  Jean looks at the document again, although some of the print appears blurry to her enraged eyes. The heading reads:

  “DURABLE GENERAL POWER OF ATTORNEY, NEW YORK STATUTORY SHORT FORM.” Underneath in smaller print is an explanation: “The powers you grant below continue to be effective should you become disabled or incompetent. CAUTION: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DOCUMENT. It gives the person whom you designate (your “Agent”) broad powers to handle your property during your lifetime, which may include powers to mortgage, sell, or otherwise dispose of any real or personal property without advance notice to you or approval by you...”

  Jean pauses.

  “This document names you as Sun’s agent to, let me see, ‘Act in my name, place, and stead, in any way which I myself could do, if I were personally present…’ Don’t tell me Sun signed this willingly!” she cries.

  “Truthfully, Jean…? He did. And as you can see, it’s been duly notarized by Ms. Lickel here.” Sklar nods to the lawyer.

  “You also witnessed this document?” Huff asks.

  “I did. Along with Ms. Margaret Henson,” Lickel says.

  “And where is Ms. Henson?” Huff asks.

  “Unfortunately, Ms. Henson passed away two years ago,” Lickel says.

  “How convenient,” Huff sniffs.

  The sumptuous wood-paneled conference room in the venerable old white-shoe firm of Huff and Gaines is now a battlefield where the gentlemanly Huff is dangerously outmatched by wily rebel forces.

  “So am I to understand that my husband handed all his financial affairs over to you over three years ago without my knowledge?” Jean says to Sklar.

  “That’s a slight oversimplification. But that’s what it boils down to, yes,” Sklar says.

  Jean shakes her head in disbelief, thumbing through another folder.

  “According to these bank accounts and records, there’s hardly any money left in the estate!” Jean says.

  “I don’t call five million dollars hardly any money, Jean,” Sklar says.

  “It is when he was worth close to a billion! What the hell happened to the rest of it?”

  Sklar is about to answer when Mona Lickel intervenes. “Mr. Sunderland instructed Mr. Sklar to set up what is known as a ‘tontine.’ Substantial investments were made in various entities controlled by three people. In such an arrangement the surviving partners always benefit the most.”

  “The three people being—?” Jean says warily because she already knows the answer.

  “Mr. Sunderland, Mr. Sklar, and Mrs. Danya Dickert Sunderland,” Lickel says matter-of-factly.

  Bigamy, the lusty elephant in the room, has reared its ugly head. Unable to control herself, Jean leaps up from the table, screaming at Sklar, “You bastard! You’re not getting away with this!”

  Squire Huff follows his client to a corner of the conference room to try and calm her down. Sklar and Lickel exchange sly glances at one another as Huff confers with Jean for a long moment. Though still distraught, Jean returns to the table and speaks in a more measured tone.

  “What about my house?” she asks.

  “The house in New York and the estate in Southampton have both been mortgaged and will be sold—unless, of course, you want to buy them,” Lickel says.

  “Buy them? I own them!”

  “Unfortunately, that was never the case. They were both in Mr. Sunderland’s name,” Lickel says.

&nbs
p; “Yeah, Jean. Sun had me mortgage them years ago to take advantage of the markets. I’m surprised he never told you,” Sklar says.

  Jean is so beside herself she grabs a bound copy of Sunderland’s Last Will and Testament and flings it across the conference table at Sklar.

  “And this ridiculous will…! He makes you the executor? I’m his wife, for God’s sakes! At one point I was his executor. When the hell did that change exactly?” she cries.

  “Four years ago, as per the codicil,” Lickel says with no emotion.

  Jean slumps back in her chair, robotically shaking her head.

  “You’ve arranged everything very neatly, haven’t you, Burt? As his wife I’m entitled to half his estate. But there’s not much of an estate left, is there? Thanks to you.”

  Squire Huff now tries to take control. “Mr. Sklar—Sklaah (as he pronounces it in his mid-Atlantic accent)—rest assured that my client is going to contest every single document pertaining to Mr. Sunderland’s finances.”

  Sklar ignores Huff. “I’m not keeping anything from you, Jeanie. Scout’s honor.” Sklar raises his fingers in a boy scout salute.

  “Mr. Sklar, you will kindly address me from now on,” Huff says.

  Sklar leans forward and clasps his hands together with the expression of a concerned clergyman. “Listen guys, I know how painful this is for you on any number of levels. But let me assure you…everything I’ve done concerning this will and, indeed, concerning all of my best friend Sun’s affairs has been done entirely at his direction—”

  “Which doesn’t mean it’s honest!” Jean interrupts.

  “Which means it’s legal,” Mona Lickel shoots back using her “exorcist voice,” as Sklar calls it—the deep-toned, satanic rasp which is so effective in negotiations because it scares the shit out of people coming from this soberly tailored, tightly permed grandmotherly figure. Huff looks unnerved.

  Sklar goes on. “Look Jean, Sun was my best friend, as you know—even though you didn’t let me speak at his funeral and seated me in Siberia. He was a great man. A flawed man, to be sure, but a great man. He felt he’d amply provided for you and his son during his lifetime. And not to rub salt in the wound, he fell in love late in life. He had a bad heart and he wanted to make sure that if anything happened to him, the woman he loved would be amply provided for.”