Bluff

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Sklar remembered feeling curiously detached as he smoothed the bedcovers to hide any sign of a struggle. He picked up the book of Shakespeare sonnets Lois kept on the night table beside her bed, the one he had given her the day they met. He placed the book under her hand to make it look like she’d had a heart attack while reading. An old person’s way to go.

  The next day, Sklar was informed of Lois Warner’s death by her physician. Sklar feigned shock and grief, saying, “I can’t believe it! She wasn’t just a client. She was family!”

  The doctor told Sklar that old people with heart conditions often die without warning. “It’s a relatively painless death,” the doctor told him.

  “Thank you for telling me that. I loved her,” Sklar said with great sincerity.

  When Sklar called Sunderland with the news they were in the clear, Sunderland broke down as if getting away with murder was almost as bad as the act itself. Sklar rushed over to see Sunderland, worried his Catholic friend might feel the urge to confess his guilt to the world. Sklar managed to calm Sunderland down, reminding him how much they both had at stake, as well as the dubious assurance they’d had “no choice.” Though the two men never spoke of it again, Sklar knew Sunderland was haunted by the murder. The former altar boy’s conscience was ticking away.

  Sklar bolts upright in bed as he suddenly realizes that Sun might have told Danya everything about this crime. And by everything Sklar means his own involvement. Sunderland’s cryptic outburst at the restaurant, “Lois, we killed you!” might not have been the only time Sun made reference to the murder. What if Danya knew the whole story?

  Was that the real reason she fled? And where the hell was she?

  Chapter Forty-seven

  I hadn’t uttered a single word since my capture. Not one freaking word! I wanted them to think I was crazy and in shock. But not everyone was fooled. The state’s psychiatrist told the D.A. I was “malingering,” the fancy term for faking. Meanwhile Lydia hired an expert who said I was in shock and a borderline schizophrenic. In other words, it was dueling shrinks at dawn. I liked Payne Whitney and wanted to stay there. Then I made a slight error. I bumped into a hospital attendant and inadvertently uttered the fateful words, “I beg your pardon.”

  Wouldn’t you know the downfall of a deb would be manners?

  So it’s good-bye psych ward, hello Rikers.

  The jig is up. I can start talking now, although there aren’t many to talk to. I’m in isolation in this hell hole because I’m a high-profile prisoner. Rikers makes the Gypsy’s look like The Golden Door Spa. Nevertheless, I have plenty of time to go over crucial events to make sure I get my story straight. In order to go forward, I have to go backward.

  Alan and I were estranged after our mother died. I felt betrayed he never supported me against Sklar. I just assumed he and Sklar were still in touch and that he was living on the trust fund Mummy had set up for him. On Labor Day, 2013, four years after Mummy died, Alan called me up after a long period of complete silence.

  “Hey, Maudie. Remember me?”

  Hearing my brother’s voice was a poignant reminder of the old days. He was the only family I had left. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed him. I didn’t care about Sklar anymore, or what he’d done. I was doing pretty well at poker plus working various temp jobs to supplement my tournaments. I’d quit doing the victim rag, although I did track Sklar occasionally on social media just to see what he was up to.

  “Hey, stranger!” I said warmly. “How the hell are you?! Where the hell are you?”

  “New York.”

  “Last I heard from you, you were in Santa Fe with another Ms. Right Now.”

  “Yeah. I was. Yeah…”

  His voice was somber and hesitant, which was so unlike him.

  “‘Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?’” I joked. Alan and I often spoke to each other in lines from The Godfather.

  “My enemies are too close, Maudie. I’m in deep shit.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. What’s up?”

  “Sklar cut off my money….You were right about him, Maudie. I should have listened to you.”

  I was gratified to hear this. But I wasn’t going to rub it in. “It’s all just money under the bridge now, Bro. How can I help you?”

  “I’m into some bad people for a lotta bucks.”

  “What’s a lot?”

  He paused. “Two hundred and fifty K.”

  I heard myself guffaw. “You’re kidding!”

  “I wish. These guys mean business, Maudie. I’m scared.”

  “Brother of mine, what makes you think I have that kind of money? I could scrape up fifteen K maybe. But that’s about it.”

  “I gotta give ’em fifty thousand in a month. They give me time ’cause I’ve been a good customer.”

  “Who are these people, Alan? Please tell me you’re not doing drugs again.”

  “No, no…Sports betting. I made a shitload of money at first. But you know how these things go…If I don’t pay them, they’re gonna cripple me, Maudie—or worse! These aren’t Godfather people. They’re Scarface people. I’ve tried to get in touch with Burt so many times. But he won’t take my calls!”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I know there’s more money in that trust Mom set up. He’s just keeping it.”

  Alan broke into childlike sobs. I felt so sorry for him. He was always a kid at heart, a beautiful dreamer, coddled by our mother who made him believe he was entitled to wealth without having to earn it. Sklar had abetted Alan’s fantasy, steering him along on the old opioid road until he was so weak and dependent he didn’t dare defy Sklar. But now that Mummy was long gone, Sklar had nothing to lose by stiffing Alan. I just wondered what had taken Sklar so long.

  “Okay, okay…calm down, my little brother. What do you want me to do?”

  “Come see Burt with me. He’s scared of you, Maudie. I know that for a fact. Some people believed you. He doesn’t want you badmouthing him again.”

  I agreed to go. Not because I thought it would do any good. But because I wanted to see my brother again and, I have to admit, I was curious to see Sklar again too. I’d always wondered whether Sklar had set out to pillage our family right from the git-go. Or if his larceny gradually evolved as a crime of opportunity, given my mother’s neediness and dependence on him. I wanted to see what Sklar was like in person, now that he was such a success. Did his face reflect his corruption? Or was there a portrait in a closet taking the heat for him?

  I took the train up to New York and met Alan in the lobby of Sklar’s office building. I hardly recognized my brother. He was pale as the moon, and painfully thin, old beyond his years. He moved like he was in waist-high water, yet had jarring, nervous tics. He smiled when he saw me and we embraced. But I knew he was on something. I had to steady him as we took the elevator up to Sklar’s offices on the fourteenth floor.

  I hadn’t been to those offices in years. Gone was the bland oatmeal décor which had comforted rich old lady clients like my mother. It was now a high-tech showroom of gray suede, glass and steel, far more suited to the glitzy crowd of celebrities and billionaires he represented.

  I grabbed Alan’s hand and we marched down the hall, ignoring the shouts of a perturbed receptionist demanding we needed an appointment. We barged past Sklar’s secretary into his private office. Sklar was on the phone, his crossed legs stretched out on top of his desk. The second he saw us, he swung his legs down to the floor, murmured something into the phone, and hung up. I ignored his secretary sputtering her apologies behind us and got the ball rolling immediately.

  “Burt, are you going to help my brother? Or do I have to start harassing you in public again?” I demanded.

  Burt waved his secretary out of the room.

  “Hello, kids! Long time, no see. An unexpected treat. Have a seat.”

&nb
sp; We plunked ourselves down on the leather chairs across from his desk. Alan physically shrank in Sklar’s presence. He hung his head and grew teary. Seeing my brother reduced to an eight-year-old who’d been slapped for something he didn’t do rekindled my burning hatred. I stared at Sklar with all the warmth of an enemy combatant.

  “Laudie, Laudie, Laudie Miss Maudie…if looks could kill!” he laughed. “Tell me, what brings you guys to the Big Apple?”

  “Gimme a break, Burt,” I said angrily. “You know damn well why we’re here. Alan needs money and you won’t take his calls. Where’s the rest of his trust fund?”

  Burt heaved a grand sigh and clasped his hands behind his head, leveling me with an amused gaze.

  “So how’s the poker coming along, Maudie?”

  I was totally taken aback he knew I was playing poker.

  I squinted at him. “You keeping tabs on me, Burt?”

  He went on. “I met another lady poker player at a big gala at the Modern the other night. She’s from your neck of the woods. A big-time lawyer. Very famous. Terrific gal. I’ll send you an article they did on her in the Washington Post.”

  “You know my address too, eh?”

  “I know more about you than you think, Ms. Maudie. I may know more about you than you know about yourself….” He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him on the desk in a more businesslike pose. “Okay… What am I gonna do with you guys?”

  “You’re going to give my brother the money he needs,” I said.

  “Honestleee…? I know you kids blame me for everything that’s happened.”

  “Enough with the kids, Burt. We’re both middle-aged, like you.”

  “Maudie, I just wish to hell I could convince you that I’m not the devil here. Your dear mother, God rest her soul—fascinating, beautiful creature that she was—was also, to put it delicately, extremely willful. The bad decisions were all hers. Why don’t you believe that?”

  “Okay, fine,” I said dismissively. “We’re not here to talk about the past. We’re here to talk about Alan. What happened to the rest of his trust fund?”

  “He went through it. I warned him he would if he kept on spending,” Sklar said curtly.

  Alan finally piped up. “I’m right here, Burt! You always told me there was a lotta money…more than I’d ever need.”

  Burt shook his head. “Alan, do you have any conception of how much money you spent over the years? You never had a job. You just kept spending. You have no idea what it’s like to earn a living, son. Now you understand. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

  “But you promised there’d always be enough,” Alan whined.

  “Enough didn’t mean a bottomless pit. I warned you.”

  “You did not! You encouraged me!”

  Alan was like a fly struggling to break free of a web. He finally just gave up.

  “This is pointless, Maudie. Let’s get out of here!”

  Alan stormed out of the room, but I wasn’t ready to go. I got up and shut the door so we wouldn’t be interrupted.

  “Okay, Burt. Here we are, alone at last. Nostalgic and touching as it is, if you want to stop meeting like this, you’re going to have to help my brother. And I don’t mean help him along the old opioid trail, like you did in the past. I mean financially. He owes a quarter of a million dollars to some bad hombres who doan need no stinkin’ badges.”

  Sklar whistles in disbelief. “Whoa, pilgrim! That’s a helluva lotta money!”

  “Really? You used to call it ‘chump change’ when our mother was alive. You told me I was going to be able to afford my own plane one day. I can hardly afford my five-year-old Toyota.”

  Sklar heaved another theatrical sigh. “You know, Maudie, we used to be friends until you went around town trying to ruin my reputation.”

  “Oh, please. You wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if it hadn’t been for me. You used me to get to Siddy. And you used Siddy’s name to get all your other glittery clients. Don’t deny it.”

  “It’s not how you get in the door; it’s once you’re in that counts.”

  “How inspirational. Can I put that on a needlepoint pillow?”

  Sklar rose from his desk, turned his back on me, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stared out the window.

  “Views like this cost a lot…” he said almost to himself.

  Then he turned to face me.

  “Truthfully…? I’ve got a lot on my mind. I can’t deal with your brother’s crap right now.”

  “No problem! I’ll just camp outside The Four Seasons where you and the great Sun Sunderland have lunch every Friday and tell people how you’re gonna get my brother murdered.” I got up to leave.

  “Siddown, Maud!” Now he was angry. “The last fuckin’ thing I need at the moment is for you to start making trouble for me again. You hear me?”

  I stared hard at him and narrowed my eyes. We were in a poker hand now.

  “Alan needs fifty thousand dollars. Today. And another two hundred K in six months. Are you going to give it to him or not?”

  “How do you know he’s not making it all up to get drugs? He’s an addict, for chrissakes. Addicts lie!”

  I wasn’t folding. “Fifty K today, Burt. Two hundred K in six months. Or else I’m moving back up here to make your life P.R. hell.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds. Then a strange look came over his face, like he was trying to figure something out. He sat down. This change in position was the equivalent of a blink.

  “Okay…” he said, more gently. “It just so happens there might be some money left over from an old investment.”

  “What investment?”

  “An old investment.”

  “I want to see the paperwork.”

  “Forget the goddam paperwork! Jesus, Maud! Can’t you see I’m trying to do your brother a favor here…?”

  “Oh, come off it…!”

  He raised his hand to calm me. “All right, all right… Let me be completely honest with you—”

  “Gee, that’ll make a nice change,” I said.

  “Ever the prep school smart-ass, aren’t you, Maudie? It just so happens Mr. Sunderland and I have a very big deal pending. The last thing I need is for you to go rocking the boat right now.”

  “Burt, if I thought I could rock your boat, believe me, I would. But I know I’m the one who’d wind up sunk—again. So whether this money’s from some so-called investment, or from another client you’re going to rob, or just a plain old-fashioned gift out of the goodness of that thing in your chest which may once have been a heart—although I doubt it—if you want to bail my brother out, I accept with pleasure, as I used to say in my deb days.”

  “Done!” Sklar slapped the desk with his palm. “But I have one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  He pointed his thumb and index finger at me like it was a gun, and said, “Go. away. Go away for good! I mean it. No more stunts, no more accusations, no more barging into this office, no more bullshit! Just accept the fact I did the best I could for your mother. She’s the one who let you and Alan down, not me. Lois knew what was happening. She knew she was going broke. Truthfully…? Your mother was a raging narcissist who didn’t want the party to go on without her!”

  “Tell me what you criticize and I’ll tell you who you are,” I said.

  “If you agree to go away, I’ll help your brother. But for the last time.”

  I thought for a moment. “You know, in all those crime novels I used to give you for free, to go away is a nice euphemistic way of saying go to prison. So, in effect, you’re ordering me to go to prison. And I guess being financially challenged is a kind of prison. And I’m already there. So if I do agree to go away, as you say, then what? Specifically.”

  “I’ll give you fifty K in cash today, and the rest in six months,”
Burt said.

  If I’d ever had any lingering doubts that Burt Sklar had stolen our mother’s fortune, they evaporated in that moment. I knew that Sklar would never in a million years have agreed to give my brother this money unless he was truly guilty. I wanted to kill him right then and there.

  Burt went on: “But I give you this money on one condition. This is it. No more money. Ever. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal.” I nodded.

  Burt walked out of the room. He returned a couple of minutes later with a shopping bag holding ten bank bundles of crisp hundred-dollar bills, each bundle labeled $5,000.00. I was impressed he kept that kind of cash on hand. I wondered what other smarmy deals went down in that office.

  He plunked the bag down on his desk in front of me. “Fifty thousand dollars. Do we have a deal?”

  “That depends,” I said.

  “On what?”

  “How do I know you’re going to give us the rest of the money in six months?”

  “How do I know you’re not gonna badmouth me all over town again, picket my office, throw eggs at me, or post some of your bullshit about me on the Internet?” he shot back.

  “Fair enough. Let’s draw up a contract.”

  “Fuck that! I’m doing this for you as a favor!”

  “Nothing formal! Just a piece of paper between friends.”

  “Don’t you trust me, Maudie?”

  I roared with laughter. “Is that a joke, Burt?”

  Sklar threw his hands up in exasperation. “Whaddya want from me?”

  “I want a piece of paper that says you owe me two hundred thousand dollars, payable in six months.”

  “Isn’t your brother the one who needs the money?” Sklar said.

  “That’s right. But unlike you, I’m going to see my brother isn’t tempted to spend it elsewhere before these goons get to him. If there’s one thing we agree on, it’s that my brother’s an addict.”

  Sklar thought for a moment. “How do I know you’re gonna keep your word and not trash me?”

  “Because I’ll sign a contract too. I’ll agree to go away.”