by Tom Wolfe
But every now and then a rare flower like Miss Shelly Thomas of Riverdale landed in a jury box. What kind of name was that? Thomas was a Waspy name. But there was Danny Thomas, and he was an Arab, a Lebanese or something. Wasps were rare in the Bronx, except for those society types who came up from Manhattan from time to time, in cars with drivers, to do good deeds for the Ghetto Youth. The Big Brother organization, the Episcopal Youth Service, the Daedalus Foundation—these people showed up in Family Court, which was the court for criminals under the age of seventeen. They had these names…Farnsworth, Fiske, Phipps, Simpson, Thornton, Frost…and spotless intentions.
No, the chances that Miss Shelly Thomas might be a Wasp were remote. But what was she? During jury selection he had elicited from her the information that she was an art director, which apparently meant some kind of designer, for the Prischker & Bolka advertising agency in Manhattan. To Kramer that suggested an inexpressibly glamorous life. Beautiful creatures scampering back and forth to taped New Wave music in an office with smooth white walls and glass brick…a sort of MTV office…terrific lunches and dinners in restaurants with blond wood, brass, indirect lighting, and frosted glass with chevron patterns on it…baked quail with chanterelles on a bed of sweet potato and a ruff of braised dandelion leaves…He could see it all. She was part of that life, those places where the girls with brown lipstick go!…He had both of her telephone numbers, at Prischker & Bolka and at home. Naturally he couldn’t do a thing while the trial was in progress. But afterward…Miss Thomas? This is Lawrence Kramer. I’m—oh! you remember! That’s terrific! Miss Thomas, I’m calling because every so often, after one of these major cases is completed, I like to ascertain what it is exactly that convinced the jury—a sudden stab of doubt…Suppose all that happened was that she lost the case for him? Bronx juries were difficult enough for a prosecutor as it was. They were drawn from the ranks of those who know that in fact the police are capable of lying. Bronx juries entertained a lot of doubts, both reasonable and unreasonable, and black and Puerto Rican defendants who were stone guilty, guilty as sin, did walk out of the fortress free as birds. Fortunately, Herbert 92X had shot a good man, a poor man, a family man from the ghetto. Thank God for that! No juror who lived in the South Bronx was likely to have sympathy for a foul-tempered nut case like Herbert. Only a wild card like Miss Shelly Thomas of Riverdale was likely to have sympathy! A well-educated young white woman, well-to-do, the artistic type, possibly Jewish…She was just the type to turn idealistic on him and refuse to convict Herbert on the grounds that he was black, romantic, and already put upon by Fate. But he had to take that chance. He didn’t intend to let her slip by. He needed her. He needed this particular triumph. In this courtroom he was in the center of the arena. Her eyes had never left him. He knew that. He could feel it. There was already something between them…Larry Kramer and the girl with brown lipstick.
The regulars were amazed that day by the zeal and aggressiveness of Assistant District Attorney Kramer in this nickel-and-dime Bronx manslaughter case.
He started tearing into Herbert’s alibi witnesses.
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Williams, that this ’testimony’ of yours is part of a cash transaction between you and the defendant?”
What the hell had gotten into Kramer? Teskowitz was beginning to get furious. This sonofabitch Kramer was making him look bad! He was tearing up the courtroom as if this piece a shit were the trial of the century.
Kramer was oblivious of the wounded feelings of Teskowitz or Herbert 92X or any of the rest of them. There were only two people in that cavernous mahogany hall, and they were Larry Kramer and the girl with brown lipstick.
During the lunch recess Kramer went back to the office, as did Ray Andriutti and Jimmy Caughey. An assistant district attorney who had a trial going was entitled to lunch for himself and his witnesses courtesy of the State of New York. In practice what this meant was that everybody in the office stood to get a free lunch, and Andriutti and Caughey were first in line. This pathetic little perk of the office was taken very seriously. Bernie Fitzgibbon’s secretary, Gloria Dawson, ordered sandwiches in from the deli. She got one, too. Kramer had a roast-beef sandwich on an onion roll with mustard. The mustard came in a gelatinous sealed plastic envelope that he had to open with his teeth. Ray Andriutti was having a pepperoni hero with everything you could throw into it thrown in, except for two enormous slices of dill pickle that were lying on a piece of waxed paper on his desk. The smell of dill brine filled the room. Kramer watched with disgusted fascination as Andriutti lunged forward, over his desk, so that the pieces and the juices that squirted overboard from the hero would fall on the desk instead of his necktie. He did that with every bite; he lunged over the desk, and bits of food and juice spilled from his maw, as if he were a whale or a tuna. With each lunge his jaw shot past a plastic cup of coffee which was on the desk. The coffee came from the Mr. Coffee. The cup was so full, the coffee bulged with surface tension. All at once, it began to overflow. A viscous yellow creek, no wider than a string, began running down the side of the cup. Andriutti didn’t even notice. When the filthy yellow flow reached the desktop, it created a pool about the size of a Kennedy half-dollar. In no time, it was the size and color of a dollar pancake. Soon the corners of two empty sugar packets were submerged in the muck. Andriutti always loaded his coffee with Cremora powder and sugar until it turned into a heavy sweet sick high-yellow bile. His gaping jaws, with the pepperoni hero stuffed in, kept lunging in front of the cup. The high point of the day! A free lunch!
And it doesn’t get any better, thought Kramer. It was not just young assistant D.A.s like him and Andriutti and Jimmy Caughey. All over Gibraltar, at this moment, from the lowest to the highest, the representatives of the Power in the Bronx were holed up in their offices, shell-backed, hunched over deli sandwiches, ordered in. Around the big conference table in Abe Weiss’s office they were hunched over their deli sandwiches, they being whomever Weiss thought he needed and could get hold of that day in his crusade for publicity. Around the big conference table in the office of the chief administrative judge for the Criminal Division, Louis Mastroiani, they were hunched over their deli sandwiches. Even when this worthy jurist happened to have a great luminary in to visit, even when a United States senator came by, they sat there hunched over their deli sandwiches, the luminary, too. You could ascend to the very top of the criminal justice system in the Bronx and eat deli sandwiches for lunch until the day you retired or died.
And why? Because they, the Power, the Power that ran the Bronx, were terrified! They were terrified to go out into the heart of the Bronx at high noon and have lunch in a restaurant! Terrified! And they ran the place, the Bronx, a borough of 1.1 million souls! The heart of the Bronx was now such a slum there was no longer anything even resembling a businessman’s sit-down restaurant. But even if there were, what judge or D.A. or assistant D.A., what court officer, even packing a .38, would leave Gibraltar at lunchtime to get to it? First there was plain fear. You walked from the Bronx County Building across the Grand Concourse and down the slope of 161st Street to the Criminal Courts Building, a distance of a block and a half, when you had to, but the prudent bearer of the Power kept his wits about him. There were holdups on the crest of the Grand Concourse, this great ornament of the Bronx, at 11:00 A.M. on nice sunny days. And why not? More wallets and handbags were out on foot in the middle of nice sunny days. You didn’t go beyond the Criminal Courts Building at all. There were assistant D.A.s who had worked in Gibraltar for ten years who couldn’t tell you, on a bet, what was on 162nd Street or 163rd Street, a block off the Grand Concourse. They had never even been to the Bronx Museum of Art on 164th. But suppose you were fearless in that sense. There remained another, subtler fear. You were an alien on the streets of the 44th Precinct, and you knew that at once, every time Fate led you into their territory. The looks! The looks! The deadly mistrust! You were not wanted. You were not welcome. Gibraltar and the Power belonged to the Bronx Democratic Part
y, to the Jews and Italians, specifically, but the streets belonged to the Lockwoods and the Arthur Riveras and the Jimmy Dollards and Otis Blakemores and the Herbert 92X’s.
The thought depressed Kramer. Here they were, himself and Andriutti, the Jew and the Italian, wolfing down their sandwiches, ordered in, inside the fortress, inside the limestone rock. And for what? What did they have to look forward to? How could this setup survive long enough for them to reach the top of the pyramid, even assuming it was worth reaching? Sooner or later the Puerto Ricans and the blacks would pull themselves together politically, and they would seize even Gibraltar and everything in it. And meantime, what would he be doing? He’d be stirring the muck…stirring the muck…until they took the stick away from him.
Just then the telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“Bernie?”
“You got the wrong extension,” said Kramer, “but I don’t think he’s here anyway.”
“Who is this?”
“Kramer.”
“Oh yeah, I remember you. This is Detective Martin.”
Kramer didn’t really remember Martin, but the name and the voice triggered a vaguely unpleasant recollection.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m over here at Lincoln Hospital with my partner, Goldberg, and we got this half-a-homicide case, and I thought we ought to tell Bernie about it.”
“Did you talk to somebody here a couple hours ago? Ray Andriutti?”
“Yeah.”
Kramer sighed. “Well, Bernie’s still not back. I don’t know where he is.”
A pause. “Shit. Maybe you can pass this along to him.”
Another sigh. “Okay.”
“There’s this kid, Henry Lamb, L-A-M-B, eighteen years old, and he’s in the intensive-care unit. He came in here last night with a broken wrist. Okay? When he came in here, at least from what’s on this sheet of paper, he didn’t say nothing about getting hit by a car. It just says he fell. Okay? So they fixed up the broken wrist in the emergency room, and they sent him home. This morning the kid’s mother, she brings him back in here, and he’s got a concussion, and he goes into a coma, and now they classify him as a likely-to-die. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“The kid was in the coma by the time they called us, but there’s this nurse here that says he told his mother he was hit by a car, a Mercedes, and the car left the scene, and he got a partial license number.”
“Any witnesses?”
“No. This is all from the nurse. We can’t even find the mother.”
“Is this supposed to be two accidents or one accident? You said a broken wrist and a concussion?”
“One, according to this nurse, who’s all excited and breaking my balls about a hit-and-run. It’s all fucked-up, but I just thought I’d tell Bernie, in case he wants to do anything about it.”
“Well, I’ll tell him, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with us. There’s no witness, no driver—the guy is in a coma—but I’ll tell him.”
“Yeah, I know. If we find the mother and get anything, tell Bernie I’ll call him.”
“Okay.”
After he hung up, Kramer scribbled a note to Bernie Fitzgibbon. The victim neglected to mention he was hit by a car. A typical Bronx case. Another piece a shit.
6. A Leader of the People
The next morning Sherman McCoy experienced something that was new to him in the eight years he had been at Pierce & Pierce. He was unable to concentrate. Ordinarily, as soon as he entered the bond trading room and the glare from the plate glass hit him and the roar of a legion of young men crazed by greed and ambition engulfed him, everything else in his life fell away and the world became the little green symbols that slid across the black screens of the computer terminals. Even on the morning after the most stupid telephone call he had ever made, the morning he woke up wondering if his wife was going to leave him and take the most precious thing in his life with her, namely, Campbell—even on that morning he had walked into the bond trading room and, just like that, human existence had narrowed down to French gold-backed bonds and U.S. government twenty-years. But now it was as if he had a two-track tape in his skull and the mechanism kept jumping from one track to the other without his having any control over it. On the screen:
“U Frag 10.1 ’96 102.” Down a whole point! The United Fragrance thirteen-year bonds, maturing in 1996, had slipped from 103 to 102.5 yesterday. Now, at 102, the yield would be 9.75 percent—and the question he asked himself was:
Did it have to be a person that the car hit when she backed up? Why couldn’t it have been the tire or a trash can or something else entirely? He tried to feel the jolt again in his central nervous system. It was a…thok…a little tap. It really hadn’t been much. It could have been almost anything. But then he lost heart. What else could it have been but that tall skinny boy?—and then he could see that dark delicate face, the mouth hanging open with fear…It wasn’t too late to go to the police! Thirty-six hours—forty by now—how would he put it? I think that we—that is, my friend Mrs. Ruskin and I—may have—for God’s sake, man, get hold of yourself! After forty hours it wouldn’t be reporting an accident, it would be a confession! You’re a Master of the Universe. You aren’t on the fiftieth floor at Pierce & Pierce because you cave in under pressure. This happy thought steeled him for the task at hand, and he focused again on the screen.
The numbers were sliding across in lines, as if a radium-green brush were painting them, and they had been sliding across and changing right before his eyes but without registering in his mind. That startled him. United Fragrance was down to 101 7/8, meaning the yield was up to almost 10 percent. Was something wrong? But just yesterday he had run it by Research, and United Fragrance was in good shape, a solid AA. Right now all he needed to know was:
Was there anything in The City Light? It sizzled on the floor at his feet. There had been nothing in The Times, the Post, and the Daily News, which he had gone through in the taxi on the way down. The first edition of The City Light, an afternoon newspaper, didn’t come out until after 10 A.M. So twenty minutes ago he had given Felix, the shoeshine man, five dollars to go downstairs and bring The City Light to him. But how could he possibly read it? He couldn’t even let himself be seen with it on top of his desk. Not him; not after the tongue-lashing he had given young Señor Arguello. So it was under the desk, on the floor, sizzling at his feet. It sizzled, and he was on fire. He burned with a desire to pick it up and go through it…right now…and the hell with what it looked like…But of course that was irrational. Besides, what difference would it make whether he read it now or six hours from now? What could it possibly change? Not very much, not very much. And then he burned some more, until he thought he couldn’t stand it.
Shit! Something was happening with the United Fragrance thirteen-years! They were back up to 102! Other buyers were spotting the bargain! Act fast! He dialed Oscar Suder’s number in Cleveland, got his aide-de-camp, Frank…Frank…What was his last name?…Frank…Frank the doughnut…“Frank? Sherman McCoy at Pierce & Pierce. Tell Oscar I can get him United Fragrance ten-tens of ’96 yielding 9.75, if he’s interested. But they’re moving up.”
“Hold on.” In no time the doughnut was back. “Oscar’ll take three.”
“Okay. Fine. Three million United Fragrance ten-point-tens of’96.”
“Right.”
“Thanks, Frank, and best to Oscar. Oh, and tell him I’ll be back to him before long about the Giscard. The franc is down a bit, but that’s easy to hedge. Anyway, I’ll talk to him.”
“I’ll tell him,” said the doughnut in Cleveland—
—and even before he finished writing out the order chit and handed it to Muriel, the sales assistant, he was thinking: Maybe I should see a lawyer. I should call Freddy Button. But he knew Freddy too well. Freddy was at Dunning Sponget, after all. His father had steered him to Freddy in the first place—and suppose he said something to the Lion? He wouldn’t—or woul
d he? Freddy regarded himself as a family friend. He knew Judy, and he asked about Campbell whenever they chatted, even though Freddy was probably homosexual. Well, homosexuals could care about children, couldn’t they? Freddy had children of his own. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a homosexual, however—Christ! what the hell did it matter, Freddy Button’s sex life? It was crazy to let his mind wander like this. Freddy Button. He would feel like a fool if he told this whole story to Freddy Button and it turned out to be a false alarm…which it probably was. Two young thugs had tried to rob him and Maria, and they had gotten what was coming to them. A fracas in the jungle, by the rules of the jungle; that was all that had occurred. For a moment he felt good about himself all over again. The law of the jungle! The Master of the Universe!
Then the bottom dropped out. They had never overtly threatened him. Yo! Need some help? And Maria had probably hit him with the car. Yes, it was Maria. I wasn’t driving. She was driving. But did that absolve him of responsibility in the eyes of the law? And did—
What was that? On the screen, United Fragrance ten-point-tens of ’96 blipped up to 102 1/8. Ah! That meant he’d just gained a quarter of a percentage point on three million bonds for Oscar Suder by acting fast. He’d let him know that tomorrow. Would help ice the Giscard—but if anything happens with the…thok…the tall delicate boy…The little green symbols glowed radioactively on the screen. They hadn’t budged for at least a minute. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He would go to the bathroom. There was no law against that. He took a big manila envelope off his desk. The flap had a string that you wrapped around a paper disk in order to close the envelope. It was the sort of envelope that was used to relay documents from one office to another. He panned across the bond trading room to see if the coast was clear, then put his head under the desk and stuffed The City Light into the envelope and headed for the bathroom.