by Tom Wolfe
“Well, Sherman,” said Pollard, “I’ve been in touch with all the members of the executive committee, except for Jack Morrissey, and I want you to know you have our support, and we’ll do anything we can. I know this must be a terrible situation for you and Judy and Campbell.” He shook his smooth round head.
“Well, thank you, Pollard. It hasn’t been too terrific.”
“Now, I’ve been in touch with the inspector at the Nineteenth Precinct myself, and they’ll provide protection for the front door, so that we can get in and out, but he says he can’t keep the demonstrators away from the building altogether. I thought they could make them stay back five hundred feet, but he maintains they can’t do that. I think it’s outrageous, frankly. That bunch of…” Sherman could see Pollard ransacking his smooth round head for some courtly way to express a racial epithet. He abandoned the effort: “…that mob.” He shook his head a great deal more.
“It’s a political football, Pollard. I’m a political football. That’s what you’ve got living up over your head.” Sherman tried a smile. Against all his better instincts, he wanted Pollard to like him and sympathize with him. “I hope you read the Daily News today, Pollard.”
“No, I hardly ever see the Daily News. I did read the Times.”
“Well, read the story in the Daily News, if you can. It’s the first piece that gives any idea of what’s really going on.”
Pollard shook his head more woefully still. “The press is as bad as the demonstrators, Sherman. They’re downright abusive. They waylay you. They waylay anybody who tries to come in here. I had to walk a goddamned gauntlet just now to get in my own building. And then they were all over my driver! They’re insolent! They’re a bunch of filthy little wogs.” Wogs? “And of course the police won’t do anything about it. It’s as if you’re fair game just because you’re fortunate enough to be living in a building like this.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about everything, Pollard.”
“Well, unfortunately…” He dropped that. “There’s never been anything like this on Park Avenue, Sherman. I mean, a demonstration aimed at Park Avenue as a residential area. It’s intolerable. It’s as if because this is Park Avenue, we’re denied the sanctity of our homes. And our building is the focus of it.”
Sherman experienced a neural alert as to what might be coming, but he couldn’t be sure. He began shaking his head in time with Pollard’s, to show his heart was in the right place.
Pollard said, “Apparently they intend to come here every day or stay around the clock, until—until I don’t know what.” His head was really going now.
Sherman picked up the tempo of his own head. “Who told you that?”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie, the doorman?”
“Yes. Also Tony, who was on duty until Eddie came on at four. He told Eddie the same thing.”
“I can’t believe they’ll do that, Pollard.”
“Until today you couldn’t have believed a bunch of—that they’d hold a demonstration in front of our building on Park Avenue, could you? I mean, there you are.”
“That’s true.”
“Sherman, we’ve been friends a long time. We went to Buckley together. That was an innocent era, wasn’t it?” He smiled a small brittle smile. “My father knew your father. So I’m talking to you as an old friend who wants to do what he can for you. But I’m also president of the board for all the tenants of the building, and I have a responsibility to them that has to take precedence over my personal preferences.”
Sherman could feel his face getting hot. “Which means what, Pollard?”
“Well, just this. I can’t imagine this is in any way a comfortable situation for you, being held virtual prisoner in this building. Have you considered…changing residence? Until things quiet down a bit?”
“Oh, I’ve thought about it. Judy and Campbell and our housekeeper and the nanny are staying over at my parents’ now. Frankly, I’m already terrified that those bastards out there are going to find out and go over there and do something, and a town house is completely exposed. I’ve thought about going out to Long Island, but you’ve seen our house. It’s wide open. French doors everywhere. It wouldn’t keep a chipmunk out. I’ve thought of a hotel, but there’s no such thing as security in a hotel. I’ve thought of staying at the Leash, but that’s a town house, too. Pollard, I’m getting death threats. Death threats. There’ve been at least a dozen calls today.”
Pollard’s little eyes swiveled swiftly about the room, as if They might be coming in the windows. “Well, frankly…all the more reason, Sherman.”
“Reason for what?”
“Well, that you should consider…making some arrangements. You know, it’s not just yourself who is at risk. Everyone in this building is at risk, Sherman. I realize it’s not your fault, not directly, certainly, but that doesn’t alter the facts.”
Sherman knew his face was blazing red. “Alter the facts! The facts are that my life is being threatened, and this is the most secure place available to me, and it also happens to be my home, if I may remind you of that fact.”
“Well, let me remind you—and again, I’m only doing this because I have a higher responsibility—let me remind you that you have a home here because you are a shareholder in a cooperative residential venture. It’s called a cooperative for a reason, and certain obligations, on your part and the board’s part, proceed from the contract you executed when you purchased your shares. There’s no way I can alter those facts.”
“I’m at the most critical juncture in my life—and you’re spouting contract law?”
“Sherman…” Pollard cast his eyes down and threw his hands up, most sadly. “I have to think not only of you and your family but of thirteen other families in this building. And we’re not asking you to do anything of a permanent nature.”
We! We the Jury—inside the walls!
“Well, why don’t you move out, Pollard, if you’re so fucking terrified? Why don’t you and the entire executive committee move out? I’m sure your shining example will inspire the others, and they’ll move out, and no one will be at risk in your beloved building except the damnable McCoys, who created all the problems in the first place, right!”
Occhioni and Killian were peering in from the doorway to the library, and McCarthy was looking in from out in the entry gallery. But he couldn’t rein himself in.
“Sherman—”
“Move…out? Have you any idea what a pompous preposterous jerk you are? Coming in here, scared to death, and telling me the board in its wisdom deems it proper for me to…move out?”
“Sherman, I know you’re excited—”
“Move…out? The only one who’s moving out, Pollard, is you! You’re moving out of this apartment—right now! And you’re going out the way you came—out the kitchen door!” He pointed a ramrod arm and forefinger in the direction of the kitchen.
“Sherman, I came up here in good faith.”
“Awwwwww, Pollard…You were a ridiculous fat blowhard at Buckley and you’re a ridiculous fat blowhard now. I’ve got enough on my mind without your good faith. Goodbye, Pollard.” He took him by the elbow and tried to turn him toward the kitchen.
“Don’t you put a hand on me!”
Sherman took his hand away. Seething: “Then get out.”
“Sherman, you’re not leaving us any choice but to enforce the provision concerning Unacceptable Situations.”
The ramrod pointed to the kitchen and said softly: “March, Pollard. If I hear one more word from you between here and those fire stairs, there’s gonna be an unacceptable situation sure enough.”
Pollard’s head seemed to swell up apoplectically. Then he turned and strode rapidly through the entry gallery and into the kitchen. Sherman followed him, as noisily as he could.
When Pollard reached the sanctuary of the fire stairs, he turned and, furious, said: “Just remember, Sherman. You called the tune.”
“ ‘Called the tune.
’ Terrific. You’re a real phrasemaker, Pollard!” He slammed the kitchen’s old metal fire door.
Almost immediately he regretted the whole thing. As he walked back to the living room, his heart was beating violently. He was trembling. The three men, Killian, Occhioni, and McCarthy, were standing about with a mime-show nonchalance.
Sherman made himself smile, just to show everything was all right.
“Friend a yours?” said Killian.
“Yes, an old friend. I went to school with him. He wants to throw me out of the building.”
“Fat chance,” said Killian. “We can fucking tie him up in knots for the next ten years.”
“You know, I have a confession to make,” said Sherman. He made himself smile again. “Until that sonofabitch came up here, I was thinking of blowing my brains out. Now I wouldn’t dream of it. That would solve all his problems, and he’d dine out on it for a month and be damned sanctimonious while he was at it. He’d tell everybody how we grew up together, and he’d shake that big round bubble head of his. I think I’ll invite those bastards”—he motioned toward the streets—“on up here and let ’em dance the mazurka right over his big bubble head.”
“Ayyyyyy,” said Killian. “That’s better. Now you’re turning fucking Irish. The Irish been living the last twelve hundred years on dreams of revenge. Now you’re talking, bro.”
Another roar rose from Park Avenue in the heat of June…McCOY!…McCOY!…McCOY!
26. Death New York Style
It was the Dead Mouse himself, Sir Gerald Steiner, who got the bright idea. Steiner, Brian Highridge, and Fallow were meeting in Steiner’s office. Just being here, breathing the Mouse’s own eminent air, gave Fallow a warm feeling. Thanks to his triumphs with the McCoy case, the upper rooms and inner circles of The City Light were open to him. Steiner’s office was a big corner room overlooking the Hudson River. There was a large wooden desk, a Mission-style worktable, six armchairs, and that necessary proof of high corporate position, a couch. Otherwise the decor was Working Newspaperman. Steiner kept promiscuous heaps of newspapers, reference books, and copy paper on his desk and the worktable. A computer terminal and a manual typewriter stood on workmanlike metal stands near his swivel chair. A Reuters wire-service machine chattered away in a corner. A police radio was in another. It was now silent, but he had kept the thing on for a year before its yawps and bursts of static finally wore him out. The plate-glass windows, which offered a sweeping view of the river and the clam-gray Hoboken shore, had no curtains, only venetian blinds. The venetian blinds gave the vista a Light Industry, Working Newspaperman aspect.
The purpose of this summit meeting was to figure out how to proceed with Fallow’s smoking-hot tip: namely, that Maria Ruskin was the mystery woman, the foxy brunette who took the wheel of McCoy’s Mercedes roadster after McCoy ran down Henry Lamb. Four reporters—including, Fallow was happy to see, Robert Goldman—had been assigned to do legwork on the story. Legwork for him; they were his drudges. So far they had established only that Maria Ruskin was out of the country, probably in Italy. As for the young artist, Filippo Chirazzi, they had been unable to find any trace of him at all.
Steiner was sitting at his desk with his jacket off, his tie pulled down, and his red felt suspenders blazing away on his striped shirt, when it came to him, his bright idea. The City Light’s business section was currently running a series on “The New Tycoons.” Steiner’s scheme was to approach Arthur Ruskin as a subject for the series. This would not be entirely devious, since Ruskin was in fact typical of the “new tycoon” of latter-day New York, the man of immense, new, inexplicable wealth. The interviewer of the new tycoon would be Fallow. If he could get close to the old man, he would play it by ear. At the very least, he might find out where Maria Ruskin was.
“But do you think he’ll go for it, Jerry?” asked Brian Highridge.
“Oh, I know these chaps,” said Steiner, “and the old ones are the worst. They’ve made their fifty million or their hundred million—that’s what the Texans call a unit. Did you know that? They call a hundred million dollars a unit. I think that’s delightful. A unit, of course, is a starting point. In any case, this sort of chap makes his great colossal pile, and he goes to a dinner party, and he’s sitting next to some pretty young thing, and he’s getting a bit of the old tingle—but she hasn’t the faintest notion who he is. A hundred million dollars!—and she’s never even heard his name, and she isn’t interested in who he is when he tries to tell her. What can he do? He can’t very well go about with a sign around his neck saying FINANCIAL GIANT. At that point, believe me, they begin to lose some of their purported scruples concerning publicity.”
Fallow believed him. It was not for nothing that Steiner had founded The City Light and kept it going at an operating loss of about ten million dollars a year. No longer was he merely another financier. He was the dread buccaneer of the dread City Light.
The Mouse proved to be an able psychologist of the newly and anonymously rich. Two telephone calls from Brian Highridge and it was all set. Ruskin said he generally avoided publicity, but in this case he would make an exception. He told Highridge he would like for the writer—what was his name? Mr. Fallow?—to be his guest for dinner at La Boue d’Argent.
When Fallow and Arthur Ruskin reached the restaurant, Fallow pushed the brass revolving door for the old man. Ruskin lowered his chin slightly, and then he lowered his eyes, and the most profoundly sincere smile spread over his face. For an instant Fallow marveled that this gruff barrel-chested seventy-one-year-old man could be so grateful for a gesture of such innocuous politeness. In the next instant he realized it had nothing to do with him and his courtesy at all. Ruskin was merely feeling the first ambrosial radiations of the greeting that awaited him beyond the threshold.
As soon as Ruskin entered the vestibule and the light of the restaurant’s famous sculpture, The Silver Boar, shone upon him, the fawning began in earnest. The maître d’, Raphael, fairly leaped from behind his desk and his daybook. Not one but two captains came forward. They beamed, they bowed, they filled the air with Monsieur Ruskins. The great financier lowered his chin still further, until it floated on a cushion of jowl, and he mumbled his replies, and his grin became broader and broader and, curiously, more and more diffident. It was the smile of a boy at his own birthday party, the lad who is both humbled and wondrously elated by the realization that he is in a room full of people who are happy, abnormally happy, one might say, to see him alive and in their presence.
To Fallow, Raphael and the two captains gave a few quick Hello, sirs and returned to sprinkling Ruskin with the sweet nothings of their calling. Fallow noticed two odd characters in the vestibule, two men in their mid-thirties, wearing dark suits that seemed to be mere screens for bodies of pure prole brawn. One appeared to be American, the other Asian. The latter was so large and had such a huge head, with such wide flat menacing features, Fallow wondered if he was Samoan. Ruskin noticed him, too, and Raphael said, with a smug smile, “Secret service. Two secret services, the American and the Indonesian. Madame Tacaya will be dining here this evening.” After imparting this bit of news, he smiled again.
Ruskin turned to Fallow and made a face, without smiling, perhaps fearing that he could not compete with the wife of the Indonesian dictator for the restaurant’s attentions and homage. The big Asian eyed them both. Fallow noticed that he had a cord coming out of his ear.
Raphael smiled again at Ruskin and gestured toward the dining room, and a procession began, led by Raphael himself, followed by Ruskin and Fallow, with a captain and a waiter at the rear. They turned right at the spotlit form of The Silver Boar and headed into the dining room. Ruskin had a grin on his mug. He loved this. Only the fact that he kept his eyes downcast prevented him from looking like a complete fool.
At night the dining room was well lit and seemed much more garish than at lunchtime. The dinner crowd seldom had the social cachet of the lunch crowd, but the place was packed nonetheless and was ro
aring with conversation. Fallow could see cluster after cluster of men with bald heads and women with pineapple-colored hair.
The procession stopped beside a round table that was far bigger than any other but was as yet unoccupied. A captain, two waiters, and two busboys were buzzing about, arranging stemware and silverware in front of every place. This was evidently Madame Tacaya’s table. Immediately opposite it was a banquette under the front windows. Fallow and Ruskin were seated side by side on the banquette. They had a view of the entire front section, which was all that any true aspirant for the high ground of La Boue d’Argent required.
Ruskin said, “You wanna know why I like this restaurant?”
“Why?” asked Fallow.
“Because it’s got the best food in New York and the best service.” Ruskin turned and looked Fallow squarely in the face. Fallow could think of no adequate response to this revelation.
“Oh, people talk about this social stuff,” said Ruskin, “and sure, a lot of well-known people come here. But why? Because it’s got great food and great service.” He shrugged. (No mystery to it.)
Raphael reappeared and asked Ruskin if he cared for a drink.
“Oh, Christ,” said Ruskin, smiling. “I’m not supposed to, but I feel like a drink. You got any Courvoisier V.S.O.P.?”
“Oh yes.”
“Then gimme a sidecar with the V.S.O.P.”
Fallow ordered a glass of white wine. Tonight he intended to remain sober. Presently, a waiter arrived with the glass of wine and Ruskin’s sidecar. Ruskin lifted his glass.
“To Fortune,” he said. “I’m glad my wife’s not here.”
“Why?” asked Fallow, all ears.
“I’m not supposed to drink, especially not a little bomb like this.” He held the drink up to the light. “But tonight I feel like a drink. It was Willi Nordhoff who introduced me to sidecars. He used to order them all the time, over at the old King Cole Bar of the St. Regis. ‘Zitecar,’ he’d say. ‘Mit Fay, Es, Oh, Pay,’ he’d say. You ever run into Willi?”