The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  Then came the main speaker, Hubert Birnley, the movie actor, who had decided that what was needed was the light touch and the human side of Arthur the great financier and ferry captain to the Arab world. He became mired in an anecdote that hinged largely upon one’s comprehension of the problems people have with swimming-pool-filtration systems in Palm Springs, California. He left the stage dabbing a handkerchief at the corners of his eyes.

  Last on the program was Cantor Myron Branoskowitz, of Congregation Schlomoch’om, Bayside, Queens. He was a huge young man, a three-hundred-pounder, who began singing in Hebrew in a strong clear tenor voice. His lamentations began to swell in volume. They were unending and irrepressible. His voice took on throbs and vibratos. If there was a choice between ending a phrase in a high octave or a low one, he invariably went high, like an opera singer in concert, indulging his virtuosity. He put tears into his voice that would have embarrassed the worst hambone Pagliacci. At first the mourners were impressed. Then they were startled as the voice grew in volume. Then they became concerned as the young man appeared to swell like a frog. And now they were beginning to look at one another, each wondering if his neighbor was thinking the same thing: “This kid is out to lunch.” The voice rose, rose, then peaked with a note just this side of a yodel before plunging to a lower range with a teary cascade of vibrato and coming to an abrupt halt.

  The service was over. The audience paused, but Fallow did not. He slipped out into the aisle and, crouching slightly, began hurrying down toward the front. He was ten or twelve rows from the front when a figure ahead of him did the same thing.

  It was a man wearing a navy-blue suit, a snap-brim hat, and dark glasses. Fallow caught only the briefest glimpse of the side of his head…the chin…It was Sherman McCoy. He had no doubt worn the hat and the glasses in order to enter the funeral home without being recognized. He rounded the bend at the first pew and fell in behind the family’s little entourage. Fallow did the same. Now he could get a glimpse of the profile. It was McCoy all right.

  The crowd was already in the hubbub of departing a funeral service and letting off the steam of thirty or forty minutes of obligatory respectfulness toward a rich man who, while alive, had not been particularly warm or likable. A funeral-parlor functionary was holding open the little side door for the Widow Ruskin. McCoy stayed close on the heels of a tall man who was in fact, as Fallow could now see, Monte Griswold, the master of ceremonies. The eulogizers were joining the family backstage. McCoy and Fallow were merely part of a mournful troop of dark blue suits and black dresses. Fallow folded his arms over his chest to hide the brass buttons on his blazer, for fear they would look out of place.

  There was no problem. The funeral-home doorman was intent only on herding inside everyone who was going inside. The little door led to a short flight of stairs, at the top of which was a suite of rooms, like a little apartment. Everyone gathered in a small reception room decorated with balloon shades and panels of fabric framed in gilded wood, in the nineteenth-century French manner. Everyone was paying his condolences to the widow, who could scarcely be seen behind the wall of blue suits. McCoy hung about the edges, still wearing his dark glasses. Fallow stayed behind McCoy.

  He could hear the baritone burble of Hubert Birnley talking to the widow and no doubt saying perfectly proper and fatuous things with a sad but charming Birnley smile on his face. Now it was Senator Greenspan’s turn, and his nasal voice could be heard saying no doubt several wrong things along with the right ones. And then Monte Griswold had his turn, uttering impeccable things, one could be sure, and waiting to receive the widow’s compliments for his skills as emcee. Monte Griswold said good-bye to the Widow Ruskin, and—bango!—McCoy confronted her. Fallow was right behind him. He could see Maria Ruskin’s features through the black veil. Young and beautiful! Nothing quite like it! Her dress accentuated her breasts and brought out the conformation of her lower abdomen. She was looking straight at McCoy. McCoy leaned so close to her face Fallow thought at first he was going to kiss her. But he was whispering. The Widow Ruskin was saying something in a low voice. Fallow leaned in closer. He crouched right behind McCoy.

  He couldn’t make it out…A word here and there…“straight”…“essential”…“both”…“car”—

  Car. As soon as he heard the word, Fallow experienced a feeling that journalists live for. Before the mind can digest what the ears have just heard, an alarm puts the nervous system on red alert. A story! It is a neural event, a feeling as palpable as any recorded by the five senses. A story!

  Damn. McCoy was mumbling again. Fallow leaned in still closer…“other one”…“ramp”…“skidded”—

  Ramp! Skidded!

  The widow’s voice rose. “Shuhmun”—she seemed to be calling him Shuhmun. “Kint we tuk about it letter?”

  “Letter?” wondered Fallow. “Something about a letter?” Then he realized she was saying later.

  Now McCoy’s voice rose: “…time, Maria!”…“right there with me—you’re my only witness!”

  “Uh kint make myself think about all that now, Shuhmun.” The same strained voice, ending with a little throb in the throat. “Kintchuh understand? Duntchuh know where you uh? My husband’s dead, Shuhmun.”

  She cast her eyes down and began shaking with soft sobs. Immediately a wide squat man was by her side. It was Raymond Radosz, who had spoken during the service.

  More sobs. McCoy walked away quickly, heading out of the room. For an instant Fallow started to follow him, then wheeled about. The Widow Ruskin was the story now.

  Radosz was now hugging the widow so hard the enormous shoulders of her mourning outfit were buckling. She looked lopsided. “It’s okay, honey,” he said. “You’re a brave kid, and I know exactly how you feel, because me and Artie went through a lot together. We go back a long, long way, back before you weren’t even born, I guess. And I can tell you one thing. Artie woulda liked the service. I can tell you that. He woulda liked it, with the senator and everybody.”

  He waited for a compliment.

  The Widow Ruskin pulled her grief together. It was the only way to disengage from her ardent mourner. “But you most especially, Ray,” she said. “You knew him best, and you knew just how to put it. I know Arthur rests easier, for what you said.”

  “Awwww, well, thank you, Maria. You know, I could kinda see Artie in front of me while I was talking. I didn’t have to think what I was gonna say. It just came out.”

  Presently he departed, and Fallow stepped forward. The widow smiled at him, just the least bit disconcerted because she didn’t know who he was.

  “I’m Peter Fallow,” he said. “As you may know, I was with your husband when he died.”

  “Oh yes,” she said, giving him a quizzical look.

  “I just wanted you to know,” said Fallow, “that he didn’t suffer. He simply lost consciousness. It happened”—Fallow brought his hands up in a gesture of helplessness—“like that. I wanted you to know that everything that could have been done was done, or so it seems to me. I attempted artificial respiration, and the police responded very rapidly. I know how one can wonder about these things, and I wanted you to know. We had just had an excellent dinner and an excellent conversation. The last thing I remember was your husband’s wonderful laugh. In all honesty I must tell you, there are worse ways—it’s a terrible loss, but it was not a terrible ending.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re awfully kind to tell me this. I’ve reproached myself for being away from him when…”

  “You shouldn’t,” said Fallow.

  The Widow Ruskin looked up at him and smiled. He was aware of the sparkle in her eyes and the curious curl of her lips. She was able to put a coquettish edge even on a widow’s thanks.

  Without changing his tone of voice, Fallow said, “I couldn’t help but notice Mr. McCoy speaking to you.”

  The widow was smiling with her lips parted slightly. First the smile shrank away. Then the lips closed.

  “In fact,
I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,” said Fallow. Then, with a bright and amiable look on his face and a full-blown English Country Weekend accent, as if he were asking about the guest list at a dinner party: “I gather you were in the car with Mr. McCoy when he had his unfortunate accident in the Bronx.”

  The widow’s eyes turned into a pair of cinders.

  “I was hoping that perhaps you might tell me exactly what happened that night.”

  Maria Ruskin stared at him a moment longer and then said, between tight lips: “Look, Mr.—Mr.—”

  “Fallow.”

  “—Peckerhead. This is my husband’s funeral, and I don’t want you here. You understand? So get out—and disintegrate.”

  She turned and walked off toward Radosz and a group of blue suits and black dresses.

  As he left the Harold A. Burns funeral home, Fallow was giddy with the knowledge of what he had. The story existed not only in his mind but in his skin and his solar plexus. It surged like a current in every axon and dendrite of his body. As soon as he got near the word processor, the story would pour out of his fingers—pre-formed. He wouldn’t have to say, allege, imply, speculate that the beautiful and now fabulously wealthy merry young Widow Ruskin was the Mystery Brunette. McCoy had said it for him. “Right there with me—my only witness!” The Widow Ruskin had remained tight-lipped—but she hadn’t denied it. Nor had she denied it when the journalist, the great Fallow, when I—when I—when I—that was it. He would write it in the first person. Another first-person exclusive, like DEATH NEW YORK STYLE. I, Fallow—dear God, he hungered, lusted, for the word processor! The story vibrated in his mind, his heart, his very groin.

  But he made himself stop by the register in the vestibule and copy down the names of all the celebrated souls who had been on hand to pay their respects to the lovely widow of Mecca’s Kosher Ferry Captain without dreaming of the drama unfolding beneath their prurient noses. They would know soon enough. I, Fallow!

  Out on the sidewalk, just beyond the vestibule, were clusters of these very same luminous personages, most of them having the sort of exuberant grinning conversations people in New York somehow can’t help having at events that dramatize their exalted status. Funerals were no exception. The huge young cantor, Myron Branoskowitz, was talking with—or talking to—a severe-looking older man whose name Fallow had just copied from the register: Jonathan Buchman, the chief executive officer of Columbia Records. The cantor spoke with great animation. His hands made little flights in the air. Buchman’s expression was rigid, paralyzed by the sonorous logorrhea that spewed so ceaselessly into his face.

  “No problem!” said the cantor. It was almost a shout. “No problem at all! I’ve already made the cassettes! I’ve done every one of the Caruso standards! I can have them over to your office tomorrow! You got a card?”

  The last thing Fallow saw, before he left, was Buchman fishing a card out of a trim little lizard-skin card wallet, while Cantor Branoskowitz added, in the same declamatory tenor:

  “Mario Lanza, too! I’ve done Mario Lanza! I want you to have them, too!”

  “Well—”

  “No problem!”

  29. The Rendezvous

  The next morning Kramer and Bernie Fitzgibbon and the two detectives, Martin and Goldberg, were in Abe Weiss’s office. It was like a board meeting. Weiss sat at the head of the big walnut conference table. Fitzgibbon and Goldberg sat to his left; Kramer and Martin, to his right. The subject was how to proceed with a grand-jury hearing on the Sherman McCoy case. Weiss did not like what he was now hearing from Martin. Neither did Kramer. From time to time Kramer took a look at Bernie Fitzgibbon. All he could make out was a mask of black Irish impassivity, but it emitted short waves that said, “I told you so.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Weiss. He was talking to Martin. “Tell me again how you picked up these two characters.”

  “It was in a crack sweep,” said Martin.

  “A crack sweep?” said Weiss. “What the hell’s a crack sweep?”

  “A crack sweep’s a—that’s what we do now. Some blocks up there, there’s so many crack dealers on the block it’s like a flea market. A lot of the buildings are abandoned, and the others, the people that live there, they’re afraid to come out the front door, because there’s nothing on the street but people selling crack, people buying crack, and people smoking crack. So we make these sweeps. We move in and we pick up everything that’s loose.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Sure. You do it a couple of times and they’ll move to another block. It’s got to the point where as soon as the first cruiser comes around the corner, they start running from the buildings. It’s like these construction sites when they set off the dynamite and the rats start running down the street. Somebody oughta take along a movie camera one time. Here’s all these people running down the fucking street.”

  “Okay,” said Weiss. “So these two guys you picked up, they know Roland Auburn?”

  “Yeah. They all know Roland.”

  “Okay. So what you’re telling us—this is something Roland told them personally or this is something they heard?”

  “No, this is the word that’s going around.”

  “In Bronx crack circles,” said Weiss.

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Martin.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Well, the word is that Roland happens to see this kid, Henry Lamb, walking up to the Texas Fried Chicken place, and he tags along. Roland enjoys giving this kid a hard time. Lamb’s what they call a ‘good-doing boy,’ a mama’s boy, a boy who don’t ‘come out.’ He don’t come out of the house and get into the street life. He goes to school, he goes to church, he wants to go to college, he don’t get into trouble—he don’t even belong in the projects. His mother’s trying to save up money for a down payment on a house in Springfield Gardens, or they wouldn’t even be living there.”

  “These two guys didn’t tell you that.”

  “No, that’s what we already found out about the kid and his mother.”

  “Well, let’s stick to these two smokeheads and what they said.”

  “I was trying to give you the background.”

  “Good. Now give me the foreground.”

  “Awright. So anyway, Roland’s walking down Bruckner Boulevard with Lamb. They’re walking past the ramp at Hunts Point Avenue, and Roland sees this shit on the ramp, these tires or trash cans or something, and he knows somebody’s been up there trying to take off cars. So he says to Lamb, ‘Come on, I’ll show you how to take off a car.’ Lamb don’t want any part of that, and so Roland says, ‘I’m not gonna do it, I’m just gonna show you how you do it. Whaddayou afraid of?’ He’s, you know, taunting the kid, because he’s such a mama’s boy. So the kid walks up on the ramp with him, and the next thing he knows, Roland throws a tire or a can or something in front of this car, this terrific-looking Mercedes, and it turns out to be McCoy and some broad. This poor fucker, Lamb, is just standing there. He’s probably scared shitless to be there, and he’s scared shitless about running, too, because of Roland, who’s only doing this whole number to let him know what a faggot he is in the first place. Then something goes wrong, because McCoy and the woman manage to get the hell outta there, and Lamb gets sideswiped. Anyway, that’s what’s going around out on the street.”

  “Well, that’s some theory. But have you found anybody who says they actually heard Roland say any a that?”

  Bernie Fitzgibbon broke in. “That theory would explain why Lamb don’t say anything about being hit by a car when he goes to the hospital. He don’t want anybody to think he was involved in trying to take off a car. He just wants to get his wrist fixed up and go home.”

  “Yeah,” said Weiss, “but all we got here is a theory presented by two smokeheads. Those people don’t know the difference between what they’re hearing and what they’re hearing.” He twirled his forefinger up around his temple in the Looney Tunes mode.

  “Well, I think it’s w
orth checking out, Abe,” said Bernie. “I think we oughta spend a little time on it, anyhow.”

  Kramer felt alarmed and resentful and protective, protective of Roland Auburn. None of them had bothered to get to know Roland the way he had. Roland was not a saint, but he had goodness in him, and he was telling the truth.

  He said to Bernie, “There’s no harm in checking it out, but I can think of ways a theory like this actually gets started. I mean, it’s really the McCoy theory. It’s what McCoy fed the Daily News, and it’s on TV. I mean, this theory is already out on the street, and this is what it grows into. It answers one question, but it raises ten more. I mean, why would Roland try to take off a car with this kid along who he knows is a wimp, a lame? And if McCoy is the victim of a robbery attempt and he hits one of his assailants, why would he hesitate to report it to the cops? He’d do it like that.” Kramer snapped his fingers and realized an argumentative tone had taken over his voice.

  “I agree, it raises a lot of questions,” said Bernie. “All the more reason not to rush this thing through the grand jury.”