By dawn the morning after Stilwell’s death, Hearst was trolling the floor with a cup of coffee in his hand, senses singing. He’d made a list of questions and he was conning it as fervently as any boy had ever learned Shakespeare.
1. Did Stilwell’s secretary keep a record of his outside appointments?
2. Did anybody ask the building concierge whether she saw Stilwell or his guest(s)?
3. Was there a third man? (Or woman?)
4. What was drunk from the lowball glasses?
5. How did Stilwell die? (What 28-year-old man suffers a heart attack???)
6. Why are Sullivan & Cromwell’s Paris lawyers still reporting for work in May when Foster Dulles shut down the office last September?
He could think of at least a dozen more perplexing details that warranted investigation, but they were hounded from his mind and scattered to the four winds by the persistent and haunting image of Sally King’s face.
He had seen anguish there last night, but also a keen desire for justice that bordered on compulsion. Had she loved Stilwell? Or had it been just a “good” marriage—a ticket home from a life at Coco Chanel’s autocratic beck and call? Had Stilwell and Sally been just a pair of conveniences for each other—the homosexual and the social climber—or had they been lovers?
Hearst had been searching for answers to the nature of love for some time now, but he was well aware that his personal preoccupations—his loitering in the halls of philosophy—had nothing to do with Philip Stilwell. Two men were dead and the Germans were coming. The specifics of Sally King’s affair were irrelevant.
He set down the coffee cup—which had lost its saucer somewhere in his travels—and leafed again through the pages he’d been reading as the sun came up over Paris. A letter dated more than eighteen months ago, recounting events that had occurred in the fall of 1935.
“…most inappropriate that we should continue to represent German clients at such a time, when New York firms had already closed their offices or severed relations with agents in Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin…I represented to my brother that his dedication to those friends of several decades’ standing is understood but that friendship is conditional in the current circumstances…The personal interest must not be allowed to stand against the public duty…He maintained that his was a position of principle, well-founded on intellect and experience, and that but for the exploitative and opportunistic leadership of our day these difficulties would not have arisen…But to accept such treatment of our Jewish clients worldwide, not to mention our Jewish law partners, by National Socialist policies is unacceptable…
Allen Dulles.
Hearst could almost hear the dry, practiced voice—hear the sardonic phrases with their undercurrent of violence. Allen Dulles was a man of cold temper and controlled passion—which in Hearst’s view was far preferable to his brother Foster’s talent for feeling nothing.
There had been a bitter scene in the S&C boardroom that day in 1935 when Foster Dulles was forced to shut down Berlin. Allen had tried to reason with him in private. Had told him it looked bad to cater to S&C’s Nazi clients when those clients were scapegoating Jews. But Foster refused to listen to his little brother and so Allen had brought the issue to a full partnership vote—and won.
Some people claimed Foster had actually cried.
Then he backdated the decision in the firm’s records to 1934.
If Allen raised the matter in his letter to Hearst all these years later, it was not because he liked airing his brother’s soiled pajamas or because he was a vicious gossip but because he was not a man to be lulled by false peace. The Berlin office was closed and most of its lawyers had moved. Not back to New York, incidentally, but to Paris…
“…naturally, Joe, I would be grateful for any early warning you could give of a deterioration in circumstances…”
What, exactly, did Allen mean? Early warning of the German advance? Timely notice of the fall of France? Allen Dulles possessed friends in Washington who could cable the news before it happened. Allen didn’t need a political secretary in Paris for that. Hearst fingered his coffee cup, empty now, and considered the Dulles he’d known. Ruthless eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. A neat mustache. The precision of the sensual lips. The restless fingers. Dulles would know by now that Philip Stilwell was dead—his partner Max Shoop would have sent a telegram immediately to New York. Something oblique and terse, details to follow by personal letter. Hearst imagined Dulles taking a car and driver—the time change would make such things possible—and heading to the Stilwell household in Connecticut to break the news.
Did he sense the threat looming? Did he know that scandal—and all avoidance of it—hinged on his firm’s ability to silence Sally King?
It was Tasi Volkonskaya, returning from the Club Shéhérazade at dawn, who found her.
The door to Sally’s flat was ajar and blue light crept out into the corridor, which was predictably dim. Tasi rapped on the wood and called out bonjour as though she had every intention of breezing past to her own flat, but the lack of response from Sally brought her up short. She peered around the jamb at the small studio beyond.
It had been torn apart.
Papers, scarves, clothing, and books lay tossed on the floor, canned goods and coffee grounds and ink were spilled on the carpet. Even Sally’s underthings were scattered across the back of one of her Louis Quinze chairs, the pair she’d found in the flea market with Philip and had painted white like something out of Elsie De Wolfe. Sally herself was lying like a queen on the sofa that did double duty as a bed. With a surge of irritation Tasi realized she’d gone to sleep in the middle of all the destruction, like a child worn out by a temper tantrum. Then she saw the purple bruises on Sally’s neck.
Cautiously, she picked her way across the floor in her dance sandals. For an instant she swayed above the prone figure as though afraid to disturb the dead. The eyes were closed and Tasi thought that a good sign—every corpse she’d ever known had been wide and staring. She reached tentatively for one slack wrist and felt for a pulse.
Later, when Mme. Caullebaut the concierge was done screaming and the ambulance klaxon had died away on its careening route to the Hôpital d’Étrangers, Tasi lingered in Sally’s empty studio long enough to light a cigarette. It was hard to know where to start. She picked up a book or two, set them in neat piles against the wall, retrieved a vase and discarded some wilted flowers. Freesias, from the market on the Ile St-Louis—that would be Sally’s Philippe, always the white flowers of every description filling the corridor with scent. Had her lover given her those bruises, toppled the books from their shelves?
Tasi lounged in the doorway, dragging at her smoke. Sally might never wake up, she might die enfin, and there would be family back home that would wish to know the name of the responsible party. She surveyed the flat critically, searching for…what?
There was the sleeping divan, the wardrobe with its doors pulled crazily wide, the screen behind which Sally dressed, the full-length mirror. The pair of Louis Quinze chairs. A gas burner, seldom used, and the sink. The communal bath was at the end of the hall.
Tasi’s eyes fell on the gas-mask case, tossed like a lump of coal between the wardrobe and the dressing screen. She had frequently envied Sally that mask; they’d been issued to every Parisian citizen, but not to most foreigners. Carrying one was a sign of belonging. She wondered again where the girl had gotten it. Philippe, she decided with chagrin—and reached for the case.
Inside, there was the mask—a furled rubber gargoyle—and Sally’s papers, her carte d’identité affirming she was a neutral American citizen. Blond-haired women could not be too careful these days: German spies were known to be everywhere, Fifth Columnists they called them, and blondes were constantly being questioned by police.
She had dispatched Sally to the hospital without her identity card, a complication for the poor girl; but tant pis, Sally could never prove Tasi had been anywhere near her things; she’d been dead to
the world when the ambulance crew took her. Tasi pocketed the card—a Jewish woman of her acquaintance would pay anything on earth for a neutral’s papers. She probed deeper in the case, hoping for a passport. At the bottom, forty-nine francs in coin. Cigarettes. A powder compact. A lipstick in a shade of shocking pink.
And a single business card with the name Joseph W. Hearst, Embassy of the United States of America, engraved on it.
Tasi pursed her lips and fingered the square of heavy card stock. The nearest telephone was in the tabac on the corner of Rue St-Jacques, and it was probably still too early to call. She would have to change into something more suitable. Make coffee. Decide exactly what story she had to tell, and how she should tell it.
“Sally King has been attacked.”
Bullitt looked up from his desk, where he was scanning a cable from the White House, and scowled at the figure in his doorway. Hearst’s hands were pressed against the jamb, head thrust forward like a greyhound’s. The ambassador was tempted to snap his head off at the interruption, but he was intrigued by the fury in the younger man’s face. Bullitt had never seen Hearst shaken out of his diplomatic manners—not even when they’d chatted, as convention forced them to do, the morning after Daisy’s cataclysmic departure. Then, Bullitt had admired Hearst’s almost English indifference to pain. Today he was witness to something far less controlled.
“Sit down.”
Hearst ignored him, roaming the broad Turkish carpet Bullitt had found in a souk and flung in front of the desk in memory of the palace on the Bosporus.
“She’s in the Hôpital d’Étrangers with a fractured skull and a set of bruises that suggest somebody tried to strangle her. They didn’t waste time, did they?”
“They?”
“Whoever killed Stilwell! You can’t deny the connection, sir. The woman who called—a neighbor—said Sally’s place was a shambles.”
So it’s Sally now, is it? Bullitt mused, and said, “Anything stolen?”
Hearst shrugged impatiently. “God knows. She still hasn’t come round—she may never…It’s just such a bloody waste.”
“You think there’s a tie to that business over at Sullivan and Cromwell?”
“Of course!”
“—As opposed to a random mugging of a woman who came home too late, without protection?”
Hearst stared at him incredulously.
Bullitt sank back in his massive chair and thrust Roosevelt’s instructions aside with his left hand. His reading glasses dangled from his right. “Give it to me straight, Joe. What’d the police say about Stilwell’s death?”
Hearst had arrived at the embassy just after seven-thirty that morning and Bullitt was told the young man hadn’t even waited for coffee before setting out with a Frenchman named Petie for the préfecture de police. Petie was Pierre duPré, a sardonic bastard in a dark blue beret who’d worked for the embassy for most of the past decade. He’d told the ambassador about the trip himself.
“Exactly what we’d expect,” Hearst spat out. “Stilwell’s death is accidental and his friend’s is called suicide. Autopsies to follow.”
“But you’re not buying it.”
Hearst finally came to a halt in front of Bullitt’s desk. “Miss King tells us her story, sir, and is nearly killed a few hours later. Her flat is searched with a fine-tooth bulldozer. Somebody’s looking for something. Something they’ve already killed to hide.”
“What do you want me to do, Hearst? Call Premier Reynaud and demand an explanation?”
“You might call the Superintendent of Police. Sir.”
There was a dry cough, the merest suggestion of an interruption, from the ambassador’s doorway. Hearst tensed; Bullitt quirked an eyebrow at his chargé, Robert Murphy.
“What is it, Bob?”
Murphy glanced at a sheet of paper. “We’re getting reports of trainloads of Dutch and Belgian refugees arriving at the Gare du Nord. Red Cross evacuation trains, filled with women and kids. Most of them are wounded or dead.”
“Dead?”
“The Germans apparently strafed the rail lines. Regardless of the fact that the trains were plastered with signs saying Enfants. Croix Rouge.” Murphy’s eyes met Bullitt’s. “Survivors are being taken to various hospitals, sir. I’d like Hearst to make the rounds—talk to whomever he can—see what these people know of the Nazi advance. They’re the only eyewitness reports of the Front we’re likely to get.”
“Goddamn sonuvabitch Krauts—” Bullitt snarled, then gave Hearst a long look. “Joe, why don’t you start with the Hôpital d’Étrangers?”
“I’ll get my hat,” he said quietly.
“One more thing, sir,” Murphy attempted, as Bullitt reached for the President’s cable again. “I know it’s annoying on a morning like this, but he refused to be turned away—”
“Who?”
“Mr. Max Shoop, of the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. He’s demanding to see you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
He reminded Hearst of a cardinal as he waited in the doorway: silently observing, judging them from heavy-lidded eyes. Max Shoop had come to do battle, and he’d already won the first round. Bill Bullitt had agreed to see him.
“Max. Pleasure.” Bullitt rose and extended his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met since the Christmas party. How’s Odette keeping?”
“Quite well, Mr. Ambassador,” Shoop returned, “although she’s worried about the Germans, naturally. She remembers 1914.”
“Take her back to New York for the duration.”
Shoop smiled tightly. “I doubt Odette would go.”
“You know my political secretary, Joe Hearst?”
“We met at Christmas.” Shoop reached for a chair, dismissing the younger man completely.
Hearst’s antagonism flared. He wanted to grab Shoop by his starched white collar and say Which of you tried to strangle her last night?
“What can we do for you, Max?” Bullitt asked.
The lawyer settled his hat on his knee, fingers carefully balancing. “Well, Bill—we’ve had an unfortunate thing happen over at S and C. One of our junior people died suddenly last night of a heart attack.”
“Philip Stilwell.”
“So you know. The police…?”
“The police,” Bullitt agreed. “Hearst here has already talked to the Sûreté.”
The carefully veiled eyes slid to Hearst’s face. Hearst felt the lawyer’s calculating intelligence roam over him like a pair of gloved hands, and resented it. He decided to shock the man.
“Miss King appeared at the embassy last night and told us her fiancé was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Shoop’s expression did not change. “What an extraordinary statement. I suppose she was…overwrought.”
“She’s in the hospital this morning with a fractured skull,” Bullitt observed.
“Good God.” A tremor seemed to run through the lawyer’s body, but he masked it by shifting his weight in his chair. “I’d no idea. What happened?”
“Somebody tried to strangle her,” Hearst said. “He was hunting for something—Miss King’s flat was apparently ransacked. Do you know what he wanted, Mr. Shoop?”
Max Shoop did not reply.
Hearst paced slowly across the room and stood over Shoop’s chair. “Your lawyer’s dead and his girl’s seriously injured. It’s not a coincidence. It won’t be explained away. You’d better tell us what’s going on at Sullivan and Cromwell before someone else dies.”
Shoop’s mouth twisted. “I’m tempted to say I want my lawyer present. But I’m the lawyer, aren’t I? So that appeal won’t help.”
He was determined to protect something or someone—a colleague, the law firm, himself? Hearst waited, his eyes fixed on the lawyer’s rigid face. He could feel Shoop composing his careful responses.
“Can you promise me that what I tell you will not leave this room?”
“No.” Bullitt shook his head regretfully. “My first duty is to the President, Max, as you we
ll know. But if I can hold your confidence without violating his—I’ll do so. Word of a gentleman.”
“If I have the slightest reason to believe Philip Stilwell was murdered and you’re implicated,” Hearst said, “I’ll do my damnedest to see you hang, Mr. Shoop. Word of a gentleman.”
“It’s the guillotine in this country.” Shoop tapped the brim of his hat with one long finger; his expression did not alter. “Very well; I’ll take my chances. You know that Foster Dulles, our managing partner in New York, officially closed the Paris office last September, when war was declared between Germany and France.”
“But you’re still going into the office each day. And eight months have passed. What’re you doing there?”
“Spinning straw into gold, Mr. Hearst. Before the Germans roll into France and all the straw goes up in smoke.”
“Meaning?”
“Jewish businesses. Jewish banks. Jewish partnerships that govern some of the most lucrative enterprises in Europe. Millions of dollars of assets and stock and financial relationships are at risk once the Nazis take over France, which, as we all know, they’re likely to do in a matter of weeks.”
“But Hitler confiscates Jewish business,” Hearst objected. “It’s happened everywhere—Czechoslovakia, Austria, Norway. Germany itself.”
“Exactly,” Shoop agreed. “Which is why, for the past eight months, we’ve been working day and night on behalf of our Jewish clients. Fabricating paper trails that suggest their assets and businesses and financial arrangements are actually owned by entities in neutral countries. Sweden, for example. Spain or Portugal. Even, at times, entities in the United States.”
“You think the Nazis give a good goddamn what the paper trail says?” Hearst spat.
Shoop stared back at him blandly. “Thus far, the National Socialist government has respected the rights and property of neutrals. The trick is getting enough neutrals to underwrite our program. We’ve had to find partners with deep pockets willing to serve as holding companies for an indeterminate period. That’s been difficult. A fake transfer of ownership demands a certain level of risk—or a suicidal commitment to charity. The Wallenberg family has been helpful in Sweden, but they’re damnably shrewd and we can’t be sure they’ll honor their agreement when the fighting’s done.”
The Alibi Club Page 5