Carriage Trade

by Stephen Birmingham

  “I don’t like you spying on me, Nino!”

  “I not know marrying her was part of plan. You not ever tell me that, Tommy.”

  “I’ve got to get control of her stock! Her stock!”

  “But she not say yes.”

  “She will, damn it! I just have to work on her some more.”

  Nino’s voice was far away. “So this is the way it ends for us, Tommy,” he said. “You and me are ended now.”

  “Of course not! You and I would still be together. It’s just that she’d be with us too!”

  “You keep secrets from me, Tommy. You not tell me this part of plan.”

  “My plan is for whatever works, damn it! I was going to tell you as soon as I’d found a plan that worked. Now go to sleep. I’m going to work things out. Leave everything to me.”

  Nino lay silently beside him. Then he said, “No, I don’t think plan is going to work, Tommy.”

  “It is,” he said, and then, “She took my big file box.”

  “I hear her do that.”

  “It has all the store’s important records in it.”

  From beside him, in the darkness, there was a shrug.

  “Do you think she’ll be able to find anything in them, Nino?”

  Another shrug. “Don’t know. Don’t know what is in your records, Tommy.”

  “I’m sure she won’t be able to find anything. She knows nothing about how I’ve run the store. She won’t find anything she can possibly understand—will she?”

  Still another shrug. “God knows these things, Tommy,” came the reply.

  Now there was a long silence. “Nino?”

  “Yes, Tommy.”

  “Have you ever killed a person?”

  “No, Tommy.”

  “Neither have I. It would have to look like an accident, of course—like the other one.”

  Nino said nothing for a moment or two. Then he said, “I am thinking, Tommy.”

  “What are you thinking, Nino?”

  “I am thinking we will never go to Paracale, you and I. It was only dreaming, you and I.”

  And, beside him, staring up at the dark ceiling, Tommy Bonham now said nothing.

  Part Three

  DIANA’S DREAM

  27

  It is a rainy Saturday morning in October, and Peter Turner—freelance journalist, would-be biographer, one-day well-known name (according to Miranda’s tarot reading)—is sitting in his apartment, high in one of the Gothic dormers of the Dakota, listening again to the tapes he has made thus far of those who have variously loved and hated Silas Rogers Tarkington. The chilly rain streaks his window-panes, which could do with a washing, in the squiggly patterns of a river delta. Inside the building, a collective belch and rattle of steam pipes indicates that the Dakota’s radiators have just been turned on for the first time this winter and, from the street below, a quickening sound of traffic, auto horns, and doormen’s whistles provides an annual alert to the coming holiday season. As he listens to his tapes, Peter Turner continues to make notes in the ring-bound steno pad on his lap.

  In The Times this morning was the news that Continental Stores, Inc., has again extended the time period for its two-tiered takeover offer for Tarkington’s. Originally, it was ten days. Then it was extended to thirty days. Now it has been extended again, to ninety days. This means that Continental is having difficulty acquiring the majority of shares it needs, though it now stands in an eighteen-percent-ownership position. And this means that Miranda is having some success dissuading shareholders from parting with their shares, though the battle is by no means over. Who said, “It ain’t over till it’s over?” Yogi Berra, Peter thinks. Someone like that.

  It has been two months since Silas Tarkington’s sudden death and Peter’s involvement in this particular project, and this morning he is feeling frustrated on two separate fronts. One is personal. It is frustrating that Miranda Tarkington must spend so much of her time closeted in meetings with Tommy Bonham as they plot defenses against the takeover. Right now they are considering a “poison pill” defense—a stock split, for instance, or the floating of a new issue of Tarkington’s stock to the public. Both tactics, of course, involve enormous risk and could end up ruining the company. His other frustration is professional. Peter has still had no success in his efforts to locate the elusive Mr. Moses Minskoff, who, Peter is increasingly certain, is pivotal to the Silas Tarkington story and who also may hold the key to what actually happened that tragic Saturday morning in August at Flying Horse Farm in Old Westbury.

  No Moses Minskoff is listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, nor does it appear that he has ever been. When Peter telephoned Jacob Kohlberg to see if Kohlberg could help him locate Minskoff, the lawyer’s tone became almost testy. “Look, Turner,” he said to him, “this is your project, not mine. It’s you who’s supposed to be the investigative reporter. So investigate! I want to have as little to do with that man as possible. Find out his phone number some other way, and leave me out of this.… No, I don’t have an address for him.”

  Despite Blazer’s promise, Jake Kohlberg is turning out to be less than cooperative. Beyond the expected guarded and lawyerly platitudes (“Si Tarkington was a great man, and a great friend, and you may quote me”), Jake Kohlberg has offered very little, probably because he is acting in the interests of Consuelo Tarkington.

  Her help so far has also been minimal.

  “Tell me about Moses Minskoff,” he said to her that night when she had invited him, Miranda, and David Hockaday to dinner at the farm.

  “Moses Minskoff? He was an early business associate of my late husband’s. They had very little to do with each other in recent years, though the Minskoffs did show up—uninvited—at the farm the night Si died. Much to my surprise—and displeasure, I might add.”

  “Displeasure?”

  “He is an unattractive man. Miranda, tell Mr. Turner about the first time the Duchess of Windsor came into the store, how she made the Duke carry all her packages.” And the subject was changed and effectively closed.

  The other members of the family, it seems, knew Moses Minskoff only slightly, if at all. Alice Tarkington had only a few brief conversations with him, just enough to be impressed by his garlic breath. Blazer and Miranda each met him only once, the night he and his wife appeared at the farm, though both children had heard his name mentioned often during their growing-up years. Miranda remembered a fat man wearing a yellow Ultrasuede vest and chewing an unlighted cigar, with a fiftyish peroxide-blond wife wearing platform wedgies with ankle straps. Silas Tarkington’s mother and sister had also each had one meeting with Moses Minskoff, and that was more than thirty years ago.

  Peter Turner does not even have a clear picture of what Moses Minskoff looks like. The prison records from Hillsdale list his date of birth (Nov. 27, 1913), his height (5’11”), and his weight (280 lbs.) but do not include a photograph. “Prisoner is mug-shot on admission,” Peter was told. “But if his picture was took, it’s been lost at this point in time.” And even if such a photograph were found it would not tell much, since it would have been taken in 1948, and a man’s appearance can change greatly in more than forty years.

  Listening to his tapes and hearing Moe Minskoff’s name repeated again and again, Peter ponders the conundrum of this man.

  He looks at his notes.

  How did MM. learn of Si’s death the afternoon it happened? Obit did not appear until two days later.

  Alice thinks MM. had a hand in Si’s death. But why would murderer appear at victim’s home the night of death to pay a condolence call and stay approx. three hrs uninvited?

  Would condolence call be designed to deflect suspicion? Murderer would have to have nerves of steel to revisit scene of crime seven hrs later, and then just hang around.

  What is Consuelo Tarkington hiding?

  Now his telephone rings, and Peter reaches to pick it up.

  “Mr. Turner?” a woman’s voice says. “Is this the Mr. Peter Turner
who’s writing the story about Silas Tarkington?”

  “Yes, it is,” he says.

  “Mr. Turner, this is Honeychile Minskoff,” the woman says. “Mrs. Moses Minskoff.”

  “Well, hello!” he says in disbelief.

  “Mr. Turner,” she says, “I’m calling you because I’ve heard you’re going to be talking to a certain Miss Smith.”

  “Who?”

  “Diana Smith. The one they call Smitty. She was jewelry buyer at the store and a friend of Si’s.”

  “That’s right,” he says carefully. “In fact I just made an appointment with her, Mrs. Minskoff.”

  “That’s what I heard,” she says. “And I just want to warn you not to believe a word that little tramp says.”

  “Oh?” he says. “Why is that, Mrs. Minskoff?”

  “I guess you know she quit her job at the store. And I guess you know she didn’t get the job she was supposed to at the museum. She’s real mad about the way she’s been treated, and she’s going to try to tell you bad things about my husband and I.”

  “Oh? What sort of bad things?”

  There is a moment of hesitation. Then she says, “Well, I used to work for my husband. Just part-time. And I sold some things, some jewelry, to Smitty that she said weren’t bought quite right.”

  “What do you mean, not bought quite right?”

  There is another brief hesitation. “Well,” she says finally, “there was some things Smitty bought from me that she said was bought with bad credit cards. She accused me of selling her stuff that was bought with bad credit cards. She called me a fence for my husband. That’s all a lie. Nothing my husband or I ever sold her was bought from bad credit cards. There’s a lot I could tell you about my husband and Si Tarkington, but that wasn’t one of them.”

  “I’d very much like to talk to you, Mrs. Minskoff,” he says. “And I’d also like to talk to your husband.”

  “Oh, that won’t be possible. Except—unless—”

  “Unless what, Mrs. Minskoff?”

  Another silence. Then she says, “I might be able to arrange for something. But I’d need you to do me a little favor first.”

  “Oh?” he says. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a big favor. It’s a favor of a more personal nature.”

  “Please tell me what it is.”

  “I want you to scare him.”

  “Scare him? You mean your husband?”

  “Yes,” she says, and a note of panic has suddenly crept into her voice. “I’m scared, Mr. Turner,” she says. “That’s the thing of it with me. Daddy—my husband—he just won’t scare. He just laughs it all off and tells me not to worry. But you—you’re a member of the legitimate press, and maybe you could scare him for me. God knows I’ve tried, Mr. Turner. You don’t know what it’s been like these past few weeks for me, Mr. Turner. There’s people my husband owes money to. Not really owes, but they’re saying he owes it. And not just money, but they’re saying favors. It’s all legitimate, because everybody owes something to somebody, don’t they? These people are shylocks. Do you know what that means? It means I’ve been getting all these phone calls. They come all hours of the day and night! They don’t have any last names, these people. One is Julius. Another calls himself Don from Cleveland. Another is Ernie. One is Harry. They make threats to me. They know I have a niece who’s retarded, who I take care of, and they make threats to her. They make threats to my husband. He just laughs it all off and changes the phone number. But last night, just after we’d changed the number again, there were eighteen more phone calls! Eighteen! Sometimes they just breathe hard and hang up. I’m really scared now, Mr. Turner, and maybe you could help me. I even think anti-Semitism could be a part of it, y’know.”

  “Maybe you should report this to the F.B.I., Mrs. Minskoff. After all, threatening phone calls—”

  “The F.B.I.? Are you out of your gourd? We’re in enough trouble already without bringing the Feds in on it! But you—you’re a member of the legitimate press. You could do it.”

  “But I really don’t see how I—”

  “Look. He’s got some real money now. He could pay off his debts, and there’d be plenty left over for he and I to live on. Plenty. For years, he’s been promising me he was going to retire and we’d live in the Bahamas, free and clear. Have you ever been to the Bahamas, Mr. Turner? Neither have I, but I’ve got all the brochures. It’s beautiful there. And in Freeport, there’s gambling, and Daddy likes a little action now and then. We could be happy there, happy at last, the both of us—with no more pressures from the business. But with each new deal he makes, he just … goes on to make another one! Deals to Daddy are like drugs to an addict! But he’s getting too old for this, Mr. Turner, and so am I. He’s got the money now to retire and take the both of us to the Bahamas. Just scare him into doing it, Mr. Turner. You can do it with just one phone call, because he’s terrified of the legitimate press.”

  “Why is that, Mrs. Minskoff?”

  “Look,” she says, speaking rapidly now, “I haven’t got all day. He could walk in on me at any minute. But let me put it to you this way. My husband is a very major man. He’s an internationally respected mergers-and-acquisitions specialist, with clients all over the world, but some of his clients don’t like their names to be all that well known, which is why they use Daddy as their behind-the-scenes man, which is what behind the scenes means, staying out of the limelight, staying out of the press, keeping the people he works for confidential, important people whose work is top secret, and confidential, like the C.I.A., and who don’t like to see their pictures in the papers; these are private and powerful people, some of them even run whole countries, and there are other reasons, which I won’t go into now, why he hates the legitimate press.”

  “Something in his past, perhaps?”

  A pause. Then she says, “Maybe. Years ago. But we don’t need to go into that. That’s not the point. Everybody has something in his past he doesn’t want everybody else to know about—even you, I bet. The point is, Mr. Turner, just one phone call from you would do it. If he knows the legitimate press is after him, he’ll retire and move the both of us to the Bahamas, and we’ll have what he always promised me—our second honeymoon, free and clear. I’m desperate, Mr. Turner. Will you do that for me—just one phone call from the legitimate press?”

  “But if he hates the press so much, why would he talk to me?”

  “Look. Do I have to draw you pictures? Of course he won’t talk to you. He’ll never talk to you. All I want you to do is scare him! I want you to make him crazy! But if you do that for me, I’ll talk to you. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Silas Tarkington, and Moses Minskoff too. Is that a deal?”

  “Can you tell me how Si Tarkington died?”

  Another pause. “Maybe,” she says. “I can tell you what my husband thinks. He was cheating on his wife, you know. He was going to run off with that tramp, Smitty.”

  “You mean you think that Connie—”

  “That’s all I’m saying for now. I can also tell you who killed President John F. Kennedy, and it wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a friend of Jack Ruby, who was a client of my husband’s years ago. Are you going to make that phone call?”

  “Well … all right,” he says.

  “Okay. Do it today. Right now, before he gets all the phone numbers changed again. Got a pencil? I’m going to give you two numbers. The first one’s his office. He won’t answer. His secretary will. Her name’s Smyrna. Just tell her who you are and that you want to interview her boss. She won’t put you through, but he’ll get the message soon enough. Then call me back at the second number when you’ve done that, and I’ll meet you anywhere you say this afternoon—your apartment might be best—and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Okay?”

  She rattles off two telephone numbers. Then, abruptly, she says, “I’ve got to hang up now. He’s calling me on the other line. Remember—don’t believe anything that tramp Smitty tells
you about Daddy and I. You’ll get the truth from me.”

  Peter Turner puts down the receiver and sits at his desk, feeling slightly dizzy. All these weeks he has spent trying to get to Moses Minskoff, and now—suddenly, almost miraculously—Moses Minskoff, or at least his wife, has come to him.

  He stares at the two telephone numbers he has written down, then picks up his telephone again and slowly presses the buttons for the first number.

  A woman’s voice answers. “Development Corporation, Limited.”

  “Mr. Moses Minskoff, please.”

  “Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”

  “My name is Peter Turner. I’m a writer for Fortune. I’m writing the Silas Tarkington story.”

  “Mr. Minskoff is in conference, sir. May I take your number?”

  But Moe Minskoff isn’t in conference. In the office on West 23rd Street, Smyrna is working alone, answering crazy phone calls. She is very cross about this. She’s not supposed to work on Saturdays. He never pays her extra when she does. But last night he told her to open the office up at 9 A.M., and of course when she got there, he was nowhere to be found, though from the looks of his old sofa he’d slept there. He’s off somewhere this morning, doing God knows what. Now, about half past nine, he comes waddling in.

  She hands him his messages. “Mr. Albert Martindale of Continental called three times,” she says. “He’s not happy. He says he doesn’t like all these postponements of the deadline on the stock offer. He says it doesn’t look good for his company. He’s worried the whole deal is gonna come unstuck.”

  “Tell him to keep his shirt on, tell him to keep his pants on, tell him to keep his lid on. Tell him to keep everything he’s got on on. Tell him I’ve got everything under control.”

  “He wants to know what’s happening with that one stockholder, the woman in Florida whose shares you told him you had in your pocket. He wants to know what’s happening with her.”

  “Did you tell him it was a woman in Florida?”

  “Well, maybe. That’s who it is, isn’t it?”