Harlequin

by Morris West

  It was no great exercise in logic to conclude that finally you had to lose. Age crept up on you, and the young braves eager to blood themselves. Money became a mad monster, chewing its own tail, eating itself to extinction. Property was a thing you pledged to get credit to buy more property to pledge against another purchase, to capitalise in the end against the long chance that there might be a small pocket in the winding sheet. We were all damned to the treadmill round: a little waking, a little sleeping, a purging by terror and pity, some loving, much loneliness, and two lustrations a day to make us feel clean even if we weren’t. Afterwards, came the season when we wondered whether we were not just killing time until time killed us.

  Harlequin’s luncheon with Herbert Bachmann had produced very modest hopes. Money could be raised to enable him to meet the shortfall and buy out the minority share-holders; but, even at prime rates, the interest bill would be enormous and the profits of the bank would be cut to the bone for a long period. More grievous would be the probable loss of a large slice of underwriting business, which is always based on the promise that if the issue cannot be sold to the market, the underwriter will pick up the residue himself. There would be other damage, too. Investors tend to fight shy of a banker who has to borrow money in the street to keep himself afloat.

  Basil Yanko had calculated to a nicety. The premium was high enough to attract the greedy seller and frighten the prudent buyer. There was not enough smell to make a scandal; there was just enough to send new clients to the shop around the corner. George Harlequin could sell out rich, or fight himself bone-poor to a sterile victory. Harlequin saw it as clearly, defined it more precisely, than I; but he also saw a hope, albeit a slim one, of improving his position.

  ‘…So far, Paul, we’ve assumed the worst – that every minority holder will want to sell. We’ve based all our figures on that assumption. Now, I hold first option to buy; so, I propose to contact each shareholder with my offer and my recommendation not to sell at all, to anyone. I want to have face to face meetings wherever possible so that I don’t have to put too much in writing. I’m working on that programme now. I’ll need your help, of course. I’ve called Suzanne from Geneva. Between the three of us, we should be able to cover the territory in the time. As soon as I’ve assembled the lists and classified them, we’ll set down a plan of operation.’

  ‘But you’re still determined to reject Yanko’s offer out of hand?’

  ‘Absolutely. I find myself insulted by this man, and by all his tactics. Why are you so dubious, Paul?’

  ‘Because, until the investigation is completed, and Bogdanovich gives us some hard information, we have no cards to play. Yanko repeats his offer. You say, no, no, no; and that’s the end of the discussion. It leaves us worse off than we are now. Yanko’s malicious. You back him against a wall, he’ll jump at you like a fighting rat.’

  ‘Paul, you have to trust me.’

  ‘So be it, George. I’ve said my piece. I’ll call you in the morning and see you here at three tomorrow.’

  ‘What’s your programme now?’

  ‘I’m going to the Club for a steam bath. Then, I’m going to call Mandy Ducaine, find out where the action is tonight and go there. I’m getting thick-headed, George. I need a break.’

  ‘Until tomorrow then. Give Mandy my love.’

  I was angry when I left him. I felt he had shut me out; that my counsels were of no importance to him any more. I missed the old urbanity, the old subtlety, the comic sense of proportion. Now, he was curt and inflexible, another huckster in a harsh hucksters’ town. I wished, fervently, that I could dispense myself from the burdens of friendship and go back to the pleasant, if pointless, routines of bachelor life.

  After an hour’s workout, I felt less dyspeptic and better disposed towards mankind. I called Mandy, who is a cheerful widow with a heart as big as her fortune and whose only fear is a blank date in her social calendar. She was going to the Opera; but, if I cared to drop by for supper, there would be Harold and Louise and Monty and this new Brazilian coloratura and, oh, a dozen others. I told her I would try to make it; but if I couldn’t, love and kisses until next time. Which left me with an open card for dinner and the conviction that I was getting too old for the mating dance of the butterflies; so I went down to the billiard room and won ten dollars from Jack Winters, who has never done anything harder in his life than prune roses and avoid getting married. He scared me. He always did. I could see myself, ten, fifteen years ahead, the first to come, the last to go, pathetically eager for a rubber of bridge or a gossip round the bar.

  As I walked home through the first neon twilight and the last ant-scurry of the city, I was oppressed by a terrible sense of loneliness, a panic fear of violence and disaster. The ground of law on which I had trodden so securely for years, was cracking under my feet like river-ice in a sudden thaw. I was involved in theft, conspiracy and murder. I had made contracts for terror – precisely because I was trapped in an apparatus beyond the reach of law, an apparatus which corrupted the law into impotence and subservience.

  The machine said, ‘Yellow alert’; the great powers began to mobilise for war. The machine spewed out an astronomical calculation; a currency was devalued. Even God would forgive you your sins; but the machine would shame you with them until crack of doom – and that, too, it would produce on time… So the great illusion was fostered: that man should claim no responsibility because he could exercise none; that he should be submissive because his fate was already determined and imprinted; and only the machine could control the cosmic currents. What nobody said, because everyone was sedulous to hide it, was that the machines were fed by human mechanics, as evil, as good, as wise, as stupid, as the rest of us – and the machine only multiplied their errors into a mad mathematic, beyond which there was no appeal… Unless, of course, you attacked the machine with hatchets and bombs and rockets and a mortal contempt; which was the whole nature of modem terror, the nature of the communal despair it produced.

  I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in a shop window. I saw a middle-aged man, grim and hostile, closed against all human contact. I turned away, hurrying and thrusting through the crowds in a vain effort to shake off the doppelganger.

  When I arrived home, all the miseries of the day were capped by domestic tribulation. Takeshi was having one of his bad days. Now, I have to explain that Takeshi in good humour is a paragon to be prized above wine, women and emeralds. He cooks better than Escoffier. He can iron a shirt so that it feels like a second skin. He dusts, waxes, polishes, as if he were custodian of the Imperial treasure. On the other hand, Takeshi in bad temper is an intolerable nuisance. He shuffles about like a geriatric case. He scowls like a temple demon. He sniffs and moans and whimpers in a symphony of dolours. When he deigns to open his mouth, he is either doltish or contumacious. The only remedy I have yet discovered is to shunt him out of the house, and let him purge himself with sake, poker, and a visit to the mama-san who runs a road-house for Japanese gentlemen on West Fifty-eighth.

  The moment I stepped inside the door, I recognised the signs. I had him out of the place in five minutes’ fiat. Half an hour later, bathed, shaved and at least part-human, I was curled up on the divan, with a drink at my elbow, listening to Von Karajan conduct the Pathétique. The package had arrived from Francis Xavier Mendoza, but I left it unopened. I had been trotting long enough at the chariot wheels of the moguls. I was entitled to a little quiet living on my own account.

  I thumbed through a yachting magazine and indulged myself in fantasies of a long cruise under sail, Europe to the Caribbean, through the Panama, on to the Galapagos, across to Papeete, Tonga and the Fiji Islands. I could do it. I ought to do it instead of scrabbling in the muck of the market-place. I could take a year off, two if I wanted. Crew was no problem. There was a wide choice of pleasant company. Jenny Latham was free and eager… Paulette, maybe… But why tie myself down? Why not come new to every landfall, out of the long swing of the ocean into the land-locked
calm… I woke to the insistent buzzing of the door-bell and stumbled out, resentfully, to answer it.

  George Harlequin was standing on the mat, smiling a rueful apology. ‘I’ve been strolling for an hour. I took a chance on finding you home. If you hadn’t been, I’d have left a note.’

  ‘Come in, for God’s sake! You don’t stroll at night in this town!’

  ‘I know. But I had to think. We quarrelled today, Paul. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Forget it, George. It was a bad time for both of us. Coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please. You didn’t go out?’

  ‘Mandy’s at the Opera. She suggested supper, but I couldn’t face it. Takeshi’s got the megrims. Where’s Julie?’

  ‘Waiting up for Suzanne. She’s coming in on a late flight.’

  ‘Have you told Julie what happened?’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave me that boyish, mischief-grin. ‘She wondered why you hadn’t said anything at lunch. I think she’s forgiven you by now.’

  ‘I hope so… Look, there’s a package in the lounge. It’s a dossier on Basil Yanko. Mendoza sent it from California. Why don’t you open it and glance through it while I make the coffee?’

  I bumbled about the kitchen for ten minutes, glad that he had come, troubled that I had not told him of my talk with Bogdanovich. It was not fear that had held me back. It was pique and jealousy, the petty triumph of owning a piece of information that was, for the moment, denied to him. It wasn’t easy to explain; but, shamed by the grace of his apology, I had to do it. He was shocked by the details of Valerie Hallstrom’s death, but he refused to let me humble myself.

  ‘No, Paul! I’ve let you carry too much for too long. You’ve taken the risks. I’ve played critic and judge. From now on, we work together. No secrets, no disputes. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had some bad news this evening. Larry Oliver came to see me. He’s been offered another job. He tendered his resignation.’

  ‘When does he want to go?’

  ‘At the end of the month. He has three months’ long service leave, which covers the notice period.’

  ‘Oh, hell! That hurts us, George.’

  ‘I’ve asked Standish to move up. He’s happy, of course.’

  ‘He’s a lightweight; but he’ll have to do.’

  ‘One thing bothers me, Paul. At law we stand in a weak position. First, there’s a prima facie case against me, as president. By putting in Lichtman Wells, we’re buying time for me to answer it: but any client who deems himself aggrieved could file a complaint at any moment, in any jurisdiction where we operate. Oliver knows that and he doesn’t want any dirt on his lily-white hands. I can’t really blame him. Then we’re employing Bogdanovich, who operates outside the legal framework and is in effect an illegal agent of a foreign power. You, Paul, are now in the position of withholding evidence in a murder investigation. As if that weren’t enough, Basil Yanko telephoned. He had a problem, he said, a problem of professional ethics…’

  ‘Signs and wonders! Professional ethics!’

  ‘That’s what he said. He pointed out that Miss Valerie Hallstrom had access to highly classified information related to National Security. He had been forced, therefore, to call in the FBI. Inevitably, they would require and could demand access to any and all records, including those of Harlequin et Cie. He hoped I would not interpret this as a hostile move on his part or as an attempt to exert pressure in our negotiations. The matter was out of his hands… Now, you can see why I needed a walk.’

  I saw more than that: I saw banner headlines and a shuddering market, and whole divisions of clients moving out as if it were the retreat from Mons. And there, in the foreground, was George Harlequin, his coffee-cup steady in his hand, placid as a Zen master who has just proposed an insoluble riddle.

  I tried, haltingly, to talk my way to an answer. ‘Let’s talk about legalities first. You and I are both foreign nationals. There is no evidence that you have committed any crime in New York. There is evidence that your signature was used to collect the proceeds of crime in Switzerland… I have only hearsay evidence of a murder. Nobody knows that I have it except you and Bogdanovich. Nobody knows we’ve hired Bogdanovich except Saul Wells, who co-operates with him. Even if they did, it would be hard to charge any criminal intent on our part. We are free to hire a garbage collector if we choose, provided we don’t conspire with him to commit a felony. The FBI is a different coloured animal. They have access to our transactions, legal or otherwise, in this jurisdiction, if they deem national security is involved. Inevitably they’ll pay us a visit. What do we tell them?’

  ‘The truth, Paul. We are investigating an international fraud. I am involved, albeit innocently. A one-time employee, Ella Deane, has died in an accident and has left a suspicious amount of money. I believe we can add that we are reluctant to accept the report that absolves Creative Systems by a single statement that their employees have been screened and rescreened.’

  ‘Are we wise to open that question?’

  ‘I think so. We make no accusations. We express reasonable doubt. We can go even farther. We can point to the co-incidence of Basil Yanko’s bid to take us over.’

  ‘That tips our hand, George.’

  ‘Innocent or guilty, Yanko will be worried. The FBI will be worried, too – because Valerie Hallstrom had access to secrets and died violently.’

  ‘Once that can of beans is opened, our activities could be restricted.’

  ‘Why, Paul? We’re very legal people.’

  ‘Bogdanovich has to know, before we say anything.’

  ‘I agree. Why not call him now?’

  ‘I have to use a pay-phone.’

  ‘It’s still early. Why don’t you get dressed and take me down to Gully Gordon’s? You can phone on the way and, if Bogdanovich is free, we can meet him tonight.’

  ‘What about Mendoza’s report?’

  ‘I’ll take it with me and study it. When I’m not using it, I’ll keep it in safe-deposit. It’s not the sort of thing to leave lying around. Especially now…’

  I couldn’t resist a grin and a small pin-prick of irony. ‘You’re learning fast, George!’

  To my surprise, he took me quite seriously. ‘No I’ve always known, Paul. It was my private vanity that I could side-step the rogues and the tricksters, insulate myself against malice by urbanity, shut out violence by a wall of money and privilege. Out there tonight, walking the streets, I saw that it was an illusion. Evil is real. It stalks you. It lies in ambush. It invades your own house. Sooner or later, you have to face it, grapple with it, hand to hand. For me, that time is now. I’m glad we’re friends again…’

  We had two drinks and half an hour of music at Gully Gordon’s. When we left, we were met outside by a chauffeured limousine. Aaron Bogdanovich was in the back seat. We cruised downtown to Washington Square, and then uptown again, slowly, while Bogdanovich absorbed our news and gave us his own briefing.

  ‘I agree with you, Mr Harlequin. You don’t play games with the FBI. You give them all the information they could deduce from your records. I don’t think it hurts to voice a certain uneasiness about the operations of Creative Systems. You can take it from me the FBI are uneasy too. But, remember, you’re foreigners; you don’t understand American attitudes and procedures. That helps when you’re dealing with Government agencies… The one thing you don’t mention is your connection with me. Oh, they know I exist I Administration policy favours Israel. So long as I don’t rub their noses in what I do and pass on a good tip from time to time, they leave me alone. But private practice, they won’t buy. I don’t have much news for you yet. We traced the taxi. The driver admits picking up our passenger. He drove him to the T.W.A. terminal at Kennedy. After that, of course, nothing. He could have taken a T.W.A. flight. He could have doubled back to town or crossed to another terminal. No way to know. However, we’re combing the contract market… We’re working also on Yanko’s personal staff – his chauffeur, his h
ousekeeper, the maid and his private secretary. The police are looking into Miss Hallstrom’s private life. A friend of mine will pull the file for me at a convenient moment. It all takes time if we’re to do it properly. Oh, one thing, Mr Desmond. The fellow in the green Corvette, who was watching your apartment…’

  ‘Bernie Koonig. What about him?’

  ‘My boys picked him up for a little chat. He said he was hired by a friend to follow you and report on your movements.’

  ‘Who was the friend?’

  ‘A man called Frank Lemnitz. He’s Yanko’s chauffeur.’

  ‘That’s one break, at least. Can we use it?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that. It’s a risk; but maybe it’s worth taking. Why not drop the name in Yanko’s lap when you meet him?’

  ‘Delighted.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ said George Harlequin eagerly. ‘It might be a bigger surprise. Don’t they say in theatre there should be two laughs in every joke?’

  ‘Three,’ said Aaron Bogdanovich. ‘But you have to be sure the last one isn’t on you.’

  We were late, but not too late, for supper at the Salvador. Suzanne was there and I swept her into my arms and held her a moment longer than usual, because Harlequin wouldn’t and, like me, she needed more loving that she had. Her report from Geneva was not encouraging.

  The Union Bank was cautious about its rights and precise about its legal position. The Harlequin account had been opened in proper form; all transactions on it had been formally correct; the monies had been paid out in cash against a verified signature. The bank’s responsibility ended there. So long as this position was recognised, they would be happy to assist their honoured colleague in any permissible fashion.

  The Swiss police were slightly more helpful. They had examined the alleged forgery against a genuine signature. They admired the skill of the forger. They pointed out that cash money was difficult to trace, and could be exported legally from Switzerland. Harlequin’s position was clear, if uncomfortable: the losses had been covered; unless and until formal complaint was made by a third party, no charges could be laid against him.