And Charlotte had looked around her at the bedlam of shouting voices and ringing, endlessly ringing phones, of white faces and shirt-sleeved arms waving in the air, of foul language and puerile behaviour, and contrasted it with the investment banking floor, where all was sobriety and suits, Bostonian voices and Bulgari watches, and the three-hour lunch was as crucial as the morning’s work that preceded it, and her own department, where ambitious young men like Gabe Hoffman spent their days almost frantically matching one man’s need to another’s greed, and building their own reputations and futures in the process, and marvelled that something as basically simple as the manipulation of money could manifest itself in so many and diverse ways.
She could see now why Fred had put her to work with Gabe; it was like attending a masterclass every day. She watched him as he sniffed out possible deals, pulling them apparently from the air, persuading colleagues, clients, to go along with him, back his judgement; she listened as he coaxed and urged a deal along, counselling caution one day, steadying nerves the next, arguing with the lawyers, playing with the press; she stared at him transfixed as he talked confidently of buyers where there were none, of money that was not raised, of imminent completions that were not remotely in sight. And always, every time, it seemed, he pulled it off. One of his biggest coups, which had won them their biggest client since the BuyNow TV sales business, had been advising Myonura, the Japanese electronics company, to buy into a TV network. It had been a bold and brilliant move, and much talked of in Wall Street. He was regarded as a star, in spite of his youth, his inexperience, Fred’s suspicion of such animals. And some of the stardust rubbed off on Charlotte, she was seen as part of his team: admired, envied, often resented, sometimes disliked, but always noticed.
And Freddy Praeger, of course, was not in their team.
Chapter 28
Max, 1984
The girl pushed her knee between Max’s legs hard. She was standing behind him, and her arms were round his neck, her hands pressed, palm downwards, on his naked chest. Gradually she slithered them downwards, towards his crotch. Max tensed; he could feel his erection forming, growing. The sweat pants he was wearing were mercifully loose, but not entirely all-concealing. The girl felt his tension and giggled, reaching down inside the waistband of the pants. ‘What have you got in there?’ she whispered. ‘That is quite something, little Lord Max.’
‘OK, Opal, that’s great. Really fucking great. Hold it right there.’
‘My pleasure, darling. My great pleasure!’
‘Now don’t smile. That’s better. That’s great.’ Flynn Finnian, current darling of New York’s fashion photographers, started firing his Hasselblad.
‘Max, relax, baby. She isn’t going to eat you. No, for Christ’s sake I said don’t smile. Oh shit, or laugh. Opal, stop laughing. Look, you two, you can go and fuck yourselves stupid in the dressing room in five minutes, but right now can you spare a thought for a poor starving photographer and pose! Pose! Did you ever hear of posing? It’s the new thing in modelling. That’s better. Pose pose pose! Gorgeous, Opal. God, I could almost fuck you myself when you look like that. Max, that’s good. That’s great. Now turn a bit. Yeah, that’s right. Look at her. Look at her mouth. No, that’s no good. Try the other way round. Opal, what happens if you put one hand behind him. Right into the pants, yes, that’s right. Yeah, that’s great. Fantastic. Good. Good. Max, get a grip. Think wanky, OK? Fine. Great. Fantastic. OK, that’s it. Take a break. I’ll see you guys in half an hour.’
Max walked into the dressing room, frantic for a cigarette. He was shaking. He was lighting the cigarette when Opal appeared in the doorway behind him. She smiled at him in the mirror, walked lazily forward and slipped her hand back into his pants; he could feel her long nails scratching him slightly as she sought out his anus, and lazily forward, towards his balls. He looked at her, all six foot of her; she was a black African, her hair cropped close, an incredible beauty, with a neck at least nine inches long. She was wearing nothing but a pair of extremely small red briefs and a four-strand pearl choker. The long red boots, which had been her only other clothing for the shot, had been kicked off. She was a year older than he was, funny, raunchy, bi-sexual. Her agency had put it about that she was a princess from some remote African kingdom, but actually she was third-generation Bronx.
‘Snort?’ she said. ‘I have some in my bag.’
Max shook his head. ‘Can’t when I’m working.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t handle it. Makes me hyper.’
‘Poor little baby. I can make you hyper anyway, Max. You don’t need coke if you’re with me. Here, turn around.’
Max turned round. Opal pushed his pants down, slowly, her eyes fixed on his rampant cock. ‘My,’ she said, in her thick, gravelly voice, ‘that is a nice one. Really nice. A good well-bred English cock. I like that.’ She squatted down on the floor in front of him, her head on one side, contemplating it; then she looked up at him and grinned.
‘I’d really love to,’ she said, as if he had invited her to tea, ‘but Serena’s about to arrive, and you know how I feel about her. And how jealous she is. Can we take a rain check?’
The outer door of the studio opened and Flynn Finnian’s voice called out, mockingly camp, ‘All finished, you two? Your fashion editor’s here.’
Opal stood up swiftly, blocking Max from view. ‘Oh hi, Serena darling, how are you? Do you have the furs? I can’t wait to try them on.’
Max hauled his pants up frantically, his erection collapsing with merciful speed; Serena Sandeman, famously brilliant (and even more famously lesbian) freelance fashion editor, appeared in the doorway, her arms filled with furs, her ice-cool blue eyes flicking over Opal.
‘You’ve put on weight,’ was all she said, ‘you need to drop at least four pounds.’
‘Serena, I can’t,’ wailed Opal, ‘I only eat once every two days now. I am starving almost to death.’
‘I have a new man,’ said Serena, lighting a cigarette, ‘he gives you a shot every other day. You don’t want to eat at all, and it makes you feel great too.’
‘Not hyper?’ said Flynn. ‘The last one of those guys I went to, I was right out of it. I got done for drunk driving.’
‘Not really,’ said Serena. She gave Opal a card. ‘Call him,’ she said briefly. ‘I can’t use you for swimwear with that weight on you.’
Max looked at Opal’s rangy frame, the collar and hip bones jutting out of the coal-black skin, the hollow cheeks, the concave buttocks beneath the scarlet panties, and wondered where four pounds could go from. Her fingernails perhaps.
Serena saw him looking at Opal and smiled an icy smile, her pale eyes fixed on his. Keep off, that smile said.
‘You must be Max Leigh.’
‘Yes I am.’
‘I wanted someone dark,’ she said to Flynn. ‘How come we got him?’
‘He looks great with Opal,’ said Flynn, ‘better than a dark guy. And he’s a new face.’
‘English huh?’ said Serena.
Max nodded.
‘He’s a lord,’ said Opal. ‘An earl.’
‘Really?’ said Serena, icier still.
‘Well only a viscount so far,’ said Max modestly.
He was only in New York for a week. After this session he was going on to Las Vegas, to find Tommy Soames-Maxwell. He wasn’t quite sure why he had taken almost six months to do so; partly cowardice, he supposed, partly lack of time and funds. But in the end he had had to do it. He couldn’t turn his back on his roots any longer. He didn’t think he was going to like the roots, but a combination of deadly curiosity and a desire to lay the ghost drove him to make the necessary arrangements.
He arrived in Vegas at midday. He couldn’t believe anywhere could be so awful. It was like some grotesque fantasy town, sprung up in the middle of the desert he had been gazing at awestruck from the plane: ugly, graceless, charmless, full of appallingly massive hotels, with their thousands of rooms, endless
flashing hoardings and the interminable wedding chapels. And the noise; the unique Las Vegas noise, the whine of electronic slot machines and clattering jackpots, that began in the airport and followed him everywhere, down every street, into every building. The heat was intense: 105 degrees. Dry, hard heat; but it was actually better than the awful humidity of New York.
Max took a cab downtown, as advised by Opal, who had been to Vegas on a trip, and booked into a small hotel on Las Vegas Boulevard. It was the area he wanted to be: and Opal had said it was cheap and comparatively secure.
He lay down on the bed in his room, exhausted and scared; he half wished now he had taken Opal up on her offer to come with him. But then he would have had to explain so much and lie so much; better make out on his own. Thinking he should go and explore this legendary place, he fell asleep, and woke with a start to find it was after five. He was hungry; he set out and walked along the boulevard towards Fremont Street, picking up a burger and a Coke on the way. The whole place was almost surreal: if this was his father’s natural habitat, he didn’t think they would have much to say to one another. Then suddenly he remembered his gambling days at Eton, and the excitement he had felt even then, watching the wheel spin, praying his number would come up, an excitement so great it had been worth risking expulsion for, and decided he had no right to be so judgemental.
He had planned to walk, but it was too hot; he took a cab to Caesar’s Palace, which he felt he must see, whether Soames-Maxwell was there or not, and found himself conveyed on the ‘people mover’, a moving walkway into the strange fantasy world of the ultimate Vegas, the miniature Roman City, Cleopatra’s Barge, the Appian Way: all of it windowless, doorless, nightmarishly impossible to find a way out of. He was totally bemused by it, drunk both with the wine that literally flowed in a fountain in the lobby, to be caught in a plastic cup, and with the fearsome noise, the literally dazzling vulgarity of it. That took almost two hours, and then feeling increasingly like a lost child, in some strange, half-hostile country, he moved on to the Flamingo Hilton, and the ultra exotic Barbary Coast, with its huge thirty-foot stained-glass mural (where he strayed into the equally exotic stained-glass McDonald’s for a second hamburger); until finally it was late enough to start looking for Soames-Maxwell. He took another cab downtown and started at the Golden Nugget; it seemed incredible to him that anyone could have heard of anyone in there, extending as it did an entire block; but he liked it more than Caesar’s Palace, it made at least a nod in the direction of taste, with its white and green awnings, and he went to the cashier’s cage, where a flashy blonde said yes, sure, she knew Mr Soames-Maxwell, he came in all the time.
‘You’re in luck, he just came in.’
Max’s heart gave a heavy, jerking thud.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Where do I find him?’
‘He’s at the big table over there,’ she said, and led him over to the centre table; a very large back with a mop of greying blond hair confronted them. The girl tapped it.
‘Tommy?’
‘Hang on, Donna, hang on, wheel’s just going now. Shit, shit, come on baby, come on, come on …’
His voice tailed away; he turned round, looked at Donna and smiled. Max, expecting some violent rush of emotion, studied him, feeling oddly detached.
He was tall, taller than Max, and very broad; he was about two stone overweight, with a paunch tightly buttoned into his thick denim shirt. His hair was thick and just slightly too long; his face, heavily lined and very tanned, was good-natured, his eyes startlingly blue, the teeth showing in the just-too-wide smile very white and even. He had a moustache; he wore a heavy gold chain round his neck, and a Rolex bracelet watch on his wrist. He looked what he was, a man who had had too much of everything, all his life: too much money, sex, luck and love, and now all of them had run out on him, and he was desperately running after them all, trying to get them back.
‘Donna darling. What can I do for you? You’re looking gorgeous, gorgeous. You wouldn’t get an old man a beer, would you?’
‘Sorry, Tommy, I’m just going on the table now. Tommy, this guy’s been looking for you. He’s – what are you, Max?’
‘A journalist,’ said Max briefly. He held out his hand. ‘How do you do, sir. Max Leigh. I work with Michael Halston.’
The handshake was firm; very firm and heavy. Max resisted the temptation to rub his own hand when it was released.
‘Mike Halston eh? How is he? What’s he doing? I would really like to buy you a beer, Max, but I don’t just at this very moment have any cash.’
‘I’ll get you a beer,’ said Max. ‘Can we sit down somewhere and talk?’
‘Sure.’
Soames-Maxwell led him through to a bar; it was very dark, very noisy. They sat down in a corner, Max called the waitress.
‘Is a beer what you’d really like? Or can I get you something else?’
‘I could sink a bourbon or two,’ said Maxwell.
‘Fine. Could we have a large bourbon, please. No, make it two.’
‘Put a pack of Marlboro on that as well, would you, honey?’ said Soames-Maxwell. He flashed Max his dazzling, press-button smile. ‘You don’t mind do you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Max.
‘Now then. What can I do for you? How is old Mike?’
‘He’s fine. Very well. Retired, actually, living out of town.’
‘So how come you’re working for him?’
‘Well, he’s a writing a book. I’m doing some of the research.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The drinks had arrived. Soames-Maxwell raised his glass and drank gratefully. The glass was empty. ‘Er – could we have another of those?’ said Max to the hostess.
‘Hey,’ said Soames-Maxwell, grinning at him, lighting a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter, ‘I like your style.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Max.
‘So what’s this book you’re working on?’
‘It’s called The Last of the Playboys,’ said Max simply. ‘It’s about all the great playboys of the – well the thirties on. Aly Khan, Douglas Fairbanks, the Prince of Wales, Rainier, you know. And –’
‘And you wanted to include me? Well that’s nice. I don’t know if I’m quite in that league, but I’d be delighted. To reminisce for you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? What are you paying?’
Max hadn’t thought of that; he was taken aback.
‘Er – well, I’m not absolutely sure. It’s negotiable. I mean several people didn’t want payment. They just liked the idea of being in the book.’
‘They didn’t? Then they’re fools. Well, you can tell Mike Halston from me I’m not going to talk to anyone and increase his royalties for any less than – what shall we say – give me a price. And I want it up front.’
Max thought fast. The most, the very most he could raise in cash, on his American Express card, was £500. Which was about – what? $700. He took a deep breath. ‘Could we say five hundred dollars?’
Tommy Soames-Maxwell burst into laughter.
‘You could say it, my dear Max, but you wouldn’t get me saying anything back. I want at least five grand. OK?’
Max took a deep breath. He had a strong hunch about two things. One, that $500 was actually quite a lot for Soames-Maxwell at the moment, and two, that he was a man of immense vanity who would want to be included in the book.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘can’t do that. I’ll just have to tell Michael Halston you didn’t want to be in the book.’
‘Oh, will you? I see.’ Soames-Maxwell looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Well – how about we say five hundred down, and maybe some more negotiable.’
‘Well – maybe,’ said Max. ‘But I don’t think so. I certainly can’t promise.’
‘Do I get the five hundred right away?’
‘Sure.’
‘OK, I’ll take a promissory note in the form of bourbon, and we’ll settle up in the morning.’
‘Fine,’ said Max. ‘I understand you were a terrific fisherma
n. Maybe we could start there.’
‘Funny place to start, Max. Pretty clean wholesome sport, fishing.’
‘I know. But didn’t you fish with Hemingway?’
‘I did.’
‘So that scene must have been all quite interesting.’
‘Yes it was. OK, I get you. You want the sporting me. The sporting ladies’ man?’
‘Well – yes.’
‘I was a very fine fisherman,’ said Soames-Maxwell, and he lay back in his chair, his brilliant blue eyes soft with reminiscence. ‘Nothing I couldn’t catch, if I put my mind to it. We fished just about everywhere, off Cuba, off the Keys, off the Bahamas. I had a beautiful boat, a hundred-footer, and I tell you, Max, if you haven’t laid some beautiful women on the deck of a yacht after a day catching beautiful fish, then you haven’t lived.’
‘I haven’t lived,’ said Max, smiling at him. He was beginning to warm to Tommy. He brought the conversation round to Key West.
‘You should go down to Key West and meet Johnny Williams,’ Tommy said. ‘I already did,’ said Max. ‘He told me I might find you here.’
‘OK, Well, talk to Johnny some more. We used to sit in the Parrot House for days on end, sometimes, just drinking and talking.’
‘And – dancing, I heard?’ said Max carefully. ‘Wasn’t there some woman who could tap dance and taught you all?’
‘Yes, there was. Virgy. Virgy Caterham. Dear God, she was a beautiful woman. I loved Virgy. I really did.’
‘And was she – was she one of the beautiful women you laid on the deck of your yacht?’ asked Max. He felt rather sick suddenly, and his hand was shaking. He put down his glass and forced himself to smile at Soames-Maxwell.
‘She was. Boy, she was. Beautiful. So beautiful. But she wasn’t, I don’t want you to think, a one-night stand, some kind of a tart. She was a lady, a real lady. But she was one of our little group. Down there. She used to leave her stuffy old English husband and come down for a week here and there. He was an earl and he had some house he preferred to her. And yes, she could certainly dance. She could dance, I swear it, better than Ginger. Did she have class! She died, I heard. Ted saw it in the papers. I cried when he told me, I really cried.’
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