We looked at each other. I knew she knew, but I knew too that I didn’t have to worry. It was very quiet in the room.
“Eliot’s firm does such a lot of business with Van Zale’s,” she said. “You know how often we entertain the Van Zale partners.”
“Yes. And Bruce and Grace were so often at your dinner parties.” I got up abruptly and went to the window. When I turned at last she was right behind me. “Elizabeth, has anyone else seen that letter?”
“No. Not even Eliot. No one else is ever going to see it. When I feel strong enough I shall burn it.” Her eyes shone with tears again. “Everyone knows I’ve paid a high price for my personal life,” she said, “but I want you to be the only one who knows it’s bankrupted me.”
I took her hand in mine and held it.
After a moment she said unevenly, “You’ll … take care of it, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Privately?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t want anyone calling my son a murderer,” she said. “I don’t want anyone knowing. They wouldn’t understand how he was used—how other people played on his emotions … other people … unrepentant … profiting richly …”
“I’ll crucify them.”
I left. Outside, the sun was shining brightly and the birds were chirping in Gramercy Park.
I walked uptown.
Two hours later in my apartment I tossed an empty bottle of bourbon into the trashcan, lit a cigarette and called my brothers.
IV
My brothers came bounding up to my apartment and immediately headed for the liquor cabinet. They were twins who just missed being identical, but all three of us were alike enough for people to guess we were brothers.
“You’re the top copy,” Paul had said brutally when he had turned down my request that my brothers should work at Van Zale’s, “and your brothers are the two blurred carbons.”
It was a cruel description, but although I hated to admit it I knew later that Paul had been right not to accept Luke and Matt as protégés. Those boys would never have made investment bankers. Luke didn’t have the eye for financial detail, Matt didn’t have the brains and neither of them liked to work hard. However, I’d always felt deeply responsible for my brothers. Since my stepfather had wanted his role to be friendly and not paternal, I was really the only father those boys had ever known, and from the moment my father died I’d known they were my responsibility. I’d done my best, but it’s not easy to assume the role of father when you’re only nine years old, and as I’ve already said, I had problems of my own.
Luke was the smart one. He had a presentable wife who had put up with him for ten years, a respectable job as a partner in the flashy little brokerage firm of Tanner, Tate and Sullivan, two cute kids, a Packard and an Oldsmobile and a house in Westchester that he could at last afford. It was over a year now since he had asked me to foot his mortgage bills for him. He wore clean-cut well-pressed clothes and conservative neckties and read the New York Times on the train each morning on the way to work.
Matt, who had been married three times and was now hamming it up with a fifty-year-old actress, was the one who needed looking after. Before I made him the figurehead president of Van Zale Participations he had been officially peddling bonds, but unofficially he had made money by following various pools and selling out before the operator pulled the plug. The art of boosting nondescript stock on the ticker so that fortunes were made for the group which formed a pool was an art which Matt had lyrically compared to a composer penning a symphony score. The stock would rise as the pool bought in, rise again as interest developed in it, drop slightly to reassure the public it was bona fide, continue to rise and fall evenly over a carefully calculated period of time and then rise for the last time. The pool bought and bought, the public, lured on by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, charged in and drove the price up through the roof, the pool sold out, scooping the maximum profit, and the public was left holding the bag as the stock was abandoned to slide down to its genuine value. As Matt himself said, “It sure beats poker any day,” but the pool operators were a sharp crowd and I lived in fear he’d get mixed up in something he couldn’t handle. It was a great relief to me that I’d finally got him settled in a job where I could keep an eye on him.
“Sit down, boys,” I said after they had poured out the scotch, “and see if you can help me for a change. I want some information from Greg Da Costa.”
V
I had to be careful what I told them. Having swallowed the public version of the assassination, they believed Krasnov had acted alone, and for Elizabeth’s sake I still wanted to keep Bruce’s name out of the story. Naturally I couldn’t mention either the suicide note or its hair-raising implications, yet in order to enlist my brothers’ help I had to let them know that there was a large amount of money knocking around as the result of a conspiracy which only Greg Da Costa could unravel. In the end I fell back on the theory quashed by my friend in Washington—that Krasnov had been backed by a foreign government
“Find out what the real story is, would you, boys?” I said casually. “I want to know where Greg’s money comes from and what he knows about Paul’s murder.”
They looked at me truthfully. I sighed. Sometimes I couldn’t help wishing they were just a little quicker on the uptake.
“Hell, fellows,” I said, “think of those summers at Newport when you and the Da Costa brothers smoked cigars behind the greenhouse, swigged port on the sly and tried to figure out how to unlace a whalebone corset. If you go out to California on business Greg’s going to weep with nostalgia as soon as you walk through the doors of his hotel.”
“What business?” said Matt.
“Oh, I see!” said Luke, but he didn’t.
I plowed on. “You’re the president of Van Zale Participations,” I said to Matt, “and, Luke, you’re the broker who handles the trust’s investments. Tell Greg you’ve heard he’s hit the jackpot and offer to double his money. Then take him out to dinner, feed him the best hooch in town and—since you’re talking about money—find out just where his wonderful fortune came from.”
They chewed that over. Matt was thrilled by the cloak-and-dagger aura of the mission. Luke was cool.
“I don’t like Los Angeles,” he said, “and Greg Da Costa’s the kind of guy I’d prefer not to be seen with nowadays.”
“You’ve got to go, Luke,” I said, and as our glances met I saw he knew why. I didn’t trust Matt to handle the job alone.
Luke looked glum. He was the smart twin, the respectable twin, but when I held up the hoop he knew he had no choice but to jump through it. “All right, Steve,” he said grudgingly, falling into line, and two days later he and Matt left for L.A.
VI
The call came when I had just returned to my office after a partners’ meeting.
“Steve?” said Luke. “It’s us. Jesus Christ, you won’t believe the beans that have been spilled.”
I felt so sick I could hardly speak. “No names on the phone, please. Where are you calling from?”
“Chicago. No problem, Steve. Greg was stewed as week-old prunes and won’t remember a damn thing, but I thought we ought to get out of L.A. and head east on the first available train.”
“Swell. I’ll meet you at the station. What time do you hit town?”
He told me. I was there. I stuffed them into a cab, whipped them up to the apartment, slammed the door and reached for the scotch.
“All right, boys, let’s have it.”
“Paul was knocked off by Bruce Clayton and Terence O’Reilly!” they chorused.
I just stood there holding the bottle of scotch. “And?” I said blankly.
“Christ, Steve,” said-Luke, “isn’t that enough? Listen, this is the way it was—”
“Greg came to New York in the summer of ’26 after Stew got killed,” interrupted Matt, bursting to hog the limelight, “and Bruce Clayton—if you can believe it—asked him for a loan
.”
“That just proves there’s nothing so dumb as a highflown intellectual,” said Luke dryly, “but Greg was living well in Mexico at the time, and apparently Bruce thought he was making a mint ranching. Bruce said he knew some crazy Russian who would knock off Paul for ten thousand bucks and was Greg interested in putting up the money and paying back Jay’s suicide with interest.”
“Of course, as we all know,” said Matt, “if Greg had to choose between avenging his father and a steady income he’d choose the income, but he suddenly had this bright idea about how he could have his cake and eat it.”
“He said he couldn’t spare the cash,” said Luke, “but he cheered them on from the sidelines. Then after Paul was dead he turned around and blackmailed the hell out of both Bruce and Terence.”
“Say, Steve,” said Matt, “are you going to go on nursing that bottle or do we have any hope of getting a drink?”
I fixed the drinks. I was still feeling weak at the knees. “How did Greg know where to find O’Reilly?”
“O’Reilly kept in touch. You can bet he didn’t trust Greg to keep his mouth shut. O’Reilly’s no dumb intellectual. Of course, if he planned to disappear for good it wouldn’t matter how much Greg talked, but apparently he plans to come back to New York for a while. Greg thought there was some broad involved, though he didn’t know who it was.”
“But where the hell is O’Reilly, for God’s sake?”
“Argentina,” said Matt placidly. “He’s bought a huge ranch and he’s acting like he’s king of the pampas.”
“You were right about the money, Steve,” added Luke. “There’s one hell of a lot of it floating around. That’s some bill the Russians are footing for Paul’s murder! Quite apart from O’Reilly, Greg’s living so high on the hog that he even has two chauffeurs. It was true that the broad he married had money of her own, but Greg soon showed her how to spend it. Wherever his money’s coming from now, it doesn’t come from her.”
I said very carefully in my best casual voice, “Did Greg tell you in words of one syllable just where all this fairy-tale loot was coming from?”
“Sure. Terence O’Reilly. He gets a check every month.”
“O’Reilly must be in direct contact with the Russians,” said Luke. “Cigarette, Steve?”
I smoked a cigarette to the butt while the boys marveled at their discoveries. When the cigarette was finished I congratulated them on their detective work, confessed I didn’t know what I would have done without them and told them that if they breathed one word about the existence of a conspiracy I’d toss them out of Van Zale Participations and never speak to either of them again.
They swore earnestly that there was no need for me to worry. “Because we know what it would do to the bank, Steve,” said Luke, “if word got around that a high-grade employee like O’Reilly had been involved.”
It was nice to know that at least one of the boys wasn’t always slow on the uptake. I patted him on the back and gave him another drink. Eventually they wanted to know what I was going to do next.
“Well, if O’Reilly’s king of the pampas,” I said dryly, “I think it’s about time he paid America a state visit.” And the very next day I called with reluctance on Sylvia Van Zale.
VII
By that time, May 1928, New York was whipping through its brief spring toward yet another torrid moneymaking summer. People had stopped talking about Lindbergh’s flight to Paris, and the Street was once again the universal topic of conversation. There was only one Street in America now and everyone knew it began across from Trinity Church and glittered down past Morgan’s to the corner of Willow and Wall. The ticker tape was blazing its mighty message of unlimited riches, and in response to our servants’ pleas we had a ticker installed in our kitchen on Long Island. There were tickers everywhere now, in the clubs, in the hotels, in the restaurants, even on board transatlantic liners—for Wall Street was the promised land, and the milk and honey would flow for anyone who had a couple of nickels to spare.
My chauffeur, ferrying me uptown with a client, would leave the dividing panel ajar so that his long ears could pick up the hottest market tips. Even the housemaids could read the mesmerizing symbols of the great bull market, and at the elegant dinner parties and the debutantes’ thé-dansants, the swell nightclubs and the lowest speakeasies, people spoke in hushed tones of the gods who made all financial miracles possible, the magnificent, bighearted, lovable investment bankers who floated issue after issue of mouth-watering pieces of paper, the chips for the greatest gambling machine of all time.
We were celebrities. Following Paul’s example I tried to keep on close terms with the press, but eventually I had to call a halt to the interviews. I just didn’t have the time. The press interviewed Caroline instead and photographed our Long Island home. Charley Blair’s new yacht was front-page news in the tabloids, and Lewis’ Hollywood profile reappeared with monotonous regularity whenever he went to Washington to confer with the Treasury Secretary. Martin gave a guest lecture at Columbia. Clay was interviewed on the radio. Ward McAllister’s traditional society of Old New York finally blended with the Café Society chronicled by Maury Paul when the Yankee aristocrats achieved the glamour of upstart film stars, but as I was driven uptown in my snow-white Rolls-Royce to meet Sylvia I couldn’t help wondering what our doting public would think if they knew that a handful of their heroes were up to their aristocratic necks in extortion, conspiracy and homicide.
Paul had left the Fifth Avenue mansion to Cornelius, but Sylvia had received the homes in Maine and Florida. She had sold them. She had wanted only to live quietly, and after making pilgrimages to both Bar Harbor and Palm Beach as if to say goodbye to her past memories she had bought a town-house on Fifty-fourth Street between Madison and Park. She hadn’t wanted the mansion on Fifth Avenue—no doubt Paul had been aware of that when he made his will—and it wasn’t until I was invited to her new home that I realized how she must have disliked the grandeur of those homes she’d shared with Paul. Her little brownstone was simple and cozy. There were no antiques, nothing which would remind her of Fifth Avenue. In the morning room there were some nice books like the Edith Wharton novels, a couple of watercolors of San Francisco and a small photograph of Paul which somehow managed to dominate the room. I looked at him while the butler went off to announce my arrival and discovered that no matter where I stood the eyes in the photograph watched me. Once in Europe Paul had dragged me through an art gallery and I’d seen paintings like that. It was the damndest trick I ever saw on canvas.
When Sylvia entered the room I gasped, because she’d had her hair cut. It was the first indication I had that she was recovering from her loss, for Paul had never let her bob or shingle her hair.
She blushed like a schoolgirl. “Do I look awful?” she said nervously. “I only had it done yesterday.”
“You look wonderful!” I said, and meant it. The new style made her look years younger. No one could have guessed that she was now the wrong side of forty, and suddenly I felt sick. She looked like a woman who either had a lover or was expecting one to arrive any day from Argentina.
“Sylvia,” I said after the maid had brought in coffee, “you must have wondered why I asked to see you like this during business hours.”
She at once became tense. “I knew you were signaling that it was something important.” She finished pouring the coffee and set down the pot with care. “Is it about Bruce?” she said fearfully. “Was it suicide after all?”
I said nothing. At last she realized I had made a pact with Elizabeth, and she tried again. “Was Dinah Slade right?” she said in a rush.
“Yes and no. It’s turned out that Greg Da Costa was no more than a bystander. But there was definitely a certain other person involved.”
She got up very suddenly, moved to the fireplace and then stopped as if she couldn’t remember why she was on her feet. As I watched I saw her twisting her wedding band round and round on her finger.
“It�
�s no one I know, is it?” she said, not looking at me, and when I didn’t reply she collapsed onto the couch. “But it can’t be—it just can’t be. I’ve been telling myself over and over again …”
“Have you heard from him, Sylvia?”
“Two weeks ago. He wrote to me for my birthday. It was the first I’d heard of him since Paul’s funeral. I thought—” She stopped.
“That he’d forgotten you?”
“That he’d finally taken no for an answer.” She kept smoothing her skirt over her knees. She looked so pretty with her short hair. “It was a long silence,” she said. “I didn’t mind. I was glad. I didn’t want to hear from him again. But when he wrote … He said nothing had changed, nothing would ever change, he said he’d come into some money and had bought this ranch in Argentina—he even sent me some pictures of it. He said he wanted to come to New York to see me but he wouldn’t come unless I was willing—ready—recovered …” Her voice trailed away.
“And are you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, twisting her wedding ring, but I looked at her new hair style and thought I could see the truth better than she could. “I just don’t know. I’ve been thinking and thinking about him, wondering how it would be to get away from New York and start afresh. In some ways I think it would be the best thing for me, yet I don’t know whether I’ve got the strength to make such a break with the past. Probably if he came here he’d give me the strength.” Her eyes were dark with memory and I knew then that O’Reilly had some special sexual message for her that I’d never be able to read. But the next moment she was saying with a shudder, “He was so fanatical. I always knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do to get what he wanted.”
There was a long silence before I could bring myself to say, “Sylvia, I want him back in New York and you’re the only person who can help me.”
“Are you sure—quite sure … beyond any reasonable doubt …?”
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