That was before the mills of God prompted Sam and me to reform in September. It was also before the mills of God caught up with America in October. However, the shadow of those mills had already fallen across the investment bankers’ paths, and when in early September the market faltered, staggering beneath the burden of a million dreams, the shadow became too obtrusive to ignore. Although the market recovered quickly, we held a partners’ meeting to discuss future policy in the event of another such unpleasant “technical correction.” There was a great deal of waffle that everything was bound to be all right, but it was obvious we were secretly uneasy in case things went all wrong. Finally the senior partner Lewis Carson, who looked like an elderly cross between Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore, suggested that one of the partners should have a conference with Steve’s brother Luke to review our investment trust’s portfolio. It was generally agreed that in the event of a decline speculative stocks would be the first to suffer, and we thought it was time to eliminate the riskiest investments.
No one wanted the job of conferring with Luke Sullivan. As Clay Linden remarked acidly, since Steve’s departure Luke had become just like Mussolini without any of Mussolini’s redeeming qualities.
“I’ll talk to him if you like,” I offered humbly. “Luke and I get on real well nowadays.” That was an absolute lie, but I was always looking for ways to increase my power and I thought a toehold in Van Zale Participations could be useful to me.
The other partners all mouthed the ritual nonsense about my being too young, but once that was over they gave me the job with relief. Accordingly I wandered down to the desk which had been assigned to Luke in the great hall, but when someone told me Luke had gone to see his brother Matt I walked up Willow Street to the office of Van Zale Participations.
The trust had a showy little suite on the third floor. A bleached blonde was manicuring her scarlet nails before the typewriter in the reception room, and beyond the open door of the president’s office I could see Matt Sullivan, his feet resting comfortably on his desk, a cigar in one hand and his hip flask in the other. He was talking to someone I could not see but assumed to be Luke. So angered was I by the sleazy atmosphere of the office and so enraged that the House of Van Zale could be intimately connected with such an operation, that I ignored the receptionist and walked unannounced into Matt’s office.
Conversation stopped. When the other man spun round startled, I did not recognize him and yet I felt that somewhere a long time ago I had seen him before.
“Good morning,” I said politely to Matt. “Forgive me for interrupting you, but since the door was open I assumed you weren’t engaged in business. Is your brother here?”
“He’s in the john. He’ll be right back,” said Matt with his usual coarseness, and stood up. He was a big man with an athlete’s figure run to seed, bloodshot blue eyes and animallike curly hair which grew low down on his forehead. “Well!” he exclaimed, his glance shifting between me and the stranger with a relish which I found incomprehensible. “Haven’t you two ever met?”
The stranger seemed to find Matt’s amusement as baffling as I did. We stared at each other suspiciously. He had a tough scarred fighter’s face, with nasty yellowish-brown eyes and thick lips. I was just wondering if I had seen his picture in the newspaper in connection with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre when I remembered the two men who had tried to comfort Jason Da Costa long ago at Vicky’s funeral.
“Say, Greg!” said Matt, really enjoying himself by this time. “Don’t you remember Mildred Blackett’s kid?”
Luke Sullivan chose that moment to walk back into the room. There was a short tense silence. Then:
“Nice to meet you again, sonny,” said the son of the man Paul had ruined. “No hard feelings, huh?” and he held out his right hand.
“How are you, Mr. Da Costa?” I said, shaking the hand courteously. “Are you in town long? I understand you live in California nowadays.”
The tension in the room slackened. What they expected me to do I have no idea; stamp my foot childishly perhaps, and flounce from the room. When I remained they no doubt assumed it was because I was too young and stupid to react with anything but friendly interest.
“I’ve quit on California,” said Da Costa easily. “My wife and I separated and I thought I’d come back East to make a little money on the market—which is where the Sullivan boys here come in. I’m staying with my cousin Vivienne Coleman—maybe you know her?”
“Only by her reputation as a popular hostess. I didn’t know she was your cousin.”
“Our mothers were sisters. Say, come over and have a drink with us this evening, why don’t you? We’ll drink to the end of the family feud,” said Da Costa, smiling at me indulgently. He had a tooth missing at the side of his mouth.
“Gee,” I said, very young and dewy-eyed, “I’d like that Thanks a lot, Mr. Da Costa. Well, if you gentlemen will excuse me …”
“Did you come here looking for me, Cornelius?” said Luke. He was the only one of the three who had any brains worth mentioning.
“Oh, it’ll wait,” I said airily, but he remained suspicious.
“I’ll walk back with you to Van Zale’s,” he said flatly, and as soon as we were in the street he launched into an explanation. “I know you’re thinking Greg’s got no business to be within a hundred miles of Van Zale’s, Cornelius, but you can relax. He’s told me himself he’s figured it’s too damn dangerous for him to resurrect the assassination business in any shape or form. He just wants to forget he ever knew O’Reilly and Clayton, and anyway he doesn’t need the bank to foot his bills for him now. He did well out of that hotel in California and decided to quit while he was ahead. Between you and me I think he was scared of getting on his boss’s nerves once too often—he was running with a rough crowd out there. Anyway, he’s just put twenty thousand dollars into Van Zale Participations. Matt and I are the only people he knows well on the Street nowadays and so it’s only natural he should gravitate to us. It’s all absolutely bona fide.”
“Uh-huh. You never had second thoughts about taking his money?”
“Hell, why shouldn’t we take it? His money’s as good as anyone else’s, isn’t it?”
The short answer to that was no. Greg Da Costa’s money was usually obtained by extortion.
“Oh, my God!” groaned Sam as soon as I confided in him. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but if Da Costa’s involved it has to be a disaster.”
We sat facing each other across my desk and put our brains to work. He excelled in analyzing current problems, while I had a talent for long-range planning. We really did work excellently together.
After agreeing we didn’t trust the Sullivan twins farther than we could throw them, we had to admit that Luke was smart enough to keep any shady secrets well under wraps. The trust was doing well and we had no excuse for demanding to see the books before the official audit. Assuming that the Sullivan twins were currently impregnable, our only route to the truth lay through Greg Da Costa, and both of us could see right away that this would be the rockiest route imaginable.
“God, maybe he’s blackmailing the twins!” said Sam horrified.
“No, no.” I had already rejected that possibility. “Matt Sullivan wasn’t acting like a man in the presence of his blackmailer. Of course, that doesn’t mean to say Da Costa’s not setting them up for the big squeeze.” I got out a cigarette and then put it away again. I had to cut down on my smoking. “There’s no choice, Sam. Repulsive though it may be, I shall have to cultivate Greg Da Costa.”
“Go easy, Neil. I know it’s unlikely, but we could be wrong about all this.”
“But supposing we’re right?” Delicious vistas were opening up in front of me. “After all, Steve did appoint his brothers, and if they get into trouble … You’re right, Sam. We’ve got to take this nice and easy. We mustn’t go wading into the lake and frightening off all the fish. We’ve got to cast our lines very carefully
on the water and tempt the fish to nibble at the bait. Then when they’re stuffed to the gills we’ll reel them in, gut them and cook them for dinner.”
Sam laughed and so did I. It was certainly an attractive idea, but as it turned out it was quite the wrong decision.
II
Late that afternoon my secretary told me I had a call from a Mrs. Vivienne Coleman.
“Mr. Van Zale?” said a woman’s low whispery voice when the call was put through. “We haven’t met, but my cousin Greg’s just told me he invited you to visit us for a drink tonight. I’m just calling to say you’ll be more than welcome, but I feel I should warn you that there’ll be several people present. I’m giving a cocktail party. Greg forgot that when he issued the invitation.”
I assured her that I loved cocktail parties and hung up gloomily.
I arrived late at the party but not late enough to avoid the horror of being crammed into a room with sixty people in various stages of drunkenness. The pall of cigarette smoke immediately made me cough, and I had just decided I could no longer endure the incessant screech of conversation when a pretty woman with thick longish chestnut hair and a pert snub nose glided through the haze toward me. She wore a sleek black dress with a cluster of diamonds placed strategically at the bottom of her very deep décolletage.
“Mr. Van Zale?” she said as my gaze halted at a spot half an inch above the diamonds. “I’m Vivienne Coleman—how are you? So nice of you to come! Aren’t cocktail parties frightful? Now, come on in and—Oh!” she gasped as someone reeled backward and spilled a tomato-colored drink all over my suit “I am sorry! How clumsy people are sometimes.” She glared at the offending guest, who was busy slinking out of sight. “Well, it’ll be a long time before I invite him back to my house! Come upstairs, Mr. Van Zale, and we’ll fix the disaster right away.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Coleman.”
“Do call me Vivienne. …”
I tried to guess how old she was, but she could have been any age between twenty-five and forty. Even with high-heeled shoes she was shorter than I was, and as we went upstairs I noticed that her legs were as riveting as her bosom. I had to repress the urge to lift her skirt to check if her thighs were as perfect as her ankles.
“Was that your husband I saw downstairs, Mrs. Coleman?” I inquired carefully.
“I’d be very surprised if it was. He’s been dead for four years,” she said, leading the way into an opulent bathroom decorated in pale mauve, and she started to sponge my suit. As she stooped to tackle the bottom of my jacket I knew I had to stop her before she reached my pants. The improved view of her bosom was already making the shirt stick to my back.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, removing the washcloth from her as she paused to survey her handiwork. “I’ll do the rest.”
She smiled at me. She had perfect teeth and sparkling blue eyes. “Am I reminding you of your mother?” she said amused.
“Not exactly,” I said, praying I wouldn’t have an erection. I tried to camouflage myself by dabbing at the stain on my thigh.
“Thank God for that! All right, if there’s nothing more I can do I’ll go, but give me a wave when you come down again and I’ll find some nice people for you to talk to.”
I was so grateful to her for leaving me alone before my excitement could become embarrassingly obvious that I felt obliged to linger at the party when I returned downstairs. However, when I rejoined Vivienne she abandoned me after a couple of introductions. I felt quite irrationally disappointed.
When the guests were drifting away and I knew I could leave without appearing rude I thanked her for the party, and after repeating how glad I was that I had been invited I gave her my most innocent smile, the one women usually chose to interpret in the raciest possible way.
“I’m delighted you were able to come, Cornelius!” she responded, warm and friendly but not, so far as I could judge, hot and hopeful. “You’ve been the despair of every hostess in New York—I’m delighted that I’ve at last lured you into society!”
I never did manage to speak to Greg Da Costa.
“This is all going to work out nicely,” I said glibly to Sam. “I’m going to date Vivienne Coleman and soon I’ll have won Greg’s confidence. Within a month I bet we’ll know just where we stand with the Sullivan twins.”
“Neil,” said Sam apologetically, “this is so obvious that I hardly like to mention it, but you’re sure, aren’t you, that Greg isn’t sleeping with her?”
“Oh, but he couldn’t be!” I was aghast. A second later I realized I was behaving just like the twenty-one-year-old kid that I was, and I made my habitual conscientious effort to be thirty years old. “I don’t think that’s very likely,” I said carefully. “You haven’t seen either of these people, Sam, but this Vivienne Coleman’s got great class. I mean, she’s really exceptional. I’m not suggesting she’s a nun, but I’m sure if she wanted a lover she wouldn’t choose a guy like Da Costa, who looks like the back end of a stove-in streetcar.”
“Uh-huh,” said Sam. “Judging from his photographs Jay Da Costa too looked like the shadiest thing this side of twilight, but anyone’ll tell you how he strung women along like pearls.”
“Jay wasn’t a gangster!”
“He didn’t have to be. He was rich and privileged, and a great career fell into his lap. But who’s to say how he might have turned out if he’d had to fight for survival on the Lower East Side? I know the traditional view is that the Da Costa brothers were genetic freaks, but isn’t that pushing the odds a bit far? One genetic freak is possible, I guess, but two? If you want my opinion I think Greg and Stewart were more their father’s sons than anyone likes to admit.”
“But why don’t people like to admit it?” I said, so fascinated by this analysis that I even forgot the revolting image of Da Costa crawling into bed with Vivienne.
“Because people here on the Street don’t like to be reminded of how close they often come to Al Capone. Wall Street’s stuffed with gangsters, Neil, and you know that as well as I do. They don’t call them gangsters here, though. They call them pool operators or bank-affiliate presidents. Sometimes they even call them investment bankers.”
I threw a paper clip at him, declared that everyone knew pool operators were respectable nowadays—as respectable as those decent, moral, honest gentlemen who were investment bankers—and then I drew the conversation back to our plans to cultivate Da Costa, expose the Sullivan twins and stab Steve in the back. The upshot was that within the hour three dozen red and white carnations arrived on Vivienne’s doorstep and by early evening we were speaking on the phone.
“Cornelius, thank you for the flowers—that was sweet of you. By the way, are you interested in musical comedy? I have tickets for the opening night of The Street Singer next Tuesday, and they say it’s going to be the biggest musical event of the season. Greg was going to come with me, but now he says he can’t make it, so I’m in dire need of an escort. Of course if you loathe Broadway musicals …”
“That sounds just wonderful!” I said. “May I take you out to a late supper afterward?”
She said I could, and scampering upstairs I took a cold shower while singing the famous tenor aria from Bizet’s Fair Maid of Perth. My sister Emily used to say that my musical taste was bizarre—“Either mathematical chamber music or hopelessly florid vocals!”—but my mother always defended me by saying it was better to have some musical taste than none at all.
Sam might have broadened my outlook to the extent that I could now enjoy listening to “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” but at least I remained a musical snob and I thought the Broadway show was about as entertaining as toothache. However, I paid little attention to it. My glance was constantly wandering sideways to Vivienne’s magnificent décolletage which began six inches from my right elbow.
After an intimate supper at Beaux Arts during which she confided to me that she had a passion for French Impressionist paintings, I asked her if she would like to come home and see my Renoirs.
I was really very angry when she declined, but I kept my face impassive as I escorted her home.
“I’m so glad your money hasn’t ruined you,” she said smiling, when the time came for us to part. “Some rich men become so accustomed to getting what they want the instant they want it that they become just like spoiled children.”
“Why hang around for a delayed delivery,” I said coolly, “when you can get what you want from a door-to-door salesman?”
She laughed. “Why indeed? Good night, Cornelius.”
I was livid. I hated women who teased and I resented having my serious proposition treated as no more important than the yowl of a pet poodle. Almost in tears at the thought of all that unexplored décolletage, I retired home to pour out my grievances to Sam, but when there was no sign of him I realized he was spending the night with his new girl. Moodily I flailed away six lengths of the pool to ease my restlessness. Later, sitting in my pajamas on the edge of the bed, I felt lonely. A memory of my warm understanding affectionate sister floated across my mind.
I picked up the phone.
“Hello,” I said, as my stepfather answered on the first ring. “Is Emily there, please?”
“We’re all in bed, Cornelius. Do you know what time it is?”
“Gee, I’m sorry,” I said surprised. “I’ll call again tomorrow.”
“Just a minute. Your mother wants to talk to you.”
I sighed. Telephone conversations with my mother were always peculiarly unrewarding.
“Cornelius? Darling, why are you calling so late? Is anything wrong?”
“No, Mama. I just wanted to talk to Emily, but it’s not important.”
“Heavens, this must be telepathy! Emily was going to call you tomorrow morning.”
This sounded more promising than my mother’s usual injunctions to eat well, get enough sleep and avail myself of New York’s cultural opportunities. “She was?” I said with reluctant interest.
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