“Twins!” Somehow that was very offensive. An illegitimate child is merely unfortunate, but illegitimate twins are positively vulgar.
“Poor little bastards, and I’ll never see them, never!” he muttered, wallowing in sentimentality. Then suddenly his mood changed as fury elbowed his maudlin streak aside. “Paul had a lucky escape from that woman,” he said bitterly. “When I think of all the lies she told me, the way she deceived me about her true feelings …”
It occurred to me he was talking like a man whose pride had suffered a peculiarly painful injury. I decided that Dinah Slade must have made some bad mistake, and the thought cheered me. Maybe she wasn’t as clever as I’d always feared she was.
“You mean she had some ulterior motive in seeking an affair with you?” I said guilelessly, sure that Miss Slade had been chasing a slice of Van Zale’s for her son since he had been conceived. “But what could she have possibly wanted?”
He looked at me with his hurt bloodshot eyes. “The bank,” he said.
I saw he was so upset that he was unable to express himself properly. “You mean she wanted the bank for her little boy,” I said patiently, “and she figured the best way to get it was to be married to a partner.”
“Forget the kid. Forget the marriage. She wants the bank. Period.”
I seriously wondered if he were mentally unhinged. “But that’s impossible!” I said with an awkward little laugh.
He gave me a scornful look. “Nothing’s impossible to Dinah Slade.”
I suddenly realized not only that he was serious but that he was sane. I felt as if I were in an elevator which had dropped ten floors in two seconds. “But women don’t become investment bankers,” I stammered. “I mean, it just doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. The clients …”
“Oh, sure,” he said sarcastically, “sure. Cosmetics is for women and queens and banking’s for men, we all know that. But I took that woman to Paris and she had my potential clients eating out of her hand and she’s so damned smart and she’s so damned charming and she makes money as easily as other women darn socks. If she ever got a toehold in Milk Street she’d have all Lombard Street in her change purse in less time than it takes to change the guard at Buckingham Palace.”
I was appalled. “You mean she’s just like a man!”
He gave me a pitying look. A second later his eyes shone with a dozen erotic memories before clouding with pain. “Some man!” he muttered fiercely, blinking back his tears.
It was a truly horrifying sight to see a man like Steve Sullivan reduced to pulp by a woman. Groping for words, I could only blurt out, “But how could you and Paul have found her so attractive?”
“Because she’s a woman!” he shouted. “Because she’s the sexiest woman in the whole damn world!” He had to stop to control himself before he was able to add with contempt, “You poor little kid, you’ll never understand.”
I really couldn’t let that pass. “I understand I like my women to be women,” I whipped back at him, “and not second-rate men.”
He blinked. I knew he had always thought I was incapable of an erection. At last he said, “Do you have someone special in mind?”
“Vivienne Coleman. You know her?”
“Jay’s niece by marriage? The brunette with the thick wavy hair and the Ziegfeld-Follies legs and the greatest tits in town?”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a pause. Then: “Yeah,” he said. “I know her.” When he looked at me again I knew I had traveled up at least six notches in his estimation. He took another pull at his hip flask before he realized it was empty. “Well, let me tell you,” he said incisively, twisting the cap back, “you’re a smart boy. You just stick to that straightforward kind of woman and never get mixed up with a complicated masterpiece like Dinah Slade. And let me tell you something else. The next woman I get involved with is going to be the absolute opposite of Dinah. She’s going to be pure, beautiful, quiet, sensitive—and with no ambition other than to be a perfect wife and mother at all times.”
We had reached his home. The car was surging up the driveway, and as we both gazed absent-mindedly at the house the front door opened and my sister Emily walked out onto the porch to meet us.
Three
I
IN FAIRNESS TO MYSELF I must stress that I did at first make great efforts to prevent the inevitable. Within minutes of our arrival I had cornered Emily and informed her firmly that I wanted to take her back to Manhattan at once.
“Cornelius, you can’t be serious!” She looked astonished but, since she was no fool, embarrassed as well. “I couldn’t leave the children—they’ve come to depend on me and I must at least wait till a new nurse is hired. Also there’s still no housekeeper and the servants require supervision.”
“Emily,” I said, “I’m not leaving you unchaperoned beneath the same roof as Steve Sullivan.”
“Oh, don’t be so absurd, Cornelius! This is 1929, not 1860! Besides, I can’t help feeling your attitude is insulting to me. Do you really have such a low opinion of my morals? And do you really think I’m as downright idiotic as some pusillanimous Victorian heroine? I’m more than capable of locking my bedroom door at night, I promise you!” she added, giving me a radiant smile.
I gave up. I knew it would be useless to protest further, but I spent the entire journey home wondering how I could possibly explain the situation to my mother. In the end I could only hope that since no explanation was possible my mother would never find out.
However, Steve spent few nights at home at first. He was too busy working late as he excavated the sorry history of Van Zale Participations, and instead of traveling home each night to Long Island he was obliged to catch what sleep he could in the city. His brothers were dragged up from the New Jersey shore; I could imagine him seizing them by the scruffs of their necks, shaking them till their teeth rattled and bawling obscenities at them until they broke down and wept. When he had extracted every detail of their debacle he bought them one-way tickets to Australia and personally escorted them aboard the ship which was to take them through the Panama Canal and west across the Pacific. Knowing how sentimental Steve was about his brothers, we were all impressed by this tough treatment, and Lewis even remarked that there might be some hope for the twins now that Steve had stopped spoon-feeding them and forced them to stand on their own feet. But our hearts sank at the thought that the mess was so bad at the trust that Steve felt he had no alternative but to sever the fraternal apron strings.
I was still wondering how Steve planned to sweep the mess under the rug when I received a call from Lewis asking me to attend a meeting with Steve in his office.
I knew what that meant. When I arrived promptly at two o’clock on that November afternoon Sam was a pace behind me.
“Once more onto the highwire, partner!” he murmured in my ear as I wiped the sweat from the palms of my hands and rapped smartly on the door.
Lewis and Steve were very displeased to see Sam and tried to get rid of him.
“This is purely a partners’ consultation, Cornelius,” said Lewis stuffily.
I doubted it. The meeting had all the marks of a power struggle from which the other partners had been carefully excluded, and I had no intention of riding out alone to do battle with Steven Sullivan.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but if this meeting concerns Van Zale Participations I want Sam to take notes so that I can review the situation thoroughly afterward.”
They both knew that meant I wanted Sam to be a witness.
Lewis cleared his throat. “I assure you, my dear Cornelius—”
“Forget it, Lewis,” interrupted Steve, who for all his faults had the virtue of never being pompous. “All right, boys, sit down. Cigarette, either of you?”
We declined cigarettes. We declined the offer of a drink. We sat down on the couch, I with my hands lying limply on my thighs, Sam with his pen poised above the pad of paper on his knees.
Lewis shifted uneasily in his chair and
started to make a long boring elaborate speech about the honor of the firm and the illustrious name Van Zale. Sam wrote neatly on his pad, but after a while he stopped writing in English and amused himself by translating Lewis into German. Finally he scrawled, “What a lot of crap Lewis talks!” and began to write down the lyrics of “Old Man River.”
Suddenly Steve interrupted. Sam’s pen skidded across the paper and scribbled busily back and forth.
“We plan on discussing Van Zale Participations at the partners’ meeting tomorrow,” Steve was saying abruptly, “but we wanted to talk it over with you now Cornelius, because you’re very much involved in the plan I’ve worked out over the last few days. Let me begin by summarizing the details so that we can all understand exactly what was going on.”
Sam wrote “DETAILS” and underlined it.
“As you know, the money received from the sale of the new issue in Van Zale Participations was collected by Luke and reinvested in the market in the corporations which formed the trust’s portfolio. There was necessarily a lag in time between the receipt of the money and its investment, and Luke fell into the habit of lengthening that gap until at one time there was a sum of six hundred thousand dollars held on deposit at the bank and waiting to be invested. There was nothing wrong with this; in fact, it could be argued that Luke was conscientiously taking his time about deciding where he could best put the money. Unfortunately he arrived at the wrong answer which was: into his own pocket.”
“Luke embezzles 600 G,” wrote Sam. “Nobody the wiser.”
“Of course he didn’t do it all at once. He started in a small way, borrowing the money, playing the market, doubling the money and putting back what he owed. Then he became more confident, and when he thought he had a foolproof racket he became overconfident. When the Crash caught him with his pants down he had all six hundred grand out in the field.”
“Luke wiped out,” commented Sam’s pen. “Owes trust 600 G.”
“He then panicked and started borrowing to try to win back what he’d lost, but that all went on the Monday after Black Thursday. He could only get money on twenty-four-hour loan, so he raised a new lot of loans to pay off the earlier ones and gamble again on the market—and of course the next day was Tragic Tuesday …”
“Luke at the end of 2nd 24-hour loans with no loot in sight,” wrote Sam.
“… and that was when he finally faced reality and turned to the partners to help him out. Lewis, as you know, got the consolidated loan extended to twenty-eight days, and here we all are. Now, this is the position: the million-plus loan which is outstanding represents money borrowed on the strength of the Van Zale name in an unsuccessful attempt to recoup the six hundred grand. I propose that I borrow that amount from the bank, use it to meet Luke’s debts and pay it back with interest over a period of ten years. There’s nothing shady about that. Luke borrowed the money in the usual straightforward fashion and I’m paying his debts for him. But the other money, the stolen trust money, is in a different league. It has to be accounted for, and if it’s not represented by stock in the Van Zale Participations portfolio then it has to turn up again on deposit at the bank. The only foolproof way to conceal the embezzlement is to wind up the trust by buying out all the shareholders so that in theory they get their money back. In practice they won’t—all the investment trusts went down with a thump in the Crash. Well, that’s tough on the investors, but they’ll be so grateful their shares aren’t entirely worthless that I think they’ll be ready to cash in their chips, and once the trust is wound up and the books are closed we can breathe freely again.”
There was a pause. Sam wrote: “Bank goes into market to buy up all the shares?” and sat looking doubtfully at it.
“I think all the partners will agree,” said Steve impassively, “that the bank shouldn’t be directly involved in this salvage attempt. The fewer links between the bank and the trust the better at this stage of the game. What we really want is for one of the partners, acting as a private individual, to finance the winding up of the trust.”
There was another long pause while Sam wrote: “Enter P.C.V.Z. with checkbook on shining white horse.”
“How much money would you say was needed?” I asked ingenuously.
“Now that the shares are worth very little I reckon we could wrap it up for around three million dollars.”
“And of course,” said Lewis, smiling benignly at me, “there’s really only one partner who has that kind of money to spare.”
We went over the whole story again and tried to figure out other solutions, but always we were haunted by the specter of Luke’s embezzlement.
“What you’re really asking me to do,” I said, standing up and moving to the window, “is to sustain a loss which should be shared equally by all the other partners—or preferably unequally by Steve.”
“Sonny, I’ve got my hands full paying back Luke’s debts!”
I whirled around on him. “My name is Cornelius Van Zale and in future you’ll call me by my name.”
“My dear boy—” spluttered Lewis.
“You too!” I snapped at him, and as Sam’s glance met mine the signal passed between us, the signal of two acrobats pirouetting to their grand finale on the highwire. As Sam started to speak I spun away from them again and stared moodily out the window.
“I think Cornelius has a right to be upset,” he said in a quiet reasonable voice. It seemed odd to hear him refer to me as Cornelius when he always called me Neil. “I know you’re making yourself responsible for part of the money, Steve, but those debts of Luke’s are legal. It’s Cornelius who’s providing the money to cover up the embezzlement. No matter how foolproof your scheme is, he’ll be taking a certain amount of risk. I think Cornelius has the right to be very upset.”
I stood there looking upset. Neither Lewis nor Steve spoke. Presently Sam said, “I think there should be some give-and-take here, I really do. It’s just not fair on poor Cornelius otherwise.”
Poor Cornelius hunched his shoulders bitterly. The silence continued.
“Of course, it’s not the actual money he minds,” said Sam. “It’s the principle involved. I’m sure you both understand— after all, we’re all gentlemen here. We wouldn’t want Cornelius to make such a sacrifice without getting any compensation, would we? It just wouldn’t be right.”
Lewis cleared his throat. “I’m sure Cornelius realizes that for the good of the firm we all have to make little sacrifices occasionally.”
“Little sacrifices?” Sam said sorrowfully. “Three million dollars?”
We waited. Finally Lewis mumbled, “A nicer office, perhaps … a larger share of the profits—”
I spun round a second time. “This office,” I said. “Paul’s office. And I want as much money as you and Steve.”
Lewis went a deep red, glanced wildly from Sam to me and back again, and finally turned in panic to Steve.
Steve was pale but calm. “The other partners would never stand for it,” he said.
“So what?” I said insolently. “We three are the ones who count. If Clay and Martin don’t like it they can move elsewhere, and if Walter doesn’t like it he can retire. Tom doesn’t count, because he’s only been here since Charley died—he’ll do what you tell him, Lewis, and so will Hal. Hal’s been away too long to have any clout here at One Willow Street. That gives us a majority to dissolve the partnership and re-form it exactly as the three of us wish. The two of you can be joint senior partners”—I thought it was cunning to emphasize this attractive tidbit to Steve—“and officially I won’t try to join you; I know I’m too young for the title at present. But don’t forget that when the new partnership agreement’s drawn up I want the same powers as you two and the same slice of the profits.”
“ ‘Joint senior partner’ would be nice, Steve,” said Sam winningly, picking up my cue, and he added to soothe Lewis, “Cornelius doesn’t want any overt sweeping changes, just a reasonable compromise which is acceptable to everyone, and under
this new arrangement all three of you benefit. Lewis has more stability as senior partner than he had before, Steve gains a title he didn’t have and Cornelius has a fair share of Van Zale’s at last. I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
“For God’s sake shut up, Sam,” said Steve wearily. “Lewis and I are grown men, not kids of six.”
“I’m not giving up this office,” said Lewis, cross as any six-year-old.
This was the concession I had been prepared to make to seal the deal. I gave Sam a barely perceptible nod, but just as Sam was opening his mouth to say, “There, there!” Steve said in his most exhausted voice: “Relax, Lewis, the office is peanuts and Cornelius knows it. You can stay here.”
Lewis looked relieved.
“But I’m going to share it with you,” said Steve, suddenly as strong as a two-ton pickup truck. “We’ll share it, just as Jay and Paul shared it when they were joint senior partners.”
Now it was my turn to panic. I looked at Sam and saw he was looking equally panic-stricken at me. I turned to Steve and saw there was a gleam in his eye. The highwire began to wobble beneath my unsteady feet.
“Pardon me, Steve,” I said, stiff-lipped, “but I always understood that you’d be returning to the London office as soon as this crisis was over. After all, we mustn’t forget our plans for expansion in Europe …” My voice trailed away.
Steve gave me a lazy indulgent smile. The lion had seen the choicest of preys and was closing in for dinner.
“We’ll hire a man with first-class European experience to handle the London office,” he said. “No problem. But I can see I’ve no choice but to stay in New York. After all, these are bad, bad times. How could I, a senior partner—incidentally, thanks for the title—run off to Europe and leave the rest of you to cope with the aftermath of the Crash? I mustn’t shirk my responsibilities!” Rising to his feet, he padded over to Lewis and patted him fondly on the shoulder. “ ‘Now is the time for all good men!’ ” he quoted triumphantly. “We’ll manage, won’t we, Lewis?”
The Rich Are Different Page 63