The Stark Truth

by Peter Israel

  At the beginning, I’d recommended the simplest method of dealing with her late husband’s money: that the estate write her a check for x dollars, either as an advance against her inheritance or as a loan, and that she do with it as she wished. But she’d refused that. If she needed a loan, she said, her credit was good at the banks. What she wanted, she said, and what I’d agreed to be, was a partner. What this meant, in practice, was that I became her messenger, communicating her sell and buy orders, safeguarding meanwhile that minimum portion of the estate which it was my legal obligation to maintain. At first, the changes she’d ordered in the portfolio seemed prudent enough, Big Board securities for the most part, and in a bull market the gains she’d made did not strike me as inordinate. Still, the estate appreciated some twelve percent in the first quarter of my involvement—remarkable compared to gains made by my other clients, who might, if we were lucky, realize eight percent for the year.

  The computer even congratulated us, in its way. It highlighted the Sprague gain, and our chief accountant, Arthur Prine, called me to query it.

  I told him the numbers were correct.

  “Christ, Tommy,” said Arthur Prine from the twentieth floor, “if you could do that with every estate, we’d own the business.”

  “Either that or be disbarred,” I answered cheerfully.

  Arthur Prine, though, had trouble understanding jokes.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said suspiciously.

  “Not to worry, Arthur,” I reassured him. “The firm’s fully covered. But Sprague’s a special case anyway.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “It’d be nice to see all your accounts jump like that.”

  “As far as we’re concerned, though, it makes little difference. We’re not in for a percentage.”

  “Too bad,” he repeated, “when other parts of the firm are.”

  The implied criticism, I knew, reflected the typical accountant’s mentality: if one part of your business is bringing down x percent, why isn’t the other? Or, if it can’t, then why not get rid of it? Still, Prine irritated me. And so, from a different direction, did Kitty.

  The results disappointed her. She wrinkled her nose at the papers spread out before us on the immense Chinese rug of her living room. We’d been too timid, she said. She thought we’d done better, but the numbers didn’t lie, did they?

  Or did they?

  I remember her pointing a red nail at one transaction in the calendar listing.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” she said, starting to leaf through a file folder next to her on the rug.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. The item in question called for the purchase of eight hundred shares of a Big Board stock. The order had been executed.

  “Here’s what’s wrong!” she said, waving a small piece of paper in the air. It was a page from a memo pad with Katherine Goldmark Enterprises printed across the bottom and some scribblings above it. I recognized her writing. “You cost me a thousand dollars, maybe more, that’s what’s wrong!”

  “Well, what’s a thousand dollars between friends?” I said airily, still not seeing it.

  “The dates,” she said angrily. “Look at the dates.” The printout showed that the purchase had taken place on the fifteenth of March. The date noted on Kitty’s memo was March twelfth. In the interim, she claimed, the stock had risen more than a point. “It took you three days to buy! Why did it take you three days!”

  Unless a weekend had intervened, I had no idea. But a weekend hadn’t intervened. I was almost positive the delay hadn’t occurred in my office. We either phoned in or faxed orders to the broker immediately. But I said I would check.

  This failed to mollify her, though. It turned out her file folder contained similar jottings for every transaction in the printout, and she insisted on tracing every last one.

  Sure enough, she found other similar discrepancies.

  “Who’s the broker?” she wanted to know.

  “Why, I’ve been using your brother’s outfit on your account.”

  “You what?”

  “That’s right, Braxton’s. Not Ted personally, of course. He’s not—”

  “But who told you to use them?”

  “No one. You didn’t specify. But hell, Kitty, they’re as good as any other, or as bad. They’re one of the three we use all the time.”

  “Then change,” she ordered. “Go somewhere else for my account. I don’t want you to ask me why, just do it.”

  This was the first time I’d heard her speak with such vehemence, the first time I’d had anything remotely resembling an order from her lips except, of course, for those I wanted to hear. I saw the stony set of her jaw in profile, her gaze intent, angry, fixed on the rug, and for the life of me I didn’t understand. Surely it wasn’t the money. In fact she spent freely, generously. At the time I’m talking about, we were on a caviar and Montrachet diet, both supplied by Kitty. But then …?

  She must have sensed my reaction. She bowed her head and arched her neck several times as though exercising it, then swiveled toward me, dark eyes still small, and tossed her hair off her forehead.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “Take what out on me?”

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t explain,” she said, looking away.

  Then nothing.

  “I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Kitty,” I persisted.

  She didn’t say anything for another moment. I watched her sigh deeply, once, twice, her bosom lifting, falling. Then she turned back to me, her eyes wet, voice bitter.

  “Oh, it’s nothing a few years on the couch couldn’t fix, but who has the time? It’s about Gar. Edgar Sprague. Edgar Chalmers Sprague, my late unlamented husband.”

  “What about him?” I said. Other than admitting that she didn’t mourn his death, she’d said nothing about him, and there was no trace of him in the apartment, to which, I knew, she’d moved soon after he died.

  “Nothing really. He was the kind of man who kept everything under lock and key. He kept his money under lock and key, his whiskey under lock and key. That was because of the maid. He said she stole his whiskey. He locked his emotions up the same way. He even tried to lock me up.”

  “Hardly the easiest of tasks,” I said lightly.

  “Hardly,” she agreed. “But let’s not talk about it. It’s too depressing.”

  “I still don’t understand why you get so worked up about his money. It’s as though you’re trying to prove something to him.”

  “I guess I am. I guess I’m trying to show him what he missed out on all those years.”

  “But he’s dead, Kitty.”

  “I know he’s dead. But I happen to believe that the dead know what’s going on, at least for a while.”

  “From the grave?”

  “From the grave,” she said.

  She seemed serious about it, too. Well, I thought, people—women especially—harbor stranger beliefs. But by implication it seemed as though she was trying to rub Edgar Sprague’s dead nose in it, which was not only unlike her but beneath her.

  “Why’d you marry him in the first place, if I may ask?” I said.

  The question seemed innocuous enough—after all, who among us hasn’t made the same mistake?—but it seemed to jolt her. She was sitting on the floor on that immense sky blue rug, her back propped against the back of a couch which formed a small trysting area in front of the fireplace. I sat near her, my legs crossed. For just a second, her head went back against the couch, her eyes small and far off. Why indeed? she seemed to be asking herself, remembering something else, maybe, and I saw, just in that second, that bitter stony look again. But only for a second. Then her head came forward, and she turned to me with an ironic smile.

  “Because I was his secretary, silly. Don’t secretaries always marry their bosses?”

  “His secretary?” I said. For some reason this struck me as weird. “For how long?”
<
br />   “Oh, seven, eight years. From about a year after I graduated from college till shortly before we got married.”

  And presumably his mistress before then? But that didn’t answer the question either, because knowing who he was—and who knows that better than the secretary-cum-mistress?—why, again, had she married him?

  She wasn’t about to answer. Maybe she even said as much, but Kitten had other ways of stopping conversations she didn’t want to go on. I remember her eyes on me, flashing with sudden pleasure, appetite. Then, with raucous laughter, she lunged at me.

  Thrown off balance, I went over backward. Her charge carried her with me, but only halfway up my body as, with strong, red-tipped nails, she scrabbled at my pants. I twisted, pushed at her hair, her head. “Don’t!” I cried out, laughing at the same time—but too late, for she was sucking me already. I felt her jaws clamp powerfully even as her eyes sought mine, and my cock blossomed obediently, grew, thrust over her pushing tongue as though to keep from being devoured.

  “Kitten, for God’s sake!” I shouted, and maybe then her brother’s warning flashed through my mind, or something did, for I was racked by simultaneous spasms of panic and desire. Her face, eyes, her warm red lips, were invisibly buried in me, my hands weak against her shoulders, all the strength of me sucked into her mouth, until in throbbing, spastic jerks I came, drowning her even as I drowned.

  Even then she did not release me.

  I felt myself go flaccid. My body flopped back weakly, spent, but still she did not release me. Her tongue and teeth held me in a wet embrace, and she pulled me deep inside her when she swallowed. Then, her head rose, her eyes glittering in dark triumph. And still she would not release me.

  “Enough, Kitten,” I called out. “Kitty, let me go!”

  But she would not, worrying my cock now from side to side by shaking her head, and fear flooded me, an unfamiliar instinct, followed by a welling and uncontrollable anger.

  “For God’s sake, Kitty!” I shouted again. Then I lurched up and struck her on the cheek, a hard, angry slap.

  She let go of me, fell back, her mouth agape and wet, her eyes astonished.

  I hit her again, saw her flinch from the blow, heard her gasp, and her eyes went wide in obvious fear.

  I pushed her back into the rug, knelt above her. Legs spreading, she reached out for me and drew me violently into her. I pinned her shoulders into the rug, riding her, my chest heaving as her body began to toss and buck with passion.

  Her eyes glazed. Her head went back as far as it could, neck arched, bosom high, as though to escape me. But there is no escape for you, Kitten, I exulted, not now, not ever.

  “Oh my God …” I heard her call out. “Oh … my …”

  She sobbed, her shoulders trembled, and I felt her start to come in a long, unending shudder of the body.

  “We can …”

  Inspired, I felt the fire erupt inside me. Semen pulsed out of me again.

  “We … can … have …”—gasping—“… any … thing …”

  7

  Then the Sprague estate struck gold.

  It came about this way.

  If you follow Wall Street at all, you will remember the story of Manderling’s of Cleveland. At the time it was probably the largest, certainly the oldest, of the closely held retailing empires. Though Manderling was traded on the Big Board, the family owned close to fifty percent of the voting shares, and the bylaws of the company were so written as to discourage any hostile takeover attempt. Most of Manderling’s competitors—the Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenues of this world—had already been gobbled up. Manderling’s remained virtually the last plum. A ripe plum, Wall Street thought, because unlike most department store chains, Manderling’s traditionally owned its own real estate, and these assets, some analysts said, had been vastly undervalued in the corporate balance sheet. An overripe plum, even, because there had been dissension in the family ranks. Apparently some of the have-nots, that is, the mere seven-figure Manderlings of the younger generation, were taking issue with the way their eight-figure elders were running the company into the ground, even though the ground itself was valuable.

  Enter Braxton’s as investment bankers and my firm as legal counsel, both of us retained “to advise the family on certain financial matters and to explore opportunities in the field of mergers and acquisitions.” (I quote from the joint press release that went out at the time.)

  I think, in passing, that I may inadvertently have given a wrong impression. In a strictly professional sense, my work may have set me apart from my peers in the firm, but I socialized with many of them, and a group of us, all divorced and close to middle age, found a certain camaraderie not only in shoptalk but in such diverse activities as bemoaning our alimony payments and pooling our bets on the Triple Crown races, in which activity yours truly served as secretary and treasurer. A foursome among us—usually Buck Charles, Art Fording, Phil Lamont, and I—even went to the Belmont each June, taking over the Charles family box for the outing. I was therefore well aware of our involvement in Manderling’s, and when Kitty Goldmark, as executrix, began buying the stock for the Sprague account, I covered myself carefully, with letters from Kitty in the file concerning each purchase and a confidential memo from me in the same file, disclaiming any role in the transactions other than my purely formal one.

  By the time the firm’s involvement became public knowledge, Manderling stock was already “in play.” The players were clearly betting on a takeover, and though there were inevitably a few bears—those who claimed that we and Braxton’s had been retained only as a sop to the younger generation from the older, who had no intention of selling the company—the price of the shares climbed up and up, up and up. And Kitty kept buying.

  In point of fact, the bears weren’t entirely wrong. The company was indeed for sale. But it would never, under any circumstances—and probably this was the one point on which the Manderling clan could reach quasi-unanimity—be sold to Jews.

  Whence Braxton’s, whence ourselves. For if the issue had to be dealt with subtly, nonetheless our real mission was to find Manderling’s an alternative to the Spodes. A White Knight, in other words, and one of good Christian persuasion.

  The Spodes were Harry Spode and William (“Buddy”) Spode, father and son corporate raiders par excellence. They had made quite a splash as New York real estate developers, starting in the early seventies when Buddy came into his own. More recently, they had joined the takeover game, at least on two occasions taking control of unwieldy conglomerates and selling off the pieces for more than they had paid for the whole. In the bargain, they had been left with an oil products company, a food distribution company, a film studio, and assorted other goodies. They owned, it was said, the half of Atlantic City that Donald Trump or the mob didn’t.

  When the Spodes filed their intentions with the SEC, it startled the Wall Street smart money into full churn and sent the Manderlings into a panic.

  Whence, as I say, Braxton’s. Whence ourselves.

  I knew that we had succeeded in bringing other suitors into the game, and that the Spodes had one offer rejected by the Manderling board of directors, flatly and unceremoniously. A second, sweetened offer was similarly rejected, though a little more ceremoniously. And one Thursday, right after lunch, Kitty Goldmark put through a sell order by phone, confirmed by messenger, on all the Sprague estate’s holdings in Manderling’s.

  The bottom fell out the next day. At a morning press conference, a Manderling spokesman announced that, having considered several offers and found them insufficient, the company was ceasing negotiations with all outside parties. For Manderling’s, it was back to “business as usual.” Not to be outdone, Buddy Spode told the media that he had better things to do than try to get in where he wasn’t wanted and that he and his father had already begun liquidating their holdings in the company. Just before noon, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in Manderling’s. By that time, though, the Sprague estate
had already cashed in profits of just over a million dollars.

  All hell was to break loose at the firm over the weekend, and at Braxton’s. Documents were reviewed by internal committees and depositions taken, not only to ascertain who, if anyone, had cost us the fat fees that would have accompanied the successful sale of Manderling’s, but to make sure our collective noses were clean when the inevitable stockholders’ suits began to be filed. No one, of course, thought to look into my sector, which was just as well.

  Meanwhile, I had my own investigation to carry out.

  I tried phoning Kitty all that afternoon. I knew she was busy until late Sunday, for her Connecticut branch had a Saturday wedding and she had some sort of anniversary brunch back in the city the following noon. I left messages for her everywhere, but it wasn’t till late Friday evening that she called me back, from some Stamford hotel.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I’ve been running all day. I’m exhausted. Let’s just say good night and catch up on Sunday.”

  “We’ve got to talk, Kitty.”

  “We’ve got our whole lives to talk, my sweet. I’ve got to be bright and beautiful tomorrow, and if I don’t get some sleep I’ll never make it.”

  Logical enough, I’d agree now, but there was a trace of impatience in how she said it, as though she wanted to get rid of me. As for me, I wasn’t in my most logical mood.

  “It can’t wait, Kitty.”

  “What can’t wait?”

  “What happened today. Yesterday and today.”

  “Tommy,” she said, and now the impatience was clear in her voice, “you’re starting to drive me a little crazy. What can’t wait?”

  “Manderling’s.”

  “For God’s sake, so I made a little money, what’s wrong with that?”

  “You didn’t make a little money. You made a lot of money. And as smart as you are, I can’t believe you made it just by looking into your crystal ball.”