A Hamptons Christmas

by James Brady

  “Might I remind you, Madame Driver, that my illustrious ancestor Javert, an inspector of the police, was the very official who pursued that career criminal Jean Valjean through the stinking sewers of Paris, tirelessly, damply, never flagging or giving up, unmindful of the stench or what was happening to his best suit and good shoes. And what reward does he get? First that rabble-rouser Victor Hugo pens his pot boiler, and then Lloyd Webber, that little cretin, comes out with his absurd musical! There’s a pair for you! Turning an open-and-shut case of petit larcency into a screed against the flics. A bestseller, not with an honest policeman as hero, but with a villainous Valjean! The crook who stole the loaf of bread in the first place. And the great Javert, a man of law and of probity, wading through merde, cruelly castigated and portrayed as the heavy! And his best shoes ruined!”

  Alix and I had slipped quietly into the room halfway through this ferocious soliloquy and stood silently listening as the Impaler in his yachting cap, who frightened easily, fell back several paces into an overstuffed chair. That Madamoiselle Javert was fully togged out in the religious habit, leather belt, rosary beads, medals of Our Lady and the usual nun shoes rendered her fury more impressive. Even Nicole, of sterner stuff than her lover (you could see where Emma got her spunk), eyed Mademoiselle warily, edging away from her.

  Alix, incapable of prolonged silence, broke the tension with vigorous applause, clapping and crying out: “Oh, I say, Sister, well done, well done indeed. So jolly to see you again. And to assure you I’d never previously thought of Inspector Javert in such a positive light. Perhaps someone ought do a revisionist Les Miz and put that scoundrel Valjean firmly in his place.”

  “Cayenne!” thundered Sister Infanta, “the prison colony. That’s where the fellow belongs.”

  The Impaler, easily swayed, nodded his great, handsome, if empty, head. “Ja, duh Devil’s Island for those bums, okay? Teach the fellow to be stealing breads!”

  As for myself, it had not previously occurred to me to think of Victor Hugo as a cop-bashing Reverend Al Sharpton.

  I made the introductions. Nicole, when she tried, could be charming, and as she was somewhat awed when faced with an authentic English aristocrat, she fell back on tradition. “Tea, milady?”

  “Gutt gutt,” said Count Vlad, who presumably spoke Romanian, or Transylvanian, but no known language, grinned his agreement (my own Romanian, I must admit, is limited to “Magda Lupescu” and “King Carol”).

  When the tea had been ordered from room service, Nicole got quickly to the point.

  “Of course Mr. Driver (I’m sure I speak for him at least in this) and I are most grateful to you for having taken in our mischievous daughter.”

  “A lovely child,” Alix remarked. I kept quiet, having learned that was the best way to get people talking. Nicole didn’t hesitate.

  “The problem is that Mr. Driver and I are engaged in somewhat adversarial litigation over terms of the divorce, custody, child support and the like, and while my concern is purely the well-being of our daughter, that son of a bitch seeks financial and other advantage.”

  “Oh, dear,” Alix murmured, lowering her eyes but nodding imperceptibly toward the “nun.”

  “Sorry, Sister,” Nicole quickly riposted, though she of all people, since she had retained her, knew that Sister Infanta wasn’t a nun at all but a private eye.

  “Of course, no offense taken,” the “nun” said demurely as Nicole resumed.

  “Properly to appreciate my position, you realize that after I left the Icecapades and my darling child was born, there were all these latent, pent-up energies. Not even the authorship of best-sellers and subsequent fame was sufficient to fill my life … .”

  I could see Alix’s lovely eyes start to glaze.

  “ … and I threw myself unstinting into good causes, much in the spirit of the third Mrs. Steinberg, Gayfryd. Even U.S. News & World Report took note when I picked up the fallen torch of our tragically lost Princess Di.”

  “Which was?” Alix asked, who had actually known Diana.

  “Land mines.”

  Her Ladyship goggled.

  “You don’t say.”

  “But I do,” responded Nicole. “Bianca Jagger and I are in the very forefront of the antipersonnel mine movement. Do you know how many million land mines there are?”

  Nicole shook her head at the thought.

  When we remained mute she half-whispered, as if only to herself and Bianca. “The risks we took …”

  “Did you dig them up?” I asked, “the two of you?”

  “No, we raise awareness and draw up petitions. The digging-up follows automatically.”

  She had other causes as well. The Newport Jazz Festival, Dutch Elm disease, and Esperanto. Then, swiftly getting back on point, she demanded:

  “Has Dick Driver been in touch with you at all, Mr. Stowe? Or with your father, the general?”

  “Admiral. Annapolis man, in fact. Class of forty-eight.”

  “I vuz myself in the Coastal Guards, a sous-officier,” Count Vlad said proudly in the hodge-podge of lingos he seemed to feel appropriate to his audience, “Royal Romanian Coastal Guards, very elite corps. Mostly gentlemens of gutt family, classy top-society folks, you understand, plus a few ruffians.”

  “Mmm,” said Her Ladyship, “I wasn’t aware Romania had a seacoast. Isn’t it rather tucked away there in the hills and forests, dotted with picturesque if somewhat gloomy castles and charming stone villages?”

  “Der Block Zee, don’t forgot nor overlooking der Block Zee,” the Impaler urged. “Many great naval battles ober der Block Zee, I swear to Gott. Odessa and der battleship Potemkin, for one. Also the Danube, ferocious mit cannons, der Turks, dose bastards, many horrors and brave gentlemens, dround-ed und sinking down.” He shook his head sadly at the very memory of bloody sea battles long ago.

  “And despite these horrors, Count,” Alix asked, “you still sail? I noted the yachting-club escutcheon on your blazer.”

  “Ja, mit der speeding boat. All mahogany, I swear to Gott genuine, not der plastics. Christ-Craft, a fine brand, endorsed by der Vatican for de commercial use of Gott’s name.”

  He blessed himself quickly, in the right to left manner favored by the Eastern Church.

  “Mahogany speeding boats. How fortunate you are,” Alix said somewhat vaguely.

  “Would anyone like a drink?” Nicole asked, the tea never actually having arrived. I certainly did but didn’t want to say so, maintaining a stiff upper lip with people the cut of whose jib my father didn’t like.

  “Is there some champers?” Alix inquired, not permitting her prejudices to get in the way of a properly chilled Dom.

  While we waited to see if the drinks trolley would eventually arrive, Nicole launched into a catalog of her former husband’s sins.

  “Last year when his father died, Dick’s father, mind you, not mine, a decent old party totally unlike his son, I hurried to Geneva, snatched up my daughter from the convent, and flew to New York at my own expense to attend the funeral. But when I billed Dick later for airfare, hotels, limos, and the like, he refused to pay.”

  When neither Alix or I expressed outrage at this, Nicole drove home her point:

  “It was his old man we were burying. And at my expense. Did you ever?”

  The front desk called up, a clerk on Sister Infanta’s payroll reporting in.

  “A Mr. Odets is down here in the lobby asking questions about your visitors, Ms. Driver. Shall I issue a no comment?”

  “Odets! That bastard,” Nicole exploded. “Dick’s paid thug. Mademoiselle Javert, can you—”

  “‘Sister Infanta,’ please. Let’s try not to blow my cover.”

  “Of course.”

  Sister continued. “I’ll nip down the back stairs and plant a false trail or two. A bientôt.”

  Count Vlad had a bottle tucked somewhere in the luggage and pulled it out now to pour himself a drink, not bothering to offer one to the rest of us. It seemed to be a vodk
a or gin with an indecipherable Balkan label.

  “Chin-chin,” he toasted us, drawing a raised eyebrow from Alix.

  “I say, are they sending up some champers?” she asked.

  Nicole was the one pacing now. “What concerns me, and what really should be the focus of our attention, is of course—”

  “Your child,” Her Ladyship offered.

  “Yes, yes,” Nicole said dismissively, “there’s that. But I know Dick. He’s a louse but clever. He’ll have Howard Rubenstein putting out press releases any hour now, pleading his case and trashing me and the count, claiming it’s my fault our daughter ran away. There’s another court hearing coming up in The Hague next month, and he’s out to score points.”

  Vlad looked up from his glass.

  “He do that all times, Dick. What a bastard, mein Gott, worser than der Turks of old, worser even than the ruffians in our Coastal Guards.”

  “Well, he’d better act swiftly,” Nicole declared, “because I’m ready with a preemptive strike. Just wait till I get Peggy Siegal on the phone. I don’t want desk clerks issuing ‘no comments’ when I can get Peggy Siegal. If we’re to have a public-relations war, let it begin with Peggy.”

  Even the London-based Alix knew about Peggy Siegal, New York’s “flack from hell.”

  “I say, Beecher. They’re rolling up the heavy artillery now. When you call on Peggy, these are indeed desperate hours.”

  When I brought the conversation back to Emma and inquired if either parent had any intention of seeing her while in the Hamptons and assuring themselves she’d get safely back to Switzerland and the convent, Nicole said vaguely that anything was possible and thanked us for our concern. By the time we left a few moments later, she was tearing and ranting over the phone to Peggy Siegal and drafting releases. “Put out that quote from the National Enquirer, what Dick said about the models. Yes, that’s it, ‘So many cover girls, so little time.’” She was still talking to Peggy as we left, without having settled with us just how or when, or even if, she wanted her daughter back.

  Were the Stowe family plus Alix more or less acting in loco parentis until the convent reopened? Or would Dick Driver be more malleable and agree to take the kid back?

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The walk-in closet—the goddamned closet!—needs a $6,500 carpet …

  We left the Admiral comfortably ensconced before a roaring fire in his den, being cheated at poker by the kid, and drove over to confront Driver at the Meadow Club (Odets had spoken carelessly and Jesse Maine phoned with his whereabouts). Having failed totally with Nicole, I was anything but hopeful. Yet one had to try. Alix and I were in agreement on that; the Drivers were dreadful people. But they were Emma’s parents.

  As a member, not of the Meadow, but of the Maidstone, I was able to give the secret club handshake to a flunky and send up my name to Driver. He was truculent at first, which I fully understood, given that I had written a fairly critical piece for Parade about that megalomaniacal ninety-story high-rise he was building near my apartment in Sutton Place, which was going to cast into perpetual shadow much of the East Side (unless the FAA’s preliminary injunction held up in court). And then there was the photo op manqué at FAO Schwarz. But when I introduced Her Ladyship, Dick overcame his sneering disdain for Grub Street and turned on the old smooth, inviting us to drinks in the club bar. That was where Driver, with or without help from the Whitneys or the late Alf Vanderbilt, had set up a command center, issuing statements hourly through the Howard Rubenstein public-relations apparat, contradicting rival claims put out by Nicole’s PR woman, and extolling Dick’s charities and virtues of every sort.

  Alix ordered a Dom and I took black coffee. When we’d settled in, I got to the point. “This girl of yours, Driver.”

  “Which one, Kim or Miss Israel?”

  “Your daughter, remember?”

  “Oh, sure. Good kid. How is she?”

  So far, as bad as he was, Dick was one up on Nicole, who hadn’t really asked.

  When I nailed him on the question of which parent was willing to take responsibility and ensure that Emma returned safely to school in January, Dick became expansive.

  “Look, Stowe, Your Ladyship, in theory of course a child ought to be with her mother. But a Dragon Lady like Nicole?” Dick pulled out several sheets of yellow legal-pad stationery. “Listen to this, her latest demands above and beyond alimony and basic child support. Next month at The Hague she’ll formally petition the court. I got hold of the details through, well, let’s not get into that.”

  I saw the fine hand of Odets here somewhere. But Dick began to read:

  “For our daughter’s bedroom, the bedroom alone, mind you, at Nicole and Vlad’s place in Bucharest: $130,000 in furnishings and decorations, a $19,000 antique desk and chair, $6,500 to paint the ceiling, a bed for $6,500, a toy chest for $1,560. All that just for the kid’s bedroom. For her bathroom there are $10,000 curtains, $4,500 in wallpaper, $7,540 in plumbing. The walk-in closet—the goddamned closet!—needs a $6,500 carpet, $2,300 in wallpaper, and $3,900 in prints. Prints? What prints do you need in the closet? The damned kid’s ten years old!”

  There was plenty more. When a club page came up with a cell phone, Driver excused himself to take the call. “Howard Rubenstein’s office,” he told us in an aside.

  “Yes? Absolutely. If Peggy Siegal is sending out releases about me and Heidi Klum, issue a dignified ‘no comment.’ But then release some of the juicier stuff in Nicole’s last sworn deposition, about the Impaler. Yes, that’s the stuff. Pull it out of the transcript and call it in to Cindi Adams and Rush and Molloy in the Daily News. Liz Smith? No, give her something exclusive. You know how she gets.”

  When he hung up, Dick told us with a smirking grin about the trancript passage he especially liked:

  “Someone got an audiotape of Nicole and the Count at a hotel in Venice during their lovemaking. Apparently in the urgency of passion, Nicole is heard to cry out, ‘Impale me! Impale me!’”

  He seemed quite pleased with himself, but even Alix blinked at that one. “I say, Mr. Driver!”

  “Sorry, Your Ladyship,” he said, trying to wipe away the smirk. I reminded Dick why we were here, that the Stowe family’s only concern was the Drivers’ daughter, not their lawsuits or press releases. But when I pressed the question, Dick said he might have to return quickly to the city and it would be inconvenient to be burdened with a child.

  “Your child,” I couldn’t resist pointing out.

  “Of course, of course. But so many things are moving too fast. Certain moneyed interests are said to be buying a vast tract out here in Montauk. I’ve got to see my people on this.”

  “Oh?” I smelled something here. “Is there a Native American tribe involved?”

  Driver jumped up from the table. “Damn, yes! I thought we had the exclusive on the deal. Don’t tell me it’s common knowledge.”

  “Not at all,” I said smoothly, “a few insiders only at this stage. Might I ask who your contact is?”

  Driver looked around furtively. “Odets came up with him. A local fellow of enmormous influence and connections. The idea is to dredge a deep-water port at Montauk suitable for ocean liners, a shortcut avoiding all that New York Harbor traffic. A duty-free port and a Native American Indian casino all in one. Bullet trains into midtown Manhattan every hour on the hour. Every car a club car. With roulette wheels and slots if statutes permit. It’ll be the biggest thing since the Opera House in Sydney. A local developer named Wyseman Clagett wants a piece of the deal, and I’m to do the contracting.”

  “Which Indians you dealing with?” I asked.

  “The Shinnecocks. A chief named Maine.”

  “But he’s …” Her Ladyship began.

  “Alix, we’ve been sworn to secrecy. Chief Maine made us promise.”

  Driver’s eyes were bigger than ever. This thing could be huge. He was counting the money already.

  “Of course,” Alix said, nonchalance at its be
st. “How thoughtless of me.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  A promising little firm headed by two men called Allen and Gates …

  I made one more hapless stab at the subject of Dick’s daughter, and we left, using Alix’s phone to call Jesse from the car, telling him what Driver said.

  “That’s Montaukket land, not Shinnecock,” I reminded Jesse. “You can’t sell it because you don’t own it. Besides, you’ve been claiming for years, on religious grounds, that you oppose casinos.”

  “Hell, Beecher, you know that and I know that. But there’s a lot better profit margin if you can sell something you don’t own. That way you don’t have to put up no cash first. There’s no damned initial investment. And this Driver is just gonna love them Montauketts down there taking the waters at Gurney’s. They’ll get along fine. Clagett’s in it, too. And he’s so crooked he’ll lie even when truth wins the election. Or so I casually suggested to Lefty, who passed on the info to his boss.”

  Jesse Maine, who’d been hanging with Lefty Odets, was eloquent in his admiration for Driver’s generosity. As he assured his new pal:

  “You know, Lefty old compadre, your Mr. Driver could win friends for hisself here in the Hamptons and right across the country, setting up scholarships and all manner of gifts and grants for worthy applicants among the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Gestures like that do win favor with oppressed people. And might even convince us to let Mr. Driver in on opportunities undreamt of by less generous and charitable men.”

  Without letting Odets know about it, Jesse had at the same time affixed a bumper sticker on the rear of Lefty’s rented car (and was wondering if he could also slip one onto Dick Driver’s limo): AMERICA WAS BUILT ON INDIAN GRAVES.

  This tended not to be a popular sentiment with many of the locals, but it cheered the Shinnecocks. And impressed innocent outlanders like Driver, who thought he was catching, quite early in the curve, a new wave of Native American indignation, which he might ride to a very profitable conclusion. When it came to the art of deal making, whom would a prudent investor back: a lousy Indian tribe or the bright young man who outsmarted his mentor and, in the end, took away Jacob Marley’s own company?