Too Much Money

by Dominick Dunne

  On the bedside table, next to the empty prescription bottle, was Winkie’s gold cigarette case from the forties. Addison knew that Winkie had promised Diana Vreeland to leave it to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. Addison opened it and looked at the lyrics to Cole Porter’s song “The Extra Man.” The case was so stylish that it became irresistible to him. He told himself that Winkie would have wanted him to have it. He slipped it into his pocket and left.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING ADDISON KENT HEADED over to the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home. On Winkie’s instructions, Addison met Francis Xavior Branigan, the assistant funeral director, and handed him an old Louis Vuitton bag of Winkie’s that Addison meant to keep after handing off its contents. Neatly packed inside were a gray pinstripe suit from Huntsman in London, a blue mono-grammed shirt from Turnbull & Asser on Jermyn Street in London, and a Turnbull & Asser lavender tie that Lil Altemus had given Winkie for his birthday.

  “I didn’t know about underwear, whether you put it on for a cremation or not, but I brought some undershorts anyway,” said Addison to Francis Xavior Branigan as he was handing him the bag, giving him the eye at the same time. Addison Kent was a very promiscuous young man, and within five minutes of his handing over Winkie’s clothes, he and Francis Xavior had a quickie in a toilet stall in the men’s room, in much the same manner he had once had a quickie with Adele Harcourt’s first husband’s step-grandson in the bathhouse of the beach club in Harbor Springs, Michigan. Francis Xavior, mistaking the quickie for love, said that he preferred to be called just Xavior. That was okay with Addison, who never planned to see him again anyway, until Xavior asked Addison if he would like to attend the cremation itself.

  “I hadn’t thought of that, no,” said Addison. “Do you do it here?”

  “No, in New Jersey. I’m going to sing,” said Xavior.

  “You’re going to what?” asked Addison.

  “I talked it over with Winkie when he was here to make the arrangements.”

  “Winkie? You called him Winkie?” asked Addison, affronted by the impertinence of the assistant funeral director. “He didn’t tell me this, about the singing. That doesn’t sound like Winkie Williams at all. What were you planning on singing?”

  “‘The Extra Man,’ by Cole Porter, that’s what he requested.”

  Addison shrugged and then asked, “What time is the cremation, Xavior?”

  “Eight a.m. tomorrow. Get here at seven, and you can drive out in the hearse with me.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Addison. He thought, I’ll be the hit of Lil Altemus’s lunch party tomorrow.

  XAVIOR TOOK time to explain the workings of the crematorium to Addison. “And then I just push this button here, and those steel doors will open, and the casket will go straight into the flames.”

  “I see,” said Addison.

  “Would you like to see the body?” asked Xavior.

  “Oh, dear,” said Addison. “I don’t know if I’m up to that. Isn’t it best to remember him as he was the other night at Swifty’s? We had such a good last time.”

  “But he looks so at peace,” said Xavior. “Do take a quick look, Addison. It’s not Winkie, you know. It’s just the shell of Winkie. Winkie’s gone.”

  He opened the casket. There was Winkie, in his gray suit, his blue shirt, and his lavender tie. “I hope you don’t mind that I put the tangerine-colored rose in his buttonhole. I took it from the vase next to his bed.”

  “Don’t you think your cosmetic person put a little too much makeup on him? He looks like he’s going onstage,” said Addison.

  “We don’t usually put on makeup for a cremation, but I wanted to give Winkie a real send-off,” said Xavior. “If I had been in total charge, I would have dressed him in white tie and tails, as if he were about to do a samba with the Duchess of Windsor. There’s no extra charge for the makeup person.”

  “I always thought Winkie should have written a book about all those famous ladies he knew, like the duchess, and Kitty Miller, and Babe Paley. All that history going to waste,” said Addison. “Did you know that the Duchess of Windsor was a hermaphrodite?”

  “No!” exclaimed Xavior.

  “That’s what Winkie always said, and Winkie knew about things like that.”

  “He knew everything. I’m ready for my song now.” He reached into his inside pocket and brought out the lyrics, which he had printed in large letters from his computer. “Here, I brought you a copy too.”

  Xavior began to sing:

  I’m an extra man, an extra man,

  I’ve got no equal as an extra man,

  I’m handsome, I’m harmless, I’m helpful, I’m able,

  Addison joined in with Xavior.

  A perfect fourth at bridge or a fourteenth at table.

  You’ll find my name on ev’ry list,

  But when it’s missing, it is never missed.

  And so I’ll live until that fatal day,

  The press will tell you that I’ve passed away,

  And you will feel sad as the news you scan,

  For that means one less extra man.

  Xavior pushed the button, and the casket went forth into the flames. Addison stared after it, tears streaming down his face. He had never heard the song sung before, and he suddenly realized it was the story of his own life too.

  “I WAS wondering if you would like to have lunch, Addison,” said Xavior as they entered the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home, where Addison stopped to use the men’s room after the car ride from New Jersey. “There’s a nice little French place around the corner. Liza Minnelli goes there sometimes.”

  “Oh, I can’t, Xavior. I’m sorry. I’m going to Lil Altemus’s lunch party for Adele Harcourt, and I have to change out of my funeral suit and tie before I pick up Adele,” said Addison.

  “Oh, right,” said Xavior, who was disappointed. He had thought their quickie in the men’s room the previous night might have led to something, a repeat at least, especially after having shared the experience of Winkie’s cremation and having sung “The Extra Man” together. For Xavior, it had been an important life moment.

  “You know Adele Harcourt’s a hundred and five years old, and she still goes out to lunch and dinner. She’s simply marvelous,” said Addison, oblivious to the fact that Xavior’s feelings were hurt. “Is it all right to smoke in here? I feel like a cigarette.”

  “No, no smoking in the whole building. Against the law,” said Xavior bitterly.

  “Good-bye, then. I have to be off. Thanks for everything. I had never heard that song sung before. I’ll call you about picking up the ashes.” He knew he was rambling. The cremation had unnerved him. He walked out of the front entrance of the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home at Madison Avenue and Eighty-first Street. He reached in his pocket and removed a gold cigarette case. He opened it. He took out a cigarette and lit it, while looking at his reflection in the gold. He read the lyrics again. Even after he slipped it back into the inside jacket pocket of his dark blue pinstripe suit from Mr. Sills, he kept rubbing his hand over it, protecting it. He knew he could not carry it to Lil Altemus’s lunch party for Adele Harcourt. Surely, she’d recognize it.

  PERLA ZACHARIAS awoke in good spirits. She had been a success the previous night at a dinner party thrown by her old friends Carlotta and Maurice Zenda. Perla lived extravagantly in the twenty-seven-room apartment on two floors that she kept in New York for her occasional visits, two or three times a year, from her homes in Paris and London, where she felt more welcome than she did in New York. Apart from Carlotta Zenda, she really had no friends in New York, although she bought tickets or tables at a staggering number of the charity balls that went on every night during the season. Even the tenants in the Fifth Avenue building where she lived shunned her in the elevator. She knew that the presence of her guards in the lobby and her two Rolls-Royces, always parked in front of the building, annoyed her neighbors, but it was her notoriety that they recoiled from the most, whi
ch she blamed exclusively on Gus Bailey.

  Fortunately, a recent discreet visit with Hy Vietor, the reclusive billionaire owner of Park Avenue, had brought that to an end. As Bailey ceased to write articles about the murder in Biarritz for Park Avenue, Perla felt the constant talk about her lessen, just as she had hoped.

  Many of the twenty-four guests present at the previous night’s dinner were often written about in Dolores De Longpre’s society column, a thing that Perla herself craved. Unlike most of the rich Middle Easterners who had moved to New York in the 1980s, the Zendas were the only couple to have been received in the top echelon of New York society. And, of course, while Perla would never admit it, she was jealous that Carlotta had been elevated to the head of the board of the Metropolitan Opera, a position of social importance that Lil Altemus’s mother had long occupied.

  Still, Perla felt she had been a success at the Zendas’ dinner, especially in telling stories about the beautiful and tragic Empress Eugénie of France. Since buying the empress’s villa in Biarritz thirteen years earlier, Perla had worked hard at acquiring Eugénie’s possessions and memorabilia, when they came up for auction, or when an impoverished royal or collector had to sell. One of her greatest treasures was a Nymphenburg porcelain breakfast set sent to the empress as a thirtieth birthday gift from her great friend and relation Ludwig, the mad king of Bavaria, who would have loved her and married her if he had been inclined to love women.

  Helga, Perla’s maid, entered the room. Perla had brought Helga with her from Johannesburg years earlier. Always claiming to have the ability to read her mistress’s mind, on this morning Helga had intuited that it would please her mistress to use King Ludwig’s historic breakfast set on Perla’s tray. Perla was thrilled.

  “I was just talking about the empress last night at dinner!” she exclaimed cheerfully.

  Helga smiled and poured the coffee, asking if her mistress had had a pleasant time at the Zendas’.

  “A simply wonderful time, Helga! In fact, that reminds me that I must call Carlotta and thank her.”

  Perla picked up the phone and dialed Carlotta Zenda. The instant she heard her friend’s voice on the other end, Perla spoke excitedly.

  “I had such a nice time at your dinner last night, Carlotta,” she said, “and I was so thrilled to meet Constance Sibley.”

  There was a pause on the other end.

  “Carlotta? Are you there?”

  “Oh, Perla,” Carlotta said finally, “I’m so upset for you.”

  Perla’s expression changed to one of utter surprise.

  “Upset? For me? But why?”

  “Obviously you haven’t read Kit Jones’s column in the Post.”

  Perla, her hand over the mouthpiece, motioned to Helga to hand her the Post.

  “Call me back when you’ve read it,” said Carlotta.

  “No, hang on,” replied Perla, who then said to Helga, “Turn to Kit Jones’s column. Quick.”

  The headline of Kit Jones’s column read, PUBLISHER SIGNS AUGUSTUS BAILEY TO SEVEN-FIGURE DEAL FOR NOVEL TO BE TITLED INFAMOUS LADY.

  Perla’s jaw dropped and she let out a little shriek.

  “That has to be me he’s writing about! Why can’t he let this drop? He’s obsessed with me! Hold on a moment, Carlotta,” she said weakly, dropping the phone onto the bed and half-burying the mouthpiece under the covers so her friend wouldn’t hear what was to come.

  “The infamous lady … that’s how I’ll be remembered!” Perla cried.

  Almost immediately, her face turned red and blotchy. The veins on her neck bulged. Perla closed her eyes and let out a gut-wrenching scream. Her charming Johannesburg accent turned harsh and common.

  “I hate that fucking Gus Bailey! I’m not going to let that piece of shit get away with this!”

  She hurled the Nymphenburg coffee cup, still filled with coffee, across the room. As it crashed against the persimmon-colored laquered bedroom wall, to which Ferdy Trocadero had applied seventeen coats of paint in an effort to get the effect he wanted, brown coffee splattered everywhere. Perla followed this by swinging the coffeepot at the wall too. The pot, craved by museums in New York, Vienna, and London, crashed against all those layers of paint, breaking into pieces.

  “Oh no, Madame!” cried Helga, who fell to her knees and began gathering up the broken porcelain.

  Perla paced the room, stepping over the broken chunks.

  “I’ll tie up that publishing house in slander suits until they go out of business! I tell you, Helga—I just want to know if anyone in my household is talking to him.”

  Perla stopped suddenly when she saw the phone peeking out from under the blankets on the bed. She walked over and slowly picked it up.

  “Carlotta?”

  “What was that smashing noise and that scream? Are you okay, Perla?”

  “Helga dropped the breakfast tray and the coffee cup smashed. She was upset. You must be more careful, Helga,” she said in a scolding voice.

  Helga, who was used to such treatment, continued to pick up the smashed pieces.

  “I think you should call your lawyer,” said Carlotta. “Books can be stopped, you know. There was that woman in England who had a book about her life withdrawn and pulped.”

  “Yes, yes, I will do that,” replied Perla quickly. “He’s already written six articles in Park Avenue on my beloved Konstantin’s death. You’d think that would be enough. And that’s just a magazine, after all. Articles come and go. They get thrown out and people soon forget. But a book is forever,” she continued with a sigh. “Books are artfully displayed in the windows of bookshops. ‘Oh, that’s the book about Perla Zacharias,’ people will say.”

  “Perla, please,” Carlotta interrupted.

  “But it’s true, isn’t it? Books are placed on bedside tables in guest rooms. Books end up in libraries, like the Manhattan Public Library, where they stay forever.”

  Perla paused to catch her breath.

  “Forever, Carlotta.”

  “You should think about making a major philanthropic gift to deflect this unpleasantness. No one can fault someone who does tremendous charitable work. Look at Adele Harcourt.”

  Perla rested on the edge of the bed and rolled her neck back.

  “Oh, Carlotta—last night at your house I had such a nice talk after dinner with Percy and Ormolu Webb. They never mentioned the fire or the articles in Park Avenue, and I thought people were finally beginning to forget this business and accept me for who I am. They just loved hearing about Empress Eugénie of France, they really did.” Her voice trailed off to a whimper.

  Perla placed her hand on her forehead.

  “And now this!”

  After hanging up with Carlotta, and sitting quietly for a moment thinking, she motioned to Helga, who was still on her hands and knees picking up the pieces of the destroyed Nymphenburg porcelain, and said, “Helga, when you’re done cleaning up that mess, please tell Willard to meet me in the study. I’ll play Mr. Bailey’s game. Willard has collected an entire file’s worth of unsavory gossip about the esteemed author. Gus Bailey has been on the scene so long and made so many enemies that the stories could fill up five novels. I’m sure he won’t want some of these rumors back in circulation; especially with that lawsuit of his pending. I’ll just have to remind him who holds the power here. I’m sure we can come to some kind of agreement.”

  “Yes, Madame.” Helga nodded. “You will make him sorry.”

  Perla resumed pacing back and forth. She knew it wasn’t enough to stop Gus from writing, although that would be fun. She needed to carefully construct a plan, one where she would come out smelling like a rose. First she would try to charm Gus. He was bound to decline but at least she could tell everyone she tried and shake her head sadly at his rejection. Then she would need to appeal to Manhattan society in a big, memorable way. She needed to get her name associated with a great institution, one that would overshadow anything that the Gus Baileys of the world could ever say about her. And
Perla knew just the one that would simultaneously give her social prestige and piss-kick Gus Bailey right in his writerly balls.

  “Simon, it’s Perla. Listen to me. I’m going to made a donation to the Manhattan Public Library that’s gonna knock everyone’s socks off. And, Simon, I’ll go to the library myself but I want an announcement straight from you.”

  Helga looked up at Perla from where she had gone back to picking up the pieces of Empress Eugénie’s teapot and noticed her employer’s trembling hands, her still-blotchy face. She had seen her boss like this before and she knew it was best to quietly do her job and then flee the scene as quickly as possible.

  “This is only just beginning. I’ll shut down his shitty little book! I’ll give him infamous lady!”

  CHAPTER 7

  LIL ALTEMUS HAD SUCH A DIFFICULT TIME DECIDING whom to invite to her first lunch party in her new apartment, as her dining room, which had originally been a spare bedroom, only seated eight comfortably, or uncomfortably, as Lil had taken to saying after her first dinner party the previous week. In her old dining room on Fifth Avenue, she could easily seat twenty-four without giving it a second thought, not even having to bring in an extra chair or two from the massive front hall. Lil wanted everything to be particularly nice, as her guest of honor was Adele Harcourt, “that old darling,” as Lil said about her when she invited the other five guests, with the ever-present Addison Kent, whom Adele asked if she could bring, making up the eight. “Addison’s such fun, and he takes me to see all the movies,” said Adele, who was going out less and less. When Adele arrived, beautifully dressed as always, in her black suit, white gloves, and straw hat and veil, she seemed tired as she leaned on Addison’s arm. Addison had changed into a well-cut tweed jacket, with a pocket handkerchief and matching tie that Lil recognized as having belonged to Winkie Williams. He made no mention of the cremation he had attended earlier in the day, but it was apparent from Lil’s expression that she had been informed of Winkie’s passing.