Too Much Money

by Dominick Dunne

  “The word is out that you don’t want to see anybody. Who was it who gave you the false information about Diandra Lomax’s disappearance?” asked Bobby. “How did he get to you?”

  For some reason, Gus found it difficult to talk about the man, whose real name was Cal Hornett. Their last conversation had taken place in England. By that time Gus had known he was a fraud who had told him a false story and cost him an enormous amount of trouble and money. Their phone call in England had been ugly. Gus had grown to feel fearful of him.

  “Dear God,” said Gus, momentarily diverted from the horse trainer with the powerful Middle East connections by someone he noticed across the room.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Bobby.

  “Perla Zacharias just came in. She’s not fond of me. I haven’t seen her since the trial in Biarritz. I hope there’s not a scene.”

  “Sable coat? Face-lift to the max? That one?” asked Bobby.

  “That’s Perla. God, look what she’s done to her face. The left eyelid droops more than the right. She looks like she’s in the witness protection program. I can’t believe Robert’s going to seat her right next to me on the banquette, but he is,” said Gus. “I guess he doesn’t read my diary in Park Avenue or the gossip columns.”

  “Just keep talking. Don’t look,” said Bobby.

  “I CAN’T believe I’m sitting directly next to that odious Gus Bailey,” said Perla after she had greeted Addison Kent, kissing him on both cheeks.

  “He doesn’t notice. He’s deep in conversation,” reassured Addison.

  “He noticed,” said Perla.

  “Aren’t you going to take off your sable coat, Perla?” asked Addison.

  She slipped out of her coat and placed it on the banquette between herself and Gus, as if to build a sable wall between them. She never looked in his direction. They had not seen each other since the last day of the male nurse’s trial in Biarritz, where they had also never looked at each other. Their last interaction had been when she called him at his house in Prud’homme. But Perla Zacharias was finished trying to appeal to that bastard. She had other avenues to pursue, and she would absolutely pursue them. Gus Bailey was but a minor speed bump on her rise to the top.

  She raised her voice slightly as she said to Addison, “The Prince of Wales said to me the other night at Clarence House, when I told him I had bought so many things belonging to the Windsors at the auction, he said to me, ‘My great-uncle was not a good man, a most peculiar individual.’ Don’t you think it’s amazing that he made such a personal revelation to me?”

  “How much did it cost to sit next to him?” asked Addison. Perla quietly gasped. She preferred to have people think she had been invited to Clarence House as the personal guest of the future king and his duchess, not that her exalted philanthropy to the prince’s charity had earned her the best seat at the table. Addison Kent still had much to learn about being the walker of the third richest woman in the world.

  CHAPTER 15

  GUS STAYED HOME THAT WEDNESDAY NIGHT TO watch his television show, Augustus Bailey Presents. He usually watched rough cuts and final cuts of his shows before they went on the air, but this night the producer and editor had been working up to the last minute, making changes, and there hadn’t been an advance screening. Gus’s introduction and narration of the show had been shot only the day before at his home in Prud’homme, Connecticut. He felt a bit of anxiety, as he personally knew the imprisoned Elias Renthal, whose story of financial malfeasance was the subject of that evening’s episode. It was Gus who had persuaded the president of the Butterfield Club to speak on camera about the reasons why Elias Renthal had been asked to resign from the prestigious men’s club on Fifth Avenue before the trial that sent him to prison for seven years. It was Gus who had persuaded Lord Deeds, the delinquent, drugged, and disinherited son of the Duke and Duchess of Chatfield, Bunny and Chiquita, to say on camera that the fabulous social climb of the Renthals had had much to do with the new acre of roof for Deeds Castle, which Elias had paid for at a cost of over a million dollars, assuring him a permanent invitation to the famous shoots at Deeds Castle. It was Gus who had gotten Max Luby to speak on camera in defense of his imprisoned friend.

  Gus, seated in front of a bookcase in the living room of his house in Prud’homme, addressed the television audience:

  “Social climbers get a bad rap. I dabbled myself in the art of it, so I know. They are fascinating to watch. Many fall by the wayside, but others go the whole way and end up as old guard to everyone except the real old guard. Elias Renthal is a massively noticeable presence in whatever circumstance he finds himself, even prison. Stout, beautifully dressed in English bespoke suits and shirts and ties and shoes before his incarceration, he drew people in society to him with his welcoming smile and jolly manner, as if proximity to him would bring them the vast riches that he made for himself. By his side always was the beautiful red-haired Ruby Renthal, who divorced and remarried Elias when he was in prison. Elias took to the grand life as if he were born to it. He chartered large yachts for Mediterranean cruises with the swellest cast of characters you ever heard of. Elias became a part of that world. If you could have seen him in his shooting clothes from Huntsman in London at Bunny and Chiquita Chatfield’s shooting party at Deeds Castle. He belonged. He was funny. He told wonderful stories. He was generous. He had given the new roof for the castle in a confidential agreement with the duke, which everyone eventually heard about. He created good times for the grandest people in the world.”

  OVER AT the Butterfield Club, Percy Webb turned to Herkie Saybrook, when they were playing backgammon, and said, “Elias is going to be pissed off at Gus Bailey about this show when he gets out of prison.” And, the next day, during lunch at the Rhinelander Hotel, Lorcan Styne turned to Perla Zacharias and said, “Elias Renthal is not going to be happy about that show of Gus Bailey’s last night.”

  And Lil Altemus, who was having her dreaded lunch with her stepmother, Dodo Van Degan, at the corner table in the back room of Swifty’s, mentioned in passing that she’d heard someone had brought two TV sets into the dining room at a dinner party to watch the Elias Renthal story on Gus Bailey’s show. But Dodo didn’t seem very impressed, so Lil changed the subject, slightly.

  Despite the considerable riches of her stepmother, of which she was envious, Lil was never able to think of her as anything but the poor relation she had once been.

  “I do so hate the word common,” said Lil. “It’s so incredibly snobbish, and I’m not snobbish at all, as anyone who knows me can tell you, but sometimes, it’s the only word that fits the situation, and Mrs. Renthal, The Convict’s Wife Ruby Renthal, is common. That’s all I have to say on the matter. Imagine, she literally stole my cook. Gert was with me for more than twenty-five years. She’s going to let Gert use her husband’s private plane to take her to Ireland for her family visits. Now that’s common.”

  “I have another interpretation of that story,” said Dodo, who was tired of hearing Lil repeat the story of Gert’s betrayal.

  “Which is what?” asked Lil, in a disinterested voice.

  “I bet Maisie Verdurin told Ruby you blackballed her and Elias from getting into your old Fifth Avenue apartment building, and she’s just getting even with you. Even a bitch like you, Lil, can’t blame poor Gert for grabbing up the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Dodo.

  “I’ll never speak to Gert again, ever, ever, ever,” said Lil. “After all I’ve done for her.”

  “From what I hear from Brucie Random, the florist at the Rhinelander Hotel, who always knows all the latest news about everybody, Gert’s also getting double what you paid her, and a sitting room all her own in the new Renthal mansion over on East Seventy-eighth Street. I don’t blame Gert for not wanting to sleep in that little rat’s hole of a maid’s room behind the kitchen in your apartment. You canceled her annual trip to Ireland, for economic reasons, and you counted the change when she came back with the groceries from Grace’s Marketplac
e. She’d have been a fool to turn down that job.”

  Lil always pretended not to hear Dodo’s criticisms. “Such awful people, those Renthals. In my day, we didn’t know people who went to prison,” said Lil. “Now they’re all around us, and they all seem to think they can just pick right up again where they left off before going to prison, as if nothing untoward had happened.”

  “Let’s change the subject,” said Dodo.

  “How come I never see you around at any of the parties? Surely as the rich widow Mrs. Van Degan you must be invited, just for the name you now bear.”

  “Oh, I go to plenty of parties, Lil. We just travel in different circles. In fact, I’ve become a bit of a partygoer. I even have a walker.”

  “You have a walker?” asked Lil, hooting with laughter. “How hilarious! Do tell. Don’t tell me it’s Brucie Random, your friend the florist in the Rhinelander Hotel.”

  “No, it’s not Brucie, but I met him through Brucie, at one of his parties where he sang show tunes, and his friend Jonsie from the wine shop on Madison played the piano. I had such a good time, and they all thought I was a riot. I was sort of the hit of the party.” She left out that her impersonation of Lil counting the change after Gert brought back the groceries from Grace’s Marketplace had had all the guys on the floor laughing. “Jonsie introduced me to Xavior.”

  “Xavior? That’s your walker’s name?” asked Lil.

  “Francis Xavior Branigan, but he’s called Xavior by his friends,” said Dodo.

  “And is Mr. Xavior Branigan a florist, too?” asked Lil.

  “Mr. Branigan is the assistant funeral director at Grant P. Trumbull’s on Madison Avenue,” said Dodo.

  “An undertaker? You’re going around to parties with an undertaker?” Lil shrieked with laughter. “I haven’t had such a good laugh in months. You know what they call women like you, don’t you? Winkie Williams, I miss him so, told me this.”

  “What do they call women like me, Lil?” asked Dodo.

  “Fag hags,” said Lil, spitting it out.

  “Well, as long as I’m happy in the role, and I am, that’s all that matters,” said Dodo, giving herself a moment to think of how to get even. She knew that bad language and dirty talk offended Lil.

  “Your esteemed father popped my cherry when he was eighty-three and I was a thirty-eight-year-old maiden lady. Push and squirt. Over in an instant. I never enjoyed it much after that. Usually I just showed him a dirty movie and jerked him off.”

  Lil covered her ears with her hands and began humming. “I am not listening. I can’t hear a word you are saying,” she said.

  “Xavior’s so thoughtful. So kind. Xavior let me look at Winkie Williams in the casket the night before he was cremated. He was wearing the lavender tie from Turnbull & Asser you gave him for his birthday.”

  “I heard that from Addison Kent,” said Lil, in a tone that indicated her source was of a higher social level than Dodo’s source, even though Lil did not personally care for him.

  “Jonsie told me Addison Kent and Xavior had sex in the men’s toilet off the front hall of the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home when Addison took over Winkie’s clothes for the cremation,” said Dodo.

  “I hate you, Dodo,” said Lil.

  “Not as much as I hate you, Lil,” said Dodo. “Why do we go on with these ridiculous lunches that we both hate?”

  “We have to keep up some semblance of a family,” Lil said, reminding herself as much as Dodo, as she did every time their meals together became too much to bear. “The Van Degans. The Harcourts. The Grenvilles. The Rockefellers. We all used to matter so much. Now only the Rockefellers do. When I was growing up, people always used to say how rich the Van Degans were, and we were. Back then if your family had forty million dollars, like we had, it was like being in the financial stratosphere. Now forty million dollars means absolutely nothing, even if we still had it, which we don’t, thanks to my nephew, young Laurance. Forty million dollars is what the Murdochs paid for their new apartment on Fifth Avenue. And all those ghastly new people you never heard of before have so much more money than we ever had when we were at the top of the peak. Gus Bailey told me that Perla Zacharias has more money than you can imagine. Simon Cabot told Gus that Perla’s money was limitless.” Lil sighed. “Is it my turn or yours to pay?”

  “I gave Robert my American Express card when I came in,” said Dodo. “The rich relative always takes the poor relative to lunch.”

  “I am not poor,” said Lil proudly.

  “No, of course not,” replied Dodo. “You’re just living in reduced circumstances. Maybe Adele Harcourt will leave you a little something in her will, if she hasn’t left everything to the poor. By the way, how is Adele Harcourt? You never hear much about her since she fell and broke her back in your kitchen.”

  “It was her hip, not her back, as you know perfectly well, and I’ve had the linoleum changed, no thanks to you,” said Lil, gathering her things. “Poor Adele doesn’t see anybody. Except me, on occasion. Her former butler, George, told Kay Kay Somerset, who lives on the floor below at Seven Seventy-eight Park, that she’s very unwell.”

  CHAPTER 16

  ADDISON KENT MADE A FATAL ERROR WHEN HE high-hatted Brucie Random in his very chic flower shop in the Rhinelander Hotel on upper Madison Avenue. Addison, dressed stylishly for a lunch party, with his top coat hanging on his shoulders, like a cape, had dropped in to send some jonquils—“masses and masses of them”—to Adele Harcourt, who was still laid up after tripping over some old linoleum in Lil Altemus’s ghastly new apartment and breaking her hip. “The card shouldn’t be addressed to Mrs. Adele Harcourt, which people always call her,” Addison said to Brucie, in what Brucie Random told his friend Jonsie over at Thierry’s Wine and Liquors had been a condescending voice, explaining the proper ways of society to a florist whose shop catered to people in society. Brucie kept a copy of the Social Register right next to the cash register and didn’t have to be told how to properly address Adele Harcourt, who had been a customer of his flower shop ever since Brucie had started there when he couldn’t get any more work on Broadway after Company closed in 1972. One of the great excitements of his life was that he was in the chorus on the album of Company, which happened to be playing at that very moment in the shop.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” said Brucie. “It’s Mrs. Vincent Belmont Harcourt, not Mrs. Adele Harcourt. Mrs. Harcourt is one of my best customers. I don’t know if it matters, but Mrs. Percy Webb, the divine Ormolu, for whom I’m going to name a scented candle, has just ordered three dozen jonquils for Mrs. Vincent Belmont Harcourt, which are being delivered to her Park Avenue apartment at this very moment. Mrs. Harcourt is very unwell, I hear.”

  “Change my order to the tangerine-colored roses, then,” said Addison, who picked up a scented candle and breathed in its aroma. “Lovely, lovely.”

  “That’s what Winkie bought before he died,” said Brucie.

  “Yes, I know. I saw it next to his bed when I discovered his body that morning,” said Addison.

  “I heard you discovered the body,” said Brucie.

  “Such a shock, when I arrived there and found him dead,” said Addison, leaning over to inhale the scent of the candle again.

  “Yeah, I bet it was a real surprise for you.”

  Immaculata, Winkie’s cleaning lady, who was also Brucie’s cleaning lady, had heard the next morning from Albie, the superintendent of Winkie’s building, that Mr. Addison Kent had been in the apartment. Immaculata had found the empty bottle of Seconal in the wastebasket in Winkie’s bathroom, where Addison probably had dropped it before leaving, because Winkie certainly couldn’t have navigated his way into the bathroom, or so Brucie and Jonsie figured, after having swallowed a whole bottle.

  “Actually, he wore one of the tangerine roses in the buttonhole of his gray suit in the casket when he was cremated. He looked very smart,” said Addison, who realized he had offended Brucie and thought a flower compliment would make things right.
>
  “So I heard. Xavior, from the funeral home, is a friend of mine,” Brucie said pointedly.

  “Oh, Xavior,” said Addison vaguely. “Yes, I met Xavior at the cremation.”

  “You did more than meet him is what I heard,” Brucie said.

  Addison blushed.

  Thereafter, Brucie Random, Jonsie, and Xavior always referred to Addison Kent as Miss Kent behind his back. “Miss Kent was in. She ordered tangerine-colored roses for Adele Harcourt,” said Brucie over the phone. “She had dick on her breath. I almost told her to gargle with Listerine before kissing all those society ladies at lunch, but I refrained. Hey, that fifty-five-dollar scented candle she was sniffing all of a sudden isn’t here anymore. Better watch out for Miss Kent. She’s a klepto.”

  “THAT GOLD cigarette case that Cole Porter left Winkie in his will, I can’t find it anywhere,” said Lil Altemus. “Cole Porter had it engraved in his own handwriting, ‘To Winkie Williams, the Extra Man himself, Love, Cole.’ You can imagine Winkie’s excitement when he got it. I know for a fact that Winkie wanted to leave it to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. I heard him tell that to Diana Vreeland years and years ago when she was still in charge of the whole thing. It would be so divine in a vitrine. You didn’t see it, did you, Addison?”

  “No, I don’t know where he put it,” replied Addison.

  “I bet that maid took it,” said Lil. “Immaculata. I never trusted Immaculata. She once tried to sue me.”

  “ELIAS, I think you’re going to have to start going to temple on a regular basis when you get out of this facility.”