The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  There is a silence after this. Then Bernice Walton, one of the committee members, breaks it to say brightly, “Anyway, I think Carol deserves to be congratulated on having carried the negotiations with the Van Degans this far.”

  There is a polite round of applause.

  Corydon McCurdy scowls. “Well, perhaps,” he says. “I’ll have to discuss all this with the director, of course. And with our own legal counsel.”

  And Carol leaves the meeting trying to conceal her fury.

  “Well, I’ve found out this much about that Beryl Stokes,” Pookie Satterthwaite says to Patsy Collingwood as they sit having coffee at the E.A.T. Café on Madison Avenue. “One of our doormen told me that William Luckman, who wrote that dirty book, has paid quite a few visits to Mrs. Stokes this week while her husband’s been out of town. What do you make of that, sweetie?”

  Patsy covers her mouth with her fingertips to conceal a yawn. “So what?” she says. “So she’s having an affair. Everybody has affairs. I thought you were going to do something to get us included in the Lieblings’ circle.”

  Pookie looks briefly crestfallen. Then she says, “The Lieblings’ apartment was burglarized last night.”

  “Everybody gets burglarized. Did they get away with a lot of good stuff?”

  “That’s the funny thing about it. The burglars apparently didn’t take a thing.”

  “How humiliating—to have a burglar who can’t find anything worth taking. I suppose Roxy will do an item on it. More ink for Carol Liebling.”

  “Now, Patsy. That’s the last thing River House needs—an item about a burglary. It was apparently an inside job. Everybody says it was her black maid. I know what’s going to happen, though.”

  “What?”

  “Noah Liebling’s the president of our board. He’s going to use this thing to try to slap another assessment on us for more security. But we’re not going to let him.”

  “Well,” Patsy says, “I’ve got to run. Consciousness-raising class.” She signals the waiter for their check. “By the way, I got our last lunch at Mortimer’s. Today’s on you.”

  “Patsy, you did not get our last lunch. I did. I distinctly remember, sweetie.”

  “Pookie, I got our last two lunches, actually. Today is definitely on you.”

  “You did not, sweetie. I did. I can even show you the credit card receipt.” She fumbles in her Chanel bag. “I know I’ve got it in here somewhere.”

  “Look, Pookie, you’re getting off easy today. Two cups of coffee.”

  “But at three dollars a cup! Oh, all right.” She hands the waiter a gold American Express card.

  “Sorry, ma’am. We don’t take credit cards for anything under twenty-five dollars.”

  “But I didn’t bring any cash.…”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Patsy says, and she tosses a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Keep the change. Now I’ve really got to run.…”

  On the thirtieth floor of the Ingraham Building, Miss Edith Ackerman is seated at her desk. But it is not her regular desk, and this is not her regular office, and that is part of the trouble.

  Edith is Noah Liebling’s secretary, and has been for the past nineteen years. This week, with her boss out of town, she was looking forward to catching up on her reading—she is three issues behind with her McCall’s—without much else to do besides fielding his telephone calls, taking his messages, forwarding the important calls, and faxing the important mail, to his numbers in Atlantic City. The earlier part of the week was just like that, routine.

  But this morning, seated at her usual desk outside her boss’s office, after finishing transcribing some letters for him and signing them for him “Dictated, but not signed,” she had just reached into her shopping bag for the November McCall’s, which announced a new and absolutely foolproof diet, when all hell broke loose.

  It was Jonesy, Miss Hannah’s private secretary, on the phone. “She’s here!” Jonesy said with great urgency. “We need you here to help out!” And so Edith has been commandeered by the old lady. “Since you won’t have much else to do today,” was the way Jonesy put it.

  “Commandeered” is the right word. This has happened before when her boss has been out of town, and Edith always resents it when it does. Miss Hannah does not come to the office on any regular basis. Sometimes weeks go by without her putting in an appearance, and some people might say this is a blessing. But to Edith this is the worst part about it. Miss Hannah’s appearances are always sudden and unannounced, and when they occur the entire building is galvanized into looking busy and all hell breaks loose.

  Edith loves working for Mr. Noah, as everyone calls him. Everyone in the company loves Mr. Noah. Edith herself, though she would never admit it to a soul, is secretly in love with Mr. Noah. Sometimes at night, alone in her bed with Kitty, her Siamese, on the pillow beside her, Edith has dreamt that she was being passionately embraced by Mr. Noah, and awakes from the dream feeling ashamed of herself. After all, Mr. Noah is really some sort of cousin of hers, though Edith is not certain how the cousinship works out. Her father, when he came from Poland as a boy in 1910, was told to look up “rich Cousin Jules in America.” Work was found for him in the New Jersey bottling plant, and after she graduated from high school, work was found for his daughter Edith as well. And here she still is.

  Like everyone else, Edith Ackerman feels sorry for Mr. Noah, always under Miss Hannah’s thumb yet never complaining, always cheerful. Mr. Noah is a saint, always so nice to everyone.

  Miss Hannah is something else again. Miss Hannah, of course, is no relative of Edith’s at all. Miss Hannah is what Edith’s father used to call “one of those high-and-mighty Deitsch.” Everyone hates Miss Hannah. No, “hates” is not the right word. The word is terror. Everyone is terrified of Miss Hannah. She is called Miss Hannah, and whenever she decides to loom on the scene, it is “Miss Hannah wants this!” “Miss Hannah wants that!” As underlings scuttle about the building, carrying out her orders. She is Miss Hannah to her face, as in “Yes, Miss Hannah,” “No, Miss Hannah,” “Right away, Miss Hannah!” “Can do, Miss Hannah!” “I’ll get those figures for you, Miss Hannah!” Behind her back Miss Hannah is “the old lady,” or “the old bag,” or “the old battle-ax,” or the old less polite word beginning with b.

  When she makes one of her appearances in the building, she arrives by private elevator and ascends nonstop to the thirtieth floor, where she is escorted to her corner office, where she sits in splendid isolation behind closed double doors, as she is sitting now, presumably. This morning her actual physical presence has not yet been revealed to Edith Ackerman. It is the kind of isolation reserved for kings and village idiots. No one would dare approach her directly unless summoned, and no one would think of initiating a conversation. The job of her executive secretary, Miss Jones—and, oh how Jonesy loves that title—is primarily to shield Miss Hannah from lesser mortals. Of course, as an executive secretary, Jonesy has her own secretary. Lately, in fact, Edith has noticed that Jonesy has begun billing herself on memos as “Executive Assistant to the President,” an even grander form of address.

  What Miss Hannah actually does when she visits the big corner office is something of a mystery to Edith. Because Miss Hannah’s office has its own bathroom, once Miss Hannah is in there, she never needs to come out. That bathroom is a sacred place. Edith wonders if even Jonesy has ever seen it, though the building’s cleaning crew places fresh soap and towels in that bathroom every night, whether anything has been used or not. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that a new girl was once caught by Miss Hannah using her bathroom. The girl was summarily fired, so the story goes. This is probably a fiction.

  When Miss Hannah comes to the office, she hardly ever lunches out. Her lunch is sent in by messenger, a “21” Club hamburger, medium rare. If it is too rare or too well done, an alarm goes off. No, it is merely a buzzer, but everyone reacts as though a bomb had exploded in the basement, tearing about, rushing to telephones, frantic
ally ordering the replacement burger. “This is Mrs. Hannah Liebling’s office calling!”

  But other than eat, what exactly does Miss Hannah do in there? Sometimes Edith has glimpsed Miss Hannah at her big desk poring over what appear to be long columns of figures. Proofs of Ingraham’s ads are always brought to her for final approval and initialing. What else? Meanwhile, Edith Ackerman always knows exactly what she will be expected to do when summoned to “help out” in Miss Hannah’s office. She will be asked to do all the little things that Jonesy and Jonesy’s assistant don’t like to do. When Miss Hannah’s buzzer sounds, Edith will be expected to leap to her feet, seize a steno pad and pencil, and rush into Miss Hannah’s room. Often the order will simply be “Open that window,” or “Turn up the thermostat.” Obviously, a woman in Miss Hannah’s position cannot be expected to place her own telephone calls—though Mr. Noah has no problem doing this—and so the order could be “Get me Mr. So-and-so.” And Edith will be expected to have memorized all the frequently called numbers so she will not have to take the time to look them up, or run them through the telephone’s electronic memory bank.

  Then there is the important matter of Miss Hannah’s Venetian blinds. When she visits her office, Miss Hannah likes the morning sunlight from the east, and so the blinds must be tilted to catch that. But as the sun moves westward, it can shine in Miss Hannah’s eyes, and so the blinds must be tilted the other way. Of course, since the sun moves north in spring and south in the fall, the offending sunlight falls upon Miss Hannah’s eyes at a slightly different time each day. And so an elaborate chart has been worked out, listing the precise dates and times for the Tipping of the Blinds ceremony. This is performed daily, whether Miss Hannah is there or not. After all, who knows when she may suddenly appear? If the blinds are in the wrong position, there is hell to pay.

  No matter what time Miss Hannah arrives, she always leaves the office at precisely five o’clock, and in a great hurry, as though she had a train to catch, which she does not. Mr. Nelson, her driver, is always waiting for her with the car outside the building’s entrance, in a space especially designated “No Parking” just for her. As the hour for her departure approaches, another ritual must be observed. At four-thirty Edith will tap on her door and say, “Four-thirty, Miss Hannah.” A nod. Then, fifteen minutes later, she will announce, “Four forty-five, Miss Hannah.” After the second announcement, announcements are made at five-minute intervals. “Four-fifty, Miss Hannah … Four fifty-five, Miss Hannah.” Why these reminders are necessary, Edith Ackerman hasn’t the remotest idea. Miss Hannah wears a wrist-watch. There is an electric clock on her desk, and another with chimes on the mantel over her fireplace. But the announcements must be made, or heads will roll. Can’t the old battle-ax tell time?

  With the five o’clock announcement, Miss Hannah will heave her large frame out of her chair and make her way to the coat closet. There Edith will stand waiting to help her into her coat, a heavy mink at this time of year. If it is raining, or looks as though it might, Edith will hand her an umbrella. Then she will hand her her reticule and gloves. Miss Hannah usually wears a hat to work, and because Miss Hannah’s hands will now be full, Edith will help her on with the mink hat, securing it to the silver-blue hair with a hatpin. Edith has often thought of ramming that long hatpin right through Miss Hannah’s eardrums. Last of all, if Miss Hannah was wearing them today, Edith will help her into her mink-trimmed boots, easing Miss Hannah’s feet into them one at a time, while Miss Hannah leans on Edith’s shoulder for support, then zipping them up.

  Then, without a word of thanks for any of this, Miss Hannah will stride down the corridor toward her elevator, while employees clear a path for her, murmuring, “Good night, Miss Hannah … Good night, Miss Hannah.…”

  Meanwhile, though very little seems to be happening inside Miss Hannah’s office when she is there, Jonesy and her assistant always make it a point to be consumed with almost frantic industry—Jonesy clicking bossily about in her spike heels, issuing instructions in her reedy voice. When Miss Hannah is closeted in her inner sanctum, an atmosphere of perpetual harassment hangs over the outer office like a mushroom cloud. They are always frowning, those two, too harried and preoccupied to talk as, wearing earphones, they transcribe dictation tapes, place and receive urgent telephone calls, initial important documents and memoranda, and fling confidential pieces of paper from their In boxes into their Out boxes, simultaneously pressing buttons to summon bonded messengers. The urgency and energy of these two ladies is exhausting just to be around on days like this. So vital to the company is the work being done here today that Edith knows she will have a headache by the time she leaves for home tonight. On days like this, this office is run like a crisis center, a war room with an emergency a minute. Working for Mr. Noah is altogether different, sheer joy.

  Edith Ackerman has been with Ingraham almost longer than anyone else, though not always as Mr. Noah’s secretary, of course. Heavens, she can remember when Mr. Noah was just a little boy. The standing joke is that Edith has lasted with the company as long as she has because she knows where lots of corporate skeletons are buried. Edith does nothing to discourage this notion, but actually she knows of hardly any corporate skeletons at all. She has made it a point not to know of skeletons. She remembers old Mr. Jules, of course. Mr. Jules was something of a tyrant, too, but somehow that was all right. Mr. Jules was a man. In Edith’s book, a male tyrant is acceptable, while a female tyrant is just a pain in the kazoo. She knows there’s a double standard here, but that is what she believes. She has a right to what she thinks.

  She remembers some troubled times for the company. She remembers a time, toward the end of the war, when there was almost a major scandal involving price fixing. But Edith is not even sure what price fixing means. She knows that liquor prices vary widely from state to state, and in some states from county to county, and in some towns from store to store. What Ingraham did was to figure their pricing backward from retail. The liquor store owner needed to make a fair margin of profit, and so did the wholesaler, and what was left over went to Ingraham. It seemed a fair enough arrangement to Edith. But there was a Louisville retailer who took the company to court, charging price fixing. She remembers how skillfully Mr. Jules handled it in the end.

  He called two of his vice-presidents into his office. “Eddie and Charlie,” he said, “somebody’s going to have to sit for this. The Kentucky attorney general isn’t going to let us off unless somebody sits. It’s going to be one of you. Which one of you is it going to be?”

  The two men eyed each other uneasily. “Flip a coin?” one of them said.

  “Now, look at it this way,” Mr. Jules said. “Charlie is thirty-nine, married, with three kids. The oldest enters Penn State in the fall. Eddie, you’re twenty-seven, no wife, no kids.”

  “A fiancée,” Eddie muttered, looking at his shoes.

  “Which one of you do you think it should be?”

  “I guess me,” Eddie said at last.

  Now that, Edith thinks, is the way to run a company. It was only, she was assured, a white-collar crime, which was like no crime at all. Eddie’s sentence was only two years. His prison was more like a country club, and every week Mr. Jules sent him a box of homemade brownies. In nine months’ time, with good behavior, Eddie was out, and back at work at Ingraham’s with an increase in salary. There was no publicity. Would Miss Hannah ever be able to solve a problem as neatly as that? Edith thinks not.

  Edith also remembers Miss Bathy. Now, there was a woman who was a delight to work for, as different from her older sister as night from day. If Miss Hannah is the Wicked Witch of the West, Miss Bathy was Glinda, the Good Witch. Everybody loved Miss Bathy. She was as pretty to look at as she was fun to be with, always a smile for everyone. Miss Bathy was considered to be the company’s advertising genius. To Edith, Ingraham’s advertising no longer has the special flair it had when Miss Bathy handled it.

  Edith remembers the famous “Men of Eminence” campa
ign, for instance. In that series famous scientists, educators, authors, concert artists, doctors, captains of industry, and even a U.S. senator and a Supreme Court judge were persuaded to pose for photographs showing them enjoying a glass of V.S.O.P. The copy stressed that these distinguished gentlemen were not being paid for their endorsements. Instead, a contribution of one thousand dollars was being paid by Ingraham to their favorite charities, though Edith happens to know that, in the case of one college president, his favorite charity had been his son-in-law’s bank account. Then there was Miss Bathy’s “Gracious Living” series. In that one the message was that, by serving V.S.O.P., a host or hostess could greatly improve his or her social status. It was this series that had been the first in history to show a woman pouring, and even sipping, a cocktail. Everyone had quaked in fear over those ads, sure that there would be a public outcry over this, and that the government would step in and force them to cancel the campaign. But, as Miss Bathy predicted, nothing of the sort happened, though sales figures for the brand soared. Those Gracious Living ads, it was said at the time, changed American liquor advertising forevermore, as everyone in the industry scrambled to copy Ingraham.

  Edith has heard all the rumors about there being a “relationship” between Miss Bathy and Mr. Jules. She doesn’t believe a word of any of it. Whenever she saw Mr. Jules and Miss Bathy together, their relationship was all business, and nothing but. Miss Bathy also supplied another important service to the company. There were plenty of times when certain corporate skulls had to be cracked together. Mr. Jules and Miss Hannah handled this unpleasant work, and then Miss Bathy applied the bandages, the soothing poultices, the healing compresses of cotton gauze, the comforting words, the boxes of homemade brownies. After a dose of Miss Bathy’s tender, loving care, the violent dressing-down from Mr. Jules—who often hurled heavy objects in the direction of people who brought him unwelcome news—never seemed quite so bad.