The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Mr. Noah fulfills that function now. Miss Bathy retired after Mr. Noah joined the company. Edith has heard it said that Mr. Noah and his aunt do not get on. What may have caused this, Edith does not know. It is none of her business, and she has never asked.

  In addition to her job and Kitty, her Siamese, there is only one other light in the life of Edith Ackerman, and that is the woman she calls the Little Girl. The Little Girl is fifty-three years old now, but Edith has always called her that, though her given name is Tillie. The Little Girl is her niece, and Edith has had her since 1949, when she was eight, and Edith’s brother was shot down in Korea, and the Little Girl’s mother didn’t want to keep her. The little girl is feebleminded. Oh, Edith knows this is not a term one is supposed to use anymore. Today she would probably be described as learning disabled, or intellectually challenged, but whatever you call it, the Little Girl’s mental age is that of a five- or six-year-old.

  She must be watched very carefully. During the day the Little Girl attends a special school for others like her, and at the end of the day, Edith picks her up and takes her home to her apartment in Kew Gardens, where the Little Girl has the spare bedroom. For the most part, she is sweet and gentle-natured. She plays endlessly with Kitty. But there are times when she wants to be sexually active, and then she must be restrained.

  The Little Girl is also diabetic. Edith gives her her insulin injections, tests her urine, weighs her food, and supervises her exercise on the stair-climbing machine. But this morning she had some sort of seizure. Her bed was drenched with sweat, her neck was twisted at an awkward angle, she was making incomprehensible gurgling sounds in her throat, and she seemed in danger of slipping into a coma. Her blood-sugar count had shot up for some reason, and Edith quickly gave her a shot. After that she seemed to improve, but Edith decided not to send her to her school today. Instead, a neighbor had agreed to come in and take care of her. For all the worry she is, Edith loves the Little Girl very much, and frets about her night and day.

  Now the buzzer sounds, and Edith Ackerman springs to her feet, seizes her steno pad and pencil, and rushes to the double doors.

  “Yes, Miss Hannah?”

  Miss Hannah sits crouched behind her big desk, many pieces of paper spread out in front of her. Without looking up, she says, “What time is it?”

  Edith consults the clock on the mantel. “Ten-eighteen, Miss Hannah,” she says.

  “I want you to call my son in Atlantic City,” she says. “He may be in a meeting, and if he is, don’t bring him out. Just leave a message for him. Tell him I want to see him at my house tonight, first thing, when he gets back to New York.”

  “That may be quite late, Miss Hannah.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be up.”

  “He’ll have luggage, Miss Hannah. He may want to drop that off at River House before—”

  “No. I want to see him at One thousand Park before he goes home. I want to see him first thing, the minute he gets back to the city. My doorman can watch his luggage.”

  “Yes, Miss Hannah.”

  “Make sure he gets that message. It’s very important.”

  “Yes, Miss Hannah.”

  Edith starts to withdraw.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” she says.

  “Yes, Miss Hannah?”

  “Phone my daughter-in-law and tell her I’d like her to join me for lunch.”

  “Yes, Miss Hannah. Will you be eating here at the office, Miss Hannah, or would you like me to call for a reservation?”

  “We’ll be lunching at my apartment. Twelve-thirty.”

  “Yes, Miss Hannah. By the way, Miss Hannah, that Mr. William Luckman called again.”

  “Keep telling him what I told you to tell him. That I am not available. I was not impressed with that young man. He spells trouble, if you ask me. I don’t wish to speak with him.”

  “I understand, Miss Hannah.”

  Miss Hannah pushes her chair back from her big desk. “I’m ready to go home now,” she says. “You can fetch my things.”

  “Yes, Miss Hannah.”

  While Miss Hannah leans heavily on Edith’s shoulder, as Edith helps her into her mink-trimmed boots, Edith thinks: Praise the Lord. Miss Hannah is actually leaving the office early. Now perhaps she, too, can leave for home early, and check in on her Little Girl.

  Miss Hannah straightens up. “Thank you, uh—uh—”

  “It’s Edith, Miss Hannah.”

  “Thank you, Edith.”

  That’s another thing. For all the years Edith has worked for the company, Miss Hannah has never been able to remember her name.

  17

  Noon

  “Mrs. Liebling? This is Joanne Satterthwaite calling. I live in Twenty-nine A.”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Satterthwaite,” Carol says. “How are you?”

  “I’m well. May I speak to Mr. Liebling, please?”

  There is something in Mrs. Satterthwaite’s tone, a certain undue formality, considering they are neighbors in the same building, that alerts Carol to the possibility that this may not be a friendly telephone call. “I’m sorry, but Noah’s out of town today,” she says. “He’ll be back around—”

  “Well, I might as well tell you,” Pookie Satterthwaite says, “and you can relay it to your husband. There are a number of us—quite a few of us, in fact, here at River House—who are not at all happy with what’s going on in this building.”

  “Oh?” Carol says. “What’s the matter?”

  “My husband, Darius, and I have decided to head up a protest committee.”

  “Oh? To protest what?”

  “Your burglary.”

  “Well, please put me on your committee, too,” Carol says smoothly. “I’m the one who’s been most put out by it, even though nothing was—”

  “It was obviously an inside job,” Pookie says. “It was obviously one of your colored maids.”

  “I only have one maid,” Carol says, “and Mary was visiting her son and daughter-in-law in Islip yesterday afternoon when it happened. So Mary had nothing to do with it.”

  “Well, as you know, most of us here at River House try not to employ colored. They’re unreliable. They have relatives, and friends. They bring strangers into the building.”

  “Mary has been with me for seventeen years, Mrs. Satterthwaite,” Carol says. “She is absolutely—”

  “Obviously, we can’t dictate who you want to hire and who you don’t. But this situation is getting out of control, and our committee’s purpose is to bring it under control. The main thing is—and I want you to make this quite clear to your husband—we are not going to let you use this inside-job burglary of yours as an excuse to slap another assessment on us for stepped-up security. And if that’s what your husband’s got on his mind to do, we are simply not going to stand for it, Mrs. Liebling.”

  “Since Noah doesn’t even know about the burglary, I’m sure he has no such thing on his mind,” Carol says.

  “He will, though. We’re all sure of that, because that would be just like him. One of our committee’s purposes is to try to stop him before he tries to do it. I might as well tell you, Mrs. Liebling. There are a number of us here in the building who are not at all happy with the job your husband is doing as president of our board.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” Carol says.

  “We have quite a number of other tenants on our side in this,” Pookie says. “We’ve lined up the Taylors, the Vadricks, the Gerridges, the Sturtevants, the LeMosneys. We’ve got Monica McCluskey and Graham Grenfell. They’re all behind us. And I don’t need to remind you, Mrs. Liebling, that Darius and I own one of the largest apartments in the building. That gives us more voting shares than almost any other tenant. In fact, we think we’ve got enough votes to call for a reelection and throw your husband out as president.”

  “I think you ought to discuss this with my husband,” Carol says. “He’ll be home late tonight. I suggest you call him at his office Monday morning.�
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  “And I suggest you tell him so he’ll be prepared for what we’re prepared to do, if he tries to pull anything!”

  “Very well. Now, I really must hang up, Mrs. Satterthwaite. I’ve got—”

  “And you can tell him we’ve got a plan.”

  “What sort of plan?”

  “For security.”

  “Very well. I’ll tell him.”

  “It’s a three-part plan. First, every servant who works at River House will be required to be photographed, full-face and in profile, and to wear these on a photo-ID badge while working in the building. Second, each servant will be fingerprinted, and the fingerprints will be kept on file in the front office. They’ll have all this done at their own expense, of course, so it won’t cost any of us a penny. And third, if any servant is given a key to an apartment, these keys must be turned in to the front office before the servant leaves the building, and picked up when he comes back in again. This will prevent them from going out and having their keys copied, and handing them out to all their friends.”

  “I don’t think you could get anybody to work in this building under conditions like that,” Carol says.

  “Well, if they want the privilege of serving families who live at River House, that’s what they’re going to have to do,” she says.

  “The privilege of serving people like you?”

  “What do you mean by that crack? I’ve never understood how people like you got into this building in the first place. I thought there were supposed to be certain standards at River House.”

  “At least my apartment has furniture,” Carol says.

  There is a little pause. “Our furniture is all being hand-made in Manila,” she says. “That takes time.”

  “Since nineteen eighty-four?”

  “Wait a minute. You’ve never set foot in my apartment. How did you know we’re still—waiting for a few pieces? Did your husband tell you that? That’s tenant confidentiality. Your husband has violated tenant confidentiality! We can nail him with that one, when I tell my committee that. He’ll be off this building’s board so fast he won’t know what hit him!”

  “Oh, shut up!” Carol says.

  “Kike!”

  Carol slams the receiver down.

  “It sounds like you really blew it, sweetie,” Patsy says. “You’ll never get anywhere with her now that you’ve picked a fight with her. And you won’t get anywhere with that Stokes woman, either, if she’s Carol’s best friend.”

  “She started it! She made a crack about how my apartment is decorated. I wasn’t supposed to take that lying down, was I? She’s never been inside my apartment!”

  “Hmm. Now that you mention it, neither has anybody else. It’s funny, Pookie. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never once invited me over.”

  “It’s not finished yet! As soon as it’s finished, we’re going to have a big party and invite everybody.”

  “Hmm. Well, if I were you, I’d get after that decorator of yours, whoever it is you’re using.”

  “It’s not his fault. It’s Darius’s. We can’t seem to agree on a color scheme.”

  “Hmm. Well, it sounds as though you really blew it this time, sweetie.…”

  “Carol? It’s Roxy Rhinelander at the News. How are you, my darling?”

  “Fine, Roxy. How are you?”

  “Just wonderful, my darling. Say, a little bird tells me there’s a big feud brewing over at River House. Anything in that for my column?”

  “No, Roxy. There’s no feud.”

  “You sure, my darling?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Something about security, I was told.”

  “Really? Who told you that, Roxy?”

  “Confidential sources, my darling! Well, if anything breaks, you’ll make sure I’m the first to know, won’t you? Don’t forget, I’ve given you and your daughter quite a lot of nice ink lately.”

  “There’s no feud, Roxy.”

  Damn her, she thinks. She can see the column item now: “Carol Liebling hotly denies rumors of a big feud brewing over security at oh-so-exclusive River House.…” Could Pookie Satterthwaite be behind this? Noah will be furious.

  “I’m quittin’, Miss Liebling.” Mary stands with her feet planted squarely in the doorway, her hands on her hips.

  “Oh, no!” Carol cries. “What’s the matter, Mary?”

  “Girls downstairs in the laundry room. They be giving me fishy looks. They be saying I robbed your apartment. I ain’t been robbing no apartments.”

  “Of course you haven’t, Mary!”

  “I’m quittin’, Miss Liebling.”

  “Now, Mary, please. You’ve been with us so long. We get along so well. We need you, Mary. Don’t do this just because of what some silly girls in the laundry room are saying!”

  “They say we all got to have mug shots taken and wear badges to get in and out. They say we all got to be fingerprinted, like criminals, Miss Liebling! All account of me.”

  “Nonsense, Mary. You don’t have to be fingerprinted because you haven’t done anything wrong. Nobody can make you be fingerprinted.”

  “I’m quittin’, Miss Liebling. I ain’t workin’ in this building no more.”

  “Look, Mary. When something happens in a building like what happened here yesterday afternoon, people get kind of—hysterical. They get crazy, and they say crazy things. When all this blows over—”

  “Mr. Roger, in the front office. He even axed me if I done it.”

  “I spoke to Mr. Roger. I told him I knew you hadn’t done it. I told him you couldn’t possibly have done it. I told him you were out in Long Island yesterday, visiting your family.”

  “He axed me their name. Their address. Their telephone number. So he could check up on me, see if I was lyin’ to him.”

  “Mr. Roger was just trying to do his job, Mary.”

  “They don’t like colored here.”

  “Now, Mary, that’s just not true. There are quite a few black people working here. There’s Cecil, the porter. There’s Hilton, the building’s engineer. There’s—”

  “That don’t matter. They don’t like colored here. I known that all along.”

  “Listen, Mary. Mr. Liebling is coming home tonight, and I’m going to talk to him. I think it’s high time you got a nice raise, and I’m sure he’ll agree.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m quittin’.”

  “Oh, Mary, please! Don’t do this to us. Now look what you’ve made me do. You’ve made me start to cry, damn it!”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Liebling. I’m quittin’.”

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Van Degan,” Anne says, looking up from a stack of museum correspondence she is filing.

  “You mentioned you were working here,” Georgette says. “And I just happened to be in the museum to see the Diana Vreeland show, so I thought I’d just stop by and say hello. Is it a fascinating job?”

  Anne smiles. “Well, I wouldn’t call it fascinating, exactly,” she says. “But every now and then an interesting letter comes through—though if I stop to read it, it slows up my filing, which is what I’m supposed to be doing. I call it a Catch-22 job.”

  “Catch-22?”

  “If I’m going to get anything out of this job in terms of Bennington, I’ve got to learn something about how an art museum works. But if I try to learn how the museum works, I can’t do the job properly.”

  Georgette Van Degan looks at her watch. “It’s twelve-thirty,” she says. “Have you had lunch?”

  “Not yet, Mrs. Van Degan.”

  “Good. Let’s have lunch. There are some things we need to discuss about the party. If I can use your phone, I’ll call Le Cirque.” Then she looks down at what Anne Liebling is wearing: faded jeans, a sweatshirt with the words GOTCHA COVERED emblazoned on the front, and a pair of bamboo chandelier earrings. “Well, let’s not bother with Le Cirque,” she says. “I live just across the street. I’ll have my cook fix us something. Soup and a salad okay?”

 
“That would be lovely, Mrs. Van Degan,” and she reaches for her down-filled parka, while Georgette Van Degan buttons herself into her fisher jacket.

  “Aunt Carol, it’s Becka Hower,” the woman’s voice says, and for a moment Carol has no idea who this is. Then she remembers Ruth’s estranged daughter from California.

  “Oh yes, Becka.”

  “Aunt Carol, I’m here at Mother’s house, and things are in a terrible state. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “What’s wrong, Becka?”

  “It’s Mother. I’ve got to get back to California, but she won’t let me go. She says she’s been desperately lonely. She wants me to stay and live with her. I can’t do that, Aunt Carol. But she says she’ll kill herself if I leave! And she sounds as though she means it!”

  “Now, Becka. Tell me exactly what’s been happening.”

  “I came here to see her because she asked me to. And because I was curious. I never really knew her, and my father would never talk about her. But ever since I got here, there’s been nothing but—craziness. Do you remember that young man, Ector, who she brought to your house on New Year’s Eve?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, he’s still here, for one thing. I think she’s paying him to stay here. I don’t know that for sure, but it doesn’t seem like Ector has anyplace else to go. I don’t know what their relationship is supposed to be. I don’t think they’re lovers, because she’s given Ector his own room. Actually, Ector turns out to be rather sweet. He’s done everything he possibly can to help. He’s even offered to marry Mother, if that will help.”

  “Oh, dear …”

  “I don’t think she’d do anything as crazy as that, but I don’t know. She reads to him. They watch old movies together. But whenever I try to slip out of the house, she says she needs me. She says she needs us both, for the companionship. She wants us to stay with her for the rest of her life, Aunt Carol. She’s offered to pay me a lot of money if I’ll spend the rest of my life with her, but I can’t do that. And if I say I’ve got to go, she says she’ll kill herself. And Ector—poor Ector—is caught in the middle of it. And then, two days ago, that Mr. Luckman came to call.”

  “Yes …”