Looking startled, he staggers backward, his hand clasped to his throat. Then his knees buckle, and he falls to the floor.
On the rear wheel of his bike, hunched against the handlebars and the wind, he is headed at full speed toward the fallen log, leaps over it, and plunges forward into the darkness.
Carol drops the gun, and it lands on the carpet with a soft thud. She flings herself to her knees on the floor beside him and cradles his head in her arms. “Oh, Noah!” she sobs. “I love you, Noah! Don’t die!”
“You’ve killed him!” Melody cries, and she stoops to reach for the gun.
But Anne is too quick for her, and she, too, drops to her knees and picks up the small, bone-handled pistol. She points it blindly at Melody. “You did all this!” she sobs, and a third shot rings out, and the devastation is complete.
Already, through the broken window, the sounds of police sirens can be heard shrilling upward from the street below.
PART THREE
Grandmont, 1994
21
Some Final Words
“… according to police, appeared to have occurred after a long night of heavy drinking. It is the first time a violent crime has taken place at exclusive River House, arguably New York’s most fashionable residential address.”
Georgette Van Degan switches off the television set from the remote. “Well, we’re off the hook, darling,” she says to her husband. “We won’t have to give that silly coming-out party, and we’ll get to keep the porcelain collection.”
The telephone rings, and she reaches for it. “Oh, yes, Roxy,” she says, “how are you, my precious love? … Oh, no, no, no, my darling. There never was going to be any coming-out party, certainly not with that lush Carol Liebling.… Frankly, I didn’t tell you because I know how upset you journalists get when you print something that isn’t accurate.… And it wasn’t your fault, my darling. I think you got that item from Jacques, the captain at Le Cirque.… I thought so. But he often gets things wrong. It’s the language barrier, you see.… Yes, we did have lunch, but it was to discuss an entirely different matter. I don’t really remember what it was.… Well, you can print a correction if you want to, darling. But at this point I’d really rather not have my name associated with that murderess.… Thanks, lovey, I appreciate that. Bye-e-e-e-e.”
Her husband turns to her. “You know, you really are a god-damned fool, Georgette,” he says. “You really are a stupid god-damned fool.”
“Why? What’s wrong? We’re off the hook! Thank God!”
“Without Carol we’ll never get the Ingraham business. We’ll never get shit from them as long as the old lady is running things!”
“Well, don’t look at me as though I had anything to do with what’s happened, Truck!”
“And the museum gift—that gift is designed to save me millions in taxes! Well, the gift offer still stands.”
“But you said yourself you weren’t sure they’d accept your terms.”
“They will. They will, believe me, when they’ve had a chance to think about it. The museum isn’t being run by Mother Teresa. You stupid fool. I was a fool to think I could take a slut like you out of the bean fields of Indiana and turn you into a lady.”
“And you’re the gentleman? All I’ve got is your first three wives’ word on how you beat up on them. But I’ve had my bruises photographed. In color! And those photographs are all in a safe at my lawyer’s office—so don’t try to mess around with me!”
“Bitch!” And suddenly he pitches forward in his chair, clutching his shirt.
“What’s the matter?”
His fingers paw his chest, and the color has drained from his face. “Heart,” he whispers. “Pain … hurting … call nine-one-one … call nine-one-one … please …”
In all his years in the restaurant business, Glenn Bernbaum of Mortimer’s has never put together a luncheon party the size of this one in such a hurry—twenty-six women, meaning nine four-tops have had to be pushed together, taking up more than half the main dining room. And Patsy Collingwood has indicated that she would have invited many more if her invitations hadn’t had to go out at the last minute, right after hearing this morning’s news. But her guests are all important women, all important customers, and so, for Mr. Bernbaum, all this hasty rearranging of the room has been worth the effort.
Patsy’s guests are:
Marietta Spinola, Bitsy Walcock, Cinnamon La Farge, Bettina Musgrove, the Countess Grazzi, the Ballinger twins, Hermine McGovern, Pookie Satterthwaite, Corliss Thrue, Gloria Tunbridge, old Mrs. Nion Farwell (with the harelip), Cissie Warburton, Consuelo Custin, Lady Eve Cotterford, Chubby Corscadden, Roxy Rhinelander, Gussie Swinburne, Melissa Hart-Turnbull, Cherry de Rothschild, Ernestine Kolowrat, Flossie Bunce, Edwina Lahniers, Babs Goulandris, and Hyacinth Lafoon. Rarely have so many prominent New York society women been gathered at the same table. The News has sent a photographer to record the event.
And now Patsy and Mr. Bernbaum are setting out the place cards, tackling the arduous chore of placement.
“I don’t see a card here for Georgette,” Mr. Bernbaum says.
“Georgette? Georgette who?”
“Van Degan.”
“Oh, her. Her husband’s business is going down the tubes, and he’s given away all their porcelains to save on taxes—and those porcelains were supposed to be her insurance when he dies, because he doesn’t have any. She’s become one of yesterday’s people, I’m afraid. Now, if I could only have gotten Carol Liebling to come, that would have been the coup of all time! But she’s in jail.”
They return to the place cards. “Do you think Cissie Warburton can be trusted to behave herself next to Belinda Ballinger?” she asks him.
And now, after the usual disputes about who has been seated where, and after—as inevitably happens—the guests have rearranged the seating to suit themselves, they are all seated. Drink orders have been taken—mostly for chablis or Perrier with lime, with only old Mrs. Farwell insisting on her customary double bullshot—and Patsy Collingwood taps her water glass with her teaspoon. “Girls!” she says. “Girls! It’s Topic A, and I want to hear everyone’s favorite theory, one by one!”
“Pookie should go first. After all, it happened in her building.”
“Well,” Pookie begins, “all I know is what I heard from James, the night doorman.…”
Two white-coated orderlies carry Truxton Van Degan on a stretcher down the curving staircase of the Van Degans’ Fifth Avenue apartment. Right behind them is a paramedic holding a gold plastic cup over Truxton Van Degan’s nose and mouth, and following him is a second paramedic carrying a bottle of oxygen. Georgette Van Degan supervises the operation from the top of the stairs.
“Remember—no heroic life-sustaining measures,” she calls down to the men on the steps below. “My husband has a living will. He requests no heroic life-sustaining measures.” Then she suddenly screams, “For Christ’s sake, watch out!” One of the paramedics has jogged one of the pair of red Chinese vases with his elbow, and it rocks slightly on its carved ebony base in its lighted niche in the stairwell. “That’s Lang Yao sang-de-boeuf! Those vases are priceless! I won’t even let my maids touch them with a feather duster!”
The four men from the life squad give her an odd look before continuing slowly down the stairwell with their burden.
There were times, when he was in a jokey mood, when Jules Liebling referred to Bathsheba Sachs as “Miss Fix-It” for her ability to smooth over some of the rougher moments that occasionally arose in the distilled spirits industry. She was certainly Miss Fix-It during the trial.
The name Kaminsky, for example, is not uncommon in New York, but when Bathy Sachs learned that the case had been assigned to Judge Ida Kaminsky, she did a little research. She discovered that Judge Kaminsky’s father, who had also been a judge, was indeed the same Judge Saul Kaminsky who, back in the free-for-all days of Prohibition, had acquired a certain indebtedness to the Liebling family. There was no need to r
emind Judge Ida Kaminsky of this fact. She knew.
Given these circumstances, Bathy had no trouble persuading the family that the defendant should waive her right to a jury trial, and to allow the judge to reach a just and fair verdict on her own.
A defendant who is clearly innocent, Bathy reminded them, should never risk having her fate decided by a jury, who will always be asked to wrestle with the knotty problem of “reasonable doubt.”
The New York County prosecutor, who was running for reelection in November, seemed determined at first to make this a major case, assuming that the amount of publicity the case would receive would keep his name and face in the newspapers and on television screens for some time. But when Judge Kaminsky chose the smallest courtroom on Foley Square for her hearing, with its limited space for press and spectators, and with television and other cameras banned, the prosecutor began to find himself frustrated at every turn. Still, he insisted that Carol should stand trial for something called “depraved-indifference murder,” a charge not often heard in courtrooms. Judge Kaminsky, however, ruled that until she had reached her verdict, the word homicide would be substituted for murder.
With his stern prosecutorial eyes glaring at the defendant, the prosecutor kept repeating the obvious: Carol’s fingerprints were on the lethal weapon; there were powder burns on her right hand. And since Carol had an alcohol level in her bloodstream of .10 at the time of her arrest, he asserted that the shootings occurred in “a wild, mad, drunken rage.”
The lawyer Bathy had chosen for Carol’s defense was a young man named Justin Baar. Quiet, polite, soft-spoken, and almost shy-seeming in Judge Kaminsky’s presence, Mr. Baar had had little previous courtroom experience, and this, Bathy decided, would work to the defense’s advantage. Because Mr. Baar refused to respond to the prosecutor’s thundering oratory with much more than a raised eyebrow, the prosecutor’s performance was robbed of the drama he clearly wanted. The prosecutor obviously wanted a courtroom battle, but there can be no battle when the opponent refuses to fight back. Each verbal climax on the part of the prosecution was followed by anticlimax on the part of the defense. And this tactic—as Bathy had hoped—made the proceedings in Judge Kaminsky’s chambers seem decidedly unnewsworthy to the media.
There was, of course, one tricky problem. Immediately following her arrest, Carol had videotaped and signed a full confession. She and only she, she swore, had held the gun. Naturally, she did this to protect Anne, but this confession would be a major stumbling block for her defense. Mr. Baar, meanwhile, was growing tired of hearing his client described as “blind, stinking, out-of-her-mind drunk.” A .10 alcohol level in the bloodstream, Mr. Baar pointed out to Bathy, is actually minimal for intoxication; it pained him to hear his client portrayed as no better than a Bowery bum. But Bathy had an interesting suggestion. “If Carol was blind, stinking, out-of-her-mind drunk when she pulled the trigger,” Bathy said, “she must obviously have been bund, stinking, out-of-her-mind drunk ten minutes later when she taped her confession. Why would anyone believe a confession from a person in that condition?” Thus was the prosecutor’s own rhetoric thrown back at him.
Anne was the final witness called in her mother’s defense. And it was there that Bathy was able to execute her most brilliant move. Mr. Baar had succeeded in persuading Judge Kaminsky that because of Anne’s age, she would testify as Jane Doe and not as Anne Liebling. But then—in a most unusual move, and over the most vociferous objections of the county prosecutor—he requested that Anne’s testimony be heard on a Saturday morning. In no one’s memory had a Manhattan courtroom been open on a Saturday; it was unheard of, the prosecutor bellowed. But in his customary shy and gentle way, Mr. Baar said, “We’re only requesting this, sir, so that the young woman’s studies at college will be disrupted as little as possible. Surely, this young woman’s life has suffered terrible disruptions already. This testimony is going to be painful enough for her as it is. Surely you don’t want her to suffer more pain and distress by having to be conspicuously absent on a school day—a day, incidentally, when she is scheduled to take an important examination for which she has been studying long and hard. We have struggled in this courtroom to preserve this young girl’s anonymity and privacy, and to keep her out of the public spotlight. Please show a little human kindness, sir, by not forcing her to interrupt her valuable education. As a father yourself, wouldn’t you ask the same consideration for your own teenage daughter, sir?”
Judge Kaminsky agreed, and announced that her court would go into special session on Saturday morning to hear Anne’s testimony.
From her years in public relations Bathsheba Sachs knew that, except for extraordinary, fast-breaking news stories, men and women in the media never willingly go to work on weekends. Neither, as a rule, do county prosecutors, and this one was forced to cancel an important golf date.
And so, gently guided by Mr. Baar, Anne Liebling offered her tearful, truthful testimony. The prosecutor, clearly in a foul mood, declined to cross-examine her. Judge Kaminsky then declared the proceedings closed, and announced that she would deliver her verdict on Monday morning.
That Saturday, in fact, was yesterday. Now it is Sunday morning, and Bathsheba Sachs has just awakened from a vivid and disturbing dream. In it she was back at Grandmont again, that great castle Jules built of granite and French buhrstone high on a hill overlooking the Hudson. In her dream she approached the house as they all used to approach it in Jules’s Pierce-Arrow, up the long, curving drive with its rhododendron hedges until the house itself appeared, its turrets and its battlements and crenels, designed in no particular style except what one critic rather waspishly described as Middle European Post Office. The house not only dominated the landscape. It loomed over it. Every window in the house was lighted in Bathy’s dream, as though to welcome her home.
The wide green lawns swept down to the riparian wall, which obscured the New York Central’s tracks from view. Mr. Vanderbilt’s railroad had tried to ruin the Hudson’s eastern shore, but it had not succeeded at Grandmont, where only the river itself was visible. The river is nearly a mile wide at this point and still tidal; the Indians called it the River That Flows Two Ways. Across the river, on its west bank, twinkled the lights of the village of Sneden’s Landing, tucked against the shoreline in the first drop in the Palisades, and to the north the mercury lights of the Tappan Zee Bridge glowed like a chain of garnets.
Up the river steamed the night boat to Albany, and there was laughter and music from her decks. Outside slept the animals in the family’s private zoo—a llama named Llewellyn, a tame zebra called Honey, a baby elephant named Baba au Rhum, and Cyril’s beloved Potto, the bush baby.
But suddenly into the peaceful dream came the voices—voices from the village, and even from the corridors of the Ingraham Building itself—whispering voices:
“Isn’t it a scandal? His wife’s own sister! How does his wife put up with it, do you suppose? She must know. She must be some kind of saint. It’s been going on for years. How she must suffer … and yet she never lets on … but then, what can you expect from people like that? … With Jules Liebling’s background … a bootlegger … He had people killed….”
Bathy had learned to ignore such talk, to shrug it off, to laugh it off, because she knew that the truth was much different from what people thought it was, and that if people had known what the real truth was, the scandal would have been much greater. So why, in her dream, had these voices still not lost their power to hurt her?
Then, in the dream, a carousel of images appeared across her sleeping consciousness like color slides projected on a screen. Click. There was little Noah in a blue and white sailor suit and white cap, dressed that way by Hannah perhaps because she was remembering the young seaman who had been the one true love of her life. Click. There was Hannah herself, looking strong and purposeful in the garden with her pruning shears and a wicker basket over her arm. Click. There was Cyril, trying to make his father love him, holding out his arms to
Bathy, asking for her to comfort him for some punishment he’d been given for some misdeed he’d committed in his father’s eyes. Click. There was Cyril’s little sister, Ruth, lively and pretty in those days, dreaming of becoming a movie star, much to her father’s dismay. Click. There was the children’s aunt Settie Kahn, who was killed by a swan, looking wan and stooped and bitter. Settie was always dropping by Grandmont on some excuse or other, mostly to get away from her husband, Bathy always supposed. After Settie died, Hannah reinvented Settie as some ethereal and beautiful creature, “too good to live,” as Hannah used to say, one of Dr. Marcus Sachs’s Three Graces—Settie, Hannah, and Bathy. But to Bathy, Settie was always a troublemaker who carried tales, some true, some false, between members of the family. Settie was always jealous of Hannah because Hannah had married a man much richer than Leo Kahn, and because Hannah had had children while Settie was barren. At the same time, Settie treated Jules in a haughty and condescending way, often referring to him behind his back—though she’d never have dared to do so to his face—as “the Polack.”
Whenever Bathy thinks of Settie, she doesn’t think of her stoop. She thinks of her sneer. The sneer was in her dream.
Click. Then, at last, came a picture of Jules himself, looking stern and disapproving and disappointed and disgusted, and other words beginning with the letter d. And in her dream his mouth suddenly flew wide open, as if he was about to roar, and she strained to listen to what he was about to shout out to her. It seemed to be some sort of accusation, that he was trying to say she hadn’t forgiven him enough, though the words didn’t seem to come. Then she knew that the letter d was important, that the word began with the letter d, and that the word was do. “Didn’t I do enough for you?” she cried out to him. “Didn’t any of us do enough for you?” The cry woke her up, trembling, and frightened and in a cold sweat. Because Bathy Sachs almost never has dreams like that—dreams that begin in tranquility and light, and end in terror and disorder. A word that begins with d.
The Wrong Kind of Money Page 48