An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  “I couldn’t imagine who was coming to call at ten o’clock at night,” said Adrienne, breaking the silence.

  “Get lost,” Arnie said in a growl that sounded like “gedloss,” with a toss of his head and a wave of his thumb, indicating for her to remove herself. Adrienne retreated to another room without a word. “Come on in the sauna,” he said to Kippie. “We can talk there, and for chrissake, don’t drip none of the blood on my white carpets.” Moving ahead of Kippie, he straightened two Lucite picture frames and removed a speck of dust from a brass-and-glass end table on the way to the steam room.

  “What kind of trouble are you in?” asked Arnie, when Kippie had undressed and followed him into the sauna.

  “Who said I was in trouble?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, junior.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I can help you out of it, that’s what it is to me.”

  “How?”

  “You got Judge Quartz for your preliminary hearing, right?”

  “Yes. How’d you know?”

  “It’s my business to know these things. I knew ten minutes after they busted you. Friend of mine came in on the same flight from Paris. They were looking for what he was carrying, and instead they found what you were carrying.”

  “I couldn’t understand why they hit on me like that,” said Kippie. “It was nothing, what I was carrying, a couple of joints, and they acted like I had a shipment from Colombia. You ought to see what they did to my luggage.”

  “Assholes picked the wrong guy, that’s all,” said Zwillman.

  “My family’s going to kill me.”

  “You lose a tooth?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “The cop hit me.”

  “Cops don’t usually hit preppy boys like you. Did you pull your rich kid act on the cop?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Called him a mick or a spic?”

  Kippie nodded. “A mick.”

  They looked at each other and laughed. “I can read you like a book, Kippie.”

  “There were these two big cops the customs agent called. One held me under my armpit here, and the other held me under my other armpit, and they lifted me up so that my feet didn’t touch the floor and carried me through the Pan Am waiting room. Not one of the great looks, you know. This is after they made me take my clothes off and shoved their finger up my ass looking for drugs. I was pissed off.”

  Over the intercom in the steam room came the sound of a woman’s voice. “Ready for your massage, Mr. Zwillman,” she said.

  Arnie turned to the box and pushed a button. “Okay, Wanda. I’ll be in in a minute. Get the table set up.” He turned back to Kippie. “Wanna massage?”

  “No thanks,” said Kippie, who didn’t want to be in the steam room either.

  “This Wanda’s good,” said Arnie. “She’ll bring you off if you get a hard-on.”

  Kippie shrugged. “Okay,” he said.

  “I take it you haven’t contacted Jules and Pauline with your little adventure?” He said the names “Jules” and “Pauline” with an exaggerated pronunciation, in an outsider’s allusion to their grandeur.

  Kippie shook his head.

  “You better call them from here,” said Arnie. “Just don’t tell them what happened. Don’t tell no one, except your lawyer. I’ll get you a lawyer. Gonna cost you ten grand up front.”

  “Are you going to lend me the ten grand?” asked Kippie.

  “I bailed you out, sonny boy. There’s a limit to my generosity.”

  “Where am I going to get ten grand?”

  “Your rich mommy.”

  “She won’t. I know it. She said so the last time.”

  “Be adorable, Kippie, like you know how to be, and she’ll come through. Then when you go before Judge Quartz on Monday morning, the case will be dismissed. Count on it.”

  “What do you want for all this, Arnie? I can’t think you’re doing all this for me because you think I’m such a swell kid.”

  “Smart boy.”

  “What do you want?”

  “An intro.”

  “Who the hell could I introduce you to?”

  “Your father.”

  “My father? My father lives on Long Island, is now married to the former Sheila Beauchamp, and plays bridge all day every day in Southampton, or Palm Beach, or the Racquet Club in New York, or at Piping Rock, wherever he happens to be. What possible reason would you have to want to meet Johnny Petworth?”

  “Don’t get snotty with me, you spoiled brat. I’m talking about Jules Mendelson.”

  “He’s not my father. He’s my stepfather.”

  “All right, your stepfather. I want to meet your stepfather.”

  Kippie hesitated. He knew from past experience that he could not promise his stepfather. “My stepfather does not think highly of me,” he said quietly.

  “You want to get your case fixed without your family knowing about it, don’t you?”

  “Arnie, please, man. My stepfather will never come to your house. I know it.”

  “I know that, junior. What I want you to do is arrange for both your parents to have dinner and see a film at Casper Stieglitz’s house. I’ll be there too, but that’s the part you don’t tell them.”

  “Who’s Casper Stieglitz?”

  “The film producer.”

  “But my mother and stepfather don’t mix with people like that. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying they don’t.”

  “Arrange it, asshole. You don’t want your name in the papers, do you, for getting busted on Pan Am flight number three from Paris? I don’t think Jules and Pauline are going to care much for that, with the economic conference coming up in Brussels and all.”

  Kippie, abashed, only stared at Arnie Zwillman.

  “What’s Piping Rock?” asked Arnie.

  “A club,” answered Kippie.

  “Where?”

  “Long Island.”

  “What kind of club?”

  “The kind that wouldn’t let you in.”

  “As a member, you mean?”

  “Not even as a guest of a member. Not even for lunch.”

  “How come?”

  “You’re not their type.”

  Arnie nodded. “Now, you better call your mama and tell her you’re in dire need of ten thousand dollars. I’ll take my massage first.”

  As a family, Jules and Pauline and Kippie had met only once during the days that followed. Although Hector Paradiso lay dead in an open casket at the Pierce Brothers Mortuary, life went on as usual in the city, despite the endless speculations as to the cause of his death. The Freddie Galavants decided not to cancel their dinner dance in honor of the visiting Brazilian ambassador. Polly Maxwell saw no reason not to go ahead with the fashion show luncheon at the Bel Air Hotel for the Los Angeles Orphanage Guild, even though Pauline Mendelson, Camilla Ebury, and Rose Cliveden had telephoned in their regrets. And Ralph White, despite Madge’s protestations, refused to back out of a long-planned weekend of trout fishing on the Metolious River in Oregon, but did promise to be back for the funeral at the Church of the Good Shepherd.

  It was a particularly busy time for Jules as well. The economic conference was coming up in Brussels, with all its attendant preparations. A group from the National Gallery in Washington had been promised lunch at Clouds and a tour of the collection, with him as their tour guide, and they could not be put off. And there were the arrangements for Hector’s funeral going on concurrently, in which Jules seemed to have an inordinate interest. It surprised Pauline that he seemed so insistent on lining up former ambassadors and other prominent figures in the city to act as pallbearers, when none of them were known to have been more than acquaintances of Hector’s.

  Kippie was mostly silent during those days, saving his conversation for Blondell and Dudley, to whom he was not a disappointment, or hitting a tennis ball against the backboard on the tennis court for hours at a time, or go
ing for several appointments to Dr. Shea to have a new front tooth implanted, or to Dr: Wright to have the forefinger of his right hand attended to, where Astrid, Hector Paradiso’s dog, had bitten off the tip. When Kippie was alone with his mother and stepfather, he strummed on a guitar, which drove Jules mad, but Jules said nothing. There had been a time, before he wanted to become a restaurateur, when he wanted to become a guitarist.

  Casper Stieglitz’s secretary, Bettye, had telephoned Jules’s secretary, Miss Maple, that day and invited Mr. and Mrs. Mendelson to a Sunday night dinner and screening of a film to be held at a date sufficiently in the future to ensure an acceptance.

  “Tell him no,” said Jules, when Miss Maple telephoned him at home to repeat the invitation. “We don’t even know Casper Stieglitz.”

  Kippie looked up from his guitar playing and struck a chord sufficiently grating so that Jules looked up in annoyance from the telephone conversation.

  “No, Jules, don’t tell him no,” said Kippie.

  There was an authoritative tone in Kippie’s voice that made Jules react to his stepson. He covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with his hand. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I’m telling you, accept that invitation.”

  “What do you know about this invitation?”

  “Tell Miss Maple to say yes, Jules,” said Kippie.

  Jules and Kippie stared at each other. “Hold off on it, Miss Maple,” said Jules, and hung up. “Your mother will never go to Casper Stieglitz’s house.”

  “She will if you tell her she has to.”

  “There’s a beat missing here for me,” said Jules. “Do you know this Casper Stieglitz?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “I just know.”

  “What’s your connection?”

  “Someone’s going to be there who wants to meet you.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You better damn well say.”

  “Arnie Zwillman.”

  “Arnie Zwillman?” said Jules, in a shocked voice.

  “Do you know him?” asked Kippie.

  “Of course I don’t know him. Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you ever know such a person?”

  “You sound like my mother,” said Kippie. “She says things like ‘How do you know such-a-person?’ ”

  Jules ignored the remark. “This man is a gangster,” he said. “He burned down the Vegas Seraglio for the insurance money.”

  “He’s never been busted,” said Kippie.

  “And he cheats at cards. He has an electric surveillance system in the ceiling of his card room, and a man hides above the ceiling and sends him mild shocks telling him what’s in the other players’ hands.”

  “You know a lot about Arnie for not knowing him.”

  “Tell me, Kippie. What’s your connection with him?”

  At that moment Pauline came into the room, dressed in black. She had come from the calling hours at the funeral home where Hector Paradiso’s body was on view.

  “What was it like?” asked Jules.

  “A nightmare,” said Pauline. “Poor Hector. He would have hated it. Such sobbing. The Latins do cry so audibly. The rosary went on until I thought I’d die. And the flowers! You’ve never seen such awful flowers. Pink gladiolus. Orange lilies. Everything I hate. Tomorrow, the funeral will be better. Rose Cliveden and Camilla are handling everything, and Petra von Kant’s doing the flowers herself.” She turned to Kippie. “How are you, darling? How’s the tooth? Let me see. Oh, look. He’s doing such a good job, our Dr. Shea. How’s the finger? Does it hurt terribly? I’m so glad that little dog is out of our house. Get me a glass of wine, will you, darling. Your mother’s a wreck.”

  Kippie poured his mother a glass of wine. When he brought it over to her, she was lying back on a chaise, her feet up. “Thank you, darling. Isn’t this nice, just the family, at my favorite time of day. It’s been so long since we’ve been together like this.”

  She looked at her husband and son and smiled. Neither returned her enthusiasm, but both nodded. For a moment there was a silence.

  “Casper Stieglitz has asked us to go there for dinner,” said Jules.

  “Casper Stieglitz? Whatever for?” asked Pauline, with a chuckle at the absurdity of such a notion.

  “And a film,” added Jules.

  “Oh, heavens, all those people we don’t know,” said Pauline. As far as Pauline was concerned, there was no more to be said on the subject.

  Jules turned to Kippie and shrugged, as if to point out that he had tried, and failed.

  Kippie, looking at Jules, began to strum on his guitar again. “This is my latest composition,” he said. “Kind of a catchy lyric.” He began to sing in a low muffled voice.

  “Flo is the name of my stepfather’s mistress,

  She lives on a lane called Azelia.

  Each afternoon, at a quarter to four—”

  Jules, rarely stunned by the events of life, looked at Kippie, stunned.

  “Whatever that is, it’s lovely, darling, but I can’t stand guitar music at the moment. I have such a terrible headache.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” said Kippie, putting down his guitar. “Arnie Zwillman will be there too.”

  “And who, pray tell, is Arnie Zwillman?” asked Pauline. Pauline had a way of saying a name like “Arnie Zwillman” that left no doubt what her feeling was about such a person, without voicing a single derogatory word against him.

  “You’ll like him, Mom. Arnie Zwillman’s from an old mob family. Old mob money. Listed in the Mafia Register. None of your new people stuff. You’ll love him.”

  Pauline laughed. “Do you think my son is making fun of me, Jules?” she asked.

  Jules did not reply.

  “How do you know such a person?” she asked Kippie.

  Kippie laughed. He dearly loved his mother. He was proud of her beauty. At all the schools he ever attended, the other boys and the teachers vied with each other for him to introduce them to her, and she was never not charming to them in return. He was always thoughtful to her on her birthdays and at Christmas. But he was also bewildered by her life in society, and he could not bear Jules Mendelson. He never confided in her, although he knew that his secrets would be safe in her keeping.

  “I wish my son would spend more time in the company of the sort of people he was brought up with, instead of the marginal types he’s constantly with,” she said. “I simply don’t understand how you get to know these people, Kippie.”

  “Look, Pauline,” said Jules suddenly, rising from his chair at the same time. “I think we’d better go to Casper Stieglitz’s. Just this one time.”

  “I never thought I’d hear that from you, Jules. I thought you couldn’t stand all those movie people,” said Pauline. “ ‘All they ever do is talk about movies.’ Isn’t that what you always say about them?”

  “I think we’d better go,” Jules repeated softly, looking at Pauline with a married look that indicated she should go along with his wishes.

  “Suit yourself, Jules,” said Pauline. “You go, but I have no intention of going. I don’t know that man, and I don’t know why I have to go there for dinner.”

  Jules looked at Kippie again and made a loose gesture that indicated he would talk Pauline into going when the time came.

  Arnie Zwillman had been having his daily massage from Wanda when Kippie Petworth came to call. Kippie sat reading a magazine in another room until Wanda was finished.

  “Wanna massage?” asked Arnie, when he came out of his workout room, tying the belt of his terry cloth robe.

  “No, thanks,” said Kippie.

  “She’ll bring you off if you get a hard-on,” said Arnie.

  “No, thanks,” said Kippie.

  “See you tomorrow, Wanda,” said Arnie. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of grapefruit juice. “This stuff’s good for you.”
/>   Kippie nodded.

  “What’d your stepfather say?” asked Arnie Zwillman.

  “He’ll go,” answered Kippie.

  “Good boy, Kippie. What about your mother?”

  “My mother’s iffy.”

  “Iffy, huh?”

  “ ‘All those people we don’t know’ were her exact words,” said Kippie.

  “Very hoity-toity.”

  “That’s my mom.”

  “You tell your mom—”

  Kippie held up his hand in protest. “I can’t tell my mother where to go. Only my stepfather can do that. He’ll get her there.”

  Arnie Zwillman nodded. “What happened to your finger?”

  “Dog bit me.”

  “You lost your finger?”

  “Part of it.”

  “Yech. I hate blood,” said Arnie. “What’d your old man say about me?”

  “He’s not my old man. I told you that.”

  “All right. What did your stepfather, Jules Mendelson, say about me?”

  “He said you burned down the Vegas Seraglio for the insurance money,” said Kippie.

  Arnie Zwillman turned red and shook his head. “That fat dickhead.”

  “Hey, you’re talking about my stepfather.”

  “What else did he say about me?”

  “He said you cheated at cards.”

  “Big fucking deal. I don’t know anybody who don’t cheat at cards. That’s part of the game to me. It’s a case of cheating the cheaters.”

  “He said you had an electrical surveillance system in the ceiling of your card room.”

  “How the fuck did he know that?”

  “Listen, Arnie, you’re not hearing any criticism from me. I’m just the message carrier.”

  “Your arraignment’s tomorrow. Judge Quartz will dismiss the case. Will your parents be going to the courtroom with you?”

  “My parents don’t even know. Besides, they’ll be at a funeral.”

  “Come in here a moment, Kippie,” Jules had said the next morning. He was standing in the door of the library, darkly dressed for Hector’s funeral, holding a coffee cup in his hand, as Kippie made his way to the sunrise room for breakfast. “There’s something we must discuss before your mother comes down.”