by Jon Cleary
‘Dollars?’ She knew it was a ridiculous question, but he had caught her off-balance.
‘Of course dollars! Jesus, what did you think – fucking potato chips?’
‘If you want to talk to me, don’t use that language – ’
‘Okay, okay. No language.’ He beat his hands together, drew in his breath in a hissing sigh. ‘I’m in trouble, Meg. Real trouble. I need a million and a quarter dollars by the end of the week.’
‘Where do you expect to get it?’
‘I’ve tried everywhere – well, not everywhere. Not here in Kansas City. I didn’t want word getting back to your father … You’re my only hope, Meg.’
She laughed harshly, but not from amusement: the tension came out of her in a nervous bark. ‘You’re crazy, Frank. What makes you think I have that much money on hand?’
‘You have it in your share of the Trust. You’re worth much more than that – Jesus, you must be worth fifty times that! You could realize on your stocks – ’
‘You’ve forgotten one thing. None of us can claim any part of what we own in the Trust until we’re twenty-five. Nina could claim hers now if she wanted, though she hasn’t. But I still have two years to go. Until then all I get is the income from my share of the Trust. And you’re wrong about my share being worth fifty million or anything like that. There are two trusts, the Family Trust, which is the holding company, and the Children’s Trust. They interlock, but I’m not worth anything near what you think. Some day I will be, when Mother and Daddy die, but not now. You should have checked your facts.’
‘I was never allowed to look at the goddam trust deeds! Magnus shut me out as if I didn’t belong to the family – ’
‘If he did, it would be on Daddy’s orders. Even we girls don’t know everything that’s in the deeds. Daddy’s just following in his father’s footsteps – he didn’t know what was in the deeds till Grandfather died.’
He turned away, made a sound that sounded like a whimper. Then he slumped down on the couch opposite her. ‘Well, that’s it.’
‘That’s what? You ask me for a million and a quarter dollars and you haven’t given me one word of explanation why.’
The anger and the aggression had gone out of him: he looked limper still within the limp suit. ‘I’ve been buying land up in Platte County. I got word there was to be an airport up there – not now, some time in the future. I had to borrow the money, get it where I could. Now I’ve learned I’ve bought in the wrong place. It’s land that’s going to stay zoned for farming and nothing else. The lenders want their money back.’
‘Who lent you the money?’
He stared at his outstretched legs; there was a gap between his sock and the trouser-bottom and two or three inches of black-haired leg showed. Then, as if he wanted no comment from her on his hairiness, he reached down and pulled up his sock. He sat up, almost sedately, and said, ‘I borrowed the money up in Chicago. Someone here gave me some names.’
‘Banks?’
‘No.’ He laughed, a harsh giggle like hers of a moment ago. ‘No, I got the introductions from a man named Scarlatti. The name mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
‘It would to George Biff. I didn’t know myself till the guy himself told me. He was one of Johnny Lazia’s men. He shot off George’s fingers.’
‘You went to a man like that for introductions in Chicago? Who did you go to see – gangsters?’
She had meant it flippantly, but he said, ‘I guess you’d call them that. They’re called other names. But they have the money and they’re always looking for places to invest it. It’s dirty money, I guess, when they get it. But they’re looking for places to launder it. I heard about them and I went to them.’
‘Did you use Daddy’s name?’
‘They knew who I was, so it helped.’
She stood up and got herself a cigarette from a box on a side table. She rarely smoked, but she needed something now to steady her. Her own topic of divorce had gone completely out of her head. ‘What will they do if you don’t pay back the money?’
‘I hate to think about it. Jesus – ’ Suddenly he put a hand over his face and laid his head back on the couch.
She felt no pity for him; and was ashamed. ‘Why did you do it? Buy up all the land?’
He took his hand away, stared at her. ‘I wanted to be rich.’
She remembered a yellowed clipping in the family book kept in her father’s library. Her grandfather had been asked why he had worked so hard and Thaddeus had replied simply, I wanted to be rich. It was not an admission her father would make, considering himself beyond such vulgar honesty, but she knew he still subscribed to her grandfather’s creed.
‘Do you want me to go to Daddy?’ Not that she intended doing so: she just wanted to know how much he wanted of her.
‘It wouldn’t be any use.’ He stared into the empty fireplace for a while. She stood looking at him and at last he looked up and met her gaze. He frowned, as if he had just remembered something. ‘Pedemont? Who’s he?’
‘A private investigator. He has some names and places concerning you.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I was going to ask you for a divorce.’
She had expected him to react in anger; or at least with some show of sarcastic derision. He reached across and poured himself another brandy from the decanter that had been brought in with their coffee. ‘It never rains but it pours, eh? How long have you had him following me?’ But he didn’t wait for her answer: ‘What the hell, anyway? If he’s got names and places, he’s got them. But what the hell did you expect? You kicked me out of bed. You know how I am about that sort of thing – I can’t do without it.’
‘Will I have to take you to court or do we divorce quietly without any fuss?’
‘Do your folks know?’
‘No. They don’t need to know – I mean about the other women.’
‘What grounds do we use, then? The State of Missouri doesn’t grant divorces just because the people don’t like each other, especially when there are kids to the marriage. You can get me for adultery.’ Sarcasm began to roughen his tone. ‘And there’s cruelty, bigamy, alcoholism – ’ He raised his brandy goblet. ‘But no one could ever accuse me of being a drunk. I think there’s impotency, too – but you couldn’t accuse me of that, either, could you? Nobody would believe that, not if I took this out in court and slapped it on the table – ’
‘Don’t be vulgar – ’
His sarcasm was growing into anger. ‘How about pregnancy at marriage? I believe I could get you on that.’
‘It was your child – you got me pregnant – ’ She was suddenly afraid, felt the tension come back.
But his anger dissolved, he dropped the argument. ‘Let’s keep the kids out of this. Who gets them if we do divorce?’
‘I’d want them with me. But I wouldn’t deny you access to them.’
‘Access to – Jesus! We’re talking about our kids – my kids! No,’ he said abruptly and stood up and faced her. ‘Divorce is out! I’m not giving up the kids. If anyone’s going to have access to them, it’s got to be you!’
‘Then I’ll go to court – ’
But she knew it was an empty threat and she didn’t know whether something in her voice gave her away. For he looked at her, then nodded his head, as if she had just given him an idea. ‘Daddy wouldn’t like that, would he? Not all our dirty linen washed out in court? About me sleeping around with call girls because you’d kicked me out of bed because you couldn’t stand the hair on my belly and the size of my – ’
‘Stop it!’ She shut her eyes, swung away from him. Were all marital rows as degrading as this? Did they all descend to this level when they got to the shouting stage?
‘Or maybe – ’ He stopped and she looked back at him: afraid for the first time of him, not that he would hit her but for what he might do. ‘Maybe your old man will give me the million and a quarter. For that I’ll give you – and him – the quiet divorce. No fuss, nothin
g.’ Then he added, because, though he might no longer love her, he still loved the children: ‘Just access to the kids, that’s all.’
She shook her head, lost for any constructive argument: she only knew that she would not allow him to go to her father. ‘I’ll get the money – myself.’
‘How?’ He looked at her suspiciously. Sicilian suspicion, she thought: she had read somewhere that they trusted no one. Not that they could be blamed: nor him, either. ‘How?’
‘Somehow. I’ll – I’ll have to talk to Magnus.’
He sneered. ‘He’s on your father’s side.’
‘He’s a friend – to all of us. I’ll see him first thing in the morning.’
He considered and she saw that she had at least won some ground: there was a gleam of desperate hope in his eye. ‘Okay. But remember – I’ve only got till Friday.’
6
‘It’s impossible,’ said Magnus McKea.
‘I thought nothing was impossible for people like us.’
‘Don’t give yourself airs, Meg, not with me. Your mother may do it, but you should know better.’ He studied her a moment. ‘You don’t sound too put out by all this.’
She had come to see Magnus in his office in the New York Life building on West 9th Street. Other law firms were moving further uptown as the building boom continued, but Rufus McKea and Son was a firm that did not have to impress any of its clients. Magnus’ grandfather had moved into the building when it had been built in 1890 and the law firm had the solidity that the building and the company that owned it enjoyed.
‘I am very put out, Magnus.’ She was dressed as if already on her way to court. A grey suit, white silk blouse, grey gloves: the respectable, wronged wife. ‘It wasn’t easy for me to come down here and tell you all this …’
‘I’m sorry, Meg. I didn’t mean to be critical. It’s just – well, you are asking the impossible. I can’t break the trust, have money released to you now instead of in two years’ time. And there are the other two trustees – they wouldn’t even listen to any argument you put up. Is Frank really in such trouble?’
‘To people in Chicago, I think they’re Syndicate men.’
‘Syndicate?’
‘Isn’t that what Senator Kefauver called them? The Syndicate.’
Magnus had been calm, judge-like, up till now; but all at once he looked perturbed. He came of a family that had known violence and lawlessness, though it had always been on the side of the law. The McKeas were pioneer stock, had been here when John McCoy and thirteen other men, including the first Magnus McKea, had formed the Kansas Town Company. That first Magnus had been a justice of the peace, handing out rough justice to rough men who had expected no less; his son Walter had been a judge who had sentenced a dozen men to be hanged. But the present Magnus had never witnessed any violence, not even in the war, though he had seen its aftermath. He had been on the prosecution team at the greatest of all trials, at Nuremberg, but even there the violence and murder, on an unbelievable scale, had been at a distance. He was appalled at the idea that this girl in front of him, a daughter of one of the city’s most respected men, should be touched, no matter how remotely, by mobsters.
‘Your only way is to go to your father. But that’s advice I can hardly charge you for. I can see you think it’s bad advice.’
‘I wouldn’t have come to you, Magnus, if I thought I could solve everything by going to Daddy.’
He said cautiously, ‘How are things between you and Frank? I mean the marriage.’
She owed him honesty: he was trying to help. ‘It’s finished. That’s why I want to raise the money. If I give it to him, he’ll give me a quiet divorce.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘A dirty divorce – and there’s a lot of dirt. On his side,’ she added defensively.
He pondered a moment, running his. hand over his crew-cut as if trying to rub up some magical idea. ‘Did Frank give you the name of the people in Chicago?’
‘No. He was introduced to them by someone here in Kansas City. A man named – I can’t remember. All I do remember – ’ She shuddered. ‘He was one of the men who crippled George Biff’s hand.’
‘Frank knows some nice characters, doesn’t he? If your father knew he’d been in touch with that particular hoodlum … Or if George himself knew …’
‘Would a bank lend me the money?’
‘I think you’re making a mistake if you’re going to bail Frank out. Yes, I think any bank would lend you the money against what you can draw from the Trust in two years’ time.’
‘Would you go guarantor for me? I can’t ask Daddy.’
He hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right. Do you want me to arrange it?’
‘If you would. Just impress on the bank, whichever one it is, that I don’t want Daddy to know.’
‘I’ll have to ask one of the out-of-State banks. That may well lessen any leak or gossip – banks are discreet, but they’re still staffed by human beings. I’ll have the money put into my private account. Give me forty-eight hours.’
She came round the desk and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Why aren’t you married, Magnus?’
He took her hand, kissed the back of it. ‘I’m in love with all the Beaufort sisters. If the State of Missouri allowed polygamy, I’d propose to you all.’
‘How old are you?’
He smiled. ‘Forty. Too old for you.’
‘I don’t know. I once told someone that I preferred older men.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He didn’t believe me.’ She pulled on her gloves. ‘Do your best for me with the bank, Magnus.’
‘Are you going to tell Frank what you’re trying to do?’
‘Not yet. Let him sweat a while longer.’
‘You have a good deal of your father in you. More so than any of your sisters.’
‘Sometimes I wish he’d recognize that,’ she said and was gone before she could confess anything more to him.
That evening she told Frank she had had no success so far in raising the money.
‘Then it looks as if I’ll have to go to your father. He’ll think the deal is a good one. Dirty but good.’
She hated him now and all at once she decided not to tell him that she was trying to raise the money herself. She had been going to buy him off, certain that he would accept; he might ask for an extra settlement for himself, but she would give him that out of her income. But what he had just said turned her completely against him: whole lives have been wrecked by a loose tongue and an emotional reaction to what has been said. So she decided on another tack, one that might be dangerous but would give her more satisfaction. Satisfaction, her father had said, that’s all there is for people like us. She was being her father’s daughter, though he would never appreciate it.
‘Don’t go to Daddy yet. I’ll talk to him,’ she lied.
Instead, next morning, she went to George Biff. He looked at her curiously, then at his maimed hand. ‘Why you want to know that feller’s name, Miz Meg?’
‘It’s important, George.’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing doing. He was trouble twenty years ago, he still be trouble. You stay away from him. What the heck you want with him, anyway?’
‘I could go dig up his name somewhere downtown, George, but I don’t have the time. Now please …’
‘You tell me why you wanna get in touch with him. Otherwise I’m gonna go to your father, tell him the trouble you trying to buy.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘I would, Miz Meg.’
She stared at him, knowing that he would indeed go to her father; but knowing, too, that he would do it out of love for her. So she told him why she wanted to find the man who had maimed him and even as she told him she marvelled that her one confidant in the family was this middle-aged black man who was unrelated to any of them and had the least influence … ‘So there’s no time to lose, George.’
‘I dunno. You know what you suggesting?’ He had
been outside the stables, polishing her mother’s Cadillac, when she had come across to see him. He had already driven Lucas to his office and come back ready to drive Edith to one of her luncheons later in the morning. There was no one within fifty yards of them, but he dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. ‘Jesus God, you can’t fool around with people like that! Look what they done to me – ’ He held up his hand. ‘And I was just a nobody.’
‘They aren’t going to do anything like that to me. What’s the man’s name?’
‘Pete Scarlatti,’ he said reluctantly. ‘And I’m gonna come with you.’
‘No, George. You shouldn’t have to face him again, not after all these years – ’
‘He ain’t gonna worry me. It’s the men in Chicago gonna worry me. I’m coming there, too.’
‘No. Daddy would kill you if he found out. I remember how he was when you went down to help Mr Tim at the stockyards – ’
‘I’m more afraid for you than I am of your daddy. When we going?’
She hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right. I love you, George, you know that?’
He smiled. ‘All the women tell me that. That’s why I’ve never married – can’t make up my mind. You come back when you hear from Mr McKea about the money. Then we go and see Scarlatti.’
Magnus called her that afternoon. ‘The money is in my account now. You have a five-year loan from our firm’s New York bank, at the going interest rate. Do you want me to handle Frank from here on?’
‘No, I’ll handle it. I’ll call you tomorrow night.’
She left the children with their nurse. She was no longer breast-feeding Emma and it would not matter if she was not back for the children’s supper. Frank would not be home till 6.30 and she hoped she would be back before then. She would lie to him if she had to, but she would rather not have any questions at all from him as to what had kept her out when the children were being fed. She prided herself on having been a good mother and, if nothing else, she wanted him to retain that image of her.
George had brought Edith back from her luncheon and was free till he had to pick Lucas up at six o’clock. Margaret now ran Nina’s Buick, but she let George take the wheel as they drove downtown. He was very quiet, but she made no comment. She had no idea what George’s ambitions had been as a musician or a fighter, but he was going to meet the man who had ruined whatever prospects he had had.