An Inconvenient Woman (38 page)

“Yes, yes, I know. Your Bettye told me that. Look, Casper, I don’t mind being thrown off your picture, but I have a feeling it wasn’t your idea, and I want to know whose idea it was.”

Casper looked at Philip but didn’t answer.

“Who told you to fire me? Or rather, who told you to tell your secretary to fire me?”

“Nobody, I swear to God,” said Casper.

“Oh, sure,” replied Philip. “You made this decision all on your own.”

“Yes, I did. I just don’t think you captured the interview with the narcs in the right way,” said Casper.

“That’s the same scene you told me you liked so much the day before yesterday, Casper,” said Philip. “Who told you to fire me?”

Casper shook his head.

Philip dropped Casper’s glasses on the floor and stepped on them. “Oops, I broke your glasses.”

Casper went down on his hands and knees to retrieve his glasses.

Philip reached out and grabbed him by the neck of his black velour shirt. “You know, Casper, when I was at Princeton, I saw your film
A Mansion in Limbo
three times, because I thought it was so great. I used to want to meet you. And now I have, and you’re nothing more than a pathetic drug addict with a face-lift and a wig. What happened to you, Casper?”

“Let me up,” said Casper.

“Who told you to fire me?”

“No one, I swear.”

“Either you tell me, or I’m going to rip this rug right off your head and call your girlfriends in here from the tennis court to see their little sugar daddy without his hair pasted on.”

Casper, frightened, looked up at Philip. “Don’t. I beg of you, Phil. Ina Rae doesn’t know I wear a rug.”

“Who told you to fire me, Casper?”

It was a surprise to Arnie Zwillman when he did not hear from Jules Mendelson after their initial meeting at Casper Stieglitz’s party, so he telephoned him at his office to set up a
second meeting to discuss further the proposition he had suggested to Jules. Miss Maple, Jules’s secretary, was unfamiliar with the name Arnie Zwillman and asked him all the questions that an unfamiliar person is asked by an overly protective secretary.

“Will Mr. Mendelson know what this call is in reference to?” asked Miss Maple.

“Yes, he will,” replied Arnie.

“Mr. Mendelson is in conference at the moment. May I have your number, and I will tell him that you called, Mr., uh, what did you say your last name was?”

“Zwillman. Arnie Zwillman. Ring through.”

“What?”

“I said, ring through to his conference and tell him Arnie Zwillman is on the phone. He’ll take the call, believe me, Miss, uh, what did you say your last name was?”

“I didn’t.”

“Just ring through, Miss I-Didn’t.” He chuckled at his joke.

When Miss Maple informed Jules that a very rude person called Mr. Zwillman was on the line and had insisted that she ring through, Jules turned to Sims Lord and said, “It’s Zwillman.”

“You better take it,” said Sims. “You’re going to have to talk to him sooner or later. I checked. All records of the Chicago situation in nineteen fifty-three were expunged at the time. It’s as if what happened didn’t happen.”

Jules nodded. He pushed the button on his telephone. “Hello?”

“You really ought to fill your girl in on who I am, Jules,” said Arnie. “It’s not very good for my ego to be put through the third degree. ‘Will Mr. Mendelson know what this is in reference to?’ she asked.”

“What is this in reference to?” asked Jules.

“I’ve been waiting to hear from you, Jules,” said Arnie.

“Well, now you have me.”

“I’m interested in getting together as soon as possible. Nineteen ninety-two is just around the corner, Jules,” said Arnie. “There’s a lotta crapola to be worked. What you people in your line of work call modus operandi.”

“I don’t want to meet with you, Zwillman. Now, or ever.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. And don’t call me again, or I’m going to call the FBI.”

“Oh, you big dangerous man,” said Arnie.

“So long, Arnie.”

“You’re making one big fat mistake, Mendelson.”

“I don’t think so, Zwillman.”

“You were pretty cool, Jules,” said Sims Lord, after Jules hung up the telephone.

“It was good to know those records were destroyed, Sims. I’m going out for a cup of coffee. I want to get a little air.”

An hour later Arnie Zwillman informed the Secretary of State, through a highly placed intermediary, of the unfortunate event in the past of Jules Mendelson, the presidential designate for the head of the United States economic commission in Brussels during the year of European statehood, involving the 1953 death of a young woman who fell, or was pushed, from the balcony of the Roosevelt Hotel in Chicago during a romantic tryst.

The records of the death, which had been expunged by the mayor of the city at the request of the parents of Jules Mendelson, were in the hands of Mr. Zwillman and available to the Secretary of State, the highly placed intermediary was informed. The family of the dead girl had been handsomely recompensed for their loss at the time by the family of Mr. Mendelson.

That day at the Viceroy Coffee Shop Jules Mendelson did not read his financial newspapers, as he usually did. His mind was filled with other thoughts. The feeling of relief that he had anticipated when he told Arnie Zwillman that he would not meet with him again was less than he had expected it to be.

Perhaps it was the tone of voice Zwillman had used when he said to Jules, “You’re making one big fat mistake, Mendelson.” People simply did not call Jules Mendelson, Mendelson. He was in deep thought, stirring his coffee, although there was neither cream nor sugar in it to stir, when Philip Quennell walked up to his booth and slid into the seat opposite him.

“Hello, Jules,” said Philip.

“Get lost, Quennell,” said Jules, in a snarling tone of voice. While he feared Arnie Zwillman, he in no way feared Philip Quennell, and he was relieved to be able to shift his
focus from one man to the other. He disliked Philip Quennell and had disliked him from the first night they met, when he arrived at the Mendelson party late, the only guest without a dinner jacket, and declined the magnificent wine from the Bresciani auction of which Jules was so proud. Each episode he had spent with him since had only increased that feeling.

“I hear you got me fired from my documentary,” said Philip.

Jules did not try to disguise the contempt that crept into his face. “I don’t waste my time getting low-level people fired,” he said. “Move on, will you?”

“Oh, no?” said Philip, very calmly, making no effort to move. “Casper Stieglitz, after I threatened to pull off his rug in front of a couple of his hookers, let it out that you had called Marty Lesky to, as he put it, send me back home, or you wouldn’t follow through with your pledge to the Los Angeles County Museum, which would have been very embarrassing for Marty, who has recently embraced culture.”

Jules stared at Philip.

“What I want to know is, did you have me fired because of the crack in the Degas ballerina statue? Or because I refuse to buy your suicide story and think you are involved in a cover-up of Hector Paradiso’s death? Or, what is probably the reason, because we happen to share a mutual friend in the person of Miss Flo March?”

Jules could not stand to hear the name of Flo March come out of the mouth of the handsome, self-assured young man who sat opposite him. He hated Philip Quennell’s youth. He hated his good looks. But what he hated most was to think that Flo, in her anger at him, had made love to Philip Quennell, had probably performed on him the same sexual intimacies that he had come to crave from her more than anything in his life. Enraged, his face very red, he rose in his seat and leaned across the coffee shop table and grabbed Philip.

Philip Quennell did not flinch for an instant. “If you’re as smart as you’re supposed to be, Jules, you will remove your hands from my body immediately,” he said. “I don’t care how old you are, how rich you are, how important you are, I will knock you down on your fat ass right here in this coffee shop, in front of all these customers who are staring at you.”

Jules met Philip’s eye and knew he meant what he said. He released his grip on the young man.

“Everything all right, Mr. Mendelson?” asked Curly, the manager of the coffee shop, who ran over to the table.

“Get this guy out of here, Curly,” said Jules.

“No, no, Curly,” said Philip, waving his forefinger back and forth. “You don’t have to get me out of here.” There was about him a menace that was felt by both Jules and Curly. If Curly had thought of touching Philip to prod him out of the coffee shop, he desisted. “I am about to walk out of here on my own. I have just about finished with what I have to say to Mr. Jules Mendelson. But there is just one more thing, Jules.”

“Come on, fella. Get movin’,” said Curly.

Philip turned to Curly. “I am movin’. But first I’m finishin’.” He turned back to Jules. Both men were standing, and people were watching. “Do not for an instant think that I will go gently into the night, Jules, despite your orders to send me home. I don’t like you, any more than I liked your crooked pal, Reza Bulbenkian. I don’t like people who can call up a newspaper and tell them not to print a story that the public has a right to know, or tell the police not to solve a crime, and allow a killer to walk free because you decided to dream up some cockamamie suicide story. You’re covering up for somebody, Jules. And I’m not going back to New York until I find out who it is. For all I know, maybe you shot Hector Paradiso, Jules.”

“Get lost,” said Jules.

“I’m not going back to New York, Jules, despite your best efforts. I’ve decided to stay awhile. So long, Jules. So long, Curly.”

Jules sank back into his seat in the orange Naugahyde booth as he watched Philip Quennell leave the Viceroy Coffee Shop. Within him, he knew that Philip, for all his youth and handsomeness, was not a romantic rival for Flo March’s considerable favors. He also knew that his unreasonable jealousy of Quennell, caused by Flo’s spending two nights in his room at the Chateau Marmont, had led him to make the sort of tactical error he would never have made in a business transaction.

Jules usually arrived at Flo’s house on Azelia Way at a quarter of four every afternoon. As he had been in his office since six o’clock in the morning, it was not thought unreasonable by anyone that he should leave at exactly three-thirty, no matter what, and be unreachable until he called in for his messages
an hour and a half later. What no one knew was that by then he had made love to Flo March as many as three times.

On the same day that he talked with Arnie Zwillman on the telephone and fought with Philip Quennell in the Viceroy Coffee Shop, he walked out of his office at exactly three-thirty, as was his custom. Miss Maple, who had been with him for years, was not unaware that he seemed dispirited. As he walked past her desk, she waved good-bye to him while she continued her telephone conversation.

“Mr. Mendelson is not available,” Miss Maple said. “Oh, hello, Mr. Crocker. If you leave your number, I will be speaking with him in about an hour and a half and relay it to him. Oh, yes, Mr. Crocker. Oh, yes, I know the area code in Washington is two-oh-two. I should know it by now, shouldn’t I, after all these calls between you and Mr. Mendelson.”

Jules was at the main door of his office on the top floor of the Mendelson Building when he heard the name Crocker. He turned back to Miss Maple. “Is that Myles Crocker?” he asked.

“Would you hold on a moment, Mr. Crocker? My other phone is ringing,” said Miss Maple. She pushed the hold button. “Yes, it is,” she said to Jules. “Myles Crocker. State Department. Assistant to the Secretary of State.”

“I know who he is,” said Jules. He put down his briefcase on Miss Maple’s desk and returned to his office.

Miss Maple was surprised at the break in his routine. She thought he had appeared older recently. He had seemed preoccupied since Pauline left for Northeast Harbor. He had seemed frantic for the several days he had been locked in with Sims Lord. He had seemed remote since he returned from the Viceroy Coffee Shop, reacting only to the information that a storm in Bangor, Maine, had delayed Mrs. Mendelson’s departure for Los Angeles on the family plane by several hours.

Miss Maple said into the telephone, “Mr. Mendelson has just returned unexpectedly, Mr. Crocker, and will be picking up the telephone immediately.”

“I’ve been asked to call you, Jules,” said Myles Crocker. “The Secretary had been with the President all morning on the hostage crisis and couldn’t make the call himself, but he will certainly be in touch with you when things calm down here.”

“Yes,” said Jules, quietly. He knew that he was about to hear distressing news.

“I’m afraid that I am the bearer of some bad news, Jules,” said Myles Crocker.

“Yes?”

“The Secretary didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else but him.”

“Yes?”

“It is about your appointment to head the American delegation in Brussels.”

“Yes?”

“Some information has come to the Secretary of a rather distressing nature.”

“What sort of information?”

“A tragic event in a Chicago hotel room in nineteen fifty-three. There is no way that you would ever be ratified, if such a story became known, and it is thought best to simply withdraw the nomination.”

Jules remained perfectly calm. “I have heard that vicious story myself. There is no truth to it. None whatever. When you are a man in my position, there are always going to be such stories spread about you. If there were anything to such a story, there would be records in Chicago, and no such records exist.”

“The records were expunged at the time, Jules, but somehow, copies of them exist. At least
a
copy of them exists. A Mr. Arnie Zwillman, formerly of Chicago, has made that copy available by fax to the Secretary, and to the
Post
.”

“Dear God.”

“This is terribly embarrassing for me, Jules, to be the bearer of this news, after having been entertained so beautifully and so often by you and Pauline.”

Jules did not reply.