False Gods (21 page)

"I've been waiting till you were ready. And now let's get on with it. I think you're going to need your old office. I'll rent it from Ralph Collins. Don't worry. I'll know how to handle him. And Mrs. Olyphant. She'll be a great hand at this game."

Myron began to feel that a whole wonderful new life was being placed squarely, perhaps even a bit heavily, in his taken-for-granted lap. But mightn't this be what happiness was?

"Bella," he asked in sudden suspicion, "have you been discussing this project with Mrs. Olyphant?"

She simply smiled and suggested that they celebrate the occasion with a rare second cocktail.

And so his new life started.

The beginning was simple enough. His offer to take the chairmanship of the major fund drive about to be launched by the Staten Island Zoological Gardens, of whose board he had long been a devoted member, was, needless to say, gratefully accepted, and Ralph Collins, deftly handled by the tactful Bella, was found agreeable to the idea of having a Townsend back in his office at no cost to the firm, indeed, actually paying rent. If Collins was still not wholly convinced of the "intangible values" of an old name, he was perfectly willing to pick up any such values that came free. Mrs. Olyphant, moreover, proved superb and efficient in her new role. Free of the nagging interference of an office manager, she roundly snubbed the secretaries of the younger partners, who had once tossed in her face that their bosses paid for hers. And at the zoo offices, to which she repaired on alternate afternoons, she trained the girls in public relations in how to address rich potential donors—and in how to pronounce their names. Her years of reading the social columns in magazines and evening journals became a distinct asset to the drive.

Myron found that he loved the work. His rich friends and relatives, who had regarded him, a bit ruefully, as too much the easygoing club gentleman to be entrusted with the thorny tax planning of their estates, were delighted to find that they could oblige him by contributing to an institution in which many of them were anyway interested. And Myron did much more than just solicit them. He would take them, one by one, to an excellent lunch in a private dining room in the zoo's administration building, followed by a visit "behind the scenes" to see a baby elephant born or the big cats hosed or a polar bear operated on or whatever the particular event of the day happened to be.

In time he learned to match the exhibition to the particular taste of the visitor. The ladies liked the little furry animals, the more brightly colored birds and the young of almost any species. The men preferred the large dangerous predators. Sometimes Myron, suspecting a sadistic streak, would take a corporation president to see mice eaten by snakes, and for the lewdly inclined the monkeys could always be counted on to copulate. The keepers had been told to produce, if feasible, what Myron asked for, and the only time he had a serious row with the director was when a proposed "spat" between two leopards had got out of control and resulted in the serious mauling of one of the beasts.

The money poured in. Myron was quick to pick up the tricks of his new trade: to get the poorer trustees to pledge more than they could pay (with private assurance they would not be dunned) so that the richer ones would not feel they were being stuck with the whole load; to name the first baby of any species to be born in captivity after a generous lady (with much publicity); to whisper in the ear of one tycoon that another, his particular rival, was pledging twice his sum; to abrogate the names of buildings and wings as soon as the donor's family had become extinct or obscure, so as to have more tags available for new givers; to sell positions on the organizing committees of benefit parties to social climbers and even a seat at Amy Bledsoe's table for twenty-five
g
's.

Bella herself now took on the job of chairman of a big drive for the Manhattan Gallery of Art, of which she had long been a trustee, and centered her activities in Townsend, Cox & Collins, where she rented an office next to her husband's. "We'll be known as Mr. and Mrs. New York," she said with mock smugness. Ralph Collins's tongue seemed to drip as he noted the passage through the reception hall of some of the biggest names in town. Surely some of these might stick! Myron found himself now invited to the firm lunches he had not dared to attend when he was a nonproducing partner.

It was intoxicating. He had always been deeply mortified by his inability to make big money in a money society, and even when he had, on rare occasions, got his hands on a large fee, he had been haunted by the sense that he had not really earned it, that it had been simply based on a percentage of an estate that had come to the firm through an earlier Townsend.

But now he discovered—or Bella discovered for him (he was happy to give her full credit)—an ability in himself, which nobody could challenge, of raising sums far larger than any partner of his old firm could have dreamed of charging as a fee. He was their equal at last, and it wasn't just because he was Sidney Townsend's grandson, either. Staring boldly at the latter's portrait as he strode through the reception hall, he asked himself with a complaisant sneer who in the world would have given so mean-looking an old codger a blasted nickel no matter what worthy cause he was touting!

Myron and Bella carried their work into the evening hours. She had always been less critical than he of dull parties so long as they were, as she put it, "well done." Ever a keen observer of food, wine, service and décor, the latter including the gowns of her hostess and the lady guests, she was inclined to forgive bad talk for good appearance. And of course, as a museum trustee, she could put up with the fiercest bore if his walls were hung with masterpieces and his table covered with fine porcelain. But now she shared with Myron a single criterion: their hosts had to be wealthy or have wealthy guests. Dinner parties were no longer dull play; they had become stimulating work. Even if they took up every evening in the week, they never palled.

The only difficulty was in not appearing too available to the socially ambitious and thus watering their stock-in-trade.

"I heard you telling Silas Hofritz that we'd be glad to come to his seventieth birthday party," Bella noted in the car as they were returning from a dinner where they had met that particularly odoriferous developer. "When the invitation comes in, I suggest you tell Mrs. Olyphant to call his secretary and say you'd forgotten we were going to the country that day. That will show him we prefer a simple rural excursion to his great gala."

Myron meekly accepted the reproach. "I thought as soon as I'd said it that I might have been going too far."

"A man like that would at once assume that we weren't the real Townsends. That we'd probably changed our name. He thinks his money can buy him anything, and it can, in time, but he's got to put it up first, and plenty of it. That's our job."

"I'll be more careful in future. What is lowlier than an unpaid prostitute?"

Bella ignored his question. She didn't like him to be
quite
so cynical. "We may go to Mr. Hofritz's
next
birthday. Or drop in for a drink and not stay for dinner. In the meanwhile why don't you take him to a zoo lunch? Do the crocodiles ever eat each other? That might be his affair."

"Yet he goes to Amy's."

"That's different. Amy's like royalty. She can afford to have
anybody.
"

Amy Bledsoe, who had become an intimate friend of the Townsends, occupied a unique position in Gotham. She had no claim to it in looks or birth. She was an elderly stout woman of middle-class Irish origin who dyed her abundant billowing hair a flaming red and wore large jewels that went oddly with her plain sensible countenance. She had been first the trained nurse, then the housekeeper and at last the wife and widow of Horace Bledsoe, the investment banker, who had left her the "big" half of his estate in a marital deduction trust, the balance going to his son and daughter by an earlier marriage. It was the opinion of those who knew her best that Amy had never been the old man's mistress. She was shrewd, well read, big-hearted and full of sound common sense, and she gave widely and intelligently from her large income. But the peculiar veneration with which she was regarded by the New York social world sprang less from her generosity, which, after all, could easily be topped by multimillionaire friends who could give from principal as well as income, as from her robust character, from her virtuousness (to use a word they never would), from something anyway that made her a kind of saint in a desert that might have been tired of too many lizards and scorpions.

Amy gave generously to both Myron's zoo and Bella's gallery, but when she complained one evening, when he was seated on her right at one of her dinner parties, that her ability to support charities would cease with her death, an idea struck him, and he became for a moment quite tense with concentration.

"You mean because what you have is in trust?"

"Yes. It's what they call a marital deduction trust. It all has to go to Horace's children when I die."

"Who already have millions."

"And who are not renowned, I fear, for their philanthropy."

"But don't you have the power to appoint the trust principal?"

"But that's just a technicality. The law made Horace give me that if the trust was not to be taxed in his estate. I promised him I'd never exercise it, and of course I never will."

"Hmm." Myron's heart was pounding. He even found a moment to reflect that his new idea had made him the superior of his father and grandfather. "Tell me, Amy. Hasn't the principal of your trust gone up in value since Horace's death?"

"Oh, it's more than doubled!"

"Then I suggest that your promise is limited to the date of death value. I can see no reason that you shouldn't feel free to appoint the increase as you see fit. And I'll bet Horace would have agreed."

Amy's mouth fell open as she stared at him. "Why, Myron Townsend, what a brilliant idea! I see what you mean. It's as if I'd somehow earned that increase. Except of course I didn't. The trustees are two of Horace's most brilliant partners."

"That makes no difference. They were working for you. You can simply add a paragraph to your will that you appoint any percentage of the trust principal that exceeds the value of the trust at your husband's death to..."

"The Staten Island Zoological Gardens!" Amy exclaimed, clapping her hands.

Something cautioned him to restrain her. "Or in equal shares to the zoo and Bella's gallery," he added with a laugh, as if to make a jest of it.

"Of course, the children will howl."

"But you won't be there to hear them."

"No, I'll be in the special heaven reserved for the ultra-philanthropic!"

Was she laughing at him? It was hard to tell with Amy. But if she was serious, O gun at sea, O bells that in the steeples be, at first repeat it slow! Myron loved Emily Dickinson. He would raise a hundred million for his and Bella's institutions! He almost regretted now having to divide with Bella. But if Amy were to consult with Bella about the plan, it would be as well to place a carrot under his wife's more scrupulous nose.

And Amy was indeed going to discuss the matter with Bella. That was what she was now telling him, before she had to turn to the man on her left.

"I want you and Bella to stay on for a bit tonight after the others have left."

Myron sat after dinner with Bella in an agony of apprehension, the last guest having left, waiting for their hostess, who had briefly excused herself.

"I think I've figured out the greatest common denominator of Amy's group," Bella observed pensively.

"Ambition perhaps? Satisfied ambition?"

"Is ambition ever satisfied? No, I think what makes them different is that they all speak so glowingly of one another."

"Only when they're here, though. The moment they're out of Amy's sight, they tear each other to bits."

"So Amy's is a place of suspended hostilities. That dreadful little new wife of Sam Spatz hadn't the faintest idea who I was tonight, but she bent over backwards to be polite. If you're at Amy's, I guess, you can't be nobody."

"Isn't it possible that they simply want to convince themselves that they really are what they only seem at Amy's? Even the cultural crowd who are on the prowl for grants. Amy cleans them up! For a whole euphoric evening, they can almost forget the wear and tear of acquisition. Going to Amy's for them is like going to church."

"And what is it like for you and Bella?" Amy was standing in the doorway with a scolding smile.

"We don't have to go to church," Myron responded as he rose to greet her. "We're already there. Acolytes at your altar."

She crossed the floor slowly and slumped in the sofa by Bella, contemplating the empty chamber with a sigh of relief. "Thanks for staying on." And she proceeded now to tell the expressionless but attentively listening Bella the details of Myron's proposal.

Bella's face still reflected nothing when Amy finished and sat regarding her inquisitively.

"Will you discuss this with Horace's children?"

"No, because I know what they'd say. They'd say I had no moral right to do it. But I shouldn't care what they thought if I was sure in my own mind that what I was doing was right. What would
you
do, Bella, if you found yourself in my situation?"

"If you put it that way, I have to tell you I wouldn't exercise the power." Bella's tone was light, perhaps a bit self-consciously light. "Not even to deflect a penny from those already overendowed darlings. You're perfectly clear that you wouldn't reduce the principal going to them below its value at Horace's death, aren't you?"

"Oh, of course, that's sacred!"

"And why? Because that was Horace's clearly expressed intent. But didn't he expect that principal to increase in value? Didn't he spend his whole business life making money multiply itself? Didn't he make his smartest partners your trustees? If he had meant you to give any of that anticipated growth to charities, wouldn't he have told you so?"