The Bonfire of the Vanities (72 page)

Almost immediately he regretted the whole thing. As he walked back to the living room, his heart was beating violently. He was trembling. The three men, Killian, Occhioni, and McCarthy, were standing about with a mime-show nonchalance.

Sherman made himself smile, just to show everything was all right.

“Friend a yours?” said Killian.

“Yes, an old friend. I went to school with him. He wants to throw me out of the building.”

“Fat chance,” said Killian. “We can fucking tie him up in knots for the next ten years.”

“You know, I have a confession to make,” said Sherman. He made himself smile again. “Until that sonofabitch came up here, I was thinking of blowing my brains out. Now I wouldn’t dream of it. That would solve all his problems, and he’d dine out on it for a month and be damned sanctimonious while he was at it. He’d tell everybody how we grew up together, and he’d shake that big round bubble head of his. I think I’ll invite those bastards”—he motioned toward the streets—“on up here and let ’em dance the mazurka right over his big bubble head.”

“Ayyyyyy,” said Killian. “That’s better. Now you’re turning fucking
Irish
. The Irish been living the last twelve hundred years on dreams of revenge. Now you’re
talking
, bro.”

Another roar rose from Park Avenue in the heat of June…McCOY!…McCOY!…McCOY!

It was the Dead Mouse himself, Sir Gerald Steiner, who got the bright idea. Steiner, Brian Highridge, and Fallow were meeting in Steiner’s office. Just being here, breathing the Mouse’s own eminent air, gave Fallow a warm feeling. Thanks to his triumphs with the McCoy case, the upper rooms and inner circles of
The City Light
were open to him. Steiner’s office was a big corner room overlooking the Hudson River. There was a large wooden desk, a Mission-style worktable, six armchairs, and that necessary proof of high corporate position, a couch. Otherwise the decor was Working Newspaperman. Steiner kept promiscuous heaps of newspapers, reference books, and copy paper on his desk and the worktable. A computer terminal and a manual typewriter stood on workmanlike metal stands near his swivel chair. A Reuters wire-service machine chattered away in a corner. A police radio was in another. It was now silent, but he had kept the thing on for a year before its yawps and bursts of static finally wore him out. The plate-glass windows, which offered a sweeping view of the river and the clam-gray Hoboken shore, had no curtains, only venetian blinds. The venetian blinds gave the vista a Light Industry, Working Newspaperman aspect.

The purpose of this summit meeting was to figure out how to proceed with Fallow’s smoking-hot tip: namely, that Maria Ruskin was the mystery woman, the foxy brunette who took the wheel of McCoy’s Mercedes roadster after McCoy ran down Henry Lamb. Four reporters—including, Fallow was happy to see, Robert Goldman—had been assigned to do legwork on the story. Legwork
for him
; they were his drudges. So far they had established only that Maria Ruskin was out of the country, probably in Italy. As for the young artist, Filippo Chirazzi, they had been unable to find any trace of him at all.

Steiner was sitting at his desk with his jacket off, his tie pulled down, and his red felt suspenders blazing away on his striped shirt, when it came to him, his bright idea.
The City Light
’s business section was currently running a series on “The New Tycoons.” Steiner’s scheme was to approach Arthur Ruskin as a subject for the series. This would not be entirely devious, since Ruskin was in fact typical of the “new tycoon” of latter-day New York, the man of immense, new, inexplicable wealth. The interviewer of the new tycoon would be Fallow. If he could get close to the old man, he would play it by ear. At the very least, he might find out where Maria Ruskin was.

“But do you think he’ll go for it, Jerry?” asked Brian Highridge.

“Oh, I know these chaps,” said Steiner, “and the old ones are the worst. They’ve made their fifty million or their hundred million—that’s what the Texans call a unit. Did you know that? They call a hundred million dollars a unit. I think that’s delightful. A unit, of course, is a
starting
point. In any case, this sort of chap makes his great colossal pile, and he goes to a dinner party, and he’s sitting next to some pretty young thing, and he’s getting a bit of the old tingle—but she hasn’t the faintest notion who he is. A hundred million dollars!—and she’s never even heard his name, and she isn’t interested in who he is when he tries to tell her. What can he do? He can’t very well go about with a sign around his neck saying
FINANCIAL GIANT
. At that point, believe me, they begin to lose some of their purported scruples concerning publicity.”

Fallow believed him. It was not for nothing that Steiner had founded
The City Light
and kept it going at an operating loss of about ten million dollars a year. No longer was he merely another financier. He was the dread buccaneer of the dread
City Light
.

The Mouse proved to be an able psychologist of the newly and anonymously rich. Two telephone calls from Brian Highridge and it was all set. Ruskin said he generally avoided publicity, but in this case he would make an exception. He told Highridge he would like for the writer—what was his name? Mr. Fallow?—to be his guest for dinner at La Boue d’Argent.

When Fallow and Arthur Ruskin reached the restaurant, Fallow pushed the brass revolving door for the old man. Ruskin lowered his chin slightly, and then he lowered his eyes, and the most profoundly sincere smile spread over his face. For an instant Fallow marveled that this gruff barrel-chested seventy-one-year-old man could be so grateful for a gesture of such innocuous politeness. In the next instant he realized it had nothing to do with him and his courtesy at all. Ruskin was merely feeling the first ambrosial radiations of the greeting that awaited him beyond the threshold.

As soon as Ruskin entered the vestibule and the light of the restaurant’s famous sculpture,
The Silver Boar
, shone upon him, the fawning began in earnest. The maître d’, Raphael, fairly leaped from behind his desk and his daybook. Not one but two captains came forward. They beamed, they bowed, they filled the air with
Monsieur Ruskins
. The great financier lowered his chin still further, until it floated on a cushion of jowl, and he mumbled his replies, and his grin became broader and broader and, curiously, more and more diffident. It was the smile of a boy at his own birthday party, the lad who is both humbled and wondrously elated by the realization that he is in a room full of people who are happy, abnormally happy, one might say, to see him alive and in their presence.

To Fallow, Raphael and the two captains gave a few quick
Hello, sirs
and returned to sprinkling Ruskin with the sweet nothings of their calling. Fallow noticed two odd characters in the vestibule, two men in their mid-thirties, wearing dark suits that seemed to be mere screens for bodies of pure prole brawn. One appeared to be American, the other Asian. The latter was so large and had such a huge head, with such wide flat menacing features, Fallow wondered if he was Samoan. Ruskin noticed him, too, and Raphael said, with a smug smile, “Secret service.
Two
secret services, the American and the Indonesian. Madame Tacaya will be dining here this evening.” After imparting this bit of news, he smiled again.

Ruskin turned to Fallow and made a face, without smiling, perhaps fearing that he could not compete with the wife of the Indonesian dictator for the restaurant’s attentions and homage. The big Asian eyed them both. Fallow noticed that he had a cord coming out of his ear.

Raphael smiled again at Ruskin and gestured toward the dining room, and a procession began, led by Raphael himself, followed by Ruskin and Fallow, with a captain and a waiter at the rear. They turned right at the spotlit form of
The Silver Boar
and headed into the dining room. Ruskin had a grin on his mug. He loved this. Only the fact that he kept his eyes downcast prevented him from looking like a complete fool.

At night the dining room was well lit and seemed much more garish than at lunchtime. The dinner crowd seldom had the social cachet of the lunch crowd, but the place was packed nonetheless and was roaring with conversation. Fallow could see cluster after cluster of men with bald heads and women with pineapple-colored hair.

The procession stopped beside a round table that was far bigger than any other but was as yet unoccupied. A captain, two waiters, and two busboys were buzzing about, arranging stemware and silverware in front of every place. This was evidently Madame Tacaya’s table. Immediately opposite it was a banquette under the front windows. Fallow and Ruskin were seated side by side on the banquette. They had a view of the entire front section, which was all that any true aspirant for the high ground of La Boue d’Argent required.

Ruskin said, “You wanna know why I like this restaurant?”

“Why?” asked Fallow.

“Because it’s got the best food in New York and the best service.” Ruskin turned and looked Fallow squarely in the face. Fallow could think of no adequate response to this revelation.

“Oh, people talk about this social stuff,” said Ruskin, “and sure, a lot of well-known people come here. But why? Because it’s got great food and great service.” He shrugged. (No mystery to it.)

Raphael reappeared and asked Ruskin if he cared for a drink.

“Oh, Christ,” said Ruskin, smiling. “I’m not supposed to, but I feel like a drink. You got any Courvoisier V.S.O.P.?”

“Oh yes.”

“Then gimme a sidecar with the V.S.O.P.”

Fallow ordered a glass of white wine. Tonight he intended to remain sober. Presently, a waiter arrived with the glass of wine and Ruskin’s sidecar. Ruskin lifted his glass.

“To Fortune,” he said. “I’m glad my wife’s not here.”

“Why?” asked Fallow, all ears.

“I’m not supposed to drink, especially not a little bomb like this.” He held the drink up to the light. “But tonight I feel like a drink. It was Willi Nordhoff who introduced me to sidecars. He used to order them all the time, over at the old King Cole Bar of the St. Regis. ‘Zitecar,’ he’d say. ‘Mit Fay, Es, Oh, Pay,’ he’d say. You ever run into Willi?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Fallow.

“But you know who he is.”

“Of course,” said Fallow, who had never heard the name in his life.

“Jesus,” said Ruskin. “I never thought I’d ever become such a great pal of a Kraut, but I love the guy.”

This thought launched Ruskin on a long soliloquy about the many roads he had traveled in his career and about the many forks in those roads and how America was a wonderful country and who would have ever given a little Jew from Cleveland, Ohio, one chance in a thousand to get where he was today. He began to paint Fallow the view from the top of the mountain, ordering a second sidecar as he did. He painted with vigorous but vague strokes. Fallow was glad they were sitting side by side. It would be difficult for Ruskin to read the boredom on his face. Every now and then he ventured a question. He fished about for information as to where Maria Ruskin might stay when she visited Italy, such as at this moment, but Ruskin was vague about that, too. He was eager to return to the story of his life.

The first course arrived. Fallow had ordered a vegetable pâté. The pâté was a small pinkish semicircle with stalks of rhubarb arranged around it like rays. It was perched in the upper left-hand quadrant of a large plate. The plate seemed to be glazed with an odd Art Nouveau painting of a Spanish galleon on a reddish sea sailing toward the…sunset…but the setting sun was, in fact, the pâté, with its rhubarb rays, and the Spanish ship was not done in glaze at all but in different colors of sauce. It was a painting in sauce. Ruskin’s plate contained a bed of flat green noodles carefully intertwined to create a basket weave, superimposed upon which was a flock of butterflies fashioned from pairs of mushroom slices, for the wings; pimientos, onion slices, shallots, and capers, for the bodies, eyes, and antennae. Ruskin took no note of the exotic collage before him. He had ordered a bottle of wine and was becoming increasingly expansive about the peaks and valleys of his career. Valleys, yes; oh, he had had to overcome many disappointments. The main thing was to be decisive. Decisive men made great decisions not because they were smarter than other people, necessarily, but because they made
more
decisions, and by the law of averages some of them would be great. Did Fallow get it? Fallow nodded. Ruskin paused only to stare gloomily at the fuss Raphael and his boys were making over the big round table in front of them.
Madame Tacaya is coming
. Ruskin seemed to feel upstaged.

“They all want to come to New York,” he said dismally, without mentioning whom he was talking about, although it was clear enough. “This city is what Paris used to be. No matter what they are in their own country, it starts eating at them, the idea that in New York people might not give a damn who they are. You know what she is, don’t you? She’s an empress, and Tacaya’s the emperor. He calls himself president, but they all do that. They all pay lip service to democracy. You ever notice that? If Genghis Khan was around today, he’d be President Genghis, or president-for-life, like Duvalier used to be. Oh, it’s a great world. There’s ten or twenty million poor devils flinching on their dirt floors every time the empress wiggles a finger, but she can’t sleep nights thinking that the people at La Boue d’Argent in New York might not know who the hell she is.”

Madame Tacaya’s secret-service man stuck his huge Asian head into the dining room and scanned the house. Ruskin gave him a baleful glance.

“But even in Paris,” he said, “they didn’t come all the way from the goddamned South Pacific. You ever been to the Middle East?”

“Mmmm-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no,” said Fallow, who for half a second thought of faking it.

“You oughta go. You can’t understand what’s going on in the world unless you go to these places. Jidda, Kuwait, Dubai…You know what they wanna do there? They wanna build glass skyscrapers, to be like New York. The architects tell them they’re crazy. A glass building in a climate like that, they’ll have to run the air conditioning twenty-four hours a day. It’ll cost a fortune. They just shrug. So what? They’re sitting on top of all the fuel in the world.”

Ruskin chuckled. “I’ll tell you what I mean about making decisions. You remember the Energy Crisis, back in the early 1970s? That was what they called it, the Energy Crisis. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. All of a sudden everybody was talking about the Middle East and the Arabs. One night I was having dinner with Willi Nordhoff, and he gets on the subject of the Muslim religion, Islam, and how every Muslim wants to go to Mecca before he dies. ‘Efry focking Muslim vants to go dere.’ He always threw a lot of
focking
s in, because he thought that made him sound fluent in English. Well, as soon as he said that, a lightbulb went on over my head. Just like that. Now I was almost sixty years old, and I was absolutely broke. The stock market had gone to hell about then, and that was all I had done for twenty years, buy and sell securities. I had an apartment on Park Avenue, a house on Eaton Square in London, and a farm in Amenia, New York, but I was broke, and I was desperate, and this lightbulb went on over my head.

“So I says to Willi, ‘Willi,’ I says, ‘how many Muslims are there?’ And he says, ‘I dunt know. Dere’s millions, tense of millions, hundruts of millions.’ So I made my decision right then and there. ‘I’m going in the air-charter business. Efry focking Arab who wants to go to Mecca, I’m gonna take him there.’ So I sold the house in London and I sold the farm in Amenia, to raise some cash, and I leased my first airplanes, three worn-out Electras. All my goddamned wife could think of—I’m talking about my former wife—was where were we gonna go in the summer, if we couldn’t go to Amenia and we couldn’t go to London. That was her entire comment on the whole goddamned situation.”