The Bonfire of the Vanities (18 page)

“Who is this?”

“Kramer.”

“Oh yeah, I remember you. This is Detective Martin.”

Kramer didn’t really remember Martin, but the name and the voice triggered a vaguely unpleasant recollection.

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m over here at Lincoln Hospital with my partner, Goldberg, and we got this half-a-homicide case, and I thought we ought to tell Bernie about it.”

“Did you talk to somebody here a couple hours ago? Ray Andriutti?”

“Yeah.”

Kramer sighed. “Well, Bernie’s still not back. I don’t know where he is.”

A pause. “Shit. Maybe you can pass this along to him.”

Another sigh. “Okay.”

“There’s this kid, Henry Lamb, L-A-M-B, eighteen years old, and he’s in the intensive-care unit. He came in here last night with a broken wrist. Okay? When he came in here, at least from what’s on this sheet of paper, he didn’t say nothing about getting hit by a car. It just says he fell. Okay? So they fixed up the broken wrist in the emergency room, and they sent him home. This morning the kid’s mother, she brings him back in here, and he’s got a concussion, and he goes into a coma, and now they classify him as a likely-to-die. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“The kid was in the coma by the time they called us, but there’s this nurse here that says he told his mother he was hit by a car, a Mercedes, and the car left the scene, and he got a partial license number.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No. This is all from the nurse. We can’t even find the mother.”

“Is this supposed to be two accidents or one accident? You said a broken wrist and a concussion?”

“One, according to this nurse, who’s all excited and breaking my balls about a hit-and-run. It’s all fucked-up, but I just thought I’d tell Bernie, in case he wants to do anything about it.”

“Well, I’ll tell him, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with us. There’s no witness, no driver—the guy is in a coma—but I’ll tell him.”

“Yeah, I know. If we find the mother and get anything, tell Bernie I’ll call him.”

“Okay.”

After he hung up, Kramer scribbled a note to Bernie Fitzgibbon. The victim neglected to mention he was hit by a car. A typical Bronx case. Another piece a shit.

The next morning Sherman McCoy experienced something that was new to him in the eight years he had been at Pierce & Pierce. He was unable to concentrate. Ordinarily, as soon as he entered the bond trading room and the glare from the plate glass hit him and the roar of a legion of young men crazed by greed and ambition engulfed him, everything else in his life fell away and the world became the little green symbols that slid across the black screens of the computer terminals. Even on the morning after the most stupid telephone call he had ever made, the morning he woke up wondering if his wife was going to leave him and take the most precious thing in his life with her, namely, Campbell—even on that morning he had walked into the bond trading room and,
just like that
, human existence had narrowed down to French gold-backed bonds and U.S. government twenty-years. But now it was as if he had a two-track tape in his skull and the mechanism kept jumping from one track to the other without his having any control over it. On the screen:

“U Frag 10.1 ’96 102.” Down a whole point! The United Fragrance thirteen-year bonds, maturing in 1996, had slipped from 103 to 102.5 yesterday. Now, at 102, the yield would be 9.75 percent—and the question he asked himself was:

Did it have to be a
person
that the car hit when she backed up? Why couldn’t it have been the tire or a trash can or something else entirely? He tried to feel the jolt again in his central nervous system. It was a
…thok…
a little tap. It really hadn’t been much. It could have been almost anything. But then he lost heart. What else could it have been but that tall skinny boy?—and then he could see that dark delicate face, the mouth hanging open with fear…It wasn’t too late to go to the police! Thirty-six hours—forty by now—how would he put it? I think that we—that is, my friend Mrs. Ruskin and I—may have—for God’s sake, man, get hold of yourself! After forty hours it wouldn’t be reporting an accident, it would be a confession! You’re a Master of the Universe. You aren’t on the fiftieth floor at Pierce & Pierce because you cave in under pressure. This happy thought steeled him for the task at hand, and he focused again on the screen.

The numbers were sliding across in lines, as if a radium-green brush were painting them, and they had been sliding across and changing right before his eyes but without registering in his mind. That startled him. United Fragrance was down to 101 7/8, meaning the yield was up to almost 10 percent. Was something wrong? But just yesterday he had run it by Research, and United Fragrance was in good shape, a solid AA. Right now all he needed to know was:

Was there anything in
The City Light
? It sizzled on the floor at his feet. There had been nothing in
The Times
, the Post, and the
Daily News
, which he had gone through in the taxi on the way down. The first edition of
The City Light
, an afternoon newspaper, didn’t come out until after 10
A.M.
So twenty minutes ago he had given Felix, the shoeshine man, five dollars to go downstairs and bring
The City Light
to him. But how could he possibly read it? He couldn’t even let himself be seen with it on top of his desk. Not him; not after the tongue-lashing he had given young Señor Arguello. So it was under the desk, on the floor, sizzling at his feet. It sizzled, and he was on fire. He burned with a desire to pick it up and go through it
…right now…
and the hell with what it looked like…But of course that was irrational. Besides, what difference would it make whether he read it now or six hours from now? What could it possibly change? Not very much, not very much. And then he burned some more, until he thought he couldn’t stand it.

Shit!
Something was happening with the United Fragrance thirteen-years! They were back up to 102! Other buyers were spotting the bargain! Act fast! He dialed Oscar Suder’s number in Cleveland, got his aide-de-camp, Frank…Frank…What was his last name?…Frank…Frank the doughnut…“Frank? Sherman McCoy at Pierce & Pierce. Tell Oscar I can get him United Fragrance ten-tens of ’96 yielding 9.75, if he’s interested. But they’re moving up.”

“Hold on.” In no time the doughnut was back. “Oscar’ll take three.”

“Okay. Fine. Three million United Fragrance ten-point-tens of’96.”

“Right.”

“Thanks, Frank, and best to Oscar. Oh, and tell him I’ll be back to him before long about the Giscard. The franc is down a bit, but that’s easy to hedge. Anyway, I’ll talk to him.”

“I’ll tell him,” said the doughnut in Cleveland—

—and even before he finished writing out the order chit and handed it to Muriel, the sales assistant, he was thinking: Maybe I should see a lawyer. I should call Freddy Button. But he knew Freddy too well. Freddy was at Dunning Sponget, after all. His father had steered him to Freddy in the first place—and suppose he said something to the Lion? He wouldn’t—or would he? Freddy regarded himself as a family friend. He knew Judy, and he asked about Campbell whenever they chatted, even though Freddy was probably homosexual. Well, homosexuals could care about children, couldn’t they? Freddy had children of his own. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a homosexual, however—Christ! what the hell did it matter, Freddy Button’s sex life? It was crazy to let his mind wander like this. Freddy Button. He would feel like a fool if he told this whole story to Freddy Button and it turned out to be a false alarm…which it probably was. Two young thugs had tried to rob him and Maria, and they had gotten what was coming to them. A fracas in the jungle, by the rules of the jungle; that was all that had occurred. For a moment he felt good about himself all over again. The law of the jungle! The Master of the Universe!

Then the bottom dropped out. They had never overtly threatened him.
Yo! Need some help?
And Maria had probably hit him with the car. Yes, it was Maria. I wasn’t driving.
She
was driving. But did that absolve him of responsibility in the eyes of the law? And did—

What was that? On the screen, United Fragrance ten-point-tens of ’96 blipped up to 102 1/8. Ah! That meant he’d just gained a quarter of a percentage point on three million bonds for Oscar Suder by acting fast. He’d let him know that tomorrow. Would help ice the Giscard—but if anything happens with the
…thok…
the tall delicate boy…The little green symbols glowed radioactively on the screen. They hadn’t budged for at least a minute. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He would go to the bathroom. There was no law against that. He took a big manila envelope off his desk. The flap had a string that you wrapped around a paper disk in order to close the envelope. It was the sort of envelope that was used to relay documents from one office to another. He panned across the bond trading room to see if the coast was clear, then put his head under the desk and stuffed
The City Light
into the envelope and headed for the bathroom.

There were four cubicles, two urinals, and a large sink. In the cubicle he was dreadfully aware of the rustle of the newspaper as he took it out of the envelope. How could he possibly turn the pages? Every rustling crinkling crackling turn of the page would be a thunderous announcement that some slacker was in here goofing on a newspaper. He pulled his feet in toward the china base of the toilet bowl. That way no one could get a glimpse under the cubicle door of his half-brogued New & Lingwood shoes with the close soles and the beveled insteps and conclude, “Aha! McCoy.”

Hidden behind the toilet door, the Master of the Universe began ransacking the newspaper at a furious clip, page by filthy page.

There was nothing, no mention of a boy struck down on a highway ramp in the Bronx. He felt vastly relieved. Almost two full days had now passed—and nothing. Christ, it was hot in here. He was perspiring terribly. How could he let himself get carried away like this? Maria was right. The brutes had attacked, and he had beaten the brutes, and they had escaped, and that was that. With his bare hands he had triumphed!

Or was it that the boy had been hit and the police were looking for the car, but the newspapers didn’t regard it as important enough to rate a story?

The fever began to rise again. Suppose something
did
get in the papers…even a hint…How could he ever put the Giscard deal together under a cloud like that?…He’d be finished!
…finished!…
And even as he quaked with fear of such a catastrophe, he knew he was letting himself wallow in it for a superstitious reason. If you consciously envisioned something that dreadful, then it couldn’t possibly take place, could it…God or Fate would refuse to be anticipated by a mere mortal, wouldn’t He…He always insisted on giving His disasters the purity of surprise, didn’t He…And yet—and yet—some forms of doom are so obvious you can’t avoid them that way, can you!
One breath of scandal—

—his spirits plunged even lower.
One
breath of scandal, and not only would the Giscard scheme collapse but his
very career
would be finished! And what would he do then?
I’m already going broke on a million dollars a year!
The appalling figures came popping up into his brain. Last year his income had been $980,000. But he had to pay out $21,000 a month for the $1.8 million loan he had taken out to buy the apartment. What was $21,000 a month to someone making a million a year? That was the way he had thought of it at the time—and in fact, it was merely a
crushing, grinding burden—
that was all! It came to $252,000 a year, none of it deductible, because it was a personal loan, not a mortgage. (The cooperative boards in Good Park Avenue Buildings like his didn’t allow you to take out a mortgage on your apartment.) So, considering the taxes, it required $420,000 in income to pay the $252,000. Of the $560,000 remaining of his income last year, $44,400 was required for the apartment’s monthly maintenance fees; $116,000 for the house on Old Drover’s Mooring Lane in Southampton ($84,000 for mortgage payment and interest, $18,000 for heat, utilities, insurance, and repairs, $6,000 for lawn and hedge cutting, $8,000 for taxes). Entertaining at home and in restaurants had come to $37,000. This was a modest sum compared to what other people spent; for example, Campbell’s birthday party in Southampton had had only one carnival ride (plus, of course, the obligatory ponies and the magician) and had cost less than $4,000. The Taliaferro School, including the bus service, cost $9,400 for the year. The tab for furniture and clothes had come to about $65,000; and there was little hope of reducing that, since Judy was, after all, a decorator and had to keep things up to par. The servants (Bonita, Miss Lyons, Lucille the cleaning woman, and Hobie the handyman in Southampton) came to $62,000 a year. That left only $226,200, or $18,850 a month, for additional taxes and this and that, including insurance payments (nearly a thousand a month, if averaged out), garage rent for two cars ($840 a month), household food ($1,500 a month), club dues (about $250 a month)—the abysmal truth was that he had spent
more
than $980,000 last year. Well, obviously he could cut down here and there—but not nearly enough
—if the worst happened!
There was no getting out from under the $1.8 million loan, the crushing $21,000-a-month nut, without paying it off or selling the apartment and moving into one far smaller and more modest—an
impossibility!
There was no turning back! Once you had lived in a $2.6 million apartment on Park Avenue—it was impossible to live in a $1 million apartment! Naturally, there was no way to explain this to a living soul. Unless you were a complete fool, you couldn’t even make the words come out of your mouth. Nevertheless
—it was so!
It was
…an impossibility!
Why, his building was one of the great ones built just before the First World War! Back then it was still not entirely proper for a good family to live in an apartment (instead of a house). So the apartments were built like mansions, with eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-foot ceilings, vast entry galleries, staircases, servants’ wings, herringbone-parquet floors, interior walls a foot thick, exterior walls as thick as a fort’s, and fireplaces, fireplaces, fireplaces, even though the buildings were all built with central heating. A mansion!—except that you arrived at the front door via an elevator (opening upon your own private vestibule) instead of the street. That was what you got for $2.6 million, and anyone who put one foot in the entry gallery of the McCoy duplex on the tenth floor knew he was in
…one of those fabled apartments that the world
, le monde,
died for!
And what did a million get you today? At most, at most, at
most:
a three-bedroom apartment—no servants’ rooms, no guest rooms, let alone dressing rooms and a sunroom—in a white-brick high-rise built east of Park Avenue in the 1960s with 8½-foot ceilings, a dining room but no library, an entry gallery the size of a closet, no fireplace, skimpy lumberyard moldings, if any, plasterboard walls that transmit whispers, and no private elevator stop. Oh no; instead, a mean windowless elevator hall with at least five pathetically plain bile-beige metal-sheathed doors, each protected by two or more ugly drop locks, opening upon it, one of these morbid portals being
yours
.

Patently
…an impossibility!

He sat with his $650 New & Lingwood shoes pulled up against the cold white bowl of the toilet and the newspaper rustling in his trembling hands, envisioning Campbell, her eyes brimming with tears, leaving the marbled entry hall on the tenth floor for the last time, commencing her descent into the lower depths.

Since I’ve foreseen it, God, you can’t let it happen, can you?

The Giscard!…Had to move fast! Had to have a print!…This phrase suddenly possessed his mind,
have a print
. When a big deal such as the Giscard was completed, closed, once and for all, it was set down in the form of a contract that was actually printed by a printing company, on a press.
Have a print! Have a print!