The Rich Are Different (64 page)

I rocketed out of my chair, rushed round the desk and goddamned nearly ripped the lapels off his jacket as I jerked him to his feet.

‘You—’ The obscenities streamed out of me. The room swam in a hot mist of rage while Cornelius, his face pinched with fright, tried to prise himself free. Finally sanity returned. I dropped him, shoved him back in his
chair and stood towering over him. ‘You goddamned little sonofabitch!’ I shouted in fury. ‘Never speak to me like that again!’

‘Cut the crap, Steve,’ snarled the boy, shooting to his feet with his chin up and his shoulders squared, ‘and stop acting so fucking dumb.’

I gasped. So shattered was I by this rapid transformation from well-spoken schoolboy to loud-mouthed maverick that it took me a moment to realize I’d backed away from him behind my desk.

‘Now you listen to me,’ said Cornelius in a low rapid voice. ‘I’ve got the evidence to put you in jail and if you don’t give me what I want, I’ll use it. It’s as simple as that. And don’t think the evidence would rebound against Sam and me just because we’ve kept quiet this long. We’ll say you intimidated us and we’ll act the part of a couple of frightened kids and the police will just pat us on the head and send us home. But you won’t have a chance. You’ll be washed up, cleaned out and ploughed under. All you’ll need is a headstone.’

‘You’re crazy,’ I said. ‘If you do this to me you’ll finish Van Zale’s.’

‘So what!’ he spat at me. ‘What do I care? I’ll still have fifty million bucks to fuck around with! I’ll start backing talking pictures or investing in aeroplanes and I’ll make another fifty million while you’re sitting on your ass in some shitty jail!’

I reached for my hip-flask. The silence lengthened.

‘Think about it,’ said Cornelius. ‘Let me know when you’re ready to discuss my terms.’ And turning abruptly he walked out of the room.

[7]

I thought about it all over Christmas but could see no way out. I’d have to let him have what he wanted but I knew that no matter how many concessions I made he would always want more. I wanted to be the number one man at Van Zale’s and so did he. We were on a collision course. What I needed was to buy enough time to manoeuvre myself into a position where I could screw him as ably as he’d screwed me. I needed to fall back, conciliate, retrench.

But how I was going to achieve that I had no idea and meanwhile I felt as emasculated as if I’d been pistol-whipped by a woman.

I thought about it day in and day out until in January the letter came from Hal Beecher, our resident partner in London, to say he’d been wanting to return to New York for some time and perhaps he could nowadays be of more use to us at Willow and Wall than in Milk Street.

Everything fell into place with a bang. The London office had been static for some time and shortly before Charley’s death we’d discussed the possibility of recalling Hal to New York. Now, as we searched for new partners and continued our efforts to shore up the firm, it made even more sense to recall conservative elderly Hal to help guide the firm through its biennial post-murder blues, and it was no less than an inspired move to send me to London to take his place. I had the European experience and a
record of taking chances that panned out well. Once I’d got the Milk Street office humming I could even start an expansion in Europe, and suddenly I could see it all, a European empire, Van Zale offices in Hamburg and Zurich, Van Zale et Cie in Paris as well as Van Zale’s in London … And while I was piling up my successes in Europe Cornelius would be piling up mistakes in New York. After five years I could come back and kick him out. I’d have it made.

‘I’m all for improving the London office,’ said Martin when we discussed the idea in a partners’ meeting. ‘It’s obvious the financial picture has changed there now that the foreign government loan business has all but ceased, and it’s equally obvious we’ve got to make a greater effort than ever before to capture the domestic industrial and commercial markets. Paul was an expert on British industry and you spent two years with him in England, Steve. Offhand I can’t think of anyone in the Street better suited to restructure our London office and evolve a really innovative new policy.’

All the partners made sympathetic approving noises. I could see Lewis was already savouring the idea of being sole senior partner in New York while Clay was revelling at the thought of more elbow-room. I permitted myself a small cynical smile. Cornelius could take care of them both and save me the bother. I now had great faith in Cornelius’ ability to take care of anyone who stood in his way.

I looked at him. He was already looking at me. As we exchanged gracious smiles he said pleasantly: ‘You’re an Anglophile, aren’t you, Steve? I’m sure you’ll do a great job. Do you still have a lot of friends there?’

‘You bet I do,’ I said, smiling at him lazily across the table, and for some reason the very first person I thought of was Dinah Slade.

[1]

It was March 1929 when I arrived in England. Caroline was to join me in June when the boys had finished school, so I was on my own. At Southampton my ship docked in the rain but by the time I reached London the sky was pastel blue and the short grass in the parks was rippling in the spring breeze. Flinging open a window in my suite at the Ritz I sucked in a lungful of mild air and pictured the usual winter’s end blizzard which was probably howling through New York. Next door to the park, traffic was roaring down Piccadilly.

I wasted no time sighing nostalgically for Broadway but ordered up a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch, dispatched my secretary to buy the day’s newspapers and had my valet unpack my best British tweeds right away.

The next hour passed very pleasantly. I browsed through the financial
columns. Woolworth’s was flourishing like a weed. I made a mental note to buy more shares. The financial highbrows were twittering about the effect on the working-classes of ‘hire purchase’ which I thought was a real cute English phrase, the kind you want to can and take back to the States. I cast my eyes over the big industrial names, Portland Cement, Shell Oil, Courtauld’s, Austin and Morris, and remembered I had to buy a car. The Rolls-Royce would have to be black – I could remember how they despised bright colours in the City – but I thought I might buy a flashy Frazer Nash Boulogne for roaring around on weekends.

I glanced at the sports pages but found only English football, checked the list of theatres and earmarked a couple of plays. As I absent-mindedly fixed myself another tot of the best Scotch that ever flowed out of Scotland I shuddered at the memory of the unaged whisky from the New Jersey stills, but America was already receding and Europe, foreign and exotic, was seeping sensuously through my mind. I felt as if I had just arrived at some splendid party. All I had to do to have the time of my life was to join in.

Picking up the phone I called Dinah Slade’s office a stone’s throw away in the heart of Mayfair and asked to speak to the boss.

The line clicked. Dinah’s voice said suddenly: ‘Steve?’

‘Dinah! How are you? Did you get my letter?’

‘I certainly did! Lovely to hear you again, Steve!’ Something had happened to her mesmerizing English accent. The keep-your-hands-off-me-you-brute flavour had mellowed into a suggestion of maybe-you-and-I-could-get-along-after-all. ‘Welcome to England!’

‘Thanks!’ I said. ‘It’s great to be back. How’s business?’

We spent a couple of minutes telling each other how wonderful it was to be alive and well and making money. Finally I purred: ‘Say Dinah, I guess your social calendar must stretch from here to Christmas, but could you take pity on a poor ex-patriate American and have dinner with me tonight?’

‘Steve, how sweet of you to ask!’ she purred right back. ‘I’d absolutely adore to. Come to my house first for a drink – you’ve got my new address, haven’t you?’

This was quite a welcome. I began to feel in very high spirits. ‘I sure have – thanks a lot, Dinah,’ I said, and after we’d fixed the time I hung up, yodelled ‘Yippee!’ as exuberantly as any cowboy and poured myself another slug of vintage Scotch in celebration.

[2]

I was kind of annoyed with Caroline at the time. When I had first told her of my decision to go to Europe she had been livid. ‘Europe! Steven, you must be out of your mind!’ She had wanted a reason for my decision, but I could hardly tell her I’d just been worsted in a power struggle and that the move to Europe was a brilliant manoeuvre to recoup my losses.

‘You enjoyed Europe when we were there with Paul and Sylvia during the war!’ I said hotly.

‘Yes, but when
you’re young you don’t care about living in a foreign country for a couple of years! But now – England – all those frightful aristocrats and stuffy traditions and the terrible food and plumbing – oh Steven, you’ve got to change your mind! I just won’t stand for it! I refuse to go!’

We lost our tempers. Caroline locked herself in one of the guest-rooms and I got so exasperated I broke down the door and hauled her out. She screamed loudly but she was always impressed by a show of strength and although I did give her the chance to tear herself away she let me catch her in the bathroom so that we could have a steamy reconciliation beneath the shower.

‘No showers in those dreadful English bathrooms,’ she reminded me darkly as we rolled ourselves up in a towel, but she no longer tried to persuade me to change my mind.

Still, by the time March came I could hardly wait to have a break from married life. Caroline was complaining constantly that she couldn’t bear to leave her friends, charity work, birth control organizations, home, garden, servants and all the amenities of North American life. Our reconciliation under the shower had been short-lived. Caroline’s interest in sex had plummeted to zero again, and the more she sulked the more annoyed I became because I was afraid her attitude would upset Scott and Tony.

Eventually I tried to engineer a truce by asking her to keep an eye on my brothers for me. This innocent request cleverly served two purposes: it placated Caroline by stimulating her vicarious interest in my career, and it made me feel less guilty about leaving Luke and Matt to manage on their own. Since they were useless correspondents they were relieved when I told them Caroline would relay their news to me, and I made them promise to meet her once a week to tell her what was going on. How I was going to keep an eye on them when Caroline joined me in June I had no idea, but I figured that if they could keep their noses clean until she left New York I might feel more confident that they could operate without supervision.

Before I left New York I installed Luke, the respectable twin, as my watch-dog at Willow and Wall. His brokerage firm continued to handle the Van Zale Participations account, but Luke took my place in running the trust. I invented a title for him, ‘Supervising Officer, Interdepartmental Investment Trusts’, gave him a desk in the great hall and arranged for him to report to old Walter once a week, but since Walter knew next to nothing about investment trusts this meant Luke had a large amount of autonomy. Of course Luke wasn’t a banker and never would be, but he had brains of a kind, he had been watching me run the trust since 1926, and as the trust’s broker he had the portfolio at his fingertips. It made sense to employ him as my deputy, and since I knew Caroline would scent trouble right away if the job proved more than he could handle I reckoned I’d taken the appropriate safeguards. Anyway I liked the idea of receiving inside reports from One Willow Street. If Clay tried to muscle in on my territory or Cornelius suddenly decided to bone
up about investment trusts, I wanted to read all about it that same day in a transatlantic cable.

That took care of Luke. As for Matt who was enjoying himself representing Van Zale Participations at three-hour business lunches every day I told him very plainly what kind of behaviour I expected from him in my absence.

‘No pool operators,’ I said sternly. ‘No bucket-shops. No hustling around notorious flim-flam men. No scenes in speak-easies. No gambling with gangsters. And no bumming around with those bootlegger friends of yours up in the northern hills of New Jersey. The last thing I want to hear when I’m in Europe is that Matthew Sullivan, president of Van Zale Participations, was arrested by Revenue agents while transporting half a dozen jars of applejack over the state line.’

Matt promised to be good as gold. Luke swore I wouldn’t regret my decision to trust him. Both of them hugged me emotionally when they came down to the docks to say goodbye and I admit I had quite a lump in my throat at the thought of not seeing them for twelve months. I planned to return to New York once a year to check up on everyone, but a year’s still a long time.

‘Goodbye, Steven darling,’ said Caroline, offering me a cool cheek after my brothers had stumbled off moist-eyed down the gangway. ‘I guess it’s useless asking you to behave yourself but do try not to drink too much, there’s a lamb.’

I would have roared like a lion but Scott and Tony were there and Caroline and I never quarrelled in front of them.

It certainly wasn’t one of the brighter moments of our marriage, but even a good marriage has its sticky patches and we both agreed our marriage was a good one. It was true we shared what the old fogeys called ‘modern attitudes’, but marriage is a flexible institution and just because Caroline and I had long ago hammered out our own rules our modern style didn’t mean we were less successfully married than a conventional couple. I wasn’t faithful to her, but Caroline knew all about that and actually encouraged me to have as many women as I wanted. ‘Sexual frustration,’ intoned Caroline with her bowdlerized version of Freud in one hand and her volume of Marie Stopes in the other, ‘should have no place in a modern marriage. In this dawn of a new era both men and women should be freed from the tyranny of sexual enslavement.’ Loosely translated this meant that a wife should be able to say no as often as she liked and if a husband wanted more he could damned well step out and get it.

This coincided with Paul’s theory that a good marriage has nothing to do with fidelity and I must say the philosophy did have its attractions. The only aspect that bothered me was the thought that Caroline might practise what she preached as enthusiastically as I did. I wouldn’t have liked it at all if she’d gone stepping out with any man who caught her fancy.