The Wrong Kind of Money (62 page)

“Don't touch me!” She recoils sharply from him in the chair.

“I love you, Carol!”

“Melody
! I think I could have accepted it if it had been any other woman. Or even any other
man!
But
Melody
—whom we'd taken into our house as our friend, our guest, a member of the family almost—a girl we'd agreed to be surrogate parents for, people her parents trusted, Anne's college roommate, for God's sake, Noah! That I can never accept!”

“So it's true!
” Both of them turn now, and Anne is standing in the doorway in her nightgown, wakened by the sound of their angry voices. “So it's all true,” she says again. She takes one step into the room. “You filth!” she says to Noah. “You filthy piece of shit! You filthy asshole!”

Carol jumps to her feet and, doing so, overturns the pie-crust table on its folding legs, the table holding her highball glass and ashtray. What's left of her drink spills, and her glass rolls across the carpet, spewing ice cubes, and many cigarette butts scatter across the floor. The small pillow on her chair, with its needlepoint legend,
THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING
, also rolls to the floor. “Get back to bed, Anne,” Carol says. “This is between your father and me.”

Anne takes another step into the room. “No, it's not between you and him. It's between me and him! Filthy piece of shit!”

“Shut up!” Carol says. “Don't you dare talk to your father that way! Get back to bed. You're the one who brought that piece of trash into this house to begin with! It's all your fault, you know!”

“Filthy piece of shit!
” Anne says again, her voice rising, and raising her hand in a fist as though to strike him.

“I said shut up! Your father is the most wonderful man in the world!”

From the chair where he sits, her father says, “Go ahead and hit me, Annie, if it makes you feel any better.”

She turns away from him and glares at her mother. “I think you're both filthy, stinking pieces of shit!” she says. “You're both filthy assholes!”

“Is everything all right?” A fourth voice is heard in the room, and the three others turn and see Melody standing in the doorway, still holding the keys with which she let herself into the apartment.

“What are you doing here?”
Carol screams at her.

“I had to pick up a few things. It's so late. I didn't think anybody would still be up. But then I heard voices, and—”

“Get out of here!
”

She turns to Noah with a look of utter calm on her face. “So you told her,” she says. “I hoped you would. I'm glad you did.” She turns to Carol. “So now you know,” she says. “Noah and I are in love. It's as simple as that. There's nothing more to say.”

“
I said get out of here!
”

“I really think you'd better go, Mellie,” Noah says.

“No, I belong here with you, Noah, to help you get through this.”

“Please, Mellie—”

“I knew it wouldn't be easy, darling.”

“Mellie,
please
!”

“Did you tell her everything, Noah? Did you tell her everything you told me?” She turns to Carol again. “Noah loves me, Carol. He never really loved you, Carol—ever.”

“I never said that, Mellie. Now please—”

“Did you tell her that you want a divorce? That you want to marry me?”

“No, because—because I love Carol, Melody.”

“Did you tell her how I've been able to do things for you that she could never do? Did you tell her what I did for you in Atlantic City? Did you tell her how I rewrote your script? Tell her now, Noah. I want to hear you tell her.”

“Later, Mellie—not now. Now, please, just go!”

“Later?”
Carol screams. “This is all news that I'm to be told
later?”

“We've got to stop telling them these lies, Noah,” Melody says. “We've got to tell them the whole truth now.” And she steps quickly toward him and kisses him full on the mouth.

He pulls away from her. “Stop this, Mellie,” he whispers.

With a little cry Carol springs to the coffee table and picks up the pistol, and now Noah is on his feet as well. “What the hell do you think you're doing, Carol?” he shouts. “Put that damn thing down!”

“I'm going to kill myself, that's what I'm going to do! I was going to kill myself this afternoon, but a policeman stopped me. I never want to see any of you again!”

Noah lunges for her and grabs her right arm. “Drop it!” he shouts, trying to pull her arm down, and they wrestle briefly, silently, for the gun.
“Stop this, for God's sake!”

“Mother!
” Anne screams.

“Let her do it, Noah,” Melody says calmly. “It would solve everything.”

The first shot, a flat crack, hits the window, and there is a noisy shatter of glass falling into the entrance courtyard below, as the curtains billow outward into the night storm, and the second shot—and it was the kick of the gun, the defense would contend, that triggered the second shot—strikes Noah just below the left ear.

Looking startled, he staggers backward, his hand clasped to his throat. Then his knees buckle, and he falls to the floor.

On the rear wheel of his bike, hunched against the handlebars and the wind, he is headed at full speed toward the fallen log, leaps over it, and plunges forward into the darkness.

Carol drops the gun, and it lands on the carpet with a soft thud. She flings herself to her knees on the floor beside him and cradles his head in her arms. “Oh, Noah!” she sobs. “I love you, Noah! Don't die!”

“You've killed him!” Melody cries, and she stoops to reach for the gun.

But Anne is too quick for her, and she, too, drops to her knees and picks up the small, bone-handled pistol. She points it blindly at Melody. “You did all this!” she sobs, and a third shot rings out, and the devastation is complete.

Already, through the broken window, the sounds of police sirens can be heard shrilling upward from the street below.

P
ART
T
HREE

Grandmont, 1994

21

Some Final Words

“… according to police, appeared to have occurred after a long night of heavy drinking. It is the first time a violent crime has taken place at exclusive River House, arguably New York's most fashionable residential address.”

Georgette Van Degan switches off the television set from the remote. “Well, we're off the hook, darling,” she says to her husband. “We won't have to give that silly coming-out party, and we'll get to keep the porcelain collection.”

The telephone rings, and she reaches for it. “Oh, yes, Roxy,” she says, “how are you, my precious love? … Oh, no, no,
no,
my darling. There never
was
going to be any coming-out party, certainly not with that lush Carol Liebling.… Frankly, I didn't tell you because I know how upset you journalists get when you print something that isn't accurate.… And it wasn't your fault, my darling. I think you got that item from Jacques, the captain at Le Cirque.… I
thought
so. But he often gets things wrong. It's the language barrier, you see.… Yes, we did have lunch, but it was to discuss an entirely different matter. I don't really remember what it was.… Well, you can print a correction if you
want
to, darling. But at this point I'd really rather not have my name associated with that murderess.… Thanks, lovey, I appreciate that. Bye-e-e-e-e.”

Her husband turns to her. “You know, you really are a god-damned fool, Georgette,” he says. “You really are a stupid god-damned fool.”

“Why? What's wrong? We're off the hook! Thank God!”

“Without Carol we'll never get the Ingraham business. We'll never get shit from them as long as the old lady is running things!”

“Well, don't look at me as though I had anything to do with what's happened, Truck!”

“And the museum gift—that gift is designed to save me millions in taxes! Well, the gift offer still stands.”

“But you said yourself you weren't sure they'd accept your terms.”

“They will. They will, believe me, when they've had a chance to think about it. The museum isn't being run by Mother Teresa. You stupid fool. I was a fool to think I could take a slut like you out of the bean fields of Indiana and turn you into a lady.”

“And
you're
the
gentleman?
All I've got is your first three wives' word on how you beat up on them. But I've had
my
bruises photographed. In color! And those photographs are all in a safe at my lawyer's office—so don't try to mess around with me!”

“Bitch!” And suddenly he pitches forward in his chair, clutching his shirt.

“What's the matter?”

His fingers paw his chest, and the color has drained from his face. “Heart,” he whispers. “Pain … hurting … call nine-one-one … call nine-one-one … please …”

In all his years in the restaurant business, Glenn Bernbaum of Mortimer's has never put together a luncheon party the size of this one in such a hurry—twenty-six women, meaning nine four-tops have had to be pushed together, taking up more than half the main dining room. And Patsy Collingwood has indicated that she would have invited many more if her invitations hadn't had to go out at the last minute, right after hearing this morning's news. But her guests are all important women, all important customers, and so, for Mr. Bernbaum, all this hasty rearranging of the room has been worth the effort.

Patsy's guests are:

Marietta Spinola, Bitsy Walcock, Cinnamon La Farge, Bettina Musgrove, the Countess Grazzi, the Ballinger twins, Hermine McGovern, Pookie Satterthwaite, Corliss Thrue, Gloria Tunbridge, old Mrs. Nion Farwell (with the harelip), Cissie Warburton, Consuelo Custin, Lady Eve Cotterford, Chubby Corscadden, Roxy Rhinelander, Gussie Swinburne, Melissa Hart-Turnbull, Cherry de Rothschild, Ernestine Kolowrat, Flossie Bunce, Edwina Lahniers, Babs Goulandris, and Hyacinth Lafoon. Rarely have so many prominent New York society women been gathered at the same table. The
News
has sent a photographer to record the event.

And now Patsy and Mr. Bernbaum are setting out the place cards, tackling the arduous chore of
placement.

“I don't see a card here for Georgette,” Mr. Bernbaum says.

“Georgette? Georgette who?”

“Van Degan.”

“Oh,
her.
Her husband's business is going down the tubes, and he's given away all their porcelains to save on taxes—and those porcelains were supposed to be her insurance when he dies, because he doesn't have any. She's become one of yesterday's people, I'm afraid. Now, if I could only have gotten Carol Liebling to come, that would have been the coup of all time! But she's in jail.”

They return to the place cards. “Do you think Cissie Warburton can be trusted to behave herself next to Belinda Ballinger?” she asks him.

And now, after the usual disputes about who has been seated where, and after—as inevitably happens—the guests have rearranged the seating to suit themselves, they are all seated. Drink orders have been taken—mostly for chablis or Perrier with lime, with only old Mrs. Farwell insisting on her customary double bullshot—and Patsy Collingwood taps her water glass with her teaspoon. “Girls!” she says. “Girls! It's Topic A, and I want to hear everyone's favorite theory, one by one!”

“Pookie should go first. After all, it happened in her building.”

“Well,” Pookie begins, “all I know is what I heard from James, the night doorman.…”

Two white-coated orderlies carry Truxton Van Degan on a stretcher down the curving staircase of the Van Degans' Fifth Avenue apartment. Right behind them is a paramedic holding a gold plastic cup over Truxton Van Degan's nose and mouth, and following him is a second paramedic carrying a bottle of oxygen. Georgette Van Degan supervises the operation from the top of the stairs.

“Remember—no heroic life-sustaining measures,” she calls down to the men on the steps below. “My husband has a living will. He requests no heroic life-sustaining measures.” Then she suddenly screams,
“For Christ's sake, watch out!
” One of the paramedics has jogged one of the pair of red Chinese vases with his elbow, and it rocks slightly on its carved ebony base in its lighted niche in the stairwell. “That's Lang Yao
sang-de-boeuf
! Those vases are priceless! I won't even let my maids touch them with a feather duster!”

The four men from the life squad give her an odd look before continuing slowly down the stairwell with their burden.

There were times, when he was in a jokey mood, when Jules Liebling referred to Bathsheba Sachs as “Miss Fix-It” for her ability to smooth over some of the rougher moments that occasionally arose in the distilled spirits industry. She was certainly Miss Fix-It during the trial.

The name Kaminsky, for example, is not uncommon in New York, but when Bathy Sachs learned that the case had been assigned to Judge Ida Kaminsky, she did a little research. She discovered that Judge Kaminsky's father, who had also been a judge, was indeed the same Judge Saul Kaminsky who, back in the free-for-all days of Prohibition, had acquired a certain indebtedness to the Liebling family. There was no need to remind Judge Ida Kaminsky of this fact. She knew.

Given these circumstances, Bathy had no trouble persuading the family that the defendant should waive her right to a jury trial, and to allow the judge to reach a just and fair verdict on her own.

A defendant who is clearly innocent, Bathy reminded them, should never risk having her fate decided by a jury, who will always be asked to wrestle with the knotty problem of “reasonable doubt.”

The New York County prosecutor, who was running for reelection in November, seemed determined at first to make this a major case, assuming that the amount of publicity the case would receive would keep his name and face in the newspapers and on television screens for some time. But when Judge Kaminsky chose the smallest courtroom on Foley Square for her hearing, with its limited space for press and spectators, and with television and other cameras banned, the prosecutor began to find himself frustrated at every turn. Still, he insisted that Carol should stand trial for something called “depraved-indifference murder,” a charge not often heard in courtrooms. Judge Kaminsky, however, ruled that until she had reached her verdict, the word
homicide
would be substituted for murder.