Too Much Money (31 page)

Addison, stung deeply at being spoken to in such a manner by a doorman, retreated into a corner of the entrance, so rattled that he needed a smoke. Unconsciously, he patted his jacket down until he found his gold cigarette case. At the very same moment, Lil Altemus was exiting the limousine of her stepmother,
Dodo Van Degan, with Dodo and Dodo’s lover, a very excited Xavior Branigan, who had never been to such a party before. As Lil climbed the steps, her eye caught the gold cigarette case that Winkie Williams had promised to leave to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. She stormed forward and grabbed the cigarette case out of Addison Kent’s hand as Bill Cunningham, the star society photographer from the
New York Times
, who knew an aristocrat when he saw one, took Lil’s picture over and over.

“I’ll take that, thank you very much,” she said in her most patrician outraged voice. “That poor maid, Immaculata or whatever her name was. I accused
her
of stealing Winkie’s cigarette case and told all my friends not to hire her, and all the time it was
you!
I knew you were a phony from the first time you walked into my house with Adele Harcourt at my Farewell to Fifth Avenue lunch party. What about this emerald ring?” she said, holding up the ring on her finger to Addison’s face and shaking her finger. “Did you steal this too?”

“No, no, honest to God,” cried Addison, close to tears.

“I can only imagine what your great friend Perla Zacharias will do to you when she hears about this, which she will! You shouldn’t be allowed into this party. I’m going to have a word with Elias Renthal about you!”

“Come along, Lil,” said Dodo. “You’re holding up the line, and the photographers are taking pictures of you. Xavior, take Lil’s arm. We’re going in.”

“Well, the tables have turned,” said Xavior, who had once tricked with Addison Kent in a men’s room at the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home and then been snubbed by him. He took Lil’s arm, as if he were a family member, and rendered a look to Addison that clearly said, “You’re toast, Miss Kent.”

“I never liked him, never, from the first day I met him,” continued Lil as she entered the restaurant.

Addison, devastated, began to cry at his public shame.

“Out! Move, fella! Officer,” said the doorman.

“No, no, I’m going. Will you please tell Mrs. Zacharias,” he said in a pleading voice.

“I’m not telling Mrs. Zacco nothing! Officer! Officer!”

Addison, frightened now, backed off into the crowd. He ran wildly to the corner of Lexington Avenue, sobbing all the way. He didn’t know where to run. He had recognized Bill Cunningham from the
Times
. He knew there would be pictures. For the first time in his life, he thought of his mother, who, after the failure of her cheese soufflé at Tootie Scott-Miller’s lunch party, had jumped to her death out the window of the Tavistock mansion, which was now the home of Elias and Ruby Renthal, whose party he had not been allowed to enter.

N
O ONE
ever said about Perla Zacharias that she was not a very clever, perhaps even brilliant, woman. No one knew Perla better than Perla knew herself. In the privacy of her room, she talked to herself in the mirror and was totally, brutally honest with herself. In her social quest, she still had high ambitions, despite several setbacks that had been written about in
Park Avenue
magazine in articles by Augustus Bailey, whom she loathed. Nonetheless, her desire to assume the philanthropic mantle of Adele Harcourt had never abated. Adele had been dead for more than a year now, and no one had stepped forward to take her place. Perla knew that no one must ever realize the extent of her vile vicious temper, or she would never attain the high position in New York that she felt she was ready to assume. Her half brother, Rocco, for whom she felt dislike and who she often wished had never been born, was one who knew the cruelty of her temper, but he had long since tuned out his sister, who kept him back in Johannesburg, never to visit or ever see her grand houses in New York, London, and Paris. Rocco could do imitations of her rage that kept the servants in hysterics, and he
delighted in embarrassing her memory in Johannesburg, by doing things like urinating on the dance floor of the Tits and Ass Club, the lowest dive in Johannesburg, while smoking a joint. The rage she felt at her brother, and at others such as Gus Bailey, often lingered for long periods. Some had witnessed her anger, but they were her servants, her guards, people too insignificant for her to concern herself with.

As late as she was for Elias and Ruby Renthal’s party, she did not wish there to be any leftover anger fermenting within her, so she asked her chief of staff, Willard, dressed as always in gray flannel, to ask her driver, Mohab, in livery copied from the livery of the staff of the Prince of Wales at Clarence House, with whom she dined on charity nights, to drive slowly around the park before pulling up in front of the Four Seasons. Arriving, she rolled down the darkened window of her Rolls-Royce. “I am scheduled to meet Mr. Addison Kent here outside the Four Seasons. Will you tell him that Mrs. Zacharias has arrived.”

“Mr. Addison Kent couldn’t wait any longer, Mrs. Zacharias,” said the doorman.

“I beg your pardon?” said Perla,

“He wasn’t having a very good time waiting, so he took off,” said the doorman.

“Took off? What do you mean he took off?”

“Took off. He ran down the street,” replied the doorman.

“You’d better have a word with that one,” said Perla to Willard.

“What are the orders, Mrs. Zacharias?” asked Willard. “I know you don’t want to walk into the party without an escort.”

“How would you like to walk me in, Willard? Just take me to the top of the stairs. I don’t want you to go through the line with me. I don’t want to have to introduce you to anybody. Just get me to the top of the stairs and then you can leave.”

“What are you going to do if you bump into Gus Bailey?”

I
N THE
splendid bedroom of the house on East Seventy-eighth Street, Elias and Ruby Renthal emerged from their separate dressing rooms to look at each other in their party finery. But Elias stalled the proceedings with an urgent need to use the facilities.

“Elias, we can’t be late. This party is about us, and you’re holding us up,” called out Ruby.

Nothing hurried Elias. When he finally came out of the bathroom he pointed to the bathroom door. “Don’t anybody go in there until next Tuesday.”

“No cheap talk today, darling.”

“Honey, I never saw you as beautiful as you look right now,” said Elias.

“Well, thank you, sweetheart. That really touches me. I had Bernardo. I had Frieda. I had about ten people working on me, all at the same time. How do you like the dress? Oscar was here up until about twenty minutes ago, sewing me into it. It’s called Ruby Renthal Red. I changed the seating a few times. Darling, there’s no way you can put Sylvia Luby next to the Duke of Chatsworth. You know we’re being taped for the
Today
show, don’t you? Matt Lauer’s going to do the interview. Oh, listen, by the way, Elias. I think we ought to have a drink, just the two of us. To open a split of champagne. Like this,” she said as she opened the small bottle and poured the champagne. “Listen, Elias, I want to tell you something, straight from your wife’s lips.
Thank you
, Elias.
Thank you
. I’m proud of us. We went through some rough spots, and we came through them. We did it. We’ve turned out the town. I love you, Elias.”

Just then Ruby’s secretary, Jenny, entered the room. “The car’s ready in front and it will take you and Mr. Renthal to the service entrance of the Four Seasons. We have a room for
you with a dressing table, Mrs. Renthal. Bernardo will be there for the evening, in case you need any help with makeup and hair.”

“O
H, HONEY
, you look fantastic; you’re beyond,” said Brucie to Ruby when she entered the Pool Room with Elias to begin greeting their guests.

“Oh, Brucie, look how beautifully you have transformed this room,” cried Ruby. “Look, Elias. I’ve never seen anything like it. Oh, listen, the music is starting. Come on, Elias, we have work to do. We should be standing at the top of the stairs.”

G
US WAS
perfectly content to watch the party rather than participate in it. He knew all the stories of all the people. The dancing had started. Yehudit Tavicoli, wearing new emeralds, was dancing with Joe Carey, who she let everyone know was the richest man in Brooklyn. “Hey, Gus,” called out Elias Renthal. “Come over here and have your picture taken with me.” Gus, startled, let himself be hugged by Elias as he waved to the photographers at the same time. “This is a first, Elias,” said Gus. “Did Ruby put you up to having our pictures taken?” Elias had something he wanted to say to Gus, before he lost the moment. “Why don’t you lay off on Perla? The story’s over. The killer is in jail.”

“You’re right, she probably didn’t do it. I have no concrete evidence that says she did. But something odd happened there and I’m just so intrigued by all the unanswered questions. The trial seemed so rigged. They knew before it started that the male nurse was going to be found guilty and would be sentenced to ten years. Why did the police keep the firemen out? Why were the locks all being changed? Why weren’t the surveillance
cameras working? Maybe it won’t add up to anything, but there’s so much I want to know.”

“You could get yourself in trouble, Gus. Do you ever think about that?”

“I do,” Gus replied.

“Have you seen Ruby?” asked Elias.

“From afar. She’s a beauty, Elias.”

“She’d like to hear that.”

“I intend to tell her.”

“I don’t suppose you and I will ever be friends, Gus, but I’m happy that you hold Ruby in high esteem.”

Elias eased back into the crowd. Gus stood at the top of the stairs just in front of the room where the dancing was taking place. The Pool Room looked wonderful. He always marveled at the elegant simplicity of Mies van der Rohe’s proportions and Philip Johnson’s design. This year the Four Seasons was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and Gus had been a regular there for half that time. At first the chain-metal curtains on the windows had made him dizzy; now he found them soothing.

How many times had he waved to Philip Johnson sitting at his corner table in the Grill Room? How many lunches, dinners, and parties had he attended here? He remembered the day when Anna Wintour had been confronted by a lady in black from PETA, who had tossed a dead raccoon at her table, knocking over her double espresso. Was it two years ago that he saw former president Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan munching on cotton candy in the middle booth? And then there was the fire in the Brasserie kitchen that caused both the Grill Room and the Pool Room to be engulfed in smoke, forcing the power lunchers to flee into the street.

Gus looked down now, checking the crowd. The room was almost full; the guests were talking and laughing while the friendly young waitstaff moved effortlessly among them. There
was Lil Altemus talking to Maisie Verdurin, both in the same business now. Lil, liberated from God’s Waiting Room on her way to Real Estate Heaven. He glimpsed Kit Jones, who seemed to be listening intently to something Dodo Van Degan was whispering. He wondered what tidbit Kit was getting for her column. Simon Cabot and Baroness de Liagra were toasting each other while the irrepressible Julian Niccolini hovered with a bottle of champagne.

Quite a scene, Gus thought. Here were the rich, those who were about to become richer and those who were hanging on by their thumbs. These were the people he had spent a lifetime listening to and writing about, who never seemed to tire of telling him their secrets. He was always amazed by their willingness to talk at cocktail parties, lunches, and dinners—even during random encounters on the street. He had long ago decided that listening was an art, and he had mastered it. But what was surprising was how quickly his subjects returned to his willing ear after their secrets were revealed in the pages of
Park Avenue
magazine, or in his novels. Even O.J. Simpson had given him a big smile when he had covered Simpson’s most recent trial. And Phil Spector had been incredibly friendly when they had stood side by side in the men’s room of the courthouse in Los Angeles. Gus was about to leave his elevated perch and make his way down to the crowd when he saw Stokes Bishop walking toward him. Stokes stopped to speak with Alex von Bidder, one of the owners of the restaurant. Alex had always seen that Gus got a great table and a great meal. But right now, Gus had something important to say to Stokes.

“You’re the most popular man at the party, Gus. Everyone wants to talk to you,” said Stokes.

“I’ve got something to straighten out with you, Stokes. I’ve had a bit of an epiphany. I was pretty pissed, and blabbed too much, which is one of my more unattractive traits. I realize that
we all have someone to answer to, and you have Hy Vietor, the billionaire who is answerable to no one and who didn’t go along with your plan to help me out. It’s over. It’s erased. It’s all gone.”

“Well, I’m glad. I’m sorry we had a falling-out. You’re great, Gus. You’re a superstar. Enjoy it. Say, I hear you have a big birthday coming up. Do you want help with a party?” asked Stokes.