Carriage Trade (62 page)

“Tell me something else,” she says. “Do you think that all the trouble he was in, and that the store was in, would have caused him to—to take his own life?”

“I don't know,” he says. “Smitty thinks so.”

She nods.

“No wonder Tommy Bonham wants to marry you.”

Dully: “Why?”

“Until he died, your father was in his pocket. Now Tommy wants you in his pocket.”

She nods again. “Partners.” Then she says, “I think I need a drink.”

“Lillet?”

“Something stronger. A real drink. Whiskey.”

“Where?”

She points to the liquor cabinet.

He goes to the cabinet, where he finds whiskey, glasses, an ice bucket. He fixes strong, dark drinks for them both. Then he returns and hands her drink to her. She takes a quick sip and makes a small, wry face. “My mother used to say that the first sip of Scotch always tasted to her like dirty socks,” she says. Then she says, “Well, that's it. I quit.”

“Quit?”

“Yes, quit. I'm out of this. I'm not going to fight this takeover any longer.”

He sits beside her on the sofa. “You can't quit now, Miranda!”

“I can't drag my mother into this mess. I can't drag Aunt Simma into this. And my grandmother, who's ninety-six! Let Continental Stores inherit this whole can of worms.”

“There are things you can do, Miranda, legal things.”

“And destroy Tarkington's reputation? No, thanks.”

“Don't quit now,” he says. “You've gone too far to quit now.”

“There's no point in going any farther.”

“There is! Now you know what you're dealing with. The cards are all on the table now. You can't quit now.”

“The card game's over, Peter.”

“Please don't quit now—for my sake.”

“Your sake?”

“I don't want you to be a quitter. Damn it, I'm not going to
let
you quit. I want to help you.”

She looks up at him. She is still clutching the potholder in one hand. “But you've got a book to write.”

“To hell with that. This is more important.”

“To
you
?”

“Did you really remember me from Yale?” he says. “In a red shirt?”

“Certainly.”

“I'm in love with you, Miranda.”

She is still looking at him. “Funny,” she says quietly. “You're the second man this week who's said that to me.”

“And one of them's a crook.”

She begins to laugh, and her laughter makes him start to laugh, and all at once they are both laughing, laughing like children, giggling uncontrollably in each other's arms.

In his office on West 23rd Street, Smyrna is saying to her boss, “Listen, Moe. It seems like you're either flying to Buenos Aires or to Nassau in the Bahamas, one of those two places, on Friday night. Not that it matters to me which one. But would it be out of place for me to ask when you're planning to come back from whichever place it is? Or is that one of those secrets which a secretary isn't supposed to know?”

“Ah, Smyrna,” he says. “I neglected to tell you that this office will be closing on Friday, and I shall not be needing your good services after that date.”

“
What
?” she shrieks. “You mean you're firing me?”

“I believe ‘terminated' is the word they're using at this point in time.”

“What about severance pay? What about that?”

“Smyrna, ours has been a wonderful relationship. Let's not end it on an unpleasant note.”

“You mean you're firing me without severance pay?”

“I didn't say that, did I? Let me take you to lunch at Harold's across the street around twelve-thirty, and we can discuss these various matters. Right now, I have some important calls to make.”

“I'm not going to lunch at that greasy spoon!” she says, and flounces out of his office, slamming the door hard behind her. “Cheapskate!” she yells through the door.

In the anteroom, one of her phones is ringing. “Development Corporation, Limited,” she says, her tone still angry. “Whom is calling? … No, I'm afraid Mr. Minskoff is in conference right now.… No, I do not know when would be a good time to reach him.” Then she says, “Listen, I don't know who the hell you guys are, but I'll tell you this much. This office is going to be closed after Friday, so you can lay off with these calls.… No, I know nothing of the bum's future plans.” Then she says, almost sweetly, “Why don't you try Mrs. Minskoff? I believe you have her private number.”

Farther uptown, it is Honeychile Minskoff's telephone that is ringing. She answers it and then gasps when she hears the voice on the other end of the line. “You can stop trying to frighten me!” she cries. “I don't care whether you're Julius or a friend of Harry the Heeb's or Don from Cleveland or Joe Blow from Kokomo! You can just stop trying to frighten me, 'cause my husband and I'll be leaving the country—permanently—Friday night! So there!” And she slams the receiver down into its cradle.

THE SCENE:
The interior of Moses Minskoff's inner office
.

THE TIME:
Ten o'clock Friday morning. Moses Minskoff is talking on the telephone
.

MINSKOFF:
Yes, Mrs. Van Degan, I received your check in this morning's mail. Thank you very much. You have made a very wise investment, Mrs. Van Degan, very wise indeed. Your late husband would be very proud of you, I'm sure. He was a fine man, Truxton Van Degan, a fine man of high caliber, with whom it was always a great pleasure to do business.
(pause)
Yes, Mrs. Van Degan, I will be sending you the promissory notes you purchased by Federal Express today, and you should have them in your good hands by tomorrow morning. I just have to get the necessary documents out of my safe.
(He eyes the safe.)
By the way, Mrs. Van Degan, could I trouble you to give me your Federal Express account number, since I seem to have momentarily misplaced mine? … Mrs. Van Degan? Hello? Mrs. Van Degan, are you there? Hello?

He begins jiggling the buttons of the receiver up and down, then furiously pushes buttons for other lines
.

MINSKOFF
(yelling):
Smyrna! What the hell is going on here?

The lights come up in Smyrna's outer office. She is at her desk
.

SMYRNA
(crossly):
All right, all right. Hold your water.
She rises, with her pad, and enters his office
.

MINSKOFF:
All our phone lines just suddenly went dead. We paid the phone bill, didn't we?

SMYRNA
(sarcastically):
So far as I know, Moe.

MINSKOFF:
Run down to the corner to the pay phone and call Repair Service. Damn it, we pay for business service so we oughta get it.

Smyrna returns to her office and reaches for her coat and bag. The lights in both offices fade
.

Cut to: Outside Moe Minskoff's building. It is a gray fall day. A sheet of newspaper blows in the wind. From right, a brightly painted panel truck appears and parks in front of Moe's building, next to a sign that reads, NO PARKING ANY TIME TOWAWAY ZONE. On the side of the panel truck is the legend “SIR PRIZE PARTIES, INC. Weddings. Banquets. Bar Mitzvahs. Corporate Meetings. Theme Parties. Special Events. Picnics. Conventions. Birthday Parties For All Ages. Hablamos Español.” The panels of the truck are painted with colored balloons and grinning clown faces. Bunched Mylar balloons float from the truck's rooftop
.

Inside the truck sit two clowns in whiteface with rouged cheeks and lips. One has an apple for a nose, the other a carrot. Both wear jesters' caps with bells
.

Another vehicle appears, a dark blue Chevrolet Caprice, and pulls in just behind the party truck. Its driver wears a dark fedora and a black trenchcoat
.

The two in clown costume wait in their truck, the ignition turned off. The driver of the Caprice waits in his car, slouched in his seat, his coat collar turned up, his hat brim turned down, his motor running
.

Presently Smyrna emerges from the building, wearing a down-filled parka, and goes running off down the street
.

Immediately, the two clowns step out of the truck and head for the door. One clown has his hands deep in the pockets of his red-and-white striped pantaloons. The other carries a suitcase
.

A woman leading a little girl by the hand comes down the street
.

WOMAN:
Look, Robin. Some lucky child is going to have a nice birthday party.

CHILD:
What's in that one clown's suitcase, Mommy?

WOMAN:
Why, his bag of tricks, of course!

The two clowns disappear into the building, and the woman and child stroll off
.

Silence. Then we hear the muffled sound of gunshots, nine in all
.

Silence again. The two clowns emerge from the building, moving quickly. The suitcase carried by the second clown appears to be noticeably heavier. They jump into the back seat of the Caprice, and the driver pulls quickly away. The street is empty except for the abandoned party truck, its Mylar balloons tugging in the wind
.

Presently Smyrna reappears, looking agitated. She enters the building
.

The lights come up again on Moe's pair of offices. Smyrna enters the outer room
.

SMYRNA
(yelling):
They think somebody musta cut our phone lines, Moe! They won't be able to fix 'em till Monday.

She enters her boss's office. The first thing she sees is the wall safe, open, empty, its steel door hanging crazily on one hinge. Then she turns to her boss's desk
.

He is tilted steeply backward in his big swivel chair, and his yellow Ultrasuede vest is drenched with blood. From the impossible angle that his head hangs backward over the back of his chair, and from the look of horror on Smyrna's face, it is clear that his face has been completely blown away. Where his head was, he wears a bib of blood
.

SMYRNA
(A piercing scream. A pause. She sobs.):
Oh, Moe … Moe … don't go away. Oh, please don't leave me, Moe. They won't be able to fix the phones till Monday, Moe.… But you won't be here on Monday, will you, Moe? You're going to Nassau, or else to Argentina. The tickets are in the safe.…

She sinks to her knees on the floor
.

Curtain

Part Four

CONSUELO'S GARDEN

32

“Moe Minskoff's death leaves us with some advantages, as well as some disadvantages,” Jacob Kohlberg is saying to Consuelo Tarkington on the telephone. “On the plus side, Moe claimed to have some promissory notes of Si's that he was trying to peddle. If they ever existed, no evidence of them has turned up since the murder. The police have thoroughly searched his office and his apartment, and nothing of the sort has been found. The murderer or murderers emptied Moe's office safe at the time, and considering the—uh—nature of the decedent's demise, it seems unlikely that anyone will be coming forth to demand payment from Si's estate. So I think we're safely off the hook on that one, Connie.”

“Good!”

“But on the down side, I'm sorry to say that Continental Stores has withdrawn its offer for your company. I've just had a long talk with Mr. Albert Martindale of Continental in Chicago. It seems that Minskoff was trying to act as broker in their acquisition. Martindale feels that, owing to the—uh—notoriety surrounding the murder case, he must ask his board of directors to bow out of the picture altogether, at least for the foreseeable future. Martindale doesn't rule out the possibility that his group might come back into the bidding at some future point, but, frankly, he doesn't sound sanguine about it.”

“Bidding? Is there bidding, Jake?”

“Well, that's the other thing, of course. There really aren't any other offers at the moment—none, at least, that could be taken seriously.”

“What about the Canadians? You mentioned a Canadian group.”

“There was a Canadian consortium, yes, that was interested in talking to us. But considering the situation in Canada right now, that group has been unable to get the bank financing it hoped for.”

“Just what I was afraid of,” she says. “We've got a store for sale, but nobody who wants to buy us. We're going to have to go out and start begging for a purchaser.”

“Well, I wouldn't say begging, Connie. Meanwhile, there've been a couple of meetings of the store's employees, and talk of the employees trying to buy Tarkington's. I don't know how far any of that talk has gotten. It seems to me a little bit like letting the lunatics run the asylum, but I've made it clear that we'll listen to any serious offer.”

She sighs. “Well, let me talk all this over with Miranda,” she says.

“Miranda?”

“She's taking a few days off from the store, staying here with me, and we've been talking about lots and lots of things.” She hesitates, and then says, “Jake, what would you think of letting Miranda run the store?”

There is a silence. Then he chuckles. “All I can say is that if Si were here he'd hit the ceiling at that idea.”

“But Si isn't here,” she says quietly. “Is he?”

“How do
you
feel about it, Connie? Do you want to give the kid a chance?”

“That's what I'm thinking,” she says. “Why not give the kid a chance?”

“How did your meeting with Peter Turner go?” Her mother asks. They are seated at opposite sides of the candlelit dining table at the farm.

“Very well,” she says noncommittally. “He's being very helpful, going over the store's books with me and so forth.”

“He seems like such a nice young man.”