Carriage Trade (67 page)

“Perhaps,” she says, feeling her resolve beginning to waver. “But still—”

“I love you, Miranda,” he says. “Whatever it is you think I've done that's made you decide to ruin me now, I'll always love you. Remember that.” He reaches out to take her by the shoulders.

“Please, no,” she says, stepping away.

“Remember those feelings you had for me years ago, when we first met? By the pool? The blue swimsuit with the red mermaid? You still have those feelings, don't you?”

“I was just a child,” she says. “And somehow I feel we've been over this ground before.”

“My child love. Face it, Miranda, you need me and I need you. It was to be you and me, from the moment we met.” His gaze at her is steady and hypnotic. “Now, why don't you calm yourself down? You've let the store's little problems worry you far more than those little problems are worth. Relax, and we'll talk some more later.” He glances at his watch. “In fact, why don't we have lunch? Let me book a table for the two of us at Le Cirque, and we'll talk over a nice relaxed lunch.”

“Damn it, I am calmed down! I am relaxed!”

“See? You're all on edge. You're a bundle of nerves.”

“If I am, it's because of things that were done here at the store—illegal things.”

“Now, Miranda, nothing was done that was illegal, I promise you. Sure, sometimes I was forced to do things that were a little bit—creative—with the books to bail your father out, but nothing was done that was in any way illegal.”

“I don't know whether it's illegal to shift funds around within a company—the pension fund into the general operating fund, for instance—but for a trustee to steal from someone else's trust fund is definitely against the law.”

His face goes suddenly pale, his eyes flash, and his lip begins twitching violently. “Trust fund? What trust fund? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Blazer's trust fund. The half-million-dollar trust fund that Daddy set up for Blazer, that was to be his when he was twenty-one.”

“I had nothing to do with that!”

“In 1979, you somehow got the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company to turn over its trusteeship to you, and you and Alice Tarkington were supposed to administer it together. For the next five years, you and Alice authorized systematic withdrawals from it, and we've found matching deposits to the store's general operating account for all of these withdrawals. By 1984, the trust fund was depleted.”

“Who ‘found'? Who's ‘we'? Did Blazer tell you this? Blazer is a stupid jerk.”

“No.”

“Was it Alice? Alice is a lush.”

“No.”

“Was it Jake Kohlberg? Kohlberg is a cheap shyster who's always hated my guts because I was closer to your father than he was.”

“No, it wasn't Jake.”

“Then who? Who's ‘we'?”

“A friend of mine and I, a friend who's been helping me go over the books.”

“That writer you've been screwing, I suppose. Your mother told me about him. He's a lightweight, you know. He may have got an M.B.A. at Harvard, but it took him an extra year to get it.”

“He was ill with hepatitis for most of one school year.”

“Hepatitis? Is that what he told you? It was more likely AIDS!”

She smiles, because she sees a light, however dimly, beginning to glow at the end of this long and murky tunnel. “And so,” she says carefully, “it looks as though you, with Alice's unwitting aid, managed to raid my brother's trust fund.”

“What do you care? He's not even your real brother!”

“Nonetheless, I think of him as my brother,” she says.

“Your father hated Blazer. He never intended Blazer to get any of that money.”

“But he didn't intend you to get it, did he?”

“It all went back into running the store! It was done to help save the store!”

“That may be true, but it was still illegal.”

“It was all done with your father's full approval. Everything I did was done with his full approval. Are you going to try to have me fired for doing what the president of the company ordered me to do?”

“Somehow, I don't believe that, Tommy,” she says.

“Have you told Blazer any of this? Are you going to try to get him to make trouble for me?”

“I haven't decided,” she says. “I'm actually a little afraid to, because I really think Blazer might try to kill you if he knew. He has such a quick temper. It's not so much that Blazer wants the money. I really don't think the money means that much to him at this point. But if he knew you'd stolen it from his poor mother while Alice was—physically incapacitated—I think he might really try to kill you. And much as I distrust you, Tommy, I really don't want your blood on my hands. So maybe I won't tell Blazer. But,” she says, “I could always report what I know to the state Attorney General's office.”

He hesitates, staring hard at her. Then he says, “Your mother put you up to this, didn't she?”

“No,” she says. “She approves of what I'm doing, but she didn't put me up to it. I'm telling you this entirely on my own.”

“You know why she's turned against me, don't you?”

“I don't think there's any particular reason.”

He sighs, spreading the palms of his hands. “I was hoping not to have to tell you about this, Miranda. But I guess I'm going to have to.”

“Tell me about what?”

“Did she tell you she came to see me Saturday morning at my house on Heather Lane?”

“No, she didn't.”

“I thought not. Well, she telephoned me Saturday morning and said she wanted to see me. I had no idea what it was about, but I asked her to stop by. She drove over in her car. I let her in. She was wearing a light raincoat, one of our Selancy rainwear line, though it wasn't raining. I offered to take her coat, but she said no, she was a little chilly, she'd rather keep the raincoat on. I gave her a cup of coffee, the way she likes it, with a little yogurt spooned in instead of cream. She sat on the sofa.

“She began telling me how lonely she was with your father gone—‘desperately lonely' was the way she put it—how terribly she missed him, how she wasn't sure she could ever adjust to life without a man around the house. She talked for quite a while about her loneliness, so I suggested things she might do to keep busy, instead of working for the hospital ball, which she never really enjoyed. Join the local garden club, I said. Work for that little symphony they're trying to start in Manhasset. How about travel? She kept saying no, that there was no real substitute for male companionship.

“I got up to get her another cup of coffee, and she lay back against the sofa and opened up her raincoat, and—Miranda, this is very difficult for me to say to you—and she had nothing on underneath it. She was naked.”

Miranda stares at him in disbelief, with the unlikely picture of her fastidious mother sprawled naked on Tommy's sofa suddenly flash-frozen in her mind. “No,” she gasps.

“Oh, yes. She said something like, I want you, Tommy,' and I couldn't believe my eyes myself. She looked so pathetic there … the aging beauty. I said to her very sharply, ‘Pull yourself together, Connie! You're making a fool of yourself. I have no interest in you. I don't love you. I love Miranda.' She jumped to her feet. She was very angry. She ran at me, and for a minute I thought she was going to try to scratch my eyes out. But instead she just called me a few choice names, buttoned her coat, and dashed out of the house.

“So that's why she's turned against me. That's why she's turned
you
against me. That's why she wants to get rid of me. That's why you're firing me—because of a jealous woman's anger. She'll deny it, of course, but that's the truth. I never planned to tell you any of this, but now you know. You're dismissing an executive with more than twenty years of loyal service because of a woman's jealous rage.”

She is still staring at him. Finally she says, “I know when you first came to New York from Indiana, you wanted to be an actor. I'd just like to say, Tommy, that I think the English-speaking stage lost a great performer when you went into retailing. And I've just figured something else out. Those E.K. bonuses you paid yourself all those years, those bonuses that were supposed to be for
extra kindness
. Those bonuses came from Ernestine Kolowrat, didn't they? Your share of Daddy's blackmail money, from the little deal you worked out with Ernestine on the side. Very clever, Tommy, I must say. You didn't blackmail Daddy directly. You just collected a third of the money Ernestine got. I suppose, the way you figured it, that meant your hands were clean.”

He jumps to his feet. “That's ridiculous!” he shouts.

“Is it? Why is your mouth twitching like that, Tommy? Is it something that happens to your face when you tell a lie? Like Pinocchio's nose?”

His hand flies to his mouth, and his look is one of purest hatred now, his eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “Listen, you little bitch,” he says, “I've spent the last twenty years bailing your father out of his messes, doing everything but wipe his ass for him. If it hadn't been for me, this store would still be a two-bit operation backed by a handful of two-bit crooks. You think your father was a merchandising genius? He was a merchandising
moron
, was what he was, with his stupid policy of letting customers take years to pay their bills, just for the publicity!
I
was the one who was the genius, trying to make his stupid policies look like they made economic sense. Who figured out ways to bail him out whenever the store was short of cash?
I
did! Who helped him buy his fancy houses and his racehorses and kept your mother and you in designer dresses, and you in fancy boarding schools and colleges? Who sat back and let him grab all the glory?
I
did. Your father would have been
nothing
without me—nothing but a washed-up ex-con piece of shit, which was all he ever was from the beginning!”

“And this is the man who was closer to you than a brother? Oh, my, oh, my,” she says.

His words come pouring out now, rapid-fire, the sentences tumbling on top of one another. “Shut up, you stinking bitch! Listen to me! If you try to make trouble for me over this Blazer business, you'll see the shit really hit the fan! All his dirty little secrets that I helped him keep! His real name! His prison record! The girl in Boston! The Van Degan swindle! I could go on and on. You think you can run this store without me? Well, let me tell you what you're going to find! You're going to find I've dug a hole for you so deep you're never going to climb out of it! The walls of that hole are going to cave in on you and bury you in shit! And you know why you'll never be able to dig yourself out of that shithole? Because you're too
stupid
, that's why!

“You know what your father really thought of you? He thought you were a stupid, oversexed, round-heeled slut with popcorn for brains—popcorn soaked in piss! And he was right! I never should have talked him into giving you that stupid little job in the advertising department. He knew you were too stupid even for that, and he told me so. It was me,
me
, who begged him to give you that job, remember? And this is the thanks I get for it—fired—because you think you can be just like him, Mr. High and Mighty! You'd be nowhere if it weren't for me! Neither would your mother! Everything you've both got you owe to me! I've done everything for the two of you but wipe the cum out of your cunts! That's all you are, ass-wipes!”

“Oh, my, oh, my,” she says again. “And this is the woman you said you wanted to make your full partner?”

“Shut up! I offered you that because I knew if I gave you enough rope you'd hang yourself! And when that happened—and it wouldn't have taken long—I'd have taken over, and I'd have what should rightfully have been mine all along, right from the very beginning. This store always should have been mine to run, and I'll tell you what's going to happen if you try to run it without me. In six months' time, you're going to find yourself dead in the water! This store is going to kill you, Miranda, just the way it killed your father. And I'm going to enjoy watching you die. I can't wait for you to die. I hope you die very soon. And meanwhile, if you try to cause me any legal trouble over the trust fund thing, you're going to find out what trouble really is!”

“Are you finished?” she says. She wants to smile, but resists the impulse. “Okay. Then listen to me. There isn't going to be any trouble if you do exactly what I say. I want you to clear out your desk and be out of here by the time the doors close at five o'clock. If you need help packing your things, I'll send a boy up from the stockroom. Between now and when you are ready to leave, you are not to set foot outside this office. Is that clear? Oh, and one other thing.” She reaches in the pocket of her skirt. “This ring. The accounting department tells me Mrs. Lopez-Figueroa has already paid for it. True to form, her husband's bank always pays her bills on time. Oh, to have a husband like Señor Lopez-Figueroa! It didn't seem quite right to put this back into Smitty's stock and try to sell it again, even though that sort of thing's been done often enough before. It's an excellent stone. I thought you might like to have it, in lieu of severance pay.” She places the ring on the top of his desk.

With one hand, he sweeps the ring off his desk. It flies through the air and falls, sparkling, on the carpet. Then he raises his hand as if to strike her, and instinctively she lifts her knee slightly into what might be called the firing position. But his hand falls to his side again.

“Goodbye, Tommy. Don't forget to turn in your passkey to Oliver. He'll be expecting it.” And she turns and leaves him standing there.

“
I did it!
” she cries when she meets him at the Cafe Pierre bar. “I did it! I did it!”