Rules of Civility (16 page)

In the boxes above them sat the owners in the company of young women and other hangers-on. All of the owners were rich, of course, but the ones who came to the runarounds weren't the blue bloods or the dilettantes; they were the men who had earned every penny. One silver-haired magnate in a perfectly tailored suit leaned against the rail with both arms like an admiral at the helm. You could just tell that for him racing horses was no idle matter. It wasn't money in search of a distraction. It required all the discipline, commitment, and attention of running a railroad.

And above them all, above the gamblers and the fans and the millionaires, high in the thinner air of the upper stands, were the aged trainers—the ones past their prime. They sat watching the horses with the naked eye, without binoculars or stopwatches, having no need for either. They were measuring not just the speed of the horses, not just their start or their endurance, but their courage and carelessness too—knowing as precisely as one can what was going to happen come Saturday, without it ever occurring to them to place a bet and improve their meager lot.

The one thing for certain at Belmont was that on Wednesday at 5:00 A.M. there was no place for the common man. This was like the circles of Dante's
Inferno
—populated with men of varied sins, but also with the shrewdness and devotion of the damned. It was a living reminder of why no one bothers to read
Paradiso
. My father hated wagering, but he would have loved the runarounds.

—Come on, Peaches, Grubb said taking her arm. I see some old friends.

Grinning with outsized pride, Peaches handed me her binoculars. As they walked away, Johnny looked up hopefully. I ditched him, saying I wanted a closer look at the paddock.

When I got there, I turned Fran's binoculars back on the silver-haired admiral. There were two women in his box gossiping and drinking from aluminum cups. The absence of steam suggested that the cups were filled with liquor. One of them offered him a sip; he didn't deign a reply. He turned instead to confer with a young man who held a stopwatch and clipboard.

—You've got good taste.

I turned to find Tinker's godmother at my side. I was surprised that she had recognized me. Maybe a little flattered.

—That's Jake de Roscher, she said. He's worth about fifty million dollars, and self-made. I can introduce you, if you'd like.

I laughed.

—I think I'd be a little out of my depth.

—Probably, she conceded.

She was dressed in tan pants and a white shirt. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. She obviously wasn't cold. It made me feel self-conscious about having the blanket over my shoulders. I tried to shed it casually.

—Do you have a horse in the race? I asked.

—No. But an old friend of mine owns Pasteurized.

(Naturally.)

—That's exciting, I said.

—Actually, the favorite rarely is. It's the long shots that are exciting.

—But I suppose it can't hurt your bank account if you own the favorite.

—Perhaps. But in general, investments that need their own food and shelter don't amount to much.

Tinker had implied at some point that Mrs. Grandyn's money had originally come from coal mines. Somehow that added up. She had a self-possession that could only be secured by the more immutable assets like land and oil and gold.

The next horse was on the track.

—Who's that? I asked.

—May I?

She held her hand out for my binoculars. Her hair was barretted back so there was no need to clear it from her face. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes like a hunter—turning the lenses directly on the horse, having no problem finding her mark.

—It's Jolly Tar, the Witherings' horse. Barry owns the paper in Louisville.

She lowered the binoculars but didn't hand them back. She looked at me for a moment and hesitated, the way some will when about to ask a sensitive question. Instead, she made a statement.

—I gather that Tinker and your friend are getting along. How long have they been living together? Is it eight months now?

—Closer to five.

—Ah.

—Do you disapprove?

—Certainly not in the Victorian sense. I have no illusions about the liberties of our times. In fact, if pressed, I would celebrate most of them.

—You said you didn't disapprove in the Victorian sense. Does that mean you disapprove in a different sense?

She smiled.

—I need to remind myself that you work at a law firm, Katherine.
How did she know that?
I wondered.

—If I disapprove, she continued after weighing the question, it's actually on your friend's behalf. I don't see any advantage to her living with Tinker. In my day, a girl's opportunities were rather limited, so the sooner she secured an eligible husband the better. But today . . .

She gestured toward de Roscher's box.

—You see that thirty-year-old blonde next to Jake? That's his fiancée, Carrie Clapboard. Carrie moved all manner of heaven and earth to get into that chair. And soon she will happily oversee scullery maids and table settings and the reupholstering of antique chairs at three different houses; which is all well and good. But if I were your age, I wouldn't be trying to figure out how to get into Carrie's shoes—I'd be trying to figure out how to get into Jake's.

As Jolly Tar rounded the far turn, the next horse was ushered from the stables. We both looked down at the paddock. Anne didn't bother lifting the binoculars.

—Gentle Savage at fifty to one, she said. Now, there's your excitement.

CHAPTER NINE

The Scimitar, the Sifter & the Wooden Leg

When I came out of work on June 9, there was a brown Bentley parked at the curb.

No matter how much you think of yourself, no matter how long you've lived in Hollywood or Hyde Park, a brown Bentley is going to catch your eye. There couldn't be more than a few hundred of them in the world and every aspect is designed with envy in mind. The fenders rise over the wheels and drop to the running boards in the wide, lazy curve of an odalisque at rest, while the white walls of the tires look as improbably spotless as the spats on Fred Astaire. You can just tell that whoever is sitting in the backseat has the wherewithal to grant your wishes in threes.

This particular brown Bentley was the model in which the chauffeur rides in the open air. He looked like an Irish cop turned manservant. He was staring straight ahead and holding the wheel with big mitts stuffed into little gray gloves. The windows of the passenger compartment were tinted so that you couldn't see who was inside. As I watched the reflection of the masses drifting by, the window rolled down.

—Shiver me timbers, I said.

—Hey, Sis. Where you headed?

—I was just thinking of going down to the Battery to throw myself off the pier.

—Can it wait?

The chauffeur was suddenly at my side. He opened the rear door with surprising grace and adopted the posture of a midshipman at the head of a gangplank. Eve skooched across the seat. I saluted and climbed aboard.

The air in the car was sweet with the smell of leather and the hint of a new perfume. There was so much legroom that I almost slipped off the seat onto the floor.

—What does this rig turn into at midnight? I asked.

—An artichoke.

—I hate artichokes.

—I used to too. But they grow on you.

Eve leaned forward to push an ivory button on a chrome panel.

—Michael.

The chauffeur didn't turn his head. His voice crackled through the speaker as if he were a hundred miles at sea.

—Yes, Miss Ross.

—Could you take us to the Explorers Club.

—Of course, Miss Ross.

Evey sat back and I took her in. It was the first that we'd seen each other since the dinner party at the Beresford. She was wearing a silky blue dress with full-length sleeves and a low neckline. Her hair was as straight as if she'd ironed it. She pulled it behind her ears giving full visibility to the scar on her cheek. A thin white line suggestive of experiences that parlor girls only dream of, it had begun to look glamorous.

We both smiled.

—Happy birthday, Hotstuff, I said.

—Do I deserve it?

—Do you ever.

 

Here was the setup: For her birthday Tinker said she could rent out a ballroom. She told him that she didn't want a party. She didn't even want presents. All she wanted was to buy a new dress and have dinner for two at the Rainbow Room.

That should have been my first clue that something was in the works.

The car and driver weren't Tinker's. They were Wallace's. When Wallace heard about Eve's wishes, he had given her the car for the day as a present so that she could go from store to store. And she had made the most of it. In the morning, she had worked her way down Fifth Avenue on reconnaissance. Then after lunch, she circled back with Tinker's money and launched a full-fledged attack. She bought the blue dress at Bergdorf's, the new shoes at Bendel's and a bright red alligator clutch at Saks. She even paid for the lingerie. She was fully outfitted with an hour to spare so she'd come looking for me because she wanted to have a drink with an old friend before she turned twenty-five in the clouds over Rockefeller Center. And I was plenty glad she did.

Behind a panel in the passenger door there was a bar. It had two decanters, two tumblers and a sweet little ice bucket. Eve poured me a jigger of gin. She poured herself a double.

—Whoa, I said. Don't you think you should be pacing yourself?

—Don't worry. I've been practicing.

We clinked glasses. She took a mouthful of the gin and ice chips. She crunched the ice as she looked out the window reflecting on something. Without looking back she said:

—Doesn't New York just turn you inside out?

 

Located in a little townhouse off Fifth Avenue, the Explorers had been a second-rate naturalists and adventurers club that went bankrupt after the Crash. What little it possessed of value had been spirited away in the night by the well meaning to the Museum of Natural History. The rest—a misassembly of curios and keepsakes—had been left behind by the creditors to gather the dust it had deserved in the first place. In 1936, some bankers who had never been outside of New York bought the building and reopened the club as a high-end watering hole.

When we arrived, the street-level steak house was just filling up. We climbed the narrow staircase lined with old photographs of ships and snowy expeditions to the “library” on the second floor. The library had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding the club's carefully assembled collection of ninteenth-century naturalist texts that nobody would ever read. In the middle of the floor there were two old display cases, one with South American butterflies and the other with pistols from the Civil War. While all around in low leather chairs brokers, attorneys, and captains of industry mumbled sagely. The only other woman in the place was a young brunette with short-cropped hair sitting in the far corner under the moth-ridden head of a grizzly. Wearing a man's suit and a white-collared shirt, she was blowing smoke rings and wishing she was Gertrude Stein.

—Right this way, the host said.

As we walked, I could see that in her own way Eve had mastered her limp. Most women would have tried to make it disappear. They would have learned to walk like a geisha—taking small invisible steps with their hair turned up and their gaze turned down. But Eve didn't hide it at all. In her blue floor-length dress, she swung her left leg awkwardly in front of her like a man with a clubfoot. Her heels marked the wooden floor in rough syncopation.

The host showed us to a table right in the middle of the room. He put us front and center so that Eve's allure could be appreciated by all.

—What are we doing here? I asked when we sat.

—I like it here, she said looking around at the men with a discerning gaze. Women drive me crazy.

She smiled and patted my hand.

—Except for you, of course.

—What a relief.

A young Italian with hair parted in the middle appeared from behind a swinging door. Evey ordered champagne.

—So, I said. The Rainbow Room.

—I'm told it's pretty fab-dabulous. The fiftieth floor and all that. They say you can see the planes landing at Idlewild.

—Isn't Tinker afraid of heights?

—He doesn't have to look down.

The champagne arrived with unnecessary ceremony. The waiter placed a standing ice bucket at Eve's side and the host did the honors with the cork. Eve waved them off and filled the glasses herself.

—To New York, I said.

—To Manhattan, she corrected.

We drank.

—Any thoughts for Indiana? I asked.

—She's a sorry nag. I'm through with her.

—Does she know?

—I'm sure the feeling's mutual.

—I doubt it.

She smiled and refilled our glasses.

—Enough about all that. Tell
me
something, she prodded.

—What?

—Anything. Everything. How are the girls at Mrs. Martingale's?

—I haven't seen them in months.

This was a white lie, of course, since Fran and I had flapped around a bit. But there was no reason to tell that to Evey. She never liked Fran that much anyhow.

—That's right! she said. I'm so glad you've gotten your own place. How is it?

—It's pricier than the boardinghouse. But now I can burn my own oatmeal and plunge my own commode.