The Rich Are Different (54 page)

The door
opened. We all stared.

‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Terence O’Reilly, ‘but I’ve come to confess.’

[2]

My first reaction was that he was crazy as a coon-dog. My second, when I realized he hadn’t come to confess at all, was that he was clever as a cobra – and just about as harmless. I should have realized as soon as I saw the way the plot was shaping up that the conspirators, who were as anxious as we were to transform Krasnov into a lone assassin, would have to provide an explanation for his undeniable presence in the building.

‘I was responsible for a breach of security which has ended in tragedy,’ said O’Reilly, ‘and I wish to tender my resignation.’

We watched him in silence. Even Clay had locked up his California manners in the presence of an outsider and presented a conventional Connecticut Yankee front. Martin replaced his spectacles. Old Walter looked shocked. Lewis wore his stuffiest expression. I was still boggling. It was left to Charley to say mildly as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a sodden handkerchief: ‘There’s no need to be so melodramatic, O’Reilly. We’ve had enough melodrama for today. Come in and close the door. Is it my imagination, fellows,’ he added to his partners, ‘or is it really about a hundred and ten in the shade?’

That defused O’Reilly nicely. We sat around in our leather armchairs discussing the weather like a bunch of pseudo-English gentlemen while O’Reilly was left standing by the door. At last when we had finally made it clear to O’Reilly that he was a first-generation Irish-American in the presence of a bunch of Yankee aristocrats, Charley said with all the nice-guy charm for which he was famous: ‘I’m sorry, O’Reilly, bring up a chair and sit down. You look exhausted. Now what’s all this about a breach of security?’

O’Reilly was the one who was sweating now but he kept both his dignity and his nerve.

‘Thank you, Mr Blair, but I’d prefer to stand,’ he said. ‘I wanted to explain that I knew this man Krasnov. Every weekend this summer Bruce and Grace Clayton had held open house for various intellectuals and political extremists, and since I was a friend of the Claytons, Mr Van Zale suggested it might be wise if I stayed in close touch with them to keep an eye on what was going on. I reported to Mr Van Zale on the society Citizens for Militant Socialism. Krasnov was a member. I thought he was unstable, but Bruce so abhorred violence that I decided the C.M.S. presented no serious threat to Mr Van Zale’s safety.’

‘An inspired judgement!’ drawled Clay. ‘Just what the hell are you leading up to?’

O’Reilly flicked the sweat from his forehead and ploughed on. I could tell what rough going it was because I was sitting behind him and could see his hands clenching and unclenching behind his back.

‘Krasnov came to see me yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘It was late –about a
quarter of six. He asked for me at the front entrance and they sent an office boy up to my room. I went down. My first reaction was to get him out of the building, but he said he had some information about the parade so I took him up to my office. It then turned out he had no information but just wanted me to get him a job. Bruce had evidently exaggerated the importance of my position at Van Zale’s. When I said it was impossible for me to get a job in the bank for a known Bolshevik he tried to tell me he was no longer a communist but of course I didn’t believe a word of it. The man was obviously unbalanced. I got him out of my office at last and took him downstairs to the back lobby. Then I opened the doors into the great hall, said: “That’s the way out,” and left him. I was expecting an important call from Chicago at six and I wanted to get back to my desk. I realize now I should never have left him, but—’

‘Disgraceful!’ thundered Lewis and Walter together.

‘Jesus Christ!’ snorted Clay.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Martin. ‘The doorman in the front lobby must have recorded Krasnov’s entry into the building. Why did no one realize he hadn’t left?’

‘They did.’ O’Reilly’s hands tightened behind his back again. ‘The doorman went off duty at six. At six-twenty when I finished my call from Chicago, the nightwatchman sent someone up to check if Krasnov was still with me and I said he’d gone. It seemed obvious to me that Krasnov had left when everyone was leaving the building at six and hadn’t bothered to sign himself out. I never thought twice about it at the time.’

‘Well, it’s easy to see now what happened,’ said Charley heavily. ‘Krasnov hid himself somewhere – perhaps in that broom closet by the stairs – and later when the coast was clear he slipped into the drawing-room half of Paul’s office. I understand a map of the ground floor was found in his pocket. He would have had to hide again when the nightwatchman made his rounds, but there’s a coat closet in that far room and it would have been easy to lie low there.’

There was a pause. O’Reilly had certainly come up with a story supporting the lone assassin theory, and now if luck was running his way the Van Zale partners would gobble up his story in a frenzy of relief and prepare to convince the world there had been no conspiracy. Unfortunately luck wasn’t running all his way. I knew Dinah and Paul had been in Paul’s office the previous night, and neither of them had noticed a stray anarchist soft-shoeing around looking for something to do.

I clamped my mouth shut. Let the other partners believe him. Let them spread the word and save the bank. The bank had to come first. But when the danger was past I’d turn that conspiracy inside out and emerge top dog at Van Zale’s.

I was just congratulating myself on my iron self-control when O’Reilly said outrageously in a meek little voice: ‘I’ll carry the memory of this mistake to my grave, I swear it, gentlemen. Mr Van Zale was like a father to me.’

I leapt
to my feet. ‘You sonofabitch!’ I shouted at him as everyone jumped out of their skins with shock. ‘Get the hell out of here before I knock the shit out of you!’

Of course everyone thought I had lost control because he hadn’t bothered to see Krasnov off the premises. None of them suspected him. He had been one of Paul’s people, a favoured protégé. No one knew, as I knew, that he had wanted Paul’s wife.

‘Easy, Steve,’ said Martin, grabbing my arm.

‘Get out,’ said Clay to Terence.

‘Yes, leave us, O’Reilly,’ said Charley.

The ranks were closing. Someone opened the door. O’Reilly was put out, like a cat who had forgotten his house-training and made a mess. The door closed again. Charley poured me another cup of coffee. Lewis patted my shoulder with stagey sympathy. Clay offered me a cigarette.

‘Sorry about that, fellows,’ I said when I had my stiff upper lip firmly back in place. ‘I know we all hate scenes. The truth is I never could stand that guy Terence O’Reilly.’

Someone made an Irish joke to cheer me up. We all exchanged thin Anglo-Saxon smiles. At last Lewis said in relief: ‘Well, at least we now have enough evidence to convince the public that Krasnov acted alone.’

I began to fear for my self-control again. I got up at once. ‘Will you all excuse me for a moment?’ I said. ‘l feel pretty beaten up and I’m going to have to lie down.’

Everyone made sympathetic noises and I staggered along the corridor, shut myself in my room and reached automatically for my hip-flask.

After a while I began to think more clearly. After a longer while I felt bothered. Something wasn’t adding up. Somewhere along the line I’d missed a connection.

I marshalled my thoughts as carefully as a snake-charmer collecting friends from the snake-pit. I was almost one hundred per cent certain O’Reilly’s story was a lie, but why was a lie needed? How in hell
had
Krasnov got into the building?

I considered O’Reilly’s story again, just to make sure I didn’t believe it, but the more I considered it the more implausible it became. The truth was there was no way O’Reilly could have guaranteed that Krasnov would remain undiscovered if he had stayed in the building overnight. The night-watchman might well have called a guard to search the building when he found there was no evidence Krasnov had checked out. Krasnov might have skipped nimbly from closet to closet but every time he moved he would be taking a risk. The nightwatchman or the guard made regular rounds. The cleaning women arrived soon after midnight and rattled around for a time. And someone might have been working unusually late or – like Paul and Dinah – visiting after hours. As a story explaining Krasnov’s presence in the building O’Reilly’s rigmarole was just about plausible, but as a plan of action guaranteeing the assassin was in the right place at the right time it was riddled with the possibility of failure.

I pretended
I was O’Reilly evolving the perfect plan for getting Krasnov into the building, but I didn’t have to pretend hard because of course there was only one way. I don’t know why I spent so long beating around the bush pretending I couldn’t think of it. Fear of facing the truth probably.

I swivelled in my chair and looked out of the window. My room was directly above Paul’s office, and when I looked out I could see across the patio to the door in the wall, the bank’s back entrance into Willow Alley. There was no access to the building from the roof. The front was guarded night and day. The top of the high back wall was spiked and glassed and wired with the most elaborate alarms. The door, with its locks which would have driven even the best safe-cracker to suicide, was the only way Krasnov could have entered One Willow Street.

I was O’Reilly again, pussyfooting around setting the scene. The night-watchman on his first round would have turned on the burglar alarms covering the doors which opened from Paul’s office into the patio, but O’Reilly, pretending to work late, would have run down later to switch them off. No problem. Afterwards O’Reilly would have gone home, briefed Krasnov for the last time and given him the keys of the Willow Alley door plus the key of the patio doors. Krasnov would have delayed entering the building for as long as possible but would probably have walked in while it was still dark and stashed himself in the drawing-room closet. Still no problem.

But one problem was insurmountable. O’Reilly could never have had access to those keys. Only the partners were allowed to use the Willow Alley entrance and enter the building through Paul’s office, and only the partners had the keys which opened the door in the wall.

I told myself O’Reilly must have had a set of keys himself when he was Paul’s personal assistant. There could be no other explanation.

But I had to find out for sure. I had to know.

‘Get Terence O’Reilly down here,’ I said to my secretary. ‘I want to talk to him.’

[3]

He tippy-toed reluctantly into the room and paused about one inch past the threshold. ‘You wanted to see me, Steve?’

‘Yeah. Sorry I lost my temper just now. Take a seat. Drink?’

‘No, thanks.’ He sat stiffly on the extreme edge of the client’s chair. His polish was worn and chipped, like crockery which has seen better days. His hard bright light eyes were dull with exhaustion. His mouth drooped sullenly.

‘Before you quit and wander off into the blue,’ I said, ‘I’d like to fix a time when I can go over your files with you. I don’t expect that kid Herbert Mayers knows much, does he?’

He hadn’t expected to discuss business. I saw him struggle to focus his thoughts. ‘Bart understands the filing system. He knows where everything
is. Of course there’s some hush-stuff he doesn’t know about, but I can fill you in on that.’

‘Does Mayers know the safe combinations?’

‘Sure. You forget he’s had my old job for over a year.’

‘Does he have all the keys – all the keys I would expect you to have on your office key-ring?’

‘All except the keys for my own file cabinets, but I’ll turn those in to you before I leave.’

‘Swell. By the way, do you have the keys to the Willow Alley entrance? I think I must have left mine out on the Island last weekend and it’s goddamned inconvenient trying to crash through all those ghouls at the front entrance.’

‘No, I never had any partners’ privileges,’ he said bitterly without stopping to think. ‘You should know that better than anyone, Steve.’

I wanted nothing better than to move at top speed away from the subject of the Willow Alley keys. Trying not to think of the implications of his denial I said mildly: ‘What’s the big grudge?’

‘Well, we’re the same age, aren’t we? And we’re both Van Zale protégés. I know you’re a smart guy but I’m no fool either. Don’t you think we both should have ended up partners?’

I was genuinely surprised. ‘It’s not my fault if Paul thought your brain was better suited to administration than to finance.’

‘Oh, I could have done just as well as you!’ he spat at me, suddenly coming apart at the seams. ‘But just because your father ran through two million dollars of old money while my father was an immigrant who ran a hardware store—’

‘Oh Christ!’

‘And just because my family were Catholics from Connaught while your family were Protestants from Ulster—’

‘We came from County Cork!’ I yelled, although no one knew where the first Sullivan had come from before he turned up fighting the British in the Hudson Valley. However, I’d read somewhere once that Sullivan is a common name in the Irish south-west.

The crazy slanging match went on and on. I’d no idea O’Reilly had such a chip on his shoulder about being a first-generation Irish-American Catholic. Later I realized he was probably still smarting from the way he had been treated in Charley’s office when all the partners had pulled out their Yankee stops to put him in his place, but at the time I didn’t bother to analyse why he was so furious because I was too busy welcoming the chance to let off steam. In the light of my private knowledge about the assassination I was having a hard time restraining myself from beating O’Reilly to bloody pulp, and his ethnic drivel, heavily laced with religious idiocies, was just the excuse I needed to lose my temper and roar obscenities at him.

We never came to blows because we were too hot. We just sat gasping in our chairs until he muttered: ‘Fuck you!’ and staggered out.

Ten minutes later when I had cooled off I remembered he had denied
ever having had a set of keys for the Willow Alley door. I believed him too. His resentment in being refused such a partners’ privilege was all too obviously genuine.