The Wrong Kind of Money (41 page)

“Her mother …”

“An absolute fit!”

He snaps his fingers. “Her mother's the one!”

“The one for what?”

“To tell Carol what's going on. Mother would say, ‘I told you so.' Where is her mother?”

“I have no idea. Some nursing home. Carol doesn't like to talk about it.”

He strokes his chin thoughtfully. “I might have a way—I might be able to engineer a way—of finding out. Yes. You see, it gives this little scandal we've uncovered a certain symmetry. Years go by, but in the end Mother has the last word. Mother knows best. Thank you, Beryl baby!”

She stares at the ceiling. “The more I think about it—one little peck on the cheek was all it was. And he reacted as if—”

He rolls over on his side and drops his cigarette into a half-filled wineglass, where it goes out with a quick sizzle. “Speaking of little pecks,” he says, “and little peckers, look what's happened to my little pecker. It suddenly got big again.” He rolls onto his back, smiling at her and stroking himself. “Take a look at this. You ready for another little go-around, teacher?”

“Oh, Billy, do you really think we
should?
After what you've told me, it seems sort of—”

“Look at it this way. Why should those two be the only ones who are getting any?” He jumps to his feet and stands in front of her, displaying himself. “You like a little S and M?”

“Well, I don't know. I've never really—”

“Nothing too kinky. But I've got a nice pair of police-issue handcuffs.”

She is giggling again. “You mean like—
Gerald's Game?”

He laughs. “I wouldn't cuff you to the bedposts,” he says. “Just hands behind your back. A lot of women really get off on domination-submission. Anyway, I didn't bring my cuffs. But maybe next time, okay? Meanwhile, I did bring this.” His jacket lies across a chair, and he fishes in a pocket and produces an inhaler. “Ever try this, teacher?”

“What is it?”

“Just a li'l ole popper. Puts kind of a different spin on things.” He unscrews the cap and places the inhaler first in one nostril, then the other. “Now you take a couple of good whiffs,” he says, and hands her the inhaler.

She inhales, and falls quickly back across the bed. “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” she cries. “My star pupil!”

“Your star pupil is now your star muff-diving instructor,” he says. “I'm going to do to you what Tarzan did to Jane—something he learned from the apes.” And he flings himself on top of her.

“Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh,” Beryl says. “Oh, Billy-Billy-Billy. Oh, Billy, I love you so!”

“Grrrrr!
” he says. “Your Billy has a big club. Get ready to go Greek!”

Now it is Thursday afternoon, and Hannah Liebling sits alone in the library of her apartment at 1000 Park Avenue. Once more she lifts his letter from her desk and reads it through again. What a strange, mysterious city New York is, she thinks. It is a city of hiding places. Old lovers lie hidden from each other here for years, successful stowaways in their secret lairs. Her old friend Molly Bernbach once told her that she had spent ten years living in the same building as her ex-husband without realizing it, and when they finally met they didn't recognize each other. And here, all along, on West Eighth Street, less than a mile and a half away, has been living George Noville, Radioman First Class, when Hannah knew him, but now, from his letterhead, “Captain, U.S.N., Ret.”

Once again, as she has been doing regularly for the past several hours, she picks up the receiver of the telephone to call him, and then quickly replaces it in its cradle in a panic. Why? What is she afraid of? It is not like Hannah Liebling to be terrified of placing a telephone call. Is she afraid that a woman's voice may answer? His letter does not say whether he ever married, or whether he has a wife living now. He merely says, “I have thought of you often, and fondly, over the years.” That would not indicate a wife at the moment. And if a woman's voice answers, she could just hang up, though that seems even more cowardly. A woman's voice could belong to a maid or housekeeper. The thing to say is simply: “Is Captain Noville in?” So that is not what frightens her.

She knows exactly what it is. She is terrified of calling him because she is terrified of seeing him again. And she is terrified of seeing him again because she is terrified of seeing how he has changed, and of him seeing how she has changed. That is the only thing that frightens her.

Through the open doorway, across the entrance foyer, she can see the dining room, where her portrait hangs. When that was painted, Hannah was young and slender and pretty, and soft, and innocent, and poor. Now she is old, and heavy, and far from pretty, and hard, and tough, and rich. She can see the look of disappointment that will fall across his face. And her own look of disappointment will surely match his, because he is older than she is—eighty-eight now. No, eighty-nine. And she remembers too vividly the young sailor who put the gardenia between his teeth and danced a finger-snapping little jig on the sidewalk beneath her window. She thinks she could not bear to see that sailor now. She would probably burst into tears. And how many years has it been since Hannah Liebling did that? More years than she would care to count.

And, then, what would they have to say to each other?

“Hello, George.”

“Hello, Hannah.”

And then what after that? She picks up the receiver, then puts it down again with a shaking hand.

She picks it up once more, but now it is Albert to the rescue! Her majordomo has appeared at the door.

“Excuse me, madam,” he says as she replaces the receiver. “Mrs. Noah Liebling is here to see you.”

“Carol?” She is somewhat surprised, since it is unlike Carol to drop by without telephoning first.

“Yes, madam.”

“Please show her in, Albert,” she says.

The two women exchange pecks on the cheek. “I tried to call you, Nana,” Carol says. “But your line's been busy-busy-busy.”

“Yes,” Hannah says. “I've been on the phone much of the afternoon.”

“Anyway, I was at a museum meeting, so I just decided to walk over.”

“Sit down, dear. Would you like a drink? A cup of tea?”

“Nothing, thanks.” She sits down in Hannah's visitor's chair and carefully removes her gloves, finger by finger. “Nana,” she says, “I've gotten myself in a bit of a pickle. I need your advice.”

“I see,” her mother-in-law says.

“That's not even quite true. I haven't gotten
myself
into this pickle. Someone else has gotten me into it.”

“I think I know,” Hannah says. “I think I've been reading about it in the newspapers. Something about a coming-out party for Anne and this Van Degan girl.”

Carol nods. “Nana, this Georgette Van Degan is like a bulldozer! She came up with this idea, and suddenly she was off and running with it! There doesn't seem to be any way to stop her, and now things have gotten completely out of hand. She keeps feeding these items to Roxy Rhinelander!”

“We've never given coming-out parties for anyone in this family, Carol. We've just never gone in for that sort of thing.”

“I
know
that, Nana. And it certainly wasn't my idea. But my question to you is—”

“Old man Van Degan and his wife moved out of this building the same day my husband and I moved in. My husband spent the rest of his life trying to live down that insult, and now here it is again, all over the newspapers. Again.”

“I remember you telling me about that, Nana, but I didn't realize it was the same family. But Georgette obviously—”

“Tell me something,” Hannah interrupts. “Does Anne want this? This party?”

“Well, I think she thinks it would be a lot of fun. What girl that age wouldn't? Though I don't think she and Linda Van Degan were ever all that close. But—”

“It said in one of those stories that we had promised to supply free booze. Who promised that? You? Noah? It was certainly not I.”

“
No
body promised that, Nana! That's Georgette Van Degan again. I promised nothing of the sort. And Noah doesn't even—”

“We
never
supply free booze. Not even for the worthiest of worthy causes. That's been company policy as long as we've been a company, Carol.”

“I
may
have suggested that
perhaps
the company could provide the liquor at cost. But I promised her nothing.”

“And we never supply liquor at cost, either. That's also a company policy.”

“Well, I didn't know that,” Carol says. “That's why I said ‘perhaps.' But she's taken my ‘perhaps' to mean—”

“What does Noah think about all this? I telephoned him on Monday, and couldn't get a straight answer out of him.”

“You
did?
But Noah doesn't know a thing about any of this, Nana.”

“He
doesn't?
You mean you and the Van Degan woman have been planning this—this spectacle, and you haven't even discussed it with your husband, who's going to be paying all the bills?”

Carol bites her lip. “Noah's been out of town all week, as you know, while all this has been going on. And he's got so many other, much more important things on his mind. I didn't want to bother him with this. But now it's gotten completely out of hand.”

“What things? What important things has he got on his mind?”

“Ballachulish-Fifteen? Don't you remember? He's making the presentation to the sales conference tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh, that,” Hannah says.

Oh, that,
Carol thinks. Noah has told her that it will cost the company between twenty and thirty million to launch and test-market a new label, and his mother is able to dismiss it with “Oh, that,” Noah has devoted most of his time and energy to this for more than a year. He has agonized over it, spent sleepless nights over it. But now it is just “Oh, that.”

Slowly, Hannah Liebling rises from her desk and begins moving about the room, fingering small objects as she goes—a crystal paperweight, an onyx obelisk. “The thing is,” she says, “that this is all wrong from a public-relations standpoint. I've discussed this with my sister Bathy, and she agrees with me. For years, you know, Bathy was our director of advertising and public relations, and she was the best one we ever had. We both feel that the publicity your proposed party has already generated has been very bad for us. Any more publicity like this will only make it worse. You see, we've always tried to project an image of—what shall I call it? Probity. Responsibility. Respectability. Trustworthiness. ‘Ingraham—the label you can trust.' That was one of our slogans. We showed a visual of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The subliminal message was, ‘You can trust the Leaning Tower of Pisa never to fall down,' The copy said, ‘You can trust Ingraham never to let you down,' Bathy's famous Christmas ad. It stressed sobriety—responsibility, consideration for others. We've tried to avoid anything that would show us as frivolous, or extravagant, or show-offy. People think the Lieblings have too much money, anyway. And they think of it as dirty money, tainted money, money with the blood of bootleggers all over it. Anything we do in any public way that seems the least bit ostentatious, like the kind of party I've been reading about, simply reinforces this view in the public's mind, and that's not good for business. That's why we've tried to stay out of the society columns and the gossip columns. An article in
Fortune
or
Forbes
or
Business Week
we don't mind. But stories in Roxy Rhinelander's column are something else again. Reading things like that, the public, who are our customers, think, ‘Well, what can you expect? Rich, vulgar Jews.'”

“I know exactly what you mean, Nana,” Carol says. “That's why I came to see you today. To ask you how we can contain, or control, this situation.”

“We? It seems to me that you've got yourself into this situation, Carol. It's up to you to get yourself out of it. Why not just tell this woman that you've changed your mind? Just tell the woman no.”

“I can do that,” Carol says quickly. “But there's another aspect to this that I'd like you to consider, Nana.”

“Oh? And what is that, pray?”

“Truxton and Georgette Van Degan own an extremely important collection of Chinese and Japanese export porcelains. The collection was started by Mr. Van Degan's great-grandfather. His grandfather added to it enormously, and his father added even more. Right now it is one of the most important collections in the world, probably worth at least a hundred million dollars, but really priceless. The public has never seen any of it. Some of it is displayed in vitrines in the Van Degans' Fifth Avenue apartment, but most of it is in storage, gathering dust. It's such a shame—a princely collection.”

“They've always been in the glass business. It stands to reason they'd collect porcelain. But what's that got to do with a coming-out party for a couple of silly
girls?”
She pronounces it
guh-uhls.

“The museum would die to have the Van Degan collection. The museum's been after it for years, and even Mrs. Astor couldn't get them to part with it. Now, thanks to me, the Van Degans are thinking of offering at least part of it. Their lawyers are working on a gift proposal now. But there's a hitch. Mrs. Van Degan told me last night that if I didn't go along with this party, they might withdraw the gift.”

“So she's blackmailing you into giving this party. No party, no porcelains.”

“In a sense, yes. But there's more to it than that. For one thing, just think of how important this gift would be to the people of the city of New York, and to the museum-going public in general. And, for another, if I could be the person who got the Van Degan collection for the museum, it's almost certain that I'd be placed on the museum's board.”