Too Much Money (30 page)

Addison, terrified, continued to pretend to sleep.

P
ERLA’S FAMOUS
F
RENCH LAWYER
, P
IERRE
L
A
Rouche, had been shocked to see Gus enter the courtroom, after having been assured that Perla had had both the book and magazine articles he wrote about her stopped. Gus had written during the criminal trial that La Rouche was “an elegant fellow with a mean streak, who chain-smoked in an affected manner with a tortoiseshell cigarette holder.” La Rouche didn’t like Gus, and Gus didn’t like La Rouche, who he felt had been unnecessarily cruel to Floyd McArthur when the bewildered nurse had been on the stand.

During breaks in the proceedings, the guard watch was much less rigid than it had been during the earlier criminal trial. Floyd McArthur, the American male nurse, was doing ten years. On several occasions during the long day, Gus had been able to engage McArthur in conversation in the prisoner holding room, where they put the shackled nurse during the breaks. During the criminal trial, he had been guarded every moment as if he were a terrorist.

Gus, who had been sympathetic to the nurse in the criminal trial, talked quickly and in a low voice. He told McArthur that there was a rumor in circulation that he was taking the fall for
the deaths of Konstantin Zacharias and one of his eight nurses who perished with him, and that he would be receiving a sizeable stipend at a future time. “I am so sick of hearing that story,” said McArthur in an exasperated tone of voice. “Certainly you don’t think I would give up seeing Wanda and the kids for some money down the road.” He went on a rant about the horrors of prison life in Biarritz. “There’s rats in the cells and the toilet overflows all the time and there’s often shit on the floor.”

Gus didn’t want to waste precious time on that sort of information. “Tell me about Konstantin that last night before the fire,” Gus said.

Floyd said he had admired Konstantin Zacharias. They had often taken afternoon walks together through the old city, where Konstantin enjoyed hearing about Floyd’s wife, Wanda, and the children. Konstantin regretted that he had never had children of his own to pass on his fortune and banks to. Despite Konstantin’s vast wealth and his reputation for toughness in financial negotiations, McArthur said the banker was always kind and thoughtful to all the nurses, guards, and servants, which he couldn’t say about “the lady of the house.” He was cautious in denouncing her, but his dislike was apparent. Floyd said that Konstantin’s long-time doctors, especially Dr. Sedgwick, whom Konstantin had known and trusted for years and who had often stayed for long visits at the villa, had been changed. The new doctors, not one of whom Konstantin had felt close to, had kept him overmedicated. He had become paranoid. McArthur said Konstantin thought his enemies in the Russian mafia, whom he greatly feared, were hiding behind the curtains in his dressing room, which he had to pass through on his way to his bathroom. He said none of his friends were allowed in to see him. He said he missed his brothers. He said there were screaming fights about changing the will, cutting out Konstantin’s brothers and sisters.

“Listen, Mr. Bailey,” said Floyd.

“What do you mean Mr. Bailey, for god’s sake. The name is Gus.”

“Call Wanda when you get back to the States, Gus. Send her my love and love to the kids.” There were more things Gus wanted to know, but a guard entered and was furious to see Gus in the holding room. He ordered him to leave, or he would have him thrown out of the courtroom for the afternoon session.

“I’ll call Wanda and say I saw you, Floyd, and I’ll send your love to the kids,” said Gus as the angry guard hurried him out of the holding room. Gus didn’t have the heart to tell Floyd that Wanda was planning to divorce him, to take back her maiden name, and to ask for full custody of the kids.

T
HE SEASON
had ended in Biarritz, and the bar at the Hôtel du Palais, usually filled to capacity with an international fun-loving clientele, was dark and virtually empty when Gus walked in to meet a Spanish reporter friend, who had not yet arrived. He was reading his notes from the conversation he had been able to sneak in with Floyd McArthur during a break in the proceedings. When he looked up, he saw a man at another table staring at him. It was the man in the gray flannel suit who had been in his room at Claridge’s and at the auction of Perla Zacharias’s Fabergé eggs that hadn’t been destroyed in the fire at the villa. There was no question in Gus’s mind that he was being followed by this mysterious man. He had thought it had ended with the lawsuit, but now that he had thrown down the gauntlet and defied Perla’s attempts to kill his book and kept on writing, publisher be damned, he realized that when she found out, he could be in even greater danger than before. The fear came back, stronger than ever.

G
US WAS
in a pensive mood when he flew back to New York the next afternoon on Iberia Airlines from Barcelona. He was
relieved that Addison Kent was not on board. Addison had flown on to Paris from San Sebastián to attend a lunch party given in a “glorious apartment” in the Hôtel Lambert in honor of Perla Zacharias, a lunch party that Addison simply could not miss. It was not until a week later that the baron’s butler noticed that a pale blue Fabergé egg that had been part of the centerpiece was missing. A maid was fired.

W
ITHIN TWO WEEKS OF RECEIVING HER
N
EW
York real estate license, Lil Altemus, lunching at Swifty’s with Maisie Verdurin, for whom she now worked, was receiving congratulations on all sides for having found a buyer for the sixteen-room apartment at One Sutton Place South, one of the most prestigious buildings in the city, belonging to her first cousin, Minnie Willoughby. “Minnie’s mother and my mother were sisters,” explained Lil to each person who stopped by her table. “Poor darling Minnie, she practically hasn’t left her bedroom for two years, except for medical visits, and all those beautiful rooms were just sitting there empty. Quite honestly, I think the maids are stealing things from her, and she doesn’t even notice, as she never leaves her room. Granny’s Lowestoft tureen that Minnie always had in the center of her dining room table just simply is not there. I said to her, ‘Minnie, I don’t think it’s safe for you here.’ At first she said, ‘Never, never, never,’ she would never sell, she’d lived there for over thirty years, but when I said I thought I could get her twenty million dollars, she began to listen, ill as she is. Then you found that pushy hedge-fund couple, Maisie, not our kind but perfectly all right as far as those money-money-money people
go, and I know practically everyone on the board of the building, which helped a great deal, and everything fell into place. Isn’t it exciting? I haven’t felt so happy in a long time. Maisie, let’s have a glass of champagne.”

“But where will cousin Minnie go to live? In one of those assisted-living places where you take your own furniture?” asked Maisie.

“Not at all. Believe it or not, I’ve grown rather fond of my little apartment on East Sixty-sixth Street. I’m having it all done over. I’ve gotten rid of those red damask draperies from the Fifth Avenue apartment that looked all wrong from the beginning and hired a charming young man named Markham Roberts, he’s the latest hottest thing, to brighten it up, and it’s really quite cozy. There’s an apartment in my building that’s coming on the market, and Minnie’s going to move there. Do you remember my old cook, Gert, whom Ruby Renthal stole from me? Gert has an Irish niece named Lil after me, and we’re going to change her name to Bridey—we can’t have two Lils on the same premises—and she’s going to move into the little maid’s room there and take care of Minnie. Now I must run. I have an appointment with old Marjorie Watson at River House about letting me sell her place.” Lil looked in both directions and then mouthed but did not speak the word
Alzheimer’s
.

T
HE TALK AROUND TOWN AT LUNCH AT
S
WIFTY’S
and Michael’s and ‘21’ was about Elias and Ruby Renthal’s coming-out party at the Four Seasons that everyone of importance in New York was receiving invitations to. There had been talk that Stokes Bishop would host the party, but Simon Cabot and Baroness de Liagra had prevailed and the party was being hosted by Elias and Ruby, as their own return to New York after his seven years in prison. The name Ruby Renthal was in the air.

Simon Cabot, the international public relations figure best known for making the unpopular Camilla Parker-Bowles, mistress of His Royal Highness Prince Charles, acceptable to the British public following the tragic death of Princess Diana, issued the following release to Kit Jones, Toby Tilden, Christine Saunders, and others of equal stature in the New York media:

There was, of course, no mention of the vast artistic contribution of Baroness de Liagra in choreographing the Aquacade especially for Ruby.

Ruby Renthal, Ruby Renthal, Ruby Renthal. Everyone in New York was beginning to talk about Ruby Renthal.

E
AST
F
IFTY-SECOND
Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue was jam-packed with chauffeur-driven limousines dropping off the three hundred guests at the awninged entrance of the Four Seasons, the city’s most prestigious restaurant for the rich, famous, and powerful. Horns honked. Police whistles blew. On the sidewalk, smartly uniformed doormen opened the doors of the limousines and another opened the door of the restaurant, saying to the regulars, “Good evening, Dr. Kissinger;” “Good evening, Mayor Bloomberg;” “Good evening, Mrs. Rockefeller;” “Good evening, Ms. Vanderbilt.” Paparazzi, flashing their cameras, pushed through the hundreds of spectators, who cheered and screamed for their favorites as they emerged from their limousines. It was controlled pandemonium. “Oh, my god, there’s Faye Converse, the old-time movie star,” cried out Lillian Hoolihan, Gert Hoolihan’s niece, who had changed her name to Bridey when she went to work for Minnie Willoughby. “She’s still beautiful at seventy-six,” said Bridey. She wrote down Faye Converse’s name below Mick Jagger’s on the list of the famous people she’d seen that she was planning to read to the other maids at bingo night at the Sodality of Mary. Gert and Tammi Jo, who had been hired to be Elias Renthal’s private nurse, had
high positions in the Renthal household and had been allowed by Ruby to enter the restaurant and watch the arriving guests from the bottom of the stairway leading up to the party room.

Upstairs in the restaurant, it was Brucie’s finest hour. Ruby had taken a liking to Brucie during the several years she had lived at the Rhinelander Hotel when Elias was doing time in the facility in Las Vegas and, in return, Brucie had become her most ardent admirer. His pal Jonsie, from the wine shop, said that Brucie worshiped Ruby. So it was no surprise that Ruby had insisted to Elias that Brucie do the flowers and decorations for the party at the Four Seasons. It was the biggest job of his career, and he rose to the occasion. The centerpieces, the fifteen-inch red candles, and the goody bags bearing gifts for the departing guests at the end of the party all fell under Brucie’s supervision. He had created a new scented candle named for Ruby Renthal as one of the gifts.

A
N EMERGENCY
call from Johannesburg about her drug-addicted half brother, Rocco, who had this time urinated on the dance floor of the Tits and Ass Club while smoking a joint and had landed in jail for the second time in a month, had delayed Perla Zacharias considerably, much to the dismay of Bernardo, who was waiting to do her hair and makeup before he went to do the same for Ormolu Webb. Addison Kent was frantic, and in order to save time, Perla suggested that he wait outside the Four Seasons and be there when she finally arrived, as she did not wish to walk up the stairs to the party unescorted any more than Addison wanted to walk up the stairs alone, as he had not been invited directly, merely as an escort for Mrs. Zacharias. Addison had the taxi drop him at the corner of Fifty-second Street and Park Avenue and walked the half block east to the entrance of
the Four Seasons through the nearly impenetrable crowd of fans and paparrazi. “Excuse me. Excuse me,” he kept saying in the tone of voice he had learned to use when speaking to what he considered to be lesser people. “Coming through, please. I’m a guest at the party. Coming through, please,” he said several times, inadvertently bumping into Bridey Hoolihan and knocking her Instamatic camera out of her hand just as she was about to snap Caroline Kennedy, her favorite Irish American, emerging from her car. “Fuck you, asshole,” screamed Bridey at Addison as she leaned down to pick up the smashed camera from the sidewalk. In her brief time living in New York, Bridey had learned a new language that was quite different from how she’d spoken at Our Lady of Sorrows in Roscommon, Ireland. Addison, unabashed, ignored her and pushed on, finally breaking through the crowd to the entrance of the Four Seasons. “Has Mrs. Konstantin Zacharias arrived yet?” he said to the doorman in the same uppity voice. The doorman took an instant dislike to Addison. “Don’t know the lady, and you can’t wait here,” he said.

“No, no, you don’t understand. Mrs. Zacharias is a very important international woman and a close personal friend of Elias Renthal and she specifically told me to meet her at the door.”

“Then move over there out of the way. You’re holding things up here,” said the doorman, waving him away, totally unimpressed with Addison’s self-importance. “Good evening, Mrs. Schlossberg,” the doorman said to Caroline Kennedy as he bowed his head in respect and opened the door. The doormen knew the riff from the raff.