Too Much Money (7 page)

“Well, the book deal is just about to be announced, so I
guess I have something to look forward to,” said Gus. “I couldn’t go to Lil’s last night. You probably heard, or read, that I’m being sued for slander. I stayed home to watch Kyle Cramden’s lawyer, Win Burch, on the
Harry Sovereign Show
. Mr. Burch is one slick customer, with a lot of fake charm. I’d never seen him before, but I’ve certainly heard a lot about him.”

“How’s your lawsuit coming?” asked Winkie.

“Slowly. Expensively. I’m scared shitless of this Win Burch. He’s said to be terrifying when you’re on the stand. People say that he scares people for a living. They call him The Pit Bull.”

“Everyone’s rooting for you, Gus,” said Winkie.

Gus shook away the thought of Win Burch. “How was Lil’s new apartment?” he asked.

“A bit charmless. Low ceilings. Poor Lil. She hates it, but she’s being brave about it. She can’t stand her nephew for having her move out of her Fifth Avenue apartment after she lived there for so many years, and she never lets up on poor Dodo for inheriting all the family money. Thank God she has Gert.”

“Yes, yes, good old Gert,” said Gus.

W
INKIE WENT
off to meet Addison Kent for an early dinner at Swifty’s. Winkie had lied to Gus when he said he had gone into the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home to use the men’s room. He had gone to make the arrangements with an assistant funeral director named Francis Xavior Branigan for a cremation in three days.

“For whom?” asked the assistant funeral director, eyeing Winkie somewhat suspiciously.

“For me,” replied Winkie. He was an elegant-looking fellow, even in his advanced years, and the assistant funeral director noticed how beautifully he was dressed, although his recent weight
loss made his gray pinstripe suit appear to be too large for him. Though dazzled by this glamorous figure, Xavior was made uncomfortable by his request.

“A cremation for you, Mr. Williams? Tell me, how exactly do you know the precise date you will be ready for cremation?”

Winkie just held his gaze, silently communicating to the assistant funeral director that he knew what he was doing and that he would not be deterred. “This is a very delicate matter, Mr. Branigan. You won’t breathe a word, will you?”

“You’re putting me in a very awkward position, Mr. Williams.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Winkie replied airily.

Xavior changed the subject.

“I feel like I know you. I recognized you right away. I’ve been reading your name in Kit Jones’s and Dolores De Longpre’s columns for years, and I see your pictures in
Park Avenue
at the grandest parties. You’re the most famous extra man in New York. Is it true that Cole Porter wrote ‘The Extra Man’ about you? It’s one of my favorite songs of his.”

“Cole always said it was about me, yes,” said Winkie, who loved his social celebrity. “Of course, I was awfully young then, and I was the best dancer in New York; at least that’s what Dolores De Longpre always wrote about me.”

“Is it true what I read that you never go out on the anniversary of Marie Antoinette’s death?” asked Xavior.

“No, no, no. I don’t know who started that ridiculous story,” said Winkie, shaking his head.

Francis Xavior Branigan was bursting with excitement that he was engaged in such a glamorous conversation and was completely charmed by the handsome Mr. Williams. He hated to turn back to the boring business of practicalities, but he felt it his duty to get to the bottom of the request.

“What brings you to this very sad act that you are contemplating? Is it all right if I call you Winkie?”

Winkie laughed. “Of course. I would like you to call me Winkie. All the waiters at Swifty’s call me Winkie. I love it.”

“But you haven’t answered my question,” said Xavior.

“I’m riddled with cancer. Absolutely riddled. I don’t have a chance. I’m not in pain, thank God, or thanks to Lil Altemus, rather. She’s on the board of the hospital. She took her brother’s place after Laurance had that terrible stroke. The pain clinic is at my command, so I’m a little high at all times. I have gone to my last party, and seen everybody one last time, and kissed a lot of ladies on the cheek, and discussed Tina and Freddie Tudor’s divorce, and asked Lil for one last dance. Now I am ready to do it. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. I have prepared the announcement for the
New York Times
obituaries.”

Xavior stared at Winkie for a moment, his mouth slightly agape.

“Oh, dear. I find this so sad,” he finally answered, shaking his head. “I believe I have a legal responsibility to inform someone of your plans.”

“No you don’t,” Winkie stated pointedly. “Who will ever know we had this conversation?”

Xavior looked away for a moment.

“Don’t they call you a social gadfly in the columns?” Xavior asked, deciding at least to humor Winkie.

“This is my reputation, yes,” said Winkie.

“You seem deeper.”

“I am deeper. But, you see, I have wasted my opportunities,” said Winkie. “It’s not good to inherit a few million when you are as young as I was. Especially way back when a million dollars was still considered a lot of money.”

“Rich family?”

“A rich lover or two would be more accurate,” replied Winkie, and they both chuckled. “It made me idle. There were things I could have done. I could have written, I’m sure. My eye
was perfect. I missed nothing. I could turn a phrase better than anyone.”

“But why didn’t you?” asked Xavior.

On Winkie’s face was a look of profound weariness that had nothing to do with being tired but had a great deal to do with having seen too much. He stared straight ahead. Xavior was aware of a moisture that appeared in Winkie’s eyes, as if he were fighting tears. He shook his head slowly. “It’s a terrible thing to come to the conclusion that your life has been so unimportant as mine has been.”

“But you have friends. Many, many friends.”

“Yes, yes, there is that,” replied Winkie.

“Do you have a friend who will find you? It’s awful when nobody stops by for a few days, and the cleaning woman comes a week later and she tells the television reporter for the evening news that your body had started to stink,” said Xavior.

“Oh, no, we mustn’t have that,” said Winkie, with a gesture of horror. “I wouldn’t like it a bit to be found in a state of decay. I am about to have dinner at Swifty’s with a very close friend of mine who will find me the next morning. His name is Addison Kent, a charming young man. He will send the announcement to the
Times
, and he will be in touch with you about picking up the body. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Francis Xavior Branigan.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Branigan.”

“Xavior,” he said.

“Xavior, yes. Let’s discuss price, so I can pay in advance,” said Winkie. “I’ve brought my checkbook along.”

Seduced by the profound role that the famous Winkie Williams was asking him to play in New York social history, Xavior chose to go forward with the suicide plan.

“The basic cremation price is six thousand.”

Winkie’s face took on a look of financial surprise. “I think
that’s a little pricey for a burn-up, Xavior. I hope you’re not thinking about a fancy casket. I read Jessica Mitford on the American way of death, and I know about the exorbitant charges in the mortuary world. I want the cheapest wooden box there is. I wouldn’t mind if it was cardboard, as a matter of fact.”

“It’s still six thousand,” said Xavior. “Make the check out to Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home.”

Winkie took his checkbook from the inside pocket of his pinstripe suit and wrote out the check. “Outrageous, you know,” said Winkie.

Francis Xavior Branigan smiled. “I know a funeral home up on One Hundred Twelfth Street and Amsterdam Avenue where you can probably get a better deal, but that wouldn’t be the right thing at all for you, Winkie.”

“Here,” said Winkie, handing him the check for six thousand dollars.

“Will there be a service?”

“No funeral. No memorial. It’s in the announcement. It says, ‘William (Winkie) Williams passed away in his sleep on such and such a night. There will be no funeral or memorial service.’”

“That’s to the point. No music, I suppose.”

“Maybe a little Cole Porter. I think Bart Howard made a recording of ‘The Extra Man’ back in the fifties,” said Winkie.

“I know the lyrics,” said Xavior.

Addison Kent knew what Winkie planned to do. He knew him well enough to know never to try to talk him out of it. He knew that for Winkie it was the right thing to do. He knew Winkie’s cancer had spread to his bones and that it had metastasized. “I’m riddled,” he’d said to Addison. Later, after it was all over and people discussed the late Winkie Williams, Addison always said, “He was like a mentor to me when I first came to New York from Michigan.”

They sat at the corner table in the back room of Swifty’s. Between the two of them, they knew almost everyone in the room. They waved. “Hi, Sass. Hi, Blaine.” They threw kisses. They only nodded to Yehudit Tavicoli, who was searching for a new rich husband and dining with an obscure Arabian royal. Winkie ordered martinis. No one in the room could have guessed that they were discussing what clothes Winkie should be laid out in before his cremation. He didn’t want to be put into the flames in the blue silk pajamas with his monogram on the pocket that Perla Zacharias had given him, along with his own monogrammed towels, when he visited her at her villa in Biarritz, shortly before the terrible fire took place that killed Konstantin. His plan was to wear them to bed the night he took the thirty-seven pills he had been able to get from the pain clinic at the hospital. He thought the blue silk pajamas were perfect to be wearing when he would be found the next morning, but he had always been a fashion plate, so he wanted Addison to have his latest pale gray pinstripe suit from Huntsman in London taken up to Mr. Francis Xavior Branigan at the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home, along with his favorite blue shirt with his monogram on the pocket, and the lavender tie from Turnbull & Asser that Lil Altemus had given him for his birthday the previous week.

“I haven’t worn it yet. She’ll be thrilled to hear. You must tell her afterward. I’ve asked her to be the executrix of my will. It will keep her occupied in that new apartment she hates so much.”

“Is there any porn in the apartment that I should get rid of?” asked Addison. “You wouldn’t want Lil Altemus to find any of those videos I’ve seen in there, would you? Especially the one with you and the three black guys.”

“Perish the thought,” said Winkie. “The videos are in that French chest with the ormolu decoration. By the way, Lil has always
said that the French chest should go to Boothby’s to be auctioned. She said it could be worth quite a lot of money if it’s the real thing, and Lil knows her French furniture. She said it’s the ormolu that makes it so valuable. Remember, Lil gave all that eighteenth-century French furniture to the Metropolitan Museum, and they named the room after her, back when she still had so much money.”

“Where did you get that chest?” asked Addison.

“There was a very rich Argentinian named Arturo Miramonte who lived in grand style in Paris back in the fifties, and he took rather a shine to me. Actually, it was more than a shine. He almost left his wife for me. Instead he left me that cabinet with all the ormolu in his will, among other things, like money, quite a lot of money, as a matter of fact. That was all years and years ago. I was quite good-looking back then. Arturo said he left it to me because I was the only one who had ever figured out there was a secret panel. I must remember to tell Lil Altemus about that.”

“I always heard that it was Pauline Mendelson’s late ex-brother-in-law, Donald Mendelson, who left you your money,” said Addison.

“That was my second inheritance,” said Winkie. “There was almost a scandal. Donald died in his apartment at the Sherry-Netherland from some bad heroin that his great friend Lady Wetmore brought with her from the South of France. Thank God for Thomas, the butler, who worshiped Donald and knew of his habits. He told the devastated and stoned Lady Wetmore to pack and fly back to France on the first plane out, went to the lobby and got her a cab, cleaned up all the evidence of needles and drugs, and then called nine-one-one, or whomever they called in those days to report a dead body. Not a word made the papers, other than a paid obituary that said he died of a heart attack. I don’t know about you, Addison, but I’m going to have another martini. After all, what difference does it make?”

The day after he made his cremation arrangements with Francis Xavior Branigan at the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home and later had dinner at Swifty’s with Addison Kent, where they decided on the clothes Winkie would be cremated in, and got a little drunk at the same time, Winkie Williams was out and about making further final decisions. He had decided to do it quickly, to get it over with. He always had an instinct for knowing the right moment to leave a party.

O
RMOLU
W
EBB
ran into Winkie on Madison Avenue, and they stopped to chat for a moment after Winkie had kissed her on both cheeks and admired her new short haircut from Bernardo. Ormolu never gave a dinner where Winkie wasn’t at an honored place at her table. “Mica said she saw you at Swifty’s last night,” said Ormolu, laughing gaily, as she always did, covering the fact that she was shocked by his appearance. Later, Ormolu said to her husband, Percy Webb, when they were dressing to go to Rosalie Paget’s dinner, “I saw Winkie Williams on Madison Avenue today on my way from Bernardo, my hairdresser’s. Poor darling Winkie, he looked simply terrible. I almost didn’t recognize him, but he was in such good humor, full of fun as always.”

W
INKIE WENT
into Thierry’s Wine and Liquors on Madison Avenue. He went straight to Jonsie, his old pal Jonsie, who had been selling him wine for a couple of decades for his little lunch parties in his “small and terribly chic” apartment, as
Quest
magazine had described it, just around the corner.

“I want the most expensive bottle of champagne in this overpriced shop,” said Winkie to Jonsie, who was once, when they met back in the 1940s, the substitute piano accompanist for Mabel Mercer, the nightclub chanteuse beloved by unmarried men of the period. Winkie was one of the few people who ever
saw Jonsie accompany Mabel Mercer when she sang “You Are Not My First Love” at Tony’s on West Fifty-second Street.