The Bonfire Of The Vanities Part 41

21. The Fabulous Koala

Never in his life had he seen things things, the things of everyday life, more clearly. And his eyes poisoned every one of them!

In the bank on Na.s.sau Street, which he had entered hundreds of times, where tellers, guards, junior officers, and the manager himself knew him as the estimable Mr. McCoy of Pierce & Pierce and called him by name, where he was so esteemed, in fact, they had given him a personal loan of $1.8 million to buy his apartment-and that loan cost him $21,000 a month!-and where was it going to come from!-oh G.o.d!-he now noticed the smallest things...the egg-and-dart molding around the cornice on the main floor...the old bronze shades on the lamps on the check-writing desks in the middle of the lobby...the spiral fluting on the posts supporting the railing between the lobby and the section where the officers sat...All so solid! so precise! so orderly!...and now so specious! such a mockery!...so worthless worthless, offering no protection at all...

Everybody smiled smiled at him. Kind respectful unsuspecting souls...Today still Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy...How very sad to think that in this solid orderly place...tomorrow... at him. Kind respectful unsuspecting souls...Today still Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy...How very sad to think that in this solid orderly place...tomorrow...

Ten thousand in cash...Killian said the bail money had to be in cash...The teller was a young black woman, no more than twenty-five, wearing a blouse with a high-neck stock and a gold pin...a cloud with a face blowing the wind...in gold...His eyes fastened upon the strange sadness of the wind's face of gold...If he presented her with a check for $10,000, would she question it? Would he have to go to a bank officer and explain? What would he say? For bail bail? The estimable Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy...

In fact, all she said was "You know we have to report all transactions of $10,000 or more, don't you, Mr. McCoy?"

Report? To a bank officer! To a bank officer!

She must have seen the puzzlement on his face, because she said, "To the government. We have to fill out a form."

Then it dawned on him. It was a regulation designed to foil drug dealers who did business in large amounts of cash.

"How long does it take? Does it involve a lot of paperwork?"

"No, we just fill out the form. We have all the information we need on file, your address and so on."

"Well-all right, that's fine."

"How would you like it? In hundreds?"

"Uh, yes, in hundreds." He didn't have the faintest idea of what $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills would look like.

She left the window and soon returned with what looked like a small paper brick with a band of paper around it. "Here you are. This is a hundred one-hundred-dollar bills."

He smiled nervously. "That's it? Doesn't look like much, does it?"

"Well...depends. All bills come in packages of a hundred, the ones same as the hundreds. When you see a hundred on there, it's impressive enough, I guess."

He propped his attache case up on the marble sill of the window and snapped open the lid and took the paper brick from her and put it inside and snapped the case shut and then glanced at her face again. She knew, didn't she! She knew there was something sordid about having to take out such a desperate amount of cash. There was bound to be!

In fact, her face betrayed neither approval nor disapproval. She smiled, politely, to show her goodwill-and a wave of fear swept over him. Goodwill! Goodwill! What would she or any other black person who looked into the face of Sherman McCoy think tomorrow- What would she or any other black person who looked into the face of Sherman McCoy think tomorrow- -of the man who ran down a black honor student and left him to die!

As he walked down Na.s.sau, toward Wall, on his way to Dunning Sponget & Leach, he had an attack of money anxiety. The $10,000 had pretty well wiped out his checking account. He had another $16,000 or so in a so-called money market savings account that could be s.h.i.+fted at any time to the checking account. This was money he kept on hand for-incidentals!-the ordinary bills that came up every month! and would keep on coming up!-like waves at the sh.o.r.e-and now what? Very shortly he would have to invade princ.i.p.al-and there wasn't that much princ.i.p.al. Had to stop thinking about it. He thought of his father. He would be there in five minutes...He couldn't imagine it. And that would be nothing compared to Judy and Campbell. Very shortly he would have to invade princ.i.p.al-and there wasn't that much princ.i.p.al. Had to stop thinking about it. He thought of his father. He would be there in five minutes...He couldn't imagine it. And that would be nothing compared to Judy and Campbell.

As he walked into his father's office, his father rose up from the chair behind his desk...but Sherman's poisoned eyes picked out the most insignificant thing...the saddest thing...Just across from his father's window, in a window of the new gla.s.s-and-aluminum building across the street, a young white woman was staring at the street below and probing the intertragian notch of her left ear with a Q-tip...a very plain young woman with tight curly hair, staring at the street and cleaning her ears...How very sad...The street was so narrow he felt as if he could reach out and rap on the plate gla.s.s where she stood...The new building had cast his father's little office into a perpetual gloom. He had to keep the lights on at all times. At Dunning Sponget & Leach, old partners, such as John Campbell McCoy, were not forced to retire, but they were expected to do the right thing. This meant giving up grand offices and grand views to make way for the rising middle-agelings, lawyers in their forties and early fifties still swollen with ambition and visions of grander views, grander offices.

"Come in, Sherman," said his father...the erstwhile Lion...with a smile and also a wary note. No doubt he had been able to tell from the tone of Sherman's voice on the telephone that this would not be an ordinary visit. The Lion...He was still an impressive figure with his aristocratic chin and his thick white hair combed straight back and his English suit and his heavy watch chain across the belly of his vest. But his skin seemed thin and delicate, as if at any moment his entire leonine hide might crumple inside all the formidable worsted clothes. He motioned toward the armchair by his desk and said, quite pleasantly, "The bond market must be in the doldrums. Suddenly I rate a visit in the middle of the day."

A visit in the middle of the day-the Lion's old office had not only been on the corner, it had commanded a view of New York Harbor. What bliss it had been, as a boy, to go visit Daddy in his office! From the moment he stepped off the elevator on the eighteenth floor he was His Majesty the Child. Everyone, the receptionist, the junior partners, even the porters, knew his name and sang it out as if nothing could bring greater happiness to the loyal subjects of Dunning Sponget than the sight of his little face and budding aristocratic chin. All other traffic seemed to come to a halt as His Majesty the Child was escorted down the hall and deep into the CEO's suite to the office of the Lion himself, on the corner, where the door opened and-glorious!-the sun flooded in from over the harbor, which was spread out for him down below. The Statue of Liberty, the Staten Island ferries, the tugboats, the police boats, the cargo s.h.i.+ps coming in through the Narrows in the distance...What a show-for him! What bliss!

Several times, in that glorious office, they came close to sitting down and having a real talk. Young as he was, Sherman had perceived that his father was trying to open a door in his formality and beckon him through. And he had never known quite how. Now, in the blink of an eye, Sherman was thirty-eight, and there was no door at all. How could he put it? In his entire life he had never dared embarra.s.s his father with a single confession of weakness, let alone moral decay and abject vulnerability.

"Well, how's it going at Pierce & Pierce?"

Sherman laughed a mirthless laugh. "I don't know. It's going on without me me. That much I know."

His father leaned forward. "You're not leav leaving?"

"In a manner of speaking." He still didn't know how to put it. So, weakly, guiltily, he fell back on the shock approach, the blunt demand for sympathy, that had worked with Gene Lopwitz. "Dad, I'm going to be arrested in the morning."

His father stared at him for what seemed like a very long time, then opened his mouth and closed it and sighed a little sigh, as if rejecting all of mankind's usual responses of surprise or disbelief when a disaster is announced. What he finally said, while perfectly logical, puzzled Sherman: "By whom?"

"By...the police. The New York City police."

"On what charge?" Such bewilderment and pain on his face. Oh, he had stunned him, all right, and probably demolished his capacity to get angry...and how contemptible a strategy it was...

"Reckless endangerment, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to report an accident."

"Automobile," said his father, as if talking to himself. "And they're going to arrest you tomorrow?"

Sherman nodded and began his sordid story, all the while studying his father's face and noting, with relief and guilt, that he remained stunned. Sherman dealt with the subject of Maria with Victorian delicacy. Scarcely knew her. Had only seen her three or four times, in innocuous situations. Should never have flirted with her, of course. Flirted.

"Who is this woman, Sherman?"

"She's married to a man named Arthur Ruskin."

"Ah. I think I know who you mean. He's Jewish, isn't he?"

What earthly difference does it make? "Yes." "Yes."

"And who is she?"

"She's from someplace in South Carolina."

"What was her maiden name?"

Her maiden name? "Dean. I don't think she's Colonial Dames material, Dad." "Dean. I don't think she's Colonial Dames material, Dad."

When he got as far as the first appearance of the stories in the newspapers, Sherman could tell his father didn't want to hear any more of the sordid details. He interrupted again.

"Who's representing you, Sherman? I a.s.sume you do have a law lawyer."

"Yes. His name is Thomas Killian."

"Never heard of him. Who is he?"

With a heavy heart: "He's with a firm called Dershkin, Bellavita, Fishbein & Schlossel."

The Lion's nostrils quivered, and his jaw muscles bunched up, as if he were trying to keep from retching. "How on earth did you find them?"

"They specialize in criminal law. Freddy b.u.t.ton recommended them."

"Freddy? You let Freddy... Freddy..." He shook his head. He couldn't find the words.

"He's my law lawyer!"

"I know, Sherman, but Freddy..." The Lion glanced toward the door and then lowered his voice. "Freddy's a perfectly fine person, Sherman, but this is a serious matter!"

"You turned me over to Freddy, Dad, a long time ago!" turned me over to Freddy, Dad, a long time ago!"

"I know!- know!-but not for anything important!" He shook his head some more. Bewilderment upon bewilderment.

"Well, in any event, I'm represented by a lawyer named Thomas Killian."

"Ah, Sherman." A far-off weariness. The horse is out of the barn. "I wish you had come to me as soon as this thing happened. Now, at this stage-well, but that's where we are, isn't it? So let's try to go from here. One thing I'm quite sure of. You have got to find the very best representation available. You've got to find lawyers you can trust trust, implicitly, because you're putting an awful lot in their hands. You can't just go wandering in to some people named Dershbein-whatever it is. I'm going to call Chester Whitman and Ed LaPrade and sound them out."

Chester Whitman and Ed LaPrade? Two old federal judges who were either retired or close to it. The likelihood of their knowing anything about the machinations of a Bronx district attorney or a Harlem rabble-rouser was so remote...And all at once Sherman felt sad, not so much for himself as for this old man before him, clinging to the power of connections that meant something back in the 1950s and early 1960s... Two old federal judges who were either retired or close to it. The likelihood of their knowing anything about the machinations of a Bronx district attorney or a Harlem rabble-rouser was so remote...And all at once Sherman felt sad, not so much for himself as for this old man before him, clinging to the power of connections that meant something back in the 1950s and early 1960s...

"Miss Needleman?" The Lion was already on the telephone. "Would you ring up Judge Chester Whitman for me, please?...What?...Oh. I see. Well, when you're through, then." He hung up the receiver. As an old partner, he no longer had a secretary of his own. He shared one with half a dozen others, and obviously she, Miss Needleman, did not jump when the Lion opened his mouth. Waiting, the Lion looked out his solitary window and pursed his lips and looked very old.

And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.

The Lion looked away from the window and straight at Sherman and smiled, with what Sherman interpreted as a kindly embarra.s.sment.

"Sherman," he said, "promise me one thing. You won't lose heart. I wish you'd come to me sooner, but that doesn't matter. You're going to have my complete support, and you're going to have Mother's. Whatever we can do for you, we will."

For an instant, Sherman thought he was talking about money. On second thought, he knew he wasn't. By the standards of the rest of the world, the world outside of New York, his parents were rich. In fact, they had just enough to generate the income that would support the house on Seventy-third Street and the house on Long Island and provide them with help a few days each week at both places and take care of the routine expenses that would preserve their gentility. But to cut into their princ.i.p.al would be like cutting a vein. He couldn't do that to this well-meaning gray-haired man who sat before him in this mean little office. And, for that matter, he wasn't at all sure that's what was being offered.

"What about Judy?" asked his father.

"Judy?"

"How has she taken all this?"

"She doesn't know about it yet."

"She doesn't doesn't?"

"Not the first thing."

Every vestige of an expression left the face of the old gray-haired lad.

When Sherman asked Judy to come with him into the library, he had every intention, every conscious intention, of being completely honest. But from the moment he opened his mouth he was aware of his clumsy secret para-self, the dissembler. It was the dissembler who put that portentous baritone into his voice and who showed Judy to the wing chair the way a funeral director might have done it and who closed the door to the library with lugubrious deliberateness and then turned about and wrapped his eyebrows around his nose so that Judy could see, without hearing the first word, that the situation was grave.

The dissembler didn't sit behind his desk-that would be too corporate a posture-but in the armchair. And then he said: "Judy, I want you to get a grip on yourself. I-"

"If you're going to tell me about your little whatever it is, don't bother. You can't imagine how uninterested I am."

Astounded: "My little what what?"

"Your...affair...if that's what it is. I don't even want to hear about it."

He stared at her with his mouth slightly open, ransacking his mind for something to say: "That's only part of it"..."If only that's all it was"..."I'm afraid you'll have to hear about it"..."It's gone beyond that"...All so lame, flat-so he fell back on the bomb. He'd drop the bomb on her.

"Judy-I'm going to be arrested in the morning."

That got her. That knocked the condescending look off her face. Her shoulders dropped. She was just a little woman in a big chair.

"Arrested?"

"You remember the night the two detectives came by here. The thing that happened in the Bronx?"

"That was you you?"

"It was me."

"I don't believe it!"

"Unfortunately it's true. It was me."

He had her. She was staggered. He felt cheap and guilty all over again. The dimensions of his catastrophe once more hogged the moral terrain.

He started in on his story. Until the very words came out of his mouth, he meant to be completely truthful about Maria. But...what good would it do? Why devastate his wife completely? Why leave her with a completely hateful husband? So he told her it had been just a little flirtation. Known the woman barely three weeks.

"I just told her I'd pick her up at the airport. I just all of a sudden told her I'd do that. I probably had-I guess I had something on my mind-won't try to kid you or kid myself-but, Judy, I swear to you, I never even kissed kissed the woman, much less had an af the woman, much less had an affair. Then this unbelievable thing thing happened, this nightmare, and I haven't seen her since except that one night when all of a sudden there I am sitting next to her at the Bavardages'. Judy, I swear to you, there was no happened, this nightmare, and I haven't seen her since except that one night when all of a sudden there I am sitting next to her at the Bavardages'. Judy, I swear to you, there was no affair affair."

He studied her face to see if by any chance she believed him. A blank. A daze. He plunged on.

"I know I should have told you as soon as the thing happened. But it came right on top of that stupid telephone call I made. And then I knew knew you'd think I was having some kind of affair, which I wasn't. Judy, I've seen the woman maybe five times in my life, always in a public situation. I mean, even picking somebody up at an airport is a public situation." you'd think I was having some kind of affair, which I wasn't. Judy, I've seen the woman maybe five times in my life, always in a public situation. I mean, even picking somebody up at an airport is a public situation."

He halted and tried to size her up again. Nothing. He found her silence overwhelming. He felt compelled to supply all the missing words.

He went on about the newspaper stories, his problems at the office, about Freddy b.u.t.ton, Thomas Killian, Gene Lopwitz. Even as he droned on about one thing, his mind raced ahead to the next. Should he tell her about his conversation with his father? That would win him her sympathy, because she would realize the pain it caused him. No! She might be angry to know he had told his father first...But before he reached that point, he realized she was no longer listening. A curious, almost dreamy look had come over her face. Then she started chuckling. The only sound that came out was a little cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck in her throat. in her throat.

Shocked and offended: "This strikes you as funny?"

With just a trace of a smile: "I'm laughing at myself. All weekend I was upset because you were such a...dud...at the Bavardages'. I was afraid that might hurt my chances of being chairman of the museum benefit."

Despite everything, Sherman was pained to learn that he had been a dud at the Bavardages'.

Judy said, "That's pretty funny, isn't it? Me worrying about the museum benefit?"

With a hiss: "Sorry to be a drag on your ambitions."