The Bonfire Of The Vanities Part 40

Lopwitz now lowered his eyes and sank back in the wing chair and beamed in antic.i.p.ation of talking to the famous Golden Hillbilly whose famous b.u.t.tery bulk and tenor voice were now encased in Lopwitz's own eight-seat jet aircraft with Rolls-Royce engines. Strictly speaking, it was Pierce & Pierce's, but to all practical purposes, it was his, personally, baronially. Lopwitz lowered his head, and great animation came over his face, and he said: "Bobby? Bobby? Can you hear me?...What's that? How's it going?...They treating you all right up there?...What?...h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?...Bobby? You still there? h.e.l.lo? Can you hear me? Bobby?"

Still holding the telephone, Lopwitz looked at Sherman with a scowl, as if he had just done something far worse than get suckered on the United Fragrance deal or go absent without leave. "s.h.i.+t," he said. "Lost the connection." He clicked the receiver. "Miss Bayles?...Lost the connection. See if you can get the plane again."

He hung up and looked miserable. He had lost the opportunity to have the great artist, the great ball of fat and fame, pay him his thanks and, thereby, homage to the Lopwitz eminence from the skies forty thousand feet over the American heartland.

"Okay, where were we?" asked Lopwitz, looking as angry as Sherman had ever seen him. "Oh yeah, the Giscard." Lopwitz began shaking his head, as if something truly dreadful had happened, and Sherman braced, because the debacle of the gold-backed bonds was the worst of it. In the next instant, however, Sherman had the eerie feeling that Lopwitz was really shaking his head over the broken telephone connection.

The telephone rang again. Lopwitz pounced on it. "Yeah?...You got the plane?...What?...Well, all right, put him through."

This time Lopwitz looked at Sherman and shook his head with frustration and bewilderment, as if Sherman was his understanding friend. "It's Ronald Vine. He's calling from England. He's out in Wilts.h.i.+re. He's found some linenfold paneling for me. They're six hours ahead of us there, so I gotta take it."

His voice asked for understanding and forgiveness. Linenfold paneling? Linenfold paneling? Sherman could only stare. But apparently fearful that he might say something at such a critical juncture, Lopwitz held up one finger and closed his eyes for a moment. Sherman could only stare. But apparently fearful that he might say something at such a critical juncture, Lopwitz held up one finger and closed his eyes for a moment.

"Ronald? Where you calling from?...That's what I thought...No, I know it very well...Whaddaya mean, they won't sell it to you?"

Lopwitz fell into a deep discussion with the decorator, Ronald Vine, about some impediment to the purchase of the linenfold paneling in Wilts.h.i.+re. Sherman looked at the fireplace again...The chiggers...Lopwitz had used the fireplace for just about two months and then never again. One day, while sitting at his desk, he had suffered an intense itching and burning sensation on the underside of his left b.u.t.tock. Fiery red blisters he had...Chigger bites...The only plausible deduction was that somehow chiggers had found their way to the fiftieth floor, to the mighty bond trading floor of Pierce & Pierce, in a load of firewood for the hearth and had bitten the baron on the bottom. On the bra.s.s andirons at this moment was a stack of carefully chosen New Hamps.h.i.+re hardwood logs, sculpturally perfect, perfectly clean, utterly antiseptic, b.u.g.g.e.red with enough insecticide to empty a banana grove of everything that moves, permanently installed, never to be lit.

Lopwitz's voice rose. "Whaddaya mean they won't sell it to 'trade'?...Yeah, I know they said it to you, but they know you're getting it for me. What are they talking about, 'trade'?...Unnh-hnnh...Yeah, well, you tell 'em I got a word for them. Trayf... Trayf...Let 'em figure it out for themselves. If I'm 'trade,' they're trayf... trayf...What's it mean? It means, like, 'not kosher,' only it's worse than that. In plain English I guess the word is s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t. There's an old saying, 'If you look close enough, everything is trayf trayf,' and that goes for these moth-eaten aristocrats, too, Ronald. Tell 'em to take their linenfold panels and shove 'em."

Lopwitz hung up and looked at Sherman with great irritation.

"All right, Sherman, let's get down to cases." He sounded as if Sherman had been stalling, arguing, evading, double-talking him, and otherwise trying to drive him crazy. "I can't figure out what happened with the Giscard...Lemme ask you something." He c.o.c.ked his head and put on the look that says, "I'm a shrewd observer of human nature."

"I'm not prying," he said, "but I want you to tell me anyway. You having trouble at home or something?"

For a moment Sherman entertained the notion of appealing, man-to-man, for pity and revealing just an inch or two of his infidelity. But a sixth sense told him that "problems at home" would only arouse Lopwitz's contempt and his appet.i.te for gossip, which seemed to be considerable. So he shook his head and smiled slightly, to indicate that the question didn't even trouble him, and said, "No, not at all."

"Well, do you need a vacation or something?"

Sherman didn't know what to say to that. But his spirits rose. At least it didn't sound as if Lopwitz was about to fire him. In fact, he didn't have to say anything, because the telephone rang again. Lopwitz picked up the receiver, although not so rapidly this time.

"Yeah?...What's that, Miss Bayles?...Sherman?" A big sigh. "Well, he's right here."

Lopwitz looked at Sherman quizzically. "Seems to be for you." He held out the receiver.

Very odd. Sherman got up, took the receiver, and stood beside Lopwitz's chair. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mr. McCoy?" It was Miss Bayles, Lopwitz's secretary. "There's a Mr. Killian on the line. He says it's 'imperative' that he speak to you. Do you want to speak to him?"

Sherman felt a thud of palpitation in his chest. Then his heart kicked off into a steady, galloping tachycardia. "Yes. Thank you."

A voice said, "Sherman?" It was Killian. He had never called him by his first name before. "I had to get hold of you." Hadda gedoldya Hadda gedoldya.

"I'm in Mr. Lopwitz's office," said Sherman, in a formal voice.

"I know that," said Killian. "But I had to make sure you didn't leave the building or something before I G.o.doldya. I just got a call from Bernie Fitzgibbon. They claim they got a witness who can-make the people who were at the scene. You follow me?"

"Make?"

"Identify 'em."

"I see...Let me call you when I get back to my desk." Composed.

"Okay, I'm in my office, but I got to head to court. So make it quick. There's one very important thing you got to know. They're gonna want to see you, officially, tomorrow. Officially, okay? So you call me back immediately." The way Killian said "officially," Sherman could tell it was a code expression, in case someone in Lopwitz's office had access to the conversation.

"All right," he said. Composed. "Thank you." He put the receiver back on the cradle on the Irish Chippendale table and sat back down in the wing chair in a daze.

Lopwitz continued as if the call had never taken place. "As I told you, Sherman, the question is not that you lost money for Pierce & Pierce. That's not what I'm saying. The Giscard was your idea. It was a great strategy, and you thought of it. But I mean, f'r Chrissake, you worked on it for four months, and you're our number one bond salesman out there. So it isn't the money you lost for us, it's that here you are, you're a guy who's supposed to function the best out there, and now we got a situation where we got a whole string of these things that I've been talking to you about-"

Lopwitz stopped talking and stared with astonishment as Sherman, without a word, stood up in front of him. Sherman knew what he was doing, but at the same time he seemed to have no control over it. He couldn't just stand up and walk out on Gene Lopwitz in the middle of a crucial talk about his performance at Pierce & Pierce, and yet he couldn't sit there another second.

"Gene," he said, "you'll have to excuse me. I have to leave." He could hear his own voice as if he were hearing it from outside. "I'm really sorry, but I have to."

Lopwitz remained seated and looked at him as if he'd gone crazy.

"That call," said Sherman. "I'm sorry."

He started walking out of the office. In his peripheral vision he was aware of Lopwitz following him with his eyes.

Out on the floor of the bond trading room, the morning madness had reached its peak. As he headed toward his desk, Sherman felt as if he were swimming through a delirium.

"...October ninety-twos at the buck..."

"...I said we strip the f.u.c.kers!"

Ahhhhh, the golden crumbs...How pointless it seemed...

As he sat down at his desk, Arguello approached and said, "Sherman, do you know anything about 10 million Joshua Tree S&Ls?"

Sherman waved him back, the way you would warn someone away from a fire or the edge of a cliff. He noticed his forefinger shaking as he pressed out Killian's number on the telephone. The receptionist answered, and in his mind Sherman could see the scalding brightness of the reception area in the old building on Reade Street. In a moment Killian was on the line.

"You someplace you can talk?" he asked. Tawk Tawk.

"Yes. What did you mean, they want to see me officially?"

"They wanna bring you in. It's unethical, it's unnecessary, it's bulls.h.i.+t, but that's what they're gonna do."

"Bring me in?" Even as he said it, he had the dreadful feeling he knew what Killian meant. The question was an involuntary prayer, from his very central nervous system, that he be wrong.

"They're gonna place you under arrest. It's outrageous. They should take whatever they got before a grand jury and get an indictment and then see about an arraignment. Bernie knows that, but Weiss's gotta have a quick arrest to get the press off his back."

Sherman's throat went dry with "place you under arrest." The rest was just words.

"Under arrest?" A croak.

"Weiss is an animal," said Killian, "and he's a wh.o.r.e for the press."

"Under arrest-you can't be serious." Please don't let it be true. "What can they-what are they charging me with?"

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

"I can't believe it." Please make this unreal. "Reckless endangerment? But from what you said-I mean, how can they? I wasn't even driving!"

"Not according to their witness. Bernie said the witness picked your picture out from a set of photographs."

"But I wasn't driving!"

"I'm only telling you what Bernie told me. He says the witness also knew the color of your car and the model."

Sherman was aware of his own rapid breathing and the roar of the bond trading room.

Killian said, "You there?"

Sherman, hoa.r.s.ely: "Yes...Who is is this witness?" this witness?"

"That he wouldn't tell me."

"Is it the other boy?"

"He wouldn't say."

"Or-Christ!-Maria?"

"He's not gonna tell me that."

"Did he say anything about a woman in the car?"

"No. They're gonna keep the details to themselves at this point. But look. Lemme tell you something. This is not gonna be as bad as you think. I got a commitment from Bernie. I can bring you up there and surrender you myself. You'll be in there and outta there. Ba-bing Ba-bing."

In and out of what what? But what he said was "Surrender me?"

"Yeah. If they wanted, they could come downtown and arrest you and take you up there in handcuffs."

"Up where?"

"The Bronx. But that's not gonna happen. I got a commitment from Bernie. And by the time they release it to the press, you'll be outta there. You can be thankful for that."

The press...the Bronx...surrender...reckless endangerment...one grotesque abstraction after another. All at once he was desperate to visualize what was about to happen, to picture it, no matter what it was, rather than simply feel the horrible force closing in about him.

Killian said, "You there?"

"Yes."

"You can thank Bernie Fitzgibbon. You remember what I was telling you about contracts? This is a contract, between me and Bernie."

"Look," said Sherman, "I've got to come by and talk to you."

"Right now I got to go over to court I'm already"-awready-"late. But I should be through by one. Come on over around one. You probably gonna need a couple of hours anyway."

This time Sherman knew exactly what Killian was talking about. "Oh, G.o.d," he said in his now husky voice, "I've got to talk to my wife. She doesn't know the first thing about any of this." He was talking as much to himself as to Killian. "And my daughter and my parents...and Lopwitz...I don't know...I can't tell you-this is absolutely incredible."

"It's like the ground's been cut out from under you, right? That's the most natural thing inna world. You're not a criminal. But it's not gonna be as bad as you think. This don't mean they got a case. It just means they think they got enough to make a move. So I'm gonna tell you something. Or I'm gonna tell you something I already told you, again. You're gonna have to tell some people what's happening, but don't get into the details of what happened that night. Your wife- wife-well, what you tell her, that's between you and her, and I can't guide you on that. But anybody else-don't get into it. It can be used against you."

A sad, sad wave of sentiment rolled over Sherman. What could he say to Campbell? And how much would she pick up from what other people said about him? Six years old; so guileless; a little girl who loves flowers and rabbits.

"I understand," he said in an utterly depressed voice. How could Campbell be anything but crushed by it all?

After saying goodbye to Killian, he sat at his desk and let the diode-green letters and numbers on the computer screens skid in front of his eyes. Logically, intellectually, he knew that Campbell, his little girl, would be the first person to believe him totally and the last to lose faith in him, and yet there was no use trying to think logically and intellectually about it. He could see her tender and exquisite little face.

His concern for Campbell had one fortunate effect, at least. It overshadowed the first of his difficult tasks, which was going back in to see Eugene Lopwitz.

When he showed up at Lopwitz's suite again, Miss Bayles gave him a wary look. Obviously Lopwitz had told her that he had gone walking out of the room like a lunatic. She directed him to a bombastic French armchair and kept an eye on him for the fifteen minutes he was kept waiting before Lopwitz summoned him back in.

Lopwitz was standing when Sherman entered the office and didn't offer him a seat. Instead, he intercepted him out in the middle of the room's vast Oriental rug, as if to say, "Okay, I let you back in. Now make it quick."

Sherman raised his chin and tried to look dignified. But he felt giddy at the thought of what he was about to reveal, about to confess.

"Gene," he said, "I didn't mean to walk out of here so abruptly, but I had no choice. That call that came in while we were talking. You asked me if I had any problems. Well, the fact of the matter is, I do. I'm going to be arrested in the morning."

At first Lopwitz just stared at him. Sherman noticed how thick and wrinkled his eyelids were. Then he said, "Let's go over here," and motioned toward the cl.u.s.ter of wingback chairs.

They sat down once more. Sherman felt a twinge of resentment at the look of absorption in Lopwitz's bat face, which had voyeur voyeur written all over it. Sherman told him of the Lamb case as it had first appeared in the press and then of the visit of the two detectives to his house, although without the humiliating details. All the while he stared at Lopwitz's rapt face and felt the sickening thrill of the hopeless wanton who flings good money after bad and a good life after vile weak sins. The temptation to written all over it. Sherman told him of the Lamb case as it had first appeared in the press and then of the visit of the two detectives to his house, although without the humiliating details. All the while he stared at Lopwitz's rapt face and felt the sickening thrill of the hopeless wanton who flings good money after bad and a good life after vile weak sins. The temptation to tell all tell all, to be truly wanton, to tell of the sweet loamy loins of Maria Ruskin and the fight in the jungle and his victory over the two brutes-to tell Lopwitz that whatever he had done, he had done it as a man- as a man-and that as a man he had been blameless-and, more than blameless, perhaps even a hero-the temptation to lay bare the entire drama-in which I was not a villain!-was very nearly more than he could withstand. But he held back.

"That was my lawyer who called while I was in here, Gene, and he says I shouldn't go into the details of what happened or didn't happen with anybody right now, but I do want you to know one thing, particularly since I don't know what's going to be said in the press about all this. And that is that I did not hit anybody with my car or drive it recklessly or do anything else that I can't have a completely clear conscience about."

As soon as he said "conscience," he realized that every guilty man talks about his clear conscience.

"Who's your lawyer?" asked Lopwitz.

"His name is Thomas Killian."

"Don't know him. You oughta get Roy Branner. He's the greatest litigator in New York. Fabulous. If I was ever in a jam, I'd get Roy. If you want him, I'll call him."

Nonplussed, Sherman listened as Lopwitz went on about the power of the fabulous Roy Branner and the cases he had won and how he first met him and how close they were and how their wives knew each other and how much Roy would do for him if he, Gene Lopwitz, said the word.

So that was Lopwitz's overpowering instinct upon hearing of this crisis in Sherman's life: to tell him of his inside knowledge and the important people he knew and what a hold he, the magnetic baron, had over the Big Name. The second instinct was more practical. It was set off by the word press press. Lopwitz proposed, in a way that did not invite debate, that Sherman take a leave of absence until this unfortunate matter was resolved.

This perfectly reasonable suggestion, calmly made, set off a neural alarm. If he took a leave of absence, he might-he wasn't completely sure-he might still draw his base salary of $10,000 a month, which was less than half of what he had to pay each month in loan payments. But he would no longer share in commissions and bond trading division profits. For all practical purposes, he would have no more income.

The telephone on Lopwitz's Irish Chippendale side table rang with its little cooing ring. Lopwitz picked it up.

"Yeah?...You do?" Big smile. "Terrific...h.e.l.lo?...h.e.l.lo?...Bobby? You hear me all right?" He looked at Sherman and gave him a relaxed smile and mouthed the man's name, Bobby Shaflett Bobby Shaflett. Then he looked down and concentrated on the receiver. His face was creased and crinkled with purest joy. "You say it's okay?...Wonderful! I'm glad to do it. They've given you something to eat, I a.s.sume...Good, good. Now listen. You need anything, you just ask them. They're nice fellows. Dja know they both flew in Vietnam?...Oh sure. They're terrific fellows. You want a drink or anything, you just ask 'em. I keep some 1934 Armagnac on the plane. I think it's stowed in the back. Ask the smaller one, Tony. He knows where it is...Well, when you come back tonight, then. It's great stuff. That's the greatest year there ever was for Armagnac, 1934. It's very smooth. It'll help you relax...So it's okay, hunh?...Great. Well...What?...Not at all, Bobby. Glad to do it, glad to do it."

When he hung up, he couldn't have looked happier. The most famous opera singer in America was in his airplane, hitching a ride to Vancouver, Canada, with Lopwitz's own two former Air Force captains, veterans of combat in Vietnam, as chauffeurs and butlers, serving him Armagnac more than half a century old, $1,200 a bottle, and now this wonderful round famous fellow was thanking him, paying his respects, from forty thousand feet above the state of Montana.

Sherman stared at Lopwitz's smiling face and grew frightened. Lopwitz wasn't angry at him. He wasn't perturbed. He wasn't even particularly put out. No, the fate of Sherman McCoy didn't make all that much difference the fate of Sherman McCoy didn't make all that much difference. Lopwitz's English Reproduction life would endure Sherman McCoy's problems, and Pierce & Pierce would endure them. Everybody would enjoy the juicy story for a while, and bonds would go on being sold in vast quant.i.ties, and the new chief bond salesman-who?-Rawlie?-or somebody else?-would show up in Lopwitz's Tea-at-the-Connaught conference room to discuss raking Pierce & Pierce's billions to this part of the market or that. Another air-to-ground telephone call from some fat celebrity and Lopwitz wouldn't even remember who he was.

"Bobby Shaflett," said Lopwitz, as if he and Sherman were sitting around having a drink before dinner. "He was over Montana when he called." He shook his head and chuckled, as if to say, "A h.e.l.l of a guy."