Solomon Gursky Was Here (33 page)

Smith bought yesterday's
Gazette
at the newsstand and sought out a bench that wasn't already laden with drug addicts. He dozed and then ate lunch at the Peking Gardens, indulging his one daring taste, an appetite for Chinese food. Then he wandered over to the Mount Royal Hotel and rested in the lobby. Next he drifted through Alexis Nihon Plaza, stopping for a Tab, and snoozing on a bench. Later he splurged on an early dinner at Curly Joe's. Steak and french fried potatoes. Apple pie. Bloated, more than somewhat flatulent, he was back at Mrs. Jenkins's house before eight, resolved to announce that he was moving out, but not before giving the two of them a piece of his mind.

Murph Heeney was wearing a crêpe-paper party hat. “Surprise, surprise! We thought you'd never get here.”

“Said the curate to the go-go dancer,” Olive shrieked, blowing on a noisemaker.

Hooking him under the arms, they danced a shaken Smith into the parlour, where the table had been set for three.

“For horse-doovers we got devilled eggs and then Yankee pot roast and chocolate cake with ice cream,” Heeney said, shoving a chalky-faced Smith into a chair.

Smith managed to force an acceptable share of food down his gullet while Olive entertained Heeney.

“This guy goes to the doctor he's told he has to have his—his—” She stopped, censoring herself in deference to Smith, and continued, “—his
penis
amputated, he hits the roof …”

Smith begged off coffee and struggled upstairs to his room. He wakened, his stomach churning, at three
A.M
., and raced to the toilet down the hall only to run into that hairy ape emerging in his BVDs. Heeney grabbed him by the arm, possibly to sustain his own uncertain balance. “I'd wait a while I was you,” he said, holding his nose.

“Can't,” Smith said, breaking free of Heeney's grip.

Four

One

1973. September. Pulling out of Wardour Street, gearing down with a gratifying roar, Terry tucked his battered MG into the carpark. Then he walked swiftly back to the Duke of Wellington, mindful of the plump grey skies for he was wearing his new suit, jacket nipped in just so at the waist, patch pockets, trousers slightly flared. They were all at the bar, waiting. Des, Nick, Bobby.

“Hello, hello, hello.”

“Saucy.”

“Ta-ra, ta-ra!”

A grinning Terry, dimples displayed to advantage, lifted the corners of his jacket and twirled about.

“Oh, my dear,” Bobby exclaimed, quaking with pleasure, “the wonders wrought by Cecil Gee.”

“Not bloody likely. Three hundred nicker it was. From Doug Hayward,” Terry announced, “tailor to the stars.”

Des reached over to stroke the fabric; then, abruptly, his hand dropped to Terry's groin, fat fingers fondling. “And what have we here?”

“Forbidden fruit,” Terry said, slapping Des's hand away as he leaped free.

“Bespoke, you mean.”

“Piss off, son.”

Nick, anticipating trouble, slid between them.

“Anybody seen Mother Foley?” Terry asked.

“Not to worry, Terry. Foley will be here. Got time for a nosh?”

“Not tonight, dear, I've got a headache.” Cunningly lifting a jacket sleeve, Terry revealed his magnificent bulky black wristwatch. The
face showing absolutely nothing until he flicked a tiny knob and 7:31 lit up in computer-type numerals. “Ta-ra, ta-ra!”

“Where'd you nick it?”

“It's not even on sale here yet. Lucy got it for me in New York.”

Suddenly Foley loomed over them. Grey curls leaking out from under a broad-brimmed safari hat, wine turtleneck sweater, tie-dyed jeans. Terry slipped into the Gents' after him.

“You bring the bread, mon?”

“
Mañana
. No fear.”

Foley rubbed his purple jaw pensively.

“Oh, come off it, luv. When have I ever let you down?”

Foley handed it over. Terry, blowing him a kiss, danced back into the bar. “I've got time for one more.”

“And where are you off to tonight?” Des asked. “Pray tell.”

“Oh, maybe Annabel's for a bit of the old filet mignon and some Dom P. Or possibly Les A. for a spot of chemmy.” Actually she had yet to take him anywhere that she might be recognized. Infuriating, that.

“Shame on you, Terry, selling your body beautiful for such ephemeral trifles.”

He reclaimed his MG, shooting into Hyde Park, emerging at the top of Sloane Street and cutting into Belgravia. He knew, without looking, that she would be waiting by the window of her mews flat, chain-smoking. So he took his own sweet time getting out of the car.

Wearing a black silk shift, the sleeves necessarily long, Lucy opened the door before he could ring the bell. The thumb on her right hand was wrinkled as a walnut, all the moisture sucked out of it. She had tried bandaging it at night, but it didn't work. She tore the bandage off in her sleep.

Lucy's large black eyes flickered with distress. Not quite forty-one, she looked older, possibly because she was so scrawny now. “The money's on the hall table,” she said. Like he was the delivery boy from John Baily's.

“You haven't said a word about my suit.”

“Don't tease me, Terry. Hand it over.”

“Do you think the trousers are too snug?”

“They advertise. Shall we leave it at that?” And she disappeared into the kitchen, slamming the door.

Terry drifted into the bedroom, idly opening drawers. In the topmost drawer of her bedside table, a priceless antique no doubt, the surface pocked with cigarette burns, he found a half-finished Toblerone bar. More chocolates, these from Bendicks, were in the next drawer, as well as used tissues everywhere, rings he could risk saying the char had nicked. The next drawer yielded a bottle of Quaaludes. Other bottles. Uppers, downers. And a book, many pages dog-eared, passages underlined here and there.
The Collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
. The book was inscribed in a tiny scrawl. “July 12,1956: To my darling Lucy, love, Moses.” Terry's first impulse was to rip out the inscription and tear it into little pieces, but his instinct for self-preservation saved him. There were limits.

“You've got it,” Lucy said, emerging from the kitchen, “haven't you, and you're teasing me?”

“Sorry, luv.”

“Get me a drink.”

“Please.”

“I wouldn't go too far if I were you.”

So he fetched her a Scotch. “Drink up. There's a good girl. Now let's go out and eat.”

“I can't go out like this. I need something right now.”

“Ta-ra,” he sang out, leaping back as he flashed his envelope at her. “Ta-ra, ta-ra!”

“Terry, please.”

“I want to go to Les A.” Fending her off, he held tenaciously to the envelope. “Will you take me to Les A. for dinner?”

“Yes. Why not?” she said, startling him.

“Promise?”

“Yes yes yes.”

“All rightee, then.” Pulling her bodice away from her with a hooked finger, he rammed the envelope between her breasts. Then he stepped back, smirking, but smelling of fear. Lucy, beads of sweat sliding down her forehead, retreated to the bathroom. She trapped the little vein in her neck, pinching it between two fingers—it was
either that or her tongue, the other veins had collapsed—and then she reached for the needle. When she came out again her manner was imperious. “Sit down, Terry.”

He sat.

“You were never the only hunk of meat dangling on the rack, my dear. If I shop around I daresay I can find a less expensive, more obliging cut.”

Cunt. But he didn't say it. He knew from experience that it would soon wear off, she would need more, and then she was the one who would be obliging. So he grinned, making an offering of his dimples. “Can't you take a joke any more?”

“A joke, yes. You, no.”

“Aren't we going to Les A. together? Like you promised.”

“We're not going anywhere together any more.” Relenting a little, she added, “Come on, Terry. Surely you knew it had to end sometime.”

“All rightee, then. Okay, ducks.”

Two

Mr. Bernard died on a Monday, at the age of seventy-five, his body wasted. He lay in state for two days in the lobby of the Bernard Gursky Tower and, as he failed to rise on the third, he was duly buried. The family requested, unavailingly as it turned out, that instead of flowers donations should be sent to the Cancer Society. The flowers, some in the form of wreaths from sympathizers unfamiliar with Jewish ritual, were meticulously screened for compromising cards by a dutiful Harvey Schwartz. Most of them, Harvey was gratified to discover, came from celebrated people, achievers, names recognized beyond Montreal, around the world in fact, and this information he imparted to attendant newspapermen with his customary zeal.

Happily, there were no embarrassments. Lucky Luciano was dead. So were Al Capone, Waxey Gordon, “Little Farfel” Kavolick, Longy Zwillman and Gurrah Shapiro. Other cronies from the halcyon days did not send flowers or, with the exception of Meyer Lansky, were sufficiently tactful not to comment in the press. Lansky, unforgiving, told the reporter who surprised him in Miami with the news of Mr. Bernard's death, “Without Solomon that bastard would have ended his days like he started them. Sweeping up in a whorehouse.” But, pressed by the news agencies, Lansky refused to elaborate. He insisted that he had been misquoted.

Fat Charley Lin rode to the funeral in a rented Rolls-Royce, passing out scented cards for his trendy Toronto restaurant, the House of Lin, to all comers. Stu MacIntyre, the former minister of justice, was also there, amused to see the son of the late Judge Gaston Leclerc in attendance. André Leclerc, who was in charge of public
relations for McTavish in Europe, was rooted in Paris, but also, appropriately enough, maintained a château on the Loire. And just as Callaghan had anticipated, Bert Smith showed up to see Mr. Bernard buried.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Tim Callaghan. Remember me?”

“I remember you.”

“Yes. I thought you would. Well, he's dead. It's over now.”

“Over? It's not over. It's just begun. Now he will have to face a Judge that he can't subvert.”

“Well, yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it.”

“It's the only way of looking at it.”

“I would like to talk to you, Bert.”

“Call my secretary for an appointment.”

“We're old men now, Bert, both of us. I would be grateful if we could go somewhere and talk.”

“About the good old days?”

“I know how you feel, Bert.”

“Do you now?”

“Let's talk.”

The newspapers noted that Mr. Bernard, who began his life with nothing, was born in a sod hut on the prairie. The son of a peddler, Aaron Gursky , he owned his first hotel at the age of twenty-one and lived to preside over a distillery with estimated annual sales of more than a billion in fifteen different countries. Reporters observed that some two thousand mourners filed past Mr. Bernard's coffin. Among them were federal and provincial cabinet ministers, American senators, the Israeli ambassador, and numerous business leaders. The rabbi, in his eulogy, ventured “that Mr. Bernard Gursky's deeds would survive him locally, nationally and internationally at home and abroad. He was as good at giving away money as he was at making it. Though he supped with kings and presidents, he could also walk humbly with ordinary people, regardless of race, colour or creed. His sense of compassion was personal. We have lost a legend in our time, a man of world renown.”

Obituaries the world over emphasized Mr. Bernard's generosity, his legitimate claim to being a latter-day philanthropist. They made no mention of his brother Solomon, the notorious Solomon, and mercifully downplayed the Prohibition years.

Harvey, his mood expansive, his shoes new, handled his own interviews with surprising élan. He was grateful that no embittered employee—say old Tim Callaghan—surfaced with the most compromising story of his long tenure with Mr. Bernard. The day the merchant bankers of London were flown in for lunch in the Gursky boardroom to celebrate their underwriting of a five-hundredmillion-dollar line of credit that would enable Mr. Bernard to acquire the McEwen Bros. & Ross Distillery in the Scottish highlands. The day that lived in infamy in Harvey's head, still polluting his dreams.

Mr. Bernard, intimidated for once, was determined that those establishment bankers, including one lord and two knights, would not wink at each other behind his back, putting him down for a reformed ghetto thug. He had gone over the menu endlessly and put on and discarded three suits before he settled on the charcoal grey, with the surprising help of a charming, disconcertingly pretty new receptionist. The young lady actually whistled as he passed, obliging a startled Mr. Bernard to stop and stare.

“It makes you look
very distingué,
” she said. “Like you were on your way to Windsor Castle.”

“What's your name, young lady?”

“Why it's Kathleen O'Brien, Mr. B.”

Nobody called him that. He enjoyed the mischief in it. He chuckled. “Can you type?” he asked.

“Like the wind,” she said. “I can also take shorthand, speak French fluently, and shoot a mean game of snooker.”

“But do you know enough not to repeat what you hear?”

“Try me, Mr. B.”

Transferred to his office for a trial run a week before the bankers' lunch she teased him into exchanging his diamond-studded, initialled cuff-links for something more subdued, and even managed to talk him out of his black silk socks. “Only for Hungarians of questionable origin,” she said.

Rehearsing him for lunch, Miss O'Brien slapped his hand when he picked up a fork in his accustomed manner. “No, no, Mr. B. Like this.”

“But you'd have to be a real horse's ass to hold your fork upside down.”