Too Much Money (26 page)

“I hear she wears a monocle,” said Gus. “Very Violet Trefusis.”

“Who’s Violet Trefusis?”

“A famous lesbian of her day.”

“Let’s not have that conversation,” said Maisie, and they both laughed.

Suddenly Gus’s voice turned serious. “Listen, Maisie. Is Lil Altemus coming?”

“I always have Lil,” said Maisie. “She classes up the joint.”

“Will you seat me next to Lil and put Addison Kent on the other side of her and somebody’s wife with no glamour or chitchat next to him, so that Addison will ignore her and overhear a story that I’m going to tell Lil about Perla Zacharias?” asked Gus.

“May I ask what this is all about?” asked Maisie, her curiosity piqued. If she was going to rearrange her table for him, she felt it was only right that Gus Bailey tell her exactly what he was up to.

“Lil’s getting a little hard of hearing, so I can raise my voice. I want Addison to repeat the story to Perla. It’s very important to me that Perla hears, and Addison will probably go directly into the bathroom and call Perla on his cell phone.”

“As the hostess of the evening, am I allowed to know what the story is all about?” asked Maisie.

“It has to do with some letters in my possession that Perla wrote in English in her own handwriting to her mysterious third husband that no one talks about,” said Gus. “One letter in particular could be very embarrassing.”

“I’ll go along with that. I found Perla a buyer for her villa right on the Bay of Biscay in Biarritz, which she put up for sale after the trial. I got her seven hundred million. At the time, it was more than had ever been paid for a house in that area,” said Maisie. “Richest man in Russia.”

“What happened?”

“She didn’t want to pay me my commission. She thought the honor of selling her villa would bring me a lot of real estate publicity. All that money and she’s trying to cheat me out of my commission. I screwed it up for her. I told my Russian billionaire buyer that it was a bad-luck house, that everyone who had ever owned it had come to a bad end, which wasn’t altogether untrue. I sold him another house, just as big, in Cap Ferrat. Yes, of course I’ll seat you next to Lil, who’s getting deaf, and seat Addison Kent next to Lil. It’ll liven up the party. Now I have to figure out whose wife has no glamour or chitchat for the other side of Addison. Oh, Mrs. Luby. Sylvia Luby. She’d be perfect.”

“See you at eight,” said Gus.

“O
H
, G
US
, I’m so happy that you’re seated next to me,” said Lil. She was wearing her Van Degan pearls that she could not bear to sell, even though she needed the money so badly. “Maisie is so good at seating her tables. It’s nice to have an old friend like you.” She whispered into his ear, “I’m wearing a new hearing aid for the first time, and I don’t want anyone to know. What scandalous thing are you writing about now?”

“I’m in possession of photocopies of sixteen love letters Perla wrote in English in her own handwriting to that third husband of hers, the mystery husband no one knows anything about, the one she paid to marry her as a ruse to get Konstantin Zacharias to pursue her again after his brothers talked him out of marrying her the first time.”

“Be careful to my left,” said Lil, pointing her head in Addison’s direction. “Biggest mouth in town and Perla’s walker.”

“The actual letters are in a safe-deposit box in New York, which only I and one other person have access to. I didn’t seek
out the letters or pay for them. I never met the third husband. Some very revealing things come out in a few of them.”

“Like what?

“Like what her baby brother—her half brother that she doesn’t want anyone to know about, by the way—told the counselor at the drug rehab center in Johannesburg she put him in about the mysterious death of her second husband, from whom she inherited two hundred and thirty million of her first fortune. That is certainly going in my book. You know they ruled it a suicide, but he was shot—twice in the heart. This is just another thing I need to investigate.”

“Gus, you do lead such an interesting life. Secret letters. Being followed. And that man in the gray flannel suit in your room at Claridge’s whom you told me about over dinner some months back.”

“I keep thinking of that guy too. Wondering what he was doing in my room,” said Gus. “Maybe he was after my laptop, or maybe he was planting some drugs to get me in some kind of media trouble.”

“Didn’t you tell me you saw that same man at the auction of Perla Zacharias’s Fabergé eggs at Boothby’s?”

“Yes. I believe he’s in her employ. I’ve become quite fearful of him.”

Addison, leaning in close to Lil to listen to her conversation with Gus about Perla’s letters, accidentally knocked over his glass of red wine.

“Addison, for god’s sake!” exclaimed Lil, her hands thrown up in disgust. “You spilled your red wine all over my dress. Why are you leaning in so close to me?”

“Oh, Lil, I am sorry,” said Addison. “Just leave your dress in a shopping bag with your doorman and I will pick it up in the morning. I know exactly the right cleaners for red wine. You’ll never be able to tell.”

“This dress is practically falling apart, it’s so old,” said Lil, dabbing futilely at the stain with her napkin. “It’s from Bill Blass’s last collection. I offered it to the Costume Institute at the Met, but Anna turned it down, and now it’s ruined.”

Addison shook his head in a feigned display of sympathy and then, after a few respectful beats, he shot out of his chair, nearly knocking it over in the process, and ran to find a private spot from which he could call the third richest woman in the world and update her about these disturbing developments.

R
UBY
R
ENTHAL SAT IN A CORNER OF
E
LIAS’S HOSPITAL
room on the VIP floor of the Adele Harcourt Pavilion reading the latest issue of
Park Avenue
magazine, with Gus Bailey’s article on Adele Harcourt’s funeral, while Elias, still in a comatose state, slept on. From the beginning of his coma, she had talked to him and read to him from the
Wall Street Journal
and the
Financial Times
. “Of course he can hear me,” she said over and over to the nurses, when they expressed their doubt that Elias could hear anything she was saying.
If it’s about money, he can hear it
, she thought, as always, but no longer said aloud. Only Tammi Jo, her favorite nurse, agreed with Ruby that Elias could hear and understand, even though he was in a coma. Tammi Jo, fat and funny, always managed to work it into the conversation that she had gone to nursing school with Floyd McArthur, the male nurse in prison in Biarritz for killing Konstantin Zacharias. “Oh, I knew Floyd McArthur,” said Tammi Jo, after reading Gus Bailey’s article on the trial in Biarritz. “Strange guy, but kind of a healer in a way. He had this magical touch with sick babies. No way did he kill Konstantin Zacharias.” Ruby loved that news and couldn’t wait to tell it to Elias after he came out of the coma. Tammi Jo
was the only one Ruby told that the best dry cleaner on the Upper East Side of New York couldn’t get the asparagus and urine smell out of the sable cuffs on her brand-new eleven-thousand-dollar Karl Lagerfeld suit that she had only worn once, at Adele Harcourt’s funeral on the day of her husband’s stroke. Baroness de Liagra was going to take it back to Paris so that Lagerfeld could replace the sable on the cuffs. Tammi Jo was spellbound by stories of Ruby’s kind of life. She didn’t even mind when Ruby complained that she felt it necessary to carry her packages in plain shopping bags, as some of the women in society were doing these days so as not to flaunt their wealth too much while the country was sobered by a recession: “What’s the point of having it if you don’t get to flaunt it? I’m helping the economy by buying ridiculously expensive things!” Tammi Jo knew a good gig when she saw one. She wanted to leave the Adele Harcourt Pavilion and go to live in the big mansion on East Seventy-eighth Street during Elias’s long convalescence ahead and eat Gert’s gourmet dinners and fig mousse in the servants’ dining room, along with Jenny, Ruby’s secretary; Blondell, her maid, who had previously worked for Adele Harcourt; Jacques, her chauffeur; and George, her butler, who had been Adele Harcourt’s butler.

Ruby called over to Elias whenever she read something she thought he would be interested in. “You won’t believe this, Elias. It’s a good thing you’re still out of it, I suppose. Gus Bailey writes in his diary in
Park Avenue
about Adele Harcourt’s funeral. He quotes ‘New York aristocrat’ Lillian Van Degan Altemus saying, ‘That ex-convict ruined poor darling Adele’s funeral, after she gave her fortune to the city of New York.’ That’s so typical of Lil, isn’t it? She’s broke, you know. She takes the Madison Avenue bus these days. Her stepmother got all the Van Degan money. The stepmother, who’s twenty-five years younger than Lil, lives with a gayette who works in a funeral
parlor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Elias and I know a thing or two about the mighty falling.”

“Go on reading Gus Bailey’s article to Mr. Renthal,” said Tammi Jo. “That should wake him up.”

Ruby glanced over at Elias.

“‘All of the great names of New York society gathered on the stairway of the Butterfield Club to watch the financier Elias Renthal be taken out on a gurney.’ I wonder how Gus knew how much your suit from Huntsman on Savile Row cost. He writes that you urinated all over your brand-new six-thousand-dollar suit when you had the stroke in the men’s room of the Butterfield. He writes that he just happened to be in the men’s room at the same time.” She read on to herself with a surprised look on her face. “Hey, Elias. I never knew you pointed your finger in Gus’s face and kept saying, ‘They’re going to get you. They’re going to get you.’ No wonder you had a stroke! I didn’t know Gus put towels under your head when he went to find me. I didn’t know he covered your privates, so you wouldn’t be embarrassed when they photographed you. I know you don’t like Gus Bailey, but he never once wrote that we crashed Adele Harcourt’s funeral reception. He said there was a mix-up on the list.”

There was a knock on the door and an orderly carried in an enormous orchid plant. There was no space large enough to put it down. Tammi Jo, who always had a solution, knew of a metal medical table near the ladies’ room down the hall and directed the orderly where to find it before someone else took it. Ruby knew even before she opened the card who had sent the orchid plant from Brucie’s flower shop in the rear of the Rhinelander Hotel. She even knew it cost a thousand dollars.

“Elias, I wish you could get a look at the size of this orchid plant that Perla Zacharias has just sent you. It’s like something they’d have at a memorial service at St. Ignatius Loyola.”

Ruby opened the blue card with Perla’s monogram in the blue envelope and read it aloud to Elias: “‘Elias, dear old friend of my darling Konstantin, I pray for you daily and know that you will be coming out of the coma soon and will be back wheeling and dealing and running things. When you are well enough to talk on the telephone, please call me. I need you to introduce me to someone. It is terribly important to me. With love, Perla.’ What the hell is that all about, Elias?”

Rereading the card in an attempt to determine Perla’s meaning, Ruby failed to see Elias’s body stirring in bed. First a finger, then a hand, then the slight shift of his body. After a few minutes Elias spoke, in a weak, quiet voice.

“How long have I been out?”

Ruby looked up, surprised, and ran to his side. “Elias, Elias, my darling.”

Elias squinted, blinking slowly.

“Am I still alive?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, my darling. You are alive! You’re out of the coma. You came through it. I knew. I knew. I’ll call the nurse, the doctor, everyone. Let me call the desk.” Ruby dialed excitedly, “Tammi Jo, come, come quickly. My husband is out of the coma. Oh, Elias, I’m so happy.”

Tammi Jo was crying over the phone she was so happy for the lovely Mrs. Renthal.

“W
HAT’S THE
date today?” asked Elias in a hoarse voice, after he’d been awake for about an hour.

“Tell me the date,” repeated Elias, when no one answered.

“Here’s the
New York Times
. It’s March twelfth. You’ve been in the coma for three weeks. Why?”

“This is the night they’re honoring Max Luby in Brooklyn,” said Elias.

“Oh, don’t worry. I backed out of that one right after the Chatfields asked us to the shoot at Deeds Castle on the same date as Max Luby’s party,” said Ruby.

“Listen to me,” said Elias. “You have to go to Brooklyn tonight, and you have to get all dressed up in one of those new gowns your muff diver friend ordered for you at the couture shows in Paris.”

“I’m so happy you retained your dignity during your coma,” said Ruby.

“And you’re going to knock them dead at the church hall.”

“I don’t get it, Elias,” said Ruby. “You’ve been out cold for three weeks. I thought you were dead half the time, except for your farts, which I grew to rely on to know you were still alive, but you came through all of that, and the first thing you can think to say is about Max fucking Luby with the thousand-dollar toupee and the light blue gabardine suits?”

“You gotta go, babe,” said Elias.

“But Max Luby doesn’t like me, and I don’t like Max Luby,” said Ruby.

“He’s my best friend, and he flew out to see me every weekend when I was at the facility in Nevada, and he took care of my money for me,” said Elias. “Now that I can’t trade anymore in the stock market, that’s going to be Max’s job in my new life. Max is going to be in charge of my money. I need him. We’re going to have to ask them to dinner and go to their house to dinner. Please do this for me.”

She and her husband stared at each other. “I am so happy to see you awake, Elias.”

T
HE ROOM
was filled with doctors, nurses, and orderlies. Ruby took out her cell phone and stepped out to call her secretary, Jenny. “Oh, Jenny. Mr. Renthal has come out of the coma. Isn’t
it marvelous? Thank you, Jenny. I’ll tell Elias when this mob of medical people lets me get nearer to the bed. Now, there’s a change of plans for the evening. I have to go to a testimonial dinner tonight in Brooklyn for a business associate of my husband’s. He insists I go, and I can’t exactly say no-I-won’t-go to a husband who’s just come out of a three-week coma, can I? First, call the home of Max Luby in Brooklyn. The phone number’s in the contacts on the computer. Ask for
Mrs
. Luby. Her name is Sylvia, but you call her Mrs. Luby. Big fat lady. Shops at Loehmann’s. Get the picture? She’s never liked me. She tells everyone that I never used to invite her when we were giving parties in the old days. Say that Mr. Renthal has come out of his coma and that Mrs. Renthal will be attending the dinner tonight in Brooklyn. I tore up the invitation when it came and threw it out, so you’ll have to get all the details and addresses. Time, place, that sort of thing. Make sure the chauffeur has a copy and knows exactly where he’s going. I don’t want to be driving up and down streets in Brooklyn, looking for the right church hall. Then track down Frieda, my manicurist, and tell her she
must
be at my house in an hour. If she has to cancel one of her other customers, tell her I’ll pay for that too, and extras. I hear her son’s in trouble again, dealing dope, so she could probably use the money, legal bills being what they are. And call Bernardo. Tell him it’s an emergency and could he please please please come to my house at six to do my hair. I’ll be wearing the new yellow satin gown from Karl Lagerfeld that Baroness de Liagra brought back from Paris. Ask Blondell to check it to see if it’s wrinkled from the flight over and to be extra super careful if she has to iron it.”