Authors: Dominick Dunne
The cachet of working at Boothby’s had proved to be an ideal stepping-stone into the right dining rooms of New York, where extra men who understood the art of conversation were always in demand. Lil Altemus, who knew a climber when she saw one, could read the excitement in Addison’s eyes at being in her house on such an intimate occasion as her family Easter Sunday lunch.
“He has a bad case of Astoritis,” said Lil to Gus about Addison. “He is simply dazzled by New York social life.”
That Addison Kent had become such a close friend of Adele
Harcourt’s had to do initially with Adele’s famous emerald necklace, which had once belonged to a czarina of Russia. Even at her ripe old age, Adele had not decided whether to leave the necklace to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or to the Museum of the City of New York. And so one day, a few years back, she had her social secretary, Emma, call Boothby’s to say she wanted to have the necklace appraised again, as if that might help her make the decision. As Prince Simeon was away from New York, attending a private jewelry sale of the Krupp diamond in Monte Carlo, young Addison Kent was sent along to Adele Harcourt’s Park Avenue apartment. Her butler, George—famous George her friends called him, who wrote out her invitations, menus, and place cards far better than any calligrapher ever could—led Addison to her library, where Adele was sitting on a chintz sofa reading
Park Avenue
.
“I love
Park Avenue,”
said Addison.
“Do you mean the street or the magazine?” asked Adele, playfully.
“The magazine,” replied Addison, grinning.
“Such fun, isn’t it? Sometimes I write for it. I bet you didn’t know that. Stokes Bishop talked me into writing about my hundredth birthday party that poor old Laurance Van Degan gave for me before his terrible stroke.”
Right from the beginning they got along. The hundred-year-old grande dame, who still enjoyed a good laugh, was simply enchanted with the twenty-four-year-old Addison Kent, who, it turned out, told her he knew her first husband’s step-grandson from Harbor Springs, Michigan, where his family had “a summer place.” Addison always established a social connection, however remote, with any new person of consequence he was meeting. He didn’t tell Adele he had known her first husband’s step-grandson only for a seven-minute quickie in a cabana of the Harbor Springs Yacht Club during a dance, and that
they had never spoken again once the zipper flies of their white linen trousers had been re-zipped and they had left the cabana separately to return to the dance, where their dates in summer evening dresses had been waiting to foxtrot.
Addison was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of Adele’s jewels, especially her famous emerald necklace. Adele loved being complimented on her emeralds and enjoyed telling the many stories of its previous owners. “Barbara Hutton owned this necklace at one time. You’re too young to know who Barbara Hutton was, but she was quite something in her day. It was stolen from her in Tangier, where she had a house in the casbah,” she said. “I want to leave something to Lil Altemus, and something to darling Loelia, and to Rosalie Paget. Something substantial, like a ring or a bracelet. You must help me decide, Mr. Kent.”
“Call me Addison, Mrs. Harcourt.”
“P
OINT ME
to where I’m sitting,” said Adele, taking Lil’s arm after Addison excused himself to use the lavatory and Gus stepped out of the room to make a phone call. “I don’t see as well as I used to.”
“I’ve put you next to Gus Bailey, Adele,” said Lil. “I know how you love talking to writers. Don’t say anything to him that you don’t want to read later in one of his books or in his diary in
Park Avenue.”
“Who’s he writing about now?” asked Adele. “So many of my friends were unhappy with him after he wrote
Our Own Kind
. Do you remember when Dolores De Longpre walked out of the Temple of Dendur benefit at the museum because Mr. Bailey was seated at her table? It was the talk of the party.”
“That sort of thing happens to him,” said Lil. “Listen, don’t mention this to him—it’s a big publishing secret—but he just
signed a deal for a great amount of money to write a novel about Perla Zacharias.”
“Oh, dear!”
“Did you read his pieces in
Park Avenue
on the Zacharias trial in Biarritz? Believe me, there’s something fishy in that story. Ask him why there were no guards on duty that night at the villa.”
“That Mrs. Zacharias sent me the most enormous orchid plant for Easter. Too big, really. Addison said it must have cost at least a thousand dollars. Why would she send me flowers? I don’t even know the woman.”
“But she wants to know you, Adele,” replied Lil. “You are who she wants to be in New York. You’re going to have to send her a thank-you note for her thousand-dollar orchid plant. Next thing she’ll invite you to dinner and make an enormous contribution to the Manhattan Public Library, which will in turn get her invited to your house, Adele. Ask Gus Bailey about her. He knows everything about Perla Zacharias, going all the way back to her Johannesburg past and her first two husbands. Gus is the one who made her famous, some say infamous, writing about her month after month in
Park Avenue
magazine, after the murder in Biarritz. I tell you, a novel about Perla Zacharias, with all the things Gus knows, will be the talk of the town.”
“You have me simply riveted, Lil darling,” said Adele. “Mr. Bailey seems to be everywhere. Now the big news is that he’s being sued for slander by that ex-congressman nobody ever heard of before all the controversy, Kyle Cramden. Gus said something about the disappearance of that girl, whatever her name is, that Cramden is supposed to have been involved with, that she was dropped at sea, or something like that,” said Lil.
“Diandra Lomax,” said the butler.
“What?” asked Lil.
“The missing girl’s name is Diandra Lomax,” said the butler.
“Yes, yes, thank you, Dudley, Diandra Lomax, who went missing, but Gus doesn’t want to talk about the lawsuit. He practically bit my head off when I mentioned it earlier,” said Lil. “He’s frantic about it.”
“Yes, I read about that in the paper,” said Adele. “Quite a lot of money, isn’t it?”
“Eleven million,” whispered Lil into Adele Harcourt’s deaf ear, although she heard it.
“Dear God,” said Adele. “He doesn’t have that kind of money, does he?”
“Of course not,” said Lil. “Oh, look, here comes Dodo, my dreaded stepmother.”
“Happy Easter, Lil,” said Dodo, smiling and friendly, fully aware that she was disliked by her stepdaughter. Dodo Van Degan was not pretty. Nor was she ugly. She was pleasant looking. The help always liked her. She remembered their names. Even when she began to buy expensive clothes, she never looked stylish. She used to say she needed someone to put her together. “I bought this new suit just for your Easter lunch, Lil.”
“Oh, green. Difficult color, green,” said Lil, waving to Janet Van Degan, her sister-in-law, whom she loved, who had just walked in the front door.
“You always lift my spirits, Lil,” replied Dodo. The two women looked at each other with dislike. “Happy seventy-fifth,” she said in a loud voice. “I can’t wait to see you blow out all those candles.”
A
HALF
hour later, after glasses of champagne and trays of caviar hors d’oeuvres had been passed around by Dudley, Lil’s guests were seated at her dining table.
“Isn’t Lil’s table just perfect?” said Adele Harcourt, addressing her remarks to Gus, whom she didn’t know, while looking down the length of the table. “So pretty. So Easter, the
whole thing. Lil’s always had the prettiest table in New York. Look at those wonderful flowers. That’s Brucie’s signature, those tangerine roses. Brucie is the florist we all use, from the Rhinelander Hotel, but you probably knew that. Oh, and look at these dear little chocolate Easter bunnies. So sweet. I always give these party favors to my maid, Blondell. She has so many children.
“I understand you don’t want to talk about your lawsuit, Mr. Bailey. It must be simply horrid, being sued and being in the scandal pages of the papers all the time.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Harcourt. I hope you don’t mind,” said Gus. “Lawyer’s orders. I tend to talk too much, and people quote me later, and it gets me in trouble, which isn’t good with this eleven-million-dollar slander suit in the offing.”
“Good heavens, Mr. Bailey, I’d never want to get you in trouble, so let’s go on to another topic entirely,” said Adele. “I am absolutely riveted by your pieces in
Park Avenue
about the Konstantin Zacharias case in Biarritz. Mrs. Zacharias just sent me a thousand-dollar orchid plant for Easter, and I don’t even know her.”
Gus laughed. “People say she wants to be you.”
Adele Harcourt wrinkled her nose dismissively and changed the subject. “You probably don’t remember, but I was at the table at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum on the night Dolores De Longpre walked out when you sat down.”
Gus laughed again. “Stomped out would be more like it. Of course I remember. How could I forget? Dolores was one angry lady that night. She thought she was a character in my book
Our Own Kind …
and, well, she was right.”
Gus was having such a wonderful time with Adele Harcourt that he decided he would share his recent news with her. It was just too good to keep to himself. With a mischievous expression on his face, he leaned in and in a lowered voice said, “Would you like to hear a secret I’ve been itching to tell someone?”
“Of course I would,” replied Adele. “I’m mad about secrets.”
“I just signed a deal with a publisher to write a novel based on a notorious woman.”
Adele grinned knowingly.
“Yes, I heard. This woman certainly won’t be happy with that bit of news. No thousand-dollar orchid plant for you, Mr. Bailey.”
O
N
E
ASTER
S
UNDAY, WHILE
L
IL
A
LTEMUS WAS
giving her farewell lunch at her twenty-eight-room apartment on Fifth Avenue, Ruby Renthal was the sole passenger, except for her manicurist, in her husband’s G550, which the international interior designer Nicky Haslam had recently redecorated as part of Ruby’s plans for her husband’s reentry into New York society after his release from prison. What she had learned during the several years she and Elias had been on top in New York was that there was nothing the old rich enjoyed more than getting free rides in a billionaire’s plane, and those European titles couldn’t get enough, either. Ruby’s manicurist, Frieda, had come along at the last minute when Mrs. Renthal, who was used to getting what she wanted, made her a financial offer Frieda simply couldn’t refuse, with her teenage son in all that trouble with the law and the lawyers’ fees mounting, even if it meant infuriating Lil Altemus, Rosalie Paget, and Matilda Clarke, who had their regular appointments on Sunday morning, when Frieda went to their apartments. Frieda could always use extra money, and Ruby Renthal was very generous when she went after someone or something she needed. Frieda’s life was overwhelmed by
her son’s transgressions. She feared that prison might be in his future.
“It’s a four-and-a-half-hour flight to Las Vegas. I’ll be at the, ah, the facility for several hours, and then we’ll fly right back to New York,” said Ruby, after the financial arrangements had been worked out. Ruby always used the word
facility
rather than
prison
when she spoke of the circumstances of her husband’s life. “There’ll be a second car waiting at the airport to take you home when we get in. Where do you live? Queens, isn’t it? The driver will take you there, and Michael, Michael’s the steward on the plane, he’ll take you out to lunch in Las Vegas, and drive you around. You’ll find it’s very amusing, the Strip and all that sort of thing. I fly out to visit my husband every other weekend, and we’ve all gotten to know Las Vegas, haven’t we, Michael? Marvelous paintings at the Bellagio, like a private museum, if that sort of thing interests you. Mr. Wynn, who owned the place, had the last picture Van Gogh painted before he committed suicide, or cut off his ear, or whatever he did.”
They sat at the backgammon table for the manicure.
“Who was Lil Altemus having for lunch today?” asked Ruby.
“Mrs. Altemus doesn’t really talk to me when I do her nails,” said Frieda, “but I heard from Gert that old Adele Harcourt is coming. But it’s mostly family, I think. And what she calls her strays, those people who have nowhere to go. She’s having that writer Augustus Bailey.”
“I used to like Gus Bailey, but now I just can’t stand him,” said Ruby, looking at the color of the fingernail polish on her left hand. “He came to our apartment for lunch and dinner on several occasions, and then he wrote in
Park Avenue
that my husband was guilty. He agreed with the jury’s verdict. My husband will never forgive him for that, and I have to go along with my husband on things like this, but I sort of miss Gus at the same
time. Don’t tell anyone, but I have a strong bond with him that neither of us ever mentions. Years ago, in another lifetime, I used to go out with the same guy who murdered Gus’s daughter. He beat me up a few times, and I ended up in the hospital. I was supposed to be a witness at the trial, but the judge wouldn’t let me testify in front of the jury. Keep that one to yourself. Even my husband doesn’t know. I love that color, Frieda. What’s it called?”
“Jungle Red,” replied Frieda.
“From now on, we’re going to rename it Ruby Renthal Red.”
Frieda, who rarely smiled, smiled.
“So Adele Harcourt’s going to be a hundred and five, huh? I hear she’s gaga. She wears those straw hats all the time so the wig doesn’t come off.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Frieda.
“Who’s Gert?” asked Ruby.
“Mrs. Altemus’s cook.”
“Oh,
Gert
. Of fig mousse fame, I suppose,” said Ruby. “They say that Lil used to bring her into the dining room after her dinner parties, and the guests would all clap for her.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Can I ask you something, Mrs. Renthal?” asked Frieda.