I'll Take Manhattan (47 page)

“I’ve been afraid of that for so long. Was it that, Maxime? Tell me,” Lily implored.

“No, Mother, not that. It’s some kind of terrible mistake. They say that they found cocaine in his apartment. They suspect him of dealing. It’s all utterly impossible. The only thing that I was able to find out was that he said someone hid the drugs in his place.”

“If that’s what he said, that’s what happened.” Lily’s voice was relieved, calmer. “Justin is not a liar. And of course he’s not a drug dealer. I’ll call Charlie Salomon right now. He’ll know exactly what to do, how to fight this. We’ll get him out of jail in the morning, first thing.”

“Mother, more than anything Justin didn’t want anybody to hear—to guess. But there was a reporter there and he got a photo of me … he knew the essentials, about the drugs.”

“We have to be prepared for that.” Lily’s grave, silver voice had never sounded this note of lament, not even for herself.

“Oh, Mother, I feel so horribly sorry for him, poor, loving, harmless Justin. Why did this have to happen to him?” Maxi asked, and as she asked she knew how childish the question was.

“Maxime, something—like this—has been waiting to happen to Justin for a long time. It’s not his fault, dear, but it was bound to come. Try not to worry. Charlie Salomon’s the best lawyer in town and thank God, Cutter is here for all of us. Goodnight, Maxime, and … thank you, darling. Thank you for going to help.”

Before she went to wake Cutter, Lily telephoned Charlie Salomon, chief counsel to Amberville Publications, at home, finding him still watching television. Precisely, displaying almost no emotion she told him what had happened, as far as she was aware of the facts, and made an appointment to meet him at One Police Plaza in the morning.

Then, wrapping her robe around her she walked slowly from her sitting room to the bedroom she shared with her husband. He had had a particularly tiring day and she knew that he had to get up early for a breakfast appointment, but she couldn’t put off waking him any longer. The reassurance she had given Maxi, the short conversation she had had with the lawyer had left her with an intense need to be held in Cutter’s arms and told that everything was going to be all right, that he would carry on for her now, that she was no longer alone.

She looked at his sleeping face, as distinguished in unconsciousness as it was in wakefulness, for the relaxation of his lean facial muscles left the clean, fine, aristocratic line of his bones and his skull unchanged. Only the dark, brooding sternness, that perpetual bull-killer’s watchfulness had disappeared from his expression. She sighed with unconscious pleasure. Even in this moment of long-dreaded trouble there was joy for her in looking at him.

Gently she ran her fingertips over his forehead. He
turned to one side to avoid her touch but she continued and eventually he woke, dazed, from the depth of sleep. “What? Lily? What’s happening?” he muttered, not fully awake.

“Wake up, my darling, I need you.”

“Lily, are you sick?” He sat up in bed, alarmed.

“I’m fine. It’s one of the children, one of them is in trouble …”

“Maxi. What’s she done now?”

“No, it’s Justin, our child, Cutter. Oh, Cutter, hold me tight, hug me hard, I’ve been so afraid, so afraid for so long, and now it’s happened.” Lily flung herself into Cutter’s arms and tried to burrow into a safe place. He held her and kissed the top of her head and comforted her for a minute, but then he pushed her away far enough so that he could see her face.

“Tell me, Lily. What about Justin? What’s happened, for God’s sake?”

“He’s been arrested. The police searched his apartment and found drugs—cocaine. They’ve taken him to jail. He called Maxi but it was too late to do anything tonight. I’ve already talked to Charlie Salomon and he’ll get him out first thing tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute. How much cocaine did they find?”

“Maxi didn’t know, they wouldn’t tell her, just that it was ‘enough’—enough to book him as a suspected dealer.”

“Christ!” Cutter jumped out of bed and tied his bathrobe around his waist. “Christ almighty, as if that kid didn’t have enough money! How the hell could he have been so stupid? I could strangle him with my bare hands … suspected of dealing cocaine? An Amberville dealing cocaine! Do you have any idea of the disgrace that is? It’s as low as—”

“Wait!
He’s not guilty
, Cutter! Justin couldn’t possibly be guilty of that. He’s not evil, he’s not a criminal, how can you even think it?” Lily was panting with outrage. “Somebody left it, concealed it, in his apartment. He didn’t know it was there. Maxi learned that much.”

“Oh, Lily. Couldn’t that dumb kid have thought up a lie that sounded a little more convincing?”

“You assume it’s a
lie
?” Lily’s voice rose.

“Justin is somebody with something to hide. I knew it from the minute I first saw him. He’s never been honest with me or with you or anybody else in the family. He vanishes for months without saying where he’s going, he has an apartment we’ve never even seen; it all adds up, Lily. I know you don’t want to admit it, but it adds up. And now we get the whole rotten mess dumped in our laps. Justin’s a lousy rich dilettante drifter whose dividends and trust funds aren’t enough, so he sells coke on the side and gets caught, the little prick.”

Lily looked at Cutter, striding up and down the bedroom, ruthlessly throwing his words like stones at her feet.

“Cutter, listen to me.” She forced herself to speak as calmly as possible. “You don’t know Justin, but even so, surely you must understand that he would never ever do anything to hurt anyone but himself. Unfortunately, he does know the kind of people who would hide drugs in his place. When I realized that the two of you didn’t get along with each other, when you and Justin never grew close, when you made no effort to get to know him better—
your own son
, Cutter—I thought the reason was because you knew, because you sensed, well—because somehow you instinctively realized that he was homosexual. And I thought that perhaps you blamed yourself in some crazy way, thought that—”

“Homosexual?” There was a moment of dead silence. The word seemed to bounce back and forth from one wall to another of the bedroom that was filled with Cutter’s stunned disbelief and Lily’s incredulous realization that he had
not
known, not seen, never even bothered perhaps, to be sensitive to his son, to wonder at Justin’s evasive mode of life and ask himself why.

“He can’t be a homosexual, Lily. It’s not possible,” Cutter finally said in harsh denial.

“You believed he was a cocaine dealer. Immediately, with no questions asked. Why can’t you believe he’s a homosexual?”

“My son a faggot! No, never. If it had been Toby … but not
mine
. God damn it, Lily, I never wanted you to have him, but you, no, you wanted what you wanted.
He should never have been born.
”

“Never been born?” Lily looked straight at Cutter as she echoed his words and he saw a face he had not dreamed could exist, contorted, ready to strike out at him, the face of a woman stripped down to the bones of an emotion he’d never seen before.

Swiftly he walked toward her and forced her, struggling, into his grip. “Lily, Lily, beloved, I’m sorry, Jesus I didn’t mean it, not a word, not a single word. I just went crazy for a minute—I have a thing about … homosexuals … a phobia, I guess. It’s some kind of primitive reaction, I just couldn’t take it when you said that Justin … Lily, it sounds nuts but it’s my problem and I’m ashamed of it. I don’t blame you for being upset. You know how people can say things when they’ve had a shock, things they don’t mean. Lily, I’m glad we have a son—truly, deeply glad. So glad, my Lily.” He felt her relax in his hold and begin to weep. “O.K. now, darling? I love you so much. Please say you forgive me. Look, I’m going to get us both a drink and we’ll talk about it, about what we can do to help the poor guy, about what I can do for my son.”

As he made his way down the stairs to the bar Cutter swore at himself for being the worst kind of a fool, a man who let his tongue slip when dealing with a woman. No amount of anger was an excuse. Since the minute he’d first made love to Lily he’d schooled her to be controlled, to be dominated, so that now he could turn her in any direction that suited his purpose. To carry out his intention to break up Amberville Publications meant that he must continue to have Lily’s complete confidence, her entire trust. He’d managed to make her stop publication of three magazines but there were seven more still left whose identities must be wiped out as fully as possible. He’d almost blown it. That wouldn’t happen again, he vowed, as he carried the glasses back to the bedroom. Not even if it meant saving Justin’s ass, that sick, sullen little faggot. He’d always hated him and now he knew why.

At breakfast time there is always a traffic jam at Park and Sixty-first Street, for in front of the Regency Hotel the police allow limousines to triple-park while less privileged taxis are forced into a single file to pass this expensive but basically unremarkable hotel. Its dining room has, for reasons unclear, become the most popular place for powerful men to do business with each other over coffee and dry toast. The Plaza is too far downtown, the Carlyle too far uptown, the Waldorf too far east, the new Plaza Athenée too new, so it has fallen to the Regency to garner the Tisches, the Rohatyns, the Newhouses and the Sulzbergers of the city, who often accomplish more real trading in the course of a one-hour breakfast than they may do in the rest of their day. No two men ever meet for breakfast at the Regency just to eat, unless they are a pair of rare, unaware tourists who can’t bother to wait for room service.

Cutter Amberville had, by virtue of consistent and precisely right overtipping—never so much that he seemed insecure, yet never so little that it failed to impress—nailed down the second banquette on the right facing the Sixty-first Street windows. He had picked this table three years ago when he first came back from England, because it allowed him to sit with his back to the wall. He could not understand the men who allowed themselves to be seated at the center tables, exposed to all eyes. Obviously they knew that they would be observed, since the Regency breakfast was a declaration of courtship, potential or protracted, but why, he wondered, go out of your way to attract attention? Cutter made sure to arrive several minutes before his guest, Leonard Wilder of the United Broadcasting Company, thereby establishing subliminal proprietary rights from the beginning of the conversation.
He concentrated on the man he was going to meet, sparing no thought for Lily, who had already left to get Justin out of jail.

Leonard Wilder was a man famous for his impatience. He wore two watches and constantly checked them; he normally made two breakfast dates in a morning, one at eight and one at nine, and he never bothered to eat. He had been important for too long to bother with the courtesy rituals, the minuetlike to-ing and fro-ing of corporate affairs, and his favorite phrase was known to be “Cut the baloney, what’s the bottom line?”

Cutter rose as Wilder was brought over to the table by the headwaiter.

“I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. Wilder,” Cutter said as they shook hands, “and I’m particularly pleased that you could find time for breakfast on such short notice. My wife and I watched your ‘Ragtime Special’ last night, and we both agreed that it was excellent entertainment.”

“Wasn’t bad, did well.” Wilder replied in his rapid-fire, impatient way.

“Well then, shall we order?” Cutter studied the menu critically, giving it his complete attention. “Henry, I’ll start with the fresh strawberries and Mr. Wilder will have—no, nothing to begin with? After that, the English porridge with fresh cream. Let’s see—ah, yes, I’ll have the buckwheat cakes with Canadian bacon. Be sure the bacon is lean and cooked to a crisp, and remind the chef that my buckwheat cakes must be freshly made.” He turned to Wilder. “I’d have the same if I were you. No? They make a batch all at once every morning and then put them on a steam table to keep them warm … they’re no good that way so the chef always makes a fresh batch for me.” Wilder grunted. “And hot coffee, really hot. You can bring that right now. What will you have, Mr. Wilder? Only coffee? I guess it’s the transplanted ex-Westerner in me, but I find that with a decent breakfast I can do twice as much work before lunch than if I only gulp a cup of coffee. You’re sure? All right, Henry, just coffee for Mr. Wilder.”

Leonard Wilder glanced at Cutter’s trim waistline. Cutter intercepted his look.

“Breakfast like a rich man, dine like a pauper. I’ve always
followed that advice. Still, diet isn’t enough, you have to keep in shape too. My wife and I are both ardent weekend athletes and we have a gym in the house so that we can work out every day. What do you do for exercise?”

“Walk to work.”

“Ah, there’s nothing like walking,” Cutter agreed, “but I don’t find it exercises the whole body unless you run and in this city you can’t do that, unless you’re willing to be killed by a taxi driver.”

He sat back and sipped his coffee. “Waiter, this isn’t really hot. Could you bring another pot, please, and fresh cups? And take away Mr. Wilder’s coffee too. It’s only lukewarm.”

Leonard Wilder ground his teeth and checked his watches. Cutter relaxed and waited for the fresh coffee.

“I knew your brother,” Leonard Wilder said abruptly. “Wonderful man.”

Cutter sighed. “We all miss him. It’s been a great loss.”

“One-man show. Best in town. Things a mess now?”

Cutter chuckled. “Well, Mr. Wilder, that can happen in a privately owned corporation. We both know too many cases where the founder of a business died and the business fell apart at the seams. But fortunately Amberville Publications is in a different situation. Henry, these strawberries aren’t ripe. Take them back, please, and bring me a compote of mixed fruit.” He turned back to Wilder. “That’s the trouble with out-of-season strawberries, you can never be sure. Usually there are good ones from Algeria or Israel this time of year, but those really weren’t worth eating.”