People Like Us (35 page)

“You going to L.A. or Europe?”

“L.A. For a day.”

“I liked that piece you wrote about me.”

“Thanks.”

“Still off the sauce, you see,” she said, holding up her soft drink.

“Same here,” he said, holding up his.

“This is my secretary. Brucie Hastings. Gus Bailey.”

“Oh, I read your piece on Faye,” she said.

Gus shook hands with the young woman. Her handshake was gentle.

“Are you working?” asked Gus, turning back to Faye.

“I’m going to be in
Judas Was a Redhead
. Have you read it? Marvelous book.”

“Nestor Calder’s a friend of mine,” said Gus.

“I’m playing Magdalena, the old hooker with the heart of gold,” she said.

“Perfect,” said Gus.

“How do you like that, Brucie? Did you hear what this son of a bitch said to me? I tell him I’m playing a hooker with a heart of gold, and he says ‘perfect,’ like in perfect casting.”

Brucie laughed. She appeared fragile to Gus.

“Are you in first class, Gus, or are you still riding back in steerage?”

“Steerage.”

“Here, give me your ticket. Brucie, take Mr. Bailey’s ticket over to that nice lady at the desk, Robin I think her name was, the one I gave the autograph to, and ask her to upgrade Mr. Bailey to first class and seat him next to me, and you sit in his seat in steerage. There are a few things I want to talk to Gus about.”

“I don’t normally sign autographs in planes, but I’ll
make an exception this time,” said Faye to the woman who interrupted her conversation with Gus when the plane was aloft.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Converse,” said the woman. “Will you sign it to Darlene?”

“She looked like a Darlene, didn’t she?” said Faye, when the woman had gone back to her seat. Gus laughed. “I bet you were an only child, Gus,” said Faye. They were drinking Perrier water.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You seem like you were an only child. That loner thing about you.”

“One of four, as a matter of fact.”

“New England, right?”

“Hartbrook. A little town on the Connecticut River that you’d have to be born in to know about.”

“Where’s the rest of the four of you?”

“Two dead. One suicide. One cancer.”

“The other?”

“A brother.”

“Where is he?”

“Boston, I think. We don’t keep in touch.”

“What does he do?” asked Faye.

“Designs condominiums in New England resorts, to the great displeasure of the Old Guard and the environmentalists,” said Gus, shifting in his seat. “This isn’t why you kicked Brucie out of her first-class seat to sit back in steerage, is it, so you could ask me about my background?”

“No. I was just vamping.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They laughed again.

“You know someone called Elias Renthal, don’t you?” she asked.

“I know him, kind of. I interviewed him and his wife.”

“I read it,” said Faye.

“I see him at parties. The last time I saw him, he said, ‘Hi, Bus,’ and I said, ‘It’s Gus, not Bus,’ and he
said, ‘That’s what I said.’ That’s how well I know him. Why?”

“He’s rich, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, he’s rich.”

“Very rich?”

“We’re talking big bucks here.”

“Generous?”

“What are you getting at, Faye? I don’t think he’d finance a movie, if that’s what you’re interested in.”

Faye shook her head no. She looked out the window of the plane. Then she said, “Brucie, my secretary.”

“In steerage.”

“She’s dying.”

“Oh, no.”

“She’s got the dread disease,” said Faye.

“God almighty,” said Gus.

“She’s married to a dancer on the Larkin show. He has it too. Get the picture?”

“Got it,” said Gus.

“I’m trying to raise money for the disease, a lot of money, big money. Do you think Mr. Renthal would help me out?”

“I don’t know. He gives to the opera. He gives to the ballet. He gives to the museums. I don’t know about disease. I especially don’t know about that disease. He’s still on the make. So far he only does the social-advancement charities.”

“All I want, Gus, is an introduction to Mr. Renthal, and I can handle it from there,” said Faye.

“Faye, you’re a famous woman. You can get to anyone in the world you want to get to. You don’t need me to meet Elias Renthal.”

“He didn’t return my call.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“He didn’t return my two calls.”

“What did the secretary say?”

“ ‘Will he know what this is in reference to?’ she asked.”

Gus shook his head.

“I could do a fund-raiser,” said Faye. “But it takes time. And time is not on our side.”

“Elias Renthal’s wife is the key,” said Gus. “He does whatever she tells him to do. Her name is Ruby Renthal.”

“I’ve seen her picture in the magazines. Pretty.”

“Very pretty,” said Gus. “And nice, too.”

“Can you set it up for me to meet her?”

“I think so. She liked the piece I wrote on her. I’ll set up a lunch.”

“At Clarence’s. I’ve always wanted to go to Clarence’s.”

“Okay, I hope.”

“Thanks, Gus. Will you have time for dinner while you’re in L.A.?”

“Probably not.”

“You out on an article?”

“Family stuff,” said Gus.

“Listen, Gus. I’m sorry about what happened to you and Peach. I mean, about your daughter.”

Gus nodded.

“I was doing a picture in Italy at the time, or I would have written,” she said.

Gus nodded.

“I don’t know how you behaved so well under the circumstances. If that had happened to me, I would have shot the son of a bitch.”

Gus nodded. It was the sort of thing that people said to him.

When Gus stepped into the dark bar after the bright sunlight of Studio City, he was temporarily blinded and waited for a minute at the entrance until he got his bearings. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the bar was empty except for a young woman sitting on a stool behind the bar adding up receipts at the cash register.

“Help you?” she asked, when Gus settled himself on a stool.

“Perrier,” he said.

“Out of Perrier,” she said, not moving from her stool.

“Coke?” he asked.

She rose, put her receipts on the cash register, picked up a beer mug, filled it with ice, and from a spigot filled the mug with the soft drink.

“It’s Pepsi,” she said, putting it in front of him. She was pretty, under thirty, Gus figured, and stared at him as if she knew the purpose of his visit was not to drink a Pepsi Cola at two o’clock in the afternoon. Her blouse was made of a thin material, through which the shoulder straps of her undergarments could be seen.

“Are you Marguerite?” Gus asked.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, without answering his question.

“I wanted to ask you a question.”

“About what?”

“Is it true that you are engaged to marry Lefty Flint?”

“Who are you?”

“Is it?”

“What the hell is it to you?”

“The man is a killer. The man has taken a girl’s life.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I am the father of the girl he murdered.”

“He was drunk when he did that. Now he doesn’t drink anymore. That was a one-time thing. He explained all that to me.”

“You know then what he did?”

“Yes, I know.”

“And you’re still going to marry him?”

“You better get out of here, Mr. Bailey.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said Gus. He was drained, white, shaken. For an instant their eyes met.

“Good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye,” she answered.

“Look,” said Gus.

“What?”

“Here’s a telephone number and name. If you ever are in trouble of any sort, ring it.”

“Whose number?”

“It’s not mine. It’s just if you’re in trouble. Keep it.”

“I’m not going to be in any trouble, Mr. Bailey.”

“I hope not, Marguerite. With all my heart, I hope not.”

He turned and walked out of the bar.

Marguerite picked up the card that Gus had dropped on the bar and read it. On it was the name and telephone number of Anthony Feliciano.

“May I go down into your storeroom?” asked Gus.

“For what?” asked Peach. Divorced, with her own house, which was not the house of their marriage, Peach sometimes objected to Gus’s use of her home.

“I’m looking for something I might have left behind when I moved out,” he answered.

“All your things were packed up and sent to New York,” said Peach.

“There’s something I can’t find.”

“What?”

“Some letters that my father sent me during the war,” he answered.

“All right,” she said.

Somewhere, not lost, but long out of sight and reach, in a box, or trunk, or drawer, was a black Leatherette box, lined with satin, on which rested a medal and ribbon, commemorating an act of bravery in a war. With it was a Luger, taken off the body of a dead soldier.

In the gun shop, he waited until a customer had finished his business and the shop was empty before he ceased looking at the racks, as if he were planning on making a purchase.

“Help you?” asked the salesman.

“I have a German Luger from World War Two,” said Gus. He opened his briefcase and took out the gun, which was still wrapped in a brown paper bag grown soft and greasy through the years.

The salesman watched as Gus unwrapped the paper on the glass counter and picked up the gun.

“A beauty,” he said. “Worth a bit of money, you know. They don’t make them like this anymore. Is it for sale?”

“No,” replied Gus. “I wanted to get it put into working order. Could I get that done here?”

“How much of a hurry are you in?”

“I’m not in a great hurry,” said Gus.

“A week? Ten days? It’s a busy time here with hunting season underway.”

“That’s all right. I live in New York, not here, but I’ll be back out in a month or so, and I can pick it up then.”

“I’ll need a deposit.”

“How much?”

“Seventy-five.”

“Okay.” Gus reached in his pocket and brought out some money.

“Is it registered?”

“No.”

“Name?”

“Mertens. Gene Mertens.”

33

With the invitations to the Renthals’ ball in the mail, addressed by Mrs. Renthal’s calligrapher, and supervised by Mrs. Renthal’s social secretary, it quickly became the most highly anticipated party in New York in years. Ezzie Fenwick, who had taken upon himself the role of champion of Ruby Renthal, told certain people that he would be able to secure invitations for them, implying, not quite honestly, that he advised Ruby on her list. Those who had not been invited, and thought they should have been, planned earlier than usual migrations to their houses in Newport and Southampton, their ranches in Wyoming, their cottages on the coast of Maine, or elsewhere.

There was no one quite so distressed by his exclusion from the Renthals’ list as Constantine de Rham, recovered now, nearly, from his gunshot wound, which he continued to insist was self-inflicted. In his own mind he felt the shooting had added a tragic melancholy to his persona, coming as it did so few years after the death of his wife Consuelo. He imagined, walking daily to his lunch table at Clarence’s, first on a walker and then on a cane, usually led by Yvonne Lupescu, that people said of him, “Poor man. What a lot he has suffered.”

When Elias Renthal was still married to his second wife, Gladyce, Constantine de Rham had made his house on Sutton Place available to Elias as a location for his assignations with Ruby Nolte. Had his affair with the airline stewardess been public knowledge, Elias would have had a more difficult and costly divorce from Gladyce than he already had. Constantine had been
handsomely rewarded for his services, but he still felt entitled to an invitation and silently sulked every time he read something in the newspapers about the forthcoming party, even though his somewhat sullied reputation and his affair with Yvonne Lupescu had made further contact with the high-rising Renthals an impossibility.

But for a chance meeting in the fitting rooms of Sills, Lord Biedermeier’s tailor, between Elias Renthal, who now ordered suits twenty at a time for each season, and Constantine de Rham, who, because of his extreme weight loss due to the bullet that had briefly lodged itself in his stomach, was having his own summer suits taken in by several inches, the matter might have gone unnoticed, for Constantine would never have shared with anyone, least of all Yvonne Lupescu, his extreme hurt at the social slight by the Renthals.

That day at Sills, only the lateness of Elias, due to a business emergency, caused the overlap of appointments between the one-time friends. Mr. Sills was a stickler for promptness among his fashionable clientele, but he dared not reprimand Elias Renthal for his tardiness, for who else these days, except Arabs, he once pointed out to Lord Biedermeier, ordered suits twenty at a time on a seasonal basis.

As Elias Renthal’s time was limited, and Constantine de Rham’s time hung heavily on his hands, Mr. Sills silently signaled to Sal, the fitter, to move from Mr. de Rham’s mirrored cubicle to Mr. Renthal’s, so that the busy tycoon could be dealt with instantly. De Rham, who had taken his snubs from people he once dined with on a nightly basis, was in no mood to take a snub from a fitter with pins in his mouth and moved outside his cubicle in order to complain loudly to Mr. Sills. It was then he saw Elias Renthal in his cubicle, with a large cigar in one hand, remove his trousers and put on the first of the twenty pairs he was to have fitted, beginning with the satin striped trousers that would have to be ready in time for the ball.