The Bonfire of the Vanities (37 page)

Dunning Sponget & Leach occupied four floors of a skyscraper on Wall Street, three blocks from Pierce & Pierce. When it was built, it had been the very latest in the 1920s Moderne style, but now it had the grimy gloom that was typical of Wall Street. The Dunning Sponget offices resembled Pierce & Pierce’s. In both cases modern interiors had been caked with eighteenth-century English paneling and stocked with eighteenth-century English furniture. This was lost on Sherman, however. To him everything about Dunning Sponget was as venerable as his father.

To his relief, the receptionist didn’t recognize him or his name. Of course, by now the Lion was nothing more than one of the wrinkled old partners who infested the corridors for a few hours each day. Sherman had just taken a seat in an armchair when Freddy Button’s secretary, Miss Zilitsky, appeared. She was one of those women who look fiftyish and loyal. She led him down a silent hall.

Freddy, tall, lank, elegant, charming, smoking away, stood waiting for him at the door of his office.

“Hel-lo, Sherman!” A plume of cigarette smoke, a magnificent smile, a warm handshake, a charming display of pleasure at the very sight of Sherman McCoy. “My goodness, my goodness, how are you? Have a seat. How about some coffee? Miss Zilitsky!”

“No, thanks. Not for me.”

“How’s Judy?”

“Fine.”

“And Campbell?” He always remembered Campbell’s name, which Sherman appreciated, even in his present state.

“Oh, she’s thriving.”

“She’s at Taliaferro now, isn’t she?”

“Yes. How did you know that? Did my father mention it?”

“No, my daughter Sally. She graduated from Taliaferro two years ago. Absolutely loved it. Keeps up with everything. She’s at Brown now.”

“How does she like Brown?” Jesus Christ, why am I even bothering to ask? But he knew why. Freddy’s thick, fast, meaningless current of charm swept you up. Helpless, you said the usual.

It was a mistake. Freddy was immediately off on an anecdote about Brown and coed dorms. Sherman didn’t bother listening. To make a point, Freddy flipped his long hands upward in a languid, effeminate gesture. He was always talking about families, his family, your family, other people’s families, and he was a homosexual. No doubt about it. Freddy was about fifty years old, six feet four or more, slender, awkwardly put together but elegantly dressed in the English “drape” style. His limp blond hair, now dulled by a rising tide of gray, was slicked back in the 1930s fashion. Languidly he settled into his chair, across the desk from Sherman, talking as he did so, and smoking. He took a deep draft of the cigarette and let the smoke curl out of his mouth and drained it up into his nostrils in two thick columns. This was once known as French inhaling and was so known to Freddy Button, the last of the Great Smokers. He blew smoke rings. He French-inhaled and blew large smoke rings and then blew speedy little smoke rings through the large ones. From time to time he held his cigarette not between his first two fingers but between his thumb and forefinger, upright, like a candle. Why was it that homosexuals smoked so much? Perhaps because they were self-destructive. But the word
self-destructive
was the outer limit of Sherman’s familiarity with psychoanalytical thought, and so his eyes began to drift. Freddy’s office was
done
, the way Judy talked about
doing
apartments. It looked like something from one of those abominable magazines…burgundy velvet, oxblood leather, burled wood, brass and silver bibelots…All at once Freddy and his charm and his taste were supremely annoying.

Freddy must have sensed his irritation, because he broke off his story and said, “Well—you said something happened with you and your car.”

“Unfortunately, you can read about it, Freddy.” Sherman opened his attaché case and took out the Pierce & Pierce interoffice envelope and withdrew the copy of
The City Light
and folded it back to page 3 and handed it across the desk. “The piece at the bottom of the page.”

Freddy took the newspaper with his left hand, and with his right he put the cigarette out in a Lalique ashtray with a lion’s head sculpted on the rim. He reached toward a white silk handkerchief that debouched carelessly, voluptuously, from the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Then he put the newspaper down and put the glasses on with both hands. From his inside breast pocket he took out a silver-and-ivory cigarette case, opened it, and removed a cigarette from under a silver clip. He tamped it on the outside of the case, lit it with a slender fluted silver lighter, then picked up the newspaper and commenced reading; or reading and smoking. With his eyes fixed on the newspaper, he brought the cigarette to his lips in the candle position, between his thumb and forefinger, took a deep drag, twirled his fingers and—bingo!—the cigarette popped out between the knuckles of his forefinger and middle finger. Sherman was amazed. How had he done it? Then he was furious. He turns into a tobacco acrobat
—in the middle of my crisis!

Freddy finished the article and laid the cigarette in the Lalique ashtray with great care and took off his glasses and tucked them back beneath the lustrous silk handkerchief and picked up the cigarette again and took another profound drag on it.

Sherman, spitting the words out: “That’s my car you just read about.”

The anger in his voice startled Freddy. Gingerly, as if tiptoeing, he said: “You have a Mercedes with a license number that starts with R? R-something?”

“Exactly.” With a hiss.

Freddy, befuddled: “Well…why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Not until Freddy said those words did Sherman realize that…he was dying to! He was dying to confess—to someone! Anyone! Even this nicotine
Turnvereiner
, this homosexual fop who was a partner of his father! He had never looked at Freddy with such clarity before. He could
see
him. Freddy was the sort of willowy wand of charm into whose office a Wall Street firm of the Dunning Sponget magnitude shunted all the widows and legacies, such as himself, who were presumed to have more money than problems. Yet he was the only confessor available.

“I have a friend named Maria Ruskin,” he said. “She’s the wife of a man named Arthur Ruskin, who’s made a lot of money doing God knows what.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Freddy, nodding.

“I’ve—” Sherman stopped. He didn’t know quite how to word it. “I’ve been seeing a bit of Mrs. Ruskin.” He pursed his lips and stared at Freddy. The unspoken message was “Yes; precisely; it’s the usual sordid case of cheap lust.”

Freddy nodded.

Sherman hesitated again, then plunged on into the details of the automobile ride into the Bronx. He studied Freddy’s face for signs of disapproval or—worse!—enjoyment! He detected nothing but a friendly concern punctuated by smoke rings. Sherman no longer resented him, however. Such relief! The vile poison was gushing out! My confessor!

As he told his tale, he was aware of something else: an irrational joy. He was the main character in an exciting story. All over again he took pride—stupid pride!—in having fought in the jungle and triumphed. He was on stage. He was the star! Freddy’s expression had progressed from friendly and concerned…to entranced…

“And so here I am,” Sherman said, finally. “I can’t figure out what to do. I wish I’d gone straight to the police when it happened.”

Freddy leaned back in his chair and looked away and took a drag on his cigarette, then turned back and gave Sherman a reassuring smile.

“Well, from what you’ve told me, you’re not responsible for the injury to the young man.” As he spoke, inhaled smoke came out of his mouth in faint jets. Sherman hadn’t seen anyone do that for years. “You may have some obligation, as the owner of the vehicle, to report the incident, and there may be the question of leaving the scene of the accident. I’d have to look up the statute. I suppose they could develop an assault charge, for throwing the tire, but I don’t think it would hold up, since you clearly had reason to believe your life was in danger. In fact, this really isn’t as unusual a circumstance as you might think. Do you know Clinton Danforth?”

“No.”

“He’s the chairman of the board of Danco. I represented him in a suit against the Triple A. The Automobile Club of New York was the actual entity, I believe. He and his wife—you’ve never seen Clinton?”

Seen him?
“No.”

“Very proper. Looks like one of those capitalists the cartoonists used to draw, with the silk topper. Anyway, one night Clinton and his wife were driving home—” Now he was off on some story about the car of this illustrious client of his breaking down in Ozone Park, Queens. Sherman sifted the words for some little nugget of hope. Then it dawned on him that this was merely Freddy’s charm reflex at work. The essence of the social charmer was having a story, preferably with Fat Names in it, to fit every subject. In a quarter century of law practice, this was probably the only case Freddy ever handled that even touched the streets of New York.

“…a black man with a police dog on a leash—”

“Freddy.” Sherman, hissing again. “I don’t care about your fat friend Danforth.”

“What?” Freddy, befuddled and shocked.

“I haven’t got time for it. I have a problem.”

“Oh, listen. Please. Forgive me.” Freddy spoke softly, warily; also sadly, the way you might talk to a lunatic who was heating up. “Really, I was only trying to show you—”

“Never mind showing me. Put out that cigarette and tell me what you think.”

Without taking his eyes off Sherman’s face, Freddy put out the cigarette in the Lalique ashtray. “All right, I’ll tell you exactly what I think.”

“I don’t mean to be abrupt, Freddy, but Jesus Christ.”

“I know, Sherman.”

“Please smoke if you want to, but let’s stick to the point.”

The hands fluttered up to indicate that smoking wasn’t important.

“All right,” said Freddy, “here’s what I see. I think you’re in the clear on the major issue here, which is the personal injury. You might conceivably be at risk of a felony charge for leaving the scene and not notifying the police. As I say, I’ll research that. But I think that’s not too serious a proposition, assuming we can establish the sequence of events as you’ve outlined them to me.”

“What do you mean, ‘establish’?”

“Well, the thing that worries me about this newspaper story is that it’s so far off from the facts as you’ve given them to me.”

“Oh, I know it!” said Sherman. “There’s no mention of the other—the other fellow, the one who first approached me. There’s not one word about the barricade or even the ramp. They’re saying it happened on Bruckner Boulevard. It didn’t happen on Bruckner Boulevard or any other boulevard. They’re making out that this boy, this
…honor
student…this black saint…was walking across the street, minding his own business, and some white bigot in a ‘luxury car’ comes along and runs him down and keeps going. It’s lunacy! They keep calling it a ‘luxury car,’ and all it is, is a Mercedes. Christ, a Mercedes is like a Buick used to be.”

Freddy’s arch of the eyebrows said, “Not precisely.” But Sherman pressed on.

“Let me ask you this, Freddy. Does the fact that”—he started to say “Maria Ruskin” but didn’t want to appear to be anxious to lay off blame—“the fact that I wasn’t driving when the boy was hit, does that put me in the clear legally?”

“So far as the injury to the young man is concerned, it seems to me. Again, I’d want to review the statutes. But let me ask you something. What is your friend Mrs. Ruskin’s version of what happened?”

“Her version?”

“Yes. How does she say this fellow got hit? Does she say she was driving?”

“Does she
say
she was driving? She
was driving
.”

“Yes, but let’s suppose she sees some possibility of a felony charge if she says she was driving.”

Sherman was speechless for a moment. “Well, I can’t imagine she would…”
Lie
was the word he meant to say but didn’t, for in fact it was not utterly beyond the realm of the imagination. The notion shocked him. “Well…all I can tell you is that every time we’ve talked about it, she’s said the same thing. She’s always used the expression ‘After all, I was the one who was driving.’ When I first suggested going to the police, right after it happened, that was what she said. ‘I was the one who was driving. So it’s up to me to decide.’ I mean, I guess anything can happen, but…God almighty.”

“I’m not trying to sow doubt, Sherman. I just want to make sure you know that she may be the only person who can corroborate your version of this thing—and at some risk to herself.”

Sherman sank back in his chair. The voluptuous warrior who had fought beside him in the jungle and then, glistening, made love to him on the floor…

“So if I go to the police now,” he said, “and I tell them what happened, and she doesn’t back me up, then I’m worse off than I am now.”

“It’s a possibility. Look, I’m not suggesting she won’t back you up. I just want you to be aware of…where you stand.”

“What do you think I should do, Freddy?”

“Who have you talked to about this?”

“No one. Just you.”

“How about Judy?”

“No. Least of all Judy, if you want to know the truth.”

“Well, for the time being you shouldn’t talk to anybody about it, probably not even Judy, unless you feel compelled to. Even then, you should impress upon her the need to keep absolutely quiet about it. You’d be amazed at how the things you say can be picked up and turned against you, if someone wants to do it. I’ve seen it happen too many times.”

Sherman doubted that, but he merely nodded.

“In the meantime, with your permission, I’m going to talk this situation over with another lawyer I know, a fellow who works in this area all the time.”

“Not somebody here at Dunning Sponget—”

“No.”

“Because I’d hate to have this thing kicking around the halls here at this goddamned place.”

“Don’t worry, it’s another firm entirely.”

“What firm?”

“It’s called Dershkin, Bellavita, Fishbein & Schlossel.”