The Bonfire of the Vanities (85 page)

Kramer was dying to look at McCoy, but decided to be cool and professional. What does a rat look like when he’s listening to himself being a rat in a room full of people who know he’s a rat—going wired to see his girlfriend? Unconsciously, but profoundly, Kramer was relieved. Sherman McCoy, this Wasp, this Wall Street aristocrat, this socialite, this Yale man, was as much a rat as any of the drug dealers he had wired up to go rat out their species. No, McCoy was more of a rat. One doper didn’t expect much from another. But in these upper reaches, upon these pinnacles of propriety and moralism, up in this stratosphere ruled by the pale thin-lipped Wasps, honor, presumably, was not a word to be trifled with. Yet backed to the wall, they turned rat just as quickly as any lowlife. This was a relief, because he had been troubled by what Bernie Fitzgibbon had said. Suppose the case had not, in fact, been investigated carefully enough? Maria Ruskin had corroborated Roland’s story before the grand jury, but in his heart he knew he had pushed her pretty hard. He had put her in a small tight box so fast she might have—

He preferred not to finish the thought.

The knowledge that McCoy was at bottom nothing but a rat with a better résumé put his mind at rest. McCoy was caught in this particular mess because it was his natural milieu, the filthy nest of his defective character.

Having reassured himself of the rightness of his cause, Kramer treated himself to some positive resentment of this big pseudoaristocrat who now sat only a few feet from him filling up the room with his rat aroma. As he listened to the two voices on the tape, the aristocratic honk of McCoy, the Southern Girl drawl of Maria Ruskin, it didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what was going on. The pauses, the breathing, the rustling about—McCoy, the rat, had taken this gorgeous foxy creature into his arms…And this apartment on East Seventy-seventh Street where they were meeting—these people on the Upper East Side had apartments just for
their pleasures
!—while he still searched his brain (and his pockets) for some place to accommodate the yearnings of Miss Shelly Thomas. The Beauty and the Rat talked on…. There was a pause while she left the room to fix him a drink and a scraping noise as he apparently touched his hidden microphone. The Rat. The voices resumed, and then she said, “There’s a lotta people’d like to hear
this
conversation.”

Not even Kovitsky could resist looking up and around the room at that one, but Kramer refused to oblige him with a smile.

Maria Ruskin’s voice droned on. Now she was whining about her marriage. Where the hell was this tape supposed to be leading? The woman’s complaints were boring. She had married an old man. What the hell did she expect? Idly he wondered—he could see her, as if she were right here in the room. The languorous way she crossed her legs, the little smile, the way she looked at you sometimes—

All at once he was jerked alert: “A man from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office came around to see me today, with two detectives.” Then: “A pompous little bastard.”

Whuh—
he was stunned. A scalding tide rose up in his neck and face. Somehow it was the
little
that wounded him most. Such a contemptuous dismissal—and him with his mighty sternocleidomastoids—he lifted his eyes to search out the faces of the others, ready to laugh defensively if anyone else happened to look up and smile at such outrageousness. But no one looked up, least of all McCoy, whom he would have gladly throttled.

“He kept throwing his head back and doing something weird with his neck, like this, and looking at me through these little slits for eyes. What a creep.”

His face was now scarlet, aflame, boiling with anger and, worse than anger, dismay. Someone in the room made a sound that might be a cough and might be a laugh. He didn’t have enough heart to investigate.
Bitch!
said his mind, consciously. But his nervous system said,
Wanton destroyer of my fondest hopes!
In this little room full of people he was suffering the pangs of men whose egos lose their virginity—as happens when they overhear for the first time a beautiful woman’s undiluted, full-strength opinion of their masculine selves.

What came next was worse.

“He made it real simple, Sherman,” said the voice on the tape. “He said if I would testify against you and corroborate the other witness, he’d give me immunity. If I didn’t, then I’d be treated as an accomplice, and they’d charge me with these…felonies.”

And then:

“He even gave me these Xeroxes of stories in the newspapers. He practically drew me a map. These were the correct stories, and these were the ones you concocted. I’m supposed to agree with the correct stories. If I say what actually happened, I go to prison.”

The lying bitch!
He had put her in the box, of course—but he hadn’t drawn her any map!—hadn’t
instructed
her as to what to say—hadn’t warned her away from the truth—

He blurted out: “Judge!”

Kovitsky held up his hand, palm outward, and the tape wound on.

Sherman was startled by the assistant district attorney’s voice. The judge immediately shut him up. Sherman was braced for what he knew was coming next.

Maria’s voice: “Just come here.”

He could
feel
that moment all over again, that moment and that horrible wrestling match…“Sherman, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with your back?”…But that was just the start…His own voice, his own cheap lying voice: “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, how much I’ve needed you.” And Maria: “Well…here I am.” Then the dreadful telltale rustling—and he could smell her breath all over again and feel her hands on his back.

“Sherman…What’s this on your back?”

The words filled the room in a gush of shame. He wanted to drop through the floor. He slumped back into his chair and let his chin fall onto his chest. “Sherman, what is this?”…Her rising voice, his wretched denials, the thrashing about, her breathless gasps and shrieks…“And a
wire
, Sherman!”…“You’re—hurting me!”…“Sherman—you rotten, dishonest bastard!”

Too true, Maria! Too horribly true!

Kramer listened to it in a red haze of mortification. The Bitch and the Rat—their
tête-à-tête
had degenerated into some sort of sordid ratbitch fight.
Pompous little bastard. Creep. Something weird with his neck
. She had scorned him, humiliated him, undercut him, slandered him—opening him up to a charge of subornation to perjury.

Sherman was astonished by the sound of his own desperate gulps for air, which came heaving out of the little black machine on the judge’s desk. It was a mortifying sound. Pain, panic, cowardice, weakness, deceit, shame, indignity—all of those things at once, followed by an ungainly clumping. That was the sound of himself fleeing down the town-house stairs. Somehow he knew everyone in the room could see him running away with the tape deck and
the wire
between his legs.

By the time the tape had petered out, Kramer had managed to crawl out from under his wounded vanity and collect his thoughts. “Judge,” he said, “I don’t know what—”

Kovitsky broke in: “Just a second. Mr. Killian, can you rewind that tape? I want to hear the exchange between Mr. McCoy and Mrs. Ruskin concerning her testimony.”

“But, Judge—”

“We’re gonna listen to it again, Mr. Kramer.”

They listened to it again.

The words sailed by Sherman. He was still drowning in ignominy. How could he look any of them in the face?

The judge said, “All right, Mr. Killian. What conclusion are you proposing that the court should draw from this?”

“Judge,” said Killian, “this woman, Mrs. Ruskin, was either instructed to give certain testimony and omit certain other testimony or suffer severe consequences, or she thought she was, which amounts to the same thing. And—”

“That’s absurd!” said the assistant district attorney, Kramer. He was leaning forward in his chair with a big meaty forefinger pointed at Killian and a red-mad look on his face.

“Let him finish,” said the judge.

“And furthermore,” said Killian, “as we’ve just heard, she had ample motivation to testify falsely, not only to protect herself, but to injure Mr. McCoy, whom she calls a ‘rotten, dishonest bastard.’ ”

The rotten, dishonest bastard was mortified all over again. What could be more mortifying than the plain truth? A shouting match broke out between the assistant district attorney and Killian. What were they saying? It meant nothing in the face of the obvious, miserable truth.

The judge roared, “
SHUDDUP
!” They shut up. “The question of subornation is not one that interests me at this time, if that’s what you’re worried about, Mr. Kramer. But I do think there exists the possibility of tainted testimony before the grand jury.”

“That’s preposterous!” said Kramer. “The woman had two lawyers by her side at all times. Ask them what I said!”

“If it comes to that, they’ll be asked. But I’m less concerned with what you said than with what was on her mind when she testified before the grand jury. You understand, Mr. Kramer?”

“No, I don’t, Judge, and—”

Killian broke in: “Judge, I have a second tape.”

Kovitsky said, “All right. What’s the nature of that tape?”

“Judge—”

“Don’t interrupt, Mr. Kramer. You’ll have a chance to be heard. Go ahead, Mr. Killian. What’s the nature of that tape?”

“This is a conversation with Mrs. Ruskin that Mr. McCoy informs me he recorded twenty-two days ago, after the first newspaper article concerning the injuries to Henry Lamb was printed.”

“Where did this conversation take place?”

“Same place as the first one, Judge. Mrs. Ruskin’s apartment.”

“Likewise without her knowledge?”

“That’s correct.”

“And what is the bearing of the tape on this hearing?”

“It gives Mrs. Ruskin’s account of the incident involving Henry Lamb when she is talking candidly, of her own volition, with Mr. McCoy. It raises the question of whether or not she might have altered her honest account when she testified before the grand jury.”

“Judge, this is crazy! Now we’re being told the defendant
lives
with a
wire
on! We already know that he’s a rat, in the parlance of the street, so why should we believe—”

“Calm down, Mr. Kramer. First, we’re gonna listen to the tape. Then we’ll evaluate it. Nothing’s engraved in the record yet. Go ahead, Mr. Killian. Wait a minute, Mr. Killian. First I want to swear Mr. McCoy in.”

When Kovitsky’s eyes met his, it was all Sherman could do to hold his gaze. To his surprise, he felt terribly guilty about what he was about to do. He was about to commit perjury.

Kovitsky had the clerk, Bruzzielli, put him under oath, then asked him if he had made the two tapes in the way and at the times Killian had said he had. Sherman said yes, forced himself to keep looking at Kovitsky, and wondered if the lie showed up somehow on his face.

The tape began: “I knew it. I knew it at the time. We should have reported it immediately…”

Sherman could barely listen to it. I’m doing something illegal! Yes…but in the name of the truth…This is the subterranean path to the light…This is the actual conversation we had…Every word, every sound, is truth…For this to be suppressed…that would be the greater dishonesty…Wouldn’t it?…Yes—but I’m doing something illegal! Around and around it went in his mind as the tape rolled on…And Sherman McCoy, he who had now vowed to be his animal self, discovered what many had discovered before him. In well-reared girls and boys, guilt and the instinct to obey the rules are reflexes, ineradicable ghosts in the machine.

Even before the Hasidic giant had lumbered down the stairs and Maria’s whoops of laughter had ceased in this moldering chamber in the Bronx, the prosecutor, Kramer, was protesting furiously.

“Judge, you can’t allow this—”

“I’ll give you an opportunity to speak.”

“—cheap trick—”

“Mr. Kramer!”

“—influence—”

“
MR. KRAMER
!”

Kramer shut up.

“Now, Mr. Kramer,” said Kovitsky, “I’m sure you know Mrs. Ruskin’s voice. Do you agree that that was her voice?”

“Probably, but that’s not the point. The point is—”

“Just a minute. Assuming that to be the case, did what you just heard on that tape differ from Mrs. Ruskin’s testimony before the grand jury?”

“Judge…this is preposterous! It’s hard to tell
what’s
going on on that tape!”

“Does it
differ
, Mr. Kramer?”

“It varies.”

“Is ‘varies’ the same as ‘differs’?”

“Judge, there’s no way to tell the conditions under which this thing was made!”

“
Prima facie
, Mr. Kramer, does it differ?”

“
Prima facie
it differs. But you can’t let this cheap trick”—he swung his hand contemptuously in the direction of McCoy—“influence your—”

“Mr. Kramer—”

“—judgment!” Kramer could see that Kovitsky’s head was gradually lowering. The white was beginning to appear below his irises. The sea was beginning to foam. But Kramer couldn’t restrain himself. “The simple fact is, the grand jury has handed down a valid indictment! You have—this hearing has no jurisdiction over—”

“Mr. Kramer—”

“—the duly completed deliberations of a grand jury!”

“
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ADVICE AND COUNSEL, MR. KRAMER
!”

Kramer froze, his mouth still open.

“Let me remind you,” Kovitsky said, “that I am the presiding judge for the grand jury, and I am not enchanted by the possibility that testimony by a key witness in this case might be tainted.”

Fuming, Kramer shook his head. “Nothing that these two
…individuals
”—he flung his hand toward McCoy again—“say in their little love nest…” He shook his head again, too angry to find the words to finish the sentence.

“Sometimes that’s when the truth comes out, Mr. Kramer.”

“The
truth
! Two spoiled rich people, one of them wired up like a rat—try telling that to the people in that courtroom, Judge!—”