Lady of Fortune (64 page)

‘Category A-l just about describes your level of financial business, Miss Watson.'

‘Are you nervous, Mr Brooks?' Effie asked him.

‘What?'he said.

‘I asked you, are you nervous?'

‘Nervous, no. Why should I be?'

‘This could be a very large account for you. A great deal of highly profitable business; not to mention the kudos of handling
the personal business affairs of the much-written-about Effie Watson, bankstress extraordinary. You might even become famous.'

Cladwell Brooks looked at her for a second or two, and then grinned. ‘You're putting me on, Miss Watson.'

‘Not at all. I'm trying to find out what kind of an attorney you are. Brilliant, or indifferent. Jazzy, or staid. You're a good salesman, I'll give you that much. But what are you going to do with $96 million worth of stocks and a strong-willed millionairess who wants you to dispose of them out of what must obviously seem to you to be pique, or perversity, or temporary insanity?'

Caldwell Brooks said, ‘I do, usually, what my clients want me to do. Sometimes, I offer advice. Sometimes, I heave a great many reluctant sighs. Sometimes I shout. But if someone as talented in business as you must be, Miss Watson – and don't think that I'm trying to flatter you, because your wealth alone is testimony to the truth of what I'm saying – if someone like you says they want to sell stock – no matter how steady and profitable that stock appears to be – then, I'll sell it.'

Effie was silent for quite a long time. Once or twice, she drew smoke from her cigarette. Then she said, ‘How old are you, Mr Brooks?'

‘I'm thirty-nine.'

‘What's your background?'

‘Very plain. My father owned a small real-estate business in Danbury, Connecticut. We were ordinary, respectable, middle-of-the-road Protestants. I went to school, then to Harvard Business College. After that, I trained for the bar. I like to sail, I like to read, I like to dance. I'm not a stuffed-shirt, if that's what you think, just because I don't smoke and I drink mineral water. I own a souped-up Hudson Roadster and over two hundred jazz records.'

‘Have you ever married?'

Caldwell Brooks lifted his head, and glanced at her acutely. ‘Is that relevant?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Well, I never did.'

‘Too busy?' asked Effie. ‘Or not inclined?'

Caldwell Brooks thought about that, and then said, ‘Too busy, I guess. Besides, it never really seemed necessary.'

Effie said, ‘You haven't asked me the one crucial question I was expecting you to ask me.'

‘You mean, why are you disposing of your stocks? Well, I guess you must believe that you're doing it for the best of all possible reasons.'

‘Wouldn't you like to know what it is?'

‘I know what it is,' said Caldwell Brooks.

There was a Fabergé clock over the library mantelpiece; faced with enamel and decorated with twining gold plants, set with rubies and opals and sapphires. It began to chime the half-hour with a sweet and pretty version of a theme from Das
Sonntagskind
by Dietrich. Effie said, ‘You're better informed than I first thought, Mr Brooks.'

‘You can call me Caldwell.'

Effie smiled, a little self-consciously. There was something earnest and attractive about Caldwell Brooks; something she hadn't come across in a man for a very long time. George Sabatini had occasionally shown flashes of it: that kind of concentrated attentiveness that allows a woman to bask and flirt and display herself, without feeling that she has to take the responsibility for any of the consequences. George, at times, had been quite wonderful, with his skywriting and his flowers and his ostentatious setpieces. But right from the beginning Caldwell Brooks made her believe – partly by showing such careful professional admiration for her, and partly by being so quiet and composed and straightforward – that he was absorbed by whatever she did, and whatever she said; and in these brash days of flappers and tootsies and hard-boiled behaviour, such romantic intensity was difficult to find.

He said, ‘I suppose I'll have to come clean. Another girl I know works for Mr Giannini at the Bank of America. She couldn't find out everything you've been discussing with him; but she did discover that you were thinking of pulling out of New York in all but name, and setting up your own bank in California to handle oil, and vegetable produce, and motion pictures.'

‘Your girls serve you well,' smiled Effie.

Caldwell drank a little mineral water, and then said, ‘You're going to meet with tremendous resistance. You know that, don't you? You've raised enough eyebrows on Wall Street as it is – a woman working as a banker. But if you set up your own bank…'

That's why I need good men to help me,' Effie told him.

‘Anyone particular in mind?'

‘You said that as if you were interested in the job.'

Caldwell made a moue. ‘It depends what it pays.'

They both laughed. Then Effie said, ‘Listen, Caldwell, dispose of my stocks first. I'm going to need as much liquidity as I can lay my hands on to start this bank properly. If you can make a good job of that, then perhaps we'll talk about a part in the bank for you. I like you: I like your attitude. But I'm going to have to have
proof
that you're the best.'

Caldwell said, ‘Just answer me one thing, if you would. Why are you doing this? You have a large slice of one of the most successful private banks on Wall Street, you own millions of dollars worth of prime stocks. New York is the boom centre of a world boom. Why are you selling out now?'

Effie stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Two reasons,' she said, in a quiet voice. ‘One, I don't trust this boom at all. Watson's New York have laid out loans of millions of dollars to finance private stock purchases; just like all the other banks. But what's going to happen if those stocks start to drop? Who's going to be able to pay us back? There isn't enough margin to support the market if it goes through any kind of a crisis; and that makes me nervous. I'd rather have my money involved in a business over which I have far greater personal control.'

‘That's fair enough,' said Caldwell. ‘But what's the other reason?'

‘The second reason is my brother Robert,' said Effie. ‘He's coming over to New York to work out some kind of joint banking arrangement with Watson's on Wall Street; and believe me, Caldwell, where my brother Robert walks, the grass shrivels up and dies. I want to be out of this before he gets here.'

Caldwell proved to be both efficient and discreet. He sold off Effie's major stocks in unobtrusive parcels, often working through five or six different brokers to disguise their origin. The last thing he wanted to do was alarm the market, or to
cause a run on Watson's New York before Effie had withdrawn all of her assets. He set up an office for her in his own building, in Canal Street, under the new company name of F. E. Securities & Investments, so that even when Effie moved to California she would have a New York company to trade in stocks and handle any Wall Street business she still might be interested in. As chairman of F E. Securities, Effie appointed a young banker who had worked for five years at Chase, Richard B Coogan III. He was smart, bespectacled, and snappy, a classic Yalie, and he spoke as if each word were a snip of metal. Effie paid him $88,000 a year, and promised him more if he produced the results she wanted. He said, ‘Right at this moment, my greatest reward is not working for those fat old poker-playing frauds at Chase any more. Miss Watson, with all respect, you're beautiful.'

Caldwell liked Dick Coogan. Occasionally they played squash together. But Caldwell made sure that all of Dick's F. E. Securities business was filtered to Effie through him. Caldwell became, day and night, Effie's most attentive escort, keeping her constantly informed on the movements of the stock market, attending meetings with her, and taking her out to dinner in the evenings so that they could discuss their strategy for creating a new American banking empire. He ordered and paid for a daily supply of fresh-cut flowers on her desk. On the day he sold her last block of General Motors stock, he presented her with a tiny gold Cadillac for her charm bracelet, with diamonds for headlamps. They were seen so often at luncheon together, at the ‘21' or Huberts or L'Histoire, that the evening papers began to print nudging little one-liners about them – although anyone eavesdropping on their conversation would have heard nothing steamier than lists of disposable securities, or arrangements for leasing office premises in Southern California.

Caldwell's pièce de résistance as Effie's business escort was to win admission for her at lunchtimes to the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, traditionally reserved for men until the market closed in the afternoons. It helped Caldwell a great deal that he was owed a considerable favour by the management; but the management themselves were alert enough to Effie's wealth and status on Wall Street to accept her as an ‘honorary banker.' Effie and Caldwell lunched there rarely;
just often enough to assert Effie's rights to be there, but many of the older customers complained bitterly, and others asked to be warned in advance by telephone whenever Effie had booked a table, so that they could keep their blood pressure down by lunching somewhere else. Effie respected the restaurant's traditions by dressing soberly, and never smoking (the first lady to do that in the Plaza was Mrs Pat Campbell, who ostentatiously lit up a cigarette in the Palm Court, and caused a social furore that shook New York for months). Effie never ventured into the men's bar, either.

Some evenings, when they had finished work, Caldwell would drive Effie up to Harlem, to Connie's on 131st Street, or the Lafayette, or the Cotton Club, on Lenox Avenue at 142nd. These were the years when the ‘class white trade' delighted in slumming uptown in Harlem: the streets outside Barrons Cabaret or Ye Olde Nest would be double-parked with Cadillacs and Packards and Jordans. Inside, segregated audiences of wealthy whites and sharply-dressed Negroes would be sitting with bottles of bootleg liquor under the tables around their feet, spectacular black revues like the Fletcher Henderson Band and fifty black girls in ‘Jazz Fantasy'; or Bessie Smith singing in ‘Mississipi Days'. On any one evening in Harlem, a white jazz enthusiast could listen to Duke Ellington's Recording Orchestra, Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, Fats Waller, and scores of musicals and floor-shows. Not many white people went primarily for the jazz, however:
Variety
magazine accurately described the main attraction as chorus-lines of ‘high yaller girls' who could ‘uncork the meanest kind of cootching.'

Effie adored Caldwell's company. He was always assured, always courteous, and he could always think of something new to do. His composure was shaken only twice. The first time was when they were sitting in the Cotton Club, listening to Duke Ellington, and George ‘Big Frenchy' De Mange, the club's current owner and one of New York's most unsavoury mobsters, came across the floor in his double-breasted dinner-jacket to take Effie's hand in his, and kiss it loudly, and say, ‘Miss Watson … you hafta believe how sorry I was about Spats. Him and me were so close we coulda been Sy Meezes. You know what I mean?'

The second time was at the end of March, when Caldwell took Effie to dinner at the Colony, to celebrate the disposal of
the last of her stocks, and his readiness to help her set up (with the co-operation of Amadeo Giannini) the Commerce Bank of California. In the same way that Giannini had got around the American law which restricted a bank's operations to only one state, Caldwell had set up for Effie a holding company called Scotbank Corporation which supervised both the California bank and the New York securities division. This in turn was controlled, along with Effie's oil and mining interests, by a super-holding company called PanStates Inc.

‘Your overall holding company should sound like a grand patriotic institution,' Caldwell told her, sitting elegantly on his stool in the Colony's gold and blue bar, in a Brooks Brothers dinner suit, with white tie. ‘Giannini called his the TransAmerica Corporation, and you can't get much more grandiose than that, can you? Especially if you're only a hoary old Italian immigrant.'

‘What am I?' asked Effie, fitting a pink cocktail cigarette into her long gold holder. ‘A hoary old
Scottish
immigrant?'

Caldwell smiled. ‘You always catch me out, don't you?' He lit her cigarette for her, and then sat back a little to admire her. She was wearing a gold-and-black sequined evening gown, with black silk fringes, and a headband of diamonds, gold, and jet. The gown was cut very low in front, in a deep V-shape, almost baring her breasts. Beneath it, she was completely naked, except for silver silk stockings, held up with silver garters.

Gerardo, the
maitre-d
', came up and said, ‘Your table is ready when you are, Miss Watson, Good evening, Mr Brooks.'

‘We'll be with you in a moment, Gerardo,' said Caldwell.

Effie watched him through slightly narrowed eyes. ‘You've got something on your mind,' she said.

‘Of course,' agreed Caldwell. ‘And you know what it is.'

‘You're referring to the chairmanship of the Commerce Bank of California.'

Caldwell nodded. ‘Your secretary told me today that you're already booked on
The Twentieth Century Limited
on Monday afternoon; that you intend to stay overnight on Wednesday at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago, after meetings with the First Chicago Bank; and that you're booked to leave Chicago on Thursday morning on The
City of Los
Angeles. Headed, of course, for Los Angeles.'

Effie sipped her champagne cocktail, and then inclined her head to one side in quiet acknowledgement of Caldwell's inside-information. ‘You have extraordinary power over secretaries, Caldwell. There's no question about that.'