Night Work (16 page)

“I'm fine. I'm great. How could I not be? I have all this.” She waved a hand at the apartment. “My husband loves me, loves our children, loves to make even more money. I think I have that in the right order.” She took his cigarette from him for a drag and gave it back. “Have you seen Dad?”

“From across a crowded room.”

“Let's go say hello.”

But she was distracted by a maid who needed clarification about something in the kitchen.

“Hi, Dad.” Tom Cassidy turned from rearranging the burning logs with a poker.

“Michael.” He put the poker back in its stand and hugged his son, a holdover from his Russian childhood, a gesture of affection imported to the Upper East Side of New York where men rarely touched except in games or combat. Tom Cassidy had been born Tomas Kasnavietski, but he had changed his name when he made his way to America as a fifteen-year-old fleeing service in the Tsar's army. A new future, a new name.

“A great little actress, that Marie LaGrange. She's going to be wonderful for us. It's as if the part was written for her.” His father spoke only in superlatives and with a strong Russian accent. He believed that tomorrow would always be a better day, that every project was due for smashing success. His optimism knew no bounds, and it sometimes grated on Cassidy like fingernails on a chalkboard. “She's a sweet girl. You could do worse, you know.”

Sweet girl, my ass,
Cassidy thought.
She's about as sweet as a straight razor.
So she was cast. She had the part. Why hadn't she told Cassidy?

“We're doing a stage reading tomorrow. Two o'clock. Can you come?”

“I'm on the job tomorrow, Dad.”

“A couple of hours. They'll never know. The first read-through's always exciting. I'd love to know what you think of the piece.” His father was always trying to persuade him to give up the cops and come into the business.

“Not tomorrow.”

“We're in rehearsal starting Monday. Come soon.”

“Sure. Soon.” An easy deflection.

“Great. Great. You're going to love this play. Everyone's going to love this play. It's the funniest thing I've ever read. There's a bit in the first act when…”

“Tom, we have to go. We're meeting Robbie Lantz for dinner at seven,” Tom's wife Megan interrupted. “Hello, Michael.”

“Megan.” He brushed his stepmother's cheek in a kiss, and as she pulled away she left a trace of perfume. Ma Griffe. His mother had worn it. Did Megan know that? Did she wear it because his father asked her to? Would a man ask his second wife to wear the perfume his dead wife had worn?

Cassidy's mother had died by what Cassidy thought of as accidental suicide. She had taken pills but timed the thing so that Tom would find her when he came home at an appointed hour, find her and save her and love her more for having saved her. But he was late, as he often was, and she died from the miscalculation. Cassidy had found her, and when he did, he realized that he had dreamed of her death a month before it happened, dreamed of finding her. He was sixteen then, and when he'd had the dream, he had dismissed it as an awful nightmare. How was he to know it was prophecy? If he had known he might have been able to stop it. He carried that like a stone in his heart.

“I'll go say good-bye to Leah,” Tom said and moved away.

“How are you, Michael?” Megan asked.

“I'm fine.”

“Good.” Her smile said she did not believe him. She was a striking blonde, a former dancer now in her forties, trim, strong, intelligent, calm, and direct. She was fiercely protective of Tom Cassidy. She organized his life, entertained the people he needed entertained, ran his household impeccably, reminded him of obligations he might have forgotten, sent notes of congratulations or condolence in his name to those who should have them, took an interest in his work without being obtrusive, and checked him subtly when his enthusiasms threatened to run him aground, the perfect wife. For the first few years that she had been with his father Cassidy had fought his instinct to like her. Guilt for his mother's death, rage that someone could replace her, something, a question for a headshrinker, which he didn't care to ask or answer. But the animosity was gone now, anyway. She was a good person, hard to dislike.

“How's the play?”

“Not good.”

The answer surprised him, not for its directness, he expected that from her, but because his father's selection of plays to produce was usually flawless. Not every one had been a smash hit, but none had been disasters. “Really not good?”

“Really not.”

“Have you told him?”

“Yes. We had a fight about it. We don't usually fight, but that night we did. It's an unfunny comedy about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things.”

“That sounds like a great evening in the theater. What made him choose it?”

“The central character is a man who escaped from bad beginnings, is now a big success in America, and has fallen in love with a younger woman.”

“Ahh.”

“Yes. He reads into it things that are not there but that he wishes were there. And he has hired a young French director, a darling of the avant garde, who has the sense of humor of a toothache and thinks the whole thing is a metaphor for the death of colonialism in the twentieth century.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. It's going to be a great couple of months waiting for the crash.”

Tom Cassidy reappeared and put his arm around Megan's waist. “Are we off? We don't want to keep Robbie waiting.” This from a man who had never been on time since birth. “Michael, come to the run-through. A couple of hours.”

“I'll try. It sounds like too much fun to miss.”

Megan winked. Tom Cassidy clapped him on the shoulder, and they left.

Cassidy worked through the room looking for Marie, but the actor Newman and Marie were no longer at the party. So that's why she wanted to come. She must have heard Newman would be at the party. He went to the bar and asked for a martini. So it was done. He had served his purpose. Did he feel anything, a sense of loss? No. He felt relieved. He raised his glass to the bartender. “Happy days.”

“Yes, sir. Happy days.”

“Frank, make me one of those silver bullets like you made for Mr. Cassidy.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Buckman. Coming up. Twist or an olive?”

“Olive.” Mark Buckman took a handful of peanuts from a cut-glass bowl on the bar. “Having fun?”

“I can barely contain my excitement,” Cassidy said.

“Yeah. A dull crowd. Well-bred, polite, civic minded, proper, successful, and boring.”

“Why do you invite them?”

“It's expected of us. They invite us. We invite them. The iron rules of social intercourse. And I'm making money with some of them. I guess that counts for something. Do you want to stay for dinner? It would liven up the table.

“No, thanks. Thelonious Monk's playing at The Vanguard. I want to catch the early set.” He loved his sister and liked Mark, but most of their friends were rich people whom he found insular and self-satisfied, as if the money had sanded off their interesting edges.

“Yeah, I don't blame you,” Mark said, as if reading his mind. “I'd go with you if I thought I could get away with it. Come on, one more drink. At least I can send you out of here fueled. And I want to talk to you about something. Five minutes, and then you're free.”

The library was a male sanctuary. The walls were lacquered with many coats of a deep red. The chairs and sofa were tobacco leather, and there were hunting and sailing prints in gold frames on the walls. A man named Peter Sanborn, a classmate of Cassidy's older brother Brian, was waiting for them by the windows in the last of the evening light. Sanborn was a tall, narrow-shouldered man with a small, pinched face that always reminded Cassidy of a praying mantis. He tilted slightly forward with his shoulders hunched when he walked or stood, which added to the impression. “Michael, how are you? You look well. How's Brian? Give him my best when you see him, will you? I really must call him. I don't think I've seen him since the last reunion. We should get together.” Sanborn had been brought up with all the proper manners: he inquired politely about the lives of others, pretended interest in what they told him, looked a man in the eye when speaking, shook hands firmly.

It was all a lie.

He was a member of a very small club, old New York money, which extended its membership to old Boston money, old Philadelphia money, and a few families from Virginia, and he believed to the bone that he was better than anyone who was not in that club, not that he would ever be so crass as to say it, but it was evident from the thinly veiled contempt he had for almost anyone who came under his eye. He was an arrogant prick, and he had always been an arrogant prick. He had probably sneered at the doctor who pulled him out. There had been a moment, years ago, in a playground in Central Park when Cassidy was ten when Sanborn had explained to a group of older boys that “Cassidy's father is a Russian, but at least he's not a Russian Jew, at least I think not.” Cassidy had felt the insult clearly, not so much from the words, but from the complete disdain with which they were delivered, and he had taken a step toward the bigger boy, fists clenched, when Brian stopped him.

“It isn't worth it. He's a jerk. Let it go.” That was Brian's way, the conciliator. Cassidy wanted to punch Sanborn in the mouth even if he lost the fight.

As Brian pulled him away he heard Sanborn complain, “What's wrong with him? Their father is Russian, isn't he? And he isn't a Jew, is he? So what's the big deal?”

“How are you, Peter? Still abusing the peasants on the plantation?”

“Oh, no. Father sold the farm two years ago. It wasn't producing financially, and he'd only held on to it for the bird shooting, but since he broke his hip, well, there you are.”

So much for Sanborn's sense of irony.

“What's up, Mark?” Cassidy took a sip of the martini. Cold, clear, mineral. Something loosened inside him, and he settled in one of the big comfortable chairs.

“I wanted to pick your brains a bit about Cuba.” Mark sat on the sofa opposite and put his feet up on the coffee table.

Sanborn stood rigidly at the end of the sofa as if undecided where to light. “I still don't understand why you think a New York policeman is going to have any insight that might be of value to us.”

Mark raised his eyebrows to Cassidy—what are you going to do? Then, patiently to Sanborn. “He was there when Castro took over. He has met some of the players. He's a smart man.” To Cassidy, “We have some investments in Cuba. We're concerned about rumors coming out of Havana that Castro is thinking of nationalizing some of the industries, that he is tending toward a socialist view of post-revolution Cuba.”

“Socialist? He's a goddamn Communist,” Sanborn said.

“He says he isn't,” Cassidy said.

“Of course he says he isn't. What do you expect, a confession? He needs our money and support to establish power. After that, he'll do as he pleases. Are you that naïve?”

“Yes,” Cassidy said. “It's one of my most endearing traits.”

“I have it on good authority that he is hiding his true colors, that he is red through and through.”

“What authority?”

“The Dulles brothers. John Foster was at Princeton with Father, and Allen was there with both my uncles.” Members of the club. “John's gone, of course, but he was keeping an eye on the situation down there the last few years, and he didn't like it, didn't like it at all, and Allen is in complete agreement.”

“Okay. Fine. Who am I to argue with people who went to school with your father and your uncles?”

“The secretary of state and the head of the CIA. The fact that they went to school with my family is beside the point.”

Mark Buckman stepped in to calm the waters. “What do you think, Mike? Did you get any feeling for what might happen? You have that friend, the artist, you've talked about. Ribera? What does he think? You said he was involved.”

“He believes in Castro. He thinks the man is going to do good things for the people. Socialist? Maybe. Communist? Ribera says, no.”

“You're going to take his word over that of the Dulles brothers? For God's sake, most artists are Commies. Everyone knows that,” Sanborn said with perfect conviction.

“You really are an asshole, aren't you, Peter. You are one of the few men I know who has learned nothing since he got out of school.” Cassidy took another sip of the martini.

“You can't talk to me like that.”

“Of course I can.” He lit a cigarette and blew smoke at Sanborn. “I have a gun and you don't. The way the world works the guy with the gun gets to say what he wants, and the guy without the gun listens or fucks off.”

Sanborn worked his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked to Mark for help, but Mark was busy studying the ice in his drink and trying not to smile. Sanborn put his glass down hard on a table and left the room.

Mark sighed and took a pull at his glass of bourbon. “You're right, of course. He is an idiot. But he's like an idiot savant of finance. What he touches sprouts money.”

“Did he take you into Cuba?”

“Yeah. Sanborn had this deal. He invited me and a couple of other guys in.” He got up and went to the desk and found a colored brochure and gave it to Cassidy. There was a photograph of the Hotel Nacional on the cover and Paradise One, a Sanborn–Buckman Company. The inside pages extolled the moneymaking certainties of investing in the project, past performance being no guarantee of future performance.

“So what is it?”

“It's a company Sanborn put together to invest in properties in Cuba, hotels mostly, some nightclubs. He used to spend time in Cuba. There was a cousin of some sort on his mother's side who made a lot of money in sugar and introduced him around. Sanborn got tight with a bunch of people in Batista's government, and some of the people who already owned casinos down there.”