The Rich Are Different (63 page)

‘It’s no good you losing your temper, Steve. No one’s going to believe your accusations because everyone likes me so much. I’m one of the most popular men on the Street.’

‘You’re insane!’ My anger dissolved abruptly into horror. ‘You’ve gone mad! You’ve got to resign right now this minute—’

‘NEVER!’ His persistent serenity was shattered so violently that I sprang back. It was as if all the fragments of his personality had burst apart. He was on his feet, his eyes glittering, his lips wet, the colour rushing to his face. ‘I’ll die before I resign!’ he shouted. ‘And if I die I swear I’ll take both you and the whole goddamned bank with me!’

I dived for the gun between us but I was too slow. He grabbed it first. Sprawling wildly, I overbalanced, and the last thing I heard before I hit the floor was three shots being fired in rapid succession.

[5]

He
shot O’Reilly first. It was lucky for me that he did. I’d lost my balance by the time he fired at me and the bullet missed, burying itself in the bookcase. Then he turned the gun on himself.

I was still scrabbling on the floor when the boys burst in from the other room.

‘My God!’ I dimly recognized Sam Keller’s appalled voice.

I tried to crawl up the desk on to my feet. My legs felt like wet cement.

‘Did he hit you?’

I didn’t know. I was in shock, unable to do anything but gasp for breath. I stared around at the carnage. O’Reilly, slumped in his chair, had been shot through the heart. His eyes bore a surprised expression. Charley had fallen forward to sprawl across the desk. He had put the gun to his head and his brains were sprayed across the back of the chair.

‘I think Steve’s all right, Sam. There’s no blood.’

‘Christ, Neil, what on earth are we going to do?’

They were twittering like frightened fledglings somewhere above my head.

‘The nightwatchman,’ I said. I was still on my knees. ‘The guard. They’ll have heard the shots. Mustn’t let them see you. Nobody must know. Cover it all up.’

‘Take it easy, Steve,’ said Sam. ‘Shall I get you a shot of brandy?’

I found my hip-flask, poured some Scotch down my throat and was on my feet. ‘Get the hell out of here, kids.’

‘But—’

‘Scram! Hide! Do as I say!’

They bolted back to the closet just as the nightwatchman’s running footsteps clattered across the floor of the back-lobby.

I was at the door to meet him. ‘Call the police, Willis!’ I gasped. ‘There’s been a terrible accident …’

[6]

I got rid of him, slammed the door, locked it and yanked the boys out of hiding.

‘Get all that recording junk stashed in the car. You’ve got five minutes at most, probably less.’

As they clawed at the equipment I turned back to the carnage, took a deep breath and plunged in. Thanking God the gun could never be traced to me, I wiped away Charley’s prints, wrapped O’Reilly’s fingers around the handle and let the gun fall to the floor beside his chair. Charley had lunged across the desk to fire at point-blank range so the powder burns with any luck might be consistent with the explanation that O’Reilly, not Charley, had been the one to turn the gun on himself. When I had finished I vomited into the grate, but had recovered by the
time Cornelius and Sam came rushing back to collect the last of the props.

‘All right, kids,’ I said. ‘Remember you saw nothing, heard nothing. You weren’t even here. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Now beat it.’

They scampered away just as the police stormed down the great hall with the verve of revolutionary troops leading a charge against the British. Sinking down in an armchair I tried to look as if I were in shock. I didn’t have to try very hard.

That was when my
tour de force
began and it ended a week later when the official verdict on the disaster proclaimed that Charley had been murdered by Terence O’Reilly who had then killed himself while he had been temporarily deranged. I lied to everyone in sight, bribed the world to the eyeballs and drank myself into a stupor each night to numb my terror. I’d never even have attempted such a suicidal gamble if I’d had the choice but unfortunately no such choice existed. The one disaster the bank could never have survived was public knowledge of Charley’s crimes.

I told the police that I had fired O’Reilly from the firm after Paul’s funeral because of a conflict between our two temperaments, and said he’d been bothering me ever since. He’d claimed he was being victimized and accused me of discriminating against Catholics. When out of sheer Christian charity I had finally granted O’Reilly an audience I had asked Charley to sit in because I’d been nervous about facing a mentally disturbed man on my own.

‘Although he didn’t go berserk and pull the gun,’ I explained, ‘until he’d got me to confess I was a Protestant.’

When questioned further I said that O’Reilly had been employed by Paul Van Zale as a general dogsbody and had always deeply resented his insignificant position.

The police swallowed the story whole and retreated with well-greased palms to oil the wheels of Jimmy Walker’s wide-open town. The press boozily absorbed the details and wrote the appropriate reams of garbage. At the press conference I’d taken care to fuel the journalists with more decent liquor than they’d seen since the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment, and after I’d talked emotionally for half an hour about the mentally deranged they were all too drunk to care about asking awkward questions.

Not even my partners suspected the truth. Spinning them a variation of the yarn I’d concocted for the police, I said that when Greg Da Costa’s information had led me to O’Reilly I had enlisted Charley’s help in the final showdown, and not one of them dreamt Charley could also have been involved in the conspiracy. Ironically I was helped by Charley’s popularity. Nobody would have believed him guilty of embezzlement, let alone murder, and so in the end his damnable ‘reputation’ saved not only his posthumous good name but Van Zale’s itself.

In fact my partners were all so grateful to me for not only unmasking the conspiracy but neutralizing it that nobody objected when I suggested
I should be joint senior partner with Lewis. For once even Clay had to swallow his jealousy in silence.

The funeral was all hell in black tails and how I got through it I’ll never know. The worst part was when Miranda Blair told me tearfully how touched she was to see me so affected by Charley’s death. Afterwards all I could do was go home, get drunk and pass out.

O’Reilly’s estranged family claimed his body but I didn’t have to see them. Lewis coped with that particular scene, but I had to see Sylvia and afterwards I almost wished Lewis and I could have swapped places.

‘Did he confess?’ was the only question she asked.

‘Yes.’

Of course it never occurred to her to question Charley’s role in the affair.

That left Elizabeth Clayton. I thought I ought to see her to make sure my secrets were safe with her, but I needn’t have worried. She just told me she had destroyed the suicide note and was glad all Paul’s murderers had finally paid for their crime.

She did ask: ‘Why did Charley do it? Was it some past grudge?’ but when I started to explain I saw she wasn’t really listening. Motives hardly mattered to her any more. She had lost Paul and Bruce and nothing could bring them back, not even the justice of Terence O’Reilly’s murder and Charley Blair’s bloody suicide.

When I left Elizabeth I paused to check that I’d left no stone uncemented in my efforts to bury the truth. There was – as always – Greg Da Costa, but I realized now that Greg had been essentially ignorant of the conspiracy in its final form. Charley had only joined at the end, long after Greg had backed away, and to explain his new wealth O’Reilly had probably told Greg he had made a fortune in the market. Greg wasn’t going to go checking up on that and he was just the kind of guy who would believe that kind of fairy-tale. I suspected Charley would have increased his payments to O’Reilly to cover Greg’s hush-money, but they would have kept all that information from Greg. You don’t tell a talented extortionist any more than he needs to know.

I did wonder if I ought to do something about Greg but finally decided I could afford to leave him well alone. With any luck he’d get himself rubbed out by his employers but if he survived I thought he wouldn’t dare try to make further capital out of the assassination. He’d be uncertain how much the police had found out as the result of the latest bloodbath at One Willow Street, and he wouldn’t want to risk arrest as an accessory before the fact of Paul’s murder by calling attention to his past links with O’Reilly. Greg was no genius but he did have a certain amount of low cunning, and I was confident he’d have enough brains to lie low with his mouth shut for a change.

‘Maybe Greg’ll land another loaded broad!’ said my brother Matt brightly, and I gloomily acknowledged this was possible. Real four-flushers like Greg Da Costa always seem to slither back on to their feet somehow.

I had
no problem with my brothers. They still believed the conspiracy had been financed by a foreign government and so they could see no reason why another conspirator should have lain beyond O’Reilly. In fact a month after the funeral when all the dust had settled and I was daring to believe I might have survived my suicidal gamble, I realized there were in fact only four people alive who knew the whole truth. Elizabeth and I weren’t talking, but I was worried about Sam and Cornelius.

At the first opportunity, I had gone to the Van Zale house on Fifth Avenue to drill them in the stories I had planned to tell the press, police and partners, and they had sworn solemnly to keep their mouths shut and support me every inch of the way. Later I’d retrieved the tape recording from them and destroyed it. In theory I should then have been able to relax, but I kept worrying in case those boys were indiscreet. I had a recurring nightmare in which they got drunk at a party and spilled out the story to anyone who would listen. Twenty-year-old kids always think they’re so smart, but as anyone my age knows there’s no one quite so dumb as a kid who thinks he knows everything.

I decided I’d have to talk to them again but for some reason – unwillingness to resurrect my memories of that night, perhaps – I kept putting the lecture off, and in the end it was not I who went to Cornelius, but Cornelius who came to me.

He waited six months, and afterwards when I could see how carefully he’d tippy-toed his way through the chaos I caught another glimpse of the little bastard who had talked so toughly about crucifixions. Underneath those girlish gold curls and behind those starry grey eyes was a mind like a machete with steel nerves to match.

I’ve often wondered why I made such mistakes with Cornelius. It’s just not good enough to say he didn’t look like the toughest kid in town. It’s not good enough either to say I thought he was a homosexual – and my God, was
that
a mistake! Homosexuals can be tough businessmen, as Paul had advised me long ago, and I was always careful not to underrate them. I think the trouble arose because I just couldn’t believe he was one of Paul’s people. I had this sort of vague idea – which for some reason I found comforting – that Paul had only made the boy his heir because he had wanted to be nice to Mildred.

I should have realized from the start that this was just the kind of sentimental bullshit that Paul would have avoided like the plague.

It was the Friday before Christmas when Cornelius tapped on my door and asked meekly for an audience. The winter sunlight shone on his golden curls.

‘Come on in!’ I said cheerily. ‘Come to wish me a merry Christmas? I guess you’re just off to get your train to Cincinnati.’

‘Not quite.’ He closed the door and glided over to my desk. ‘May I sit down?’

‘Sure. What’s the problem?’

‘No problem,’ said Cornelius, all cherubic innocence. ‘But I just thought
this might be an opportune moment to tell you that in the new year I’d like to be made a full partner. I think it’s time that my influence in the firm bore more relation to my share of the firm’s capital.’

The funny little guy! It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. ‘Sonny,’ I said indulgently, ‘you’re doing well here, but whoever heard of anyone becoming a full partner in a House like Van Zale’s before the age of twenty-one?’

‘With Sam’s support I know I could handle more responsibility.’

His persistence annoyed me. Suddenly I no longer found him amusing. ‘Cornelius,’ I said abruptly, ‘we’re constantly dealing with middle-aged clients who would never accept a young kid as their financial adviser. I appreciate you’re an able hard-working boy, but right now for the good of the firm I’m going to have to turn you down.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Cornelius in a voice of silk, ‘but I don’t think you can afford to do that.’

‘If you’re referring to your capital—’

‘I’m not. This is December 1928, not July 1926, and we both know that thanks to the market you could afford to let my capital go.’

I stared at him, that monster of a boy whom Paul had plucked from a sedate mid-western suburb, and every instinct in my body told me I was in bad, bad trouble.

‘Explain yourself!’ I invited with my warmest smile.

‘Sure. It’s simple.’ He leant forward confidingly. ‘It must surely have occurred to you after the … incident last July that you’d actually committed several criminal offences? It hasn’t? Well, let me give you a few examples. It appears from the recording—’

‘I destroyed the recording!’

‘Well, naturally,’ said Cornelius surprised, ‘we made a copy.’

A blow beneath the belt couldn’t have shocked me more. I went on staring. In the end he started speaking again in a friendly reasonable voice.

‘It appears from the recording that you chose to join the conspiracy to conceal the truth about Paul’s death. You agreed to join O’Reilly in extorting money from Charley Blair. Of course I know you only did that to encourage O’Reilly to reveal Charley’s identity, but the police might draw quite a different conclusion, mightn’t they, if ever they were to listen to the recording? Then you tampered with the evidence when you made it look as if O’Reilly had done the shooting. That must constitute obstruction of justice and maybe even misprision of a felony. Or would you just be an accessory after the fact? It would be a nice point for a criminal lawyer. And then, of course, it was your gun. It’s just possible you could have shot both men yourself. Sam and I know you didn’t, but we couldn’t see what went on, could we, and the police might think—’