children.”
“That sounds like you do take the curse seriously.”
“But I don’t really. Hell, I’ve grown casual with it. I do love the silly thingamabob. I wear it almost all the time.”
“I don’t see it now.”
“Don’t you? Haven’t you noticed? Mike’s wearing it today.”
The Great Dane lifted his head at the sound of his name and looked at me like I was the dumbest shit on the planet. He had a right to feel highfalutin, for a hound, considering the simple necklace of “rhinestones” looped around his stiff collar bore the most famous diamond in the world, an indigo blue stone, in a diamond setting, about the size of a golf ball. It winked at me.
So did Mrs. McLean.
“Stay for dinner, Mr. Heller,” she said, rising, “we’ll have drinks and talk of Gaston Means and kidnappers and ransom money, afterward.”
17
The butler, Garboni, showed me to my room, so I could freshen up before supper. It seemed I was staying overnight.
“People may talk,” Mrs. McLean had said, as we exited the sun porch, taking my arm rather formally, as if she were attired in the latest Hattie Carnegie creation and not a housecoat, “but hell, let them. I hardly think with a staff of twenty, and sixty rooms, I need worry about you compromising what little remains of my virtue.”
“Like the white slaver said to the schoolgirl, you can trust me, Mrs. McLean.”
She smiled at that. “You’ll be staying in Vinson’s room. It’s been kept just the same, since his death.”
“You’ve put me in your son’s room?”
“No. My brother’s. My son’s room has been preserved, as well. It’s a luxury of a house this size. But I never allow anyone to sleep there.”
Brother Vinson’s room, my room, was on the third floor-and we, the butler and me, went by elevator. I tried to remember when I’d ever been in a private residence that had elevators before, and couldn’t. The hallway Garboni led me down was wide enough to accommodate an el train and still take passengers on from either side. Persian rugs underfoot, brocade wallpaper surrounding me, I gaped like a rube at oil paintings and watercolors that looked European and venerable in their elaborate gilt-edged frames, noting my slack-jawed expression in the mirror of dark-wood furniture that was polished past absurdity. I felt about as at home as an archbishop in a brothel; but like the archbishop, I could adjust.
Garboni opened the door to Vinson’s room-actually, it was a suite of rooms-and we entered a sitting room a little smaller than the deck of the
“Take it easy, pal,” I said irritably. “There’s a gun in there.”
His eyes flared a little bit; that threw him. “Sorry, sir.”
“And here I was getting ready to give you a nickel tip.”
He took that at face value, or seemed to. “No gratuities are necessary, sir.”
“I’ll say. Scram.”
He scrammed; without a word, without even a nasty look. For a burly-looking wop, this bird was pretty easily spooked.
And so I was alone in Vinson’s digs. Sort of.
Just me and the stuffed alligator. And the two sets of armor. And the waist-high ivory elephant. And the six- foot bronze horse. I sat on a plush red couch with a half dozen red pillows, the sort of thing you might find yourself sitting on in a San Francisco whorehouse, and took in the goddamnedest, godawfulest assembly of mismatched junk I ever saw. A Navajo blanket covering a table; an oversize anchor clock on the wall; a portrait of a Madonna and Child; a Hindu bust; a combined bookcase and gun case; seven pieces of old armor on the wall and a shield, too; a carved bellows; several red throw rugs; a slinky-looking sofa that looked like something a Turkish harem girl might lounge on. Vinson might’ve been dead, but his bad taste lived on.
The bedroom itself was almost spartan in comparison-a bookcase filled with Horatio Alger, a cabinet with mirror, a single bed of rough rustic wood that seemed a relic or reminder or something of Colorado.
I used the bathroom-I had my own private one, no bigger than your average Chicago two-flat-and, as Mrs. McLean requested, freshened up. As I splashed water on my face, I wondered what to make of this-specifically, of her. She seemed silly but smart; self-absorbed but caring. A vain rich woman in a 98-cent housecoat.
I didn’t like her exactly-but she fascinated me. And she was attractive; probably ten or fifteen years older than me, but what the hell-older women try harder. Even wealthy ones. Especially wealthy ones.
The room had its own phone, which would allow me to check in with Lindbergh and Breckinridge at my convenience. On the other hand, I could be listened in on, so I’d edit whatever I said with Mrs. McLean in mind.
Freshened or not, I wore the same suit down to dinner-I only had two along; in fact, I only owned two-and, for fifteen minutes or so, sat alone under a cut crystal chandelier at a table for twenty-four, at which there were two place settings, directly opposite each other, midway. I was served a thin white wine that the thin black server, who was dressed far more formally than I, informed me was a Montrachet, as if I should have been impressed, which I wasn’t. He should have known better than to try to impress a guy who had a stuffed alligator in his room.
Mrs. McLean’s entrance, however, did impress. She had traded in the dowdy plaid robe for an embroidered gown, its delicate lacework dark red against a soft pink that at first seemed to be her flesh; but her flesh was whiter, creamier, as was attested to by the low cut of the gown, the white swell of her breasts, and they were indeed swell, providing a resting place for a string of perfect pearls so long it fell off the cliff of her breasts and dropped to her lap. There were worse places to fall from and to. She’d relieved Mike of the Hope diamond, which was around her own neck now, dangling just above the cleft of her bosom. In her hair was a feathered diamond tiara and her earrings were pearls that dwarfed the ballbearing-size ones of the necklace.
Her smile was amused and pleased. “I told you I could dazzle, if I chose.”
“You look great,” I said, lamely, getting up.
She gestured for me to sit and soon we were enjoying her chef’s filet of lemon sole (“with Marguery sauce”).
“Maurice,” she said, referring to her chef, “is the most priceless gem in this house.”
“I hope he doesn’t come with a curse.”
“No,” she said, smiling a little, more relaxed now despite her more formal attire, “just with the pedigree of the best cafes in Paris and London. He trained as a caterer. That’s the only sort of chef to go after.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I suppose tartar sauce is out of the question.”
She laughed; I was glad she was finally getting my jokes-too bad I hadn’t been joking.
“You know,” she said, reflecting a while later over Maurice’s “patented” parfait, “money is lovely to have and I do love having it-but it doesn’t really bring the big things of life. Friends, health, respect. And it’s apt to make one soft, selfish, self-indulgent.”
“You mean, while we’re eating parfaits in this palace, people are out there scrounging for scraps, living in shacks made out of tin cans and cardboard.”
She nodded, sadly, even as she tasted a bite of parfait. “If only I’d had the courage, years ago, to lead my own life…apart from Ned and his family and my parents and my family…I might by now have helped so many poor souls…. I might have done infinitely more good with my life.”
She licked ice cream from her lips as she shook her head regretfully.
“Well, you are trying to do some good,” I said. “For the Lindberghs and their boy.”
“Yes. In my small way. If you’re finished, Mr. Heller, we can move to the sitting room, and I’ll explain everything.”
I took her by the arm and we moved through that excessive, magnificent house through the Louis XV
