A Hamptons Christmas (13 page)

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Authors: James Brady

BOOK: A Hamptons Christmas
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He'll look into a man's eye and tell his age within a year.
The Maidstone is a very old club sitting atop the East Hampton dunes, with the ocean as a backdrop. It has a carefully culled membership with a long waiting list, and it is managed and operated by intelligent people. One of their more prescient decisions, long ago, was to take into consideration the frenetic hubbub of an American Christmas-shopping season. And to try to do something about it.
Slowing it down, for one.
The annual pre-Christmas dinner took place on December 22. The next evening but one, clearly, was unsuitable, being Christmas Eve. A night or two before, members were still at their chores, their office parties, their shopping and errands. The twenty-second, three nights before Christmas, seemed a sensible time to sit and draw breath, to chat, eat and drink, perhaps exchange, though not open, a few small gifts.
The Admiral traditionally took a table. A large one. Not quite large enough this year. We ended with several tables, moderately proportioned. By now half the winter population of East Hampton had joined in our plot to protect and conceal Emma Driver. The Admiral understood where his bread was buttered, I assure you.
Consider just who was there at the club that night (either members in good standing or as invited guests):
The mayor; artist Julian Schnabel; Uma Thurman with her baby (now sitting up brightly in a youth chair); Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; painter Childe Hassam, Jr.; Rudy the grocer; Councilman Zenk from Southampton; Budd Schulberg; Netterville the sturgeon king; Calvin Klein's estranged wife, Kelly; Annacone the tennis pro; Billy Joel and his daughter, Alexa; Peter Maas; Valerie Heller; Joe's widow; young Dr. Willard the opthamologist and his pretty wife; George Plimpton with Mrs. P. and their twin girls; and the de Menils from Houston, the oil people. From a nearby table, oldtimer Schuyler Quackenbush III waved at my father, saluting him, I guess, for putting together a first-rate group, which now included, having arrived a bit late, Jesse Maine in his brand-new Ralph Lauren (authentic Native American) togs. There were rumors Martha Stewart might actually come down from Connecticut to flog a servant or weld a burst pipe in the pool house, and that both Ben Bradlee and Wasserstein the Wall Streeter planned cameo appearances. Jerry Della Femina and wife, Judy Licht, hosted a table of their own, having long since come to accommodation on such matters, Jerry celebrating the Jewish holidays with Judy, she marking Christmas for him.
“Golly, Admiral,” said Her Ladyship, “this is a corking group.”
“May I have some, Beecher?” Emma asked when the wine steward came around to take the drinks orders.
“You certainly may not,” said Alix, determined to be on the right side of the Admiral with the holidays looming.
Sister Infanta de Castille was the center of a hub of admirers at one of the better tables near the windows, overlooking the ocean. By now her working of miracles at the surfs edge had passed into local legend. Several local clergy and one fellow in ecclesiastical purple jabbering Italian (I suspected he might be the famed Papal Nuncio) were in attendance, and considerable wine was being consumed. Sister herself was doing her part.
“Are nuns supposed to drink?” my father inquired of Emma,
who'd been fobbed off with a Shirley Temple. “Don't they take vows?”
“Not of abstinence, sir,
pas du tout
. Chastity, yes, those are the serious vows. No licky face or carrying on. But a cocktail or afterdinner brandy,
pourquoi pas
?”
He made a stern Episcopalian face. “I'd have thought drink might also be on the list.”
I wondered if we should approach the nun (Alix having previously made Sister's acquaintance) or if she possibly might head for us, curious to see her quarry (if that's what Emma was) up close. As the table organized itself, and nearby tables called hullo and exchanged kisses, Emma was variously introduced. Some knew her as Alix's ward Jane Pendragon, others as Susannah le Blanc, while she was simply Emma to the rest of us. I fretted over the inconsistencies, but sufficient drink had been taken on by most guests that I don't think the confusion of names was even noted.
Nor, by now, did I believe it mattered. Sister Infanta surely knew not only precisely who the Drivers' child was but which of her aliases she was using.
A tall, ruddy fellow of fifty or so stopped by to chat. “This is Ulf den Blitzen,” I said, introducing him to Alix. There was some brief chat and then Ulf passed on to the next table, calling out hearty “Merry Christmases!”
“Who's he, Beecher?”
“Used to be a noted alpinist. Made all the usual eighth-degree ascents in the Himalayas, scaled the toughest Chamonix needles. Perfectly normal lifestyle until a few years ago, when he joined a cult. Signed over half his money to them. They go on outings in the Adirondacks, chant and dress up, all that male bonding nonsense. Then they climb pine trees without underwear. No one knows quite what to make of it, but I've got to admit, Ulf's never looked fitter.”
“A good club wants a few eccentrics on the membership roles,” my father offered, “so long as they don't frighten horses or children.”
“Why would they climb pines trees without their underwear?” Emma asked. “I should think the needles prick, wouldn't you?”
“Part of the mystique, I'm sure,” said Her Ladyship at her most nonchalant. “Not polite to ask.”
Over the entree Emma nudged me. “I've learned a piece. ‘The Gift of the Magi.' Can I recite it? It's very seasonal. Quite in keeping with the occasion.”
“Yes, very famous American short story. O. Henry.”
“Who's he?”
“Fellow wrote the story.”
“I'm sure not. A Mr. Porter. William Sydney Porter, 1862 to 1910,” Emma informed me.
“O. Henry was his pen name. You know, like you. Sailing under false colors for good reason, I suppose.”
“Did he keep getting kidnapped, too?”
“No, but I think he was in jail. Though briefly.”
“What for?”
My God, the kid could ask questions. I hushed her up by promising if things got dull later, she might recite over the brandy.
“Oh, Beecher, you are good!”
Jesse Maine seemed to enjoy himself. “By damn, this is a dandy club. I'd join here myself if I had the dough and thought I could get the votes.”
“I can't speak to the money, but the votes might well be there, Jesse,” the Admiral said. “You know half the men in this room, I'd wager.”
“Trouble is, Admiral, half of them know me.”
And there was, he went on to remind us, the matter of his arrest record, mostly for poaching but with a few fistfights and a DWI or two thrown in.
“What's DWI?” Emma wanted to know.
“Hush!”
A minichorus of West Point cadets came on then and sang carols, very nice in their gray uniforms, and the singing not bad either. And on the final, traditional pieces, we were all urged
to join in. And did, my father especially loud and occasionally on key.
“By damn!” Jesse said again, even more enthusiastically, “this is one hell of a club you got here, Admiral.”
Venison (local, you understand, part of that culling of the herd up at North Haven) with yams and cranberries was the main dish and that wasn't bad, either, especially with the wine stewards trotting out the vintages without even being summoned. Over the mince and pumpkin pies and coffee Jesse confided that he might be stepping down from one of his multiple leadership roles in the Shinnecock Indian Nation.
“We're appointing a new shaman if things work out. I got enough to do being sachem and war chief without also being medicine man, and going down to Washington and up to Albany to lobby for recognition as an official tribe. As well as getting them to ease up on minimum lengths for striped bass and the poaching laws.”
“Who's this new shaman?” my father asked jocularly, “not Ulf den Blitzen, I trust.”
“No, one of the Latham boys, old Hamptons family. He's almost all Shinnecock and a hell of a lad, Admiral. Claims he can see right into your soul. And to prove it, he'll look into a man's eye and tell his age within a year and his exact weight within two pounds. And he's got one of them aluminum baseball bats he keeps handy in his pickup if anyone objects to being looked in the damned eye, I swear!”
“Wow!” said Emma, “Could you bring Mr. Latham to Geneva sometime, Jesse, so he could meet Mother Superior and look all the nuns in the eye and tell their age and how much they weigh. There's nobody like that in Switzerland at all that I know about.”
“I shouldn't think so, miss. These are rare gifts few has.”
As the coffee was served and the dancing began, here came Sister Infanta de Castille. Had I been more alert I would have inserted myself between our young Emma and this formidable and somewhat intimidating figure. Too late.
Ignoring the rest of our table and holding out a hand, staring down with piercing eyes from her great height, the nun made immediate eye contact with the girl. “I am Sister Infanta de Castille,” she announced.
“Yes, Sister,” Emma replied, inclining her head slightly in a show of manners, “and I am Miss Wanderly Luxemburgo of the Canary Islands.”
“Of course you are,” said the nun, eyes piously lowering, and not believing it for an instant. And then, eyes flicked again upward and blazing, she was off, headed back to her own table, as Emma, totally unperturbed, spooned up a dollop of pêche melba. A pair of genuine fakes they were, those two, and mutually recognized it.
“Well,” said the Admiral, “and what was
that
all about?”
“A passage at arms, father,” I said, “antagonists measuring each other in advance as they wait in the lists, just before the shout goes up, ‘Let the games begin!'”
“Mmm,” Her Ladyship remarked, “most curious.”
And it was, I thought. But then, Christmas parties at the Maidstone, what did one reasonably expect?
Alix flirted with the West Point cadets, George Plimpton's twins and Emma became acquainted (getting along swimmingly), Ulf den Blitzen told stories of grand old times up there at base camp in the Himalayas, “casting about for a glimpse, trying to get a photo of the dreaded Yeti.”
“What's that, sir?” Emma inquired, a bit restive at having Ulf telling stories while she hadn't been asked to recite.
“Also known as the Abominable Snowman. A great, red-headed rascal that leaps out at one.”
“Oh,” said Emma. I could hear Jesse murmur under his breath, “I'll be goddamned!”
Ulf told a good yarn but was tight-lipped about the cult (and climbing pine trees without underwear). While Sister Infanta de Castille so charmed everyone that the chairman of the dinner committee (certainly
not
a Catholic himself, I assure you) got up and asked her to close the evening by giving a blessing.
So we never did get around to having a recitation of “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry, or Mr. Porter, but I think that may have been just as well since, as I recall, it's a pretty sad story to have recited at you on the night just before Christmas.
Especially after a few drinks.
Sister Infanta is repudiated privately by the order of Mother Teresa …
“Reds come ashore. Reds' body washed up!”
That was how the next morning began, and a cold one it was. The thought of Reds Hucko's corpse making an appearance, so shortly after Sister Infanta de Castille and the Baymen prayed over him, was eerie. Of course East Hampton people wanted the poor fellow's body found. You don't want to think of a good man out there in the winter ocean being fed upon by cod. Even if Reds did take a drink. And owed money. But here on shore, in divided East Hampton, as long as Reds was missing at sea, the hostile confrontation between the Marley estate and the Baymen over his gravesite was on indefinite hold. And a good thing. Sis Marley was Mean Jake's sister, and you know what that meant, how mean. And the Bonac Boys were already angry and getting angrier.
The body was pitched into the bed of a pickup and sped to Southampton Hospital for an autopsy, but long before they had the cadaver on the coroner's table, Sister Infanta de Castille had called on Peanuts Murphy to console him.
“Hey, Sister, ain't your fault. Don't sweat it personally.”
“Monsieur Murphy, faith, if truly genuine, endures regardless of these occasional setbacks. And indeed, the sea does give up its dead.”
“Just like I always say,” said Peanuts insincerely. Somehow, he did not find this sentiment all that comforting. And after declining to join the nun in further prayer, he went off to Wolfie's Tavern to organize another Bonac Boys demonstration before the locked gates of the Old Churchyard. With Reds back in town, and being carved on at Southampton Hospital, the question of his burial place couldn't much longer be deferred.
“Maybe we oughta steal Jake again,” one of his cronies suggested over the beer. A nice symmetry, Jake out of the cemetery and Reds in, if they could pull it off.
“We might,” said Peanuts, jaw clenched. They'd stolen Jake before, with Peanuts prominent among the Boys, and they knew how to do it. They could do it again, even with a dead bolt on the mausoleum, “sure as hell, by God!”
“Yeah, to hell with the Marleys! Maybe we'll just take his mausoleum for Hucko.”
It never got to that.
“It ain't Reds!”
The good, if mystifying, news spread rapidly through East Hampton. Peanuts Murphy, who'd taken on the role of chief mourner (Reds owed Peanuts a few bucks; it was no secret), was called upon to issue clarifying statements (much in the style of White House press secretaries confronted by embarrassing gaffes and disclosures): “The sawbones who did the autopsy says the stiff got stainless-steel teeth. Probably fell off a Russki trawler. The fish been working him over for considerable time but they're sure. Reds was six-two. This fellow's a foot shorter. But the big thing is, Americans don't do steel teeth.”
Not everyone was convinced. Suspicion still lay heavily on the Marleys, damn them!
“Who knows about Hucko's teeth? Anyone check his dental records, just to be sure?”
“Oh, hell, if Reds had steel teeth don't you think we'd all
remember that? I punched him myself in the face more than once at Boaters. Or here at Wolfie's. Didn't you? Didn't all of us? Reds was always begging for a shot in the mouth.”
“Sure, and if Reds had steel teeth, he would of showed them around. Reds enjoyed making an impression. Always did.”
“Sure, he would of had pictures taken, that bastard.”
If others were disappointed Reds's body was still missing, Mademoiselle Javert was not among them. She was by now so deeply into the persona of Sister Infanta de Castille that she was attending early mass every morning and watching the
Sister Angelica
show on cable TV. To have thought Hucko dead and his body recovered one day, then the very next to be informed the corpse was a party of the third part, and with steel teeth at that, was simply too good an opportunity for Sister Infanta to let slip. So rather than regret Hucko was still missing, she prayed in the streets of Montauk, and aloud, raising Te Deums of gratitude that Reds Hucko might not yet be dead. Or at least not proven so.
One mourner was so enthused by her message he shouted, “Hucko lives! Hucko lives!”
Women of the village didn't go that far, but they and a few small children followed her about, chiming in on the prayers, less well on the Te Deums, since they knew no Latin. But Sister Infanta was certainly building a following and at least two hundred people turned out when her thanksgiving prayers were offered in all solemnity just outside the Old Churchyard. By now there were two TV crews and reporters from
Newsweek
and the
Times
. We drove up out of curiosity and because Emma wanted to see the churchyard from which Jake Marley's bones were occasionally stolen.
Sister Infanta was standing on a sturdy milk carton and addressing the troops when we got there.
“Let's be grateful and not mourn. The man can yet turn up. I'd prefer to pray on the beach, at the water's edge, closer to where Monsieur Hucko met his fate, whatever that may yet turn out to be, but it's too cold.”
Admiral Stowe, going impatiently foot to foot and feeling the cold in damaged fingers, grunted assent.
“The woman may or may not be a genuine nun, but about that, she's right. Too damned cold! Finally, the pond's freezing.”
“Will there be skating?” Emma asked.
“Looks good. One more night like this, I'd say.” We'd need skates, of course. I had a pair, so did my father. Inga was practically a pro. Being Nicole's daughter, Emma would have the genes but still would need a pair of skates. As for Her Ladyship, Alix didn't travel light (the only person of her generation still toting a steamer trunk), and you never knew what might turn up when she unpacked.
Alix was all for a good cold spell. “I can't wait to try out my Hummer on ice and bolting through snowdrifts, sounding the klaxon and crying, ‘Yoicks!'”
As the frenzy over Reds's “body” calmed and faded, young Miss Driver's introduction to Sis Marley again moved to the front burner. When the date came, the Admiral was determined to deliver the child himself.
“Wouldn't miss it. Sis Marley's not my cup of tea, never was. And can't blame Sis for being reluctant, for setting ‘tentative' dates, with this bad blood between the Marleys and Dick Driver. Not that Sis will hold it against the kid. But after all, Emma is Dick's daughter. Still, knowing how hard-shell Sis is, and getting the chance to see her with young Emma …”
This genial interlude was not to last. A lengthy E-mail now arrived (in code) for the Admiral from his “man” in Geneva, the hotel concierge Marcel.
Decoding as he went, the Admiral read the message aloud:
“The nun known as Sister Infanta de Castille is repudiated by the order of nuns founded by the late Mother Teresa. They wish no unseemly publicity so will confirm this only privately or not at all. Nor can any formal links to the Couvent de la Tour Sacrée be established. All nuns there are incommunicado (one elderly sister seems to be drunk), either skiing or buying clothes in the Paris couture until January 5.”
“The drunk one, that's got to be Sister Euphemia,” Emma interrupted.
The Admiral continued: “Independent inquiries say ‘Sister Infanta' may be in actuality a French investigator named Javert.”
Well, we'd all been assuming her “nunship” was a pose, and she was probably a private eye. But this was the first time any of us had heard the name Javert.
Which got Emma started again: “Doesn't that raise your hackles more than slightly,
mon vieux
Beecher?”
“Well, I …”
“Javert, in
Les Miserables
,” the girl announced, “was ‘an inspector of the police,' and, in point of fact, the bloodhound who ran poor Jean Valjean to earth. Sister Infanta clearly derives from someplace other than the Convent de la Tour.”
“Damn!” Alix responded, embarrassed that a child seemed better informed than an Oxonian with a double first. “Mightn't this simply be a coincidence of names?”
It took the Admiral to bring her back to reality. “Hardly likely, Alix. The French have a good deal of respect for lineage. A policeman named Javert will spin off children who become policemen, and they in turn have children of their own, who become policemen. Much in the way that Mafia godfathers beget Mafia sons and grandsons.”
Picking up on that line of thought, Alix added, “And let's not overlook Sherlock Holmes's brilliant brother Mycroft.”
I wasn't quite sure I followed either my father's logic, or Alix's, but he now resumed reading the E-mail from his agent in Geneva.
“Mademoiselle (or Madame, there's a suggestion here the woman has been or is married) Javert is widely respected by the Sûreté and especially by the Deuxième Bureau (they're the French federal cops who wiretap everyone, including foreign correspondents, as I happen to know from firsthand experience). Mlle Javert is said to be relentless in pursuit, fearless, and quite adept at disguise. Several years ago she solved, and single-handedly so, the famous case of the missing Andaman Islander and was instrumental in running to earth the jewel fence in the affair of the Beryl Coronet.”
“Golly!” Alix said, having read about the Beryl Coronet in her
pa's copy of the big English Sunday paper,
News of the World
, to which the Earl of Dunraven had a subscription for life. “Wasn't she also the sleuth who caught on to the Three Garridebs?”
I shook my head:
“No, that was definitely Holmes and Watson.”
“Oh.”
But while, thanks to the Admiral's man in Switzerland, we were now clearly able to see through “Sister Infanta's” act, she was playing exceedingly well elsewhere in the Hamptons. As I say, not only a strong following among the Baymen and the tabloid press, but in more exalted circles, namely
60 Minutes
and the Catholic Church. People really were starting to believe Reds Hucko could still come back. (And pay his debts? Anything was possible.) But for us who knew her true identity, critical questions remained:
Who was paying her? One of the parents? A third party? Was she a rival of Lefty Odets or an ally? Just what were her instructions? And was she any threat to Emma Driver, a child who had, after all, been kidnapped before?
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “Confront the woman? Or what?”
My old man replied, “Whatever we do, we may have to get Emma out of here and tucked away somewhere else.”
“A safe house,
Herr Grosseadmiral,”
Emma interjected with considerable anticipatory delight. “
Olé
! And cut both ears and tail! That's the ticket.”
“I've an idea,” said Alix. “The Shinnecock Reservation. Why doesn't Beecher ring up Chief Maine and see if they can make the arrangements?”
The Admiral shook his head. “People know how close we are to Jesse. Suppose Emma were concealed temporarily not among friends. But with apparent … enemies?”
I think we all, even Emma, knew what he was thinking.
Sis Marley.

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