People Like Us (52 page)

“I am sorry,
señor
,” said Candelaria.

“No, no, it’s my fault,” he said, although it wasn’t.

“Are you all right, Candelaria?” asked Ruby.

“
Si, si, señora
. Okay.”

“Why, Mrs. Renthal, hello. We met at the Butterfield, on ladies’ night. I’m Ned Manchester.”

“Hello,” said Ruby. “Of course. How are you?”

“Pardon my sweaty appearance.”

“You look very fit and healthy to me.”

“Do you often sit out here?”

“No. Never. I just had an urge to sit here and look up at my own house.”

“Does it meet with your approval?”

“Too big, I’ve decided.”

“Even the Clarkes used to get lost in that apartment, and they had the two boys,” said Ned.

“I always wanted to have a child,” said Ruby.

“And?”

“I guess it wasn’t in the cards, even though I’m the mama type. When you’re the third wife, the husbands already have their quota. How are your children?”

“They’re well. Bozzie’s going away to school. Charlotte says she wants to be an actress,” said Ned.

“Oh, that should go over big with Grandmother Somerset,” said Ruby, and they both laughed. Their eyes met. Ned liked the sound of Ruby’s husky, fashionable voice. “You have a beautiful voice,” he said.

“People say I sound like Loelia,” Ruby answered. She spoke the name of his wife, for Loelia was still his wife, in a natural way, and he welcomed the openness of it, as everyone else he knew had gone to great lengths in the past year not to mention Loelia’s name in front of him.

“You do,” he said.

“When I first got to know Loelia, I used to imitate everything about her. Then it became natural. I’m what’s called self-created.” She laughed at herself and Ned joined in.

“Your looks are your own,” he said.

“Had a little help there, too, my friend,” she replied. “Oh, good heavens, the time,” she said, looking at her watch. “I must go. Elias will be home.”

“How is Mr. Renthal?”

“Let’s just say he’s been better,” said Ruby. “We’re in trouble. You’ve probably heard. I guess everyone’s probably heard.”

Ned nodded. “How have people been?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone. I haven’t called anyone.”

“If you ever need anyone to talk to, I come by this way every night,” he said.

“Thanks,” she answered. She rose, shook hands good-bye, and left.

42

Time was winding down for Gus Bailey. At some point along the way he stopped writing thank-you notes to his hostesses for the dinners he attended. Then he began declining invitations, first to one of Maisie Verdurin’s dinners, and then to one at Violet Bastedo’s, and then to Lil Altemus’s. He had started to say, “I’ll be away then,” or, “I’m busy that night.”

“They won’t invite you anymore,” said Matilda Clarke.

“I don’t care,” said Gus.

“Don’t care?”

“I’ve seen enough.”

Later, Matilda remembered that.

Bernie Slatkin ran into Gus Bailey at a restaurant in the Village and later told Brenda Primrose that he seemed distracted, as if his mind was on something other than what they were discussing.

Nestor and Edwina Calder came back from Hollywood, after shooting the mini-series of
Judas Was a Redhead
. Edwina and Nestor considered Gus one of their good friends, but, on the several times they called to invite him to dinner, he did not return their calls. People said Gus Bailey was spending more and more time by himself.

One night his telephone rang.

“Mr. Bailey?”

“Who is it?”

“You’ll never remember me.”

“Try.”

“My name is Inez Peretti. We met once at—”

“At Ceil Somerset’s. You’re Ceil Somerset’s psychic. Of course I remember you. Once I was going to call you, but I couldn’t find the place card on which I wrote down your telephone number. I must have sent my dinner jacket to the cleaners, and they threw it out.”

For a moment there was a silence.

“You’re not surprised then to hear from me?” Inez asked.

“I’m not,” said Gus.

“I got your number from Ceil.”

“Fine.”

“I feel like I’m always cautioning you.”

“Yes.”

“Last time I said you were going somewhere, and you said yes, you were going to Mary Finch’s dance for Justine Altemus, and I said you were going somewhere before that, and not to go. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go?”

“Yes.”

“I feel that you are planning to do something.”

“Yes.”

“I feel revenge is in your heart.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to warn you.”

“Thank you, Inez.”

43

“Do you have any kind of religious affiliation?” asked Henry Caldwell, Elias Renthal’s lawyer.

“Why?” replied Elias.

“I thought we might get you registered in some sort of theological school between now and the sentencing. We can get it planted in the papers. All that stuff really goes down with the judges,” said Henry.

“Christ, I haven’t been to church since God-knows-when, except for a Catholic wake I went to out in Queens a while back with the Sorrowful Mysteries, but that don’t count as church. Besides, it wouldn’t look good starting up religion now at this late date,” said Elias.

“But there has to be something of that nature you can do, Elias. Like good works.”

Elias was impressed with the idea. “Good works, right. How about if I work with the homeless? That’s the big deal these days. Dish out soup or cut up carrots a couple of hours each day over at St. Bart’s? And it’s right near the office.”

“Terrific,” said the lawyer. “Mavis Jones will run that in her column for sure.”

Deals had been arrived at, behind-the-scenes deals. For his cooperation in exposing other miscreants in the financial community with whom he had engaged in exchanging privileged information for personal gain, and paying a fine of $150 million, and divesting himself of his stock portfolio, Elias Renthal had had to plead guilty to only one criminal count, a single charge of stock fraud.

“I realize I’ve committed a very serious crime,” said Elias Renthal, outside the courtroom, when the reporters asked him to make a statement. His lawyer tapped him on the arm to indicate that he had said enough, but Elias Renthal, even in adversity, was not one to be told when he had said enough. “I hope that by accepting responsibility for what I have done, I can make up for the anguish that I have caused my friends, my colleagues, and, most of all, my wife.”

Looking at Elias, Ruby was unable to see his eyes. The lights of the television cameras reflected in the convex lenses of his gold-framed glasses and threw back the rays in iridescent circles. Elias had aged perceptibly in recent months. A blankness in his eyes and a permanent furrowing in his brows, and possibly his soul, bespoke shattered dreams and lost illusions.

“Poor Mrs. Renthal,” said Bozzie Manchester, watching the evening news with his father. Ned looked over at his son and felt great affection for him, Yes, Ned thought, poor Mrs. Renthal.

It was impossible for any observer not to notice the change in Ruby Renthal’s status, but Ruby was, everyone said, a model of rectitude, standing by Elias’s side on the several times he had to appear in court before his sentencing, in a silent but supportive stance, dressed simply but expensively, her hair pulled back, her eyes not hidden by dark glasses. She never failed to hold her head up for all to see, assuming an attitude that could not be misconstrued as arrogant, which it was not, nor overly friendly, as if she were courting the press, which she did not.

The press had grown fond of her, and respectful. Even when they called her Ruby, which they did when they wanted to get her attention to pose for pictures or to ask her questions, they called her Ruby with affection, although she never answered any questions, nor ever stopped to pose. On her fingers she wore no more than her gold wedding ring. On her wrist she wore no
more than her gold Cartier watch with the roman numerals that had once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor, but no one knew that except Ruby.

“My client is virtually penniless,” Henry Caldwell had announced to the press over and over in the weeks preceding the sentencing, scoffing at reports that Elias had stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts. Elias stood beside him, with a mournful expression on his face, but everyone knew that Elias Renthal was nowhere near penniless.

For propriety’s sake, Elias, his lawyers, and his bodyguards squeezed into a Japanese compact car rather than his usual limousine to arrive at the courthouse on the day of his sentencing, in the hopes of conveying the impression to the reporters and photographers that his circumstances were reduced. They drove downtown in silence, interrupted only by Elias, who shifted his position uncomfortably in the crowded backseat, saying to no one in particular, “I’ve been in roomier women.”

On that morning the newspapers were filled with remarks by business leaders on the about-to-be-sentenced financier. Sims Lord, who had personal reasons for loathing Elias Renthal, said in the
Times
, “It is impossible for me to admire people who rape the system and then get nothing but a slap on the wrist because they have entrapped their fellow partners in crime. I hope the judge throws the book at him.”

Elias looked neither left nor right as he walked up the steps to the courthouse, flanked by his lawyers and bodyguards, ignoring the press as they yelled questions at him.

In the courtroom, there was not an empty seat. The sentencing of Elias Renthal was a media event, with press from around the world there to witness the great financier’s downfall.

“Please rise,” said the court clerk, as Judge Maurice McAuliff entered the courtroom.

Henry Caldwell pleaded that his client deserved
leniency because he had exposed wrongdoing in ten major brokerage houses and had already paid a fine of $150 million. “A sentence in this type of case should not involve excessive incarceration,” he said.

“It is unthinkable,” argued the prosecutor, “that white-collar criminals can walk away by simply paying back what they have stolen in the first place.”

Judge McAuliff, who was known to be lenient, listened to the arguments of both sides. “Your crimes, Mr. Renthal, are too serious to forgive and forget. It would be a terrible precedent for me to set in this court. The message must go out loud and clear that breaking the law is breaking the law,” he said before passing sentence. “Criminal behavior such as yours cannot go unchecked.”

Elias did not flinch when the judge sentenced him to five years in Allenwood, which meant, everyone knew, that, with good behavior, he would in all probability be released in two-and-a-half years. The judge was thought to have taken into consideration the work that Elias had done at a soup kitchen for the homeless at St. Bart’s church during the time between his arrest and his sentencing.

If Byron Macumber had not committed suicide, and left two young daughters, Kimberly and Sharon, Ruby might have been able to forgive Elias, but even after she had made an arrangement through her lawyers that would guarantee the education of the little girls from her own money, the suicide haunted her.

On the night before Elias was to check into Allenwood, Elias and Ruby dined alone, except for Max Luby, in their magnificent dining room, beneath ancestral portraits, on exquisite plates, and drank vintage wines from glasses embossed with
R
’s by a now dead Rothschild a hundred years before. Each was glad to have Max there because they no longer knew what to say to each other. Later, leaving, Max, good old Max, as he had become known to Ruby and Elias, embraced
Elias, and the two old friends from Cleveland looked into each other’s tear-filled eyes as they nodded farewell.

Later still, walking by Ruby’s bedroom, on his way to the bedroom that had become his since they returned from Europe, Elias tapped with the tips of his fingers on Ruby’s door, not for an invitation to enter, which he no longer expected, but as a way of saying good-night for the last time.

“Come in,” came Ruby’s voice from inside, to Elias’s surprise.