Treasures

T
he two United States marshals, who had come to make an arrest, parked their inconspicuous black car, got out, and looked up at the ornamental neomodern roof of the sixty-five-storied tower. Somber rain clouds drooped over the city, releasing their first drops just as the pair in their plain dark suits reached the bronze doors that fronted the avenue. The younger man, who seemed almost imperceptibly to hesitate, followed the other across the marble floor to the long rank of elevators. This was no ordinary assignment today, nor was this a part of New York into which he usually was sent, and he was feeling a certain tension. It bothered him that he did. It was unprofessional.

“It seems funny in a way to handcuff the guy,” he said. “Guy’ll be wearing a Brooks Brothers suit probably. You know what I mean? He’s not an armed thug.”

“But you can’t ever tell what a person will do. He could go off his nut and start punching. Or he could even head for the window. Press the forty-first floor, will you?”

The elevator slid upward silently as if on silken cords,
while a red light efficiently marked each number as it passed.

“Smells of money, doesn’t it, Jim?” remarked the younger.

“Sure does. And lots of it.”

“Wonder what the guy really did. Really, I mean.”

“God knows. You’ve got to be a high-priced lawyer to figure it out. I wouldn’t bother to try.”

“Seems kind of sad, doesn’t it? Being hauled off from a place like this.”

“It’s always sad no matter where it is. You never feel good about it,” Jim said seriously. “But it’s a job, Harry. You get used to it.”

The door opened and they stepped out in front of a long glass wall with many glass doors.

“Which way, Jim? Which is his?”

“He owns the whole floor. Two floors, actually. I’ll get you there, don’t worry.” Jim grinned.

Receptionists are always pretty, reflected Harry, allowing his senior to do the talking to her while he himself examined the surroundings. He didn’t know anything about rich living, he knew he didn’t, and yet, when the brief opening and shutting of a door gave him a view of quiet gray carpeting and a corridor lined with paintings, he knew that he was seeing the real thing. Gold was gaudy and quietness was expensive. Maybe he had read that somewhere.

He thought: In one of these rooms, perhaps a room at the end of that very corridor, a man is going to have a terrible shock. In another minute or two. A terrible shock.

The receptionist must have telephoned because now a woman came rushing in. A fussy-looking matron with fuzzy gray hair, she was terrified.

“What? What? United States marshals?” she cried, confronting Jim.

He showed his badge, and Harry did the same.

The woman’s eyes, enlarged by her glasses, sprang tears.

“It’s got to be a mistake! I can’t let you see him before he talks to a lawyer. This isn’t right! No, you’re not going in.”

“Ma’am,” said Jim, “here’s the warrant. Read it. We can force our way in. You don’t want us to do that, do you?”

They were moving through the door toward the gray carpet, following the frantic woman. They entered a room, spacious, with many windows, more paintings, and a great desk at which a man was seated. Upon seeing them, he stood.

The woman was almost babbling. “I couldn’t stop them. I don’t know what all this is, I—”

The man was young. He’s about my age, thought Harry, and all this place is his. And somehow the pity he had been feeling for this stranger now turned to anger. To be my age and own all this! I hope he gets what’s coming to him, whatever he did.

The man was standing on dignity, but he was scared to death, his face had gone blue-white. He stammered.

“There’s a mistake here. A terrible mistake. My lawyer’s working on the matter right now.”

“That’s all right,” Jim said. “You’ll be able to call your
lawyer. But you’ll have to come along.” He took out the cuffs. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need to wear these.”

“You don’t understand,” the man said. “I’m not the sort of person—”

“Please. Make it easy for yourself,” Jim told him patiently.

The woman was openly weeping. “He’s a good man. Be gentle with him.”

And Harry’s pity flowed back. “Don’t worry,” he heard himself say.

In less than five minutes they were out of the building with their prisoner, whose handcuffs were hidden by the raincoat that the woman had dropped over them. Silently, stunned and proud, the prisoner climbed into the car and was driven away through the dreary rain.

On the forty-first floor in the room from which he had been taken, there had been a fire under a carved mantel, and a spray of yellow flowers on the desk.

The event made the front pages of all the papers as well as the television news. Telephones rang in the offices of the city’s prestigious corporations.

“Have you heard how it happened? Well, I heard—”

At dinner parties all up and down Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, out to the North Shore, and in Connecticut, it was the topic of the moment.

“Everybody loved him,” people said, commiserating and astonished. “So bright, so charming, so kind. And no one in the world was ever more generous, we all know that. I can’t believe it! What can have happened? How can you explain it?”

P
ART
O
NE
1973-1981

C
HAPTER
O
NE

T
he downstairs neighbors had provided hot soup, cold meats, salad, and a home-baked pie, food enough for a dozen hungry eaters, Eddy Osborne remarked to himself. But there were only his sisters Connie and Lara and Lara’s husband, Davey, at the kitchen table, none of them able to swallow more than a few mouthfuls of the good things. If anyone had told me I’d swallow even that much on the day of my mother’s funeral I wouldn’t have believed it, he thought.

He stood up, poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, and went to stare out of the rain-beaded window at the bleak March afternoon. A shudder chilled his shoulders. Here was the ultimate desolation, the gray gloom and the grief.

Poor Peg, poor Mom! Sometimes the wig had tilted to the side, mocking her gaunt face with a rakish, jaunty look; she had been so vain, too, about the thick, tawny hair that all three of her children had inherited.… And Eddy’s heart broke. Making a little sound like a sob, he covered it with a cough and turned his face.