Treasures (38 page)

Then he walked back to Eddy. “Berg couldn’t have been more helpful,” he reported. “I only had to ask him once.”

“I suppose he was pretty shocked. Stunned.”

“I guess so, but he didn’t show it. He seemed only concerned. Compassionate. And I tried to reach your wife, but she had left. Her mother said she was going to make some stops on the way and probably wouldn’t be home before dinnertime. That’ll give you a chance to wash up and rest before she gets there.” Rathbone added kindly, “Take a stiff drink, sit down, and talk together as calmly as you can and then have a good dinner.”

“Are we going to lick this thing, Henry?” Eddy asked, very low. “Tell me the truth, please. I can handle it.”

“Eddy … We’re going to do the very best we can, that’s the answer.”

• • •

The Filipino couple were in the kitchen. Ramón, with an apron over his white coat, was polishing silver, and María Luz was stirring something at the stove.

“How would you two like to take the evening off?” Eddy proposed, showing his most cheerful manner. “Mrs. Osborne and I have just been invited somewhere, so you might as well go.”

“But the dinner …” María Luz was both doubtful and hopeful.

“Save the dinner for tomorrow.” He gave them a jovial wave as he left the kitchen. “Go on. Enjoy yourselves.”

The last thing he could tolerate right now was a ritual dinner, the elegance of which he ordinarily appreciated. But tonight there might be tears and recriminations. Who knew what tonight would bring?

In the library he sat in a vague sort of daze until he heard them going out at the back door. Then, as if obeying some peremptory command, he sprang up. In a pantry closet he found some cardboard cartons and pulled them into the library. He telephoned to the building superintendent and asked for more cartons, the largest he had and as many as he had.

“As many? We have a couple of dozen, Mr. Osborne, waiting for the trash pickup.”

“Bring them all,” said Eddy.

Back in the cleaning closets he found rolls of tissue paper, of brown wrapping paper, and balls of heavy twine. The house was well stocked with such practical items, for Pam was a good housekeeper, an efficient keeper of the house, the home that was now being destroyed.
For no matter what Rathbone said—what had he said? Something like
I’ll do my best
?—Eddy felt disaster in his bones. At the same time he could also remember moments when, even today, he had been certain that things would all turn out well in the end. But now, now at this moment, he felt only disaster.

When the superintendent had covered half the library’s floor with cartons, Eddy saw the questions on his tongue. But they remained unasked; no doubt something in Eddy’s face had deterred the man. As soon as he was gone, Eddy set to work, taking pictures down from the walls. There went the Sargent lady in her velvet dress; Winslow Homer’s palm trees bending in a southern wind; the Pissarro’s crowded, rainy street in Paris. These were his treasures and he was ripping them off his walls. There was even one that had not yet been hung, a nineteenth-century portrait of a horse that he had ordered from London for Pam.

For three hours he worked, going from room to room. He was frantic. Panic rose in him, and panic was cold; it ran up and down his arms and raised the hair on the back of his neck. Lifting, padding, cutting his fingers on twine, he sweated. He wrapped small objects, porcelains and ivories, emptying the twin lacquered cabinets in the drawing room; he began to take down his first editions, the leather-bound Dickens, the Walt Whitman, the—

“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” Pam screamed. “Have you gone crazy? Crazy?”

He pulled himself erect and, ankle deep in paper, regarded his wife, his cherished wife, in her camel-hair
coat and her alligator boots. And for the moment he was dumbstruck.

Stupidly, he said, “We’re moving to Kentucky, you remember. So I thought, I had some time, I came home early. I thought I’d get a few things ready.”

She grabbed his shirtfront. “Eddy, listen to me. I’ve known you were hiding something but I gave up asking you what. Do you think I’m an idiot? I’ve been so afraid.… Sit down here and tell me what’s wrong. I want to know. Now! Now!”

His Adam’s apple seemed to swell until it hurt. Nevertheless he had to begin. “I’m in trouble with the government, Pam. Some tax trouble. God, I hoped it would turn out all right! I wanted to spare you, but I can’t anymore. I was arrested this morning.”

“Arrested?”

“Yes. It was—well, it was quite an experience.” And he managed a weak, shamefaced smile. “Fingerprints and all.”

“But what have you done?” she cried.

“A few foolish things, I have to admit. But nothing criminal. I haven’t hurt anybody. It’s a tax mess, that’s all, too complicated to explain. I’d need to show you reams of papers. My lawyer says we’ll work it out.”

“But if you were arrested, you must be out on bail.”

“Yes. Martin put it up.”

She was standing above him. And he looked up at her calm forehead under the velvet headband. Most women, hearing this piece of news, would be losing control.

“Why don’t you get angry at me?” he asked. “I would
feel better if you did. I deserve it. Don’t be afraid of losing your temper. Yell at me.”

“What’s the point? What would it accomplish?” she responded wearily. Quality, he thought as always. Breeding. It shows.

In the street below, a fire engine passed with a long, terrifying wail, receded, and left a bleak aftermath of stillness. Pam was waiting.

“I got in too deep,” he said. “I don’t know how it happened. I thought I had a magic touch. I always did have. I knew my way around the market.” He put his head in his hands. “Maybe I lost my touch. Things started to drain away. It was like a hemorrhage.” And he made a little sound almost like a sob.

She stroked his hair. “Don’t, Eddy. Aren’t you the one who always says anything can be worked out if you keep your wits about you?”

He raised his head. “Pam, I think it’s possible that I might go to prison.”

“Who’s your lawyer? What does he say?”

“Henry Rathbone. One of the best in the city. He says it’ll be okay.” Had he actually said that? He had only promised to do his best.

“Did he tell you to pack up these things, to move?”

“He doesn’t know I’m doing this. It’s my idea to get things out of here in case anyone wants to come snooping after the paintings and antiques. The stuff’s all yours, anyway.”

“Louis XVI doesn’t fit on a horse farm.”

“Sell anything you don’t want and take the cash. Oh, I’m glad I was smart enough to put this apartment in
your name too. It’s got to be worth four or five million by now.”

The doorbell rang, making Eddy start. “Don’t open it!”

“It has to be somebody they recognize downstairs, or no one would have let them come up,” said Pam.

He supposed, after the morning’s experience, that he would never again feel secure about who might be on the other side of a door. And then, when he heard the voices of Martin and Connie, he had the same feeling that had overcome him in the presence of Rathbone, that he was a child waiting to be scolded.

Connie stared about her. “My God, look at this ruin! Whatever possessed you, Eddy? Whatever?”

Martin waved her to silence. “How’re you doing, Eddy? It’s been a hell of a day for you.”

“I want to thank you, Martin. If I can thank you, that is. But how can I ever for what you did?”

“Just see how you can work your way out of your troubles. That’ll be thanks enough. Your sisters are beside themselves with worry. Lara phoned just now. She wanted to take the next flight.”

“No, no,” Eddy objected. Lara wouldn’t say a word of condemnation, yet he felt he couldn’t face her with this failure, not Lara, who had encouraged him from his days in junior high school up to now. “No, don’t let Lara come,” he repeated.

“We told her not to. With two children and the office work …” Martin shoved aside a pile of tissue paper and sat down on the sofa. “I only spoke ten minutes
with Rathbone, so tell me, how deep in the hole are you?”

“I don’t know exactly. A lot. I’d have to figure. It’s complicated. I can’t do bookkeeping in my head.”

Martin frowned slightly. “But you must have some idea. Rathbone says one of the counts against you is that you played the stock market with your clients’ funds. Haven’t you any conception of your personal stock holdings?”

“I don’t know. Maybe thirteen million. It varies, fluctuates. The market’s been down the last couple of months. You know that.”

“I know that,” Martin said somewhat dryly. He nodded toward a Cézanne that was propped against a chair. “How much did that cost?”

Eddy followed Martin’s glance toward the luminous blue-green Provençal hills. “About six million,” he murmured, and wiped his forehead. “God Almighty,” he blurted then, “I saved fortunes for my clients all the same! Everybody rushed to me. Didn’t they love my four-to-one tax shelters? And now these same people will remember only my mistakes and won’t give me the time to correct them. All I need is some time! God Almighty, I haven’t committed murder, have I?” he demanded of the three who faced him.

“Well, if you’ve ruined people, that’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?” Connie said, sounding bitter. “Some of my good friends that I sent to you too.”

Again Martin stopped her. “There’s no point in that sort of talk,” he admonished.

Pam sat rigidly, looking toward the window where
lights twinkled across the street. Holding tears back, she blinked, and Eddy knew that the truth had finally just reached her.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “what started this government crackdown in the first place. What happened all of a sudden?”

“Somebody wrote an anonymous letter,” Martin replied. “It was mailed from Vancouver to the SEC. Somebody who’d apparently lost money because of insider trading. I heard it from a man who has a brother with the SEC. Oh, it wasn’t about you at all. But it started the ball rolling.”

“Do you think I really have cause to be terribly worried?” Eddy asked.

Martin stood up. “I think I’m glad you have a top-notch attorney. Meanwhile, watch your health and use your head. Head over heart, you know.”

Eddy nodded ruefully. “My mother used to say that, but she never did it.”

“Well, you do it. Take a stiff Scotch and go to sleep.” When Martin gave Eddy his hand, the grip was comforting. “Call me if you need me. Come on, Connie.”

When they had left, Pam let a few tears fall, whispering into Eddy’s shoulder, “Life was a ball, wasn’t it? Such fun, being young and healthy and with no worries, just two hours ago. And now I feel a hundred years old.”

“Remember what Martin just said, head over heart?”

“I know.” Pam wiped her eyes. “I will. I just had to get it out of my system.”

“Of course you do.” And he understood that there must be within her, even as within himself, a turmoil of
struggling contradictions, pity, fear, and anger. Of course.

“Life will be a ball again,” he said.

“What happens next? To you, I mean.”

“A trial. In about three months, Rathbone estimates.”

“And he really thinks you’ll win?”

“Lawyers have to think so, don’t they?”

Smile, Peg always told her children. Smile even when you don’t want to and it’ll actually make you feel like smiling.

“Life isn’t over,” he said again. “Hey, I’m only thirty-four years old, and there’s a long way to go. Let’s see that photo of the Kentucky place. It’s there on the desk. Looks like
Gone with the Wind
, doesn’t it? Columns and all. And that copper beech on the lawn must be a hundred fifty years old.” He hugged Pam closely. “Listen. I’m going to work out of this. And if I don’t right away, if—if anything happens, why, you just go down there and live in the sun and wait till I get there too.”

“He swindled people, didn’t he? Tell the truth,” Connie said on the way home. “I’m furious! How could he have been so stupid?”

“One word,” Martin said. “Greed. It came too easily when he started, and he got too greedy.”

“How will it end?”

Martin shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is that it’ll end badly. From what I can see, he’s committed four or five felonies.”

“I’m angry at him, but I’m heartbroken too. Poor
Eddy! He’s got to be terrified. And I’m awfully sorry for Pam. Whatever will she do?”

“He told me once that everything belongs to her. Six of those paintings alone will give her at least twenty million. So I wouldn’t worry.”

“All the same, I’m sorry for her. They’ll be ruined socially. Utterly ruined.”

The federal district court was a far more imposing chamber than the one in which Eddy’s first scene had been enacted. Everything seemed larger, the ceiling higher, the windows wider, the flag more prominent, and the bench more elevated. The judge had the stern expression of the cancer surgeon who is about to operate. The jury’s twelve chairs looked solemn in their rows, even when they were vacant. This was the place where severe punishments were meted out. Eddy’s facetious remark about the guillotine did not seem absurd here. He wondered whether his heart, which had ceased to hammer—after all, how could it have kept hammering for the last three months?—and had merely subsided now into an irregular beat, would ever beat normally again.

All the chairs behind him, in row after row, were filled. He wondered why, and who the strangers might be who filled them. Directly in back of him in the second row sat his wife and his sisters; Lara, during the whole five weeks that his trial lasted, kept going back and forth from Ohio, although, knowing what effort it must take, he wished she wouldn’t. Connie came in a sable coat, at least fifty thousand dollars’ worth of coat,
he knew, and hoped the judge and jury would not think this expensive lady was his wife. Pam, most sensibly, had worn her camel hair coat. She had remembered, too, that he had once said he felt uncomfortable when strangers sat directly behind him, where they could stare at the back of his neck, and so she took care to sit behind him herself. Pam was a princess, no doubt of it, in her dignity and reassuring calm. Pam was royalty.

Sometimes there appeared a few other familiar faces, friends and clients who had once been friends and were now enemies. Once he saw the puzzled, mournful face of Mrs. Evans, who probably was not sure now what she should think of the man she had served and protected from every small annoyance. In a brief passage of words during the court’s recess, he gathered from her that Osborne and Company had been taken over by the government’s examiners, who occupied almost every desk. And he hoped, although he did not say so, that no one would put his feet on his private desk, which was a treasure brought from an ancient house in Yorkshire. At the same time he knew perfectly well that the thought was foolish.