“What’d you do in the Army for fun, when you weren’t soldiering?”
“I read a lot.”
“What?”
“European history. When I got to World War One I always stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because I already knew how it’d end in nineteen-forty-five.”
“That was the end of World War Two, not One.”
“Was it?” Partain said and smiled to take the edge off his answer. He was still smiling slightly when he said, “Tell me about you and Dave Laney.”
“I already told you. He’s a shit I lived with in Mexico.”
“Where’d you meet him?”
“God, I hate that question,” she said. “ ‘Where did you two meet?’ It’s as if everyone’s expecting something cute — like in the movies. So for a while I’d give them cute: ‘A bellhop at the Biltmore sent me up to his room.’ ”
“Dave says you met during the Dukakis campaign in ’eighty-eight.”
“He lied. We met in November of ’ninety-one at a Beverly Hills wedding reception my mother’d dragged me to. I don’t know why Dave was there because he didn’t seem to know the bride or groom. Millie was working the room like a coyote. I stood in a corner, drinking the free Dom Pérignon and wearing something I’d got at the Nordstrom Rack in the Valley for ninety-six bucks that looked like nine hundred and sixty. That’s why Dave made his move. He thought I looked like money.”
“You do,” Partain said.
“Almost any woman who stays out of the sun, is under forty and doesn’t have a weight problem can look like money in this town. But for some reason, men can’t fake it. Money, I mean. Dave sure as hell can’t.”
“Why?”
“Take those clothes he wears. He looks like some real tan guy who walks into Carroll and Company on Rodeo and says, ‘Sell me some stuff that’ll make me look rich.’ And that’s what they do: sell him stuffthat’ll make him look like a guy who wants to look rich but isn’t.”
“Then Dave’s what — medium rich?”
She studied him for a second or two, smiled a small superior smile and said, “He told you about his trust funds, didn’t he?”
“In passing.”
“The two one-million-dollar funds that’re managed by the stuffy old bankers back in Boston?” Partain nodded.
“Well, it’s not two one-million-dollar trust funds. It’s a hundred-thousand-dollar one at the Bank of America, which isn’t exactly giving Dave’s money its undivided attention. They stuck it away in some money market account, for God’s sake. When we went down to Mexico it was paying close to four or five percent. I forget which. When he came back it was below three percent. The main reason I came back is I got sick of Dave. The other reason is I’d run out of money.”
“Where’s it come from?” Partain said. “Your money?”
“You sure ask delicate questions.”
“I see no reason for delicacy.”
“Well, this may come as a shock but, except for food, I’m almost as much of a miser as you are. Where food’s concerned, I don’t want to buy it, prepare it, cook it or clean up after it. And even though I know I can buy a spring fryer at Vons for maybe $3.98, I’d rather pay thirty-two bucks at Chez Delano’s for the poulet à la Memphis.”
“None of that answers my question.”
“About where my money comes from. Okay. I earn a lot and save most of it. The only thing that gives me a bigger rush than saving money is sex. When I work, my money’s parted out like this: about forty-eight percent for Social Security, state and Federal taxes. After you hit fifty-five thousand, most of the Social Security bite stops. Overall, I pay about forty-three percent in taxes. I live on forty percent of my take-home pay and save the rest. No stocks. No bonds. No mutual funds. Just a regular savings account in a too-big-to-fail bank that still gives out those little passbooks and records every deposit along with the picayune interest.”
“You must be in the top bracket.”
“Next to the top.”
“Doing what?”
“I write advertising copy. TV, radio and print. Freelance. I even do billboards. One time I had three of them down on the Sunset Strip — big mothers — all at the same time. Real bust-eye stuff.”
“You’re good, then?”
“The best.”
“Since it takes a certain amount of cunning to sell anything, I don’t quite understand—”
She interrupted. “About me and Dave Laney.”
Partain nodded.
“Sex,” she said. “He’s awfully good at it.”
Partain gave her another nod, which he hoped said, “That explains everything.” She apparently interpreted it to mean, “Please continue.”
“What you’re still wondering,” Carver said, “if she’s so shrewd and cunning, why didn’t she spot Dave Laney for the rat he is. The sad answer is I did — from the moment he first opened his mouth and started in on his trust funds. People with trust funds don’t talk about them. And people from fine old California families don’t brag about how old and fine they are right after they’ve told you about their trust funds. The Laneys, this is Dave’s version now, sailed around the Horn in either eighteen-forty-nine or ’fifty and made their first fortune off the miners. Every generation after that made another fortune off something or other — real estate, oil, insurance, agriculture, wars. The last big Laney fortune was made in real estate in the late ’seventies and early ’eighties. Dave says they bailed out because they saw it coming. The crash.”
“It’d be more interesting if they hadn’t,” Partain said.
She nodded her agreement.
“Anyway, the Laneys performed all these wonderful economic tricks when they weren’t serving their country in every war since the one between the states, as Dave calls it, when some of the Laneys fought for the Confederacy and some for the Union. He told me all this ten minutes after we met. Well, maybe fifteen. He even threw in an uncle who’s recently been promoted to Army general.”
“What year was this?” Partain said.
“When we met? ’Ninety-one.”
“Who’s the General?”
“General Laney, I suppose. Ever hear of him?” Partain’s reply was delayed and, when it came, it was a question. “Does your mother have a Who’s Who?”
“Every volume since ’fifty-two.”
“Where?”
“In her study.”
“Let’s take a look.”
They couldn’t find any Laney who was a general under the Ls, but Partain did find one under the Hs. He was Major General Walker Laney Hudson, USA, b. Pasadena, May 19, 1943; grad. U.S. Military Academy, 1964.
After she closed the big red L to Z volume and put it back on the shelf, Jessica Carver said, “You know him, don’t you — this General Walker Laney Hudson?”
“We’ve met,” Partain said.
Chapter 13
They had dined at a card table on salad and spanakopita, the Greek spinach and cheese pie that was a specialty of the uncle’s ground-floor restaurant. For dessert, there was a far too rich baklava that General Winfield politely declined. Nick Patrokis ate both portions, then wrapped up the paper napkins, plastic plates and plastic cutlery in the Washington Post that had served as a tablecloth and dumped it all into a big brown plastic garbage can. The General folded the card table and stored it away.
It was just after 9 P.M. when they moved to the golden oak desk for the Greek coffee that Patrokis poured from a Thermos into a pair of small cups. After finishing one cup, Patrokis poured himself another and said, “Sounds like a nice job of mind-fucking to me.”
The General winced slightly, then shook his head. “You have to understand that Henry Viar simply doesn’t care anymore. He spends much of his time in the upstairs front bedroom, sipping whiskey, smoking Pall Malls, watching the street and, I suspect, fantasizing about the farther shores of Might’ve Been.”