Chapter 4 #2
Laurie began, begrudgingly, with the most obvious and least pleasant task.
He put on a suit and paid a visit to the rich dead man’s closest friend and would-have-been rival: the equally rich Tjofabier F.
Raberding, heir to Brooklyn Glass. The rags were what the rags were, but photographs didn’t lie, stiff expressions notwithstanding; week after week of society page featured him and August Wright companionably side by side.
Smoking, billiards, girls, theatre. Two handsome young lads out on the town.
Sam wanted him to find what made Chary Wright tick? He’d start with the brother he grieved.
Laurie didn’t understand fame. Not why it was coveted nor why it was pursued.
His own name was recognizable, but his face?
No. Sam would get Laurie’s dearly desired picture-as-a-byline only as soon as he had ceased working undercover—which prior to last week, he’d naively thought would be never.
To be told to Pivot, I don’t give a damn—talk about changing values.
Lawrence Tulley had been building something, he’d thought.
Bigger things than which rich man may or may not have murdered another.
T. F. Raberding lived not in Brooklyn—of course not—nor on Millionaire’s Row but on the Upper West Side, in a high-floor turret suite of the brand-new Ansonia Hotel overlooking Broadway.
It filled the entire block of 73rd to 74th, in fact, if that gave any idea as to the scope of the thing—and also the attitude of its apartment inhabitants.
Laurie had heard rumors there was a mob man in residence there now, straight out of Sing Sing.
Laurie wondered what deal had been cut there, if it was one of the mob men who had protected the strikebreaking plasterer scabs when things had gotten heated with the builder last year.
Rats as neighbors to six-thousand-dollar-a-year neighbors was a big motivator.
Rich-boy Raberding, he was pretty sure, had never known rats.
As he’d been instructed, he came in through the Broadway entrance.
It was a two-story-tall arch done in white (partially scab-laid) brick and pale limestone, and if that gargoyle’s face was more than a gargoyle, Laurie wasn’t enlightened enough to know who or what it was meant to be.
For once, he didn’t see a newsman creeping around the sidewalks—besides himself, of course—so maybe it worked.
He removed his hat and walked straight back to a clerk who stood at a massive desk.
Mahogany. The desk was backlit by a spiraling, black-and-white marble staircase that had windows in lieu of right-side handrails.
The May day was a gloomy, smogged one, though, so Laurie suspected he was missing the full effect.
The staircase was apparently for show; the clerk sent him up in one of six brass elevators to the tenth floor.
At the end of the ride, Laurie plopped coins into the white-gloved hand of the attendant, who concealed his surprise fast. Laurie walked away, grinning.
Sam wanted him to investigate rich men, he was gonna have to swallow an invoice filled with generous tips.
The tenth-floor hallway, like the lobby, was black and white squares of marble beneath his oxfords, a rug runner so plush, his heels practically bounced off.
Each apartment had an electric buzzer. Laurie rang the one for 10109, put hands in trouser pockets, and waited.
He wondered if he passed muster, then wondered why he cared.
This suit was the new sack style, blue serge, single-breasted, but mail-order, tailored after the fact.
His tie was slim and his waistcoat six-buttoned, collarless.
He was not about to wear his best morning suit to try and impress a millionaire.
This second-best one got him into Delmonico’s just fine.
He might not even have gone this far, except Hiram Sumner had come back from the Hamptons just in time to facilitate Laurie’s invitation, and he’d said something snobby about it.
“He’s at home Thursdays and Fridays,” he’d said. Spring picnics had given him a sunburn across cheeks and nose-bridge. “Fashionable hours, if you know what those are. Don’t you blow this, L. Wear a stiff collar. This wasn’t easy to get.”
“Oh? You did a favor for me, H?”
Hiram had thrown a pencil. “You’ll understand once you’ve met him.”
So Laurie had worn the stiff collar.
The heavy apartment door swung open, a maid behind it.
She barely gave him a glance. Laurie stepped through, proffering his card, and she disappeared.
He had already not passed muster, it seemed.
Raberding’s refusal to greet him at the door was a snub.
On the other hand, there was no footman.
Perhaps etiquette was less of a concern for new money.
Or maybe Laurie didn’t know how it went any longer.
Society was the antithesis of his focus.
He was an undercover workingman, not a society one; he knew only the basics he’d gleaned from a past in service.
He waited.
The apartment’s vestibule had parquet maple floors, carved mahogany wainscoting, gilt crown molding. The side tables were clawfoot, gold-leaf lacquered, topped with ferns that must’ve gotten just enough dim sunlight from the adjacent glass-surround light shaft to eke out survival.
Six or seven heeled steps later—so close? The man had kept him waiting a-purpose—Raberding appeared around one paneled corner. After a slight pause, like consideration, he spoke.
“Lawrence Tulley of the Appeal?”
Without looking over, Laurie pulled his hand slowly away from fern fronds—two could play at rudeness. “You have my card.”
Unbothered, Raberding chuckled and said, “Now, I knew yours was not a breaking-news sort of paper, but surely, six months after the fact is leaving a death investigation slightly long.”
Laurie looked up.
What grainy black-and-white newsprint photographs had not revealed of the ludicrously named Tjofabier Raberding: he was absolutely stunning in person.
Intelligent-looking; a keenness of eye. Dark hair.
Dimples. Every angle on him statue-perfect.
And—awareness ping-ponged, and the man smiled—he was as obvious as they came. No red tie needed.
New theories—assumptions, really, at this point—writhed up and took root. August Wright’s closest friend. The two of them hardly ever seen apart.
(Two Wright heirs queer? Both of them?)
Hiram had some explaining to do. There, maybe, was how he had been able to get Laurie, “lowly journalist,” his invitation. Not with his name or his reputation or the Appeal’s; possibly with Laurie’s face. Or the promise of it.
But this wasn’t a basement bathhouse setup, it was Laurie’s goddamn job. His real name.
Laurie took a moment to feel betrayed, then turned and smiled anyway. “Investigation, Mr. Raberding? This is an afternoon call between bachelors.” He didn’t offer to shake hands. Neither did Raberding. High society didn’t shake hands, and one of them had ambitions of entering it.
“My goodness. In that case...” Raberding lowered his voice. “Library or parlor?” He tilted his head beguilingly, confirming everything Laurie needed to know.
“Which one’s the turret I can see clear from the Bowery?”
“From the Bowery?” Raberding’s lips twitched. “That will be the parlor.”
“That one.”
“By all means.” He led the way, not very far, and they passed the (shelves-half-full) library on the way.
The parlor was round, with three windows on the exposed half-moon, all with colorful leadlighting, the one in center flanked by electric candle sconces.
The mahogany theme continued there, too, trim and wainscoting; one electric, crystal chandelier glimmered overhead.
Raberding jerked the bell pull for the maid. She appeared almost immediately.
“Tea and coffee, please.” He sat, and turned to Laurie, cross-legged. “You don’t even have a pen and pad,” he teased. “You’re sure you are the journalist I was promised?”
“Who were you promised? No, don’t answer. Whoever he was, I’ll stand in for him.” Top-speed flirt. No reason why not. However unwillingly given, he had built-in rapport.
Raberding laughed, grin spreading wide. No, not even a full-color supplement-issue portrait could’ve shown how magnetic the man was. Ship-launching gorgeous, with deep, buried-treasure blue eyes.
“I was promised a sort of rough—brash—pushy kind of fellow. Now I think our Mr. Sumner was having me on. You are not any kind of rough, Mr. Tulley. Not with hair like that.”
“I feel a little set up myself,” Laurie admitted. He couldn’t tell if Hiram hated him or loved him. He knew Laurie’s tendencies, so maybe he thought of it as a boon. Either way, he was probably laughing still. Damn your scruples, L.
Refreshments were delivered: tea, cake, coffee, sugar-crusted digestive biscuits. When the maid had disappeared, Raberding spoke again.
“Not to worry, Mr. Tulley; the walls are a foot thick. Concrete. We can speak freely.” Other things freely too, maybe, from the gleam in his eyes.
“I should explain. I don’t mean to ambush you.
” He distributed tiny plates and tinier cakes.
“You see, I was also promised discretion, guaranteed by a sort of… mutually assumed risk. You understand?”
Yeah. Hiram had been forthcoming, all right.
“Sure, I got that. Sounds like insurance. Or maybe that Hiram had an apoplexy and forgot we’re journalists.”
Raberding laughed. “But no. I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know about dear August. More than the police got, for certain, or any of the twelve other rags asking me about his death.
Our ‘friendship,’” he said significantly.
“I’m not wholly sure how it will fit into your socialist arsenal, but I trust you’ll know how to utilize the answers you seek. ” He paused. “You do understand me?”
Laurie did. He said nothing. Rich men and their pleasant threats.