It was that I was mourning what I assumed would be the imminent destruction of the previous forty years, and preparing myself for a great change. As long as my mother and father had died in mystery, and were unavenged, my heart had been open to them. Now I was preparing to close the chapter, and, I feared, close my heart.
I could hardly take my eyes from the river and the waters I once had known so well. I watched the wind move the diaphanous curtains. I suppose you might say that I was crazy, but love moved me. In that long abandoned long lost town, on the shore of the Hudson, I spent two sleepless days loving the quiet things that were left to me, preparing myself, saying goodbye.
When, on the train to New York on Sunday evening, I finally opened the folder, my eyes were as cold as steel. It was dark outside, and as all the Vassar girls were riding in the opposite direction, the train was nearly empty. In yellow light reflected mercilessly from blackened windows I was incapacitated by tenderness no longer, which was good, for although tenderness has its place, life is driven not by tenderness but by vigor.
Though the folder was an inch thick, I knew within a minute or two that the mystery would be solved. In ten minutes I had skimmed the documents and tied together an indictment, and by the time I reached Grand Central I had read the entire account and knew it indelibly.
It was all fairly simple. The first entry was a letter dated 27 August, 1909, when I was not quite five. In it, a Mr. Schellenberger pointed out to one of Mr. Edgar's lieutenants that it was physically possible to bridge the Hudson. He had in mind a suspended span from the Palisades to the heights of Kingsbridge in the Bronx.
Such a bridge would have been spectacular, especially since, to match the altitude of the Palisades, a great ramp would have had to have been constructed on the New York side. The bridge would be visible, Schellenberger claimed, from the Catskills, Long Island Sound, the Ramapos, and New York's seaward approaches. The key to its placement was simply that the river at the point he proposed is relatively narrow.
Mr. Schellenberger disappeared, but in the year of Wilson's election came a flood of memoranda, notes, and letters in which the focus shifted northward. The City of New York was un-receptive to a public bridge built for private gain. As the wood there was too hard, Mr. Edgar's chisel would have to be directed elsewhere, but the Yonkers politicians, as happy as they would have been to accept a bribe, were beholden to the bosses in the great city upon which Yonkers was fated to sit forever like a cat on a Percheron.
North of Yonkers the river widened and the rock gave way to marsh. According to consultants hired by Stillman and Chase, it was not technically feasible to bridge the Tappan Zee—too much shifting of the river floor, and too wide. The nearest available site was Teller's Point, where the distance to both sides of the river was a mile and the geology favorable.
Advice to Mr. Edgar was that if a bridge and its associated approaches were built on this spot, a vast city would spring up on both banks of the Hudson. With the automobile's conquest of distance, no one would think twice about approaching New York from the rest of the continent via a bridge only thirty miles to the north.
"Why not just take over the ferry traffic?" Mr. Edgar had scrawled in the margin. The answer must have come verbally, because it was nowhere in the folder, but it was undoubtedly that no ferry has ever been able to compete with a bridge.
In January of 1914, Mr. Edgar wrote instructions to his lieutenants. The project was to go ahead. Everything had to be done in the greatest secrecy. If not, the price of surrounding lands would rise, defeating the rationale for the scheme in the first place, by unacceptably raising the cost of construction in relation to the probable returns. The most important parcels were obviously those directly in the path of the crossing and nearby, and no effort should be spared in securing them. The farmers were not likely to want to sell their land at prices low enough to allay suspicion of development. "In this case," he wrote, "do what is necessary to secure the properties, dealing as harshly as may be required with the first people with whom you deal, so that the others will understand and fall into line."
When I read that, I thought of Mr. Edgar, and, even though he wasn't there I said to him, "It may have taken forty years, but you blew it, and you're going to die." I was hardened by those lines to the point where my moral qualms about killing a helpless man receded so far that I could no longer sense them.
In the middle of the dossier was a foldout map of both banks of the Hudson and Teller's Point in between. My father's farm was clearly delineated and identified. Across the property, in engineer's or draftsman's style, were drawn the main approach ramp for the bridge, and the easternmost pier and anchors. The roadway went right through our house.
I suppose Mr. Edgar was right. My father never would have sold out, because what was at stake here was not money but love. Without killing my father, Mr. Edgar never would have been able to put his bridge in place.
But even though he did kill my father (and, for good measure, my mother, too) he did not put up his bridge. He would have, but that summer the war came. He would build ships instead, and direct his capital to the expansion of steel and rubber production. My parents were killed not even for a bridge. They were killed for nothing, like birds that hunters shoot-and leave behind in the field.
The evidence at that point was enough, though it may not have been sufficient in a court of law, but any lingering uncertainties vanished when I came upon two receipts bound into the pages of the folder. Both were dated June 8th, 1914, and each was for $1,000. One was signed by a Mr. Curtin, and the other by a Joseph Nevel. In a businesslike hand that matched neither signature, someone had written, "For services rendered, June 5th, 1914."
Never have I been quite as relaxed about anything as I was initially about the murder of Eugene B. Edgar. I realize that this might seem a trifle coldhearted, but look, you know, he killed my mother and father. I realize that the impulse of many people would be to help him, to rehabilitate him. I can only say, let them help and rehabilitate the murderers of their families, I will deal with the murderers of mine somewhat differently. I was neither proud of what I was going to do, nor ashamed. I would take no pleasure in it, but I knew what was required of me, and that I simply could not shirk.
I brought no tools or weapons, and was outfitted only in a pair of Florentine driving gloves, a navy-blue polo shirt, a pair of khaki pants, and rubber-soled shoes. This is what I normally would have worn, except for the gloves, which I kept in my pocket until I needed them. They were fashioned of very strong and supple leather, they were extremely thin, and in my pocket they looked like a folded handkerchief. I took some cash, in $20 bills, for train fare, gasoline, and tolls, and I carried a newspaper. I have always loved to travel light.
The gold was already loaded on the plane, along with some photographs, letters, and a few mementos: my father's pocketknife, his gold-rimmed spectacles, my mother's wedding ring, a locket of her hair, my pistol from the war, and a beautiful little Sargent that Constance had given me, in which a woman in a white dress is walking down a garden path, holding the hand of a young child.
The Smedjebakkens were gone; all my possessions sold, donated, or burned. The remnants of my bank accounts had been converted to Swiss francs and were in my flight bag with the pistol. The landing strips were prepared, the apartment in Brazil waiting. Most reassuring was that the Smedjebakkens had arrived safely at their destination, and this I knew because I had received a telegram that read: GREAT HAPPINESS MOZART SNOW COVERED MOUNTAINS MAGNIFICENT CITIES MARBLE HALLS CRYSTAL POOLS AND CHOCOLATE CAKES STOP PAOLO.
No one knew that the gold was missing. No one knew that the plane was gassed, loaded, and waiting in the barn. No one knew that I had liquidated everything I had and that the Smedjebakkens had started a new life. No one knew what I was going to do, or where to find me. Even Sydney had broken off our affair, saying that such a thing was acceptable only once in a lifetime, and not for too long, which I thought was both sensible and a great r
elief. I was free. I had no friends or family and I would never be missed, but I was free. I walked through the streets of New York like a visitor from another world, and yet this was my city, that I knew and loved so well. But, still, I had the lightness of being that you feel when you are graduated from an institution that you intend to put behind you forever.
It was early September, and still hot. The humid storms had been replaced by summer heat in declining light, the prelude to golden autumn. I took the train out to Greenwich at commuter time, sitting in the rear car with the conductors on their last run. I knew that investment bankers habituated the forward cars, so I had boarded the train early and was the last to get off. No one saw me in the Greenwich twilight as hundreds of engines started in the parking lots amid the scramble to get in position for the race home on horribly winding roads. In the dusk I walked briskly onto Fishcake Lane, and as darkness fell I found myself at the edge of the Sound, looking across a beautiful rolling moor at the light from Dickey Piehand's estate in Mianus.
It was as immense as an ocean liner bobbing and twinkling on the brine off East Hampton. All the lights were on, and from the darkness in the still fragrant vegetation it looked as bright as if someone inside were filming a movie. I wondered if Ed Murrow were visiting Dickey Piehand, but not a truck was in sight.
I walked across the moor in the dark, smelling the sand, the heather, and many plants that I couldn't identify, having been terribly ill in the weeks in which I was supposed to have studied botany. I love plants, but have always hated it when people go from one to another saying their names. Quite often, people, especially very rich people, are overcome with joyful contempt when I don't know the name of some lousy fucking plant. "You mean, you don't know that this is a palustral helichrysum?" I always reply that these plants about which they are so irritatingly reverent don't know what they are, either. And just because, two hundred years ago, a clerk in a Danish arboretum called the vegetable we are discussing a palustral helichrysum doesn't mean that it really is a palustral helichrysum. The plant is what it is, and palustral helichrysum be damned.
Shielded by darkness and nearly overcome by the scent of the sea, I approached the house, and the closer I got the better I heard the sound of a hi-fi. It was a recording of a woman singing a ballad from a Broadway musical. Perfect.
The garage was located at a civilized remove from the house. As I knew from having been at several Piehand soirées and picnics and having had to eat there because of the coffee, it was far enough away for the sound of starting an engine not to carry. With a record going inside the house, I could have laid down an artillery barrage and no one would have been the wiser. Perhaps because it was such a benevolent evening that even Dickey Piehand was not afraid the night air might hurt his automobiles, the doors were open.
The top was down on the little MG, and a cat was sitting on the canvas cover that snapped across the gap in back of the seat. "Go away!" I said. It didn't move, so I picked it up, but, before I could throw it, it jumped from my hands and settled on the passenger seat. "All right," I said. "If you want to come with me, you can." The cat blinked, as they do, like a king.
I jumped into the MG, inserted the key provided by Mr. Tubby, and drove slowly down the driveway, with the lights off. When I got to Fishcake Lane I turned on the headlamps and picked up speed. Though driving on winding roads in a sports car on a moonlit summer night, I was subdued. I was thinking about things that were sad and true, and before I knew it the cat and I were flying high over the Sound on the steel deck of the Throgs Neck Bridge.
I had been to the Edgar place on Biscuit Neck a dozen times, for parties, small dinners with ministers of finance, and, most recently, to brief Mr. Edgar as he lay on his sickbed. I knew the inside of the house, the outside, the grounds, the paths through the woods, the exercise pavilions, tennis courts, and pools.
He owned all of Biscuit Neck, even the village. The Biscuit Neck police force was a public institution, he was the one taxpayer, and their primary function was to guard his two-thousand-acre estate. Needless to say, the town was rich, even if it was not heavily populated. As Mr. Edgar had begat no one to beget anyone else, there were no schools. Because his estate had its own sewage, water, and electrical systems, there was no maintenance to speak of: if a pothole had to be fixed on the main street, the gardeners would do it, and they knew how, because they were always repaying the forty-five miles of roads up at the house. The shops in the village were the tiny offspring of Tiffany, Dunhill, Mark Cross, S. S. Pierce, etc., and they were not really shops but offices from which to service the estate.
I parked in the shadows between the village and the heavy spear-point fence that went for many miles around the Edgar compound. That the police would carefully inspect the car and record the license number was a mathematical certainty.
Whereas the cat fit right through the bars and waited passively on the other side, I had to climb over. I listened carefully for the sound of approaching police cruisers, and when I heard nothing but existential silence I went up and over the fence, balancing precariously on the rail beneath the spear points, and then dropping to the ground. Had the spears been sharpened, I would not have been able to do it. I frankly do not understand why Mr. Edgar spent six million dollars to build the fence and left the spears dull. For another half-million he could have affixed razor-sharp blades instead, and though he would not be alive today at least he might have lived to have seen color television.
With the cat purring in my arms, I walked for half an hour over small hills and through forested groves, across vast fields of hay that had just been harvested, and under the ponderous black moon-shade of English oaks on the hundred-acre lawn.
Mr. Edgar had dinner at four. That he was not exactly Italian in his eating habits was well known. I doubted, however, that he was asleep, because the lights in his bedroom were blazing. He was home, and not in any of his châteaux or town houses, or on any of the yachts, the three largest of which were called the Interest, the Dividend, and the Capital Gain.
Suddenly, blinding lights slewed in my direction and dogs began to howl. Had the dogs been loose, they would have done me in. You don't have much chance with bull mastiffs, as their passion for hunting people down is what ties them together and sets them apart.
Luckily for me, Mr. Edgar did not want his dogs to foul his footpaths, so their handlers trucked them about in golf carts, and golf carts move very slowly. The cat and I ran behind the hedges that screened the pool. The dogs' noses kept leading them to us, and they got so close you could hear the springs of the golf carts knocking as the dogs strained to jump out. They were fifteen feet away, and the headlights were blinding even through the hedge. Dog saliva flew in the air. The droplets sparkled in the intense light and then were vacuumed up by the night. It was like the Trevi fountain in a high wind.
The moment I heard the leashes undipped and the rocking of the golf carts as the dogs left them, I pointed the cat through the hedge and pinched his flank. Off he shot, as straight as a rocket and as loud as an ambulance, and he led the dogs so deep into the darkness that in less than a minute I could barely hear the whine of golf carts chasing after them. Then, they, too, disappeared, and I was alone in the restored din of the crickets.
I sat on one of the chaises near the pool. The water was black, pure, and gurgling. One of the options of a man with as much money as Mr. Edgar is to have the filtering house a quarter of a mile away, so that one can sit by the pool without thinking of the West Side Highway. I lay back and looked up at the stars. Toward New York, the sky was bordered by a scalloped orange glow as the city's vast system of illumination backlit the tops of the oaks. Straight up, stars trembled and meteors flared in breathless white lines. The moon was somewhere, somehow whitening the black sky. I slept for at least an hour.
When I awakened I was calm and a little tired. I sat up and swung my feet to the ground, reflecting on the means by which Mr. Edgar had accumulated his wealth. Undoubtedly he had done many
fine things. They could not, however, serve as a balance for his depravities. What a mistake it is of juries and judges to consider a man's good deeds when weighing his sins. Such-and-such a fellow raped and murdered someone's daughter, but he gave to charity and he was always cheerful. In the final ledger, one entry can easily disqualify every other, for more important than doing good is to refrain from doing harm.
As I sat near the pool trying to come fully awake—something I can usually do rather quickly by wiggling my toes—I remembered a meeting that I attended with Mr. Edgar and half a dozen others at the River Club. I was there to give a country estimate, but I never got around to that: Mr. Edgar was in a fury, and he held to one subject like a bulldog.
"We have many billions on account from institutions, governments, and individual investors," he said.
"Zillions," asserted a young Edgar grandnephew. That was the end of him.
Mr. Edgar pulled out a cigar knife and placed it on the table. "Put your pinkie in here, Selwyn," he commanded the nephew, who did. "Good. Now, you shut up. If you so much as open your mouth, we'll feed your finger to the fish."
With the nephew out of the way, he turned to the comptroller. "What is our current return?"
"Four and a half percent, net."
"Which comes mainly from loans and investment."
"Yes sir."
"How much, exactly?"
"Three points, more or less."
"And what is our net, currently, from participation?"
"About one and a quarter."
"So tell me where that other quarter point comes in," Mr. Edgar ordered.
"Asset rental and leasing, prepaid charges not accountable as reimbursements, and fees."
"Fees!" thundered Mr. Edgar. "Fees!"
"Yes sir."
"How many points?" he demanded.
"An eighth of a point, sir."
"Asses!" he said. "Fees! No one questions them. They take advantage of people's lifetimes of passivity, their years of education and molding. There are two kinds of creature in the jungle—the tiger and the iguana. The tiger sets the fees, and the iguana pays them. I want more fees."