One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [133]
“That would be lovely, my dear. But I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“I want it now,” she insisted. Billy let her take it with her, and was almost relieved to have it out of his apartment. Now all he needed was the money.
He had a cocktail party that evening but stayed home to wait for Sandy.
At eight o’clock, Sandy rapped impatiently on the door. He’d never been in Billy’s apartment, and he looked around, surprised and possibly shocked, Billy thought, by how small it was. “When you get the money, I guess you’ll be buying a bigger place,” Sandy said, opening his briefcase.
“No,” Billy said. “I like it here.”
“Suit yourself,” Sandy said, pulling out a yellow legal pad. He began outlining the particulars, and within twenty minutes, he and Billy had come to an agreement.
Afterward, Billy got into bed, exhausted. Sandy, no doubt, found the need for secrecy strange, but he’d assumed the cross was merely a bibelot, and Billy eccentric. But the arrangements were easy enough, and the money couldn’t be traced to the sale of the cross. Sandy would open an investment account for him at a bank in Geneva, Switzerland, and would transfer the three million dollars into the account in increments of just under ten thousand dollars a day over the next ten months, which would avoid alerting the authorities, who tracked only transactions of over ten thousand dollars. Wrapping up their business, Sandy jokingly suggested Billy make a will.
“Why?” Billy said, taken aback.
“If something happens to you, the government will try to claim the money,” Sandy said, snapping his briefcase shut.
Billy closed his eyes. It was done now, and there was no going back. He promptly fell asleep and didn’t wake until morning. It was the first night in weeks he’d been able to fall asleep without taking a pill.
Two nights later, however, he had a terrible fright. It was the opening night of Balanchine’s Jewels at the New York City Ballet, and Billy decided to go alone, wanting an evening off from the obligation of having to maintain his persona in front of other people. He should have known better—as soon as one left one’s apartment, there was no privacy in New York—and strolling through the promenade in the State Theater during the first intermission, Billy ran into Enid Merle, accompanied, incongruously, by a cookie-cutter young beauty with enormous teeth. Enid didn’t introduce the girl and was, in fact, distinctly unfriendly. “Ah, Billy” was all she said before she turned away.
Billy didn’t put too much emphasis on it, reminding himself that Enid could be that way. Besides, he thought, rationalizing her behavior, like everyone else he’d known in New York for years, Enid Merle was finally old.
In the next second, he was distracted by a pat on the shoulder. Billy turned and found himself face-to-face with David Porshie, the director of the Metropolitan Museum. David Porshie was a bald man with olive skin and deep bags under his eyes; at fifty-five, he was relatively young to hold such a position, the hope of the board being that he might remain the head of the Met for another thirty years. “Billy Litchfield,” David said, folding his arms and looking at Billy scoldingly, as if he’d done something wrong.
Billy was terrified. As the director of the Met, David would know all about the mystery of the Cross of Bloody Mary, and it crossed Billy’s mind—irrationally—that somehow David had found out that Mrs. Houghton had had the cross and given it to him. But he was only being paranoid, because David said, “I haven’t seen you in ages. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
“I’ve been around,” Billy said cautiously.
“I never see you at our events anymore. Ever since Mrs. Houghton passed—God rest her generous soul—I suppose you don’t think we’re important enough.”
Was he somehow digging for information? Billy wondered. Struggling to maintain his composure, he said, “Not at all. I’ve got my calendar marked for the gala next month. I’m arranging to bring Annalisa