I Come as a Theif Read online

  The front door buzzer sounded, and Joan went out, switching the light off as she did so. Tony jumped out of bed and stood by the bedroom door which she had closed. On the other side was the living room, which opened directly into the hall foyer.

  “You see, the elevator man is waiting.” Norris’s voice came to him. “I promise to be a good boy. One kiss, and I’m gone.” Tony heard the kiss.

  “All right, Norry, that’s enough.”

  “And you may marry me?”

  “Yes, I think I really may.”

  “You mean you will marry me?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Joan! You darling!”

  “Good night, Norry.” Her tone was cool, sure, almost domestic.

  There was the sound of another kiss, and then of a closing door. Joan opened the bedroom door and stood there, silhouetted against the living room light. He came up, naked, to embrace her.

  “You’re a remarkable woman!”

  She pushed him away. “And I suppose you think you’re a remarkable man.” Her voice was dry and flat. “Maybe you are. But not a man to marry. Oh, I see that now! Clear out of here, will you? And go down the stairs and out the back way.”

  “You think he may be waiting?”

  “No. He’s a gentleman. Something I’m afraid you know very little about. I don’t want the elevator man to see you. I could never face him!”

  ***

  The next night, at seven o’clock, Tony waited for Lee downstairs in the lobby. When he saw her coming from the elevator down the long corridor he moved forward to meet her. She stopped, and he kissed her. As he did so, he had the faint sensation of Inez Feldman’s sticky, gum-droppy kiss in the conservatory of her father’s mansion on Riverside Drive when he had paid up for his immunity in the theft of the dolls’ house divan. But when he drew his head back and saw Lee’s eyes, scared, questioning, as if dreading some brutal hurt, he kissed her again, more searchingly, and there were no gum drops. Then he kissed her a third time, right in front of the old doorman, who had come in from the street and whom she had known from childhood. That Lee, transparently the kind of girl who should object to such a witness, did not object, went far toward convincing Tony how utterly he was at last committed.

  5

  Lee’s parents went to bed very early, and Pieter Bogardus was already asleep when Tony called. As soon as he began to make out the extraordinary nature of his son-in-law’s communication and heard the terms “Regional Director” and “S.E.C.” he shut him right up and told him to come downtown the next day for lunch. Then he went back to sleep. Pieter was a man who could do this.

  He had a private metaphor to describe life—his own life, anyway (it might or might not describe the life of others)—which he had never disclosed to anyone, not even to Lee’s mother. To him it was a dusty, drafty tunnel with nothing at the end but the source of all the dust and drafts. Yet it was a happy paradox that this seemingly bleak philosophy never depressed him. Pieter had always been willing to decorate his tunnel with rugs and draperies, with chandeliers and tapestries, to convert its turnings into Turkish corners, its dust into gold dust. The secret, he had discovered early, was to cover over every square inch of floor or wall and to keep them covered. The process, to be sure, was endless, for every least relaxation was followed by a peeling, a stripping, a blast of dirty wind, and even such necessary refreshment as a night’s sleep was bound to be paid for by anxious periods of needed and busy repair. But to the careful and industrious there could come moments of reward, moments of near ecstasy, moments indeed when life was almost bare of apprehension.

  Adapting his metaphor to his own body, Pieter found that shaving, combing, brushing, bathing, dressing were essential and agreeable parts of the ritual. Not only did they undo the ravages of night; they acted as shields against the garish day. Then Pieter Bogardus, with smooth gray hair about a gleaming scalp and a serene, handsome, classical face, a face that might be gazing down from a Gilbert Stuart or a Rembrandt Peale, could take his place at the breakfast table overlooking the busy East River, pour his coffee from a George II urn and turn away from the rugged headlines to the relative order of the obituary page.

  He had long given up making any effort to change the popular image of himself as it existed among his friends and law associates. They thought of him as a descendant of Pieter Stuyvesant who took a great, perhaps an inordinate, pride in the fact, as a person of aristocratic tastes who cared very much for forms and traditions, as a martinet with a kindly heart and a redeeming twinkle in the eye. Why carp at such an image? Was it not finer, after all, than the fact, finer than the image of a man who was indifferent to all forms, all traditions, a man who cared for no one on earth but his wife, a man who dressed and lived carefully because only through personal order and neatness could he hope to arrange his tunnel so it would pass inspection? Inspection by whom? Ah, who knew? Maybe by the monster that crouched at the end of the tunnel and exhaled all the drafts and dust.

  Pieter could tell you what he had paid for butter in any year and how many days their general maid had taken off the winter before. Pieter totaled up his sales taxes for the correct deduction and kept a little black book in his vest pocket to note such charitable contributions as might lurk in the entrance fees to entertainments or exhibitions. Pieter filed all reports and returns to every insurance company or governmental agency at least ten days in advance. To run a home properly in the “age of forms,” as he called it, was a task that excluded most other activities. Pieter and Selena rarely went out in the evening and never went away for a weekend. Every summer they went to Narragansett in the same week in July and returned in the same week in August. On Thanksgiving and Christmas they attended divine service. They were punctilious about funerals.

  People were always under the illusion that Pieter would approve of them if they were neat and disapprove of them if they were messy. They could never understand that he didn’t give a damn how they looked. He had quité enough to do getting through his own life without bothering how they got through theirs. And who knew? Perhaps they were judged by other criteria. Perhaps they were exempt. Perhaps they did not have to live in tunnels.

  Selena did not leave her room until eleven, and Pieter did not have to speak at breakfast except to bid the maid a courteous good-morning. After his coffee and boiled egg he did household accounts for half an hour and then walked to the subway, where he took the last car, obliterating the actual dark, dusty tunnel by reading advance sheets of tax cases. Walking down the long corridor to his office he greeted those whom he passed cheerily enough, but nobody ever stopped to ask a question or tell a story or comment on the weather. It was too well known that Mr. Bogardus wanted to go straight to his room where he would close the door and not emerge until he went to the toilet at nine-forty-five. If one had anything to say to him, one did so between eleven-thirty and his departure for his lunch club at twelve-fifteen. If the Commissioner of Internal Revenue himself had called at twelve-fourteen, he would have been told that Mr. Bogardus would take no calls until two.

  Oh, people thought he was funny. Of course, he knew that. Where would people have been in the dead world of downtown if they had not had eccentrics like him to laugh at, to feel superior to? He could imagine, with total indifference, what they must say to themselves: “Look at him, a descendant of Pieter Stuyvesant, a successful tax lawyer, a social registerite, and rather a dear old boy, but for all his advantages what is he really but a poor slave obsessed with dates and forms and minor obligations, hipped on having a spotless blotter for his desk and a regularly emptied colon? And look at me—a stenographer, an office boy, a clerk, a cleaning woman—do I clutter my life up with such senseless details?” Don’t you? Pieter smiled grimly as he put the question to his imagined mockers. Such people, like as not, had nothing in their lives to cling to but liquor and television and a bit of sex, equating the pleasure of any slut in orgasm with the ecstasy of a saint. What could such creatures know of
ecstasy?

  “Yes, darling, how are you?” he asked into the speaker when Selena called. She called every morning at eleven, after she had finished her face. Selena at sixty had the gold hair and alabaster complexion of a woman half her age, but she had to work for it. “Of course, I remember where you put it. It’s under the pin dish on your bureau. Don’t forget, it’s to be used for clothes. Every penny of it.” Selena and he were entirely agreed about the minimum social life for the evening, but she lunched every day at her club, and she liked to look well for the girls. “And if you’re tired, skip the hospital meeting this afternoon. Why don’t you go to the movies?”

  She left him to his pleasure, to the review of the Ellison case, and the memoranda prepared by two clerks. If the trustees for the late Anabel Ellison had had the power to invade principal for her benefit, and if the late Anabel Ellison had been vested with the power to remove and replace such trustees, had that constituted such a power in her as to place the trust in her taxable estate? Pieter’s eyes blinked slowly as his mind began to run down the scent. Couldn’t Anabel have kept appointing new trustees until she had found one compliant to her wishes? In fact, yes, but in law? Could a trustee be presumed to be compliant? Could he be presumed to be a bad trustee?

  Pieter rose suddenly and clapped his hand to his heart. Tony! He had just remembered Tony and the hideous telephonic revelation of the night before. Then, quite deliberately, he made himself breathe slowly and regularly, as by an old disciplinary process he turned his mind firmly from the thought. There was never any point dwelling on disaster before one had to. He was breaking one rule already that day by lunching with Tony. Enough was enough. God!

  He sat down again to resume his review of the Ellison case. Thirty-five years before, when his father’s estate, already depleted by the 1929 crash, had been finally obliterated by the federal estate tax, Pieter had abandoned stock brokerage to study law. Upon graduation he had declared his private war against the Treasury which he had faithfully fought ever since. Never, by articles in law reviews or by speeches at tax forums, had he given the least intelligence to the enemy. Never had he served on committees of bar associations advising the government on tax legislation. All his cases had been against the nation, and to have helped the latter in the smallest way to draft better laws or to find better taxing officers would have been, by his lights, simple treason.

  “Mr. Lowder called,” his secretary telephoned from the next room. “Hell be here at noon.”

  “I’ll see him at twelve-ten,” he snapped. “We’ll walk together to the Down Town Association.”

  Damn Tony Lowder. The typescript of the memorandum wriggled before him, and he saw his son-in-law behind bars. Good. Good? No, no! He panted as he again forced his mind, like a reluctant wheelchair, to turn about and face down the boardwalk to the Ellison problem. Ah, yes. But even if a trustee would not be deemed to be a compliant trustee, might not the power to appoint any trustee be deemed the power in Anabel to appoint herself? And if Anabel were the trustee, acting with a non-adverse party, possessed of this power…

  But hush. He flicked over the pages of the memorandum. No, the point was not made. These young men always missed the most beautiful things. Wasn’t there a New York statute that prohibited a trustee from exercising a power for his own benefit? Of course there was. Oh, how beautiful it was…

  It was time to go to the john. One pleasure could await another. He would go to the john and read the proof of his article on taxation of short-term trusts which he had reserved for just that time, and then he would have the pleasure of going to the library to look up that law and after that the delight of pointing out (oh so charmingly, so easily, so tolerantly) to the young man what he had missed. He hesitated before opening the lavatory door. Would that awful office boy who always hummed tunes be in the adjoining toilet? Really, it was intolerable, this common use of the washroom, this democracy of defecation. He would have to speak to the office manager … but no, all the toilets were vacant. A perfect morning.

  Or it might have been.

  At precisely twelve-ten, he went out to greet Tony in the reception hall. They walked together silently to the Down Town Association. At table it was Tony, the guest, who nonetheless suggested a drink.

  “You go ahead,” Pieter said coldly. “You know I never do before lunch.”

  “I thought today you might.”

  “Not even today.”

  They had a table in an alcove where they could not be overheard. Tony told his horrid tale. He had already given Pieter the bare facts on the telephone. There were not many to add. Pieter listened with a grave attention behind which his legal mind rapidly calculated the chances of Tony’s being caught. Fortunately, they seemed slight.

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’ve come to me for a lecture,” he said, with a little sigh, when he had heard it all. “It’s a sick, tragic business, but I take it you know all that. Your conscience is your own best punishment. What can I say? Keep your nose clean in the future, and you’ll be all right.”

  “You mean I should just do nothing?”

  “What the devil can you do?”

  “What about the bribe money?”

  Pieter shrugged. “I suppose eventually you can give it to charity. One of your boys’ clubs, perhaps.” He suddenly thought of something almost pleasant. “Or Mrs. Bogardus’s hospital.”

  “I wish it were as simple as that.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course, it’s as simple as that. It’s the only way it can be.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bogardus, but you’ve never been in a jam like mine.”

  “I should hope not.” Pieter did not at all like the preoccupied way with which Tony fingered the silver by his plate. He began to wonder if pressure and guilt might not have unsettled the younger man’s mind. “Look, Tony,” he continued in a milder tone, and Pieter could be very mild, very sympathetic, when he chose—indeed even gracious. Why did people hate that word? Because they thought it was hypocritical? He wasn’t hypocritical. He liked Tony. “Look, my boy, I can understand that you want to make some reparation for your breach of public trust. Indeed, I should be sorry if you did not feel that way. But be practical. There is no way you can do it. It isn’t like restoring stolen property. Whom could you give the money back to? The crooks who bribed you? The Securities and Exchange Commission?”

  “Oh, no, I’ve given up all idea of restitution. You’re perfectly right, of course. There’s no easy way out of this. But there’s still a way.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I can go to the United States Attorney and make a full confession.”

  As soon as Tony had said this, Pieter realized that all along he had known it was coming. That was what the gray look in Tony’s eyes and on his face had meant. Tony was no longer satisfied to live as sane men lived. He was going now to start tearing up and down his tunnel, ripping cloths and tapestries. But did he stop for a second to consider what this might do to the neighboring tunnels?

  “Have you thought of Lee? Have you thought of Eric and Isabel? Have you thought of your mother and father?”

  “I’ve thought of them, of course. I have a lifetime of that kind of thinking behind me. But the point is: I have to be a person they respect. Jesus Christ told his disciples there should be nobody between him and them: no wife or child or parent. That always used to shock me, but now I think I see what he meant. There shouldn’t be anyone between a man and his conscience. If there is, it’s really because he’s using them as an excuse. I’ve used Lee as an excuse ever since we married. And I used my mother and father as excuses before that.”

  Pieter was scandalized. To talk about Christ in the Down Town Association was grossly improper. People who talked about Christ in that way were always very odd people indeed. Like as not half of them had committed some hideous crime. Crime? Pieter almost jumped from his seat. It came over him for the first time that his son-in-law really was a criminal.

  “I thi
nk we had better keep your religious principles to yourself,” he said coldly. “I have little understanding of such matters. What I see are half-a-dozen lives ruined to satisfy a crazy scruple and no good accomplished. Think of yourself, if you won’t think of those you’ve brought into the world. Think of what you’ll be doing to your own potential to do good. You’ll never be trusted again. You’ll never get another decent job. But if you keep your mouth shut and go back to work in a spirit of true repentance, you may still accomplish great things. You may even find that your experience in wrongdoing has given you a clue to helping others.”

  “Let me tell you a little bit about myself, Mr. Bogardus,” Tony suggested. They still had not ordered, but Tony seemed totally uninterested in eating. Pieter, with another sigh, waved away the headwaiter who was approaching. “It might help you to understand me,” Tony continued. “For days after I had my experience at the Conways’, I lived in a kind of hell. It was something more horrible than anything I had ever imagined. All the normal limits of suffering seemed to have been lifted. The world was cold and dirty-dark, and I knew I couldn’t even escape it by dying. I thought of suicide, but that just didn’t seem a solution. I don’t know if I consciously believed that my suffering would survive death. I doubt it. It was more that I had a funny conviction that suicide wasn’t open to me. It wasn’t in the cards, in the order of things, and that was that. I was going to have to go on living in this unbearably bleak world indefinitely, forever—I don’t know—but anyway with no visible means of cessation. I was condemned to live in a world of Tony Lowders. For in the next few days the people I saw began to turn into me. That was it: I had somehow turned the world into a world of people who had done what I’d done and who didn’t care. Didn’t care that they’d done it or that I’d done it. Do you see it at all?”

  “Not at all.”

  Tony shrugged. “Why should you? You’ve never committed a felony. You’ve never even committed a misdemeanor.”