The Wrong Kind of Money: A Novel

PART ONE

River House, 1994

1

Nine Lives

Unless you happened to be a spectator at the trial, you probably have no idea what Hannah Liebling looks like. And it’s unlikely that you were among the spectators. Because of the prominence of the individuals involved, it would have been easy enough to have turned that trial into a national sensation. But, thanks to the shrewd public-relations work of Miss Bathy Sachs—of whom you’ll hear more later—the more sensational aspects of the case were played down, and spectators were kept to an absolute minimum. It was no coincidence that Judge Ida Kaminsky, who heard the case, was assigned the smallest courtroom in New York County, with very limited seating. The right to a jury trial was waived because, as Bathy correctly put it, When you’ve got a defendant who might be guilty, you want a jury. But when you have a defendant you know is innocent, it’s better to let a judge decide. And it was no coincidence that, throughout the proceedings, the matter was referred to as a homicide and not a murder. As Bathy said, All murders are homicides. But not all homicides are murders. Was it a coincidence that the judge assigned to the case was a woman? You decide.

Television or other cameras were not allowed in Judge Kaminsky’s courtroom. Of course, the press and public could not be completely excluded, and courtroom sketch artists were able to capture Hannah Liebling’s bulk, but not much else. They were not able to capture the fiery iciness in her blue eyes. They were not able to capture her commanding presence, though the few reporters who managed to find seating space tried to describe it for their readers. They were not able to capture what can only be called Hannah’s heroic poise, her sense of self.

When the county prosecutor produced, for a second time, the lethal weapon, she did not flinch. When he showed—again!—the photographs of the bloodied corpse blown up, in color, on the screen, many people averted their eyes. Not Hannah. She gazed expressionlessly at the screen, her face a mask. Has she no heart? people asked. Is she a woman devoid of human feelings?

Judge Kaminsky kindly set aside a small room adjacent to her courtroom for the use of family members during some of the more troubling parts of the testimony, and some members of the family repaired to this room from time to time. But Hannah—never. She was there day after day, calmly, collectedly, sitting in the seat that had been assigned to her, taking in every word, occasionally scribbling short notes to herself on a pad of paper. She had made a point, in the trial, of not being represented by any legal counsel. And when it came to her turn to testify she strode, almost regally, to the witness box, in her hat, her gloves, in her long mink coat, with her reticule slung over her left arm. She removed her right glove to be sworn in, and repeated her oath in a clear, strong voice. And when she began to testify, she did so in an accent that immediately caused the prosecutor to appear deferential, even shy, in her presence. He addressed her as ma’am.

In whose name is this weapon licensed, ma’am? he asked her.

Mine.

And who gave this weapon to the defendant, ma’am?

I did.

No sketch artist could ever replicate that voice.

May-huhn.

Mrs. Hannah Liebling speaks with the kind of Old New York accent that has almost disappeared from the Manhattan scene. It is an accent that is a product both of Hannah’s generation and social class, and as a result, it is spoken nowadays mostly by dowagers and grandes dames, both of which she is qualified to label herself, though she never would. ("Well, I have been called a doyenne," she once told a reporter.)

This accent, peculiar to New York City, where it evolved after the Civil War, involves a flattening and protracting of certain vowel sounds, turning short vowels into diphthongs. Take the word bird, or the word word. These become buh-uhd and wuh-uhd. There is a perceptible hint of what we call Brooklynese here, and also an echo of the Old South, as well as something that might have been borrowed from the German in that invisible umlaut. Hannah, it might be added, comes by all these influences naturally. Her great-grandfather, the first Marcus Sachs, emigrated to these shores from the Rhenish Palatinate and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where he became a cotton broker before moving his family north after the war. The first Marcus Sachs actually kept slaves—not many, but three or four—and, following the principles of Deuteronomy, these were always manumitted after seven years of servitude, as Hannah Liebling is always careful to point out whenever the subject comes up, though it rarely does. As for Brooklyn, Hannah was born in one of those fine old houses on Prospect Park, a neighborhood that is now almost entirely black. But let’s go back to last January, before all the trouble, before the trial.

Hannah Liebling is sitting now in the backseat of her Lincoln Town Car as it moves slowly down Park Avenue in heavy traffic. The rainy street ahead of them is a glittery sea of red brake lights refracted by the Lincoln’s wiper blades. Perhaps, Mr. Nelson, she says to her chauffeur, it would have been better if we’d gone down Third. Thuh-uhd.

Perhaps, Mrs. Liebling, he agrees. He does not point out to her that Third Avenue is, and has been for many years, a one-way uptown thoroughfare. After all, Hannah Liebling can remember when all the avenues in New York were two-way. The other two passengers in the Lincoln’s backseat do not point this out to her, either.

These are Hannah Liebling’s older son, Cyril—pronounced Kyril—and her granddaughter, Anne, who is just eighteen. Anne is the daughter of Hannah’s younger son, Noah. Hannah often calls Anne her Little Bird. Littuhl buh-uhd. It is an accent that surely, in another generation’s time, will have disappeared altogether.

Sit up straight, Cyril dear, Hannah Liebling says now, tapping him sharply on the knee with a white-gloved fingertip. Don’t slouch. Good posture is so important. It keeps the internal organs in alignment, and it’s so easy to do. All it requires is practice.

Cyril straightens up, just slightly. His slouch is deliberate because he knows it irritates his mother. Though, at six feet four, Cyril instinctively ducks his head before passing through most doorways, he affects a scholarly stoop when in his mother’s presence. And straighten your necktie, dear, his mother says, reaching out to do this for him. Actually, Cyril is a fastidious dresser, but just before being picked up by his mother’s car this evening, he had deliberately skewed his tie, confident that his mother would notice this and take him to task for it.

And tie your left shoelace, dear.

She caught this, too. In the dark backseat of the car, Cyril smiles to himself.

Appearances are so important, Hannah says. We are judged by how we appear to other people. Actually, bad posture runs in my family. My father—your great-grandfather, Little Bird—had terrible posture. I actually think it shortened his life. When he died, the doctors said his internal organs were out of alignment. I also think bad posture may have killed my sister Settie. Settie had a tendency to slouch.

Why would a slouch have killed your sister, Nana Hannah? Anne asks her.

Haven’t I told you the peculiar way your great-aunt Settie died? It was most peculiar.

No, says Anne. What was so peculiar about it?

With the back of his hand Cyril suppresses a faint yawn. His mother catches this and gives him a sharp look. But, after all, he has often heard how his aunt Settie died. From the front seat, Mr. Nelson looks straight ahead as the traffic inches forward. He, too, knows how Settie Kahn died, just as he knows many other of this family’s secrets, but his job is to drive and not listen, though he is perfectly capable of doing both things at the same time.

Was there a scandal, Nana Hannah? Anne asks her grandmother eagerly.

No, there wasn’t any scandal, her grandmother says. But it was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy, and I still believe that if it hadn’t been for that slouch of hers, she’d be here with us today.

Cyril Liebling, who has resumed his own slouch in the backseat, sniffs audibly, and his mother gives him another sharp look.

Tell me about her, Nana.

You see, my sister Settie had everything—beauty, brains, a perfect husband, a perfect marriage, two beautiful homes, all the money in the world—

She was a vain, stupid, money-grubbing bitch, Cyril says.

"Hush, Cyril. She was not! She was beautiful from her soul outward. She had a beautiful, swanlike grace, and it was like watching a dancer to watch her move."

When she walked into a room, she was like a star stepping out for a curtain call.

Cyril’s mother ignores this. "But Settie had one flaw, or imagined she did. She thought—imagined, really—that her, well, that her fronts were too big. She grew up, you see, in the flapper era, when it was fashionable for women to have very flat fronts. Women taped themselves to make their fronts appear flatter. There was an artist named John Held, who always drew women with very flat fronts, and every woman wanted to look like a John Held drawing. Fortunately, I was three years younger than Settie, and so I escaped all that. But Settie, who thought her fronts were too big, used to scrunch her shoulders together to make her—fronts—seem less prominent. That accounted for the slouch. Actually, her fronts were a perfectly normal size." She touches her own ample bosom in demonstration.

Anyway, her best feature was her long, swanlike neck, and, just by coincidence, there was a finial at the end of the stair rail in her apartment at fourteen East Seventieth that was in the shape of a swan’s head, carved out of ivory. The staircase curved between the two floors of the apartment, and I always admired that lovely swan’s head at the top of the banister—it had blue jade eyes and a rather wistful expression on its face. Settie’s eyes were also blue, and she also had a kind of wistful expression sometimes—for which I can hardly blame her, considering what she had to put up with from Leo Kahn! Anyway, she had a lovely silver satin pelisse trimmed with chinchilla that she often wore at home in the afternoons. And one afternoon, in December of 1937, she was wearing that pelisse, and she started down the stairs.… I have a mental picture of her, her shoulders scrunched together, with that little slouch of hers. The sleeve of her pelisse must have caught in the ivory swan’s head, and it pulled her off her balance. She fell, caught by the stair rail, and she was instantly killed. Instantly killed, the doctors said. The ivory swan’s neck also broke off in the fall. So there was my beautiful, blue-eyed swan, destroyed by another beautiful, blue-eyed swan. Rabbi Magnus spoke of this in his eulogy at her services. Hannah Liebling dabs her eyes.

In the backseat, Cyril Liebling draws an imaginary bow across his crooked arm as though stroking a violin.

What a sad story, Nana Hannah, Anne says softly. I wish I could have known her.

Yes, she says. Yes, it was. Very sad.

What happened to Uncle Leo?

He married again. Much too soon, of course. I never saw him after Settie’s funeral. Later, I read he died. If Leo hadn’t been in Seattle when it happened, I would have sworn he had something to do with it. He was a dreadful man. But the only person in the house with her when she died was Celestine, her French maid.

Actually, I suppose he did have something to do with it, Cyril says, slumping deeper in his seat. He was always making remarks about her big boobs. And he bought her that dressing gown—or pelisse, as you call it. With those big, dangerous sleeves.

But I thought you said she had a perfect marriage, Nana, Anne says. I thought you said he was a perfect husband.

"Well, he was the right kind of husband, was what I meant. After all, he was a Kahn. Otto Kahn was a cousin. But he wasn’t very nice to poor Settie."

Screwed every showgirl in New York, Cyril says matter-of-factly. Other than that, I found him quite a jolly old chap.

Now, Cyril, we don’t have any proof of that, his mother says. And don’t use vulgar language in front of the child.