Lady of Fortune Read Free Page A

Massachusetts, and from there to a secret retreat in New Hampshire. She did, however, send flowers to Sabatini’s funeral: a hundred white roses, with a handwritten card saying, ‘Only one tenth of what you did for me.’ Louis Sobol, the famous society columnist of the New York
Journal
somehow acquired the card and reproduced it next to his daily article. ‘If you’ve ever thought that bankers are the last people to conceal secret passions,’ he wrote, ‘just take a look at Effie Watson’s last sentimental goodbye to slain mobster George ‘Spats’ Sabatini. What Sabatini actually did for Miss Watson that was ten times greater than a hundred white flowers, we shall never know! But we may guess that there was an unholy bond between them which only death could break …’
    Effie, walking with her friend Margaret Shaw on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, on an afternoon that was already beginning to smell like early fall, spoke of business, and how she was going to redecorate her apartment in London, and whether she ought to sell her portfolio of Daumier etchings. But she never once spoke of George Sabatini, nor of the night that had been ‘Versailles’; and the only way that Margaret Shaw could tell how sad she felt was by the way she turned her head when she spoke of Long Island, and the tears that filled her eyes when she turned around again.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€˜But weren’t you frightened of him?’ the woman reporter asked her, on a blurred afternoon fifty-four years later, in Malibu, as they sat over China tea and tiny pâté sandwiches by the pool. ‘I mean, the consequences of loving a gangster could have been catastrophic, couldn’t they? Emotionally, and careerwise.’
    The old woman sitting opposite her on her basketwork chaise-longue, her face obscured by veils and by the violet shadow which was cast by the wide brim of her Italian straw hat, said drily, ‘Of course I was frightened. Love is always frightening.’
    â€˜But didn’t you care what your friends thought? Or how the people at the bank might have reacted?’
    â€˜I wasn’t in the habit of referring my lovers to my stock holders. I wouldn’t do it today, if I still had any lovers.’
    â€˜Do you think you might have married him?’ asked the woman reporter. She had been shown by the butler to a seat in which the sun shone directly in her eyes, and in which, even in her red cotton sundress, she was uncomfortably hot. Every time the pool rippled, dazzling reflections of light crisscrossed her face. But she was determined to brave this interview to the end. She was the first journalist to have talked face-to-face with Effie Watson for twenty-two years.
    Beneath her veils, Effie whispered, ‘I can’t say. He askedme. He said, ‘I want you to be Mrs George Sabatini.’ But his days were numbered, from the very day of his birth. He led such a violent life that he couldn’t possibly have survived for long. Yet, if he hadn’t led such a violent life, he would never have become so rich, and I never would have met him. So he was always caught in the dangerous circle of his own life. Those could be very vicious days, in 1927. I knew several men who were killed by gangs, and not all of them nicely.’
    â€˜Is there a nice way to die?’ asked the woman reporter.
    A clock chimed, somewhere behind the white lace drapes which rose and fell in the languid afternoon breeze.
    Effie said, ‘Time has tricked me, you know. I feel so young at heart, and yet I look at myself in the mirror and know that I am only three years away from being one hundred years old.’ She allowed herself a wry, almost invisible smile. ‘Perhaps I should stop taking ginseng. But I can’t tell you how terrible it is, to have a mind like mine, trapped inside such a futile body.’
    The woman reporter said, ‘Can I ask you about Merritt