Too Much Money Read Online Free PDF Page B

facility. Elias was hurt when he heard that his thirty-nine-room apartment, where the famous Renthal ball had taken place, had been sold, even though Ruby had told him she didn’t want to live there anymore. The Park Avenue apartment represented everything he had ever strived for in his life. He had enjoyed the astonished looks on the faces of even the most established and wealthy visitors when he showed them through it. “I bought that Tintoretto at Waring Hopkins’s gallery in Paris” was the sort of thing he used to say in better times.
    “Look, Elias, I fly out here every other weekend, and I think you could show me a little more courtesy when I make all this effort.” She started handing him the magazines. “I’ve brought you
Time, Newsweek
, Friday’s
Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Financial Times
, and
Park Avenue
. Did you read Gus Bailey’s piece on Perla Zacharias in the issue of
Park Avenue
that I gave you last month?”
    “Let me tell you something about Gus Bailey. Gus Bailey is all wet on Perla Zacharias,” said Elias. “Perla isn’t hiding anything, for Christ’s sake. I knew Konstantin. I did business with Konstantin. Konstantin was no choirboy, but he was the best financier in the world.”
    Ruby was glad they had a subject they could hold a conversation about. She liked talking about the Zacharias murder in Biarritz. “It was odd, though, Elias, even you have to admit it, that there were no guards on duty on the night of the fire, the murder, or whatever you call it, when he had hired twenty-five guards trained by the Mossad and housed them in the barracks he built for them on the outskirts of Biarritz. I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse Perla of murder—there is no evidence of that—but I think there is more to the story than what’s being reported.”
    “The guards drove Perla crazy. She couldn’t stand having them underfoot all the time. She hated it when they farted on duty. She said she didn’t have any privacy,” said Elias.
    “How do you know so much about the guards’ farts driving Perla crazy?” asked Ruby.
    “I called her collect from here after Konstantin’s funeral,” said Elias.
    “How about the famous surveillance system not working that night?” persisted Ruby. “It was supposed to be the latest, the best in the world, or so Konstantin told me the last time I sat next to him at dinner before the fire. Do you know what was in the surveillance cameras on the night of the murder? Old footage of guests arriving at a dinner party Perla gave the week before Konstantin died for the Baron Alexis de Rede, who was visiting her from Paris.”
    “Look,” said Elias, in his voice of authority, wanting to end the conversation. “There’s been an arrest. There’s been a trial. The nurse signed a full confession.”
    “In a language he didn’t speak,” replied Ruby, topping him.
    They looked at each other angrily.
    “Is it true that Perla’s the richest woman in the world?” asked Ruby, changing the subject slightly.
    “No, of course not. Maybe the third richest. She’s got more money than the Queen of England. That’s all I know about the matter.”
    “Did I ever tell you about her diamond and sapphire salt and pepper shakers? She’s got twelve pair of them. And her dining room table seats forty.”
    “You’ve told me that several times.”
    “She knows how to spend money, that’s for sure,” said Ruby. “I hear she spends a hundred thousand a year on caviar.”
    “You don’t do so bad yourself in the spending department, Max Luby tells me.”
    “Oh, fuck what Max Luby tells you about me,” said Ruby.
    Max Luby was one of Elias’s oldest friends dating back to his Cleveland days, before he and Ruby moved to Manhattan. He now handled Elias’s money. There was a time when Max Luby liked Ruby, but since her husband was incarcerated he had disapproved of both her conduct and her spending habits.
    “Perla does nothing but good for people, with all