I picked up the telephone and called the manager, who knew me by name. “There’s a pervert down there,” I said. “A wiry little Greek named George. He’s already sold two of those little girls you’re so worried about. Get after him!”
“You bet!” he barked. “I see him now. We’ll get him, yeah, thanks for the tip.”
“Good work,” I said. “Beat the shit out of him.”
IV
When my homeboys beat the Redlegs on Saturday, people made the sign of the stinkeye at each other behind the bleachers. Once more I heard ugly whispers of a fix. But no matter: on Sunday we will play White Birch for the championship, and I have bet many thousands of dollars. We will drive them like crippled geese across the ripped-up turf of the Bethpage polo field—me and Carlos and Memo and Doug and Tiger. “Aspen über alles,” that is our cry. They will not even go to the Polo Ball on Friday night. It is the event of the year in our world, but there is still a genuine risk of being poisoned. It was a black-tie event, extremely private and exclusive. Only three hundred insiders were invited for dinner, and many feelings were hurt . . . but not mine. No. I was with my home-boys, and we were riding high. But I was dressed correctly nonetheless. Appearance is very important in polo. The dress code looks to be casual, but, in fact, it is very rigid, not unlike yachting. Those rumpled tan long-coats and flimsy yellow jackets they wear are not from the Gap: they are Burberry camel’s-hair coats with linings of $12,000-a-yard ecru silk and supertech Gore-Tex survival jackets with French titanium zippers. It is a down-style kind of look, but it is extremely functional, and the fabrics will last forever.
It was almost eleven by the time we finally found the unmarked entrance to the Meadowbrook Club. I had whipped the big Lincoln through traffic on the turnpike for thirty or forty minutes at speeds up to 110, past an endless maze of strip malls and row homes and pizza parlors.
It was Fitzgerald’s valley of ashes seventy years later and fifty times uglier. I felt an overwhelming sense of doom as we drove through it with the windows rolled up to keep out the poison gas. A brownish cloud seemed to hang over everything as far as the eye could see. Even inside the car the air smelled of deadly carbon monoxide, and a strange chemical film was forming on the windshield.
I felt frantic, and just then I spotted the darkened entrance to my club. It looked like a service road to some abandoned farm, but I turned in to it anyway. Somehow I sensed that this was the place. It felt right. It was the only driveway on the turnpike without a neon sign above it.
The small road led downhill and through a dark vale of trees. There was no sign of life anywhere—no cars, no people, no road signs—and finally I stopped the Lincoln on the side of a long, quiet hill to calm down and get my bearings.
It was a nice place to be lost, a silent forest of tall elm trees and moonlight and finely manicured grounds. I rolled down the windows and stepped out of the car. The sky was full of stars, and the air smelled sweet. I felt giddy. In the distance I could see a dense bright glow in the sky that was probably Manhattan, only eighteen miles away. But I felt a sense of great distance from it, like I’d wandered off the turnpike and gone straight through the Looking Glass and into a different time. I felt like Jay Gatsby, lost in some primitive forest on the fresh green breast of the New World.
I got back in the car and drove on, up a long hill and past two or three darkened carriage houses—and suddenly I crested a rise and came face to face with the glittering vision that had to be the Polo Ball. I was stunned. It was one of those magic moments that those of us afflicted with the Romantic Sensibility tend to nurse forever in memory. I was looking across a valley at a shimmering cluster of peaked tents, swollen with what appeared to be the most elegant party in the world. As I drew closer I could hear clarinet music and the soft laughter of women. Blue lanterns glowed in the trees around the clubhouse, and tall men moved in the shadows, sipping gin highballs and smoking thin cigars. Gatsby would have felt right at home.
I parked in the trees on the edge of the golf course, and I saw Harriman at the bar, standing alone and staring balefully out at the dancers. A wall of trees blocked my access, but I easily slipped through them, then strolled across the lawn to the tent. People smiled warmly and nodded hello, then the orchestra struck up a New Age waltz.
He was sitting with a sleek blond woman in a clinging red dress who turned out to be Deborah Couples. She was no stranger to scandal, and we bonded immediately. She was seeking a sponsor for her all-female team, and I said Rolling Stone would cover it.
The rest of the night was relentlessly suave. The people were very gracious, and we all drank heavily. I refused to dance with Ms. Couples for reasons of my own, so she left and began to dance wildly with a string of swarthy suitors and Argentine polo types. Harriman tried to cut in on her, but he was too drunk to dance. I decided to leave and abandon him.