Six hundred thousand dollars, to be precise. She had it safely stashed away, in five different bank accounts, in her own name. Not a cent of it spent.

It was fortunate really that he wasn’t that passionate about Newport. If he’d insisted on going up there, he’d have discovered at once that, apart from a few tarpaulins carefully pulled over bits of the house, there was nothing going on there at all. No architects, no builders, no marble. Nothing. She’d had workmen come from time to time, to give the appearance that something was going on, and the place was well screened by hedges. That, and a lot of talking, had been all that was needed.

Six hundred thousand. They’d be able to rent quite a decent apartment on Park Avenue. They had some beautiful things. They had friends, social debts to call in. While plenty of people with huge losses were vanishing from the social scene entirely, their own case would be different.

After all, they might be poor, but they were still old money.

Brooklyn

1953

THE FIRST THING one noticed about Sarah Adler was the pair of big tortoiseshell glasses on her narrow face. Charlie had also noticed, when she leaned forward, the little Jewish star pendant on a necklace that rested between the tops of her breasts. But now as he looked into those glasses, he saw that her eyes were not only intense, but a magical brown and flecked with wondrous lights.

Sarah Adler was twenty-four. And right now, as those brown eyes stared at Charlie Master across the table in the elegant St. Regis, she was wondering: How old is he? Fifty maybe? Twice her age, anyway. But he looked in pretty good shape.

And you had to admit, older men were much more interesting.

The St. Regis, on Fifth at Fifty-fifth, was not just a hotel. It was a palace. He’d taken her for a drink, first to the paneled bar, where Maxfield Parrish’s huge, luminous mural, Old King Cole, gave a rich glow to the whole room. She’d liked that. And then they had gone into the pillared dining room. Mr. Charles Master certainly knew how to treat a girl. And he talked well, too.

It was only three weeks since she’d taken the job at the gallery, even if it did pay peanuts. So when Mr. Master had walked in this morning with his incredible collection of photographs, and the gallery owner had told her to take care of it, she couldn’t believe her luck. And now they were sitting in the St. Regis, and she was enjoying one of the most interesting conversations she’d ever had in her life.

This man seemed to know everybody. He’d been friends with Eugene O’Neill and all the theater crowd back in the twenties, and he’d written plays himself. He’d heard the jazz greats in Harlem before they were famous, remembered Charlie Chaplin when he was still performing onstage. And now he’d just told her something even more amazing.