"I guess there have been worse marriages," the bride said.
"That's what I am telling you, dear."
There really was only one very difficult moment and that was the night that the doctor told her she was most fertile. Waldron had sex with her as if he didn't want to do any more than light upon her. But it was enough to conceive and carry on the Perriweather name.
After the baby was born, Waldion ignored his wife totally. She complained to her mother-in-law.
"He acts as if I am not his wife," she said.
"The truth is, Waldron does not think that I am his mother," said the old woman.
"I've heard of children wondering who their father was but not their mother. Who does he think is his mother?"
"I don't know. He never tells anyone. He doesn't lie really, he just doesn't talk about it anymore. We have shown him hospital records. Had him talk to the doctor who delivered him. Gotten sworn testimony from nurses. And still, he won't accept me as his mummy."
"Maybe because he was raised by a nanny?" the young woman said.
"All Perriweathers are raised by nannies. I was as affectionate as any mother in the family. But he just wouldn't call me Mom."
"You know what he calls me?" said Waldron's wife.
"What?"
"His egg-layer."
"Dear," said her mother-in-law, sympathetically placing a hand on the young woman's arm. "He never spends the principal."
Waldron Perriweather III not only maintained the Perriweather fortune but he advanced it brilliantly, showing a sense of business that few would expect outside a top management school. It was beyond ruthless. He just seemed to have an inordinate knack for multiplying money rapidly.
He never told his secret but many suspected from bits and snatches that he simply looked for a chance to grow on the disasters of others.
What none of them could know was that in learning to use money, Perriweather had become one of the more efficient killers on his planet. And he did this as he invested: without passion; with only a grand cunning. Money bought services and the difference between a thug and a surgeon was that a thug usually gave more thought to tearing somebody apart and was not so ready with an excuse if he should fail.
Hit men and arm breakers, Waldron found out early, were far more refreshing to deal with than doctors. A surgeon might blame death on a patient's blood pressure and send the bill nevertheless. But a hit man never charged unless he succeeded.
So in some elements of the underworld, Waldron Perriweather III was better understood then he was in his own family or on Wall Street.
Among those who understood him were Anselmo "Boss" Bossiloni and Myron Feldman, even though they referred to him between themselves as "that faggy rich guy."
Anselmo and Myron looked like two cigarette machines, except that cigarette machines didn't have hair and, some said, felt more mercy than Anselmo and Myron. The pair had met in rehabilitation school. Myron was the better student. He majored in shop and what he learned was how to use an electric drill effectively. He found out if you took the drill bit and put it to someone's kneecap, you could negotiate anything.
Anselmo majored in gym and learned that if he held the person down, Myron could work better. They became inseparable friends. Anselmo was known as the better-looking one. Anselmo was the one who looked like a Mongolian yak.
When they first met Perriweather, they were working as collectors for loan sharks in Brooklyn. Perriweather offered them more money and strangely asked them if they had strong stomachs. It would have been an even stranger question coming from this elegant dandy if they had not been meeting in a garbage dump where Anselmo and Myron could barely breathe. Perriweather kept talking away, as if he were on a beach somewhere. Anselmo and Myron stayed just long enough to get the name of their first assignment and then left, retching.
The hit was an elderly woman in an estate in Beverly, Massachusetts. They were to break her bones and make it look like a fall.
The way they were to do it made the pair shudder but it was nothing compared to what they found out later. They were not supposed to kill the woman, just break her bones. It was an October morning, the house was enormous and the furniture was all covered with sheets. The house was being closed for the season and the woman thought that they were movers.
Myron and Anselmo had never mugged an elderly woman before and they backed away at first. "I ain't doing it," they both assured each other. And then the old woman began ordering them around like servants and each found a little place in his heart that said, "Do it."
Her bones were brittle but that was not the hard part. The hard was was leaving her alive, writhing on the floor at the foot of the stairs, begging for help.
Perriweather arrived just as they were leaving. "Hey, you ain't supposed to be here," Anselmo said. "Whaddaya hire us for if you're gonna be here?"
Perriweather did not answer. He just peeled off the hundred-dollar bills which were their payment and went inside the house, sat down by the poor old woman and began reading a newspaper.
"Waldron," the woman groaned. "I am your mother."
"Are not," Waldron said. "My real mother will be here soon. Now please die so that she will come." Anselmo looked at Myron and they both shrugged as they left. Later they read that Perriweather had lived in the house for a full week with the body before reporting it to the hospital, which of course notified the police.
At the coroner's inquest, Perriweather testified that he lived in a different wing of the house and had not noticed his mother's body. Apparently she had fallen down the stairs and broken her bones. Servants had left that morning to prepare the family's Florida home and Perriweather thought his mother had gone with them and that he was in the house alone.
"Didn't you smell the body?" the prosecutor had asked. "You could smell that body a half-mile down the road. It was infested with flies. Didn't you wonder what the damned flies were doing in the mansion?"
"Please don't say 'damn,' " Perriweather had said. A butler and several other servants saved Waldron, however, by testifying that he had a peculiar sense of smell. None at all, they said.
"Why, Mr. Perriweather could be living with a pile of rotted fruit by the bed table for two weeks, smelling so bad you couldn't get a maid into the room with a noseclip."
And there was the recently-estranged Mrs. Perriweather who admitted that her husband had a fondness for garbage dumps.
There was also testimony that there was no one who could have smelled the rotting corpse because the last two in the house, other than Mr. Perriweather, were brutal-looking movers in a white Cadillac.
Accidental death was the verdict. The prosecutor said Perriweather should go and have his nose fixed. Anselmo and Myron had more work from Perriweather over the years. They also knew he hired others but they weren't sure who and sometimes he would complain about amateur help. Sometimes he would say strange things too. Anselmo couldn't remember how the topic of their first job for him came up but he did hear Perriweather mention that his true mother visited him a day after the first hit had been made.
A nut case, they both decided, but the money was good and none of the jobs were dangerous because Perriweather always had them well planned. So when he called and told them he wanted them to steal an atomic device, there was no complaint, especially since he had agreed to meet them out in the open, in the fresh air.
He was mumbling something about revenge and they had never seen him this angry.
But his plans were again good. He showed them pictures of the atomic installation and gave them the proper passwords to use and badges to wear.
"Ain't that stuff radio-whatever?" asked Anselmo. He had read about those things.
"Radioactive," Perriweather said. "You won't have to handle it long. You just give it to these two people." And he showed them a picture of a young woman with a blank expression and a young man with eyes that wimped out to-the world.
"Those are the Muswassers. They'll plant the device. Tell them not to worry about getting it inside the gate this time. It doesn't have to be inside the gate. That's the beauty of the atomic device, you only have to be within a mile or so of your target. The one thing I do want, though, and tell them to be sure to do this, is to get these two in the laboratory when they set off the device."
Waldron showed his hit men a picture of two men, one wearing a kimono, the other a thin white man with thick wrists.
"I want them dead," Perriweather said.
"How should these other two make sure they're inside?" asked Myron.
"I don't know. You do it. You tell them when you set it off. I am tired of dealing with amateurs."
"Mr. Peiriweather, can I ask a personal question?" asked Anselmo, venturing a familiarity that years of good business cooperation had granted him.