“Oh, I didn’t do a hell of a lot. A few stitches. Luckily our benefactor here had you squeezed up in a couple of places. And Lillian held your neck in iced compresses for damn near forty-five minutes.”
“You give her a raise, Andy.” Bonner smiled weakly.
“She’s got it,” answered Phyllis.
“How long will I be wrapped up like this? When can I get out of here?”
“A few days, perhaps a week. It depends on you. Those stitches have got to set. The right forearm and both sides of your neck are cut up pretty badly.”
“Those are controllable areas, doctor.” Bonner looked up at Sprague. “An air-flow brace and a simple gauze casing on my arm would work fine.”
“Are you telling me?” Sprague smiled.
“I’m consulting.… I really have to get out of here. No offense, please.”
“Now, just a minute.” Phyllis walked around the bed to Paul’s right side. “As far as I’m concerned, you saved Andy’s life. That makes you special material, Major Bonner. I won’t have you abused. By you or anyone else.”
“That’s sweet, honey, but he also saved—”
“This is getting saccharine,” interrupted Trevayne. “You need rest, Paul. We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll be over early.”
“No. Not in the morning. Now.” Bonner looked at Andy, his eyes imploring but stern. “A few minutes, please.”
“What do you say, John?” Trevayne returned Bonner’s look while asking the question.
Sprague watched the interplay between the two men. “A few minutes means just that. More than two, less than five. I assume you want to be alone; I’ll take Phyllis back to her room.” He looked at Trevayne’s wife. “Did your considerate husband think to bring you some Scotch, or should we stop off at my office?”
“I brought it,” Phyllis answered as she bent over Paul and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you more than I can ever say. You’re a very brave man … and very dear. And we apologize.”
John Sprague held the door for Phyllis. As she walked into the hospital corridor, Sprague turned and spoke to Bonner. “You happen to be right, doctor. The neck and the forearm are mobility control areas. The medical concern, however, is that the control be exercised by the patient.”
The door closed, and the two men were alone.
“I didn’t think anything like this would happen,” said Bonner.
“If I’d thought it was ever remotely possible, I would have stopped you; I would have phoned the police. A man was killed, Paul.”
“I killed him. They had guns out for you.”
“Then why did you lie to me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“I’m not sure. All the more reason to call the police. I never thought they’d go this far. It’s unbelievable.”
“ ‘They’ means us, doesn’t it?”
“Obviously not you. You might have lost your life; you nearly did.… Genessee Industries.”
“You’re wrong. That’s what I wanted to prove. I wanted to bring that fat bastard to you so you’d know the truth.” Bonner was finding it difficult to sustain his speech. “Make him tell you the truth. He’s not Genessee; he’s not with us.”
“You can’t believe that, Paul. Not after tonight.”
“Yes, I can. Just like the information you paid for in San Francisco. You bought it from a certifiable psychopath. ‘L.R.’ I know. I paid him, too. Three hundred dollars.… Funny, isn’t it?”
Trevayne couldn’t help but smile. “Actually, it is.… You have been busy. And resourceful. But for accuracy’s sake, it wasn’t information, per se. It was confirmation. We had the figures.”
“On Armbruster?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a good man. He thinks like you do.”
“He’s a very good man. And a sad one. There are a lot of sad men. That’s the tragedy of this whole thing.”
“In Houston? Pasadena? Tacoma? Or should I say, Seattle?”
“Yes. And right down the line in Greenwich. On an operating table. Only I don’t think of him as sad, just filthy. He tried to kill you, Paul. He is part of it.”
Bonner looked away from Trevayne. For the first time since the beginning of their numerous serious and semi-serious arguments, Andy saw doubt on Paul’s face. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“Yes, I can. He was in San Francisco when we were. He roughed up a congressman from California several weeks ago in Maryland. The Congressman made the mistake of mentioning Genessee when he was drunk.… He’s part of it.”
Bonner was exhausted and began breathing through his mouth. He knew the few minutes were up. He couldn’t sustain much more. He could only make one last attempt to convince Trevayne. “Back off, Andy. You’re going to raise a lot more problems than you’ll solve. We’ll get rid of the scum. You’ll magnify things out of proportion.”
“I’ve heard that before; I won’t buy it, Paul.”
“Principles … Those goddamn principles your bank account bought for you?”
“Something like that, I guess. I said it at the beginning; I’ve nothing to gain or lose. I’ve repeated it several times since … for anyone who wants to listen.”
“You’re going to do a lot of damage.”
“And there are a lot of people I’ll feel genuinely sorry for. I’ll probably end up giving them a hand, if that’ll make you feel better.”
“Horseshit! I don’t give a goddamn about people. I care, care deeply, about this country.… There isn’t time for you. We can’t slide back!” Bonner was breathing too hard now, and Andy recognized it.
“Okay, Paul. Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Bonner closed his eyes. “Will … you listen to me tomorrow? Will you consider letting us clean our own house?… Will you stop?… We can clean our own house.” He opened his eyes and stared at Andy.
Trevayne thought for a moment of the rodentlike Roderick Bruce who wanted to crucify Paul Bonner. How he had refused to be cowed by the newsman’s threats. Bonner would never know that. “I respect you, Paul. If the rest were like you, I’d consider the question. But they’re not, and the answer is no.”
“Then go to hell.… Don’t come around tomorrow; I don’t want to see you.”
“All right.”
Bonner was falling off to sleep. The sleep of a wounded, hurt man. “I’m going to fight you, Trevayne.…”
His eyes closed, and Andy let himself out quietly.
32
Trevayne awoke early, before seven o’clock. Outside the bedroom window the morning looked incredibly peaceful. The snow had reached perhaps three inches; enough to cover, but not so heavy as to warp the perfect designs of nature. Beyond the pines and the thousands of speckled foliage on the ocean slope, the water was calm, slowed down for the winter months; only the waves hitting the rocks were irascible, still fighting for identity. This was, after all, the sea.
Andrew decided to make his own breakfast. He didn’t want to ring Lillian. She had been through so much.
He spread the yellow pages he’d gathered up from his study desk over the kitchen table. The writing was large, hastily scribbled. It consisted of half-sentences and brief notations, proper nouns and corporate titles. It was the information Vicarson had compiled on Aaron Green: much of it extracted from Who’s Who; some from public Securities Exchange prospectus files; the remainder—the specifics on personal habits—from a creative director of the Green Agency in New York. The creative head was under the impression that Sam represented a television documentary firm contemplating a feature on Green.
So simple.… Games. But not for children.
Green was not from Birmingham’s Our Crowd, as Alan Martin had suggested. There were no Lehmans or Strauses in his family background, no old German-Jewish money giving him entree into the hallowed houses of Seligman or Manfried. Instead, Aaron Green was an immigrant refugee from Stuttgart who arrived in the United States in 1939 at the age of forty. Very little was listed about h
is life in Germany other than the fact that he’d been a sales representative for a large printing company, Schreibwaren, with branch offices in Berlin and Hamburg. Apparently he’d been married in the late twenties, but the marriage ended before he left Germany just ahead of the Nazi boot. In America, Aaron Green’s success was quiet but meteoric. Together with several other older refugees he formed a small printing company in lower Manhattan. Using the advanced plate techniques developed at Schreibwaren—soon to become Hitler’s (Goebbels’) propaganda printing base—the small firm’s ability to outproduce larger competitors soon became apparent to New York’s diverse publishing needs. In a matter of two years the firm had expanded its quarters fourfold; Green, as spokesman, had obtained temporary patents of the Schreibwaren process in his own name; the rest was publishing-printing history.
With America’s formal entry into the war and the resultant restrictions on paper and print, only the most efficient survived. And in an industry notorious for trial-and-error waste, Green’s operation had a decided advantage. The Schreibwaren process reduced the waste factor to an unheard-of degree, and consequently the production speed was accelerated beyond competitors’ imaginations.
Aaron Green’s company was awarded huge government printing contracts.
War contracts.
“My old associates speak for Nazi Schlange; I, for the lady with the torch. I ask you, who is on the side of the angels?”
At this juncture, Aaron Green made several decisions which ensured his future. He bought out his partners, moved his plant out of Manhattan into inexpensive acreage in southern New Jersey, scoured the immigration rolls for grateful employees, and literally repopulated a dying town with European transplants.
The price of the New Jersey land was negligible, but wouldn’t always remain so; the expanding payrolls were peopled with men and women who looked upon their employer as a savior—the concept of organized labor, unionism, was unthinkable; and once the initial shock of “all those Jews” moving into the area was overcome and a temple built, Aaron Green’s millions were secure. For as his profits accumulated, he purchased additional land for postwar growth and diversification.
A ride down New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway to this day bore witness to Green’s financial acumen, thought Trevayne as he turned over a yellow page.
After the war, Aaron Green found new interests. He foresaw the enormous profits intrinsic to the rapidly developing television industry, and chose to reach them through advertising. The creativity of the written, spoken, and visualized word.
It was as if the postwar era was waiting for his combined talents. Aaron Green formed the Green Agency and staffed it with the brightest minds he could find. His millions allowed him to raid the best men in existing agencies; his printing facilities afforded him the capability of luring away accounts from others with contracts competitors couldn’t match; his contacts within government circles kept antitrust suits at bay, and by the time the television revenue schedules were set, Green’s sudden supremacy in magazines, newspapers, and print promotions made the Green Agency the most sought-after advertising firm in New York.
The personal life of Aaron Green was clouded. He had remarried; had two sons and a daughter; lived on Long Island in a mansion that had twenty-odd rooms and gardens rivaling the Tuileries; gave with extraordinary generosity to many charities; published quality literature with no thoughts of profit; and was an espouser of liberal causes. He contributed to political campaigns without much concern for parties, but with a sharp eye for social reform. He had, however, a quirk which ultimately caused him to be brought into court by the American Civil Liberties Union, joined, reluctantly, by the U.S. Employment Service. He refused to hire employees of German extraction. A non-Jewish German name was sufficient to disqualify an applicant.
Aaron Green paid the fines and quietly continued the practice.
Trevayne finished his breakfast and tried to form a picture of Green.
Why Genessee Industries? Why the covert support of the same type of militaristic purpose he’d escaped from and obviously still held in contempt. A man who succored the dispossessed and championed liberal reforms was not a logical advocate of the Pentagon.
At the Westchester airport he returned the rented car, made arrangements for the jet to be flown to La Guardia, later in the day, and hired a helicopter to fly him to Hampton Bays in central Long Island.
At Hampton Bays he rented another car and drove south to the town of Sail Harbor. To Aaron Green’s home.
He arrived at the gates at eleven o’clock, and when a startled Green greeted him in the living room, the look in Green’s eyes told him that the old gentleman had been alerted.
Aaron Green’s handsome Semitic features were creased; there was both sorrow and anger in his countenance. His voice—deep, vibrant, still possessed of an accent after more than thirty years—emerged like the gentle roll of kettle drums.
“It is the Hebrew Sabbath, Mr. Trevayne. I might have thought you’d consider that; at least to the extent of a telephone call. This house is Orthodox.”
“My apologies; I didn’t know. My schedule is very tight, the decision to drive over here a last minute one. I was visiting friends nearby.… I can return at another time.…”
“Do not compound your offense. East Hampton is not Boise, Idaho. Come out to the porch.” Green led Trevayne to a large glass-enclosed room that looked out over the side and back lawns. There were plants everywhere, the furniture white wrought iron with dozens of printed cushions. It was like a summer garden set down in the middle of a winter snowfall.
It was completely charming.
“Would you care for coffee? Perhaps some sweet buns?” asked Green as Andrew sat down.
“No, thank you.”
“Come, don’t let my short temper deprive you of excellent cakes. I can’t speak that well of the coffee, but our cook is a superb baker.” Aaron Green, lips tight, smiled warmly.
“I deserved the short temper. I don’t deserve your hospitality.”
“Good! Then you’ll have some.… To tell you the truth, I’d like a little nosh myself. They won’t let me indulge; company is the only way I get around them.” Green walked to a glass-topped iron table by the wall and pressed a button on a white intercom. He spoke in his deep, resonant voice. “Shirley, darling. Our guest would like coffee and some of your cakes which I have positively advertised. Bring enough for two, and it would be pointless to tell Mrs. Green. Thank you, darling.” He returned to the chair opposite Trevayne.
“You’re too kind.”
“No. I have merely changed attitudes—from irritation to common sense. That makes me appear kind. Don’t be fooled.… I was expecting you to call upon me. One day; I wasn’t sure when, and certainly did not think it would be so soon.”
“I understand the Defense Department is … upset. I assume they’ve contacted you.”
“Most definitely. A number of others as well. You are causing excited reactions in many quarters, Mr. Trevayne. You breed fear in men who are paid to be unafraid. I have told several they would not draw an additional week’s salary from me. Unfortunately—and I use the word well—they are not in my hire.”
“Then I don’t have to beat around the bush, do I?”
“Beating bushes was always a questionable method of hunting, used by the poor because they couldn’t afford bait. It had two adverse possibilities. One: the game always had the advantage due to its smell detectors and could choose its avenue of escape. And two: if aroused, it could turn on the hunter and attack without warning. Unseen, as it were.… You can do better, Mr. Trevayne. You’re neither poor nor unintelligent.”
“On the other hand, I find the idea of placing bait a little distasteful.”
“Excellent! You’re very quick; I like you.”
“And I understand why you have such a loyal following.”
“Ahh! Fooled again, my friend. My following—if I really have one—has been purchased. We both have money, Mr. Tre
vayne. Surely you’ve learned, even at your young age, that money begets followers. By itself, isolated, money is useless, merely a by-product. But it can be a bridge. Used correctly, it promulgates the idea. The idea, Mr. Trevayne. The idea is a greater monument than a temple.… Certainly I have followers. What’s more important is that they transport and convey my ideas.”
A uniformed servant came through the porch door carrying a silver tray. Green introduced Shirley, and Trevayne stood up—to Green’s obvious approval—and helped place the tray on the exquisite wrought-iron coffee table.
Shirley departed quickly, hoping Mr. Trevayne would enjoy the cakes.
“A gem! An absolute gem,” said Green. “I found her at the Israeli Pavilion at the Montreal Exposition. She was American, you know. I had to endow a half a dozen orange groves in Haifa to convince her to come back and work for us.… The cakes, the cakes. Eat!”
The cakes were delicious.
“These are marvelous.”
“I told you. Falsehoods may pass in this room with our ensuing conversation, but not about the cakes.… Come, let us enjoy them.”
Both men warily, with some humor, bandied about trivialities until the cakes were finished. Each sized up the other, each found himself confident but apprehensive, as two extremely good tennis players approaching a play-off match.
Green put down his coffee and sighed audibly. “The nosh is finished. We talk.… What are your concerns, Mr. Subcommittee Chairman? What brings you to this house under such unusual circumstances?”
“Genessee Industries. You dispense, partially through your agency, an acknowledged seven million a year—we estimate closer to twelve, possibly more—for the purposes of convincing the country that Genessee is intrinsic to our survival. We know you’ve been doing this for at least ten years. That totals anywhere between seventy and a hundred and twenty million dollars. Again, possibly more.”
“And those figures frighten you?”
“I didn’t say that. You were right the first time. They concern me.”
“Why? Even the disparity between the figures can be accounted for; and you were right. It is the higher amount.”