No One Rides for Free

by Larry Beinhart

  “I paid one, to save my sisters. He took the money and then he tried to arrest them, on the spot, right before me. He was the first man I killed. He was Geheime Staatspolizei, Gestapo.

  “I used his papers to escape. Also his clothes. I went west to Austria, because once, as a boy, we had gone to the mountains. Then I was almost caught because the murder became known and the papers were no good anymore. It was almost December and the mountains were getting cold. I was growing ill from hunger and exposure.

  “That is how I came to kill my second man. He caught me in his home, stealing his food and an overcoat and socks. He was an old man. Over fifty anyway.”

  “Why did you kill him then?”

  “He came for me with an ax. Can you imagine that, here in America, killing a man for a loaf of pumpernickel and an old overcoat?”

  “Yeah, actually, I can.”

  “Maybe you are right,” he said, and the idea disturbed him. “That is a very sad thing.”

  We walked some more, until he spied a large hunk of driftwood and we went and sat on it. He took out a cigarette, a Gitane, and offered me one. It was formal and ceremonial, so I took it.

  “Is that all of them?” I asked.

  “All of what?”

  “Of your dead. Of your sins.”

  “There is one more. A German. He tried to stop me when I was trying to get to the American lines.”

  “And Edgar Wood?”

  “I better tell you how I met Edgar,” he said. Then he explained how he had been classified as a DP, displaced person, and how, normally, he would have been sent to one of the DP camps, or to Hungary, but for a young American. A lieutenant who took pity on him and showed him how to get papers.

  “Did you bribe him?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, still with wonder more than a quarter of a century later.

  “But you made it up to him later.”

  “Yes, but who could know that?” We sat on the smooth, bleached wood, smoking. It was making me dizzy and a little high. “My name. I made it up when I got to the American lines. Gore man, it is a pun.”

  We smiled at each other, there in the moonlight, enjoying a good pun.

  “What was your real name?” I asked.

  “What does it matter? I had many. Once I was even Horthy. For two or three weeks, I think.”

  “And Edgar Wood knew all this. That’s why he had to die?”

  Goreman laughed aloud. “No, no, Tony. You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “No?”

  “Edgar knew none of this. He knew nothing of who I was before I became Charles Goreman. There were many things he did not know.”

  “There are two things I don’t know and wanted to ask you about.”

  “Who killed Edgar Wood and why,” he replied.

  “That wasn’t it, but if you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”

  “I don’t know either, so if you want to ask your other questions I’ll try those.”

  “I know that Wood was your attorney when you started. At that time he was a partner in a firm called Springstein, Saperstein, Cohen, and Wood. After you took over LTI, the attorneys for LTI, Choate, Winkler, et al, became the attorneys of record for Over & East. Why?”

  “I felt that they were a key factor in creating a smooth transition. It was my way of saying ‘thank you.’”

  “Gimme a break,” I said.

  “You doubt me?”

  “I think it could be radically rephrased. You did a deal before the takeover attempt even started. LTI was bigger than you. They could have fought you off. So I figure you had a pipeline into LTI, that you knew every move they were going to make before they made it. Then your pipeline turned around and told LTI, ‘Well, it looks like Charlie Goreman has us outmaneuvered. Maybe the best thing to do is let Over & East take you over.’”

  We looked at each other for a moment. He lit a second Gitane.

  “You could phrase it that way,” he said at last.

  “Who was the pipeline?”

  “Is that your second question?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s part of the first.”

  “I don’t mind answering questions about myself, but I hesitate to speak about other people,” he said.

  “Was it Lawrence Choate Haven?”

  “Yes,” Goreman said, and realized where I would go with the idea. “However, Edgar did not know that. He was led to believe my source was at LTI.”

  “He could have found out.”

  “I doubt it. Lawrence and I were the only ones who knew.”

  “OK. My second question.”

  “Go ahead, Tony.”

  “How did you get started?”

  “I thought you had investigated me. At least gone to the library. The story of Samson Construction is there. …” He sounded disappointed in me, while eager to sing the Saga of Charles Goreman and Over & East.

  “I know about it. But what I don’t know is where the first two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars came from. You were in commodities, you had a couple of jobs, but that’s a big chunk of change.”

  “It was my patrimony. In ’38 my father started sending money out of Hungary, to here, the United States. We were supposed to follow. We paid the Hungarians, they were willing, but the United States would not take us, not then. Suddenly we were there, and our money was here. If we had tried to bring it back, the government would have stolen it. So here it stayed.”

  “You got here in ’47,” I pointed out, “you didn’t make your move until ’54. How come?”

  “I had a great deal of trouble getting the money. The man who sent the money to the United States bore the name Itzhak Oberetstock. I claimed to be his sole surviving heir, but my name was Charles Goreman. There were no papers, nothing to show who I was.”

  He sighed heavily. “It goes to show how much trouble you can make for yourself, making puns. I don’t do it any longer.”

  “It took seven years for you to get the money?”

  “No, no, only five. I got the money in ‘52. Actually it was only eighty thousand dollars. A lot in those days. Inside of a year I doubled it on the commodities market. By ’54 I increased that amount by fifty percent. Then I spent six months looking for something like Samson Construction. … It is getting chilly. I am going back to the house.”

  He stood up and I followed him through me sand.

  “How did you finally prove who you were?”

  “I found some witnesses. People who knew me in the old country. It was not difficult. But it was time-consuming and expensive, in relation to the resources I had at that time.”

  “I would have been pissed.”

  “It was better than being in Hungary with the Arrow Cross Fascists or the Reds.”

  “So you’re not angry about it.”

  “I cannot say that,” he admitted. “I was angry. But anger, resentment, these are not functional emotions. Those are things that get in the way. I am a businessman. I deal only in the value of things.”

  “Who held your inheritance for you?”

  “One of those big Wall Street law firms.”

  “Which one?”

  “What matter, they are all alike. Big offices in a big building, with a lot of very American names.”

  “Like Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore. And the trustee was someone like Lawrence Choate Haven.”

  “Very much like that,” he said.

  “Did you feel like he was trying to defraud you?”

  “Feel? I felt many things. But did I have grounds for suspicion? There were complications in establishing the facts. That is all that I know.”

  “Yeah, but what did you feel? What did you think?”

  Goreman shrugged.

  “When you started Over & East you had to choose an attorney. Here was a lawyer who was well connected; he knew the banks, he knew everyone on Wall Street. He was tied into all the powers. You didn’t choose him. Why not?”

  “I did not like
the man.”

  26

  LOVE IN VAIN

  THE SEAPLANE TOOK US back to Manhattan early Sunday afternoon.

  “I have done a lot of thinking,” Christina told me. “I think I’ve come to terms with ‘us.’ I know that in the long run it would never work out. We’re just too different. And there’s the money problem. Traveling is very important to me, and living in a certain … style.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When this is all over, I would like to go to Greece, or maybe Ibiza, For the winter. Can you afford that, Tony? Or would you go with me on my money? Could you handle that? I don’t know if I could. Eventually I’m going to get married, and I have to marry someone who … who has more money than you do. Otherwise it wouldn’t work out. Now that I understand that, I can relax and enjoy us. Just be good friends who happen to have the world’s hottest sex. I can handle it on that level.”

  If only it were on that level, I thought, then I wouldn’t have to have it at all. Life would re-stabilize.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon with Wayne, bike riding and squash playing.

  On Monday, I called a shyster named Carmine DeSalvo, one of the nastiest people I know, specializing in those aspects of the law that verge on blackmail. Tuesday, I took Christina to see him, to represent her interest in the estate, charging Choate, Winkler’s trust department with conflict of interest. I didn’t need him to win, just to keep them off balance enough that they would be afraid to shut me down. Since I had once seen Carmine make a perfectly inoffensive nun, wearing her habit on the stand, appear to be a sleaze-monger, I was reasonably confident that he could do the job.

  After the meeting, I offered to escort Christina home, my mind full of lust-tinted pictures of romance, or vice versa.

  “Go home to Glenda and Wayne. That’s the best thing you can do for all of us.”

  “Christina …”

  “Don’t say anything. Don’t even look at me. You have honey on your tongue and the eyes of an angel. This weekend was all I thought it was going to be. It was heaven and you were my angel. I cried Sunday night. I woke up Monday morning so lonely I cried again. I didn’t eat all day and I cried myself to sleep. This morning I woke up, and all I wanted to do was cry, because … I refuse to keep hurting myself this way.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I believe you. That’s what’s wrong. If you just wanted to fuck me I could live with that. Or maybe I couldn’t. But I could throw you out and make it stick. I wouldn’t keep coming back for more misery.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I said stupidly.

  “Go home. Stay out of my life. Stay out of my bed. Don’t even call me unless it’s … don’t talk to me at all unless it’s to say who killed Daddy.”

  “I’m going to have to talk to you.”

  “Have that partner of yours do it. The one who doesn’t approve of me.” There were tears in her eyes. She whirled away from me toward the curb and waved for a cab. A dent exhibition slowed to a stop on uneven brakes and she jumped in. She sat there and dug a tissue out of her purse. “Where we going?” the driver asked. She wiped her eyes. Then she leaned out the open window.

  “There’s one, one other thing you can call me to say. You can call me to say, ‘Meet me at the airport, let’s go on the flight to Rio.’”

  The cab drove off.

  I trudged back to the office. The whole thing could only end in court, with Carmine DeSalvo pioneering the revolutionary legal concept of emotional whiplash. Christina could countersue on the same basis.

  When the phone rang I was sure it was her, but it was a muffled male voice asking for me.

  “Mr. Cassella,” the voice said, “we met at a party. …”

  “OK. And you are?”

  “If there was anyone that Wood could blow the whistle on, my bet would be Marlowe,” the voice told me.

  “Oh. And why is that, Mr. … ?”

  “Head of acquisitions. He knows where things are going to go, and when, long before anyone else. Smarter men than he are going to prison for insider trading these days.”

  “That is real nonspecific.”

  “Perhaps it is, but if someone were to add up his houses, his alimonies, his cars plus the boat, plus that woman’s apartment at Sixty-fifth and Park, plus the money he drops at Tahoe, someone might come up with an outgo that exceeds reported income.”

  “That could be said of a lot of people, maybe most people in his position.”

  “You’re supposed to be the bloodhound. All I can do is show you where the trail starts. Good luck, Cassella.” He hung up.

  It sounded like Diller. I wondered how long it would take for Marlowe to finger Klughorn, then for Klughorn to complete the daisy chain.

  I called Chip and made a squash date. I was still stiff and sore, far from at my best. Still, I enjoyed beating up a little black ball that hardly ever hit back. I lost, and Chip was excessively pleased with himself.

  “Angry at something?” he asked in the steamroom.

  “Women trouble,” I muttered.

  “If you have to have trouble, that, I’m told, is the best kind.”

  “You’re told? Never had any yourself?”

  “Never.”

  “Why is that?”

  “My approach to sex is rather clinical and cold,” he said. “What surprises me is that it is successful. More and more women seem to like it that way. I think my style might be the coming thing.”

  My reply was a grunt.

  “You, on the other hand, are probably very passionate, all that Mediterranean blood. Just the way you played squash today, and see where it got you.”

  “Chip, I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Sure. You want me to cover for you?”

  “No. Listen. Feel free to say no, but I want your word that whether you say yes or no, you’re not going to tell anyone about it. Anyone at all.”

  “My word is my bond. Or, if you prefer, my debenture.”

  “I’m serious,” I said sternly.

  “OK, OK, seriously. What is it?”

  “Absolute secrecy. What I want to do is wait ’til we get out of here, then I’ll give you a hundred bucks and consult you as an attorney. Then you’re bound by the attorney-client privilege. OK?”

  “Fine by me, buddy. I’m always glad to pick up a hundred, but it’s not necessary.”

  We found a coffee shop. I gave him the hundred and made him write out a receipt. Then I told him what I wanted.

  I wanted the records of Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore relating to the takeover of LTI by Over & East. I also wanted the records of any refugee funds that the firm had handled from 1936 to 1952, most specifically a file on Itzhak Oberetstock.

  “You are kidding, of course,” Chip said.

  “No. There’s something rotten, and I want to find it. … What if I told you that Lawrence Choate Haven sold out LTI to Charles Goreman?”

  “Tony, you shouldn’t even say things like that. Even here, even to me. You’re wide open to a slander suit. You can’t fool with guys like that.”

  “I have it on good authority.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you do. Let them say it and let them take the rap. I think somebody is lying to you.”

  “During the war, old W.W. II, some people ran a racket. They handled refugee funds. A couple of senior partners up there, Shaw and Haven to name two, were on various refugee committees. Let’s say they were sincere, why not?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I spent Monday afternoon in the New York Public Library. It’s in the Times, mostly in the Society pages. So-and-so throws a ball, proceeds to charity, to help refugees, on the committee are, and then there’s a list. Simple.”

  “So they were good guys.”

  “But let’s imagine what could have happened,” I went on. “They not only helped people, they helped money escape from Europe. Sometimes the people didn’t follow the money. It’s 1945 and the American
armies stumble over the death camps. Suddenly we discover millions of people died. Entire families, parents, children, cousins, uncles, aunts, the lot. Every possible heir. And you are holding the funds. … Then what happens? Tempting, isn’t it?”

  “Tony. I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t know where you got the nerve to come to me with, with, allegations like this. …”

  “Wait, Chip, there’s more.”

  By then he was standing and headed for the door. I threw a five on the table to cover the $1.25 tab and ran after him. I caught him trying to catch a cab.

  “You’ve used up your retainer. Also our friendship. Don’t say anything more.”

  “Just one thing more. You do work for Ricky Sams. Who in your office is connected with a Washington dope dealer named Doc Wellby?”

  A cab stopped. He jumped for the door and hauled it open.

  “Because that’s who had Edgar Wood murdered,” I said through the window as he rolled it up.

  I had his solemn word that he would not tell anyone what I told him. I was protected by the attorney-client privilege, with a signed receipt to prove it.

  As the cab disappeared I wondered if he was going straight back to the office to bring my allegations to Choate Haven. Or would he wait until morning?

  27

  BLAST FROM THE PAST

  I WAS JUST SHAKING the tree to make the nuts fall out. I used Ol’ Chip, ol’ squash buddy, to give it one shake. Mel could give it another one for me.

  I told Mel that he should look into the LTI takeover, in particular the role that was played by the attorneys for LTI. I passed along the tip on Marlowe, which Mel appreciated, since insider trading was the offense that the SEC had the most success in prosecuting.

  “All I want in return,” I said when he thanked me, “is some instant noise.”

  “How instant?” he asked.

  “Today.”

  “Gimme a break, Tony, what do you expect me to do today?”

  “Mel, you’re a bright guy. You’ll think of something. Maybe you could just call up Over & East and say, ‘Hi, Over & East, get your paperwork in order ’cause I’m gonna start prosecuting.’”

  “What are you up to, Tony?”

  “Think of it this way, Mel. If you can scare them enough, they just might try to buy you off with a decent job.”