When Mickey heard that what the Bull meant by “interim compensation schedule” was $750 a week, plus all reasonable and necessary expenses, he began to suspect that, despite the Bull’s reputation in dealing with professional sports management, he didn’t know his ass from second base vis-à-vis the newspaper business. Mickey had been getting $312.50 a week, plus a dime a mile for the use of his car.
“Trust me, Michael,” the Bull had said. “I know what I’m doing.”
That was damned near a month ago, and there hadn’t been a peep from the Bulletin in all that time.
The good-looking dame, from last night, her hair now done up in sort of a bun, was behind the marble reception desk in the lobby of the Bellevue-Stratford.
What the hell is that all about? How many hours do these bastards make her work, for Christ’s sake?
This time there was no line, and she saw Mickey walking across the lobby, and Mickey smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“Good morning, Mr. O’Hara,” she said.
“Mickey, please.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Bolinski are in the house, Mr. O’Hara. If you’ll just pick up a house phone, the operator will connect you.”
“If I wanted to talk to him on the telephone,” Mickey replied, “I could have done that from home. I want to see him.”
“You’ll have to be announced,” the good-looking dame said, her delicate lips curling in a reluctant smile.
“You got your hair in a bun,” Mickey said.
“I’ve been here all night,” she said.
“How come?”
“My relief just never showed up,” she said.
“Jesus! She didn’t phone or anything?”
“Not a word,” she said.
“You didn’t get any sleep at all?”
She shook her head.
“You sure don’t look like it,” Mickey blurted.
Her face flushed, and she smiled shyly.
Then she picked up a telephone. She spoke the Bull’s room number so softly he couldn’t hear it.
The phone rang a long time before the Bull’s wife answered it.
“Good morning, Mrs. Bolinski,” she said. “This is Miss Travis at the front desk. I hope I haven’t disturbed you. Mr. O’Hara is here.”
Travis, huh? It figures she would have a nice name like that.
“May I send him up?” Miss Travis said, glancing at Mickey. Then she said, “Thank you, madam,” and hung up. “Mr. Bolinski is in the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, Mr. O’Hara. That’s on ten. Turn to your right when you exit the elevator.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Mickey turned and started to walk to the bank of elevators. Then he turned again.
“You get yourself some sleep,” he commanded.
The remark startled her for long enough to give Mickey the opportunity to conclude that whenever it came to saying exactly the right thing to a woman he really liked, he ranked right along with Jackie Gleason playing the bus driver on TV. Or maybe the Marquis de Sade.
But she smiled. “Thank you. I’ll try,” she said. “I should be relieved any minute now.”
Mickey nodded at her, and walked to the elevator. When he got inside and turned around and looked at her, she was looking at him. She waved as the elevator door closed.
It doesn’t mean a fucking thing. She was smiling at the old blue-haired broad last night, too.
Mickey had no trouble finding the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, and when he did the door was open, and he could hear Antoinette’s voice. He rapped on the door, and pushed it open.
Antoinette was sitting on one of the two couches in front of a fireplace, in a fancy bathrobe, her legs tucked under her, talking on the telephone. She waved him inside, covered the mouthpiece with her hand, and said, “Come in, Michael. Casimir’s in the shower.”
Then she resumed her conversation. Mickey picked up that she was talking to her mother and at least one of the kids.
Casimir Bolinski entered the room. He was wearing a towel around his waist. It was an average-sized towel around an enormous waist, which did little to preserve Mr. Bolinski’s modesty.
“I can’t find my teeth, sweetie,” he mumbled.
Mrs. Bolinski covered the mouthpiece again.
“They’re in that blue jar I bought you in Vegas,” Mrs. Bolinski said.
“Be with you in a jiff, Michael,” the Bull mumbled, adding, “You’re early.”
He walked out of the sitting room. Mickey saw that his back, and the backs of his legs, especially behind the knees, were laced with surgical scars.
“Kiss, kiss,” Antoinette said to the telephone and hung up. “We left the kids with my mother,” she said. “Casimir and I have to really work at getting a little time alone together. So I came with him.”
“Good for you,” Mickey said.
“I didn’t know we were coming here,” Antoinette said, “until we got to the airport.”
Mickey wondered if he was getting some kind of complaint, so he just smiled, instead of saying anything.
“How’s your mother, Michael?” Antoinette asked.
“I had dinner with her yesterday.”
“That’s nice,” Antoinette said. Then she picked up the telephone again, dialed a number, identified herself as Mrs. Casimir Bolinski, and said they could serve breakfast now.
The Bull returned to the room, now wearing a shirt and trousers, in the act of hooking his suspender strap over his shoulder.
“I told them to come at ten,” he announced, now, with his teeth in, speaking clearly. “We’ll have time to eat breakfast. How’s your mother?”
“I had dinner with her yesterday. Who’s coming at ten?”
“She still think the other people are robbing her blind?”
“Yeah, when they’re not…making whoopee,” Mickey said. “Who’s coming at ten?”
“Who do you think?” the Bull said. “I told them we were sick of fucking around with them.”
“Clean up your language,” Antoinette said, “there’s a lady present.”
“Sorry, sweetie,” the Bull said, sounding genuinely contrite. “Ain’t there any coffee?”
“On that roll-around cart in the bedroom,” Antoinette said.
The Bull went back into the bedroom and came out pushing a cart holding a coffee service. He poured a cupful and handed it to Mickey, then poured one for himself.
“What am I, the family orphan?” Antoinette asked.
“I thought you had yours,” the Bull said.
“I did, but you should have asked.”
“You want a cup of coffee, or not?”
“No, thank you, I’ve got to get dressed,” Antoinette said, snippily, and left the sitting room.
“She’s a little pissed,” the Bull said. “She didn’t know I was coming here. She thought I was going to Palm Beach.”
“Palm Beach?”
“Lenny Moskowitz is marrying Martha Bethune,” the Bull explained. “We got to get the premarital agreement finalized.”
Mickey knew Lenny Moskowitz. Or knew of him. He had damned near been the Most Valuable Player in the American League.
“Who’s Martha Whateveryousaid?”
“Long-legged blonde with a gorgeous set of knockers,” the Bull explained. “She’s damned near as tall as Lenny. Her family makes hub caps.”
“Makes what?”
“Hub caps. For cars? They have a pisspot full of dough, and they’re afraid Lenny’s marrying her for her dough. Jesus, I got him five big ones for three years. He don’t need any of her goddamned dough.”
Mickey smiled uneasily, as he thought again of the enormous difference between negotiating a contract for the professional services of someone who was damned near the Most Valuable Player in the American League and a police reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin.
A few minutes later, two waiters rolled into the suite with a cart and a folding table and set up breakfast.
“I told you, I
think,” the Bull said, as he shoveled food onto his plate, “that you can’t get either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?” Scrapple, a mush made with pork by-products, which was probably introduced into Eastern Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually Hessians) was sometimes referred to as “poor people’s bacon.”
“Yeah, you told me,” Mickey said. “How do you think we stand, Casimir?”
“What do you mean, stand? Oh, you mean with those bastards from the Bulletin?”
“Yeah,” Mickey said, as Antoinette came back into the room, and Casimir stood up and politely held her chair for her.
“Thank you, darling,” Antoinette said. “Has Casimir told you, Michael, that they don’t have either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?”
“I could mail you some, if you like,” Mickey said.
“It would probably go bad before the goddamned post office got it there,” the Bull said, “but it’s a thought, Michael.”
“I never heard of either before I met Casimir,” Antoinette said, “but now I’m just about as crazy about it as he is.”
“Casimir was just about to tell me how he thinks we stand with the Bulletin,” Mickey said.
“Maybe you could send it Special Delivery or something,” the Bull said. “If we wasn’t going from here to Florida, I’d put a couple of rolls of Taylor ham and a couple of pounds of scrapple in the suitcase. But it would probably go bad before we got home.”
“Of course it would,” Antoinette said. “And it would get warm and greasy and get all over our clothes.”
“So how do you think we stand with the Bulletin?” Mickey asked, somewhat plaintively.
“You sound as if you don’t have an awful lot of faith in Casimir, Michael,” Antoinette said.
“Don’t be silly,” Mickey said.
“It would probably take two days to get to the Coast Air-Mail Special Delivery,” the Bull said. “What the hell, it’s worth a shot.”
He reached into his trousers pocket, took out a stack of bills held together with a gold clip in the shape of a dollar sign, peeled off a fifty-dollar bill, and handed it to Mickey.
“Two of the big rolls of Taylor ham,” The Bull ordered thoughtfully, “and what—five pounds?—of scrapple. I wonder if you can freeze it.”
“Probably not,” Antoinette said. “If they could freeze it, they would probably have it in the freezer department in the supermarket.”
“What the hell, we’ll give it a shot anyway. You never get anywhere unless you take a chance, ain’t that right, Michael?”
“Right.”
FOUR
The Philadelphia firm of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester maintained their law offices in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building at Twelfth and Market Streets, east of Broad Street, which was convenient to both the federal courthouse and the financial district. The firm occupied all of the eleventh floor, and part of the tenth.
The offices of the two founding partners, Brewster Cortland Payne II and Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, together with the Executive Conference Room and the office of Mrs. Irene Craig, whose title was Executive Secretary, and whose services they had shared since founding their partnership, occupied the entire eastern wall of the eleventh floor, Colonel Mawson in the corner office to the right and Mr. Payne to the left, with Mrs. Craig between them.
Although this was known only to Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne, and of course to Mrs. Craig herself, her annual remuneration was greater than that received by any of the twenty-one junior partners of the firm. She received, in addition to a generous salary, the dividends on stock she held in the concern.
Although her desk was replete with the very latest office equipment appropriate to an experienced legal secretary, it had been a very long time since she had actually taken a letter, or a brief, or typed one. She had three assistants, two women and a man, who handled dictation and typing and similar chores.
Irene Craig’s function, as both she and Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne saw it, was to control the expenditure of their time. It was, after all, the only thing they really had to sell, and it was a finite resource. One of the very few things on which Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne were in complete agreement was that Mrs. Craig performed her function superbly.
Brewster C. Payne, therefore, was not annoyed when he saw Mrs. Craig enter his office. She knew what he was doing, reviewing a lengthy brief about to be submitted in a rather complicated maritime disaster, and that he did not want to be disturbed unless it was a matter of some import that just wouldn’t wait. She was here, ergo sum, something of bona fide importance demanded his attention.
Brewster Cortland Payne II was a tall, dignified, slim man in his early fifties. He had sharp features and closely cropped gray hair. He was sitting in a high-backed chair, upholstered in blue leather, tilted far back in it, his crossed feet resting on the windowsill of the plate-glass window that offered a view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and Camden, New Jersey. The jacket of his crisp cord suit was hung over one of the two blue leather upholstered Charles Eames chairs facing his desk. The button-down collar of his shirt was open, and his regimentally striped necktie pulled down. His shirt cuffs were rolled up. He had not been expecting anyone, client or staff, to come into his office.
“The building is gloriously aflame, I gather,” he said, smiling at Irene Craig, “and you are holding the door of the very last elevator?”
“You’re not supposed to do that,” she said. “When there’s a fire, you’re supposed to walk down the stairs.”
“I stand chastised,” he said.
“I hate to do this to you,” she said.
“But?”
“Martha Peebles is outside.”
Brewster C. Payne II’s raised eyebrows made it plain that he had no idea who Martha Peebles was.
“Tamaqua Mining,” Irene Craig said.
“Oh,” Brewster C. Payne said. “She came to us with Mr. Foster?”
“Right.”
One of the factors that had caused the Executive Committee of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester to offer James Whitelaw Foster, Esq., a junior partnership with an implied offer somewhere not too far down the pike of a full partnership was that he would bring with him to the firm the legal business of Tamaqua Mining Company, Inc. It was a closely held corporation with extensive land and mineral holdings in northeast Pennsylvania near, as the name implied, Tamaqua, in the heart of the anthracite region.
“And I gather Mr. Foster is not available?” Payne asked.
“He’s in Washington,” Irene said. “She’s pretty upset. She’s been robbed.”
“Robbed?”
“Robbed. I think you better see her.”
“Where’s the colonel?” Payne asked.
“If he was here, I wouldn’t be in here,” she said. Payne couldn’t tell if she was annoyed with him, or tolerating him. “He’s with Bull Bolinski.”
“With whom?”
“World-famous tennis player,” Irene Craig said.
“I don’t place him, either,” Payne said, after a moment.
“Oh, God,” she said, in smiling exasperation. “Bull Bolinski. He was a tackle for the Green Bay Packers. You really never heard the name, did you?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” Payne said. “And now you have me wholly confused, Irene.”
“The colonel’s at the Bellevue-Stratford, with the Bull, who is now a lawyer and representing a reporter, who’s negotiating a contract with the Bulletin.”
“Why is he doing that?” Payne asked, surprised, and thinking aloud. The legal affairs of the Philadelphia Bulletin were handled by Kenneth L. McAdoo.
“Because he wanted to meet the Bull,” Irene Craig said.
“I think I may be beginning to understand,” Payne said. “You think I should talk to Mrs…. Whatsername?”
“Peebles,” Irene Craig replied. “Miss Martha Peebles.”
“All right,” Payne said. “Give me a minute, and then show he
r in.”
“I think you should,” Irene Craig said, and walked out of the office.
“Damn,” Brewster C. Payne said. He slipped the thick brief he had in his lap and the notes he had made on the desk into the lower right-hand drawer of his desk. Then he stood up, rolled down and buttoned his cuffs, buttoned his collar, pulled up his tie, and put his suit jacket on.
Then he walked to the double doors to his office and pulled the right one open.
A woman, a young one (he guessed thirty, maybe thirty-two or -three) looked at him. She was simply but well dressed. Her light brown hair was cut fashionably short, and she wore short white gloves. She was almost, but not quite, good-looking.
Without thinking consciously about it, Brewster C. Payne categorized her as a lady. What he thought, consciously, was that she, with her brother, held essentially all of the stock in Tamaqua Mining, and that that stock was worth somewhere between twenty and twenty-five million dollars.
No wonder Irene made me see her.
“Miss Peebles, I’m Brewster Payne. I’m terribly sorry to have kept you waiting. Would you please come in?”
Martha Peebles smiled and stood up and walked past him into his office. Payne smelled her perfume. He didn’t know the name of it, but it was, he thought, the same kind his wife used.
“May I offer you a cup of coffee? Or perhaps tea?” Payne asked.
“That would be very nice,” Martha Peebles said. “Coffee, please.”
Payne looked at Irene Craig and saw that she had heard. He pushed the door closed, and ushered Martha Peebles onto a couch against the wall, and settled himself into a matching armchair. A long teakwood coffee table with drawers separated them.
“I’m very sorry that Mr. Foster is not here,” Payne said. “He was called to Washington.”
“It was very good of you to see me,” Martha Peebles said. “I’m grateful to you.”
“It’s my pleasure, Miss Peebles. Now, how may I be of assistance?”
“Well,” she said, “I have been robbed…and there’s more.”
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