Death Shall Overcome

by Emma Lathen

  Jackson chose his words with care. “I don’t think Abercrombie’s crowd is ready for mob violence. As a group, they’re not prepared to pay the penalty for it. But, on the other hand, a single individual, resorting to concealed murder—well, that’s something else again. As you say, we’ve got double proof that somebody is willing to try that.”

  Miss Feathers looked at him with disapproval. “I don’t agree with you about mob hysteria,” she said didactically. “Even if these people wouldn’t start much by themselves, let them sit around inciting each other for a week—and you don’t know what will happen. You have to meet the threat of mass action with a display of mass solidarity. That’s why I feel that a big turnout at Lincoln Center is so important. And the committee has finally agreed with me.”

  Beating down a flicker of sympathy for the action committee, Thatcher asked Miss Feathers if she and the ADA supported Richard Simpson.

  “In spirit, we do,” said Miss Feathers loftily. “Dick Simpson has a very powerful mind. I don’t know if you saw him on the “Today” show, but I personally have never heard a more penetrating analysis of the basically sexual basis of racial bigotry . . .”

  “Good God!” said Charlie Trinkam as Mrs. Jackson directed a minatory look at her husband, who obediently broke into speech.

  “I think,” he said, “the ADA position is that the best way to attack racial discrimination by the Stock Exchange is through pressure on the SEC . . .”

  Miss Feathers interrupted him: “Yes, that’s true—as a long-term approach. But when there’s violence, we plan to counter it with a massive display of individual support for Ed Parry. We’re going to send a thousand members to Lincoln Center Saturday night.”

  Perhaps sensing John Thatcher’s apprehension that the conversation might revert to the sexual basis of racial bigotry, Irene Jackson said brightly, “We wouldn’t miss it for anything. It’s not every night you can wear your best clothes to a potential riot.”

  Miss Feathers said, “Charlie is coming with me, Mr. Thatcher. I hope you’re planning to attend.”

  Thatcher framed an evasive reply, inwardly marveling at the sympathetic working of social antennae. Elements as variegated as Gloria Parry, Nat Schuyler, Miss Feathers, and the Jacksons all realized that the NAACP benefit was assuming a symbolic significance. Surely it was too much to hope that Owen Abercrombie and his cohorts had not come to the same conclusion.

  And what about Owen Abercrombie? Thatcher had noticed that the careful Paul Jackson’s statement absolved Abercrombie’s followers, while leaving plenty of scope for homicidal action on his part. And if Owen Abercrombie were capable of dangerous violence, what more appropriate place for it than an NAACP benefit at Lincoln Center?

  At this moment, Thatcher’s thoughts were interrupted by sounds from the head table that ultimately resolved themselves into a lengthy introduction of the speaker of the evening. John Putnam Thatcher gave the intellectual precisely three minutes. Then he chose the course of prudence and suspended all thought entirely.

  At that very moment, intellectuals were the least of Stanton Carruthers’ problems. He hadn’t seen anything approaching one for the last two hours. In fact, as he looked at Owen Abercrombie’s ponderous, underslung jaw, and glittering feral eyes, he was tempted to think that he had receded through several major geological eras and was surrounded by Neanderthals.

  The White Association for Civic Intervention, known as “Whacky” the length and breadth of Wall Street, was an offshoot of the John Birch Society, organized by Owen Abercrombie, and composed of members disaffected with the moderate views of the parent organization. Its program called for action, and the nature of that action was becoming ominously clear as Carruthers, standing on the flag-draped rostrum before an enormous photomural of the founder, braced himself for questions from the floor.

  Or they were supposed to be from the floor. Most of them were coming from Abercrombie himself and started with the phrase: “Do you mean to stand up there and say . . . ?”

  “. . . I am afraid you may have misunderstood the nature of our committee,” Carruthers was saying as he thanked God for a lifetime of self-control under adversarial fire. Only now was he beginning to appreciate the high standards of politesse which govern the legal arena. “We want to help promote order during the period necessary for the Stock Exchange to come to a decision with respect to Mr. Parry’s application.”

  Abercrombie, who was also standing, hunched his shoulders forward and let his short arms dangle loosely, thereby emphasizing the simian resemblance. “You mean to say you people are going to stand back and let them take over?” he demanded.

  “The question before the Exchange involves one seat out of over a thousand. That can scarcely qualify as taking over.”

  “You’re opening the door. They’ll come pouring in.”

  Carruthers repressed the desire to ask Abercrombie where “they” were going to get the necessary hundred thousand dollars. Instead he opted for a dispassionate review of the statistics about available seats. It is rare, he pointed out, for more than two seats to fall vacant in any one year.

  “Don’t try and whitewash this thing with phony numbers!” shouted Abercrombie. “You’re trying to cover up the fact that you’re scared to stand up for your rights!”

  Carruthers permitted himself a tempered coldness. There was, he pointed out, a genuine difference of opinion about exactly what those rights were.

  “There’s no difference of opinion between honest, God-fearing Americans! We all know there’s a Commie line designed to infiltrate our way of life. Are you going to stand up there and feed us Soviet propaganda?”

  “I’m afraid I have to contradict you on that, Mr. Abercrombie. The difference of opinion extends to the majority of Congress which passed a Civil Rights Act.”

  These words were a red flag. A new contestant now entered the fray.

  “Civil rights!” shouted Dean Caldwell from the floor. “That’s one name for it. I’d like to get this talk down out of the clouds and ask the speaker what he’d do if his daughter wanted to marry one of them. Because that’s what it all boils down to! Whether or not we’re going to protect the purity of our race and our women!”

  In the thunderous ovation which greeted this remarkably offensive question, Stanton Carruthers unexpectedly found himself relaxing, sustained no doubt by the vision of his daughter Fernanda. With deliberate provocation, he smiled benignly down at the militant young Southerner and told him that, when he was old enough to have a daughter of marriageable age, he would realize that he had precious little to say about anything she did and probably would be damned grateful to anyone who took her off his hands.

  Abercrombie, older in the ways of the world than Dean Caldwell, returned to the attack.

  “It may be a laughing matter to you,” he said, lowering his voice to a dramatic hiss, “but the defense of our homes and our businesses and our families is something we’re prepared to take seriously with every drop of our blood. We are ready for action.”

  Ovation.

  “You come here and tell us you stand for order. You tell us that when the Vita Cola specialist collapses and has to be hospitalized—the first casualty on the field of battle. But not the last, let me tell you!”

  Ovation.

  “Well, we’ve got something to tell you and your committee. We’re the ones who stand for order!”

  Here Abercrombie started pounding on the table in a manner irresistibly reminiscent of the United Nations. “And we’re going to protect it and we’re going to protect you—in spite of the fact that you’re too yellow to stand up and be counted yourselves. We’re not afraid to use force against force, are we?”

  Arms angled into a stubby vee, Abercrombie received the cheering assent of his supporters. The ugly red tide that had suffused his face when he was exchanging remarks with Carruthers disappeared, replaced by a pale exultant gleam. With his head thrust back he rocked to and fro in a hypnotic interplay of emotion with
his audience. He swung forward with each question he asked, and then swayed back under the blast of their maniacal approval.

  “Are we going to lie down and take this without lifting a finger?”

  “NO!”

  “They’re all against us. They’ll try to muzzle us, try to smear us. Are they going to get away with it?”

  “NO!”

  “You’re the only ones left to defend America. Are you going to let the pinkos take over?”

  “NO!”

  And then, like a mechanical toy that had been wound tight, he abandoned his dialogue with the auditorium and launched into a wild, disordered peroration, filled with incoherencies and strange quotations:

  “. . .for the love of God and country . . . no time or place for weaklings, for questioners, for those who would undermine us . . . a solemn duty to which we here pledge ourselves . . . fight force with force . . . let not this cup pass from us . . .”

  The evening ended for Carruthers with the frenzied howls of a thousand voices ringing in his ears.

  Chapter 11

  Keep Silence, All Created Things!

  AT FIRST BLUSH it would have seemed impossible that the next day should fail to be an improvement over its predecessor.

  Not that Thatcher was deluding himself. No one acquainted with Wall Street’s passionate attachment to peaceful, if powerful, anonymity, as well as profits, could reasonably expect that listening to intellectuals detail atrocities suffered in Washington would be the only cross to be borne during the Parry Crisis. With Vita Cola still collapsing, in faithful emulation of its floor specialist, Thatcher knew that the demands on him, however incoherent, would be many and urgent.

  Nevertheless, when he arrived at the Sloan the next morning, he was unfavorably surprised to find that Miss Corsa had already received four top priority calls.

  “First Mr. Carruthers,” she reported, consulting a note.

  “Then Mr. Withers. Then Mr. Devane, and finally Mr. Lancer. They all want you to call back as soon as possible.”

  “Something must be up,” Thatcher mused aloud. “Well, it will have to wait. I’m going to check the papers.”

  Miss Corsa looked censorious.

  “After all, Miss Corsa, possibly the press can explain this new emergency—whatever it is.”

  “Yes, Mr. Thatcher,” said Miss Corsa, ostentatiously buckling down to work.

  Thatcher withdrew into his own office and scanned the headlines rapidly. He found nothing to explain why the president of the Sloan, its Board Chairman, one of the governors of the Stock Exchange, and Stanton Carruthers should be hounding him before nine thirty. This is not to say that he failed to find anything of interest. There was a front page interview with the Deputy Mayor saying: “We want to assure out-of-towners planning to visit New York that we have not had one single instance of a tourist molested in the financial district.” There was a plaintive account of the corporate confusion reigning in Vita Cola’s executive offices: “But our profits are thirteen per cent above last quarter!” And a somber announcement that the New York City Police Department had granted CASH a permit for “peaceable demonstration”: “The right to peaceable demonstration is constitutionally guaranteed to all U.S. citizens,” police officials grudgingly declared.

  Nor did the police, if the press was covering the situation, and to find mention of the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia or Washington, D.C., for that matter, one had to penetrate to page 14 of The New York Times, have anything to say about the murder of Arthur Foote or the murderous attack on Edward Parry.

  With the newspapers uninformative, Thatcher resorted to the phone. Within minutes he learned of yet another chore. Edward Parry was finally leaving the amenities of Katonah to come to Wall Street and deliver his long-awaited statement. The Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange felt that the presence of the Committee of Three at his press conference would be most advisable.

  “Yes indeed,” said Thatcher to Stanton Carruthers, who conveyed this information. “It will be a good opening for a few words about the Exchange’s scrupulous fairness.”

  “Yes,” said Carruthers, already in the throes of composition.

  After learning the particulars, the conference had been scheduled at one o’clock at Schuyler & Schuyler, Thatcher courteously asked about Carruthers’ evening with the White Association for Civic Intervention.

  There was a long silence. Finally Carruthers cleared his throat. “Endless and ugly,” he said. He debated adding further comment and decided against it. “That sums it up, I think. Well, John, I’ll be seeing you this afternoon. And I’ll prepare just a few words.”

  Rather satisfied with his Machiavellian tactics, Thatcher returned his attention to the matters which brought him his substantial salary and gave Miss Corsa and the whole sixth floor of the Sloan Guaranty Trust one of his well-known workouts.

  “Well, that should keep you busy,” he announced bracingly at twelve-thirty, “I have to be getting along.” Kenneth Nicolls, stunned by the bulk of his impossible assignments, smiled weakly, struggled to his feet, and fled. Miss Corsa was made of sterner stuff.

  “Where can I reach you, Mr. Thatcher?” she asked.

  “Just a press conference over at Schuyler & Schuyler,” he replied cheerfully. “I should be back in an hour.” His carefree frame of mind lasted precisely eight minutes, the eight minutes it took him to fight his way through the lunchtime crowds to Schuyler & Schuyler.

  There, at the William Street curb, creating pedestrian and vehicular congestion, stood two gaudy trucks. The usual big-city crowd had gathered, well-dressed and to all appearances gainfully employed, rooted to the spot, and theorizing freely to account for the appearance of television crews. Fortunately, Thatcher was unable to identify any Sloan employees amidst what he unfairly apostrophized as “brainless time wasters.” He pushed his way forward. Around him hypothesis flowed. There had been a bank robbery. There was a new salad oil scandal. Somebody had misplaced securities.

  “Probably,” said a sleek young woman, “probably some file clerk is threatening to jump from the 40th floor.” No one, Thatcher noted, looked up. Well, one thing you could say for Wall Street. If no one was looking up, no one was shouting, “Jump!”

  By the time he had worked his way into the lobby a heavy sense of premonition was ripening. By the time he reached the 26th floor, he found it was all too justified. The Edward Parry conference was being televised. Schuyler & Schuyler was a madhouse.

  “No, no, no,” crescendoed a bearded youth with a notebook. “The three camera. I told you, George. If I told you once, I told you . . .”

  Thatcher stepped aside for two men manhandling what looked like an irrigation pipe.

  “And we’ll need more light here . . .”

  “. . . what about the boom . . .”

  “WATCH THAT CABLE!”

  “Who are you?”

  The last question was directed at Thatcher. It emanated from a large woman with red hair. She did not wait for his reply, but consulted a clipboard and said: “You’re Hugh Waymark.”

  Her conviction made Thatcher regret the necessity for denial.

  “Hmm,” she said skeptically. “Well, Mr. Waymark, sorry, Mr. Thatcher, you’ll have to go to makeup. Willy! Oh, Wil-ly!”

  “Now, just a minute . . .”

  Thatcher’s horrified protests availed him nothing. A harried youth appeared and firmly led him past a gaggle of wide-eyed secretaries, worshipfully watching the invaders.

  “In here,” said Willy, ushering Thatcher into what in happier days served Schuyler & Schuyler as a conference room. Just emerging was Edward Parry, accompanied by a bitter-looking man who barely reached his shoulder.

  Sighting Thatcher, Parry paused.

  “Please, Mr. Parry!” cried the bitter-looking man, tearing a cigarette from his lips and grinding it underfoot. “We don’t have much time. I’ll ask you to read your statement, that’s one minute four. Then, when you finish …”

  St
ill talking, he led Parry away.

  “Here you are, Mr. Waymark,” said Willy, indicating a chair for Thatcher.

  “I do not propose to let myself be daubed,” Thatcher began firmly, just as the large woman reappeared.

  “We’re running late,” she said tersely. Willy burst into agitated burblings and, before he knew what was happening, Thatcher found himself in a chair as a technician advanced upon him with a small tray of cosmetics.

  “Oh God!”

  For Thatcher was not to be the only victim. Willy was leading Dean Caldwell and Vin McCullough into the conference room. They inspected Thatcher carefully.

  “Carruthers,” he said with dignity, “neglected to tell me that we were going to be involved in this sort of thing.” Vin McCullough laughed aloud, but Dean Caldwell saw nothing amusing in the situation.

  “He’s outside,” he said sullenly. “God damned circus, that’s what it is. What the hell is the matter with Nat?”

  Caldwell was still young enough to be submerged by his resentments, Thatcher noted, as he manfully detached his attention from a studious evaluation of his hairline. And, being angry, Caldwell was incapable of hiding it. Despite the technicians moving around, despite the arrival of a sheepish Stanton Carruthers, he continued to voice his discomfort.

  “How’re we going to get any work done?” he demanded pettishly. “It’s bad enough that Nat is steamrollering all of us, but now we have to put on shows for . . .”

  “Dean,” said McCullough wearily. “Just keep it to yourself, won’t you?”

  He turned to exchange a mildly ironic comment with Stanton Carruthers.

  Caldwell dropped into a chair near Thatcher and hostilely watched the makeup man.

  “The whole place is a monkey house,” he said in a lowered voice. “And we all know it’s Parry’s fault that Art Foote got killed!”

  Thatcher reflected that the problem of disciplining junior staff members was handled better at the Sloan. He did not, however, propose to concern himself with this petulant young man. Moreover, his bedizenment achieved, he was free to go.