Dry Bones

by Peter Quinn

  “Bartlett told Van Hull he was acting like a sentimental schoolgirl. Why keep beating the dead horse of Nazism when the Siberian tiger of Communism was poised to sink its fangs into our neck? The simple fact is that the next war has already begun, and if we don’t use these Germans, the Soviets will.

  “Van Hull didn’t back down.” Bassante raised his voice to be heard over the rain’s pelting racket. Water coursed off the brims of their hats. “The greatest danger we face, he told Bartlett, is in becoming the enemy we oppose—a force that not only absolves and employs murderers and torturers but also emulates them.”

  Dunne looked up and down the street. No cabs anywhere. He nudged Bassante’s elbow. “We’ll drown here. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  Bassante gestured at the ruin-strewn lot. “It wasn’t Flash Gordon and his merry band of rocketeers did this. The perpetrators worked at least twenty thousand slave laborers to death in building machinery whose sole purpose was to serve the Third Reich. They fired thirty thousand V-1s and six thousand V-2s that wrecked entire city blocks, killed nearly ten thousand civilians, and wounded fifty thousand more.

  “Their thoroughness was Mephistophelean. The hair they shaved from the heads of dead Jews was used as insulation in their rockets and delayed-action bombs. The anarchists of old who hurled a bomb and killed a dozen people were hanged in the name of protecting civilized society. These long-distance bomb throwers—part of an apparatus involving scientists, technicians, and specialists working in the cause of a psychopath dedicated to the production-line homicide of millions—are awarded new careers.”

  The rushing water seeped into Dunne’s socks. In the field, faced with the stark assignment of survival, small annoyances hardly registered. Now the chill wetness was a distracting bother. He’d already signed on to do what he could for Dick and Dr. Niskolczi and the others. See that the murderers are judged. He nudged Bassante again.

  Bassante still didn’t move. “Van Hull didn’t dispute that the information they possess is highly valuable. But what lesson do we teach, he asked, if we allow their usefulness to erase their crime? Wouldn’t it be more just, he objected, to try them for their crimes, to set the record straight and arrive at sentences that acknowledged the suffering of their victims? Those sentences might be reduced. For those who admitted what they’d done and offered to make some form of personal reparation, a pardon might be possible. Wouldn’t this be far better than pretending that their crimes never occurred, that they didn’t work and starve masses of men and women to death, that thanks to them and the services they rendered Adolf Hitler, these houses and their inhabitants—along with countless others on the continent—were wiped off the face of the earth?

  “I think if we can force the indictment of Karsten Heinz, we can do more than see that justice is done to a single criminal. I think we can begin to reverse the tide that’s permitting the mass absolution of thousands of them. Van Hull shares that hope.”

  Umbrella bobbing above his head, two more dangling from his forearm, the waiter who’d served their drinks came up beside them. “I’ve been watching from inside. ‘If you Yanks are to carry on a conversation amidst a deluge would do old Noah proud,’ I think to myself, ‘you each need to ’ave one of these.’” He handed them each an umbrella.

  “This is most generous of you.” Bassante reached in his breast pocket and took out his billfold.

  “Please, sir. The generosity has been on your part. The gratuity you left covers this and far more.”

  They opened their umbrellas.

  The waiter smiled. “Like the song says, keep ‘dem dry bones’ dry! Keep ‘dem dry bones’ dry!”

  Bassante stopped by two days later. The flight to Prague was scheduled for the next afternoon. A car would take Dunne to the airfield. The arrangements in Prague were all made. As long as the weather cooperated, the mission would be in and out. “This time it really will be your last drop.” Bassante gave Dunne his hand. “Totiusque.”

  Part V

  New Trajectories

  MODERN DETECTION:

  THE MAGAZINE OF THE PRIVATE SECURITY INDUSTRY

  JUNE 1958

  Fintan Dunne: “A Soldier’s Soldier”

  BY

  ALVIN CAPSHAW

  Beginning with this issue, Modern Detection is adding a new Profiles column to its roster of articles, feature pieces, and news roundups covering what is among the fastest growing sectors of the service industry. Each month, Profiles will spotlight a leading practitioner currently at work in the profession and offer his insights on what lies ahead for the trade.

  The need for such an addition is clear. In the five years since it began publishing, Modern Detection has made significant progress in dispelling the demeaning stereotypes and clichés about the private security industry relentlessly popularized by cheap novels, pulp magazines, and B-grade films.

  Unfortunately, fiction continues to trump fact. All too often, the mention of “private investigator” conjures up in the mind of John Q. Public a seedy “gumshoe” who operates from a shabby office in a questionable part of town and serves a clientele of lowlifes and outright criminals.

  Although it might seem like a case of “preaching to the choir,” it is worth reminding ourselves that the immense gulf between this hoary myth and everyday reality cannot be overemphasized. The vast majority of those working in today’s private security sector are employed by one of the several corporate entities that account for more than 90 percent of the industry’s revenues and profits.

  In a growing number of instances, private security operations are part of conglomerates that include unrelated businesses such as auto-parts distribution and resort and hotel properties. (More about that in a minute from the subject of this month’s Profile.) Though the products are different, the standards of quality, cost effectiveness, and, most important, customer satisfaction are the same.

  No organization better exemplifies the highest standards and practices of the industry than International Services Corporation (ISC), which is headquartered in several sleekly updated floors high up in the Graybar Building, adjacent to New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Over the last decade, ISC has consolidated the largest and best-run private investigation agencies across America into a smoothly functioning, highly coordinated operation. While its clientele is confidential, it is no secret that its customers include leading law firms, prominent investment houses, and corporations along with well-known personalities of stage, screen, and “high society.”

  Together, the leadership of ISC’s private security team represents a veritable “Who’s Who” of seasoned investigators whose collective qualifications, experience, and achievements are unmatched. Fintan Dunne, a senior partner, is a case in point.

  Standing in his outer office, a visitor immediately turns his gaze on a wall covered with framed awards, news clippings, and photos of Dunne with a wide spectrum of civic, military, and business leaders. In one corner is a signed photo of Dunne being given a one-arm hug by former New York mayor William O’Dwyer; in another, he is bookended by smiling star of stage and screen Joan Crawford and husband Alfred Steele, chairman and CEO of Pepsi-Cola.

  Most prominent of all is the photo of Dunne with his mentor and former commander, the legendary leader of New York’s “Fighting 69th” Regiment in World War I and founder of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), General William Donovan.

  As a lad of eighteen, Dunne enlisted in the 69th and served under Donovan through some of the Yanks’ bloodiest engagements. Emerging from that struggle with an array of medals that made him the AEF’s most decorated warrior—and that included the Congressional Medal of Honor—Donovan has often insisted that “the true heroes” were the fearless doughboys like Fintan Dunne who served under him.

  After the war, Dunne joined the New York City Police Department as a patrolman. Over the next decade he rose to become a lead detective on the homicide squad. He subsequently left the police to start his own investigation agency, q
uickly earning a reputation for the intensity and discretion with which he handled each and every case.

  In the wake of Pearl Harbor and entry of the United States into World War II, William Donovan was charged by President Roosevelt with building the nation’s first agency for centralized intelligence gathering, counterespionage, and psychological warfare. Fintan Dunne was among his first recruits.

  Dunne served in the OSS for the duration. The majority of his time was spent overseas as both a trainer of the OSS’s clandestine operatives and as participant in the thrilling, highly dangerous missions that, in Winston Churchill’s words, “set Europe ablaze.” As with so many of his fellow colleagues in that highly select and secretive society, Dunne remains mum on the specifics of his activities behind enemy lines.

  In the wake of V-J Day, finished with helping wrap up the business of the OSS, Dunne returned to New York and restarted his private investigation business. It quickly flourished. In 1950, he attached his fast-growing business to the multicity affiliation the All-American Detective Agency (AADA), of which he became a partner and principal. AADA was acquired by ISC in 1955 for an undisclosed sum.

  Meeting Dunne for the first time, a visitor is immediately struck by how much he has been shaped by his years as soldier, police officer, private investigator, and OSS operative. His waistline is trim, step spritely, and manner crisp. His handsome, impassive features call to mind actor William Holden. He greets his visitor with a mix of quiet intensity and friendly reserve as he takes in everything from cut of hair to strength of handshake and brand of shoes.

  As opposed to the walls in the reception room, those in his office are bare. His desktop hosts phone, clock, ashtray, a silver framed photograph of his wife, Roberta, and a single folder. It is immediately apparent that this is a well-organized professional operating by a tight schedule, a fact he makes explicit when he instructs the alert, attractive girl who serves as his assistant “to hold my calls for the next ten minutes.”

  The window behind him frames an expansive view of the city’s Lower East Side, which is his “hometown.” Orphaned at an early age, Dunne is yet another of the myriad disciples of Horatio Alger who by dint of hard work and education—he attended parochial school and Fordham University—has gone and “done likewise,” pulling himself up by his own bootstraps (or, in this case, shoelaces) from the city’s streets.

  Discussion of current client work is obviously off-limits. But Dunne is equally adamant in ruling out any attempt to revisit past cases. “People who enjoy talking about what they do,” he observes, “should be in advertising. The business of this business is keeping the business to yourself.”

  Dunne’s status as a partner at ISC permits him to spend several months of the year in Florida, where he and his wife, an interior designer, have a home. He lights a cigarette, swivels in his chair, and looks out the window. “I’ll always be a New Yorker,” he avers. “But the dark and cold of winter always feels a bit like wartime to me. I prefer the warm embrace of sunshine.”

  He makes it clear, however, that he is in touch with ISC operatives throughout the year, consulting on cases via telephone and, when necessary, traveling to branch offices throughout the country: “For me and for all of us at ISC, the needs of our clients are always paramount.” When it comes to the future of the private security industry, Dunne is forthright in stating how he sees “the shape of things to come.” It boils down, he says, to three factors: “education, professionalization, and conglomeration.”

  Back when he started in the business, Dunne remembers, “with the exception of Pinkerton and a few others, it was largely made up of sole operators who rented an office and hung out a shingle.” Today, the situation is quite different. As the consolidation of the industry continues to gather momentum and investigators specialize in specific industries and interests, higher education is a prerequisite.

  Dunne points out that experience in the military and/or police will always give an aspirant a leg up. Yet in the final analysis, an ISC private investigator is no different from a professional in its accounting or legal departments: “He’s not going anywhere unless he has the requisite level of schooling.”

  Professionalization, he explains, means more than properly training individual investigators or inculcating in them the highest standards. Rather, it involves “replacing chance with certainty in everything we do, whether in the field, the lab, or the executive suite.” To achieve this, “we must focus on the integration of advances in medical and scientific techniques into every aspect of our organizational framework.”

  Key to consistency and quality of performance, Dunne adds, is predictability and stability of revenues and profits: “If the till is full one year and empty the next, a firm’s ability to invest in expanding and enhancing its operations in any consistent way is undermined.” This is where the third factor—conglomeration—comes in: “By bringing together businesses whose revenues grow or dip at different points in the business cycle, income flow is made smooth and such inconsistency is averted.”

  The buzzer on the intercom sounds. The allotted ten minutes is at an end. Fintan Dunne escorts his visitor to the door.

  As the visitor takes his leave, he stops to get a last and closer look at the framed picture of Fintan Dunne and General Donovan. They are both in uniform. The London landmark, Big Ben, looms in the background. Beneath, in a clear, bold hand, is written: To Fintan Dunne, My highest regards to a soldier’s soldier. Bill Donovan, London, May 1944.

  June 1958

  GRAYBAR BUILDING, MANHATTAN

  Instead of storming into Ken Moss’s office, Dunne went straight to his own. Miss Teresa Dolores O’Keefe greeted him with her customary smile—delicate, understated—lifted the eyeglasses roped around her neck, and rested them on the bridge of her nose. Like all ISC executive assistants, she wasn’t to be conflated with standard secretaries found at other firms or the denizens of the typing pool parked at desks in the rear of the office.

  Miss O’Keefe was a graduate of the College of St. Elizabeth, English major, German minor. Smart and alluring in knees-together, virginal, parochial-school fashion, she was the daughter of a Jersey City cop who was gunned down in a waterfront shoot-out. Her mother was left with five kids and went back to work as a bookkeeper in the Garment District. Miss O’Keefe had four brothers: one older, KIA in Korea; three younger, fireman, cop, student at Manhattan College. It could be, Dunne suspected, that her air of convent-girl innocence was acquired rather than innate.

  If she followed the company script, she’d find a husband within ISC in the next year or two, becoming a suitable helpmate as her spouse rose up the ladder, or she’d be promoted to researcher or junior section specialist, the highest station any female employee could reach, there to earn a decent living as she spun her way to spinsterhood or to be whisked away, Prince Charming come at last.

  Or maybe she’d write her own script. She’d never mentioned she was working on a novel. But one day, while she was at lunch, he sneaked a peek in her bottom drawer. It held half a dozen of the same marbled-covered composition books, each page filled with her work-in-progress, Springtime of Our Love: A Novel of World War II, a romance set in occupied France. Boy resistance fighter falls in love with girl resistance fighter.

  They struggle against the siren song of lust as well as the serial depredations of the Germans: The passion they shared was fiery, unquenchable. Yet, they vowed, until the conquest of their motherland, their sweet Marianne, was undone, it must go unconsummated. Wasn’t to his taste, but without letting on he knew what she was up to, he wished her success, best-seller list, screenplay, the works.

  She brought him a mug of coffee, laid a file of correspondence on his desk. “Your Monday morning staff meeting is in fifteen minutes. Mr. Billings is scheduled to make a presentation. Partners as well as senior section specialists are expected to attend.”

  He thanked her and sipped the coffee. He sat at his desk, opened the monogrammed leather attaché case Rober
ta had bought him at Crouch & Fitzgerald, and took out the lone contents: June issue of Modern Detection. He read the article for a third time. It was Ken Moss’s handiwork. It had to be. There was no doubt about it.

  Dressing down Moss in a reverberant roar sufficient to rattle the thin walls and glass partitions of the newly refurbished ISC executive floor and bring people to their office doors could offer short-term satisfaction. Long term, Dunne realized, along with making Moss into the apparent victim of an ill-advised tirade, he’d be deemed lacking in the cool-headed, logical, problem-solving approach that marked an ISC executive.

  Dunne’s title of “partner” seemed to elevate him above the rules and expectations governing employees of lesser status. But it wasn’t bestowed out of organizational considerations. Thanks to the influence of Louis Pohl—“Pully,” as all his friends called him—a buddy from OSS days and a bigwig within the company, the management at the time thought it would appeal to existing and prospective clients, affording the Private Investigation and Security Department the feel of detective agency and law firm wrapped in a well-managed corporation.

  The contract he’d signed required his presence in New York headquarters only six months of the year—May 1 through October 31—in order to “provide counsel and support to ISC Private Investigation and Security” as well as assist in “identifying, soliciting and signing new business.” It also stipulated that the company provide a sublet “within walking distance” of the office.