The Longer the Thread

by Emma Lathen

  Annie was certainly no publicity hound. It helped that her work did not include negotiating major contracts, presiding over the opening of union health centers or announcing which candidate had union endorsement. Annie was not attracted to the making of general policy. She liked to sink her teeth into hard facts—and hard opponents too.

  As a young woman, she had been invaluable when Puerto Rican workers first began trickling into Seventh Avenue. Patiently she started educating employers. She insisted on bilingual shop stewards. She set up Spanish lectures on work practices, health standards, Social Security, and unemployment benefits. With the migration of textile and clothing manufacturers to North Carolina, she turned her attention to the South. Her bulldozing tactics taught more than one small town about the existence of organized labor. But, as her knowledge of the industry broadened—and as recessions took their toll—Annie Galiano made an interesting discovery: there is little point in wresting benefits from a company that then goes bankrupt.

  At this point, Annie really came into her own. The same abundant energy that had leveled every obstacle to employee well-being was now applied to the problems of the employer. She became an expert in balance sheets. She hobnobbed with efficiency experts. She recommended cost-cutting programs. More to the point, she frequently provided union loans to help small companies switch over to modern methods. She knew exactly when a family firm should go public.

  The years had left their mark. Her abundant black hair, swept back into a careless knot, was now liberally streaked with wiry gray strands. Her once-slim figure had thickened into rugged solidity, firmly planted on low-heeled oxfords. Her clothes now looked as if they came from the Salvation Army. And after decades of unlimited black coffee, cigarettes and whiskey, the high enthusiastic screech of her youth had deepened to a basso growl.

  Nevertheless, she looked like a guardian angel to Harry Zimmerman.

  “If these crazy kids really pull off a strike, Annie, we won’t be able to ride it out. Slax will have to leave the island. We’ll sell off the plant at distress prices.” He paused to let it sink in. “And you know what that means. Three hundred and fifty of your people will be thrown out of work. For months at least. Maybe forever, if the plant is used for something else.”

  Annie grunted as she ground out a cigarette. “We’ll see about that,” she said martially.

  The president of Slax Unlimited was satisfied by those simple words. True, Annie’s career had never led to a bout with Che Guevara. If it had, Harry would have put his money on Annie any time.

  “How soon can you leave?” he demanded.

  When Harry Zimmerman gave the order to reserve two seats on the morning flight to San Juan, he was smiling for the first time in days.

  His smile did not survive their arrival at the gates of the Bayamón plant. Instead of the sunlit languor that usually prevailed, there was milling confusion. Bearded students, waving placards, and uniformed police jostled for space. Standing aboard a pickup truck, a speaker with a hand microphone exhorted passing workers to lay down their tools. Somebody had been busy with a paint pot. The white wall of the office wing now proclaimed in blood-red letters, “DOWN WITH AMERICAN IMPERIALISM!” At the corner, two young men were thrusting mimeographed flyers at shoppers drawn from across the street.

  “This is your movement! This is your strike!” Prudencio Nadal harangued. “Power to the people!”

  “Power to the people!” the beards chorused.

  Harry Zimmerman was frozen in his taxicab. “Christ!” he moaned.

  But Annie Galiano did not share his negative reaction. Airports and highways, offices and hotels, were merely tiresome way stations for her. But a garment factory had the same sweet beckoning smell that the boxing ring has for a heavyweight, that Everest has for the mountaineer.

  “Let me handle this,” she said, brushing aside one hundred and ninety pounds of sportswear manufacturer.

  Her door was already open. She was plowing toward the eye of the storm. Disdaining such effete supports as trucks or microphones, she swept aside a pile of underground newspapers, picked up a box and planted it in a strategic spot facing the crowd. She mounted with the magnificent confidence of a great Othello making his entrance and commanding the entire stage. For all practical purposes, she was saying, “Keep up your bright swords!”

  What she actually said was, “Greetings, Local Six Hundred! Salutations from headquarters. I am Annie!”

  As if on signal, the shop stewards emerged from Slax, leading an enthusiastic snake line shouting, “Viva Annie!” The ensuing celebration between Annie and the workers achieved a fervor that left Prudencio Nadal stupefied.

  It was a mystery to Harry Zimmerman too. How could either of them guess that Annie had phoned ahead to the shop stewards, relying on the magic of her name? And why not? At Slax they heard about her constantly from sisters, cousins and aunts in New York, they read about her in the union newsletter, they knew about her activities in the same way that the line at General Motors knows all the work rules at Ford.

  “I still don’t see how you managed it,” Harry was grumbling two hours later when Annie had at last been able to tear herself away from her admirers.

  “Never mind,” Annie commanded briskly. “I think we can kill this strike business.”

  Everyone at the table, except Harry, brightened.

  “That would be wonderful,” said Norma Lippert.

  Cesar Romero almost shed his reserve. “I would be profoundly relieved.”

  “It sounds too good to be true.” David Lippert was incredulous. “What do you have in mind?”

  “It’s not just the production,” Eric Marten said buoyantly. “But I’d like to see that Nadal kid fall flat on his face.”

  Annie shook her head at him reprovingly. “Bah! They are simply children,” she said with indulgence. “They want attention.”

  “Children!” Eric Marten almost choked. “Look, you’re new down here. Maybe you don’t know what these children have been up to. First they recruit one of our foremen. He sabotages us so that one run is completely ruined, thousands of dollars’ worth of raw materials get the acid treatment, and a batch of sand goes into the lubricating oil. Then the foreman turns up murdered and, if you ask me, these particular children were behind that too!”

  Annie was unmoved. She had already heard most of this from Zimmerman. “But this charge of murder is new.” She became grave. “And serious. I didn’t know the Radical Independents were suspected of killing Domínguez.”

  Cesar Romero cocked an eyebrow at his colleague. “For that matter, Eric, it is new to me too.”

  “All right! All right!” Marten was red-faced. “So I haven’t said anything about it before. But I’ve been thinking, and it makes sense to me.”

  “I thought the police had decided it must be one of us,” Norma Lippert said with a detachment that made her husband stir restively.

  Eric Marten pounced. “And why did they decide that?” he demanded. “Because Domínguez told people he was going to meet one of the bosses. But what if he had one of his radical buddies stowed away here? He couldn’t very well tell anybody that. So he made the obvious excuse for coming into the office wing.”

  “It would explain a lot. And nothing these radicals did would surprise me.” David Lippert’s eagerness faltered. “But the police have pretty well decided that an outsider couldn’t have gotten in and hidden anywhere.”

  “Vallejo was thinking of an outsider getting in by himself.” Marten continued to hammer his point home. “But what if he had Domínguez to help him? It wouldn’t have been very hard for Domínguez to sneak someone in before the receptionist arrived that morning.”

  Romero, as usual, was inclined to be cautious. “What you say is true, Eric. But you still haven’t explained why the radicals should murder Domínguez. After all, they were on the same side, weren’t they?”

  “You could still explain it.” Marten was uncharacteristically hesitant. “Now, don’t say thi
s is crazy until you’ve heard me out. What was the point of all this sabotage anyway? The radicals aren’t interested in simply doing us some damage, you know.”

  “Oh, no?” Harry Zimmerman was sarcastic. “So what do you call what they’ve been doing? Helping Slax? You’re talking through your hat, Eric. Of course they want to damage us. For God’s sake, look at what the radicals back home are up to. Throwing bombs every time you look around. That’s their specialty, causing damage.”

  Marten disagreed. “The radicals here are different, Harry. They’ve got a concrete goal, and that’s to get the Yankees off the island. This Prudencio Nadal wants us out. He needed a big issue. And he didn’t have one until Domínguez was murdered.”

  There was a long silence.

  Then Romero, polite as ever, said, “It still sounds crazy to me, Eric. You mean the radicals murdered one of their own simply to drum up popular support? I don’t believe it.”

  David Lippert was not so sure. “I don’t say it sounds likely, Cesar. But it’s not impossible. We don’t know what went on between the radicals and Domínguez. For all we know, he may have been trying to blackmail them. ‘Pay me or I know someone who will pay me.’”

  “No.” Romero shook his head with finality. “That, Domínguez would not have done. You do not understand his kind of man. He wanted the satisfaction of seeing us injured. He would have regarded money as beneath him in such a context.”

  Harry Zimmerman was scornful, but before he could speak Annie Galiano seized the floor.

  “All of this makes no difference.” With a brusque horizontal gesture she dismissed blackmail and murder. “The police will take care of the killing. That’s their business. But your business is averting a strike. Let’s talk about that.”

  Harry Zimmerman immediately lost interest in the theorizing of Romero and Marten.

  “We’re waiting for you to tell us what to do, Annie, and . . .”

  “And?” she challenged.

  Zimmerman’s face twisted into a rueful smile.

  “And how much it’s going to cost us,” he said.

  Never, in all her beneficent dealings with manufacturers, did Annie forget that her primary aim was improved conditions for the labor force. And not a segment of that force, not any particular local, but garment workers in general. Harry had known all along that she would exact a price for her cooperation. He was anxious to see what it was.

  “Well,” Annie began, knitting her brows furiously, “you understand that you have to offer the line some kind of reward. Something emotionally satisfying, which is what the radicals are offering.”

  “You mean like finding themselves out of a job?” Zimmerman asked ironically.

  “Don’t laugh, Harry. In the short run, they’d have the excitement of demonstrations, protests, meetings. Besides, they probably don’t believe Slax would actually shut down. Nobody ever does until it happens. So your best bet is to offer them a victory of some sort.”

  “Sure. And I suppose you have a particular victory in mind?”

  Annie grinned. “I’ve been talking to some of the girls. That’s what held me up for so long. Tell me, Harry, what do you think about a day-care center for children of women workers?”

  Harry was thunderstruck.

  “A day-care center?” he said blankly.

  David Lippert gaped at her. “A day-care center?” he echoed. “Where did you get that idea? Most of our women live with their parents or their husbands’ parents. The grandmother takes care of the children.” In spite of her expression, he continued fluently, “So, you see, there really is no need for one. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but—”

  “Why don’t you let Annie go on?” Zimmerman said hollowly.

  Annie nodded regal thanks. “Our women live that way because they have to. A day-care center would let families live where they want. Why should you be surprised? All over the world people are trying to get away from their in-laws. Haven’t you noticed?”

  David was ready to continue the argument, but Harry was having none of that. He knew perfectly well that Annie had her guns trained on New York, not on Bayamón. If a leading garment manufacturer sponsored a day-care center that really worked, Annie would be supplied with ammunition for future bargaining sessions back home.

  “I suppose,” he said wearily, “that it would have to be something pretty special in the way of nurseries.”

  Annie bobbed her head pleasantly. “Not just special, Harry. Outstanding,” she said firmly. “One that people all over would want to copy.”

  Norma Lippert felt that she was peculiarly qualified to take part in any discussion about child-raising. She failed to recognize that this was not a discussion, not even a negotiation. This was a bill for services rendered.

  “I really don’t see the necessity for too much expense,” she said. “Of course, in principle I am in favor of day-care centers. There are too many children who don’t receive adequate supervision if their mothers are working. And so often grandmothers don’t enter into the interests of young children. But if we hired one qualified nursery teacher and made over the end of the packing wing, I don’t see why that wouldn’t do.”

  Annie eyed her coldly. “That was not what I had in mind, Mrs. Lippert. I was thinking of something much more ambitious—with preschool training, possibly Montessori teachers, all sorts of special programs. And I don’t see any reason why it should be restricted to the children of Slax workers. It’s a bad idea to start economic segregation at that age. If you make it the best nursery school in Puerto Rico, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t send your own children there.”

  Norma was startled. “My children!” she exclaimed in accents which told their own story.

  “It would probably do them a lot of good,” Annie assured her.

  Harry Zimmerman leaped into the breach. “Well, well, there’s no need to discuss that now. But I go along with the idea of the model day-care center, Annie. If we’re going to do it, we might as well do it right.”

  Annie nodded solemnly. “Now, that,” she said, “is a proposal I think I can take to the workers. And don’t worry, Harry, it’ll still be cheaper than a strike.”

  Chapter 9.

  Buttonholing

  With John Putnam Thatcher immersed in Puerto Rico and its problems, his post at the Sloan Guaranty Trust on Wall Street was occupied by Charlie Trinkam, his second in command. Charlie, although insouciant in private life, was an immensely capable banker. His personal style, however, was a far cry from Thatcher’s. In some quarters this gave rise to friction.

  “I don’t blame John for hightailing it to the Caribbean,” Charlie said breezily. Sleet was beating a rat-a-tat against Miss Corsa’s window. “I wouldn’t mind heading into the sunshine myself.”

  Miss Corsa did not welcome implications that Mr. Thatcher might be indulging himself, but she had learned not to join issue with Charlie Trinkam—at least not directly.

  “Mr. Thatcher asked me to remind you about the meeting at Northern Lakes Shipping,” she said.

  “All taken care of,” Charlie said, perching on her desk to riffle through the portfolio reports she had prepared. “Nicolls is going. And you can tell John we’re keeping an eye on those clowns over at Boston Fund too.”

  Miss Corsa made a note and continued to treat Mr. Thatcher as spiritually present if absent in the flesh.

  “. . . and he wants to see a review of the short-term Treasuries that the Trust Department is holding.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Charlie absently, initialing some carbons and tossing them into the basket. “Say, what’s this Innes was telling me? He says someone got killed at that company Olmsted is mixed up with.”

  “Slax Unlimited,” she said repressively.

  Miss Corsa was always fully briefed. Thatcher’s morning calls only supplemented her own conscientiousness. A duplicate folder of the clippings that Mrs. Schroeder had so thoughtfully provided in Hato Rey was currently on his desk here.

&nb
sp; “I believe there has been some political unpleasantness,” she added, skating over unsavory details.

  “If I know John,” Trinkam remarked tolerantly, “he’ll find that a lot more interesting than Dud Humble. Well, thanks, Rose.”

  He pushed off from her desk and strode out. Long experience told Miss Corsa that, deplorable as it was, Trinkam was likely to be right.

  Charlie, meantime, was heading back to his own quarters. En route, however he was interrupted.

  “Ah, Charlie!” Innes beamed as if finding Charlie Trinkam at the Sloan was a happy surprise. “Tell me, what do you hear from John?”

  “Not much,” said Charlie cheerfully.

  “We were wondering about his impressions of Puerto Rico,” said Innes, falling into step beside him.

  Like Miss Corsa, Charlie was loyal. But he was more direct.

  “No use trying to pump me, Innes,” he said. “I don’t know anything about what’s going on down there and, to tell the truth, I don’t want to.”

  With some indignation, Innes refuted this reading of his motives. International, he wanted Charlie to know, would never stoop to anything underhanded in advancing its cause, no matter how righteous that cause was.

  “Congratulations,” said Charlie. “Why don’t you stop by and try that line on Commercial Credit? I’ve already told them I don’t know what John’s doing. They were just making casual conversation, too.”

  On this thrust, he turned into his own office. There he found Everett Gabler.

  “Hi, Everett,” he said warily.

  Gabler was the oldest, staidest and most single-minded of Thatcher’s staff. During Thatcher’s absences, when Charlie took the helm, Everett’s normal foreboding intensified. There was only one way to deflect his disapproval. Trinkam, nobody’s fool, was willing to give it a try.