Chapter 19
The old problem of what to do about Tammany plagued Larry. A few days ago, about eight weeks before the city election, he had been approached to take a special job in the clubhouse of his district. It wasn’t a Mayoralty election year, and the assignment wouldn’t involve much work, but now that Larry was on the firm’s payroll, he wanted to discuss it with Bemrose.
Arthur was watching two window washers who swung from their leather straps on the ledge outside his office window. It was like working on the top mast of a ship fifty stories high and made Larry dizzy to look at them.
He sat down next to Arthur’s desk where the windowsill screened the penthouse of the Bankers Club next door and gave him the illusion of being at sea. A river barge seemed to disappear between the buildings. When Larry mentioned this visual illusion, Arthur explained the operation of the barge canal system around New York: Newtown creek, Coney Island creek, the Gowanus canal, Flushing creek, and Mill Basin on Jamaica bay where coal, oil, cement, and carload freight unloaded. Arthur knew these obscure waterways as well as most New Yorkers knew the piers where the giant liners tied up. Before the War he had fancied himself a marine expert and always kept the shipping page of the New York Times on his desk. Even without referring to it he could identify most of the freighters in the river as well as the lesser craft.
Larry explained the recent Tammany proposal. “They’ll come back,” Larry prophesied. “A political organization always comes back. There’s reform for a while and things are reshuffled, but the public eventually tires of reform and wants a change. When that happens, Tammany is organized to get out the votes. Things are back where they started, with a new set of faces on the billboards but the same local bosses running things.”
“Don’t waste your time with Fourteenth Street. Hook up with the labor crowd,” Arthur advised him.
They had been over it all before. Larry tried to explain that the American Labor Party would have to play ball with Tammany if it expected to get anywhere in the city. The present Fusion crowd had found that the Mayor played footie with Tammany Hall when he needed extra votes. If Larry started with a new organization, he explained to Bemrose, he’d have to sacrifice his equity in Tammany Hall and begin at the bottom with a set-up that probably would lose. That was the history of many third-party movements. They served as a healthy public irritant, very often, and they influenced elections, but they seldom turned out a decisive vote. Larry had been through the leanest years with Tammany. By ’45 the Hall would elect its candidate for Mayor and come back. They would pick a man who looked independent, but he would be a Tammany man. No matter what kind of front the Hall gave him. And the A.L.P., in return for post-election favors, would back Tammany. If Larry stuck it out, he’d be entitled to a plum himself.
“What makes you think they’ll pay off?” Bemrose asked.
“Give them till the end of forty-five, and they will.”
“Like hell they will. The local political system in this country stinks. When a good man joins an organization and is willing to work, he’s buried in a clubhouse while the top manipulators who keep out of the newspapers run the show and hand their private yes-men the judgeships.”
“That’s why fellows like you don’t monkey with politics,” Larry said. He sometimes wished that he could stay out himself, but the political habit was strong in him.
“The system soils a man all the way up. Until he becomes President,” Bemrose said. “Even then he’s not always able to wash it off. Personally, I think it’s a mistake for the President to mix in local politics.”
“They all do,” Larry protested. “It’s what keeps the organization together.”
“Well, it’s wrong.”
“Take your own case, Arthur. If they offered you a job in Washington now, you’d probably grab it with the War going on. As soon as the War ended, you’d go right back to private practice and keep on practicing until someone decided you were Supreme Court material. You’d get out of the public eye fast. How can we have first class men in public office as long as fellows like you won’t stick?”
“I don’t know the answer,” Arthur admitted. “We ought to pay good men more. We should educate the public to respect men who make a career of Congress.”
“Are you kidding?” Larry asked. “With characters like Bilbo in Washington, do you expect people to take Congress seriously?”
“It’s a paradox, but the people are always better than the government they elect,” Bemrose pointed out. “They are, you know. It isn’t true that they get the government they deserve, or that the government they elect represents them. Look at the people organizing right now to fight the War. When they really want to tackle a job——”
“They don’t think local politics are important,” Larry said. “They can’t see struggling to elect a guy who is going to sit in Congress with Bilbo.”
“Damn it, it is important!”
“Well, if it’s important, I’d better stick to Tammany Hall,” Larry said. He thought of Judge Haynes’ private contempt for “the people” and wondered how far Bemrose had freed himself from the Judge’s influence.
Arthur’s secretary announced Davis Shore, and Bemrose suggested that Larry stay in the room.
“I meant to—” Arthur swallowed, awaiting the next word. “I was going to ask you to sit in anyway. You ought to meet the clients.”
It wasn’t necessary for the managing lawyer to meet clients, Larry knew, but he appreciated the effort to make him feel like part of the firm. He had avoided Davis Shore ever since that glimpse of him at Bemrose’s reception when Shore clumsily tried to extricate himself from the tête-à-tête with Lucy.
“I’d rather not stay,” he decided.
“Oh, sit down.”
Davis Shore padded in and halted expectantly in front of Bemrose’s desk.
“Mr. Frank, my associate.”
Larry jumped up and offered Shore his chair, although there were three others vacant.
“Frank, Frank, there used to be a member of the Board at Southern Power and Light—” Shore hung on to Larry’s hand as he traced the relationship. He hoarded his voice so that it was high and as immature as the babyfine white hair.
“All my folks live in Brooklyn!” Larry overshook Shore’s hand.
“I didn’t know Arthur had a new associate,” Shore said, bewildered. “Very helpful right now to have a good friend about.” He indicated the crutches. “Excellent idea to have an associate right at the elbow.”
Arthur sucked at his cheeks and shifted his legs restlessly. The marbles seemed to be back in his mouth, impeding his speech.
“I guess you want to talk business, I’d better be going,” Larry said, louder than he intended. He knew how to act when he met an important client like Shore. Only it was coming out wrong. Bemrose should have known better than to try and bring them together. With a snob like Shore, Arthur would have had to submit drawings in advance of Larry’s family tree. He knew that Davis Shore picked lawyers with the right social connections, as much as he selected them for their ability.
Larry wondered in what decade the social circles in American life began to crystallize. Way back, he guessed. When some of the early statesmen wrote of equality, they really meant an exchange among those who already were social equals. They described a uniform society of landowners, with non-agrarian whites and Negroes excluded. The distinction persisted and had intensified with each generation. Davis Shore of Oyster Bay didn’t sit down to dinner with Larry Frank of Second Avenue if he could help it. Nor with Arthur Bemrose divorced from the impressive Judge Haynes connection. It wasn’t a pleasant realization, but Larry had come to accept it, and Arthur should have known better than to try and cross the line.
On the way back to his desk down the corridor, Larry recalled a letter of introduction which Haynes had given a prominent American jurist to Didier. “See that he meets some of the legal brains of France,” Haynes had written. “You needn’t bother to entertain him socially. I don’t think he’s interested in society.... I will be careful in the future, my old one, not to abuse your hospitality and will refer only very special people to you.”
Larry reflected on Judge Haynes’s honesty with Didier. “I will be careful to refer only very special people.... You needn’t bother to introduce him to society.” A man might be an eminent jurist, and still not an acceptable dinner companion. Haynes, with his worldly shrewdness, had accepted that narrow and unpleasant reality. Arthur had accepted it while Haynes was alive.
Since the War, since Janice, since his illness, Bemrose had begun to construct a world without those barriers, a cellophane overlay he superimposed on the old social map. Bemrose had perhaps started with the wrong two men—Shore and himself—but Larry realized that if he were not part of the experiment and had not smarted under Shore’s patronizing scrutiny, he’d be cheering for Bemrose. As it was, he cheered with his emotions but not with his common sense instincts.
Larry occupied an office next to a large room which housed the secretarial staff. Miss Thompson, who kept the girls quiet while she was at her desk, did it unconsciously with the cold set of her masculine features. As Larry turned into his room, he saw that her office chair was vacant. The girls buzzed in a happy release of spirits.
“I swear it’s the truth,” said the assistant who came to work in open-toed shoes and no stockings. “He said I could quit any time Joe got a furlough.” She giggled nervously. “He used to hit the ceiling when I threatened to quit. That’s how I got my last three raises.”
“’Ja hear what he did with Mr. Osterlink?” The file clerk crossed her feet and fluttered some papers she was putting into a folder. “He called in Mr. Osterlink and gave him a raise before he even asted, and if there’s a father’s draff, Mr. Osterlink will have to go.” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “He didn’t even ast for the raise. Canyuh imagine?”
The other girl sighed. “A big change has come over Mr. Bemrose. It must be because he’s sick.”
“He’s just learnin’ to appreciate. You wait ’til some more of ’em are drafted. They’ll all start appreciatin’.”
“He’s sadder since he came back from the Army.” The older girl mooned in her chair. “Even when he’s nice and talks to you, it makes you feel like bawling.”
“Doesn’t make me—” The girl clicked the file drawer shut.
Miss Thompson’s rubber heels, tapping the linoleum, silenced them, and Larry tried to concentrate on the proof of a brief.
A shriek roused him, and he saw Miss Thompson rush to her window. He hurried to his own. A man in shirtsleeves, balanced precariously, walked the narrow ledge of the penthouse next door, swaying as he placed one cautious foot in front of another, his arms waving in the wind.
“Quick, Mr. Frank! He’s trying to commit suicide,” Miss Thompson called. She dashed over to his door. “I’ll phone the police.”
The man had turned the corner, and his left foot slipped off the ledge. Larry gripped the windowsill, as if to maintain the man’s balance for him.
“The police are there now!” Miss Thompson reported in an uncontrolled staccato. “They say he won’t come back in. They’re talking to him, and he doesn’t pay any attention.”
Larry watched the man’s back and could sense his muscles twist beneath the flimsy white cloth of his shirt. His arms balanced like feathers, light and graceful as a ballet dancer’s. No one should try to prevent a man from picking his own method of committing suicide, Larry decided. He should be able, if he liked, to fling himself forty stories to the pavement with as great a display of eccentricity or exhibitionism as he pleased.
“Oh, stop him, Mr. Frank!” Miss Thompson pushed her hands against the window, as the man teetered again.
The next minute it was over. The figure had walked West toward the river, into the pure unsooted air. Windows opened and an ambulance wailed urgently.
Miss Thompson crawled back to the chair behind her desk, blanched and shaking. The other girls covered their eyes, too sensitive to want to decipher the undignified pulp of blood and flesh below. Larry could skip it, too, and decided that he needed a cup of coffee.
He glanced at Miss Thompson on his way out, reflecting that her sex life occurred vicariously behind an office desk. She continued to tremble in an orgasm of terror.
When Larry returned, he found a message to see Mr. Bemrose at once.
Arthur was slumped in his chair, looking blitzed. The mounting mishaps of the afternoon had culminated in the desperation written on Bemrose’s face.
“I knew there was something wrong when he didn’t show up for the appointment the other morning,” Arthur said.
“The morning we came in at eight o’clock? You mean he didn’t keep the appointment?”
“When he called me at home the afternoon before I knew——”
“But why did he get you down here at eight o’clock?” Larry insisted. “You’re too sick a man——”
“He knows that,” Arthur pointed out. “He’s using my health as an excuse to get outside trial counsel.”
“Who?”
“Jorgennsen.”
Larry sat down thoughtfully. “Jorgennsen will do all right. He’s the only man——”
“I’m washed up.”
“Just because that pompous——?”
“Five years of preparation,” Bemrose said. “I put five years into that case.” He rocked angrily in his chair. “I’ll be damned if I tell Jorgennsen how to try it.”
“Why does he insist on Jorgennsen? You’ve lived with the case. If Jorgennsen were John Marshall, he couldn’t prepare it in six months. I’ll tell you, have someone talk to Shore. Can’t Tom Newton, or Harrison, or——”
“They’ve already retained him,” Bemrose reported. “He says I can’t manage the physical hurdles of the courtroom. He doesn’t see how I can stand on my feet, examine witnesses, manipulate the reference volumes, or turn the pages of the briefs. Oh, Shore hasn’t overlooked a detail,” he said harshly. “What do they expect me to do?” His hand jerked toward an inkwell cover lying on the desk. “Do they expect me to give up trial work because my legs aren’t steady?”
“You can’t give it up.”
“I’d be throwing away three-quarters of my practice. I belong on my feet in court. The Judge drilled me in the idea that a lawyer should take his own cases to court. I might as well stop practicing.”
“You’re not going to stop, and you’re not going to give up trial work,” Larry insisted. “Let him have Jorgennsen. He’ll come running to you on the next case.”
“He won’t have another like this in twenty years.” Bemrose shoved his crutches viciously across the room. “I’ll be damned if I’m the kind of lawyer who sits behind a desk and settles cases.”
“How about that appeal of Cy’s?” Larry asked. “He’ll go broke if the City makes him pay back what his family collected in the condemnation fifteen years ago. Cy hasn’t any reserves——”
“I never took a condemnation case, and I don’t want to start now,” Bemrose protested. “Not if all the O’Malleys in New York starve. It’s one kind of law I don’t want to practice.”
“But the case involves an interesting question of law.”
“What’s the question?” Arthur looked up.
“The City claims that one of the provisions in the original state grant to the O’Malleys was concealed from the court, a covenant saying that the City could recapture the property any time by repaying what the State had charged the O’Malleys for it. Peanuts, of course. The City ignored the covenant and handed Cy’s family healthy money for the land fifteen years ago. Now it wants to get back the difference.”
“Why didn’t the City think of that fifteen years ago when they condemned Cy’s property?” Arthur asked.
“The City says it was handled crookedly at that time. No one mentioned the trick covenant when the case was being tried.”
“And Cy’s supposed to go broke in order to correct the City’s mistake? That’s lovely.” He leaned back in his chair. “How far has the case gone?”
“Affirmed in the Appellate Division, one judge dissenting,” Larry reported.
“So he could take it to Albany?” Arthur swung around toward the window and looked out thoughtfully.
Suddenly Larry thought of the suicide dance on the ledge. “Cy couldn’t, but you could,” he said. “He’s had a lousy deal from the City. You’d be helping out a pal——”
“I suppose the documents go way back.”
“You’d have a good time with the case,” Larry predicted. “You could dig around in the historical material. There are fascinating old maps of the waterways. It’s just the kind of case you like. Take it, Arthur.”
Bemrose pointed to his crutches. “What’s the use? I’d never be able to argue it in Albany. Cy would have to hire appeal counsel.”
“That’s tripe. You’ll argue it yourself if we have to take you up there in a wheelchair.” Larry rubbed his knees in anticipation. “We’ll show that stuffed penguin whether you’re finished.”
“Who’s going to pay to have briefs printed?”
“Cy. It’ll be easier for him to raise money for the briefs than to try and pay the City.”
“I wouldn’t have to charge him a fee,” Bemrose said. “The case must have cost him plenty already.”
Not charging fees again. The old pattern. But if Bemrose won this appeal in Albany, he’d come out all right. It would prove that he was still a good courtroom lawyer, in spite of Davis Shore. The boost to his morale would be tremendous.
“The case has cost him plenty, and if he loses and has to pay the City, he’ll be in hock the rest of his life,” Larry said. “I wouldn’t mind if it happened to some fellows, but Cy—well, you know Cy.”
“Needs a nursery school,” Bemrose agreed. “I never expected to have the dubious privilege of representing him. I’ll bone up on abuse before we start. It’s the only way to get along with Cy. You have to insult him louder than he insults you.”
“He’s scared of you, Arthur. He’ll behave.”
“Cy scared?” Bemrose’s head jerked backward, and he laughed. It was the first time today that he had let go.
“You’ll have a helluva lot of fun working with him. Shall I give him a ring?” Larry moved toward the door.
“Not yet,” Bemrose decided. “Get hold of the briefs and let me study them. I want to find out about this concealed covenant.”
When Larry turned around he saw Miss Thompson at the door looking like a shock case.
She covered her face. “Did you see him, Mr. Bemrose?”
Larry shrugged at Bemrose and maneuvered Miss Thompson down the hall. “Come on, the Boss wants us to locate some papers for him,” he explained.
It wasn’t the day for Bemrose to hear about the fellow who had walked off the ledge.