William F. Buckley Jr. (15 page)

Giuseppe was not much interested. “Whatever. Of course. Remember the Martino formula: Every hotel has to do its own borrowing. No holding-company debt, no credit exposure. I know that you will make the right decisions. Chicago, you know, was my first hotel.”

“Of course I know. That’s why the picture of the Trafalgar-Chicago is the frontispiece of the book. Your book.”

“My book?”

“Giuseppe, I’m talking about
The Great Martino.
”

“Of course. ‘My book.’ It is not
my
book, it is
your
book.
You
wrote it.”

“Well, I think of it as
your
book, and so does everybody else. In any case, you hardly need to tell the author of
The Great Martino
anything about the history of the Trafalgar chain.”

“Danny, do you
really
think Mrs.… your grandmother … actually
read
that book, my book?”

“Giuseppe, I told you she did. When I last visited her, a year ago, she had that book on her
lap.
And we talked about you.”

Danny could hear the old man’s sigh. It had been worth it.
Danny resented the high price he had paid the wretched ghostwriter, but clearly it was worth it, and Angelo Price had kept his word—no one knew (except Caroline) that the book extolling the life and accomplishments of Giuseppe Martino had been written by an old retired hand living in Greenwich Village, for hire but, as Angelo had said to Danny, “Remember, O’Hara, you’re paying for quality bullshit; I have my standards.” He did, and the book, though unnoticed by the critics, was praised by the whole Trafalgar circle.

“It is the highest honor I have ever been paid, to have
her
read a book about
me.
I have read one hundred books about your grandfather.”

“Yes, Giuseppe, I know that, and you know how much I appreciate it. And how much
she
appreciated it.”

“So what else, Danny, except the Chicago business. Are you and Caroline going to have another baby? It is about time, no?”

Danny was glad that his grimace was over long distance. “Ho ho, Giuseppe. Don’t you think five kids is about enough?”

“My mother had twelve. But maybe you are right, because Momma had one too many.”

Danny laughed. It was not necessary to feign ignorance of Giuseppe’s feeling about Angelina, his one remaining sibling. Clearly he wished she had never been born.

It was fortunate that Giuseppe tired so easily. Five years ago the telephoned conversations would go on a full hour. But always Danny knew to leave it to Giuseppe to take the lead in calling the conversation to a close. It was that way with presidents. His mother had told him when he was a boy that visitors to the Oval Office were always warned never to say, “It is time to go.”

“Wait until the President makes the move. As long as the President is disposed to have the company of his visitor, the visitor is at the President’s disposal.”

Danny was—always—at Giuseppe’s disposal. Danny was president of Martino Enterprises, Inc., yes, but Giuseppe was chairman of the board and sole owner of the corporation’s stock. It greatly amused Giuseppe that the board of directors was made up of Giuseppe, his valet, his chauffeur, his cook, and his housemaid.
“Board meetings go very smoothly, Danny. No one has any problems. Of course, after every meeting I give each one of them a nice tip.… But one of these days you will find out all about boards of directors.” The tremolo here was so pitched as to be pregnant with meaning. Giuseppe did not know that Danny was familiar with the old man’s will. Both wills.

Cutter Malone walked in, shut the door, sat down in the black leather chair with the fluted brass legs, then abruptly got up, went back to the door, opened it slightly, squinted into the neighboring office and returned to his seat.

“Do you want to sweep the room for phone taps, Cutter?”

“In my profession we are trained to be careful,” Cutter said, drawing a silver cigarette case from his pocket. The hand that brought the lighter to his cigarette trembled slightly, though Cutter was not yet fifty years old. He could use some exercise, some diet, and easy on the booze, Danny thought. Maybe someday he’d tell him. Meanwhile, to more immediate business.

“In your profession you are trained to harass otherwise enterprising people. What have you cooked up by way of reports for the quarter?”

“Well, Danny, I will certainly concede that you are one of the most enterprising people I have ever known. No, a correction:
the
most enterprising. Anyway, have a look at this.”

He handed him a bound manila folder. “That’s the consolidated balance sheet. These”—he handed him six more folders—“are the quarterly returns on our major league. I have the minors, if you want them.”

Danny spent a full half hour, first on the consolidated returns then, one after another, on the individual hotels. At the direction of the chairman of the board and sole stockholder, Giuseppe Martino, quarterly contributions were to be taken from company profits and paid over to the Hyde Park Fund. Danny had shepherded a “Hyde Park Fund” through Internal Revenue, getting for it a tax-exempt charter, and giving as its purposes to assist in scholarships focused on the twelve years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. Simultaneously, Danny had organized
a corporation licensed to engage in any activity. It was called the Hyde Park Capital Fund, Inc.

For three years, a diminishing sum of money was remitted to Giuseppe Martino’s personal account by Martino Enterprises, Inc. Substantial sums were paid over to the Hyde Park Capital Fund. Mr. Martino had never complained about the reduced returns from his twenty-two-hotel chain. Danny had explained how heavy the pressures were on the hotel business; and anyway, it wasn’t as if the enterprise were collapsing. Substantial profits were still turned in to the shareholder. That they were less than they had been was a development one needed to accept philosophically. And to the extent they were diminished by the contributions to Hyde Park, why Giuseppe was glad to reaffirm concretely his devotion to the memory of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and no, he would not diminish his annual contributions to Hyde Park—Danny must see to that: “Don’t reduce that contribution by five cents, Danny!” If Giuseppe had been surprised to be told that 75 percent of the profits of his corporation were now going to Hyde Park, he’d have been even more surprised to learn that a log of his verbal instructions given to Danny O’Hara over the past three years sat in the safe, initialed “G. M.,” and that these instructions had been to convey to the Hyde Park Capital Fund twenty million dollars from the profits of Martino Enterprises, in five annual payments.

It was grand larceny. Cutter opened the little refrigerator, brought out a bottle of champagne, poured two glasses, and raised his to Danny.

“Rather neat, isn’t it?”

Danny handled the compliment nonchalantly. “One has to take opportunities that come up. We aren’t really depriving the old man of anything. He has everything he wants.”

Cutter entered a cavil. “But you know, Danny, everything depends on your continued relationship with the old man.”

“Well, yes and no. If ever he got, well, mutinous, what do we do? A little paperwork, fuse the two Hyde Parks, get out of the way, point to the telephone log, shake our heads and wonder if the dear old man has truly lost his senses.”

“I wouldn’t do this if the old man were ten years younger.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t do it if I were ten years older. Cheer up, buddy.”

Caroline O’Hara reminded herself that she loved Harriet Carberry, really did. And reminded herself that Harriet’s prying was motivated only by a desire to help her friends. But this was only the first day of a three-day visit, and she confessed she was glad that tomorrow and Wednesday Harriet would be in New York during the day, returning to Greenwich only in time for dinner and to spend the night. That would complete Harriet’s annual New England tour. She would return to Pasadena, and the prying would be only over the telephone, attenuated; once or twice every month, until her next visit East.

Harriet had put on weight, perhaps because she was almost always nibbling at something—at the moment, she was nibbling at the big bowl of M&M’s. But she was still a handsome woman, determined to oversee the happiness of her friends.

“Well, does Danny have to call in on every one of the hotels in the Trafalgar chain?”

Caroline knitted as she talked. The long table behind the couch was crowded with framed pictures of her handsome brood, two girls and three boys, all of them now visiting with their aunt. She had not changed, but now her lips were slightly parted, framing a smile lit by quiet pleasure and giving pleasure to those in her company. Father Kevin, at the Riverside Church she attended, had remarked that Caroline had acquired a maternal beauty, which was different from the maidenly beauty he had merrily praised at the party after he married her and Danny, twelve years ago.

Caroline answered Harriet’s question. “Danny likes to be able to tell people—I’ve heard him do it—that he has in fact visited every one of Mr. Martino’s hotels. But of course he doesn’t do it every year. Though every year he looks in on the major hotels.”

“Is the one in Los Angeles one of the major hotels?”

“Of course. Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston, New York, Detroit. How’m I doing?”

“You’re doing good, Caroline. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could name the sixteen other cities where there’s a Trafalgar.”

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering. You know, I spotted Danny in Los Angeles just a month ago?”

“Oh,” Caroline said, not looking up from her knitting. “Is the music too loud?” She got up and turned down the volume. Just a hair. “It’s the memorial album, Landowska. That’s the twenty-fifth Goldberg. She makes it so sublimely sad. You spotted Danny in Los Angeles? At the Trafalgar?”

“No. At the Bel Air.”

“Looking in on the competition, I guess,” Caroline said.

That’s one way to put it, Harriet thought. Assuming Caroline was willing to acknowledge that there was such a thing as competition for Danny, as distinguished from Danny’s hotels. She grabbed another handful of M&M’s from the bowl and decided to drop the line of inquiry.

The telephone rang, Caroline put down her knitting and reached for the receiver.

“Yes. Well, thank you for calling, Margie.” And, to Caroline, “Danny will be late. But not too late. By eight he’ll be here.”

Danny was in a convivial mood, which was good because Caroline had invited his sister, Lila, to join them for dinner. Lila had finally stopped going away for more and more schooling. And, Danny remembered, it seemed back then as though she would never stop growing. She was as tall as her brother and very talkative about her work at the Hyde Park Library, to which she drove every day from her house in Millbrook.

It was she, Lila O’Hara, she explained to Harriet, who passed on the credentials of visiting scholars. She puffed avidly on her cigarette and drank her gin and tonic in businesslike gulps. “We had someone last week, said he was preparing a life of Sidney Hillman. He was the labor leader—remember? CIO? In case you forgot, FDR—‘Grandfather,’ as I guess I’m entitled to refer to him in this household—said, ‘Clear it with Sidney,’ when he decided
at the convention in Chicago to drop Henry Wallace and give the vice presidency to Harry Truman—1944, remember?”

“For heaven’s sake, get on with it,” Danny said to his sister. “We all remember 1944, we all remember reading about dropping Wallace, taking Truman, et cetera. So?”

“
So
—don’t be so impatient, Danny. I’m not one of your hotels. So, this ‘scholar’ said he’d like to examine White House correspondence with Hillman during 1943, ’44, and up until FDR died, April ’45. I asked him who was his publisher, and he said Henry Regnery, Chicago. And then he said, ‘Chicago made special sense to me, of course, since Hillman operated out of Chicago.’

“Now, in my business you get to know a fair amount about publishing. And it makes no difference—absolutely zero difference—to someone writing a book about somebody who lived in Chicago, whether the publisher who’s going to distribute the book also operates out of Chicago. The principal publishers are in New York City. It was clear to me that this ‘scholar’ was giving me an excuse for using Regnery. Why?
Because
”—Lila thrust her drink up above eye level, as if to declare independence, or proclaim emancipation—“
because Henry Regnery is a conservative, reactionary publisher
who has published several books critical of FDR, including the book by Tansil. His thesis—get this—is that Grandfather wanted the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, so he’d have an excuse for going to war!”

“So what did you do?” Caroline asked. “You can’t, can you, refuse material to scholars just because they publish with a conservative house?”

“Not so easy when it’s scholars you’re dealing with, but I had Mr. Henningson—that’s his name, Cyril Henningson—fill out the form we have, and told him he’d hear from us within a week. So I looked up the references, made about fifteen phone calls, and it turns out that young Mr. Henningson is a stringer for …”

Obligingly, they all waited for the revelation.

“Westbrook Pegler! Pegler is the angriest man in America and he fuels his anger by attacking FDR and Grandmother. So what
he was up to was having one of his researchers, posing as a scholar, come to Hyde Park looking for dirt.”

“Is there dirt there?” Harriet asked matter-of-factly.

Lila looked at her. She knew from one or two past experiences that Harriet was unusually direct in her manner of speech. But was she also dumb? She trained her eyes, after adjusting her horn-rimmed glasses, on Harriet and said in tones she might have used at a history seminar, “Harriet, FDR was a politician. Politicians do things, make commitments—the kind of thing, well, the kind of thing you don’t want to shovel out to somebody who isn’t going to put it in the proper perspective. If he were, oh, Arthur Schlesinger, we’d know that there’d be a historian’s … sense of—”