William F. Buckley Jr. (32 page)

“He’s tried. He got hold of Cutter. He is asking all the wrong
questions. What do you know about his background? Don’t you vet those people before letting them camp down at Hyde Park?”

“Hang on.”

She was back in a few minutes. She read now from the application letter. “… Maxwell Huxley. Born Grosse Point, Michigan, 1940. High school—Grosse Point public schools. B.A., University of Chicago 1961. Admitted, Graduate School, Department of History, September 1961. M.A., 1963. He is doing a dissertation under Professor George Callard, no relation to our Callard. You want to hear what Callard says about him?”

“Yeah.”

“ ‘Max Huxley is an impressive student. He is very meticulous, a resourceful researcher with an eye for the interesting historical detail. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on FDR’s third term and is now embarked on a dissertation on the FDR Library, its background, its objectives, its resources, with the view to informing future presidents on the ideal arrangements for their own libraries. I earnestly recommend to the administrators of the FDR Library that they give Huxley access to the archives and help him in any way possible and convenient.’ Signed, G. Callard.”

“The son of a bitch has all the qualifications we’d most like him not to have.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be in New York while young Huxley is in heat. I got plenty of excuses for going to France. Or Switzerland.”

“You can study up on hotels. Danny?”

“Yes.”

“How’s Caroline doing?”

“Screw Caroline.”

Lila shook her head. There was no way of dealing with Danny, not anymore. So she said simply, “Let me know what you plan to do.”

D
ANNY PACED THE FLOOR of his study in Greenwich. He paused every few minutes to stare vacantly at the memorandum from his secretary. It recorded the request of Mr. Max Huxley for an appointment and gave Huxley’s telephone extension at the FDR Library and the telephone number of the hotel at Rhinebeck where he was staying. Danny walked over to the nicely camouflaged little refrigerator in the corner of the study, pulled out fresh ice and mixed another drink.

What in the hell was he going to do?

He found his mind canvassing possibilities almost preposterous, on quick second thought. Might the great prestigious Francis Biddle be able to intervene? But how? By calling the president
of the University of Chicago and asking him kindly to tell graduate student Max Huxley to lay off FDR’s grandson?

Could he get a forger to concoct a letter of instruction from Giuseppe Martino, directing Daniel O’Hara to hold on to Martino stock after the old man’s death for a couple of years, before turning it over to the Hyde Park Fund?

But why? And if such a letter existed, why hadn’t Cutter mentioned it to Huxley when asked about it?

Gradually, two alternatives crystallized. One of them was perfectly straightforward: Bribe him.… A truly imposing bribe.

How much? Well, if Huxley wavered, Danny could be flexible. He might begin at twenty-five thousand dollars, and be prepared to go to double that.

What if he wanted one hundred thousand dollars?

One million dollars?

He forced himself to sit, calm down. A million dollars was a silly sum of money even to think about. It was just a metaphor, a way of saying he would not accept any bribe. But the lesser figure?

He knew that the salary of assistant professors beginning in college was about twelve thousand. So by offering him twenty-five he was offering him two years’ compensation—among other things, compensation he wouldn’t even qualify for until
after
he earned his Ph.D. And, tax free. Danny was hardly going to write it off as a business expense, and Huxley wouldn’t likely list it as compensation. And if Danny let Huxley move him up to fifty thousand, that was
four
times the salary he’d be getting.

He’d have to try it.

He made his plans carefully. He wrote out the schedule in painstaking detail, leaving out nothing. Like a choreographer’s ballet: one step after another. He recited the schedule to himself. Spoke it out, his eyes closed, a half-dozen times.

When he was fully satisfied, he lit a match to the sheet of paper and watched it burn. He poured himself another drink and took it up to his bedroom, at the other end of the hall from Caroline’s.

•    •    •    •

His first call in the morning was to Cutter Malone.

He spoke next to Margie, told her he would be out most of the day. He would be driving with Cutter to look at a site in the Berkshires, near Great Barrington, where a resort hotel might be constructed. The project was confidential, at the request of Malone’s client.

He went then to Crédit Suisse, exposed his credit number to the cashier, and withdrew twenty-five thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills.

Shortly before eleven, Cutter Malone was easily overheard by his wife speaking over the telephone. She heard her husband say, “Yeah sure, Danny. I’m available. I’ll meet you at the railroad station in Greenwich. No point in your having to drive in to New York—we can shoot up toward Great Barrington from there.” Cutter told his wife he’d be away most of the day, to look at a possible hotel development with Danny.

At about noon, Danny set out for the Poughkeepsie Inn. When he checked in, he was bearded and dressed in a tuxedo. With his left hand he carried a saxophone case, with his right, an overnight bag. He left a cash deposit of sixty dollars for one of the hotel suites and signed in as Peter Espinoso. He asked that his suite be as far as possible from other guests, as he might wish to practice his instrument. “Just one night,” he told the clerk. “Wedding reception.”

In his living room he settled down. First he put on the silk gloves, then changed his clothes in the adjoining bedroom. Now he wore a simple gray suit, a soft blue shirt and discreet striped tie. The traveling case with the tuxedo was in the closet, along with the saxophone case. He looked at his watch, and flicked his mind back to the sheet of instructions from last night.

At 3:15 he put in the telephone call. He rang through to the FDR Center and gave the operator at Hyde Park the extension number.

“Mr. Huxley? This is Cutter Malone. I’m in Poughkeepsie, looking in on the Poughkeepsie Inn on behalf of a client. I’ve thought over your request and decided to give you the information you want. I’m going to France in the next couple of days,
but I know you said it was urgent to see me. Could you come right away? This will be the last chance for me for at least a month.… You don’t have a car?”

Fuck!
Danny hadn’t thought of that.

“Well, is it worth it to you to hire a cab? What is it—less than a half hour, no? Can I hang on for a minute? Sure.… You say you can borrow a car? Oh. Well, that’s fine. So you should be here, what, a couple of minutes before four o’clock? Fine. Now since we’re going to be touching on some confidential matters, I don’t expect you to mention our meeting. That is a condition of my cooperation. Is it acceptable?… Good. Come right up to number 811. I’m in one of the manager’s side rooms. If he happens to be consulting with me when you come in, I’ll ask him to leave and wait till we’re through. Okay? Good.”

Sounds very calm, Danny thought. Very measured. Huxley had spoken slowly over the telephone, deliberately. He must have been within earshot of the person who so promptly offered him the use of a car.

Danny poured himself a drink of Scotch from the plastic container. He kept his eye on his watch. He moved the dresser in the bedroom, a waist-level table with three drawers on either side, away from the wall opposite the window that looked out onto Cannon Street.

He thought to turn on the television set and just coast about, see what was playing. He began to do so, but the sound of the voices coming in over the various channels provoked him, he didn’t know why. He looked again at his watch. Huxley might even come in as early as 3:50, if he got the car right away.

One more shot would help. He poured it into his glass, gulped it down. That was one thing he hadn’t thought of, hadn’t written down. Breath.

He didn’t have any toothpaste. He must do something about his breath. He fiddled inside his pockets—perhaps he had left a cough drop, which he sometimes carried. No.
Nothing.
He went to the bathroom and put the soap into his mouth, lathering its disgusting waxy-oily taste on his tongue. With toilet paper he wiped his tongue and breathed out into the mirror. He huffed
into his right hand, held up to an inch from his mouth and tried to smell himself. He was satisfied.

He was back in the room and heard the knock on the door. Danny opened it.

Max Huxley wore gray flannels and a blazer. Danny shook hands with a serious young man, hair close cut, briefcase in hand. Danny motioned to him to sit down and went back to his own chair behind the dresser.

Huxley spoke. “You’re Mr. O’Hara. I’ve seen a lot of pictures of you. Including,” Huxley smiled, “when at age fourteen you visited your grandfather. I was supposed to see Mr. Malone.”

Danny was prepared for that one.

“I didn’t want to advertise my presence in this part of the world. My autocratic sister would not forgive me for being so close and not calling on her. Anything Mr. Malone can tell you, I can tell you. You have a question, Mr. Huxley? We may as well get on with it.”

“I have a few, yes, sir.” Huxley opened his briefcase and brought out a clipboard. He drew a manila folder from it. “I guess the first question is, Why did the Hyde Park Capital Fund turn over the Martino stock to the Hyde Park Fund?”

“That was what Mr. Martino wished us to do.”

“Why did Mr. Martino deed the stock to the Capital Fund in the first place?”

“He told me he wished me and Mr. Malone to benefit for fifteen months from the proceeds of the Trafalgar chain. A reward for the time we had put in.”

“Where is there written evidence that that was his design?”

“There is no written evidence. His instructions were oral.”

“My research shows that during the period the Capital Fund owned the Martino stock, the company generated dividends of just over four million dollars. Do I understand you to be saying that Mr. Martino wished you and Mr. Malone to receive a bonus in that amount?”

“He did not specify the amount. We were to receive whatever the proceeds of the enterprises yielded during this period.”

“How is it that no publicity was given to the arrangement?”

“We didn’t feel any need to give publicity to it. Mr. Martino had no wish to give it publicity.”

“A copy of the probated will arrived in the mail this morning. There is no mention in it of the stock moving from your hands to the Hyde Park Fund after two years. Where are your instructions to do this?”

“I told you the instructions were oral.”

“That means that if you wished to do so, you and Mr. Malone could have kept that stock forever, doesn’t it?”

“That would have been dishonorable,” Danny said, leaning back in his chair, a trace of a frown appearing on his forehead.

Huxley paused. Then, “Well, there is no point, is there, in maintaining the confidentiality of the arrangement? I mean, it is very unusual, and for that reason newsworthy. I will of course do what I can to verify all this, that is my duty. But I cannot see why anyone would have any objection to this—”

Danny interrupted him. His voice had a new hardness in it. “To tell the truth, Mr. Huxley—Max, may I?—I do not want publicity given to the arrangement. There are good reasons for this. Associates of Mr. Malone and of mine would—I mean, some of them—would resent it that they were not also beneficiaries of the estate, even if in lesser amounts. An incitement to jealousy. And we are not anxious for the trustees of the Library to know that—that there was a distribution in advance of the funds that went to the Library. They might feel compelled for fiduciary reasons to file some sort of an objection—”

“Mr. O’Hara, are you saying I should suppress this arrangement?”

“That is exactly what I am suggesting, except that I wouldn’t use the word ‘suppress.’ I’m suggesting you simply
ignore
it. It’s hardly a major story. In fact, I’m here to
request
you do this. Mr. Malone and I would be willing to make a substantial contribution to you and your research, in exchange for your cooperation.”

Max Huxley’s mouth opened, his eyebrows lifted. And then, “Mr. O’Hara—”

“I am talking about twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, which I have here with me in my suitcase.” Danny leaned down as
though to rehearse the opening of a suitcase and the removal of a package from it.

“Mr. O’Hara, please. There is no way that any such exchange would be taken other than as a—bribe. I mean, anybody who knew about it would say just that, that I had accepted a bribe. I mean, you can see that, can’t you?” Max Huxley’s voice was that of an elderly man pleading for understanding by someone less worldly, less sophisticated.

“You will learn, Max, when you are a little older, that people throw terms like that around—‘bribe’—for personal convenience. Somebody who wanted to think ill of you would interpret helping a lady across the street as sexual harassment. Forget it. The best rule in life, whatever your profession, is to be practical. To take … practical … opportunities.…”

Huxley knew he would get nowhere. He decided to leave the room. He was flushed when he rose from his chair.

“Come on, Max, sit down. I mean, what’s the hurry, let’s just go over it one more time.”

Max remained on his feet. “I’ve said everything I have to say, Mr. O’Hara. But if you want some reassurance, I’ll give it to you: When I publish the story, I will omit any mention of our encounter here. Any mention of any attempt by you to keep me from—going ahead.” He started toward the door when the bullet pierced his back.

Huxley toppled over onto the floor, one hand reaching behind his back. He gave out a soft moan. Danny rose, approached him and fired a second shot above Huxley’s ear. Blood flowed now onto the carpet, from Huxley’s mouth and stomach.