to Larry, managed the stairs alone by clinging to the handrail.
Larry kibitzed the game a while, and finally had the boys deal him in.
He lost fifteen dollars in the next half hour. Paul Schmid suggested
that they quit, ribbing him about starting to play too late to get his
money back, but Larry didn’t mind the loss. He was anxious to clear out
so that the Bemroses could look after Marge undisturbed.
When the boys went in to say goodnight a little later, the doctor had
gone and Arthur, Lucy, and Marge were downstairs in the living room.
Larry sat down next to Marge. “Is it serious?” he asked.
“I have to go to another doctor in the morning and take a test.” She
rolled her eyes and pressed Larry’s arm. “Don’t say anything to Ed.”
“Have you figured out the rug problem?” Larry called over.
Ed’s eyes looked red from rubbing them. “It’s a stickler, all right.
Are you sure it can be done with one cut?”
“Absolutely. Your nephew solved it in ten minutes.”
“Arthur did?” Ruefully Ed took out his watch. “We must have been at it
half an hour.”
At the door Cy picked up Lucy, tossed her in the air, and kissed her
goodbye on both cheeks.
Breathlessly she tried to answer Larry about Marge. “Arthur will
remember the name of the test.”
“Ascheim-Zondek,” Arthur said.
“You mean she might be--” Incredulously Larry looked at Marge.
Outside the entrance Ed was mopping his face and complaining about the
heat.
_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.
_Chapter 20_
The headwaiter indicated a table at the far side of the room, across
the floor from the orchestra, and Larry and Bess felt their way in
the purplish light around the small, slick floor. The orchestra was
playing _June Night_. Larry had made love to his first girl by it, and
could hear it now flowing singsongy and nasal through her thinly etched
nostrils.
They blinked their way through the murky room where cigarette smoke
banked like fog, and Arthur half rose when he saw them, tabling his
hands for support, while Bess rushed over to steady the fragile cane
chair under him.
“Hello.” Arthur’s eyes challenged Bessie, and he motioned to the empty
seats at the table.
A brocade evening bag lay on the table in front of an empty place. It
must belong to Lucy.
Larry slid into the far chair and let Bess and Bemrose get comfortable.
They seldom saw each other, and needed time to become acquainted. Larry
knew that it wouldn’t take long. Bess would relate some irrelevant and
trivial incident, and soon Bemrose would be swept along with her sure
narrative skill.
Among the dancers Larry located Lucy’s gray-blonde head brushing the
dark sleekness of Philip Kenyon’s. He was the Green network salesman
whom Larry remembered from the first night at the Daughertys’ when he
had called on Lucy about the lawsuit. Her arm relaxed on his collar,
and Larry saw that they danced easily and well, her high, flat breasts
conforming to his dark blue concavity. The music trickled to a close,
and Kenyon must have said something which flushed her amber skin.
As the band started, nostalgically sobbing _As Time Goes By_, she
returned, smiling, to his arms.
Bemrose motioned Larry to move closer. “They make a nice couple. They
used to go dancing before we were married,” he said.
“Are you trying to fix her up?”
“Sometimes I feel as if she were my daughter,” Bemrose confessed. “She
must have missed going dancing after she married me. She was a little
young to settle down. I realize it now.”
Lucy fluttered a hand at him from the floor, and he smiled back at her.
“You’re not in mothballs yet. For Chris’ sake----”
“I’m glad Kenyon is around. He’s a nice fellow to take her dancing.
Especially now that I can’t.” Bemrose rearranged his legs.
“What are you going to do, hand her all the fun while you play papa?”
Larry laughed. “Whose idea is this anyway? Lucy’s?”
But Bessie motioned him to be quiet. Lucy and Kenyon, knit in quiet
conversation, were on their way to the table.
Lucy drew up a chair close to Arthur, freshened his highball with some
soda, picked up his napkin from the floor, and solicitously asked
whether he were tired. Her cool beauty reassured Larry. She never
looked lovelier than in the sheer black dress she was wearing. It
furnished solemn contrast to her light eyes and gave the gray-blonde
hair a dreamlike quality.
Kenyon, chatting happily with Bessie, took on her tone as he pitched
his amiability to hers. He was an adaptable man who reflected the
personality of others and unconsciously imitated their speech and
gestures. When a principal figure walked off the scene, Kenyon became
neutral as a photographer’s background.
Lucy, noting Arthur’s hand shake on his highball glass, asked the
waiter to give him a straw. While she was ordering drinks for the rest
of them, Larry saw the carefully tailored sleeve of a man at the next
table slip around the bosom of the girl who was with him. He reached
greedily for her left breast, and when she tore his hand away, looked
pained and helpless.
“Why do you always have to drink too much?” she asked peevishly.
“Don’t sound like your mother,” he complained. “Unpleasant bitch!”
His daughter shoved her napkin toward him as if pushing away something
loathsome. She was kodachrome pretty, with red hair.
He grabbed her arm, clearing a set of heavy silver bracelets. “You’re
grown up now. You might as well know that men--” He clawed her breast,
clutching the gold cloth of her dress. “They’ll want to sleep with you,
Baby.”
Frantically she called to the waiter. “He’ll pay the check. I have to
catch a train back to school.” She took time to daub her nose while he
fumbled in a confusion of bills and silver.