Tell Them I'll Be There (29 page)

O
NE DAY LAST
week Dan had spent an interesting afternoon with Jim Paley, Pops' lawyer friend. As well as lawyer, he found, Paley had acted over the years as a kind of sounding board, a second opinion in money matters. He was conservative, wise and prudent at all times. The kind of man who, though he would never make a big killing, would never make a huge loss.

The estate was more or less settled, he told Dan, taxes covered, the will proved and Dan found he really was a
bona fide
dollar millionaire. Paley counselled caution. ‘A lot of people are going to be short of cash right now and some of them might come knocking on your door. They may claim to be old friends of Joe. They might even say he owed them money. Don't listen,' he told Dan, ‘and don't let them in. In fact, anybody gives you money trouble refer them to me, OK?

‘It might be a good idea,' he went on, ‘to keep all this to
yourself
for now. If you haven't already, don't tell anyone apart from your closest family.'

It was good advice. He hadn't mentioned his good fortune to anyone, not even Tim. He wanted time to think about it. For one thing, it didn't seem as if it was his money anyway. He thought of it as still belonging to Pops, as if he was just a guardian and it was his job to see that it was not lost or wasted. At least he could take care of Harry and Lois as Pops wanted.

He was pondering these matters when he arrived at the office that Monday morning to be met by Lois who was still treating him coolly. The incurable romantic, she was convinced 
he had been a fool to let Sue go and she was certain he would be sorry.

‘Mr Shaw's been on this morning,' she told him. ‘Y'know, your friend Nathan.'

‘What does he want?' Dan asked, more interested just then in what was going on at the Exchange than anything else.

‘He says you're to call him the minute you get in. It's
very
urgent.'

Dan raised his eyebrows. Most things were urgent where Nathan was concerned. But
very
urgent? ‘Better get him for me Lois.'

Seconds later she handed him the phone. ‘Nathan,' he said.

‘Dan! Where the hell have you been?'

‘Does it matter?'

‘No,' Nathan said. ‘Listen, you got to come over here, right away.'

‘Where are you?'

‘In my office. Please. Come over. Now. Call a cab.'

‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about? I mean,
whatever
it is, can't we do it over the phone?'

‘No,' he said decisively. ‘You have to come here. It's
important
.'

Nathan was renting an office on the top floor of a six-storey, cold water block just beyond Tenth Avenue, not the most
salubrious
of neighbourhoods, he admitted. But, as he said, it was the best his company could afford for now. Dan climbed the twelve flights of stone steps, two to each floor. Out of breath when he reached the sixth, he realized he might be out of condition, too.

‘You better get out of here while you can still walk.'

‘Nah,' Nathan said. ‘I do those stairs twice a day and that's all the exercise I need. Keeps me fit. Come on in. Welcome to this hive of industry.'

Nathan was very much a one-man band. He couldn't afford a secretary, he said, or any kind of help. Not yet. But he was doing all right and he had bought himself a second-hand
Model-T
so he could call on the agents and buyers and distributors and anyone else who might help him build his business. 

His office was poorly furnished, but at least he had a desk large enough to accommodate a heavy-looking phonograph and still leave desk room. ‘I couldn't lug this monster over to your place, could I?'

‘You got me here to listen to your phonograph?'

‘Yeah, I did,' Nathan admitted. ‘Now sit down and tell me what you think of this.'

‘Nathan,' Dan protested, ‘I'm no judge.'

‘Shut up and listen,' he said, as he wound up the machine. ‘I did well with the Jewish track and the Irish track is just taking off. So now I need an Italian job and that means I need an Italian singer. Some guy who can sing the old Neapolitan love songs real good with a bit of Italian thrown in. You know what I mean? Maybe the chorus in English and a couple of verses in Italian.'

Dan listened patiently but he failed to see how any of this could possibly concern him. ‘What…?' he began.

‘Wait, wait, wait,' Nathan said. ‘Let me finish. So I need an Italian guy, OK? So I let the agents know what I'm looking for and I get this demo track in the post. It's from some agent in Los Angeles. Sends me this Italian guy who, he says, is going great out West. Guy called Johnny Roselli. I never heard of him but he sure can sing.' Nathan placed the record on the turntable, cranked the phonograph up a bit more, looked at Dan intently and said, ‘Listen.'

Dan was quietly amused. Nathan was gradually becoming a sharp-nosed showbiz entrepreneur with a hard-edged accent to match.

The record crackled into life then evened out with the sound of violins followed by a voice and
O Sol Mio
. Nathan's eyes never left Dan's but he waited until the music slowed to its melancholy end and only the quiet whirr of the record remained.

‘So who is it?' he demanded.

Dan shrugged. ‘Some Italian guy.'

Nathan was rewinding furiously. ‘God Almighty:' he muttered. ‘Listen, man.' And he set the record in motion again. 

Dan sat forward on the one spare chair and this time he did listen.

Nathan was smiling. ‘It is, isn't it?'

‘You think it's Michael.'

‘Don't you?'

‘I don't know,' Dan said. ‘It could be, I suppose.'

Nathan was winding furiously again. ‘Sure it is. It's obvious. I wish Tim was here. He'd know right away.'

‘What about the name?'

‘Everybody changes their name over here. You said so yourself.'

They listened again and this time Dan nodded. ‘Could be. Yes.'

Nathan picked up the telephone. ‘Long distance,' he said, a note with the number he wanted in his hand. There was a short wait then, ‘Yeah, that is this number. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for nothing.' He put the phone down. ‘My credit's not too good just now with the telephone company. We need a pay phone.'

They went down the stairs and across the street to the
drugstore
but it was approaching lunchtime and the place was crowded. Both phone booths were occupied. Nathan's Model-T took them uptown to Dan's office. Long distance took seven or eight minutes person to person but Nathan couldn't wait. He paced up and down until Dan said, ‘Sit down, for God's sake. It probably isn't him anyway.'

Nathan grabbed the phone. ‘Yeah, this is he. Thank you. Hi, this Mr Johnny Roselli? This is Nathan Shaw from li'l ol' New York. Nathan O'Shaughnessy to you.'

He laughed and listened for a moment. Then he said, ‘Well, hold on. There's a guy here like to speak to you.'

And he handed the phone to Dan.

That morning as soon as the gong opened the day's trading the stock market took a massive dive. Now it was not just the lesser known shares. Blue chip stocks were equally in trouble. General Electric, Telephone & Telegraph, US Steel all dropped points and the big drops seemed to be getting bigger. The banks were 
watching closely but there was no sign they were prepared to get involved, no sign they were prepared to step in and help out and the gong at 3 p.m. closed trading on the market's worst day ever. An estimated $10 billion of investors' money had simply drained away.
The New York Times
' headline next morning read:
STOCK PRICES SLUMP $14,000,000,000 IN NATION-WIDE STAMPEDE TO UNLOAD
with the hopeful corollary
Bankers to Support Market Today
.

The severity of the fall came as a shock and a surprise. Whilst many in government believed stocks had been valued too high there was concern now that the fall in values was far too steep. Prominent businessmen and leading bankers tried to reassure the public business was strong and banks
were
willing and able to step in. They urged newspapers to sound an optimistic note yet at the same time some of them were actually fuelling the panic by selling their own stocks short in the hope of buying them back cheaply.

But most bankers did their best to raise expectations. Things will be better tomorrow, they said. There will be many bargains to be had and there will be many buyers. The market will surely recover. But on Tuesday morning, the day that came to be known as Black Tuesday, a great flood of orders to sell poured in and threatened to sink the Exchange. In the first minutes after the gong opened trading, thousands of shares were sold or offered for sale. Radio, US Steel, General Electric, all fell dramatically. Arguments and even fist fights broke out on the Exchange floor as clerks pushed and jostled each other in their frantic attempts to find buyers. Hysteria gripped many as less than an hour after the opening gong stock values had fallen by more than $2 million.

Large crowds were again gathering outside, anxious to sell to meet their margins. Savings banks were overrun by people wanting to make withdrawals. Insurance companies were
inundated
with policy holders wanting to cash in their policies. Pawnbrokers were swamped with requests to pledge valuables.

Once again the tapes could not keep up with the volume of trade and out in the brokerage houses, though they were 
stunned already by the falls, investors found there were even bigger shocks to come. The collapse came like an earthquake and the tremors were felt across the world. It was the biggest financial catastrophe of all time.

Near to the closing gong there was a slight rally reviving hopes that the worst had passed. Already the chaos and the devastation seemed somehow unreal for those able to survive such severe losses. But the reality was all too clear for ordinary men and women forced now to mortgage their homes, to accept the fact that this ill wind had blown away their life's savings in the mounds of paper that littered the floor of the Exchange and that, for many, the ‘safe' investments prudently made to provide for a modest retirement had gone and they would have to start looking for work in a world where thousands, perhaps millions, of jobs would soon be lost.

Dan Dolan left the Exchange that Tuesday afternoon saddened by the sight of so much anguish. A detached observer, he had noted how swiftly the flimsy cloak of civilization could fall away. True, he was insulated from the turmoil, thanks to Pops, but the consternation and the hint of madness in so many eyes had disturbed him deeply.

The party was clearly over. The good times were gone, the joyful sound of jazz music was fading fast and only a slow dirge would bring this crazy decade to a close. From now on things would be very different.

There were two letters on the doormat, one from Tim who was settling in to seminary life and wanted to know what problems, if any, the Wall Street troubles had given his high flying brother. The other came in an embossed envelope with the name of a prominent New York judge on the back and an address out on Long Island. Dan ran over in his mind what misdemeanours he could possibly have committed recently but remained nonplussed. The letter, equally embossed, contained an
invitation
to a ‘social evening' at the judge's home. Dan consulted the only other legal man he knew well enough to ask.

‘Ah,' Jim Paley said with a laugh. ‘A bit premature perhaps 
but that's Andy. Judge Peterson is an old friend of mine. Your name came up at one of our meetings and he'd like to meet you.'

‘One of your meetings?'

‘Judge Peterson is chairman of your local Democrats.'

‘I'm not being indicted then?'

Paley laughed again. ‘No. Come over at lunchtime for a bite to eat if you can and I'll tell you what's on his mind.'

Judge Peterson was in his seventies. He was a distinguished judge and a leading player for the Democrats around New York. He had been a longstanding friend of Joe Baker. Andriy Petrenko had known Joe Baker when he was Josef Bakke more than fifty years ago and they had remained firm friends. ‘But he was never able to draw Joe into politics,' Paley said. ‘Joe was always too busy. But that was understandable. He came to this country with nothing and he had to keep making money to
reassure
himself he wasn't poor. He'd been poor and he knew what it was like.'

‘I came to this country with nothing, Mr Paley,' Dan said, ‘and I've been incredibly lucky. I want to preserve that good fortune in Pops' memory. I intend to take good care of the business.'

‘Sure you do,' Paley said. ‘But this country is going to need the Democrats and the Democrats are going to need bright young men. Things are in a mess right now. It's young men like you, Dan, who can help put things right. If this country has given you something good, maybe you should give something back.'

Dinner at Judge Peterson's house at Great Neck turned out to be a much more lavish affair than Dan expected. There were several young people present, men and women of his own age. The young men, he guessed, were Democratic Party hopefuls, mainly interested in political advancement. The young women, as far as he could tell, were mainly interested in the young men.

It was a black tie affair, the uniform that hides one's roots. All the men were dressed the same, Dan noted, and no one could tell how or why they came to be there. Judge Peterson spoke to Dan briefly and told him he had heard ‘good things' about him. 
He hoped he would enjoy the party and maybe
join
the party. Jim Paley and Mrs Paley were with a group of older people and as the judge moved on, Dan was left alone, drink in hand, his starched collar stiff against his neck as he surveyed the scene.