The Hour of the Cat (15 page)

“I lost for governor by more votes than any candidate in history,” Donovan said, “and against the current occupant.”

“Nineteen thirty-two was an
annus horribilis
for Republicans. Besides, before running your own campaign for governor in '32, you helped manage a presidential campaign in '28, and
won.”

“Hoover won. I was a mere accessory.”

“You're too modest,” Dulles said.

“Too honest, that's all.”

Donovan knew that he hadn't been an accessory during the election of '28. An upstate Irish Catholic, he helped manage the campaign of Herbert Hoover against Al Smith, another Catholic Irishman from New York. But he most certainly felt like one afterwards, when the electoral votes of five southern states, formerly firmly Democratic, went into the Republican column. The Rebels from the South joined with the Yankees from the North to ensure that the position of Attorney General didn't go to Donovan, the man whom Hoover had promised it, a “mackerel snapper” from New York, but to a true-blue one-hundred-percent-loyal American Protestant
.
“It's just politics, Bill,” said an emissary from the president-elect. “Don't take it personally.”
The problem is, if I take it professionally, it hurts even more.

“The Republican Party is ready to stand behind me for governor. That's already clear. They're hungry for new blood, fresh ideas. Like every Democratic governor, Lehman is dependent on the big-city bosses, and the people are fed up, ready to throw them out, not just in New York but across the nation!” Dewey was red-faced when he finished.

“There, there, Tom. ‘Elections are like wars,' my uncle Robert Lansing used to say. ‘They are won not by speeches but by clear purpose harnessed to sound strategy.'” Dulles launched into a discussion of his uncle's service during and after the war as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, a monologue that continued as the waiters cleared the table, including the plate he'd never touched. Finally, he sat. He turned toward Donovan. “We need men of stature and experience in this campaign. Men with national connections who know the New York electorate and aren't afraid of a good fight.”

“Fighting Irishmen like you, Bill.” Dewey dug into the vanilla ice cream the waiters had just delivered for dessert.

Dulles winced, perhaps because of his back, more likely from the mention of the sort of ethnic appeals he despised, the age-old specialty of those who subverted the rule of men of true standing, those predestined by pedigree and education to stand above the passions of the mob and direct affairs of state. He resumed his monologue, steering it into a discussion of foreign policy, speaking with the tone of high certainty that Donovan imagined Dulles's minister father must have used to lay down the Calvinist doctrine of justification to his congregation. The events in Europe were none of America's business, Dulles said. They involved the eternal struggle between dynamic and static forces to find a proper balance, a
natural
balance, which could only be achieved if the U.S. kept its thumb off the scale. The
right
Republican in the White House, surrounded by
responsible
advisers, were the best guarantee of such an outcome.

“What about those who argue that National Socialism is incapable of accommodation, that its motives and purpose must inevitably be directed toward conquest?” Donovan knew Dulles's deep dislike for having his opinions questioned in any way. He hoped it might agitate him sufficiently to get to the point.

“That's the kind of alarmist poppycock the Democrats will use to retain the White House. It's why they must be stopped and why we need men like you to help see to it.”

“Yes, I'd welcome your advice.” Dewey extended his hand. “Too bad there's not a photographer to get a shot of this,” Dewey said when Donovan shook it.

Dulles stood, a signal the lunch was over. He put his palms on his lower back. “Are you all right, sir?” the attendant asked from behind the chair.

“A cross to bear. We're all given them.” He spoke directly to Donovan, as though he'd asked the question. “The country cries out for men willing to take up their crosses. I hope we can count on you, Bill.” Dulles's shoes shuffled across the carpet in a short, slow
Via Dolorosa.

“I'm looking forward to the campaign,” Dewey said.

“Then work on our friend here, Tom,” Dulles said as he left the room. “You're the master of swaying the wavering juror.” He raised his hand in farewell, or benediction.
Take up your cross and follow me.

Donovan watched Dulles's stooped figure move slowly down the hallway. When he'd turned down the ambassadorship offered by president-elect Hoover as a sop for not being named attorney general, he was told that Dulles had described his behavior as “childish petulance.” Donovan's informant said that Dulles had declared, “The interests of our country must always come before pride or profit or
any
personal consideration.”

Here, of course, Donovan came to realize, was Foster's genius. He did his business atop Mount Sinai, untainted by base desires, successfully erasing in his own mind any difference between his best interests and those not only of the nation and the world but also of the Godhead. He spoke from the heights, seemingly apart from the travails and concerns of those enmeshed in the fleshpots of Egypt. The connections of his firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, extended past Wall Street to the entire international business community. The firm had overseen the investment of $10 billion in foreign securities that had been battered by almost ten years of Depression and defaults, and it fell on Foster Dulles's shoulders to act as a human flying buttress, doing his best to prop up the cracked and weakened structure of global finance. So many burdens at one time: ensuring that the beleaguered republican government of Spain couldn't raid that nation's banks and sell the assets abroad to finance its war against the surging forces of General Franco; protecting General Aniline & Film Corporation, the largest North American subsidiary of I.G. Farben, the German chemical cartel, so that if the unthinkable happened, if America was dragged into war, its operations would be safe from confiscation; running the board of the International Nickel Company, Inco, in a reasoned, calm way that didn't take the bait of the scaremongers who railed against its extensive contracts with the German arms industry. Business was business, yet with Foster Dulles the motive was never for personal profit or gain, though such rewards might result. Dulles's motives were higher, purer—world order, peace, the inexorable unfolding of God's designs as carried out by His predestined designees.

 

 

On the way down in the elevator, Dewey told Donovan that while he was sure he could win the gubernatorial nomination at the Republican state convention in September, in Saratoga, it would be hard to defeat Lehman in November. “In a close election, the Democrats are still in control of the political machines. In places like Albany and the Bronx, the bosses will steal whatever votes they need to win.”

“If you make it close enough, it'll be the same as a victory, at least on the national level.” Donovan stopped short of making the commitment that Dewey and Dulles both sought. He'd become an observer of politics rather than a player. Disappointment was part of it, but there was something else as well.

At the last meeting he'd ever had with Herbert Hoover, the president-elect squeezed his arm, an imitation hug accompanied by a frozen smile. “Bill,” he said, “you know from your football days that not everyone who tries out for the team gets to play.” The round, blank face above the stiff collar had the appearance of a boiled egg in its cup. Try as he did, Hoover couldn't forge the unspoken bond of human empathy that gave the impression he knew what others felt and felt it himself. The ability to forge that bond—or at least to give the appearance of doing so—was a gift, like grace, randomly bestowed. Men like Dulles rejected it. Others, like Dewey, craved it but were passed over.

Despite the close ties he could make with individuals, even with groups as large as the regiment he'd taken to France, Donovan knew it was a skill that failed him in the open arena of politics. He knew it for certain at the end of his campaign for governor, when it was clear not only that Lehman would swamp him but that then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt would evict Hoover from the White House. In the last week before the '32 election, Roosevelt serendipitously appeared in the lobby of the Ten Eyck Hotel in Albany. He leaned on his son's arm waiting for his official limousine, a cane in the other hand. Seeing the Republican candidate for governor coming toward him, Roosevelt beamed a broad smile and, unsatisfied with a handshake, gracefully hung the cane on his son's wrist and put his hand on Donovan's shoulder.

“Now, Jim,” Roosevelt said to his son, “I want you to shake hands with one of nature's rarest creatures, Bill Donovan, an Irish Catholic
Republican
.” Roosevelt gleefully observed his son's discomfort at this chance encounter with the opponent of his father's handpicked successor. Throwing his head back, Roosevelt laughed loudly. “It's okay, Jim, back in our school days, before his apostasy from the Democratic Party, Bill and I forged a lasting friendship based on our mutual love of football.”

It was an utter fabrication. Roosevelt had been an undergraduate at Harvard and a pampered student at Columbia Law School, treated with deference by professors in awe of his name and social standing. He'd never appeared anywhere near a football field. He and Donovan were never more than passing acquaintances. But Roosevelt told the story with such good-natured certainty that Donovan found himself nodding in agreement and joining in the laughter, unbothered by the lie or the patrician accent that, in another man's voice, might have had an edge of condescension.

“The reign of Roosevelt is at an end,” Dewey said. “A Republican victory here in New York, in his own home state, will be a clear signal that the time is nigh.”

“And if it isn't, we can always start our own law firm, Dulles, Donovan, and Dewey,” Donovan said. “It's got a ring to it.”

Dewey shook his head. He seemed to take Donovan's joke seriously. “Foster will never surrender his interest in Sullivan & Cromwell. He regards his firm the way a minister does his church. For my part, my interest is in public service, in cleaning out the crooks and corrupters and returning American government to the hands of honest, capable men.”

Dewey seemed ready to slip into a campaign speech. Donovan declined the offer of a ride before it was even made. He promised to call Dewey as soon as he returned from a meeting with clients in the Midwest. They said goodbye in front of the building. Flanked by bodyguards, Dewey looked around, waiting to be noticed by the lunchtime crush of brokers, clerks, and secretaries. After a minute of watching the crowd and sensing their lack of interest in anything save stocks and bonds and ogling each other, he ducked into the car and was gone.

Dunne arrived back at Grand Central around seven. The stars painted on the ceiling above the station floor served as a substitute for those the city's incandescence made invisible. There was no need for the occasional passengers who bothered to gaze up to trace the outlines of sky creatures the ancients claimed to see—bear, lion, lamb. The New York Central Railroad had done it for them. He exited on Forty-second Street and walked west along the Deuce, past the north side of Bryant Park. Beyond the flashing lights of the movie marquees, the horizon was streaked with the fading purplish-red remains of a sun that had just sunk behind the Palisades.

At the corner of Broadway, a shill in a white hat tried to sell him a ticket for a bus tour of Manhattan. He waved him off. At the light, a voice behind him said, “Hey, mister, postcards from Paris. Interested?” He crossed the street without looking back. The usual crowd of pasty-faced ghouls loitered in front of the Rialto, eyeing the posters for the double bill of zombie-voodoo films. Male gawkers were everywhere, walking with the feral, furtive look of men hunting for forbidden thrills. Some stopped in front of the grind-houses and stuck their noses close to the glass-encased stills touting cut-rate reels, NEVER BEFORE SEEN ON SCREEN! SHOCKING! UNCENSORED!
Slaves in Bondage
,
Girls of the Street
,
Forbidden Desires
,
Jungle Virgins
. Two sailors studied the window of a dime museum and novelty shop. The banner above advertised “The Hidden Secrets of Sex as Approved by the French Academy of Medicine, Paris.” They paid their dimes and went in to be educated.

Across the street, the belt of bulbs zipped around the Times Tower spelling out electronic headlines that almost everyone below ignored. One day Walter Grillo's name would be up there, sharing the Square with the movie stars, headliners, and top billers. In Grillo's case it'd be a once-only appearance. A tourist couple planted themselves in front of Dunne. The man posed the woman for a picture, her back to the huge sign across the Square advertising Wrigley's Spearmint gum, the same spot Dunne stopped with Danny Cassidy when they returned to New York from France.