The Hour of the Cat (43 page)

“Have you made any inquiries with our Abwehr agents in New York?”

“Yes, Admiral, they already knew of Hausser, who's hardly kept a low profile. He's hung around the Bund in New York and been a loudmouth participant in some of their rallies. He bragged to fellow Bundists of a personal acquaintance with General Heydrich. Our agents figured him for either an FBI plant or a hollow-headed braggart.”

“The incurable arrogance of the SS. They all suffer from it. Worse, it's highly contagious.” Oster was on his feet again, pacing back and forth in front of the door.

“You instructed our agents to keep a watch on him, I trust,” Canaris said.

“I planned to, but before I could, I was informed he'd disappeared.”

“Disappeared? You mean, recalled to Germany?”

“It's unclear. I'm still receiving information from New York. It seems he's been working as a chauffeur, and his employer died in a fire.”

“Is Hausser suspected in it?”

“It doesn't appear so. But our agents in New York tell us that he's vanished from sight.”

“What do your SS contacts tell you?”

“They're being untypically tight-lipped. Either they don't know or won't divulge. I don't want to do anything that would indicate too deep an interest on my part.”

Canaris smiled, slightly. “Perhaps, he's gone underground and joined up with the gangsters who run New York.”

“In New York, the gangsters rule the underground.” Oster shot a fulgurous glance at Canaris. “But in Berlin they run the government.”

The Jew, as seen through the eyes of the ordinary non-Jew, is a study in contradictions. He is at once communist subversive and capitalist exploiter. He is an unhealthy creature, lax in matters of personal hygiene and poorly conditioned, yet an extraordinary seducer of wholesome, attractive gentile girls. He is the modernist par excellence, the enemy of tradition, but a stubborn adherent to the practices of his ancient faith. He controls the newspapers and the movies but the little attention paid him in these venues is often in the form of disparaging stereotypes. The Jew is a peddler and small businessman, a scrounger and a scavenger; and he is plutocrat and millionaire, overlord of the factories and department stores that drive the peddler and small businessman out of business. He is a coward and a pacifist, afraid of war because it often results in pogroms directed against himself and his tribe, and he is a scheming warmonger eager for the profits that war will bring. Attempts to reconcile these opposing perceptions of the Jew will invariably fail unless one understands that they have little to do with the perceived—i.e., the Jew—and everything to do with the perceiver, the non-Jew. Perhaps the best way to think of it is to imagine the Jew as a movie screen, a blank surface, upon which society projects its submerged fears, resentments and lusts, allowing them to flicker through the filter of everyday perceptions. Pity the poor Jew, if you wish. But beware the projectionist, you must.

—MANFRED STERN,
Landscapes of the Imagination

D
ONOVAN LOWERED THE newspaper. The account of the reopening of the Grillo case had absorbed him so thoroughly that he hadn't noticed that most of the other breakfasters in the River Club had finished and left. A waiter poured him another cup of coffee. He lifted it—a silent, solo toast.
Here's to Dunne. He'd come through.

Donovan almost congratulated himself on never doubting that he would; but he knew there'd been moments when he had. How couldn't there have been when he'd stuck out his neck on such little evidence?

“What's got you looking so happy?” Jim Forrestal stood on the other side of the table, hat at his side. He was smiling, or what passed for a smile with Forrestal, one corner of his mouth turned up at a wry, sarcastic angle. “Every time I read the papers, I want to puke.”

Donovan pointed at the headline. “This murder case that's being re-opened, and the exposé of the crooked cops who were involved.”

“What about it?”

“An acquaintance of mine is responsible, Fintan Dunne, an ex-cop and private investigator. He served with me in the 69th.”

“Catch one rat today. Tomorrow another brood is born. That's the way of the world.” Forrestal put his hat on the table and pulled up a chair. “Mind if I sit?” He sat before Donovan could say anything, looked around for a waiter and snapped his fingers at one he spotted in the corner. “Bring me a cup of tea.”

“I thought you'd still be out on the North Shore,” Donovan said.

“I'd rather die from heat then boredom.” Forrestal brushed his finger beneath his flat and slightly tilted nose, a reminder of a knockout blow he'd taken in his days as a college boxer. He turned in his chair. “Where's that tea?”

Donovan laughed at Forrestal's impatience. He'd never been put off by Forrestal's abruptness, which others found unmannerly and abrasive. He considered it part of the sales pitch by the brokerage house of Dillion, Read, a firm headed by arrivistes like Clarence Dillon (born Lapowski, he'd done a nuptial reverse and taken his wife's maiden name) and Jim Forrestal, who, though he did his damnedest to avoid any reference to it, had never entirely erased the taint of his Irish working-class origin up the Hudson River, in Beacon, New York. Outsiders perceived Dillon, Read as part of the Street's blue-blood club. Insiders knew that Dillon and Forrestal had climbed up from below and snickered among themselves at Hymie and Paddy's efforts to pass as Anglo-Saxons. Yet they were often more likely to trust their money to men who were born without it and knew its true value than to those fed from a silver porridge bowl with a silver spoon.

The waiter brought Forrestal a cup, saucer, and pot of tea. “Do you wish me to pour, sir? Or do you prefer to let it steep?”

Forrestal didn't look at him. “Steep.”

“How was your trip to Washington?” Donovan didn't expect that Forrestal would resent being questioned about his invitation to the White House. It was common knowledge that, after six years of unremitting animosity, F.D.R. was trying to repair his relationship with the financial community and had summoned men he perceived might be sympathetic, Forrestal among them.

“You think it's hot here? Washington is a hell hole.”

“Did it go well?”

“My trip?”

“Your meeting with the President.”

“Fine.” Forrestal poured himself a cup of tea.

“Did he cast the famous Roosevelt spell over you?”

The corner of Forrestal's mouth angled up in a sardonic smile. “He said I had a reputation as a tough, short-tempered son of a bitch.”

“I suppose that's better than being ‘a malefactor of great wealth.' The government doesn't hound every son of a bitch over his income taxes.”

“He meant it as a compliment. He said he was looking for men who know how to get things done, especially how to organize and finance large-scale industrial enterprises.”

“Too bad he didn't think of that six years ago, before he plunged the country into a failed experiment with socialism. He's only got two years before his time is up.”

Forrestal shrugged. “He's thinking about the country's defenses. The threats from overseas are becoming too powerful to ignore. He said he wants to bring the whole country behind an effort to make sure we're armed and ready for whatever comes.”

“Come on, Jim. The man will say whatever he thinks will bring you over to the Democrats. If ever there was a living embodiment of Dr. Johnson's dictum that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,' it's F.D.R. He's failed to end the Depression, and he and his party know the political tide is turning against them.”

“I like him.”

“That's not the issue. The fact is, you can't trust him.”

“
Trust
?” Forrestal poured himself a cup of tea, blew on it, and took a gulp. “Who said anything about trust? I think he'll do whatever's necessary to ensure we don't end up at the mercy of our enemies.”

“You're about half right, Jim. He'll do whatever is necessary to ensure he can outfox his political adversaries. War is about the last card he has to play.”

“He asked about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Apparently, he knows we're neighbors on Beekman Place.”

“And cut from the same green cloth. He knows the Irish in the country are overwhelmingly opposed to bailing out the British a second time.”

Forrestal ignored Donovan's reference to their shared Irish Catholic background. “He asked if I ever saw you, and when I said we often bumped into each other, he said to send his regards.”

Donovan ignored the message from the president. “This time it's not just the Irish who are opposed. The vast majority of Americans are against sending our boys overseas again.”

“It's different this time,” Forrestal said.

“Yes, this time instead of an insufferable moralist like Woodrow Wilson for our president, who couldn't accept any fact that didn't fit his ideals, we have Franklin Roosevelt, a thoroughbred opportunist who has no ideals other than ensuring his own political survival. Did he reminisce with you about the time he and I spent together at Columbia and our mutual love of football?”

“No. All he said was that Bill Donovan is a patriot. ‘When the time comes,' he said, ‘I know I'll be able to count on him.'”

“Now that he's got that rogue Joe Kennedy as ambassador to London, he'll try to add a few more Irish names to his administration to keep the Paddy vote loyal in case he decides to try for a third term. He's a shameless politician.”

“I wouldn't want to be led by a shameful one.” Forrestal finished his tea. He picked up his hat and stood. “I better be going.”

“I'll walk with you on the way out.” Donovan signed for his breakfast and accompanied Forrestal to the street.

“This Czech business is just a start.” Forrestal snapped the brim of his hat to protect against the glare of the morning sun.

“It's also none of our business. It's for the Europeans to figure out.”

“For now maybe. But not for long.”

Donovan's driver pulled up in front of them. “Can I offer you a ride downtown?”

“Thanks, but no.” Forrestal slipped his hands into the pockets of his crisply pressed, handsomely tailored suit. “I'm going to stop at my gym.”

Donovan guessed Forrestal had the suit made by a Savile Row tailor. Like most on Wall Street who weren't born to the upper class, Forrestal was careful to always dress as if he were.

“You're not going to believe this,” Forrestal said, apparently aware Donovan was admiring his suit, “but a few weeks ago, some louse stole one of my suits while I was working out at the gym. He left my wallet and keys but took everything else, including shirt, tie, and shoes. Maybe I should hire that private eye friend of yours to look into it.”

“Dunne? I'm afraid he's got bigger things on his mind. But you're lucky, because it could have been worse.”

“How?”

“If the thief was a New Dealer, he'd have taken the wallet, too.”

Forrestal wasn't amused. “Whoever he was, if I ever get my hands on him, I'll break his neck.”

 

 

Delayed by the downtown traffic, Donovan hurried into his office, giving his secretary a quick, perfunctory hello. She followed behind and placed a file on his desk. She held several phone messages in her hand.

“Damn traffic,” Donovan said. “Pretty soon it's going to bring the entire city to a standstill.” He took his jacket and tossed it over the arm of a chair.

She picked it up, smoothed it with her hand, and draped it carefully over her arm. “Which would you like first, the good news or the bad?”

He sat behind the desk. “Good.”

“There's no need to rush. Your ten o'clock appointment is canceled. Mr. Pennoyer from Morgan's is indisposed. He'll have to reschedule.”

“And the bad?”

She laid five phone messages on his blotter as though they were a poker hand. “Take your pick. They're all from the same person.”

He picked one out and read the name aloud, “Ian Anderson.”

“He called twice after you left last evening and three times this morning. The last was about twenty minutes ago.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“Only that it was urgent.”

“Next time insist that you need more information.”

She shifted his jacket to her other arm. “I'm afraid the bad news gets worse. He's nearby and intends to stop here in hopes of catching a few spare minutes with you. I told him you have none to spare, but I don't think I dissuaded him.”

Donovan looked at his watch. “Well, I suppose now that the ten o'clock appointment is canceled, I can give him a few minutes. But don't close the door.” By the time he returned from a trip to the bathroom, Anderson had arrived. His visit turned out to be mercifully brief. He explained that he'd read in last night's paper about the sudden re-opening of the Grillo case and wondered if Donovan might not use his connections with the prosecutor's office to put him in touch with the chief investigator.

Pleased at such an easy request to fulfill, Donovan didn't pry. He told Anderson he could do even better than put him in touch, since he was a personal acquaintance of the private detective being celebrated in the papers. They'd served together in the war, and though Donovan kept mum about his role in getting Dunne out of jail, he promised Anderson that Dunne would gladly provide whatever help he could. He dialed Dunne's number several times but only got a busy signal. He summoned his secretary and asked her to keep trying.