Read The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) Online

Authors: Douglas Kennedy

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The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (58 page)

‘There are a couple of things we need to discuss. The first is - the matter of his insurance policy.’

‘His
what?’

‘Eric, as it turns out, had his life insured by NBC. It was part of the medical cover which paid for his bills after his hospitalization last month. As we know, the network hadn’t canceled his medical policy after sacking him. What I’ve since discovered is that the bastards also never canceled his life cover. What’s more, last year, when everyone at NBC thought he was the best thing since sliced bread - and, more to the point, commercially valuable - they upped his life insurance to seventy-five thousand dollars.’

‘Good God.’

‘Yeah - it’s a hell of a chunk of change. And it all goes to you.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Well, let’s say around half of it will end up in your bank. The other half, I’m afraid, will fall into the hands of the IRS. I know their actual demand is around forty-three thousand … but I’ve got a good tax guy I use - a tough s.o.b. I’ve talked through this case with him, and he’s pretty sure he can get their demand shaved down by around seven to ten grand. Still, that’s around thirty-five thousand to you … which ain’t bad.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Eric would’ve been pleased, knowing it was going to you.’

‘But without a will, who’s to say it will go to me?’

‘You’re his only extant family member. There are no other siblings, right? We’ll have to jump a few standard legal hurdles. But, trust me, it’ll be a cinch. The money is yours.’

I sat there, saying nothing. Because I didn’t know what to say. Joel Eberts sat opposite me, studying me with care.

‘So that’s the good news,’ he said.

‘By which you mean …’

He hesitated, then said, ‘There is something else I want to talk with you about.’

I was worried by his tone. ‘Something serious?’ I asked.

‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

Another apprehensive pause. Joel Eberts was never apprehensive.

‘Sara,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I need to ask you a question.’

‘All right,’ I said, my anxiety rising. ‘Ask.’

‘Say I told you …’

He broke off. He looked supremely uncomfortable.

‘What’s wrong, Joel?’

‘Part of me doesn’t really want to go into this.’

‘Go into
what!’

‘The question I have to ask you.’

‘Ask it.’

He paused.

‘All right. Here it is. Say I told you that I knew the name of the individual who named your brother to the FBI …’

‘You
do?’
I said loudly.

He held his hand up.

‘One thing at a time. Say I did know. The question is … and I really think you should consider this carefully: would you want to know that individual’s name?’

‘Are you kidding me?
Absolutely.
So tell me. Who was the shit … ?’

‘Sara … are you sure? Really sure?’

I suddenly felt very cold. But I still nodded. And said, ‘I want to know.’

He stared directly at me, fixing me in his gaze.

‘It was Jack Malone.’

Ten

I
COULDN’T MOVE.
I sat rigid in the chair, staring down at my hands. I felt as if I had just been kicked in the face.

Though I wasn’t looking at him directly, I could feel Joel Eberts’ gaze on me.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘I’m so damn sorry,’ he said.

‘You’ve known about this since … ?’

‘The day after the funeral.’

‘You waited this long to tell me?’

‘I needed to check a lot of things out first. I really didn’t want to hit you with this, until I was absolutely certain that it was true. Even then, I debated for days about whether to tell you …’

‘You were right to tell me. I had to know this.’

He sighed a tired sigh.

‘Yeah - I guess you did,’ he said.

‘How did you find out?’

‘Lawyers talk to other lawyers who talk to other lawyers who talk to …’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Ever heard of Marty Morrison?’

I shook my head.

‘One of the biggest corporate lawyers in the city. Ever since this blacklist crap started, Marty’s firm has handled a lot of people who’ve been called to testify by HUAC. ‘Cause it’s not just the entertainment business that’s been investigated. The Feds have also been poking their noses into schools, colleges, even some of the biggest companies in America. As far as they’re concerned, there’s a Red under every bed.

‘Anyway, Marty and I have known each other since Adam. He grew up two blocks from me in Flatbush. We were at Brooklyn Law together. Though he went the Wall Street way, we’ve always maintained the friendship. Of course, we’re constantly giving each other crap about our political differences. I always say he’s the only Republican I will ever break bread with. He still calls me Eugene Debs. But he’s a straight shooter. Very well connected. Someone who knows where all the bodies are buried.

‘He also happens to be a big Marty Manning fan. Around a year ago, we’re having lunch one day, he gets talking about some sketch he saw the previous night on Manning’s show. That’s when I do a little bragging and tell him that Manning’s head writer - Eric Smythe - happens to be my client. Marty was actually impressed … though, of course, he had to make a joke about it: “Since when the hell has a stevedore lawyer like you been representing writers?”

‘That was the only mention of your brother. A year goes by. The stuff hits the fan with NBC. Eric refuses to do the dirty on his friends. He ends getting slimed in Winchell’s column. The next day, Marty rings me here. “Saw the item about your client in Winchell,” he tells me. “Tough call.” Then he asks if there’s anything he can do to help, because he knows all those assholes on the HUAC committee. He also thinks they’re opportunistic trash - not that he’d ever admit that publicly.

‘Anyway, I thanked Marty for the offer of help - but told him that your brother wasn’t looking for a deal … and certainly wouldn’t suddenly become a stoolie after all the damage that the Winchell piece had done. So, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.

‘Then, of course, four weeks later, Eric was dead. And …’

He stopped. He twitched his lips. He avoided my stare. ‘What I’m about to say to you might really anger you. Because it was none of my business. But …’

He stopped again.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘I was so goddamn upset …
enraged
… after Eric died that I made a call to Marty. “You can do me a favor,” I said. “Get me the name of the bastard who shopped my client.” And he did.’

‘Jack Malone?’

‘Yeah: Jack Malone.’

‘How did your friend find out?’

‘It wasn’t hard. According to Federal law, anything revealed under testimony at a HUAC hearing - or during an interview with an agent of the FBI - cannot be printed or publicly disseminated. But there are three former G-men - backed by this right-wing supermarket magnate named Alfred Kohlberg and some super-patriotic priest called Father John F. Cronin - who have set up a company called American Business Consultants. Their principal job - if you can believe this - is to scrutinize employees in major corporations, making sure they’re not Reds. But they also publish two newsletters -
Counterattack
and
Red Channels.
These rags exist for one purpose only - to list the names of everyone who’s been accused of being a Communist in a closed executive session of HUAC. Those two newsletters are the Blacklister’s Bible: they’re the place corporate America and the entertainment industry look to see who’s been named. Naturally enough, Marty Morrison has a subscription to both of these shit sheets. He discovered that your brother had been listed in
Red Channels
- which is also how Eric’s employers at NBC learned that he’d been named during testimony in front of HUAC.

‘From there it was easy for Marty to call a couple of lawyers he knows around town - guys who’ve cornered the blacklisting market, making very big bucks representing people who’ve been dragged in front of HUAC. Of course, lawyers being lawyers, they’re always exchanging notes with each other. Marty hit pay dirt on the third call. A big white-shoe attorney named Bradford Ames - who, among other things, looks after the legal side of Steele and Sherwood. Ames owed Marty a favor. Marty cashed it in now.

‘“Between ourselves, do you have any idea who might have named Eric Smythe?” Marty asked him. Of course, Ames had heard of your brother - because his blacklisting and his death had been all over the papers. “Between ourselves,” he told Marty, “I know exactly the guy who shopped Smythe. Because I represented him when he testified in executive session at HUAC. The funny thing about this guy was that he wasn’t in showbiz. He was a public relations guy with Steele and Sherwood. Jack Malone.”’

My mind was reeling. ‘Jack testified in front of HUAC?’ I asked Joel.

‘That’s what appears to have happened.’

‘I don’t believe it, Jack’s about the most loyal American imaginable.’

‘According to Marty, he had a skeleton in his closet. A really small one - but even tiny skeletons get used against you nowadays. It turns out that, right before the war, Mr Malone put his name down for some Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee … which was one of those organizations that was helping people fleeing from Nazi Germany and Italy and the Balkans. Anyway, as it turns out, the committee that Malone was associated with had direct links with the American Communist Party. Brad Ames said that Malone swore up on a stack of Bibles that he was never a member of the Party … that a couple of Brooklyn friends of his had finagled him on to the committee … that he’d only gone to a couple of meetings, nothing more. The problem was - one of the guys who allegedly finagled him on to the committee had been subpoenaed by HUAC. And he’d named Malone during his testimony. Which is how Jack Malone also ended up in the pages of
Red Channels
- and how his bosses at Steele and Sherwood found out about his accidental flirtation with subversion.

‘Naturally enough, Malone sang “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in front of his employers - and said he’d do anything required to clear his name. They called their corporate attorney, Bradford Ames. He met Malone - and they talked things through. Ames then went to some guy on the committee - and did a bit of bartering. Which is how things work at HUAC. If the witness isn’t hostile, the number of names - and the actual names themselves - are agreed beforehand between the committee and the witness’s attorney. Malone offered to name the same guy who named him. That wasn’t enough for the committee. So he also offered to name three other people he knew on the committee. But the committee said, ‘No sale’ - as the guy who named Malone had also named those names as well.

“You’ve got to give them one new name,’ Ames told him. ‘Just one. Afterwards you tell them it was all a youthful mistake, and how you love America more than Kate Smith, blah, blah, blah. Then they’ll exonerate you.’

‘So that’s when Malone said, “Eric Smythe.” Naturally, Ames knew the name immediately - ‘cause he too watched
Marty Manning.
He told Malone that he thought the committee would be satisfied with that name. Because Eric Smythe was a relatively big fish.

‘A week later, Malone went down to Washington and testified in front of HUAC. It was an executive session - which meant that it was all behind closed doors, and not for the public record. So I suppose Malone thought that no one would ever know.

‘But lawyers always talk.’

‘I’m sorry,’
Jack said when I first told him about Eric being named.
‘I am so goddamn sorry … Tell him if there’s anything … anything … I can do
…’

I remember leaning over to kiss him, and saying:
‘You’re a good man.’

I saw him after Eric’s death standing in that godawful room at the Ansonia, looking down at the bloodstain, then sobbing into my shoulder. Once again, he said,
‘I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry
…’ Once again, I was so touched by his sense of emotional solidarity, of shared grief.
He was crying for Eric, for me - for the tragedy of it all,
I remember thinking later.

But now, it turns out it was guilt that was making him cry. Guilt and shame and remorse and …

I swallowed hard. My hands tightened into fists. Not only did he betray us … he cried about it.

‘Did the committee exonerate Malone?’ I asked.

Malone.
Not Jack. He would never be Jack again. He’d now be
Malone.
The man who destroyed my brother.

‘Of course,’ Joel Eberts said. ‘He was cleared completely. According to Marty, Steele and Sherwood was so pleased with the way he handled everything with HUAC, they slipped him a bonus.’

‘You know, you really don’t have to be doing this,’
I’d said after he’d insisted on paying to have Eric’s belongings moved, and for the paint job at the Ansonia.

‘Hiring a couple of painters for two days isn’t exactly going to break the bank,’
he’d said.
‘Anyway, I had a bit of a bonus windfall. Out of nowhere I was handed a commission check for over eight hundred dollars. It’s Steele and Sherwood’s way of saying thank you

For naming names. For saving your own skin. For decimating Eric’s life. For killing any love or trust between us. For ruining everything. All that for eight hundred dollars. At today’s exchange rates, would that be the equivalent of thirty pieces of silver?

‘So Malone doesn’t have a clue that anyone knows he fingered Eric?’ I asked.

‘I doubt it. Sara, I said it once, I’ll say it again: you don’t know how bad I feel about this …’

‘Why should you feel guilty?’ I said, standing up. ‘I thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For telling me the truth. It couldn’t have been an easy decision. But it was the right one.’

‘What are you going to do about this, Sara?’

‘There is nothing
to do,’
I said. ‘It’s
done.’

I left his office. I stepped out into the street. I took two steps, then reached out for a nearby lamp post and held it tightly. No, I didn’t break down. Or let out a scream of anguish. Instead, a second wave of shock ran through me. I gulped for air. My stomach heaved. I bent over and was sick in the street.

I retched until there was nothing left to retch. My body was drenched in sweat. I managed to right myself up. I found a tissue in my jacket pocket, and used it to dab my mouth. Then I worked up the strength to raise my right hand and hail a cab home.

When I reached my apartment, I walked into the living room, and sat down in an armchair. I stayed seated for what only seemed like minutes. When I glanced at my watch, however, I realized that more than an hour had gone by. The shock was still so penetrating that I wasn’t conscious of time. Instead, I felt glazed, hollow - to the point where standard emotional responses seemed futile. I just sat there, blankly. Not knowing what to do.

Another hour went by. Then I heard a key in the lock. Jack walked in. He was fresh from a road trip, with a suitcase in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other.

‘Hey there!’ he said, putting down his suitcase and approaching me. I stared down at the floor. I suddenly couldn’t stand the idea of looking at him. Instantly, he sensed that something was very wrong.