Armageddon (71 page)

Hanna Kirchner summoned Adolph Schatz into her office in the Magistrat.

In the presence of the department heads of the Magistrat and the leaders of the Assembly she addressed the tormentor of Berlin.

“I accuse you of collaboration with the Soviet Union against the people of Berlin by police brutality, by the hiring of ex-Nazis, by the use of political terror through your so-called SND and for participation in the ‘workers’ Putsch.’

“Yesterday, you attempted to fire five hundred policemen because they are members of free parties. You will either answer these charges here and now satisfactorily or you are discharged as president of police.”

Adolph Schatz, a bully all of his life, blinked with disbelief at the little woman behind the big desk. He growled that all of them would regret it and stormed from the place beelining for Soviet Headquarters.

Trepovitch naturally denounced the Magistrat action as “illegal.”

At the same time People’s Radio ridiculed the move, Hans Kronbach entered RIAS. Adolph Schatz’s forte was political terror. He was neither a good organizer nor an efficient administrator. While his strong-armed squads ran rampant for three years, Hans Kronbach had constructed an excellent police force predominantly loyal to the Magistrat.

Hans Kronbach as the new police president issued an order for all police to report to the Western Sector. The next morning 90 per cent of the Berlin force crossed over to where Hans Kronbach established a new office.

Adolph Schatz had outlived his usefulness, but for the sake of saving Russian face he continued to run a police force in the Russian Sector. Berlin now had two police forces.

This was the first break within the city government but there were more to come as department after department underwent merciless harassment. The Germans, now finding safe haven, fled to the West.

The British returned to the people of Berlin their Victory Column commemorating the Bismarck Wars.

The United States redesigned the eagle at Tempelhof as an American eagle and set it atop the building.

Trepovitch said that this was all a return to militarism and in the same breath announced there would be no more midday meals for workers from the West in the Russian Sector.

At the Tempelhof elevated station, throngs gathered each day to watch the Gooney Birds take off and land.

Dozens of men were gathering in Wiesbaden from all over the world wearing the China/ Burma/ India Theater of War arm patches and waiting for the arrival of the boss, Major General Hiram Stonebraker.

Although the first load of coal had been dramatically flown into Berlin, the situation was desperate. The Gooney Birds were weary beyond weariness and so were the crews. Rain leaked into their cabins and there wasn’t so much as a spare windshield wiper left in Europe.

Chapter Nine

C
LINT LAY ON THE BED
with his back propped up sipping a martini and watching Judy dress. It was a repeat performance of a ten-year ritual that neither of them seemed to tire of. Judy had a rounded voluptuous body, soft without being fat. She always sat before the mirror putting on her face without a bra because she knew Clint liked to look at her. When she finally did slip into the bra, it was the signal for him to begin shaving and showering as the timing would work out for both of them to be dressed at the same time.

Clint reached to the nightstand, grasped the martini pitcher, swirled it, drained out another half glass.

“Who are we?” he intoned abstractedly.

“Sweet people on the high road to becoming sweet rich people.”

“We are perverters of the American dream. We prostitute for the worthless products of a flabby society.”

“That nasty old man must have upset you, lover. You haven’t been yourself all week.”

“That nasty old man is Hiram Stonebraker, humanitarian. He handed me a mirror and said, look at you, Clinton Loveless. Will the American people pull through with white toilet paper? Will womanhood survive with the old, gray telltale boxes?”

Judy slipped into her bra delicately and glanced into the mirror. Clint wasn’t even looking.

“It’s that thing in Germany with all the airplanes.”

“Yes ... that ... thing.”

“I don’t know that I’m in favor of spending tens of millions feeding Nazis. What for? Another war?” She opened her closet. “Clint, start shaving. We’ll be late for dinner.”

“Who are we?”

Judy went to him, rumpled his hair, lifted his legs, and put them on the floor. “We’ll ditch Milt and Laura early and get back and make love like animals.”

Clint stretched and walked into the bathroom.

“I’ll put the children down,” she said putting on a robe.

Clinton and Judy Loveless met Laura and Milton Schuster in the lobby of the restaurant. Clint and Milt shook hands; Judy and Laura bussed cheeks and each said, “Darling how lovely you look,” or words to that effect and Milt said, “Let’s have a drink.” He had come straight from the office and was in need.

The restaurant was noisy. The meal was smothered in sauce. The four of them sat side by side along the wall with other fashionable New Yorkers ... like sides of beef in a butcher shop window.

Milt Schuster was a pale, articulate lawyer in one of the big ad agencies and as a matter of company and personal policy gave his dissertation on “that idiot in the White House.”

Clint didn’t know about that. He thought Harry Truman was doing a hell of a job both feeding the world and keeping it from moral collapse. American prestige had never been so high. However, he did not wish to intrude on Milt Schuster’s soliloquy because it wouldn’t change Milt’s mind anyhow.

Laura began chattering about an Italian film by a newly acclaimed genius, Dino Massavelli. “The picture has such honesty, such realism ... so earthy. Why can’t Hollywood make such films?”

“Because it would bore the crap out of people,” Clint said. “Laura, you liked that picture because it showed a couple of Dagos pissing in an alley and the leading lady refused to shave her armpits. Otherwise no one, including Dino Massavelli, had the slightest idea what the picture was about.”

Milt Schuster said that business was on the skids because of the bureaucracy in Washington. Laura said they simply must see the Cuban-African Dance Group at Town Hall. Clint knew she got kicks from it because of a half-dozen six-foot Negroes built like there was no tomorrow, muscles glistening in their own sweat. Looking at Milt, who could blame her? They had to gobble down the last course because it was getting close to curtain time.

The check came to $61.00, which never failed to hit Clint like a kidney punch. He greased his way out of the place passing the bulwark of captain, maitre d’, check-room attendant, wash-room attendant, and a frantic doorman who blew his whistle desperately for a taxi that never came.

It was only six blocks to the theater ... let’s walk it. They galloped off at a half trot. Fortunately the curtain was fashionably late. They were forced to split up because seats were hard to get, even at fifteen bucks apiece. As was the custom, Clint drew Laura Schuster.

The theater was another of those New York atrocities, an ancient firetrap that seemed to have been constructed for the discomfort of the audience.

The play was a ridiculous bore from six minutes after the first curtain. A grand old team, who were once fine performers, went through the motions and would continue to do so as long as smart New Yorkers plunked down fifteen bucks a ticket.

By the second act Clint had hypnotized himself into complete detachment. His mind was on airplanes flying and landing in rhythm, unloading, pouring life blood into a city of two million human beings. Clint had thought of little else since General Stonebraker had come and gone.

He thought of writing to the general to give him some ideas on the removal of long-range navigation equipment which wouldn’t be needed on the short hauls and the removal of other compartments which, with proper loading, could increase each pay load by a ton in a Skymaster.

What the hell, Clint thought, Stonebraker’s staff will think of these things. Goddam, they’d all be there ... Perry Sindlinger, Matt Beck, Sid Swing, Pancho, Lou Edmonds ... what a wild-assed bunch of reprobates.... The bubble burst with a merciful final curtain.

The narrow, dirty street was swarmed with a sudden outpour of humanity from other drafty, uncomfortable theaters. They wrestled with the usual indecision of how to round out the evening. Judy suggested a chanteuse and combo at one of those East Side cabarets, also constructed for human torture with postage-stamp-sized tables.

Laura Schuster thought maybe that clever, clever little review at the Side Alley. She knew Milt would like it because it ripped the hell out of the Truman family. Laura also suggested a screamingly funny singer down in the village who was on the brink of being closed because of obscene lyrics. “He’s so witty,” Laura explained.

Milt Schuster suggested they go to Sardi’s because Milt didn’t have much imagination and Sardi’s was the traditional place to go.

Clint envisioned further discomfort and mob scenes and preposterous tabs.

They joined the new flock of sheep converging on Sardi’s, waited for forty minutes, and after proper apologies from a profusely perspiring headwaiter they were seated against the wall.

“The play was utterly divine,” Laura Schuster said.

Milt thought it had its moments.

Judy said there was still a lot of magic in the team of Hunt and Martin.

“The play was unadultered crap,” Clint said. They tittered because Clint was in one of his cleverly candid moods. “This evening cost us a bill ... one hundred dollars to eat garbage and sit on planks to hear a crusty old fart mumble lines completely without conviction. Clara Martin has a grandson in Princeton. I resent a talentless playwright telling me she is a desirable mistress. And I am about ready to throw up listening to you three literate people justifying this crap.”

They grinned at him sickly.

“Tomorrow night we may debase ourselves by going to a comfortable neighborhood theater and for two bucks watch a great movie, but God almighty, we have to rip it apart because it was made in Hollywood. You know what we are. We’re not only phonies ... we’re suckers.”

Judy quickly patted Laura Schuster’s hand. “Clint will call you sweet people tomorrow and tell you how sorry he is. Good night, darlings.”

On the way home the cab driver said, “Why in hell should I be loyal to the goddam Dodgers, I ask you? In 1928 I had a good business, I had a house paid for, I had dough in the bank. Comes the crash, I’m wiped out. Lemme ask you somethin’ pal, did the Dodgers care about me? Hell no. So, why should I care about the Dodgers?”

Clint gave an exorbitant tip for his friendly philosophy; then resented the doorman because he always felt capable of opening his own door.

Judy knew there was a choice of two ways to handle him, either have a counterexplosion of her own, or give him overwhelming sex for a week to smother his discontent.

He loaded a glass with scotch and stared morosely out at the perpendicular cement prisons of Manhattan, again not watching Judy undress and this worried her. She scented herself, slipped beside him.

“Lover ... momma wants.”

“Who are we? My kids don’t even know what sunshine looks like. It’s rationed out here in cheap, grotesque snatches when their Nana parades them over to that hood-filled excuse for a park.”

“Clint, honey, I told you Pudge Whitcomb talked vice presidency at the last cocktail party. He means it, and when it comes through we can move to a wonderful penthouse with our own roof garden ...”

“Filled with false hedges because no self-respecting plant would grow here. Do you suppose we’ll ever see the moonlight again? Does it ever shine over this place or are we too damned busy elbowing our way into Sutton Place to look for it.”

She pressed her bosom close to him. Clint got up and left the chair. “We’re antiseptic. We don’t even get dirty on vacations any more. The white linens of Nassau for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Germless. We don’t even draw ants on a picnic!”

“Clint, that’s enough.”

“You know what I once did, Judy? I helped that nasty old man lift a half-million tons of oil and rice and fly it over the highest mountains in the world. We did it through monsoons and low freezing levels and on muddy airstrips. We put more material into China by airplane than trucks did on the Burma Road ... more than the ships brought into their ports. We did it with airplanes. By God, I was somebody in those days.”

“You can’t live that for the rest of your life. You’re a big boy now. We’ve worked too damned hard to get what we have.”

“Have? We deserve this. This is why Judy Loveless was a hashslinger to put her husband through college. All for this ... phony, overpriced suckersville down there.” He belted the drink down and refilled his glass. “You’re right, Judy, that nasty old man shouldn’t have come. He shouldn’t have said ... Clint ... we need you ... he shouldn’t have said that.”

Chapter Ten

T
HE NEXT DAY
C
LINTON
Loveless sported a fearsome purple hangover. His swivel-hipped secretary patched him up as best she could with a limited supply of drugs and coffee and followed him, pad in hand, to the sacred inner sanctum where J. Kenneth Whitcomb III was about to conduct a top-level think session.

As the brain trust gathered, the level of tension mounted. Pudge’s father inherited railroads, lumber acreage, and oil holdings from his own tycoon father, a robber baron at the end of the last century.

During the 1920s Pudge’s father was dissatisfied with the way many of his products were being sold and so created Whitcomb Associates as his own ad agency to sell a better corporate image. The advertising agency was never designed to be other than a minor holding. Pudge was the family black sheep; at will-reading time it was the perfect inheritance for a son held in low esteem.

Pudge proceeded to fool all of his contemptuous brothers and sisters by becoming a business phenomenon and the first of the clan to make the covers of both
Time
and
Fortune.
Whitcomb Associates took on the new accounts that made his father scream from the grave and turned losers into winners. He was an American success story.