William F. Buckley Jr. (26 page)

This was a letter addressed to the Hyde Park Fund by a lawyer in Poughkeepsie, New York. The lawyer wrote to say that he had a client who wished to establish a fund that would concern itself with the environment in the area around the Hudson River, in the general vicinity of Hyde Park. The thinking was to give the charitable enterprise the name “Hyde Park Nature Fund,” and the lawyer wished to inquire whether the trustees of the Hyde Park Fund would raise any objections to the similarity between the two names.

In handwriting, Dr. Callard had written, “Tell them why nix.”

Lila knew Lawry’s mode of thinking. She had reached the point of understanding fully even instructions given thus laconically, instructions others might have found inscrutable. Her assignment was to write a tactful letter to the lawyer explaining why the confusion of a “Hyde Park Nature Fund” was not something the Hyde Park Fund would put up with. “Tell them why nix” was a way of saying, Forbid them to do it but be diplomatic about it.

So, later in the day—Lila would not rearrange the order of things she had set out to do, unless it was an emergency—she went over to the huge current reference section of the library and searched out the New York State Corporation Index. She went down the list—

Hyde Park Auto Service

Hyde Park Capital Fund, Inc.

Hyde Park Fund, Inc.

Hyde Park Funeral Home, Inc.

Hyde Park Pharmacy, Inc.

She paused. Hyde Park Capital Fund?

What was that? If it was okay to set up something called the Hyde Park Capital Fund, why was it not okay to set up something called the Hyde Park Nature Fund?

Maybe the Hyde Park Capital Fund was so unrelated to FDR and the Hyde Park with which she was associated that confusions weren’t possible. She needed to find out exactly what the Hyde Park Capital Fund
was.
She went to the Register of Corporations and looked under “Hyde Park Capital Fund.” The reference book in hand was for the year 1963. She read, “Incorporated June 1959. Address, P.O. Box 1776, Grand Central Station, New York 10017. Incorporator, C. Malone. Capital, $1,000. Shares, par value 10 cents.”

Cutter
Malone? She had met him, a great friend of Danny’s; an officer in Martino Enterprises.

She looked in the library to inspect the volume for 1962, but it wasn’t there. She spoke to the librarian and learned that superannuated corporation registers were thrown out at the end of the year. Lila went back to her office, looked through the Poughkeepsie telephone directory and dialed the number for the public library.

“This is Dr. O’Hara at FDR Library, Hyde Park. I wish to know if you have back copies of the Register of Corporations, New York State.”

She was put through to a librarian.

No, they didn’t keep the old Registers. A lot of lawyers kept them, but probably the best thing would be to go to Albany, to the Secretary of State’s office. “They would have everything you’d want.”

The following morning, Lila drove the sixty miles to Albany. The uniformed officer at the entrance to the capitol told her where to go. She knew the city well. She had explored the governor’s mansion where her grandfather had held court, dauphin to the whole English-speaking world. Lila felt the pulsations of the modest city that had sent the governor on to the White House to save the day for democracy.

She entered the reference library and quickly confronted a file
on a dusty shelf of Registers of Corporations going back through the years.

For 1962, the entry for the Hyde Park Capital Fund was indistinguishable from the entry for 1963. The same was so of the registers for 1961, 1960 and 1959, the year in which the Capital Fund was established.

She went now to the librarian. Her heart was beginning to pound. Where could she find a record of substantial transactions in New York corporations? She was directed to the Corporate Reference Service for the current year. “That service picks up transactions, filings, references, that kind of thing, to a corporation. For instance, transfers of shares usually require a stamp tax, and the Reference Service records stamp taxes paid, and the sums of money represented.”

She was handed the reference manual and took it to a work desk. Her eyes scanned down the first-quarter report. There was no change. She turned to the second quarter.

“Hyde Park Capital Fund. Address, P.O. Box 1776, Grand Central Station, New York 10017. New York State Stamp Transfer Tax paid on 2,875,000 shares of Martino Enterprises, Inc.”

She stared at the entry. She removed her glasses. She heard the librarian giving out instructions to someone, answering questions. She did not make out the words being spoken. She got up, finally.

“Is there a way to make a copy of a page in the Corporate Reference book?”

She was told to take the volume to the basement floor. “The fee is twenty-five cents per page.”

Lila nodded, opening her purse.

“No. Downstairs. You pay downstairs.”

She nodded, and walked off toward the staircase.

P
ESQUITO has got to be the most optimistic human being in the western hemisphere.”

“Umm.”

“You know, I don’t think you particularly care. You’ve got that thesis on your mind. What century was it written in?”

“Seventeenth. Cervantes died the same year as Shakespeare.”

“And the way you tackle it, it might as well be this week’s issue of—
Life
magazine. What were they doing in the seventeenth century that’s so engrossing.”

“Fucking.”

Danny smiled, and leaned down and touched a kiss on her head. Then, his beer bottle in his left hand, he turned to Pesquito for the fourth time. “Damnit, Pesquito, you said you were
certain
we’d run into some good fish—you said sailfish, in fact—today. It’s almost twelve o’clock. How far out are we?”

“Mabee ten, twelf kilometers.”

“Is this the best spot? I can’t imagine why else you’d choose it. It has got to be what, 110 degrees?” He tilted back the beer bottle. Maybe he’d look in on Augustino on the top deck. Why not?

He climbed the companionway of the 54-foot fishing launch. The trolling speed was a leisurely eight knots, 9.2 miles per hour, 14 kmh—approximately. He felt the wind in his face and the hot sun overhead. “Hey, Augustino, feesh? Soon? Beeg feesh?”

He got the
Sí, señor
, but Augustino did not smile, perhaps because he had no teeth. What he did was smoke. An old aluminum ashtray did heavy duty at the bottom of the control panel. The gauges had long since lost out to the weather, and Pesquito did not trouble to polish them, or the wood in which they were emplaced.

Danny thought to make conversation. “What is the range of this boat?”

Augustino looked up. “Raich?”

“Range. How many mi—how many kilometers can it go before we stop to take more … 
gasolina?
”

Augustino nodded his head. He understood. He left the wheel and his cigarette, raised his two hands, all the fingers outstretched in his left hand, two in his right. “Seffen hours.”

Danny acknowledged the information, decided it was too arduous, too hot, to pursue the conversation. At that point Pesquito’s voice cried out from below, “
Strike! Strike!
Come, Mr. O’Hara, come!”

He turned and made his way down the companionway steps two at a time and saw the rod bent over, Pesquito’s right foot on the transom, straining. “
Sit! sit!
”

Danny sat in the fighting chair and buckled himself in. Pesquito, though pitched forward by the diving fish, edged over and thrust the base of the rod into the receptacle rising from under Danny’s crotch. Danny grabbed the rod with his left hand, and with his right made contact with the reel. “I got it, I got it!”

Florry had put down her book. She brought out a camera from her purse.

“Good, Danny, good!”

She looked up again when his rod line went slack and she saw the great swordfish thrash, all silver and blue, soar up toward the sky and then plunge down. “I got him too,” she said, “got him, terrific!”

When they got back to the succulently air-conditioned suite they were wet with the heat but exhilarated. “You go ahead,” Danny said to her, pointing to the shower. In a few minutes she came out, dressed in a light terry-cloth dressing robe, her hair tucked up into a white-towel bandana. She left the shower running. Danny, in undershorts, moved into the bathroom and stayed under the cool water a full two minutes. He came out, a towel wrapped around his loins. He was very pleased. “That was pretty out there, no? That was a lot of fun. Did you time how long it took?”

“At least twenty-five minutes,” Florry said, stretched out on the bed, the top part of the bathrobe separated, her eyes half closed. “You got the hang of it in a hurry, Danny.”

“Well,” he lay down beside her, letting the towel fall to the side, “it isn’t all that hard. Takes a little coordination. A certain amount of strength. Hell, I’m what, thirty-nine years old?” He looked down at his right arm, flexed it, and tweaked his protruding muscle with the fingers of his left hand. “Want to feel, Florry?”

“Not
that
muscle,” she replied, her voice gone husky.

Good old Florry, Danny said to himself, easing his pelvis up toward her and, with his right hand, edging her head toward it.
She never waits for me, she’s always there, willing, anxious, loving, soft, luscious.
… He was moaning now, his eyes closed. What a perfect day, and the whole evening stretched before them.

The Hotel Mirador was where the divers performed. The restaurant’s thirty tables sat on a terrace one hundred feet above the
waves that tore snarlingly into the base of the cliff at irregular but frequent intervals, momentarily raising the water level from inches above the coral ocean floor, when the wave ebbed, to eight or ten swollen feet. It was during those few precious seconds of elevation that the diver, plunging down off the edge of the cliff, could safely penetrate the water without hitting the jagged rock inches under its low-ebb surface.

It was cool now, and Danny wore a white linen coat and tie without complaint. They had wanted a Mexican meal, but the maître d’ had looked blank when they started by ordering tamales and enchiladas and frijoles refritos, as though Mexican food were something people outgrew in their teens, certainly before they began patronizing the restaurant at the Hotel Mirador.

“Okay, okay. No tamales today.” They ordered fish. Danny was talking about the growth of Acapulco. “I was here once before, yeah, I told you; I was fifteen, and there were only three hotels. We stayed at the Papagayo, three bucks per day including breakfast. I’m thinking of putting in a Trafalgar Hotel here. Either buy one and transform it or build one new. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

Florry sipped on her wine and said she thought it would be a very good idea, why not?

“I had a nifty idea. What would you think of making Acapulco your home and taking a job in the hotel? Pretty much anything you liked in the hotel business.”

Florida Carmela Huerta put down her fork. “Danny. You do know, because we have discussed it maybe one hundred times, that I am studying Spanish? That I am working on advanced work that will roll into graduate work and a dissertation not far down the line? That they might want me someday at Salamanca on the faculty, at some point, after I get my Ph.D.?

“Now I have a suggestion for you. Why don’t you give up the hotel business and come and keep house for me while I study and teach?… Okay, I agree, that’s not very funny. But you know that I love you very much. But you should know that I am not going to live the rest of my life as your Acapulco concubine.”

She looked down at the table for a minute, and he could see the moisture in her eyes.

“We’ve edged up on the subject before.” Florry did not look at Danny as she spoke. “If you want me to become Mrs. Daniel O’Hara, I will say yes, I will do that, I will put away my books—though I’ll do my dissertation—and live with you. But not in Acapulco. In Greenwich. Or wherever your main residence is, if Caroline gets to keep Greenwich.”

Danny didn’t reply. He was grateful that, suddenly, all the floodlights on the cliffside had dimmed, arresting everyone’s attention. A slim young olive-skinned man was poised on top of the cliff ledge, a spotlight on him. A second light trained on the roiling water twelve story-lengths below. The diver was waiting for just the moment when the water would be rising but had not yet quite reached maximum height. The diners held their breath. One wave, apparently all-enveloping, roared in. Danny tensed his muscles—but the diver let it pass. Seconds later he dove—and a half second before he made contact, a huge wave, bigger than its predecessor, roared in. The diners exploded in applause.

There was a pause at the table. Danny spoke. “I understand, Florry. I do. And you know how much I love you. But you know I have five children. And there’s something else—”

“You’re
his
grandson. And you might want to run for senator in 1968.”

Danny did not reply.

“All right, Danny. I get your signal. Only just remember:
You’re
not committed,
I’m
not committed.”

“But I’m committed to taking care of your school bills. You know I wouldn’t welsh on that—”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. And—shall we be grownups about it?—you get something in return. But you have a, what, transcendent commitment? Well, I don’t. I don’t need to make that any plainer, do I, Danny boy? Danny badboy?”

He smiled, taking her hand under the table.

“No. And, you know, me and Caroline—that may change. Who knows? Getting married more than once was certainly okay
by my mother. And she’s closer to ‘him’—FDR—after all, than I am. So, who knows?”

He motioned to the waiter. And beckoned to Florry, “Dessert?”

“Liqueur,” she said. “Crème de menthe, green, and coffee.”

“You ask for it, Florry. I like to hear you speak Spanish.”

H
ARRIET CARBERRY, age thirty-five, had got married. Her husband—Giacomo Orsini—was not exactly what Harriet’s friends would have guessed Harriet would choose as a husband. For one thing, he was a pianist, and Harriet had never, while at Smith, shown any particular interest in music, though she kept a photograph of Frank Sinatra on her wall right under the photo of Ronald Colman. And then Giacomo Orsini had no right arm. Harriet had sent a letter to her numerous friends, a letter she hoped would arrive before any newspaper notice of the betrothal.