William F. Buckley Jr. (28 page)

His private line rang. Caroline. Did Danny plan to drive with her to Canterbury on Friday? Danny remembered—Tommy would be interviewed for admission to boarding school. Caroline said she thought his mother and father should be there for appearance’s sake. “Seems to me the right thing to do,” Caroline said, letting just an icicle into her voice. “And Canterbury—Kent, Connecticut—is exactly an hour and a half away.”

“Friday. Friday the …”

“Friday the eleventh.”

“Yes. I think I can change my schedule to make it. Put me down, yes.”

“Thank you, Danny. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yup. Say, Caroline, what’s Lila so anxious to see me about in New York tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, Danny. I suppose one of her projects. She’s a dear. Help her if you can.”

Danny grunted and put down the phone.

Cutter and Danny got out of the limousine together and walked into the ornately decorated club. Danny wasn’t a member—“I belong to too damn many clubs, thanks,” he had said to Henry, who had proffered him an invitation some years back—but he knew his way around and went right to the steward. He nodded his greetings and said, “We’re here to meet with Dr. Lila O’Hara”—Danny liked to throw that around, “Doctor Lila,” sort of a
mélange de genres
, as the French would put it—“Lila O’Hara.” Camelia O’Toole. Sacheverell Jones.… The steward looked down at the day’s schedule. “Yes, that’s third floor, Room E.”

Danny climbed the stairs and opened the door. He stared at the end of the table. At its head sat his godfather.

He had not laid eyes on Francis Biddle since his wedding. How old must he be? Eighty? Francis Biddle, Attorney General of the United States in the third Administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a United States Judge at the Nuremberg trials. One of the four judges who sentenced twelve German generals, admirals,
diplomats to hang, seven others to jail. The aristocratic, French-born, scholarly, rectilinear friend of civil liberties. The conscience of the legal fraternity, one biographer had called him. And who was that, next to Lila? With the stony face, double-breasted gray suit. And Lila, who was not smiling.

Danny knew, knew instantly.

His face broke into a broad smile. “Uncle Francis!” He walked over and shook his hand. “Haven’t seen you since … since Lakeville. This is Cutter Malone, my associate. Cutter, you know Lila.”

Lila shook hands. “This is Ernest Rhodes, my attorney.” They shook hands again, Lila sat down and motioned to Danny and Cutter to take the chairs opposite. She came instantly to the point.

“Danny, we have all the documentation here. Uncle Francis has been over it in great detail as has Mr. Rhodes. If you feel you want to argue about it, we can stick it in front of your eyes. It’s likelier that you’re thinking it’s time to bring in a lawyer, and of course you can do that any time you want. But I think it would make sense for you to listen to me and to Uncle Francis first. Okay?”

Danny kicked Cutter on his shoe, a signal to tell him to keep quiet.

“Dear Lila”—Danny thought he might try his characteristic approach to tough situations, just
try
it, see what happens—but then he saw the look on the face of Francis Biddle. He felt the look on the face of Francis Biddle. Abruptly he changed his tune. “Lila, let’s hear what you have to say.”

“It’s harder for me, Danny, for the obvious reasons. So I’m going to turn the chair over to Uncle Francis.”

Mr. Biddle put on his glasses and moved the yellow pad up closer to him.

“Daniel, if I were the state prosecutor, here is how I would address the court:

“The prosecution, your honor, undertakes to prove that the defendants, Daniel T. O’Hara and Cutter Malone, exploiting a professional and personal relationship with the late Giuseppe
Martino, the founder and chairman of the board of Martino Enterprises, Inc., and the sole stockholder of that corporation, conspired to tamper with Mr. Martino’s will, to defraud the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, and to embezzle sums of money in excess of two million dollars. We will present irrefutable evidence of these felonies, in violation of criminal conspiracy, theft, fraud, and embezzlement statutes and will ask for the maximum penalties on each count, which add up to forty-five years in jail.”

Danny was white. He did not look to one side to Cutter.

Francis Biddle put aside his notes. “Even though I am your godfather, Daniel, I would willingly see you sent to a state prison for the rest of your life. But I am also a trustee of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library. And I consider myself also a trustee of President Roosevelt’s reputation. Of his legacy. I would not relish a public prosecution of the grandson of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, accused of cheating the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library.”

Mr. Biddle waited. Danny made an effort: “It honestly was kind of complicated, Uncle Francis. You see—”

Judge Biddle slammed his open hand on the table. “The last thing we want from you is sniveling lies. We are here to discuss the scope and the mechanics of restitution. After we have made those arrangements, we will fix a date for your resignation as president of Martino Enterprises. You, Mr. Malone, will also resign on the indicated day, after the transactions have been completed. And if you are detected any time in the next ten years working as an accountant, a sealed complaint, with all the particulars, will be mailed to the office of the District Attorney.

“Mr. Rhodes here has worked out a schedule. Some of the figures are missing. Mr. Malone will furnish those figures. Mr. Rhodes will then specify exactly what is expected of you both.

“My presence is no longer needed. Lila,” he turned to Lila, whose expression had not changed during Judge Biddle’s summary, “there is nothing further for you to do, and I would be grateful if you escorted an old man back to his apartment.”

She rose. Everyone rose. Danny wondered whether his sister would address him.

Not today.

Francis Biddle took her by the arm. “Mr. Rhodes, kindly call me later in the day, as convenient.”

“Yes, sir,” Rhodes said, sitting down in his chair. He leaned down and brought his briefcase up on the table. He withdrew a large manila folder.

“Ready, gentlemen?”

D
ANNY DID NOT TROUBLE to advance this trip to Trafalgar-Los Angeles. No anonymous agent had been sent out from New York to test the hotel’s pressure points. What did
he
care—whether, in the days and years ahead, the Trafalgar hotel chain prospered? One week from today he would resign as president. He envisioned the scene at Trafalgar-New York when word got out. It was gratifying that people would be stunned, having for so many years dealt with him as though he were the owner of the chain. And a little frightening, the obvious speculation:
Why? Why was Mr. O’Hara leaving?

He had had of course to be very careful, back at the office, not to arouse suspicion that his mind was elsewhere. Granted, even before that terrible session at the Union Club it had been speculated
that Daniel Tracey O’Hara would probably not spend the rest of his life serving as president of Trafalgar. “Remember,” Jill from the accounting office said, sitting at the table in the Trafalgar-New York cafeteria reserved for employees, “the glint in O’Hara’s eye a couple of years ago when he thought he might be running for the Senate? Those glints don’t go away, not unless just about everybody who votes seizes up one day and mutters, ‘
Anybody but O’Hara!’ 
”

Ginny, from advertising, nibbled on her avocado salad. “Nobody would
ever
say that to Our Danny!”

Ginny was a political activist. She had volunteered to work for Danny’s campaign, but the sudden entry of Bobby Kennedy into the political race kept her on the sidelines. “Keep your eyes on 1968,” she said now to Jill, almost in a whisper. “Jack Javits is getting old. He’s ripe to be beaten.” … That exchange, overheard by Danny’s secretary, Margie, seated at the next table, was quickly repeated to Danny. He feigned indifference. In fact it had delighted him.

The in-flight movie was
Goldfinger.
It caught Danny’s attention, but after a half hour or so he ordered another Scotch and let his mind turn back to his own concerns.

The Biddle plan for restitution called for the quiet transfer by the stockholders of Hyde Park Capital Fund—Danny and Cutter Malone—of all their stock in Martino Enterprises, Inc., to the Hyde Park Fund. Ernest Rhodes and his accountant had diligently examined financial records going back for three years. Disgorgement would be primarily by Danny, given that he held 75 percent of the stock of Hyde Park Capital Fund. At nine in the morning on the day following the meeting at the Union Club, the bank balances of O’Hara and Malone were reviewed, as agreed upon, and also their portfolio of stocks and bonds.

Ninety percent of these were ordered liquidated, the proceeds remitted to the Hyde Park Fund.

Two weeks ago, Rhodes served notice on Danny that he was to put his summer house in Newport on the market and remit the proceeds to the Hyde Park Fund.

“How’m I going to explain that to Caroline? To my wife?”

“That is your concern, Mr. O’Hara,” the lawyer said. Ernest Rhodes was not a talkative man. His conversational bluntness stopped only at the boundaries of civility. Where on
earth
had Lila found this creep? Danny wondered.

Lila. That was another problem. He waited for several days sifter the Union Club Massacre to see whether she would make an initiative. She didn’t. He didn’t think it wise to give her the impression he didn’t care about her, though, in fact, he didn’t care all that much about her, but his future, such as it was, was very much in her hands, so on Day Five he composed a careful note. Its design was to convey to his little sister that he was truly sorry about all that. But he needed to be careful in exactly what he said, and it was not a bad idea to pluck a violin string in it.

“
Dear Lila: It was grand
[this would show that Danny’s old fortitude was still there]
to see you the other day at the Union Club, and to get acquainted again with The Scourge of Nuremberg
[just a little devil-may-care was okay, just a little].
There were some painful things to go over
[there, that was pretty contrite, no?] [not contrite enough]—
and it truly grieves me that you have been put to such
[such what? trouble? humiliation? fright? horror?]”—he scratched out “
to such
” and substituted “
through such an ordeal.
” [That would give her the credit she probably thought she was entitled to, for having gone through all that trouble. On the other hand, she was certainly being well rewarded. She had got her beloved Hyde Park enterprise about a hundred million in common stock! Probably she was given a raise!]
One of these days, maybe on a sail
—
not to Nantucket
[that might soften her up a little, the memory of that experience]—
I can tell you how it all happened, sort of little by little. Unlike the New Deal!
[She’d like that. Lila was forever speaking of the New Deal as distinctive because it came in as ‘a full-blown package, a complete political-philosophical program.’]
Much love as always from your big brother
[that would arouse any fraternal enzymes floating about in his sister’s scholarly mass],
Danny.
”

He would have to tell Caroline that the summer house so popular with the children would not be theirs come June. Rhodes was tough, yes, and even unfriendly, but at least he did not set out to do impossible things. He did not, for instance, try to reclaim
the salary paid to Danny and Cutter over the felonious years, 1959–64. There would have been no practical way to do this. Beginning way back in 1951, Danny had set up, unknown to any living soul in America including Cutter, beginning with the proceeds from the sale of a valuable diamond necklace, a personal bank account in Geneva into which he made systematic deposits, sometimes from his salary, sometimes from his vastly overstated expense accounts. That morning he had established the value of his Swiss account. After decoding a statement sent on plain paper and retrieved from the New York office of Crédit Suisse, he saw that he had husbanded assets of almost a half-million dollars. Dear Uncle Francis would never know about that, the son of a bitch.

Meanwhile—and this really needed to be done before tomorrow night, when he would be with her—he had to make the agonizing decision about Florry. Danny closed his eyes, crossed his legs, and gave himself a few moments to luxuriate at the thought of Florry. At the feel of Florry.

He sighed. It would no longer be possible to sidetrack funds from the hotel to maintain her. And, of course, trysts with her in Acapulco, Vancouver, Hawaii—where he had taken her just two months ago—would no longer be possible, not after leaving his post as president of the Trafalgar chain.

He would have to marry her. Or give her up.

Of course, when he was
reestablished
, he could contrive to resume his trips to the West Coast. But that was for tomorrow. Perhaps even for the day after tomorrow. He was, after all, seriously interested in the race for the New York Senate in 1968 and had to set himself up financially to make that race, only a couple of years off. He would need to maintain himself before he could resume maintaining Florry.

Maintain himself how? He brought out his Montblanc pen and lifted a notepad from his briefcase.

He could list the Astor hotels from memory: Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver. A young chain, ambitious, well managed. Let’s face it, O’Hara, he said to himself, what you know how to do, what you’re good at doing, is
to run hotels. So? So that, obviously, is where your financial future lies.

There were two problems. About one, he was fairly confident of finding a workable outcome. When Biddle had said to Cutter Malone that he could no longer engage in accounting work, O’Hara was alarmed. Did an equivalent interdiction apply to him?
Danny would not be permitted to reenter the hotel business?

After analyzing the question he was able to persuade himself, and later persuaded the awesome Mr. Rhodes, that there was a genuine difference between Cutter’s going back to accounting and Danny’s going back to the hotel business. He counted on Rhodes’s persuading Biddle that any prohibition affecting Danny’s line of work would not be comparable. Danny’s crime hadn’t been, so to speak, a crime intrinsic to the hotel business. It had simply been a crime, period. He struggled to make this point appealingly to the earnest Ernest Rhodes. By contrast, Cutter Malone’s crime had required him to traduce his own profession, the practice of accounting.