William F. Buckley Jr. (31 page)

She did a series of six stories on the enormously tall, extraordinarily handsome congressman, about whom it was pretty much taken for granted that he would one day make a bid for a presidential nomination. What stood most stolidly in his way was of course Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who wished to be President, and who dominated New York politics.

Barbara Horowitz explained to her readers that John Lindsay’s inner circle reasoned that he would need to appeal to liberal circles in New York to win support. He was, after all, a Republican seeking voters in a city resolutely Democratic. In one story she predicted that if Lindsay won, there would be tension between him and the Governor—whose problem was the opposite of Lindsay’s: Nelson Rockefeller needed to woo conservative Republicans. Rockefeller was the principal liberal figure in the Republican Party. He had contended against Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination a year earlier and, when Goldwater won, pointedly refused to campaign for him. “Governor Rockefeller is mending fences on his right while John Lindsay is using a battering ram to attract New Yorkers on the left,” Barbara Horowitz informed her readers. The city editor then assigned her to do a portrait of Abraham Beame, the City Controller and likeliest winner of a Democratic primary. “Horowitz”—she liked to see herself thus identified—found the assignment tough going, inasmuch as the short, elderly candidate was resolutely uncolorful. She complained one afternoon to her editor that Beame “has never ovulated.”

“Has never what?”

“Just an expression.”

“Well, find a different expression,” Curtis said. “… I know, I know, Abe Beame isn’t John Lindsay, he doesn’t make the ladies swoon over him, doesn’t go to Broadway shows, didn’t shine
as a student at Yale, doesn’t represent the Silk Stocking district. So he wears black socks on the beach. So he’s a pol? So write something interesting about pols.”

Barbara Horowitz did, and Henry, reading her story in the morning paper, told her she was an alchemist. She affected to be indifferent to the compliment. “Have you ever done a cover story on a pol?” she asked.

Yes, he had done Mayor Daley.

“That doesn’t count,” Barbara objected. “Daley’s fascinating.”

Henry explained that pols become fascinating if they exercise power, but in order to do that they generally have to win elections.

To round out the political coverage, the
Times
told her to do a feature on Conservative Party candidate William F. Buckley, Jr. She spent a few days reading his books, his columns, and listening to one of his campaign speeches. She reported to the City Editor that she could not do a feature on him, but would gladly volunteer to serve on it if ever an execution squad were organized. Charlotte Curtis told her to do her duty, goddamnit, and she ground out a story about one third of which was blue-penciled as too tendentious.

She was pulled away from municipal politics to do “a big story” on the FDR Library—the paper would publish several features on the twentieth anniversary of the death of President Roosevelt. Barbara called Henry at
Time
and told him of the assignment. “Stop everything and quick, call your sister-in-law, Lila, tell her what a sweet and talented thing I am, and would she please give me the next four days of her time.”

Lila O’Hara hadn’t been at the small wedding and had never laid eyes on Barbara Horowitz. She insisted on being told which train Barbara would be on—Lila would meet it. “Tell Barbara to look for the tall lady with glasses and an ice-cream cone in her hand. They’ve got the best ice cream in Dutchess County at the drugstore across the street.”

•  •  •  •

No fewer than six scholars were at work on some aspect of the Roosevelt story. And one of those six, Max Huxley from the University of Chicago graduate school, was writing not about Roosevelt, but about the Library. He was twenty-five years old, slim, studious, direct, persevering, and attracted to unusual juxtapositions; he tended to look out for relationships, e.g., between the style and dimensions of FDR’s tombstone and the period during the war when he specified what these should be. He was a steadfastly curious young man, familiar with the protocols of academic scholarship but unfamiliar with the ways of journalists. Working side by side with Barbara Horowitz, he saw an opportunity to learn exactly how a reporter from a serious daily newspaper met deadlines and crashed through obstacles that would hold up an academic researcher for a week or a month or a year.

And Barbara saw in Max Huxley an opportunity quickly to accelerate her knowledge of the Library, that extraordinary complex founded by Roosevelt himself in 1941, which had become a permanent repository for over two hundred separate collections making up over seventeen million pages of manuscripts, over a hundred thousand photographs, and thousands of feet of motion picture film. Already there were over thirty thousand books covering the life and times of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Barbara gravitated toward Max and he was obliging. He let her spend several hours reading his tidy notes, from which she got a quick general, and also profound, idea of the activity of the Center.

Barbara Horowitz, accustomed to writing under every kind of pressure, marveled at young Huxley’s notes, which appeared to have been prepared and written without any trace of pressure or haste. After a few dozen pages, Barbara wondered if Max had ever—ever in his life—made a simple typographical error. (“You might as well look for a typo in the text of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address on the monument,” she told Henry over the telephone.) For that reason her attention was arrested on one page where in ink he had placed three question marks (???) at the margin of a paragraph that dealt with recent contributions to
the Library, listed for 1964. The documents revealed the receipt of 2,875,000 shares in Martino Enterprises, Inc., at an appraised value of over one hundred million dollars.

She walked over to Huxley, who was taking notes at another desk in the library. “Max, what’re the question marks all about?”

There were others in the large room, working within earshot, so Max answered in a whisper. “The gift didn’t come from Martino. It came from something called the Hyde Park Capital Fund. I never heard of the Hyde Park Capital Fund. And how did they get the stock? I’m going to Albany tomorrow to look up the records of the Capital Fund.”

“Anything screwy going on?”

“I hope so. It would certainly liven up my thesis.”

“Let me know if you find out anything interesting?”

Max smiled. “Waal,” he drawled out the word, “why give the
New York Times
a scoop that belongs to the University of Chicago?” And then, after a pause of exaggerated concentration, with a little smile, “Sure.”

And Max did.

Late the following afternoon he told Barbara that the Hyde Park Capital Fund had for two years owned the Martino stock. And that the two listed officers and directors of the Capital Fund were one C. Malone, and D. O’Hara. “Obviously that’s Daniel O’Hara, since he was president of Martino Enterprises until a few days ago. But what was he doing with all that stock for almost two years? And where did the dividends go during that period? But it’s easy enough to take the next step.”

Of course. Just ask Lila.… Did Max mind if she tagged along?

No. Sure, come along.

Lila O’Hara received them together: Max Huxley, with whom she had dealt for the better part of a month, rounding up information he requested—whose scholarly attitude she approved of; and Barbara Horowitz, whom she had met only two days before, at the railroad station, and instantly liked.

What, Max began by asking, was the Hyde Park Capital Fund?

“Oh, I’m not all that sure. Old Martino was a man who liked to do things his own way, and I guess he told Malone and my brother to hang on to the stock for a year or so, for whatever reason—maybe the hotel chain was being reorganized, or something like that—and then to turn it over to us. Sorry, can’t be more detailed than that.”

“Well, who
can
be more ‘detailed’ about the arrangement?” Max persevered.

Lila now turned cold. “Max, we are a research center, but this doesn’t mean that we encourage the dilettante. Some Chicago University don with nothing very important in mind wants a graduate student to spend a hundred pages in a thesis nobody’s going to read on what happened between Monday and Tuesday; I mean, who cares, Max? I certainly don’t, nor do my colleagues.”

Barbara was startled. Max turned to his notepad.

Lila lit a cigarette and said, “Do you have any more questions?”

Max said yes, but he’d rather put them to her the following day, as he hadn’t arranged them in the proper order.

“What about you, Barbara?” Lila’s voice was back to normal.

Barbara said she was getting along fine but would certainly call on Lila before she began to write her story.

Max and Lila walked out of the library. Max said to her, “You know where my favorite place is to sit down around here for a few minutes?”

No, Barbara didn’t know. Max motioned her to follow him.

They walked to the front entrance of the mansion. Max showed the guard—he was friendly with all of them, at this point—his working pass, Barbara showed hers. She followed him into the oaken hallway, up four stairs to the central corridor. Over to the third door. It was open. He turned in, showed his pass again to the guard standing by the velvet cord. Max lifted it from the hook attached to the stanchion and signaled to Barbara to walk on through. They passed across the thick embroidered carpet,
around the bookcase that jutted into the room, to a couch in the little alcove from which they could view the imposing desk at the other end of the large, comfortable study of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“He had the couch here for an assistant to use while FDR was examining any of the books around us. You can take notes on the table here”—he pointed to the heavy unadorned table with the black leather stretched across. “FDR dictated a lot, reading from the table, to his secretary, seated where we are. It’s kind of fun sitting here. The tourists don’t get this deep into the FDR study. But the guards give us scholars the run of the house. Barbara?”

“Yes?”

“What was that all about with Lila? That outburst? Not at all like her. Something’s fishy. The records show that Martino Enterprises spins off three and a half to four million dollars a year. So where did that money go between November 1963, when the old man died, and April 1964, when the dividends from Martino Enterprises began to flow into Hyde Park?”

“I don’t know. But Lila was pretty tender on the point, I agree. I just don’t understand it. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll begin by asking Mr. O’Hara for an appointment. Then I’ll get a copy of the will from probate. Then I’ll ask to see the accountant of Martino Enterprises, whoever he is. Then I’ll look for the tax receipts, from the day Giuseppe Martino died.”

“Have you any idea what’s going on, Max?”

“No I don’t. But I can’t figure out what the purpose was of the Hyde Park Capital Fund. Whatever its purpose, it belongs in my thesis.”

“And in my newspaper. Max. Dear Max. I have to tell you this, that I’m going to have to pursue this story on my own. But if it turns out to be a story and if we publish it, I’ll give full credit to you for raising the question in the first place.”

“I understand. But don’t get ahead of me on trying to get the interviews with O’Hara and Martino’s accountant; give me a couple of days.”

“Max, what on earth is going on? What do you think?”

“That depends.… I wonder what FDR would have said, if this kind of thing had been plopped on his desk there?”

“Maybe he would have said, ‘You need a good lawyer,’ and quoted his rates.”

M
R. MALONE on line two, Mr. O’Hara.” Danny picked up the telephone.

“Morning, Cutter.… What? Hold it. Cutter, call me back, but on my private line.”

“Okay.” They both hung up.

The second line came directly to Danny’s desk. It rang. “Yes, Cutter, tell me about it.… Max Huxley. Yes. Well, he called in here a few days ago, wanted to see me about Martino’s will. Margie put him off—till one day next week, I think. Why?… You
saw
him?—Cutter. Where are you?” Danny looked down at his watch. “Meet me at the Yale Club. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

He told Margie he was going to the Yale Club to meet a prospective
client. On arriving at Vanderbilt Avenue, Danny went to the bar on the third floor. He ordered a gin and tonic and walked with it to a card table in the rear of the room. Cutter showed up, carrying his inevitable briefcase. He declined a drink, and sat down.

“Okay, from scratch.”

Cutter writhed about in the big armchair trying to make himself comfortable, but the chair wasn’t the problem.

“He got me on the phone. That’s easy, you know, Danny. Anybody can get me on the phone these days, since nobody in New York is less busy than I am. So he says he’s doing a thesis for the University of Chicago on the FDR Library and he’d like to talk to me about the Hyde Park Capital Fund. What was the purpose in founding it, what did it do with the money that flowed in from Martino before the stock went to the other Hyde Park fund.”

“What did you say?” Danny’s voice was edged. He signaled to the steward for a refill of his drink before he had finished the first.

“I said that my understanding of the matter was that the enterprise was confidential and therefore I was not free to discuss the matter with him.”

“That shut him up?”

“Hell no. He said he had already tried to get an appointment with you to discuss the matter, that he intended to examine the will of Giuseppe in order to unearth who authorized the Capital Fund to hold the stock for two years. The son of a bitch means business, Danny.”

Danny stroked his glass. “Hang on, Cutter. I’m going to call Lila.”

He got his sister on the phone.

“You alone?”

“Yes. How are you, Danny?”

“Not good. What do you know about a little turd from Chicago called Max Huxley?”

“Has he been to see you?”