Cockran was happy when Mattie laughed again. “I like you, Mr. Cockran. You don’t miss a thing. Look, I’ve got an early train myself tomorrow. This party’s boring, present company excepted. So why don’t you walk me back to my hotel and we‘ll talk on the way?”
6.
Stay Out of Our Business!
New York
Friday, 9 August, 1929
9:30p.m.
Cockran and Mattie walked out of the Beresford into the cool night air and turned right for the ten-block journey to her hotel, the Essex House. The rain had stopped and he offered her his arm again and she accepted.
“I get questions like yours a lot. Usually in the form of ‘what‘s a pretty little thing like you doing covering all these wars and insurrections, risking your life and limb?‘ So,” she said, turning to him with the same smile he had been trying to get her to duplicate all evening, “do you want my standard cocktail party answer or the real story?”
“Let‘s see if I can handle the cocktail answer first,” Cockran answered with a grin, pleased he had her answering questions now, instead of asking them.
“Well, Mr. Cockran, I do it so brave men like you can keep informed while your tender little backsides are safe at home doing more manly, risky things, like buying stock on margin.”
Cockran grinned again. “So, that usually works?”
“You bet. Especially when they‘ve got some other pretty little thing draped over their arm and dripping with jewelry bought from the proceeds of those margin accounts.”
“Not bad,” Cockran admitted. “I‘m happy I came alone tonight. What‘s the real story?”
“It‘s simple, actually. I love my job. I love what I do. Only it‘s not a job, it‘s an adventure. I‘m good at what I do. I make a difference and I‘m paid quite well, especially since I went to work for the Chief.”
“You mean Hearst?” Cockran asked.
“Yes. It‘s what we all call him.”
Cockran nodded. “But what about the photojournalist part?”
“Don‘t make too big a meal of that,” she said. “Most photo-journalists are photographers first and journalists second. They couldn‘t write to a deadline if their lives depended on it. They think I‘m some babe who took a few lucky photos and won some awards.” She laughed. “And they̕’re probably right. I‘m a writer first. But I‘m going to get shots they never will because all they can do is react and record what they see. That‘s not me. The story comes first. And, because it does, I know where to be to nail the photos I need to illustrate what I write.”
“Exactly how did you become a photojournalist?” Cockran asked.
Mattie’s face darkened. “I get that question a lot also. I think it‘s because I’m a woman. But it’s not something I like to talk about. It was Munich in 1923. My photographer, a smart, delightful man named Helmut Stein and I were working for The Daily Mirror, covering what has now become known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Unfortunately for us, we were literally caught right in the middle of it. I made it. Helmut didn’t. He was killed that night by Nazi thugs.”
“Nazi?”
“Sorry. National Socialists. A small political party with their own military wing, the SA. Brownshirts.”
“I‘ve heard of them.” Cockran said. “Their leader is a guy named Hitler?”
Mattie paused, her eyes moist. “That‘s the one. Anyway, Helmut had taught me enough about photography that I was able to get by without a photographer while my paper searched for a replacement. Finally, after a few months of taking my own photos, I decided I didn’t need my own photographer. If I had made better decisions that day, Helmut might still be alive.”
Cockran nodded in sympathy. “I understand. It‘s never easy when others you care for and who depend on you are taken.” Then he quickly brought the conversation back on track. “Does this mean you’re a self-made man, then, when it comes to photography?”
Mattie chuckled. “Hardly. Helmut taught me a lot before he was killed and introduced me to his peers and they were enormously helpful. Erich Salomon especially, but also Alfred Eisenstaedt and Fritz Goro. Brilliant artists, all of them. I‘ll never be in their league but they persuaded me to buy a Leica and a Contax and that made all the difference in the world.”
“How’s that?”
“They’re small. They use 35 mm motion picture film in rolls which give you 36 exposures. I only need one bag over my shoulder, two cameras, and lots of film. A telephoto lens, a supply of flashbulbs for those few occasions when natural light won’t do, and I’m good for weeks. With his equipment, Helmut sometimes needed an assistant to carry it all.”
“Why did you go to work for a tabloid like The Daily Mirror?”
“Easy. They hired women reporters. It originally started way back when, 1903 I think it was, as a paper for women. And as Lord Northcliffe himself told me, they had to hire women if it was going to succeed. It didn’t, not as a women’s paper, but even after it became a tabloid, they’ve always had an open attitude about hiring women.”
They walked along companionably like that for another twenty minutes. Washed by the rain, the air smelled fresher and cooler. Cockran couldn‘t explain his attraction to this woman but it was undeniably there, just as it had been with Nora. It had started out as a favor for Anne. A photojournalist from Scotland, for God‘s sake. How sexy could someone like that be? Well, a lot actually. Too soon for Cockran, they arrived in front of the Essex House. He had enjoyed her company a lot more than he had expected.
“Bourke, it’s been a pleasure to meet you,” she said, “and you’ve been so sweet to walk me home and listen to me chatter on. Do have a pleasant journey tonight. I don‘t know when I‘ll next be in New York, but I hope we may meet again.”
“Sure, I‘d like that too,” he said, handing her his card.
“You’re a dear,” she said, as she took his card, leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Who knows? We might even run across each other somewhere else before then. In some things, it‘s better to be lucky than good.”
10:00 p.m.
Cockran crossed the street and headed into Central Park with a smile on his face. He soon took off his jacket, slinging it over a shoulder as he felt the humidity in the rain-soaked air.
As he walked, Cockran couldn‘t keep his mind off Mattie. Anne Dawson had chosen well. He smiled at how irrepressible she was, always trying to set him up. Normally, this would be the first and last time he saw an Anne Dawson introduction. Maybe one date but then never again. But something about her made him want to see Mattie McGary again. So far as her visits to New York were not too frequent, he believed it would be safe to see her the next time she was in New York. Why he even worried about something like this was complicated.
After Nora‘s death, Cockran had no intention of ever marrying again. Having achieved perfect happiness the first time out, Cockran did not believe in tempting fate. He was not going to share his life with another woman, always comparing her unfavorably in his mind to Nora. On the other hand, Cockran was a healthy young man with an equally healthy interest in female companionship. After a period of mourning, he had allowed Anne to coax him back into the market because he was, in fact, a highly eligible bachelor whose father had left him fairly well fixed financially with blue chip bonds as well as homes on Fifth Avenue and Long Island‘s Gold Coast. He wasn‘t rich like his Gold Coast neighbors but he was comfortable.
He developed a simple formula for avoiding marriage, less out of calculation than intuition inspired by the memory of his former relationship with Emily Farnsworth. High-born Protestants didn‘t marry Catholics. So, he politely declined Anne Dawson‘s occasional attempts to introduce him to a Catholic girl and limited himself strictly to Protestants, the higher born the better. The 1920s were a liberating era for women. Sexual permissiveness and even promiscuity were well in fashion. And parties at the Gold Coast mansions often matched those described by Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. Cockran went to them all with h
is girlfriend of the day, confident that women of that background might sleep with a Catholic but never marry him.
It had worked. Cockran moved from one Protestant girl to another among the people he had grown up with and he had been pleased with himself right up until the day it stopped working. He had been dating and sleeping with a stunning debutante eight years younger and things were proceeding just fine, thank you, or so he thought. But, as it often does, the world was changing and he had not noticed. What happened was that not one but three attractive women he had dated, Protestants all, fell in love with him and were unintimidated by what was, in fact, his feigned Catholicism, riding on the coattails of his father‘s reputation as a pillar of the Church. All had been willing to be married in the Church and to raise all their offspring in the one True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in the event her spouse predeceased her.
Cockran was appalled when he saw this, bringing pain into another‘s life where once he had brought only pleasure. The first time it happened, he laid it off to bad luck which could happen to anyone. The next time he wasn‘t so sure and that parting had been more painful than the first. There would not have even been a third had she not been a Vanderbilt. Who would have thought that a Vanderbilt would be willing to marry an Irish Catholic, let alone convert? Each time he ended things with the three women became a variation of what, in his mind, had turned into “the speech.” The one where he held her face in his hands, stared deeply into her eyes and told him what a wonderful woman she was, a woman who should be loved above all others and how Cockran would never be able to do that because he loved his late wife Nora above all others and always would. Forever.
The speech wasn‘t bad. In fact, it was pretty damn good. Why? Because he meant every word. He wasn‘t in love with any of them, not the way he had been with Nora. But he had hurt those three women deeply and was sorry for it, the Catholic guilt of his childhood creeping back into his adult life. Also, his father had raised him as a gentleman and he knew if he kept doing this with single women, he was in danger of becoming a cad. He believed that would have disappointed his father even more than his fallen away status with the Church.
A modification of his relations with the opposite sex was in order because he was not going to allow himself to continue causing pain in others. Quite by accident, Emily Farnsworth came to his rescue. They had remained friends and, over the years, the two of them would occasionally have lunch together. At one lunch though, he had seen she was distraught for it turned out that her extremely wealthy husband had been sleeping with a series of attractive young Irish underhouse parlor maids, turning them over at a rapid clip and refusing to stop despite Emily‘s insistence that he do so.
Cockran agreed that her husband was a rotter and, for the sake of their old friendship, he was more than willing to honor her request to make him a cuckold as well. She didn’t state it in exactly those terms, of course. After all, she was a well-bred young lady and he was a gentleman. But the message was unmistakable. There was no question of a divorce, as Cockran well knew. Emily had two beautiful children to whom she was devoted. The affair lasted for six months until she and Cockran resumed a platonic friendship after she seduced a tennis pro at one of the local country clubs. After all, Cockran had been exceptionally discreet in their affair, whereas Emily wanted something which would set the tongues wagging at their own Club and rub her husband‘s nose in it.
Cockran wasn‘t saddened by this but rather was happy for his old friend. He hadn‘t intended to establish a pattern but, as it turned out, there was no shortage of other well-bred young Gold Coast matrons in exactly the same position as Emily, eager to get even with their philandering husbands. Cockran, his reputation as an eligible bachelor preceding him, had plenty to choose from. With them, neither love nor marriage were on the table and Cockran found that comforting because to him, both words meant pain. Pain he had spent seven years trying to cope with; pain he did not wish to inflict on others.
Mattie McGary did not fit this pattern. She appeared to be single in that she wore no ring, which was one of the first things he noticed. Still, the fine wrinkles around her eyes when she laughed led him to believe she was in her late twenties. She was obviously a woman who was dedicated to her career so he was fairly confident marriage would not be on her mind. But he would be careful. He had no desire to resurrect the speech. A fling or two with her would be nice but at the slightest hint their relationship might become serious, he would end things before it went further just as he already had with several of the revenge-seeking young Gold Coast wives.
Thinking about Mattie had distracted him, he realized later. Others were walking along the broad sidewalk when he had entered the park but now he was alone, walking through the gloom illuminated by the circles of light cast by street lamps, moving from one bright pool of light to another, humming softly to himself.
It happened swiftly before he had a chance to react. There were three of them. He heard a rush of footsteps behind him and turned in the direction of the noise. It had been a long time since he had been surrounded by danger and his defenses were down. Before he could react, a heavy fist struck him a blow squarely in the kidneys, causing him to gasp with pain. It was soon followed by another blow that forced him to his knees. A boot hit him in the back and he fell forward, his coat flying out in front of him. Before he could even get to his knees, the other two men rolled him over and began raining fists at his ribs. Once, twice, three times. He felt rather than saw the initial aggressor grab his hair and lift his head up painfully. The man spoke in a hard, County Cork-tinged accent. “You stay out of our business, boyo!” slamming Cockran’s head back into the soft glistening grass.
An angry Cockran stood up, his ears burning as blood rushed to his head, and looked around for his assailants, eager to find them and pay them back. But he was dizzy and he knelt on the grass as he felt his anger ebb, replaced by embarrassment. As an Army MID agent both during and after the war, he had been trained to handle situations like this and, had he been alert, all three of his attackers might now be limping away with broken limbs and noses. Two break-ins and now an attack? It was a warning, not a coincidence. And he wasn‘t going to let it happen again.
7.
Tommy McBride
New York City
Friday, 9 August 1929
10:00 p.m.
Kurt von Sturm’s unfavorable impression of Philip Cromwell remained even though he was now sitting in the back of the man‘s chauffeured Rolls Royce limousine. Three days together on an airship was more than enough time to make that judgment. Cromwell‘s chauffeur had met them when the airship landed in New Jersey. They stopped briefly at the paneled offices of Wainright and Cromwell on Wall Street before his chauffeur had dropped Cromwell off for an engagement on the upper West Side and left the motorcar at Sturm‘s disposal for the evening.
Sturm had investigated Cromwell for membership in the Geneva Group four years earlier when it had determined to take on an American member. During their brief stop at Cromwell‘s offices, Sturm had noticed a portrait of Cromwell‘s father. The family resemblance was strong although his father, when he sat for the artist, was probably ten years older than Cromwell today. The father looked proud and confident, one hand resting on a globe beside him, his head high and eyes fixed on a distant point on the horizon as if he were looking forward to a century in which American financial interests would dominate the world. He committed suicide two months after the portrait was painted, wiped out in the panic of 1907.
Sturm knew the son was more formidable than the father. A 1902 Princeton graduate with a degree in history, Cromwell‘s faculty advisor had been the Department Chairman, Woodrow Wilson. He was well-connected socially and in financial circles, his father‘s death notwithstanding. As a young man, he held a succession of high government positions during the war. A protégé of Col. Edward House, he was given a prominent place on the American delegation to Versailles and was also close to the American Attorney General
, A. Mitchell Palmer. Some said he would have become Treasury Secretary in a Palmer administration. Once Palmer did not receive his party‘s presidential nomination in 1920, Cromwell determined to leave government service.
Sturm also knew that Cromwell had been rejected for a partnership at J.P. Morgan. Not even his patron, Colonel House, had that much influence, especially after Wilson‘s stroke. It’s not that Morgan partners hadn‘t committed suicide before, but they had always had the judgment and good taste to do so quietly. Those weren‘t the words Sturm would have used to portray the very public deaths of Philip Dru Cromwell, III and his naked blonde mistress. It did not matter a short fourteen years later how brilliant and promising a career young Philip had in front of him. Jack Morgan was a prudent and cautious man. He was not going to take a chance on another messy Cromwell suicide. He wished Philip well, and even put in a good word for him with old Marcus Wainwright, the founder, now retired, the firm renamed as Wainwright & Cromwell.
The revival of the old-line firm under Cromwell‘s leadership was nothing short of spectacular. Though obviously tied to the previous Democratic administration, Cromwell‘s contacts and influence with the two Republican administrations which succeeded Wilson belied that fact. Fixed firmly at the intersection of the growing cooperation after the war between business and government, Cromwell was the man to see if you wanted anything done in Washington. His connections in the Commerce and Treasury Departments were exceptional. His reputation was such, Sturm knew, that he charged $25,000, in cash or securities, simply for an initial consultation, plus ten per cent of all profits generated should his efforts prove successful. In five years he had become one of the wealthiest men on Wall Street and one of the first on Wall Street to steer hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into Weimar Germany.
The DeValera Deception Page 6