'He also happens to be a big Marty Manning fan. Around a year ago, we're having lunch one day, he gets talking about some sketch he saw the previous night on Manning's show. That's when I do a little bragging and tell him that Manning's head writer – Eric Smythe – happens to be my client. Marty was actually impressed . . . though, of course, he had to make a joke about it: "Since when the hell has a stevedore lawyer like you been representing writers?"
'That was the only mention of your brother. A year goes by. The stuff hits the fan with NBC. Eric refuses to do the dirty on his friends. He ends getting slimed in Winchell's column. The next day, Marty rings me here. "Saw the item about your client in Winchell," he tells me. "Tough call." Then he asks if there's anything he can do to help, because he knows all those assholes on the HUAC committee. He also thinks they're opportunistic trash – not that he'd ever admit that publicly.
'Anyway, I thanked Marty for the offer of help – but told him that your brother wasn't looking for a deal . . . and certainly wouldn't suddenly become a stoolie after all the damage that the Winchell piece had done. So, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.
'Then, of course, four weeks later, Eric was dead. And . . .'
He stopped. He twitched his lips. He avoided my stare. 'What I'm about to say to you might really anger you. Because it was none of my business. But . . .'
He stopped again.
'Go on,' I said.
'I was so goddamn upset . . . enraged . . . after Eric died that I made a call to Marty. "You can do me a favor," I said. "Get me the name of the bastard who shopped my client." And he did.'
'Jack Malone?'
'Yeah: Jack Malone.'
'How did your friend find out?'
'It wasn't hard. According to Federal law, anything revealed under testimony at a HUAC hearing – or during an interview with an agent of the FBI – cannot be printed or publicly disseminated. But there are three former G-men – backed by this right-wing supermarket magnate named Alfred Kohlberg and some super-patriotic priest called Father John F. Cronin – who have set up a company called American Business Consultants. Their principal job – if you can believe this – is to scrutinize employees in major corporations, making sure they're not Reds. But they also publish two newsletters – Counterattack and Red Channels. These rags exist for one purpose only – to list the names of everyone who's been accused of being a Communist in a closed executive session of HUAC. Those two newsletters are the Blacklister's Bible: they're the place corporate America and the entertainment industry look to see who's been named. Naturally enough, Marty Morrison has a subscription to both of these shit sheets. He discovered that your brother had been listed in Red Channels – which is also how Eric's employers at NBC learned that he'd been named during testimony in front of HUAC.
'From there it was easy for Marty to call a couple of lawyers he knows around town – guys who've cornered the blacklisting market, making very big bucks representing people who've been dragged in front of HUAC. Of course, lawyers being lawyers, they're always exchanging notes with each other. Marty hit pay dirt on the third call. A big white-shoe attorney named Bradford Ames – who, among other things, looks after the legal side of Steele and Sherwood. Ames owed Marty a favor. Marty cashed it in now.
'"Between ourselves, do you have any idea who might have named Eric Smythe?" Marty asked him. Of course, Ames had heard of your brother – because his blacklisting and his death had been all over the papers. "Between ourselves," he told Marty, "I know exactly the guy who shopped Smythe. Because I represented him when he testified in executive session at HUAC. The funny thing about this guy was that he wasn't in showbiz. He was a public relations guy with Steele and Sherwood. Jack Malone."'
My mind was reeling. 'Jack testified in front of HUAC?' I asked Joel.
'That's what appears to have happened.'
'I don't believe it, Jack's about the most loyal American imaginable.'
'According to Marty, he had a skeleton in his closet. A really small one – but even tiny skeletons get used against you nowadays. It turns out that, right before the war, Mr Malone put his name down for some Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee . . . which was one of those organizations that was helping people fleeing from Nazi Germany and Italy and the Balkans. Anyway, as it turns out, the committee that Malone was associated with had direct links with the American Communist Party. Brad Ames said that Malone swore up on a stack of Bibles that he was never a member of the Party . . . that a couple of Brooklyn friends of his had finagled him on to the committee . . . that he'd only gone to a couple of meetings, nothing more. The problem was – one of the guys who allegedly finagled him on to the committee had been subpoenaed by HUAC. And he'd named Malone during his testimony. Which is how Jack Malone also ended up in the pages of Red Channels – and how his bosses at Steele and Sherwood found out about his accidental flirtation with subversion.
'Naturally enough, Malone sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in front of his employers – and said he'd do anything required to clear his name. They called their corporate attorney, Bradford Ames. He met Malone – and they talked things through. Ames then went to some guy on the committee – and did a bit of bartering. Which is how things work at HUAC. If the witness isn't hostile, the number of names – and the actual names themselves – are agreed beforehand between the committee and the witness's attorney. Malone offered to name the same guy who named him. That wasn't enough for the committee. So he also offered to name three other people he knew on the committee. But the committee said, 'No sale' – as the guy who named Malone had also named those names as well.
"You've got to give them one new name,' Ames told him. 'Just one. Afterwards you tell them it was all a youthful mistake, and how you love America more than Kate Smith, blah, blah, blah. Then they'll exonerate you.'
'So that's when Malone said, "Eric Smythe." Naturally, Ames knew the name immediately – 'cause he too watched Marty Manning. He told Malone that he thought the committee would be satisfied with that name. Because Eric Smythe was a relatively big fish.
'A week later, Malone went down to Washington and testified in front of HUAC. It was an executive session – which meant that it was all behind closed doors, and not for the public record. So I suppose Malone thought that no one would ever know.
'But lawyers always talk.'
'I'm sorry,' Jack said when I first told him about Eric being named. 'I am so goddamn sorry . . . Tell him if there's anything . . . anything . . . I can do . . .'
I remember leaning over to kiss him, and saying: 'You're a good man.'
I saw him after Eric's death standing in that godawful room at the Ansonia, looking down at the bloodstain, then sobbing into my shoulder. Once again, he said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry . . .' Once again, I was so touched by his sense of emotional solidarity, of shared grief. He was crying for Eric, for me – for the tragedy of it all, I remember thinking later.
But now, it turns out it was guilt that was making him cry. Guilt and shame and remorse and . . .
I swallowed hard. My hands tightened into fists. Not only did he betray us . . . he cried about it.
'Did the committee exonerate Malone?' I asked.
Malone. Not Jack. He would never be Jack again. He'd now be Malone. The man who destroyed my brother.
'Of course,' Joel Eberts said. 'He was cleared completely. According to Marty, Steele and Sherwood was so pleased with the way he handled everything with HUAC, they slipped him a bonus.'
'You know, you really don't have to be doing this,' I'd said after he'd insisted on paying to have Eric's belongings moved, and for the paint job at the Ansonia.
'Hiring a couple of painters for two days isn't exactly going to break the bank,' he'd said. 'Anyway, I had a bit of a bonus windfall. Out of nowhere I was handed a commission check for over eight hundred dollars. It's Steele and Sherwood's way of saying thank you
For naming names. For saving your own skin. For decimating Eric's life. For killing any love or tr
ust between us. For ruining everything. All that for eight hundred dollars. At today's exchange rates, would that be the equivalent of thirty pieces of silver?
'So Malone doesn't have a clue that anyone knows he fingered Eric?' I asked.
'I doubt it. Sara, I said it once, I'll say it again: you don't know how bad I feel about this . . .'
'Why should you feel guilty?' I said, standing up. 'I thank you.'
'For what?'
'For telling me the truth. It couldn't have been an easy decision. But it was the right one.'
'What are you going to do about this, Sara?'
'There is nothing to do,' I said. 'It's done.'
I left his office. I stepped out into the street. I took two steps, then reached out for a nearby lamp post and held it tightly. No, I didn't break down. Or let out a scream of anguish. Instead, a second wave of shock ran through me. I gulped for air. My stomach heaved. I bent over and was sick in the street.
I retched until there was nothing left to retch. My body was drenched in sweat. I managed to right myself up. I found a tissue in my jacket pocket, and used it to dab my mouth. Then I worked up the strength to raise my right hand and hail a cab home.
When I reached my apartment, I walked into the living room, and sat down in an armchair. I stayed seated for what only seemed like minutes. When I glanced at my watch, however, I realized that more than an hour had gone by. The shock was still so penetrating that I wasn't conscious of time. Instead, I felt glazed, hollow – to the point where standard emotional responses seemed futile. I just sat there, blankly. Not knowing what to do.
Another hour went by. Then I heard a key in the lock. Jack walked in. He was fresh from a road trip, with a suitcase in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other.
'Hey there!' he said, putting down his suitcase and approaching me. I stared down at the floor. I suddenly couldn't stand the idea of looking at him. Instantly, he sensed that something was very wrong.
'Sara, darling . . .' he said.
I said nothing. He leaned over and tried to touch me. I shrugged him off. He now looked alarmed.
'What's happened?' he whispered, crouching down beside me.
'I want you to leave, Jack. Leave and never come back.'
He dropped the flowers. 'I don't understand,' he said, his voice now barely a whisper.
'Yes you do,' I said, standing up. 'Now go.'
'Sara, please,' he said. As I turned towards the bedroom, he put his hand on my shoulder. I turned on him.
'Never, never touch me again.'
'Why are you . . .'
' Why? Why? You know why, Jack. You just thought I would never find out.'
His face crumpled. He sat down on the sofa. He put his face in his hands. He didn't say anything for a very long time.
'Can I explain?' he finally asked.
'No. Because nothing you say matters anymore.'
'Sara, my love . . .'
'No terms of endearment. No explanations. No rationalizations. We have nothing to say to each other anymore.'
'You've got to hear me out.'
'No. I don't. There's the door. Use it.'
'Who told you?'
'Joel Eberts. He knew someone who knew the guy who represented you when you went in front of the committee. Joel said that – according to his lawyer friend – you put up no resistance. You sang on the spot.'
'I had no choice. None.'
'Everyone has a choice. You made yours. Now you have to live with it.'
'They had me in a corner, Sara. I was going to lose . . .'
'What? Your job? Your income? Your professional standing?'
'I have a kid. I have to pay the rent. I have to put food on the table.'
'Everyone has to do that. Eric had to do that.'
'Look, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt your brother.'
'But you still gave his name to the FBI and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.'
'I thought . . .'
'What? That the Feds would let him off with a warning?'
'Someone gave them my name. They insisted I give them names.'
'You could have said no.'
'Don't you think I wanted to?'
'But you didn't.'
'There was no way out. If I refused to give names, I'd lose my job. But then someone else would come along and name the people I named.'
'But that would have been someone else, not you.'
'I had to put my responsibilities first . . .'
'Responsibilities to whom, Jack?'
'To Dorothy and Charlie.'
'But not to me? Or to my completely innocent brother? Or were we simply expendable?'
'You know I don't think that.'
'I don't know you anymore.'
'Don't say that, Sara.'
'Why not? It's the truth. You've destroyed everything.'
My voice remained somehow controlled. Jack buried his head deeper in his hands. He fell silent again. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded diminished, small.
'Please try to understand: they insisted, demanded, that I give them a name. Believe me, I tried to explain that I had never been a Communist; that I had joined that anti-Fascist committee when I was a kid of eighteen, and only because I believed it was making a principled stand against Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. The FBI guys said they understood that. Just as they also knew that I had served my country in the war – and hadn't dabbled in politics since then. As far as they were concerned, I was a "good American" who'd made a small youthful mistake. Other people who were on that committee had also made mistakes – and in a demonstration of their patriotism, they had given the names of those who were associated with this group at the time, or had once had Communist sympathies.
'"They're probably as innocent as you are," one of the Fed guys told me. "But you must understand: we are investigating a vast conspiracy which poses a threat to national security. We simply need to discover who is at the heart of the conspiracy. Which is why we need names. By giving us information not only are you doing a service to your country; you are also eliminating yourself from our investigations. But by refusing to assist us, the cloud of suspicion still hovers over you. Face fact, anyone who's been a Communist in the past is going to get found out. So you might as well make a clean breast of everything . . . while you still can.'"
Jack paused again. He lifted his head up, attempting to look me in the eye. But I turned away.
'Their argument had a ruthless logic to it. Someone had named me. I would prove my innocence by naming someone else. They, in turn, would prove their innocence by naming someone else. Everyone was betraying each other. But the thing about this betrayal was – no one had a choice.'
'Yes, they did,' I said, suddenly angry. 'The Hollywood Ten had a choice – they all went to jail. Arthur Miller had a choice: he refused to name names. My brother had a choice . . . and he lost his life.'
Jack's head went back into his hands.
'I tried to give them just the names of the other people on the committee. "That's not good enough," they told me. "We already know everyone who was with you back then. What we need is someone else." I told them I didn't know any other Communists. They wouldn't buy that. "Everyone knows a one-time Commie." I said I hated the idea of hurting someone else. "You're hurting nobody," they told me. "As long as he owns up to his past and agrees to cooperate with us, no harm will come to him." Again, I tried to convince them that the only Communists I knew were on that committee, and that was over a decade ago. But they were adamant. I had to give them one new name. Otherwise . . .
The Pursuit Of Happiness Page 56