The President's Man

by Nicholas Guild

  The man he was waiting for would stand by the bar; there would be a copy of Newsweek in his jacket pocket, folded in half lengthwise so you could see the first four letters of the word, and he would answer to the name of “Bernard.” It was all very much like a bad movie—even Faircliff had been embarrassed—but apparently Bernard was insisting. It wouldn’t do to keep things simple and have the guy ring us up at our hotel; no, we had to pretend the whole world was interested in our every move.

  And at three minutes to nine there he was, a plumpish, balding man in a charcoal-gray suit that looked as if it had probably been hand-tailored for him on Savile Row. This was no messenger boy.

  Austen decided he would give him a little time before he got up from his table and made contact; it would be entertaining to see how the guy behaved himself.

  Not very well, actually—at least, not by the standards Austen had learned to apply in Vietnam. This was an amateur. His hand kept sneaking down to caress the edges of his magazine, as if he worried that it might somehow have fallen out, and he was sweating; it was a cool night outside, and, although the place was kept reasonably warm (doubtless so the entertainment wouldn’t come down with goose pimples), our friend had found it necessary to wipe his face twice in the space of about a minute and a half. He was scared. This wasn’t the sort of thing he did regularly.

  Nobody else seemed to notice, however. Probably this was the way half the clowns who came in here looked, middle-aged corporate types in a perfect terror they might be seen by somebody from their tennis club.

  “How are you, Bernard?” Austen had been standing right behind him, and he was afraid for a second the guy was going to have a seizure. He put a hand on Bernard’s shoulder, the way you might steady a plank of wood to keep it from falling over. “You mustn’t be such a bundle of nerves, Bernard; somebody might think you weren’t having a good time.”

  The barmaid came up to them, her huge doughlike breasts swaying from side to side behind their little curtain of mint-green gossamer, and treated them to a look of bored inquiry. Austen smiled, lifting into view the beer glass he had been farsighted enough to bring along with him from his table, but the other man merely gaped, as if he couldn’t imagine what she wanted.

  “Order a beer, Bernard. It’s how they make their living here.”

  Bernard nodded mechanically and reached inside his jacket for his wallet, and the barmaid went away, to return in about fifteen seconds with a glass and a very wet brown bottle, both of which she held up delicately with first finger and thumb. Obviously a keen judge of human psychology, she short-changed him two dollars, and he stuffed the money into his pocket without noticing.

  Austen decided to keep the pressure up. He was curious; he didn’t like it when people involved him in things he was supposed to take on faith, and he didn’t have anything to lose by pushing just a little.

  “You’ve got something for me? Or perhaps we’re just here to drink in the atmosphere.” He waved his hand casually, seeming to take in the whole dismal scene, and grinned. “Perhaps you’d like me to tell my principal that you’ve thought better of it and he should just forget the whole thing.”

  It seemed to work. Bernard’s hand dove for cover in his trouser pocket and came out as a clenched first; when he opened it there was a small key with a red plastic handle, the number 437 embossed over it in white, lying in his palm. He stared at it stupidly for a moment, giving the impression he would have liked to remember where he had seen it before. Austen reached over and picked it up.

  “Grand Central Station—and tell Diederich that this pays all the bills, that this ends it and I want to be left alone.”

  Austen was sure he was bluffing and decided he would try his hand at that himself. His grin widened, and he put the key out of sight in his pocket. “You have an open-ended account, pal. You’ll be hearing from us again.”

  It seemed to be a terrible moment for Bernard. The man looked absolutely appalled; his eyes grew wide, and he appeared to be trying to swallow but without success. Then he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets and swept past and out into the night.

  “Your friend didn’t finish his beer.”

  It was the barmaid. Austen turned around to see her smiling loosely at him, as if they were sharing a joke. He smiled back, perhaps not very nicely.

  “No, he didn’t. But he didn’t miss much, did he.”

  He didn’t wait around for a reply.

  Outside he took a deep breath of the sweet cold air. It was lovely after the Peppermint Shack, with its hazy atmosphere of sweat and spilled beer; it was even quiet. He walked down toward Fifty-sixth Street, feeling as if he had stepped into a meadow in Wisconsin. He didn’t catch sight of Bernard again until he turned the corner.

  It didn’t amount to more than a guess and an impulse. Something about the way the man had hit the door suggested he would turn to the left, and Austen had decided to follow him. What the hell; he was still curious, and he didn’t have anything better to do. Besides, it was beginning to be sort of like the old days. The luggage locker in Grand Central Station could jolly well wait for a couple of hours.

  He didn’t really suppose he could keep it up for very long—Bernard would probably flag down a cab in a couple of minutes and disappear forever—but that wasn’t the way it worked out. Bernard just walked in a straight line without looking to the right or the left, as if his object were less to get somewhere than simply to pull himself together. After about half a block he took the Newsweek from his pocket and threw it angrily into a trash can, but for the rest he kept going doggedly on, his hands hanging limply down at his sides and his head bent. Austen kept to the other side of the street and gave him as much lead as he dared.

  At Fifth Avenue, his man stepped off the curb against the light and nearly got clipped by a bright red Datsun that swerved and sounded its horn and scurried off like an insect. This seemed to bring him to his senses, and he was a different person by the time he made it over to the East Side. He cut left and started toward the park, traveling more slowly now, paying attention in a normal way to his surroundings.

  Still he didn’t give any sign that he was tired of walking. Maybe he lived somewhere around here and was on his way home. People did live in midtown Manhattan, a few of them, the ones who could afford it, and this guy didn’t look like any socialist, with his pink, well-shaved face and his British suit. Could be he was a native of the place.

  Austen kept along behind, feeling like Exhibit Number One as he passed in front of the huge lit windows of the Doubleday bookstore, but his quarry gave no indication that he suspected anyone was following him. At Fifty-ninth Street they turned east again—yes, this was a man on his way home.

  Home turned out to be a brownstone between Madison and Park. Bernard let himself in with a key, and a few seconds later windows on the first and third floors went dark, so apparently the building hadn’t been cut up into flats. Bernard had the whole place to himself; he wasn’t poor. Austen waited for about three minutes and then crossed over to read the house number, which appeared on the iron paling that closed off the basement entrance, and the name on a brass plate just below the doorbell.

  Storey—Mr. Storey of number sixty-seven. Fine. Now we knew whom we were dealing with. He managed to get a taxi at Park and gave directions for Grand Central.

  . . . . .

  The package turned out to be just that, an oblong box, about three inches by five by two, wrapped up in brown paper. There was no writing on the outside, it didn’t rattle, and probably it didn’t weigh more than two or three ounces. Austen took a dollar bill out of his wallet and measured it against the top—too small. If there was any money inside there couldn’t be very much. Beyond that, it could be anything. Diamonds, microfilm, a bomb, somebody’s middle finger, a chocolate éclair, anything at all.

  After mature consideration, he decided against unwrapping it for a look inside. You never knew—it could be wired somehow, or there might be some elaborate and unobvio
us code worked into the wrapping itself. He was curious, but not that curious. After all, giving him the sack might be the least terrible thing Simon would think of to punish such a breach of confidence; they seemed to be playing by different rules lately.

  He dragged the telephone book out of the drawer under his hotel room night table and looked for a Storey with that address. There wasn’t one, which only proved the guy had an unlisted number. It wasn’t chic to be in the phone book. But anybody with the money to support a Manhattan townhouse was very likely to be of some significance in the world. Tomorrow morning, before his train left, he would drop by the Forty-second Street library and take a peek into Who’s Who. In this country, millionaires weren’t suffered to live anonymous lives; somebody had to have heard of Mr. Storey.

  “Tell Diederich that this pays all the bills. . .” And Diederich, the story went, was still out in California, waiting for the moving van to pull up behind his apartment. He hadn’t even warmed his new office chair yet, and already gilt-edged city slickers were dropping by the body shops to deliver mysterious packages for him.

  Austen changed into his pajamas and went into the bathroom to wash his face. This floor of the hotel showed all the symptoms of having been redecorated recently. The walls were a brilliant, rather synthetic-looking peach, and everywhere you looked there were mirrors—in the bathroom you had the feeling of being at the center of a crowd. He looked around at all the other Frank Austens who were busy drying their hands and wondered whether perhaps he shouldn’t take a vote.

  “What do you say, fellas?” he murmured to the walls. “Does it smell all right to you?”

  Apparently not.

  VII

  STOREY, CHESTER ARNOLD, banker; b. Weatherford, Tex., Apr.

  9, 1921; s. Walter and Ida (Taylor) S.; B.S., Harvard, 1946; Ph.D.,

  Columbia, 1948; m. Beatrice Patricia Howland, Aug. 5, 1950 (div.);

  children—Anita Hancock, Joyce Bennett; m. Susan Aldrich Lind, Jan.

  23, 1968 (div.). With Inland Sec. and Trust, 1948-55, 2d v.p., Cent.

  Manhattan Bank, 1955-58, v.p., 1958-61, sr. v.p., 1961-65, pres., chmn.

  bd., 1965—; also dir. Stillman Fund, 1967—, trustee Farleigh Univ.,

  1970—. Served from lt. (j.g.) to lt. comdr. USN, 1942-45. Recipient

  Navy Cross, 1944. Mem. Internat. Exec. Service Corps, Am. Philos.

  Soc., Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Republican. Episcopalian.

  Clubs: Harvard, Knickerbocker. Home: 67 E 61st St. New York City

  NY 1002l. Office: 388 Park Ave. New York City NY 10022.

  Certainly the least anyone could say about Howard Diederich was that he employed very high-class bagmen.

  Even on the train back to Washington Austen had a reasonable amount of trouble believing that someone had actually stepped out of the pages of Fortune and into a place like the Peppermint Shack for the purpose of handing over to him a package about half the size of a brick.

  The Senator was nowhere around the office, which was hardly surprising—Congress seemed to think that the weekend began immediately after lunch on Friday—so he deposited the package in the safe to which only he and Faircliff had the combination, per standard operating procedure. Then he went back to his own little cubicle and made a phone call.

  Forty minutes later he was seated in a small fish restaurant not half a mile from the University of Maryland. Austen hadn’t had lunch yet, and the place was particularly well known for its soft shell crab. Had he been consulting his stomach alone, however, he probably would have picked somewhere closer to Washington, or perhaps might even have contented himself with a peanut-butter sandwich in the privacy of his own apartment. He was there because he knew that in such a place, and at such an hour, he could be reasonably sure of not running into anybody he knew.

  The waiter had just brought him his clam chowder when Marty Eilberg came through the door. Austen thrust up a hand to attract his attention.

  “Sit down, Marty,” he said, smiling and making a sign to the waiter to bring another menu. “I’ve got your letter in my pocket, and all your problems in life are solved. How does New York grab you? You want to go to work for Central Manhattan Bank? Sit down and have some chowder—it’s freezing outside.”

  Marty didn’t so much sit as kind of wither into his chair. For several seconds he was simply an object on the other side of the table, unconscious of the waiter’s repeated attempts to put the menu into his hands, apparently unaware of anything except the three words that finally became his first intelligible response.

  “Central Manhattan Bank?”

  “You want a drink, Marty? Waiter, bring the man a scotch and water and some of that clam chowder.”

  “Central Manhattan Bank?”

  “That’s right.” Frank Austen held up the bread basket, shaking it once or twice, the way you might a rattle if you were trying to attract the attention of a child, and after a few seconds Marty Eilberg took a roll and set it down on the checkered tablecloth next to his place setting; it would be something like a quarter of an hour before he touched it again.

  “You ever heard of Chester Storey? He runs the joint. He’s a great friend and admirer of Simon’s, and he’ll probably take you on his personal staff if you play your cards right when you show him that letter.”

  The waiter came back with the chowder and a drink—it looked like something connected with the whiskey family, but God only knew—and Marty took a long swallow. After that he was his old self again.

  “Is that all I have to do, just ask for the job?” His eyes narrowed as if he suspected some sort of trap, which wasn’t so unreasonable of him. Austen smiled and nodded and broke open a roll, scattering pieces of crust here and there around his soup bowl.

  “Simon doesn’t know a thing about this,” he said, letting the smile die. “After I leave here, I won’t either. A little finesse is what’s called for—and a good memory. I want you to remember that it was me who put this in your way, Marty. I’m not interested in your gratitude, but it may happen one of these days that I’ll want you to do a little something for me, and I’ll want to hear from you from time to time, just to know how things are working out and how you’re hitting it off with Storey. I’ll expect you to bear that in mind for a long time.”

  . . . . .

  After that, the meal went off very well. Marty got it through his head that he was to suggest, merely suggest, that Simon Faircliff had been the one to advise him about applying to Central Manhattan, and that he might do well to make a glancing mention, at some point or another, of Howard Diederich. He wasn’t to suggest anything there; the magic of the name would have more potency if it were allowed to remain undiluted by any inferences that could possibly be checked. And he was supposed to keep Austen advised at all times of his home address and his telephone numbers, there and at work. He was to avoid any contact with Austen’s office; he could use the mails and write to him at his apartment. He digested all that and a great deal of lobster tail besides, and he left the restaurant a happy man.

  Austen’s feelings were a little more complicated. It didn’t make him feel any better to be on to something, since whatever it was could only be dangerous to himself or to Simon Faircliff—or both. It had occurred to him that Faircliff might know very little more than he did himself, that this all might be Diederich’s scam and that the boss man might need to be protected from his new lieutenant. It had also occurred to him that that might be nothing more than the way he wanted to read it. He was the head boy now; he wasn’t interested in having any rivals. The wish might be father to the thought. Well, he would have to see.

  The following Monday morning he finally saw Howard Diederich. That was a beginning. Senator Faircliff practically met Austen at the front door. “Come on, Frank,” he said, wrapping Austen’s shoulder in one hand as they stood by the coat closet. “Howard got in last night. I want you to meet him.”

  The introduction was simple enough. Diederich was in his office
, fishing objects out of one of the three packing cases that had come for him the Wednesday before. He straightened up when the two men filed through his door and shook hands. His sleeves were rolled up almost to the elbows, and Austen noticed that the man’s forearms were as thick as telephone poles. Clearly he wasn’t as tame as he looked.

  For the rest, he was a compact, self-possessed-looking man of about average height, very tidy in his dark gray trousers and his sleeveless charcoal sweater. In fact, everything about him suggested a certain grayness, as if he had been conceived entirely in monochrome. His eyes and his hair were black, but of a black that reminded you of heavily tarnished silver. And a smile kept struggling to express itself at the corners of his mouth, as if he were faintly amused at the impression he knew he must be creating. All in all, there was something very formidable about him. Austen didn’t like him any better than he had expected to.

  Faircliff seemed simply to withdraw to a safe distance, like a man watching a couple of dogs square off for a fight, a man who hasn’t yet made up his mind which way to place his wager.

  “I hope you’ve found a nice place to live,” Austen said.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve taken an apartment in the Watergate; it’s very comfortable.”

  “Spent much time in Washington before?”

  “No, not really. I lived in New York for a few years when I was younger, but somehow I never got down to Washington.”

  “Oh, really? Well, you won’t find this as lively as New York; Washington’s just kind of an overgrown company town.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. . .”

  It was similar to a thousand other conversations Frank Austen and everybody else in the world had every day. After the fifteen or twenty minutes mandated by common politeness, and after offering and being thanked for offering to do anything he could to help the new kid in the schoolyard find his way to the bathroom, Austen went back to his own office with the uncomfortable conviction that everything was up for grabs now, and that Simon would be watching, probably thinking it was all funny as hell, to see who came down with what.