“Nicodemus Boffin,” Brother Oliver said, rather unexpectedly, “was a character in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. He was so in love with books that he kept buying wagonloads of them, even though he didn’t know how to read.”
“Now, there’s a friend of writers,” said Brother Dexter. “I can see why they named their club after him.”
“But the founders of the Boffin Club,” Brother Clemence said, “were mostly radio writers. This was back in the twenties. They’ve had some playwrights and television writers over the years, but very few novelists. And in fact the membership has declined very badly in the last ten years or so.”
Brother Dexter said, “I believe that’s the case with all clubs of that sort. Society changed after the Second World War, something happened, people aren’t as interested in social clubs as they once were.”
Brother Clemence said, “I don’t know about any other clubs, but the Boffin Club is in very bad shape. Most of the founders are gone, the remaining members are generally older men who don’t do that much writing anymore and don’t have as much money as they used to. The club’s been on the brink of bankruptcy for years. Brother Jerome has a friend over there who’s told him the situation.”
Brother Jerome lifted his sleeves and lowered his eyebrows. “Tim,” he said.
“That’s right,” said Brother Clemence.
Sleeves up, eyebrows down. “Action writer.”
Brother Clemence nodded. “Yes. It seems this fellow Tim used to make a very good living as a writer. He wrote radio shows like The Shadow and a lot of short stories for the old pulp magazines. Had an estate out on Long Island.”
Sleeves, eyebrows. “Hindenburg.”
“That’s right,” Brother Clemence said. “He was a passenger on the zeppelin Hindenburg. Not the time it blew up, of course.”
Sleeves, eyebrows. “Himalayas.”
“I think,” Brother Oliver said firmly, “we’ve heard all we need to hear about the adventures of Brother Jerome’s friend Tim.”
“Well, you get the picture,” Brother Clemence said. “These days, Tim lives at the club. He’s sort of a janitor-watchman, in return for room and board, and he tells Jerome the membership is delighted at the thought of selling the place. They’ll make a nice profit on it, pay off their mortgages and other debts and still have some cash left over to distribute to the remaining members. They had a private meeting several months ago, and Tim was the only member to vote against making the sale.”
Sleeves and eyebrows. “Granddaughter.”
“Yes. If the club is torn down, Tim will have to go live with his granddaughter in Racine, Wisconsin.”
S & E. “Women’s Lib.”
“Thank you, Brothers,” Brother Oliver said, raising his hand to halt the flow of information. “I think that’s all we need to know about the Boffin Club.”
Brother Dexter said, “You say Capitalists and Immigrants Trust holds the mortgage on the club?”
Brother Clemence nodded. “That’s what Tim told Jerome, yes.”
“So the bank,” said Brother Dexter, “has yet another reason to want this construction project to go forward. If the club is sold, the bank gets a full return on the mortgage. If it isn’t sold, but goes into bankruptcy, the bank gets only a percentage return on the dollar. Possibly only twenty or twenty-five percent.”
Brother Oliver said, “I’m beginning to lose sight of the enemy here. At first I thought we were struggling against Dan Flattery. Then I thought it was Dwarfmann, or at least Dwarfmann’s company, or at least this man Snopes. Now you say the true villain in the piece is this bank.”
“Not villain,” said Brother Dexter. “The bank isn’t doing anything illegal, or even morally wrong. The bank has investments, and is both legally and ethically required to safeguard those investments and bring in the best possible return for the shareholders. This is a perfectly ordinary business proposition, in which a new commercial building is put up. The bank’s interests are affected in several different ways, but there’s no conflict of interest.”
“I wish I shared your objectivity, Brother,” Brother Oliver said. “But I keep feeling the weight of those slabs pressing down on the top of my head.”
Brother Dexter offered us his thin cool smile. “I’ll grant you it’s unfortunate,” he said, “that we’re the toad beneath the harrow this time. But if we’re going to prevail in this situation, and I hope we are, I think it imperative we have the clearest possible picture of what’s going on.”
I expected Brother Oliver to stumble on that toad-harrow thing, but apparently he knew his Kipling as well as his Dickens, because he simply nodded and said, “The clearest possible picture. How I’ve been looking forward to seeing it.” Turning back to Brother Clemence he said, “You and Brother Jerome have one building to go, don’t you? The one on the corner with the, uh, shop in it.”
We all knew he meant the Buttock Boutique. There was a general clearing of throats, and then Brother Clemence said, “Well, yes. The tenant in there, the, uh, shop, they don’t want to be evicted any more than we do, but the landlord is once again very very happy to get out from under a financial headache.”
Brother Jerome geared himself up toward speech in the usual way, and said, “Tell them about the rear end.”
“Uhh, yes,” Brother Clemence said. “Jerome,” he quickly told us, “is referring to the back of the building. The situation is, once again, a little complex. The building was moved to that site in the eighteen-fifties.”
“Moved there?” Brother Oliver expressed our general surprise. “That’s a very large building.”
“That’s right. In fact, it was too large to move. As this place would be, for instance. Even if we were to find another site, the monastery wouldn’t survive being moved.”
“Disassemble,” said Brother Jerome. His sleeve slid back down.
Brother Clemence shook his head. “If this building were taken apart,” he said, “two-hundred-year-old stone walls, two-hundred-year-old beams, wooden floors, all the rest of it, there’d be so much crumbling and decay and destruction we’d never get it back together again.”
“Please,” said Brother Oliver. “We were talking about the building with the, uh, shop in it.”
“Yes.” Brother Clemence got back on the track, saying, “That building was originally northwest of here, in the area that became Central Park. It was one of the few buildings in that rectangle worth saving. A retired slave ship captain named Brinley Chansberger bought it from its original owner and had it moved on great log rollers over to its present location. But in the process, the rear wall was severely weakened, and several times in the latter half of the nineteenth century portions of floors collapsed, or windows abruptly fell out into the back garden, or half a dozen bricks would suddenly spurt out into the air for no reason. Chansberger spent much of his slave-trading fortune trying to repair the place, and when he died his heirs sold it to the city, who turned it into a firehouse.”
Brother Oliver rested his elbow on the table and his forehead on his cupped hand. “I do believe,” he said, “these histories of yours are getting longer.”
“There’s not much more to this one,” Brother Clemence promised. “The building was never very good as a firehouse. The city spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, adding their own municipal architecture gloss to Chansberger’s nautical alterations to a sort of basic townhouse original structure. Then, when in the late twenties a hook and ladder about to race out in response to a fire alarm suddenly fell through the floor into the basement instead, the city put the place up for auction. A combine consisting mostly of uncles and cousins of City Council members bought the place on the cheap, and there’ve been any number of tenants in the fifty years since. But the building still isn’t structurally sound, and hasn’t been for a hundred and twenty-five years. Inside it now, Jerome tells me, it’s a mishmash of styles and architectural monstrosities, with support walls all over the place and bricked-up doorways here and there, and the general feeling is that political influence is the only thing keeping the building from simply falling down and dying. Reputable tenants won’t go near the place, so it winds up renting to tenants like the, uh, shop. Which lowers the tone of the entire area, of course. So that not only do the owners want to sell, but many other owners in this neighborhood favor the Dwarfmann plan if only because it will rid the section of that eyesore.”