But Hoover noted the official stationery of the Georgia National Bank. The word "international" did catch his eye. And French and German, he reasoned. Hoover began to think. Washington was buzzing with rumors about America having to get into the espionage game, something the United States had never done in peacetime, either officially or unofficially. Hoover lived and slept with the vision of other investigative agencies being founded, principally at the expense of his own.
So the director's hand stayed for a moment above the wastebasket. Hoover picked up a pencil and drew neat script letters upon the upper left corner of the correspondence.
"Frank: See about this," he wrote.
Then he sent the letter along to Frank Lerrick, the Bureau's gaunt, short and unsmiling director of personnel, a Hoover crony since the 1920s.
The initial reports concerning William Cochrane returned to the director of the F.B.I. within five weeks. They were decidedly mixed. But Hoover reviewed them with interest. On the negative side. Cochrane's personal politics were unobtainable, primarily because he never discussed them with anyone. There was little chance, however, that he would turn out to be some crimson-hearted Bolshevik. By family and background, Cochrane appeared to be a conservative, quiet, introspective, softly spoken man, actually more equipped to handle investigations in an office and on paper than out in the field where a misstep could cost an agent his life.
Cochrane's father had been a major during the world war of 1914 -'18, which was seen as a plus. His mother was a librarian. Cochrane was born and raised in Virginia, where his father had been the editor of The Charlottesville Eagle after the Great War. He was the middle of three brothers. He had gone to college at William amp; Mary, where he had acquired the manners of a southern gentleman. There, proctors left the rooms during examinations and, in theory at least, a young man as to learn a sense of honor as well as his academic lessons.
Cochrane graduated magna cum laude in European history, then obtained a masters degree in business at the University of Pennsylvania, way up north in Philadelphia.
But certain countercurrents caught Hoover's eye. Cochrane had traveled abroad. He had also acted at a theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Cochrane had played Sam Evans in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and had even been a favorite of O'Neill himself, who occasionally lurched by for a performance.
One of Cochrane's former directors had gone on to bigger things in New York. To an investigating agent, the director had mentioned, "Cochrane's fine gift at impersonation as well as a stellar memory."
Other details stood out. In keeping with family tradition, Bill Cochrane had served in the military, a peaceful stint as an ordnance officer at Fort Bragg, South Carolina. And then there had been the tragedy about his family life. He had married in late 1932 to a young woman named Heather Andrews, the only daughter of a moneyed Atlanta family who traced their roots far back to prerevolutionary Georgia.
"So he's married?" asked Hoover. “He’s not a queer, is he?”
"Widowed," said Lerrick. "As of July of last year." They sat in Hoover's office with the report on Cochrane on the desk between them. "A highway accident. Their car was hit head on from the right side by a truck with a drunk driver. Cochrane came out of it badly banged up. But, uh, his wife did not come out of it at all."
Hoover pursed his lips.
"Some people think he's compensating for the loss of his wife by throwing himself headlong into his work. Know what I mean? Burying himself with work to forget?"
Hoover nodded. "Maybe it's why he wrote to us. New job. Change of location. Helps a man sometimes. Other times it makes him more zealous."
Hoover lofted his thin eyebrows, then relaxed them. Zeal did not bother him if it could be harnessed on behalf of the Bureau. "What else?" he asked.
Lerrick sat by quietly as Hoover rustled through various written accounts concerning Cochrane. The director took his time and concluded a careful reading of the personnel inquiry. Cochrane, he read, had intelligence and an outstanding knowledge of international banking which, when combined with his fluency in two European languages, presented certain special talents to the agency.
But the summary on him concluded:
He has talent and intellect. But there is a serious question as to whether he could take the toughening up and physical discipline needed to become an agent for this Bureau. Similarly, book smarts and acting talent do not call upon the street smarts which would also be essential to this position. His emotional stability is also a question at this time, due to the recent loss of his wife.
"Then what is the conclusion of our inquiry?" Hoover asked.
"His letter should be kept on file. Maybe he'll be needed someday. Maybe not. I, uh, don't think he's material for us. Not right now, anyway."
"Better think again. You had two agents investigating him?"
"Yes. That's correct."
Hoover asked for their names. Lerrick gave them.
"Have them reassigned before they embarrass us again," Hoover said. Then he tossed before Lerrick a second correspondence that he had received from William Cochrane. With the letter were clipped a series of black and white photographs which Cochrane had shot with a miniature camera concealed in his suit pocket. The photographs showed the two F.B.I. agents who had been following him over the course of two weeks. The note, on the stationery of the Georgia National Bank, read simply:
Mr. Hoover: If this is the quality of your surveillance teams, our enemies should be greatly comforted. Sincerely, Wm. T. Cochrane
Lerrick took the prints and thumbed them with suppressed anger. "So he's clever. I wonder how tough he is."
"Find out," Hoover requested.
In June of 1934, Bill Cochrane entered the National Police Academy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He neared completion of the five months of training that had a dropout rate of 43 percent. He drew excellent marks in all fields: crime scene analysis, visual memory, forensic chemistry, firearms, description, identification, unarmed attack, and selfdefense. From his days as a U.S. Army ordnance officer, he knew enough about high-level explosives to practically teach a course himself. He struggled with judo and bordered on mastering it. But one criticism remained.
"You still behave," Alan Farber, the academy's assistant judo instructor remarked sourly to Cochrane one afternoon, "like some piss-elegant Southern gentleman. Every time you throw somebody you're always saying, 'Sorry'!"
"Is that right?" asked Cochrane.
"You bet it's right, boy. And you can bet your pansy ass that it'll be in my report on Friday when I write it."
"Which hand do you write with?" Cochrane asked.
"Right! Why? What's it to you?"
"Just wondering. Sorry."
“That’s what’s wrong with you. Always apologizing!”
The next day, in a self-defense session, Farber's right hand was broken by an overzealous student who threw the assistant professor nine feet in the air during a drill on knife attacks.
"He's starting," typed Alan Farber with his left hand in the final report, "to look like an outstanding recruit. Maybe some good hard field work would roughen up a few of the smooth edges. It would also measure how good an agent he might someday become."
So upon graduation, Cochrane was sent to Kansas City, where he was soon going cheek-to-jowl with a gang of railroad-yard thieves. Then he was reassigned to Chicago, where he passed an engaging six weeks. Some Sicilian gorillas were edging into the funeral-home business at the expense of some honest German-American undertakers on the North Side, making substantial contributions to the overall funeral industry at the same time.