Galloway continued. “Aside from the fact that, frankly, I don’t give a damn about my wife, I really would be a fool to do anything harmful to the Hun. He was a meal ticket. The local hero. God, his fans go back to high school around here. A lot of the fans come out just to see him. You can check for yourselves. On home dates, when it’s known beforehand that he’s hurt and not going to play, there have been more no-shows than at other games.
“And now, gentlemen, the Hun will be permanently absent from our games. I’ve got to address that problem. And it’d better be a pretty damn smart move I make, whatever it is. That’s what I’m busy with this morning. So if there are no further questions-”
“Not just now, Mr. Galloway,” said Ewing. “There may be more later. Thank you for your help.”
The two policemen and the priest rose and left the office in silence.
“Want some lunch now?” Ewing asked.
Harris checked his watch. “Let’s hit on the other executives while we’re up here.”
“Okay,” said Ewing. “On to Dave Whitman.”
They began walking down the corridor, eerily quiet in the gigantic stadium.
“Whatcha think, Father?” Ewing asked.
“Well,” said Koesler, “for what it’s worth I think he lied about the strychnine.”
“What?”
“As I told you, Hank clearly mentioned that he had a supply of strychnine in the apartment. And not only was Mr. Galloway present, but I remember his making some comment about it.”
“No shit!” Ewing murmured.
“I should never doubt Walt Koznicki,” said Harris. “Every once in a while he is capable of an absolutely inspired idea.”
“Bring it in. Bring it home. We had to do it. They depended on us.”
Although he had an exemplary father, young Dave Whitman’s role model of choice was his paternal grandfather, a railroader of the old school.
Whitman’s father, Robert, was a surgeon. He also was for many terms a Minnesota state senator. A rare combination. Understandably, he was held in high esteem in the community. Also understandably, he was seldom home. On those few occasions when he was both home and not otherwise occupied, he spent as much time as possible with his son and two daughters.
The daughters were very close to their mother. Dr. Whitman thought that appropriate. But he was particularly pleased that young Dave attached himself to his grandfather. As he grew up, the doctor had related well to his father, Bernard. Especially since he was forced to be away much of the time, Dr. Whitman could think of few others he could wish his own son to copy more than the man the doctor had patterned himself after. In fact, when in a nostalgic mood, the doctor frequently envied his son’s relationship with the old man.
Before David was in his teens, Bernard Whitman was nearing his eighties. Although of English rather than Scandinavian extraction, Bernard was a stereotype of what one might expect a native Minnesotan to be. In his late years, Bernard looked as if he’d been chiseled out of rock. Years of facing a frigid unrelenting winter wind had cut deep ridges in his face. Once he had been a huge man. Now his big-boned body was pencil-thin, skin taut over the bones. His hands remained large and gnarled.
Many an evening, Dave would sit at his grandfather’s knee near the fireplace and listen eagerly to the oft told tales.
“Things were different when I was a lad, David. I was a country boy up near Duluth. There was no Reserve Mining. Just the Lake.” (Grandpa never gave Superior its name, but always referred to it as if it were uppercased.) “And some homesteaders, some Indians, and the land to care for so it would care for us. And I was eager and ambitious. From the first time I ever saw a train I knew that was going to be my life.
“I started as a hostler, a laborer. I’d clean the shop and the pits, prepare the engines, knock the fire out, clean the ashes. That’s the bottom, David.”
Dave had guessed, before being told, that that was so.
“Then I became a fireman in the engine. That was hard work.”
Dave’s eyes would drop from his grandfather’s face to his work-worn hands; he could understand just how hard that work had been.
“Then I passed an examination to be the engineer, gained my seniority, and got to be able to pick my runs. When business got bad, I’d go back to being a fireman. In the 1929 depression, I lost about twenty years’ seniority for two or three days.”
Grandpa was with the Minneapolis, Northfield amp; Southern Railroad for fifty-one years. Regularly, he would sum it up for his grandson: “Indeed, David, it was a thrill. We’d travel under all kinds of conditions-storms, faulty engines. But there was the thrill of getting the fireman to get up speed. We had to get ’er over the hill. There were no excuses. We had to come through.”
Of all his grandfather’s many reminiscences, David was most impressed by two quasi-creeds by which Grandpa lived. One, in proof of maturity, was, “There were no excuses; we had to come through.”
When at last grandfather retired from the railroad, “I was still eager for something ahead of me to inspire me.”
He found it in the Minneapolis Society for the Blind. “I always pitied the handicap of the blind. I got sympathetic watching the blind travel. Well, sir, one day the Society for the Blind had an open house, and I attended.
“I always wondered how a blind man could operate a power saw. It seemed like suicide to me. So I sneaked away from the open-house crowd and walked over to talk with some men who were working with wood. One of the supervisors asked me if I would like to volunteer. Right then I knew that this was where I wanted to be.
“First I had to learn how to use power tools before I could learn how to teach the blind in their use.
“But I was left alone to teach them. Which was good. I never liked to have a boss over my shoulder. All my life I had to depend on myself to bring myself in.”
That was the second maxim by which grandpa lived. Young David Whitman determined to live his life in the same way. He would make no excuses. And, to the extent possible, he would have no boss over his shoulder. Certainly he would never depend upon a boss for motivation. He would depend upon himself to bring himself in.
Tempering these challenging goals was a subtle but almost ever-present sense of humor. When filling out application forms for the University of Minnesota, Dave had answered the question “Church preference?” with “Gothic.” Fortunately for the fledgling collegian, the admissions dean also had a sense of humor.
After an outstanding tour through academe, he was recruited by and joined the public relations section of International Multifoods. As IM expected, he was very good. He quickly built excellent relations with the community-and with the media, to whom he was a genuine help. They learned to trust him.
However, there was a boss over his shoulder. Whitman certainly did not depend on anyone else for motivation in his work. But bosses, even approving bosses, would not go away.
Thus, when his childhood friend, Jay Galloway, pressed Whitman to join an independent venture in publishing, his inclination was to abandon the giant corporation and its multiple bosses and get in on the ground floor of something new and exciting. It took him a considerable time to convince his wife, Kate, of the wisdom, even of the necessity of the new gamble. But he succeeded, as he knew he would.
It was not long before disenchantment set in. It was not that Whitman did not believe Galloway could succeed. Indeed, it was probable he would. But no sooner did Whitman begin working for Galloway than an air of contempt began to be detectable.
Whitman could have ignored that. But Galloway had an irredeemable habit of cutting corners, playing fast and loose with rules, relying only on hope to get away with his unending fiscal peccadilloes. Sometimes Whitman wished Galloway would just commit one serious crime rather than all those minor offenses, the total penalty for which would be approximately the same as for a felony.