"He's not here, Mr. Brogan."
"How about tall, smart, and handsome?" he asked.
"Antony?" I said. "He's out too."
"Who's this, the swami kid?"
"Yes," I said.
"Okay, kid, it's going to have to be you, because I don't know when I'm going to have a chance to call back. Listen good. Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?"
I sat down at Schell's desk and lifted a pen. "I'm ready," I said.
"First, take down this name. The guy's in Huntington and has written a recent article, not too complimentary, about the ERO. He used to work there…a doctor, Manfred Stintson." He gave me less than two seconds and asked, "Got it?"
I was still writing when I said, "Yeah."
"Well, Schell asked me about the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor. Your old man has a knack for sniffing out the shit, 'cause this one stinks like there's no tomorrow."
He paused for a moment, and when he began speaking again, he sounded agitated, almost angry. "Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, founded in 1910 by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin. The main purpose was to study heredity in relation to the scientific work of Mendel. It's all about breeding, and it's all about breeding the perfect race. They started by tracing the heredity of anomalies like your buddies on the midway down in Coney-giants, dwarfs, six-finger guys, you know. Then they got into twins and albinos, imbeciles, any trait that could be traced back generations. Hey, I'll give you a hundred guesses what the model was for perfection."
"I've no idea," I said.
"Here's a clue. All of the people who support this have a heritage from northern Europe. We're talking Anglo-Saxon, white, blue eyes, get it? And there were and are some very powerful people behind this. The initial money came from the fortune of E. H. Harriman, to the tune of eleven million dollars. You also have donations from Carnegie and Rockefeller. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, moneymen like Prescott Bush. All were or are solid supporters of this crackpottery. And what is it they support? A beating back of the rising tide of, as they put it, 'feeblemindedness'; compulsory sterilization for those of less marked intelligence; distinct separation of the races; and stricter immigration and naturalization laws to keep the likes of you and also those of southern European extraction from sullying the lineage of the founders of the great USA. As far as these guys are concerned, the very Depression itself was caused by hereditary malcontents, imbeciles, and the shiftless masses draining the life from our culture. And kid, please tell me you realize that perfection is in the eye of the beholder."
I didn't understand that he actually wanted an answer, but when he didn't continue, I snapped to and said, "Certainly."
"Shiftlessness, by the way, is something these doctors at the ERO can apparently score for. Also things like 'musical intelligence.' That's not too subjective a determination is it? Christ, to normal society, I'm as shiftless as they come. I could see these guys wanting to make me a castrati. Can you imagine how annoying I'd be if my voice was even higher? This shit's everywhere, in school textbooks, in church sermons that say only the best should marry the best, in Congress, where the real idiots are passing laws to put this plan in place. Through the efforts of these arbiters of humanity, twenty-some-odd states have mandatory laws concerning the sterilization of anyone they consider to be of subpar intelligence. There's even talk of euthanasia. You know what that means? Who needs the fucking Ku Klux Klan when you've got these guys? This very year, the International Congress of Eugenics met, and, baby, they've got plans for you. Are you with me, kid, are you with me?"
"I'm here," I said.
"I'm going to give you a little prophecy from the illuminated mind of The Worm. Follow me on this. You think you've got it bad, well you do. Mexicans are seen as a poison in the bloodstream of true America. You're a shiftless and thieving lot. That goes without saying, and that's the main reason they want to round you all up and send you back. It's political, it's social, but they pretend it's a medical condition. But consider the Jews, they have none other than Henry Ford on their keisters. Henry's a major race baiter. In the newspaper he owns out in Deerborn, Michigan, he published a piece called 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' The bottom line: Jews need to be eradicated. He's spreading this stuff all over Europe as well. The Germans, who he does scads of business with, are loving the hell out of him. Take the fact that in his autobiography he claims to have gotten the concept for the assembly line from slaughterhouses and put that together with the money and influence these fools have, their desire to sweep humanity clean of anyone who doesn't look or think like them, and that equals dark days ahead, my young swami. The Worm has spoken."
The receiver went dead. My head was swimming, not only from the cyclone of Emmet's diatribe but also from its implications. A strange emotion filled me, but I was too stunned to place it. I went back into the living room and took my seat on the couch next to Isabel. I put my arms around her and held her tightly, closing my eyes. It came to me then that what I felt, like a snowball lodged in my chest slowly melting into my system, was fear. I felt as fragile as a butterfly, and no matter how tightly I held on to Isabel, I couldn't help but see, in my mind's eye, the image of a giant shoe, above me, descending.
A CHIMPANZEE IS CURIOUS
That evening, Schell tracked down Stintson's number through phone information and called, pretending to be a reporter for the New York Times who wanted to follow up on the professor's writings in opposition to the ERO. Apparently Stintson was eager to discuss the issue and bring his concerns to a wider audience. He invited Schell to visit him at his home the next day. I would accompany Schell and act as his assistant and photographer.
Early the next morning, as we tooled along Lawrence Hill Road, Schell told me, "I still haven't called the Barneses back to discuss the sйance. I have no idea what to tell them. They're looking for answers, and this thing just keeps getting more complex with zero payoff."
"Do you think Greaves had anything to do with it?" I asked.
"I doubt it," said Schell. "We're grasping at straws, focusing in on him. But he's all we've got at the moment. Granted, he's not likeable, he was on to our con, and he belongs to an organization that, as Emmet reported, and more than likely Dr. Stintson will corroborate, is practicing a rich man's subtle genocide on the weak, the lame, the hungry, and the foreign, but that doesn't mean that he murdered Charlotte Barnes. I'm afraid we've pretty much reached the end of the line with this."
"That's not going to look good for us, is it?" I said.
"Not if Barnes gets on the blower to his cronies and tells them we failed at what we have advertised as our expertise. No, that's going to be a direct hit on our business. Barnes probably knows every wealthy truebeliever on the Gold Coast of the North Shore. We may have to relocate. I've always thought Hollywood might be a good venue for us. Movie stars seem as if they'd be easy marks."
"I suppose this is a lesson in taking jobs for free," I said.
Schell shrugged, "Not the greatest policy, but we're still the richer for it."
"In what way?"
"You've found Isabel, and I've found Morgan. Money is not the only manifestation of good fortune."
There was something definitely wrong with Schell. It wasn't the sodden depression of a few weeks earlier, before the Parks sйance, but this optimism was completely unexpected. Was Schell becoming a romantic? I found it nearly as disturbing as the more mordant condition that preceded it. I mulled it over for a few minutes and was about to mention it to him, when he pulled up to the address Stintson had given him.