“I don’t have any connection.”
“Where’d you get your information?”
“That, I’m not free to divulge, Mr. Garrett.”
“Dr. Palmer, I have to know.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, there can be no secrets between us — not on this can there be. And for another, I have to be sure you’re not being used as a catspaw.”
“A what?”
“A means to an end.”
“You mean, I could have been fed this tip as bait, so I would pass it on to you, and—”
“Exactly.”
“I assure you, it’s nothing like that.”
“You think it’s nothing like that.”
When I hung up, the senator, who had heard, shook his head gloomily. “I’m sorry, Lloyd,” he said, “but I had to sew it up. I couldn’t help it. There are things I can’t go into. It could cost me my seat to get mixed up in this mess.... Well, thanks for standing pat. I’d have expected it of you. Can’t say more than that.”
The food came and I ordered a bottle of Chablis, but he said: “Make it a split.” When the waitress brought it, she also brought the phone back, saying: “Long-distance call, Dr. Palmer. My, but you’re busy today.”
It was Mr. Garrett again. When I expressed surprise that he knew where I was, he said: “I called Hortense to find out what she knew, and she didn’t know anything except where you were and who with — which, of course, cleared up one thing right away. But while I was talking to her, Miss Immelman brought me the file, the stuff I have on Bagastex, and right now I’m looking at a memo I hadn’t seen before which makes it a whole new ball game — and how. So, Lloyd, once again, you’ve done it. Now let me talk to the senator.”
I hesitated a moment and then said: “I’ll see if he’s still here.”
Cupping my hand over the phone, I said to Senator Hood: “Do you want to talk to him? He found out I’m with you, from Hortense.”
“O.K., Paul Pry,” the senator said, taking the phone; “I’ll give you what help I can. But don’t quote me and don’t record this call. Is the bug on or off?... O.K., what do you want to know?”
He answered questions in a quick, straight-from-the-shoulder way, and I got a glimpse of the enormous body of knowledge a big shot has to have to be a big shot. I also got a glimpse of one of the crookedest deals I’ve ever heard of — a scheme with forty angles, to defraud investors, growers, creditors, contractors, machinery manufacturers, and the government. I understood at last why he couldn’t get mixed up in it. Finally he was done and handed the phone back to me.
“Lloyd,” Mr. Garrett said in a very friendly tone; “you did the right thing in protecting the senator until he chose to break silence. On that part, no hard feelings. I’ll be down in a couple of hours to look this building over, and if I like it, I’ll move in — or try to. So will you stand by at home for my call in case I need you? And will you tell Hortense I’m on my way?”
“You want this dope I have? The lawyer and so on?”
“I’ll have Miss Immelman take it.”
I got home around three and called Hortense. I told her that Garrett was on his way to Washington, but that left us dangling. We would have to stand by as we were, with no idea when we could see each other, and especially whether we could. But we had reached the point where we hungered for those nights, and I told her: “I feel funny inside, as though a vacuum were there.”
“You always say it exactly the way I feel it. It would look peculiar, though, if I weren’t here when he arrives.”
“You have to be there, of course.”
So we sweated it out. But around five he called me to say that he was at the Garrett Building and to meet him at Downing’s office. I drove in. The Pell Building is on Fourteenth Street below H Street, and I put the car in a New York Avenue parking lot and walked. But who did I meet, also walking, but Mr. Garrett! He waved and fell in step beside me. But he didn’t shake hands. At Downing’s office the girls had gone.
“We have the place to ourselves,” Downing said. He was a man around forty, slightly bald, and most deferential to Mr. Garrett, telling him: “Sir, you may not remember me, but I met you once, and I’ve heard you speak once or twice. I was the one on the front row, taking notes.”
“Yes, I remember you well,” said Mr. Garrett.
We laughed, and Mr. Garrett introduced me. “Dr. Palmer will sit in on this,” he said.
“Not with me, he won’t,” Downing said. “No one sits in on this but thee and me, Mr. Garrett.”
“Oh? You’ve got to that certain point?”
“What certain point?”
“Of excluding all witnesses.”
“Okay, call it that.”
They went into Downing’s private office while I tramped around the reception room and outer offices, the doors of which were open. I examined the big framed portraits of Roger Taney, Charles Evans Hughes, William Howard Taft, Earl Warren, and Warren Burger until I knew practically every fold of their robes. I did this for an hour. Every so often the snarl of Downing’s voice told me there might be a reason for excluding witnesses. Later, I found out that what the argument was about was what had been done by Colonel Lucas, the president of Tombigvannah when Bagastex began to sag. He had sold off Tombig subsidiaries, ostensibly for cash to operate with but actually to detach them from the crash when it came, so they would stay in the Lucas family, as the buyer was Lucas’s brother.
Garrett, while offering a decent deal — cash to the building contractor and ARMALCO stock for Tombig, on a three-for-one basis — was doing it only on the condition that Tombig recaptured the subsidiaries and bought them back for what had been paid. They included a cigar factory in Charleston, a breakfast food plant in Savannah, a lumber mill in Alabama, and a power plant near Augusta. The recapture stipulation was what Downing was snarling about. But Mr. Garrett didn’t snarl. He didn’t have to. He was holding trump cards, as he usually did. As a sort of preliminary to whatever might come up, he had bought stock some time before — Tombig stock — and he now told Downing: “O.K., we let the bankruptcy suit proceed, if that’s how you want to play it. But this afternoon or tomorrow, a stockholder who happened to buy in just in case, will file a complaint alleging fraudulent disposal of assets before involuntary bankruptcy, which is a felony. And if Leonard Downing’s a party to it, if it turns out that he helped compound the fraud, something very unpleasant is going to happen to Leonard Downing.”
“I see. I see.”
So that’s how things stood — at least as I piece them together now from what was told me later — when Mr. Garrett came out, closed the door, and dialed one of the secretary’s phones, still without looking at me. In a moment he began to talk in a low, guarded tone: “Sam?” — who seemed to be Sam Dent, my friend from the Dover trip — “Sam, I’m at a lawyer’s office, man named Leonard Downing, in the Pell Building. I need you here at once. Yes, it’s on that Tombigvannah thing.”
He hung up and then sat down in a chair, still paying no attention to me. Pretty soon Downing came out, half-sat on the typewriter table, and mopped his bald spot with his handkerchief. “Well,” he said, “we’re in luck. Colonel Lucas is on his way over. He just happened to be in town.”
“I thought he might be,” said Mr. Garrett.
“We could wind this thing up tonight.”
“I just talked to Sam Dent, my lawyer. He’s on his way.”
“Yeah, I know Sam.”
They paid no attention to me then or when various people arrived, in gabardines, summer suits, and shorts. Downing would jerk his thumb as soon as a new one showed, and he would join the others in one of the inner offices. Then a big, heavyset man came in. He had that brown mahogany color that stays outdoors all the time. His name, I later learned, was O’Connor. He was the contractor. Downing introduced him to Mr. Garrett, saying: “This is the Richard, Garrett, Jim. We’re trying to lay a deal — a three-way thing for cash, stock, and assets — that will clear up things for you. So act respectful.”