After an hour’s conversation and a close study of five letters of recommendation that Kensington had brought along from some Chicago and New York bankers that he had dealt with, the senior partner in the London merchant bank offered Kensington a job — at fifteen shillings a week.
“But that’s only three-fifty a week.”
“It’s something more than that, Mr. Kensington.”
“What?”
“It’s your first lesson.”
Three years later the merchant bank sent Kensington to New York to look after its considerable investments. “The day before I left for New York,” Kensington liked to say when telling the story, “the three senior partners had me in. Well, one of them said, ‘It won’t last, of course,’ and I said, ‘No.’ ‘Another two years,’ another one of them said, ‘three possibly.’ ‘Yes, three,’ the first one said. Then they had one of their nice little silences and after a while one of them said, ‘Do keep a sharp eye on things, Kensington,’ and another one of them said, ‘Mmmmm,’ which really meant, ‘You’d goddam better,’ so all I said was, ‘Of course,’ and because that’s all I said they seemed delighted.
“Well, I’d learned about money by then. I don’t mean to brag, but I’d learned what it is — and there ain’t maybe two dozen men in the world who know that. So for the next three years I made them money in the New York market, I mean a lot of money. Then in July of twenty-nine I sent ’em a coded cable that had just three words, ‘Get out now.’ Well, they did and that made ’em a whole bunch more money. Then in late August I sent them another coded cable, this time four words: ‘Maximum short position advised.’ Well, they wouldn’t. Now those fellas were about as smart a bunch of moneymen as you’re likely to run across, but when it comes to selling short you got to be just a little bit inhuman like a pirate, if you’re going to make any real money, because you’re betting on catastrophe and when you do that you’re betting against the hopes of millions, which again ain’t natural, and let me tell you it takes brassgutted nerve. Well, these fellas over in London didn’t have that much nerve, although they had a right smart amount, so I sent them a nice little letter of resignation and used every dime I had to sell short on my own. Well, you know what happened. By December of twenty-nine I was a millionaire and not just on paper either and I still wasn’t quite thirty years old.”
Kensington went on prospering through the next four decades, becoming enormously rich. He contributed sporadically and almost indiscriminately to various Democratic and Republican candidates who caught his fancy, set up a foundation “to ease my conscience,” he told the press, and, in an unofficial capacity, he ran various errands for half a dozen Presidents.
Now Kensington had taken on yet another Presidential chore, not because he relished it, but to pay off some old political debts and, as he put it, “to sort of help keep a lid on things, at least for a while yet.”
The fat old man scraped up the last of the cottage cheese and poked it into his mouth. He spotted a few morsels that he had missed and mashed them up through the tines of his fork and licked them off. He put the fork down a little sadly and looked across the table at Walter Penry, whom he considered to be a bit simple.
“So it doesn’t look too good for Cubbin?”
“No. Not too good.”
“Drinking too much?”
“Not so much that. They’ve got a couple of guys who keep him on pretty short rations. Or try to.”
“Been too long in his job, huh?”
“Partly. The big pitch is that he’s lost touch with the rank and file.”
Kensington snorted. “That all?”
“There’s more, but they’re saving it, at least that’s what Peter tells me.”
“He’s that funny little fella of yours, ain’t he? The one with the accent?”
“Yes.”
“He any good?”
“I think so.”
The old man looked down at his scraped plate. He abruptly shoved his chair back, muttered “to hell with it” as though to himself, and waddled across the living room of the hotel suite to its small kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, took out a container of Sara Lee Brownies, and carried it back to the table where he ripped off the top, carved out a four-inch-square chunk, and crammed it into his mouth, smiling at the comfort it gave him.
“That’s not on your diet, is it?” Penry said.
“No, it ain’t,” the old man said in a defensive tone. “You want some?”
“No, thanks.”
Kensington looked relieved. “About the only pleasure a mean old man like me has left, eating. Can’t drink because of my heart. Stopped smoking when I was twenty-four because it was a damn-fool habit. As for women, well, I just don’t think about that much anymore. Tell a damn lie, I just don’t do anything about it.”
Penry watched while the old man ate the rest of the cake and then carefully scraped up the crumbs and icing and ate that, too. The foil container looked as if it had been washed. He won’t last another year, Penry thought.
When Kensington was through with the cake, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the window of the hotel suite. “They claim to be pretty worried over there.”
“I can imagine,” Penry said. If he had gone to the window, he could have looked out over Lafayette Park and beyond it to the White House.
“It’s not because they love old Don Cubbin either.”
“No.”
“They’re worried about that other guy, Hanks.”
“Samuel Morse Hanks. Sammy Hanks.”
“Yeah, Sammy Hanks. He’s the dingdong daddy from Dumas or tries to be, don’t he?” Kensington said.
“It’s the image he’s cultivated over the years.”
“You still say that?”
“What?”
“Image.”
“Why, yes, I suppose I do.”
“Didn’t think anybody said that anymore.”
Penry made a note in what he thought of as his mental tickler file to make sure that he never used “image” again, at least not around Old Man Kensington.
“Well, what’s wrong with Hanks, don’t they pay him enough?”
“As secretary-treasurer he makes fifty-five a year, ten less than Cubbin. His expense account is just as good or better.”
“So it’s not money then?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” the old man said and began nodding his big head that was almost completely bald except for a fringe of cropped white hair around his ears and neck. He looks like a new baby, Penry thought for the fourth or fifth time that day. Like a new, smart, fat, sassy, red-faced baby.
The old man went on nodding for several moments, not conscious that he was doing it, but only of the thoughts that streaked through his mind. He could hold several thoughts in his mind at once and sometimes he wondered whether others could. Just now he was thinking about Sammy Hanks and what kind of a man he was and about whether Walter Penry was capable of successfully carrying out the assignment that he was about to be given, and just how long it would be before he could get rid of Penry so that he could get the remaining container of Sara Lee Golden Cake with the fudge icing out of the refrigerator.
“How old a man is Hanks, forty-three, forty-four?” Kensington said.
“Thirty-nine.”
“Ah.”
“How ‘ah’?”
“Well, he’s young enough to get his personal concern for the future of the union so mixed up with his personal ambition that he can’t tell ’em apart. He’s a pisscutter, huh?”