«Speaking frankly, I wouldn’t think he’s at all the type.»
«Sometimes they go for that, Pinky. You know, rotten casting turns out the best casting. Also speaking frankly, a lot of these lousy long-haired, dirty-minded directors stink up the big screen with that kind of thing. I hear they wanted Myrna to use the S word a couple of years ago, can you believe it?»
«It’s difficult, Mr. President. But I know you’re busy—»
«Heck no, Pinky. Mommy and I are just watching Wheel of Fortune. You know, she beats me a lot, but I don’t care. I’m President and she’s not.»
«Very understanding. Could you just possibly make a few inquiries for me on this matter?»
«Oh, sure. I wrote it down. Devereaux—D-e-v-a-r-o, right?»
«That will do, sir.»
Twenty minutes later the President had called him back. «Oh, wow, Pinky! I think you stepped into it!»
«Into what, Mr. President?»
«My people tell me that ‘outside of China’—those were the words—whatever this Devereaux did had ‘absolutely nothing to do with the United States government’—those, too, were the exact words, I wrote them down. Then when I pressed them, they told me I didn’t ‘want to know’—»
«Yes, of course, the exact words. It’s called deniability, Mr. President.»
«There’s a lot of that going around, isn’t there?»
Aaron paused on the path and looked up at the grand old house, thinking about Sam Devereaux and the rather odd, even touching way he had grown up in this gracefully restored relic from a far more graceful era. In truth, considered the vaunted attorney, the sparkling restoration had not always been in evidence; for years there had been the aura of neat but shabby gentility about the place rather than the current facade of spanking new paint and a manicured front law. These days, care was lavished continuously, no expense spared—spared, that was, ever since Sam had returned to civilian life after a five-month disappearing act. As a matter of course, Pinkus always studied the personal and academic histories of each potential employee of his firm so as to avoid heartbreak or a mistake. Young Devereaux’s résumé had caught his eye as well as his curiosity, and he had frequently driven by the old house in Weston, wondering what secrets were held within its Victorian walls.
The father, Lansing Devereaux III, had been a scion of the Boston Brahmin elite on a par with the Cabots and the Lodges, but with one glaring aberration. He was a bold risktaker in the world of high finance, far more capable of losing money than hoarding it. He had been a good man, if somewhat wild and tempestuous, a hard worker who had opened doors of opportunity for many, but for himself saw too few initiatives come to fruition. While watching a stock market report on television, he had died of a stroke when Sam was a boy of nine, leaving his widow and his son a fine name, a grand residence, and insufficient insurance to maintain the lifestyle to which they were accustomed and the appearance of which Eleanor refused to abandon.
As a result, Samuel Lansing Devereaux became that contradiction among the wealthy, a scholarship boy who waited on tables at Phillips Andover. While his classmates attended proms, he tended a snack bar at those proms; and when his increasingly distant acquaintances in the social set entered regattas on the Cape, he worked on the roads they traveled leading to Dennis and Hyannis. He also worked on his studies, like a young man possessed, fully understanding that academia was the only route back to the affluent world of the ancestral Devereauxes. Besides, he was sick of being merely an observer of the good life instead of a participant.
More generous scholarships followed at Harvard and its Law School, his expense monies supplemented quite nicely by a heavy schedule of tutoring his brother and sister classmates, the preponderance of whom were the latter as there were frequently bonuses having nothing to do with finance. There followed an auspicious beginning at Aaron Pinkus Associates, menacingly interrupted by the United States Army, which, in the era of massive Pentagon expansion, desperately needed all the lawyers it could dredge up to forestall wholesale indictments of its procurement personnel on bases at home and abroad. The fascist military computers unearthed a long-forgotten deferment granted one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, and the armed services gained a handsome, if pathetic, soldier, but one with a superb legal brain, which they used and obviously abused.
What had happened to him? questioned Pinkus in the silence of his mind. What horrible events had taken place years ago that had come back to haunt him now? To warp and, at times, to short-circuit that extraordinary mind, a mind that cut through legalistic abstractions and made common sense out of the most abstruse constitutional interpretations, so that judges and juries alike were in awe of his erudition and his deeply penetrating analyses.
Something had happened, concluded Aaron, approaching the huge front door, replete with antique beveled panes of glass in the upper panel. Also, where did Sam ever get the money to restore the damn house to begin with? Pinkus was, indeed, generous with his outstanding and, in truth, his favorite employee, but not to the extent that he could pour a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars into the renovation of the family residence. Where had the cash come from? Drugs? Laundering money? Insider trading? Selling illegal armaments abroad? None made sense where Sam Devereaux was concerned. He’d be a total bust at any of those endeavors; he was a klutz where subterfuge was concerned. He was—God in heaven be praised—a truly honest man in a world of worms. This judgment, however, did not explain the apparently inexplicable—the money. Several years ago, when Aaron had casually mentioned the fine improvements made on the house, which he drove by frequently on his way home, Samuel had, with equal casualness, offered that a well-to-do Devereaux relative had passed away and left his mother a very decent bequest.
Pinkus had pored over the probate rolls and the taxable inheritance records only to discover that there was no such relative and no such bequest. And he knew deep in his religious heart that whatever was plaguing Sam now had something to do with his unexplained affluence. What was it? Perhaps the answer was hidden inside this grand old house. He rang the bell—bass-toned chimes, naturally.
A full minute passed before the door was opened by a plumpish middle-aged maid in a starched green and white uniform. «Sir?» she said, somewhat more coldly than was necessary, thought Aaron.
«Mrs. Devereaux,» replied Pinkus. «I believe she’s expecting me.»
«Oh, you’re the one,» responded the maid, perhaps even more icily, thought Aaron. «Well, I hope you like the damn chamomile tea, Buster, it sure isn’t my taste. Come on in.»
«Thank you.» The celebrated but less than physically imposing attorney walked into the foyer of Norwegian rose marble, his mental computer estimating its extravagant cost. «And what variety do you prefer, my dear?» he asked pointlessly.
«A cup laced with rye!» exclaimed the woman, laughing raucously and jabbing her elbow into Pinkus’s frail shoulder.
«I’ll remember that when we have high tea at the Ritz some afternoon.»
«That’ll be the Jesus-lovin’ day, won’t it, little fella?»
«I beg your pardon?»
«Go on through those double doors over there,» continued the maid, gesturing to her left. «The hoity-toity’s waiting for you. Me, I got work to do.» With that command-cum-explanation, the woman turned and walked without precision across the expensive floor, disappearing beyond the elegantly balustraded winding staircase.