«You’re going to do a lot of damage.»
«And there are a lot of people I’ll feel genuinely sorry for. I’ll probably end up giving them a hand, if that’ll make you feel better.»
«Horseshit! I don’t give a goddamn about people. I care, care deeply, about this country… There isn’t time for you. We can’t slide back!» Bonner was breathing too hard now, and Andy recognized it.
«Okay, Paul. Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.»
Bonner closed his eyes. «Will … you listen to me tomorrow? Will you consider letting us clean our own house?… Will you stop?… We can clean our own house.» He opened his eyes and stared at Andy.
Trevayne thought for a moment of the rodentlike Roderick Bruce who wanted to crucify Paul Bonner. How he had refused to be cowed by the newsman’s threats. Bonner would never know that. «I respect you, Paul. If the rest were like you, I’d consider the question. But they’re not, and the answer is no.»
«Then go to hell… Don’t come around tomorrow; I don’t want to see you.»
«All right.»
Bonner was falling off to sleep. The sleep of a wounded, hurt man. «I’m going to fight you, Trevayne…»
His eyes closed, and Andy let himself out quietly.
32
Trevayne awoke early, before seven o’clock. Outside the bedroom window the morning looked incredibly peaceful. The snow had reached perhaps three inches; enough to cover, but not so heavy as to warp the perfect designs of nature. Beyond the pines and the thousands of speckled foliage on the ocean slope, the water was calm, slowed down for the winter months; only the waves hitting the rocks were irascible, still fighting for identity. This was, after all, the sea.
Andrew decided to make his own breakfast. He didn’t want to ring Lillian. She had been through so much.
He spread the yellow pages he’d gathered up from his study desk over the kitchen table. The writing was large, hastily scribbled. It consisted of half-sentences and brief notations, proper nouns and corporate titles. It was the information Vicarson had compiled on Aaron Green: much of it extracted from Who’s Who; some from public Securities Exchange prospectus files; the remainder—the specifics on personal habits—from a creative director of the Green Agency in New York. The creative head was under the impression that Sam represented a television documentary firm contemplating a feature on Green.
So simple… Games. But not for children.
Green was not from Birmingham’s Our Crowd, as Alan Martin had suggested. There were no Lehmans or Strauses in his family background, no old German-Jewish money giving him entree into the hallowed houses of Seligman or Manfried. Instead, Aaron Green was an immigrant refugee from Stuttgart who arrived in the United States in 1939 at the age of forty. Very little was listed about his life in Germany other than the fact that he’d been a sales representative for a large printing company, Schreibwaren, with branch offices in Berlin and Hamburg. Apparently he’d been married in the late twenties, but the marriage ended before he left Germany just ahead of the Nazi boot. In America, Aaron Green’s success was quiet but meteoric. Together with several other older refugees he formed a small printing company in lower Manhattan. Using the advanced plate techniques developed at Schreibwaren—soon to become Hitler’s (Goebbels’) propaganda printing base—the small firm’s ability to outproduce larger competitors soon became apparent to New York’s diverse publishing needs. In a matter of two years the firm had expanded its quarters fourfold; Green, as spokesman, had obtained temporary patents of the Schreibwaren process in his own name; the rest was publishing-printing history.
With America’s formal entry into the war and the resultant restrictions on paper and print, only the most efficient survived. And in an industry notorious for trial-and-error waste, Green’s operation had a decided advantage. The Schreibwaren process reduced the waste factor to an unheard-of degree, and consequently the production speed was accelerated beyond competitors’ imaginations.
Aaron Green’s company was awarded huge government printing contracts.
War contracts.
«My old associates speak for Nazi Schlange; I, for the lady with the torch. I ask you, who is on the side of the angels?»
At this juncture, Aaron Green made several decisions which ensured his future. He bought out his partners, moved his plant out of Manhattan into inexpensive acreage in southern New Jersey, scoured the immigration rolls for grateful employees, and literally repopulated a dying town with European transplants.
The price of the New Jersey land was negligible, but wouldn’t always remain so; the expanding payrolls were peopled with men and women who looked upon their employer as a savior—the concept of organized labor, unionism, was unthinkable; and once the initial shock of «all those Jews» moving into the area was overcome and a temple built, Aaron Green’s millions were secure. For as his profits accumulated, he purchased additional land for postwar growth and diversification.
A ride down New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway to this day bore witness to Green’s financial acumen, thought Trevayne as he turned over a yellow page.
After the war, Aaron Green found new interests. He foresaw the enormous profits intrinsic to the rapidly developing television industry, and chose to reach them through advertising. The creativity of the written, spoken, and visualized word.
It was as if the postwar era was waiting for his combined talents. Aaron Green formed the Green Agency and staffed it with the brightest minds he could find. His millions allowed him to raid the best men in existing agencies; his printing facilities afforded him the capability of luring away accounts from others with contracts competitors couldn’t match; his contacts within government circles kept antitrust suits at bay, and by the time the television revenue schedules were set, Green’s sudden supremacy in magazines, newspapers, and print promotions made the Green Agency the most sought-after advertising firm in New York.
The personal life of Aaron Green was clouded. He had remarried; had two sons and a daughter; lived on Long Island in a mansion that had twenty-odd rooms and gardens rivaling the Tuileries; gave with extraordinary generosity to many charities; published quality literature with no thoughts of profit; and was an espouser of liberal causes. He contributed to political campaigns without much concern for parties, but with a sharp eye for social reform. He had, however, a quirk which ultimately caused him to be brought into court by the American Civil Liberties Union, joined, reluctantly, by the U.S. Employment Service. He refused to hire employees of German extraction. A non-Jewish German name was sufficient to disqualify an applicant.
Aaron Green paid the fines and quietly continued the practice.
Trevayne finished his breakfast and tried to form a picture of Green.
Why Genessee Industries? Why the covert support of the same type of militaristic purpose he’d escaped from and obviously still held in contempt. A man who succored the dispossessed and championed liberal reforms was not a logical advocate of the Pentagon.
At the Westchester airport he returned the rented car, made arrangements for the jet to be flown to La Guardia, later in the day, and hired a helicopter to fly him to Hampton Bays in central Long Island.
At Hampton Bays he rented another car and drove south to the town of Sail Harbor. To Aaron Green’s home.
He arrived at the gates at eleven o’clock, and when a startled Green greeted him in the living room, the look in Green’s eyes told him that the old gentleman had been alerted.
Aaron Green’s handsome Semitic features were creased; there was both sorrow and anger in his countenance. His voice—deep, vibrant, still possessed of an accent after more than thirty years—emerged like the gentle roll of kettle drums.