Death Shall Overcome Page 8

  “Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Now our High-Sky Patrol . . . crackle, crackle . . . an accident on the Long Island Expressway . . .”

  At the Club, to use a technical term, all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 7

  Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken

  AS MIGHT have been anticipated, Richard Simpson’s ominous words, “A March on Wall Street,” swiftly relegated the murder of Arthur Foote and the attack on Edward Parry to the mists of ancient history. A number of prominent financiers forgot their newly formed habit of carefully inspecting all nutriment served south of City Hall; in the same area the sales of the collected works of Richard Simpson quadrupled. The financial community, in an orgy of self-absorption, abandoned itself to emotional reactions, ranging from stark bewilderment through cold fury to mindless frenzy. The mighty institutions of lower Manhattan, galvanized by the tocsins of total war and mindful of extensive casualties yet to come, could no longer respond to the tragedy of individual death.

  Or perhaps it was even simpler. The targets of Richard Simpson’s crusade were the most powerful stockbrokers, the most influential bankers, the most important lawyers in the world. Daily they made decisions that shaped the destinies of people and nations. Naturally, they disliked feeling helpless in the grip of forces bigger than they were. Wall Street was enraged—and surprised—to discover that there were bigger forces. And so, voices were raised with more heat than had been evoked since the nation went off the Gold Standard, and Wall Streeters in expensive tailoring raged with unwonted vigor.

  At the heart of the vortex around which these disturbances eddied, was the New York Stock Exchange. The Exchange is a complex body; its work is performed by eleven hundred employees and its ruling organ, the Board of Governors, consists of 33 people, 29 representing the individuals and firms which are members of the Exchange, 3 functioning as nominal representatives of the public, and the President of the Exchange. The President is the Exchange’s executive head, whose main function is to steer an uneasy course past the demands of the Staff, periodically erupting with policies of its own development, the members mired in internecine politics and time-hardened customs of the trade, and the Board.

  The President breaks into print in two ways—in the glossy brochures published by the Exchange that cozily remind everyone that stockholders are just ordinary people, and in the public press during his frequent joustings with the SEC. The Governors representing the public emerge only when some more than ordinarily selfless statement is required. The remaining Governors try to stay on top of everybody else. It is rare indeed that any unanimity can be achieved among these diverse elements. But the specter of Richard Simpson succeeded in awaking several thousand people to a common need.

  They wanted somebody else to hold the baby.

  The Exchange was opting for a neutrality so rigid that it would justify ignorance of the passions roiling through the Street. In high places telephones began to ring and rolling phrases echoed through the marble halls of the mighty.

  “If the financial community were to form a small, independent committee to . . . er . . . ensure that fairness and scrupulous disinterest will be the order of the day, it would be of inestimable assistance to the Exchange,” said one of its spokesmen.

  “The Exchange and the rest of the community must not be directly involved,” said a kindred spirit. “Now a committee could . . . er . . . focus the attention of these dissident elements and allow the rest of us to continue with our work.”

  A more outspoken representative eschewed nobility for frank speaking. “God knows we can’t talk to these people. And somebody has to. Now, if one of your partners were to be on this committee. . . .”

  It says much for the insularity of Wall Street that by three o’clock the next day it had convinced itself that a committee composed of an outstanding broker, lawyer and banker, all Wall Street denizens, would commend itself to the rest of the world as fair-minded, independent and impartial. Absolutely impartial.

  The Committee of Three had as its members Hugh Waymark, Stanton Carruthers and John Putnam Thatcher.

  The three defenders of Wall Street had their first meeting in Stanton Carruthers’ office, where they eyed each other resentfully. Carruthers, who had spent a lifetime explaining to clients that he could scarcely be expected to act in the absence of specific instructions, felt the situation most keenly.

  “I’ll be damned if I can see what we’re supposed to do,” Carruthers said, in effect repeating the statement he had made to the assembled partners of his firm when he had been presented with their ultimatum.

  Hugh Waymark hitched himself forward helpfully. While every bit as annoyed as his colleagues at being singled out by a malign fate, he was the only one to cherish any illusion that decisive action might yet cut away the difficulties and reduce his world to that satisfying condition of unchallenged somnolence from which it had been so rudely awakened.

  “The way I see it, Stan, they want us to talk some sense into this Simpson. After all, what good would a March on Wall Street do? Has he asked himself that?”

  “Pah!”

  Even Thatcher was surprised at the noise forced from his lips by sheer irritation. “The buck has been passed to us, that’s what. And how are we supposed to talk sense anyway? Do they expect us to hire billboards and sell the world on the proposition that Arthur Foote died of old age, and nobody has noticed Parry’s color?”

  Waymark looked hurt, but before he could launch a protest, Carruthers intervened:

  “Nobody cares about Arthur Foote anymore,” he said, sternly facing facts. “And, as for the rest of it, John is right. We’re not supposed to do anything. We wait for something to happen. Then everybody blames us. That keeps the principals in the clear.”

  Fact facing never has a wide appeal. Hugh Waymark was still grumbling when the Committee of Three prepared to adjourn sine die, filled with high purpose and no program. In many ways a comfortable state of affairs . . . certainly more comfortable than what was coming.

  There was a muted buzz from the phone and Stanton Carruthers held up a hand. “Would you mind waiting a moment? I told my secretary not to put through anything unless it concerned our meeting.”

  Obediently Waymark and Thatcher halted their progress to the door. Carruthers swiveled around to reach the receiver. His subsequent comments, consisting almost entirely of a series of alarmed grunts punctuated with exclamations of surprise, brought no enlightenment to his audience, but Hugh Waymark glanced up frowningly at his conclusion.

  “All right, all right. We’ll come right over. Yes, we’ll do what we can, but it sounds too late for talking.”

  Carruthers swung around and up in one urgent movement. He explained tensely:

  “That was Clovis Greene. They say they’ve got a race riot over there. The trouble’s down on the Street, and it started over an hour ago. We’d better hurry.”

  Such was the power of the vision created by these words, that they were down on the street without further questioning.

  Stanton Carruthers’ law firm maintained its cramped old-fashioned offices on Rector Street. Clovis Greene stretched in expansive grandeur over four floors at the corner of William Street and Wall Street, ten minutes away. Without a word the three trotted toward Broadway. Passing Trinity Church, its gallant spire dwarfed by surrounding colossi, they peered anxiously ahead toward their destination. As usual the vista was obliterated by a solid wave of humanity.

  “I don’t see any squad cars,” muttered Waymark. “I hope to God the police have got things under control.”

  “Well, if they haven’t, I don’t see precisely what we are expected to accomplish,” said Thatcher shortly.

  For half a block, there was depressed silence. Then: “The main thing is to keep it from spreading,” said Waymark, mindful of his own brokerage house a scant three blocks from the disturbance.

  Carruthers was more public spirited. “There will have to be some statements made. That’s our job, to strike a
calming note.”

  But Waymark, back in the days of his glory as a staff colonel, was viewing the terrain with a keen military eye. “Good thing there isn’t much glass frontage down here. Street fighting won’t do much damage. The Chase will just have to take its chances, of course. And you can always raise barricades with cobblestones,” he added breathlessly. The pace set by his two companions was incompatible with his figure, no longer what it had been in 1944.

  “Are you suggesting that we dig up the asphalt with our bare fingernails?” Thatcher demanded acidly. He was becoming conscious of the spectacle they presented. Waymark’s rotundity was balanced by Carruthers’ lean length, now stretched forward in hawklike flight. They sped past the Stock Exchange at a lope. The three musketeers, thought Thatcher dispiritedly. And what wouldn’t he give for a D’Artagnan, full of youth and fire, prepared to undertake all sorts of ill-advised actions! Carried away by this conceit, he had no difficulty in casting Waymark as Porthos. Carruthers, he supposed, was Aramis. That left him as Athos. Not, he concluded sourly, a congenial role.

  Maybe he needed an assistant on this job . . . say, Ken Nicolls. No, he decided reluctantly. The whole point of the Committee was that it should operate personally, borrowing luster and commanding respect by virtue of its distinguished participants. Another objection lay in visualizing D’Artagnan spending his evenings setting up a cooperative nursery in Brooklyn Heights.

  Carruthers, leading by a nose, came to a sudden halt at the Seventh Avenue IRT station with an abruptness that brought his two colleagues cannoning into him. “Where is it?” he asked blankly.

  “We’ll have to look for it,” said Waymark, nothing daunted.

  “I thought race riots proclaimed themselves,” Thatcher objected.

  At this moment there was a slight gap in the scurrying crowds. Carruthers pointed into it. “Do you think,” he asked dubiously, “that that can be what they called about?”

  He was pointing to a small band of weedy pickets parading before an entrance on William Street with assorted placards. They were treading their stately measure under the disenchanted gaze of three policemen.

  “For God’s sake! Do you mean this is all there is?” protested Waymark, making no attempt to disguise his disappointment. It was as if Kitchener had fetched up at Khartoum only to find everybody having a friendly hand of five-card stud. Thatcher maintained a disapproving silence for so long that his colleagues looked at him. He was staring at the placards. “Tell me,” he said, “does it seem to you that these pickets are a long way from unity?”

  The passing throng paid no attention either to the pickets or to the gimlet-eyed trio which now advanced to close quarters and soberly read each message as it revolved before them. Some people were rushing down into the bowels of the subway. Others were rushing up. Messenger boys from the printers were everywhere, delivering hot proofs of prospectuses, briefs and bank letters. A steady persistent trickle made its way to the small Roman Catholic chapel on Pine Street which provides support and solace for the faithful in the very shadow of Mammon.

  Jostled and buffeted, the three musketeers remained motionless, enthralled by their reading. The first sign said that Clovis Greene was racially biased, while the second said that Schuyler & Schuyler were troublemakers. A third, rather confusingly, maintained that “Colored operated is not colored owned,” while a fourth demanded simply: “Down with the Stock Exchange.” An even more alien note was introduced by a lone theological student carrying a banner proclaiming: “White Turret Restaurant is Unfair.”

  Thatcher, rousing himself from bemusement, voiced a problem: “Why are they picketing Schuyler & Schuyler here?”

  “Didn’t you know? They’re in this building, too.”

  “Fine. That’s all we need. It makes one thing certain. If there’s going to be any fighting, it is likely to be internal warfare among the pickets.”

  Waymark was eyeing a youth in a turtleneck sweater and beard. “They look like pacifists to me. Well, I suppose we ought to go up and see Clovis Greene.”

  “I’d like to see them,” said Carruthers grimly. “There’s work waiting for me on my desk. What do they think they’re doing, pushing the panic button like this?”

  “We may have to do more than give Clovis Greene a piece of our mind,” remarked Thatcher, nodding at a car that was inching along the street amidst the pedestrian traffic. In the windshield appeared the grim legend: Press.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  “With luck, we have two or three minutes clear,” said Thatcher, manfully overcoming the temptation to dive down into the IRT, SHOOT up to Grand Central and entrain for distant places.

  Carruthers was brisk. “You’re right. We’d better tell these pickets to address their complaints to us. I’ll promise to interview the interested parties and bring them an answer.”

  Waymark, one eye on the car which now hovered by a truck engineering withdrawal from the curb, threw himself into the fray. “We’ve got to work fast.”

  Achieving something of their former urgency, the three marched over and assumed a commanding position. Carruthers raised a courtroom voice to gain attention and introduced the Committee, primarily for the benefit of the suddenly alert police. With an easy stream of professional fluency, he said that they understood the pickets were protesting certain actions on the part of Schuyler & Schuyler and of Clovis Greene, that the Committee would interview these firms and be back shortly with statements as to their contemplated actions. Masterfully silencing all attempts to break into speech and usurp any portion of his precious time, he urged the pickets to continue the responsible citizenship already demonstrated by their courageous, forthright and nonviolent conduct.

  A speech embracing a diversity of activities and desires is necessarily generalized, but Thatcher gave Carruthers full marks for conveying the impression that the pickets were regarded seriously and that action was being taken.

  The Committee then plunged into the building, timing their entrance so nicely that the closing of the glass door coincided with the descent of a horde of journalists onto the scene.

  At the elevator, Carruthers paused in indecision. “Which first?”

  “Schuyler & Schuyler, I think,” Thatcher replied. “Most of those pickets could be quieted by a statement from Parry. We might be able to get one.”

  “But what about the Abercrombie boys down there?”

  “Nothing will quiet them. They’re looking for trouble.”

  On the 26th floor, Schuyler & Schuyler was going about its business with a commendable absence of hysteria. Indeed, when they were ushered into Nat Schuyler’s office, it was to disrupt a business conference between him and Vin McCullough.

  “Come in, come in. Don’t mind Vin. I’m snowed under at the moment, and I’m pushing all of poor Arthur’s accounts onto him. Between Ambrose’s accounts and Parry’s application, I don’t have a minute to spare.”

  He smiled up at them genially without mentioning the very substantial accounts in his own name. It was these accounts which had always supported Nat Schuyler’s unwavering domination of his firm.

  “I heard you three had been formed into some sort of committee. Don’t understand what it’s all about exactly, but we’ll be glad to do anything we can for you.”

  Thatcher was in no mood to encourage witticisms on the subject of the Committee’s mission.

  “Tell me, Nat,” he said, “do you realize that there are about twenty pickets parading up and down in front of this building?”

  Guileless blue eyes turned to him. “Why, yes,” said Schuyler thoughtfully, “yes, I believe someone did say something about it.”

  “And that Clovis Greene has whipped itself into a frenzy on the subject?” Thatcher pressed.

  “Now that was what they were saying. That Clovis Greene was calling in the police.” Schuyler beamed blandly at the room. “Very imprudent of them, I feel.”

  Carruthers brought his jaws together with an audible click, while Thatc
her stared frostily at the man behind the desk. It was all too clear what was happening. Clovis Greene was being tempted to all sorts of rash, hasty reactions to their present dilemma, and, alas, succumbing to that temptation. Once they had been given ample opportunity to put themselves hopelessly in the wrong, Nat Schuyler would waft himself downstairs and appear on the scene as a white-haired harbinger of peace and moderation.

  Nor was any of this playacting aimed at those youthful pickets. Old Schuyler hadn’t lost sight of the ball for one single second. It was the pulse of the financial community that he was following with his stethoscopic shrewdness. Given enough publicity, by tomorrow morning a large number of people on the Street would be feeling that Nat Schuyler was the voice of sweet reason. Because the people on the Street, like the residents of Katonah, were basically not interested in Ed Parry’s problems; they were interested in their own. And how could you get on with business, if crackpots like Owen Abercrombie wanted you to shoulder a rifle, or oddballs like Clovis Greene tried to call out the National Guard because a couple of students were walking up and down the sidewalk?

  At this point in Thatcher’s meditations, the door opened and a familiar figure entered. It was young Dean Caldwell.

  “Sorry, Nat. I didn’t realize that you had people here.”

  But he was too consumed with the importance of his own activities to make more than a token apology. He continued without pause:

  “Do you realize that the people have refused to do anything about what’s going on outside? They say as long as the situation is orderly, they won’t interfere. Christ! Why don’t they admit they don’t have the guts to do anything!”

  “I wasn’t aware that we’d asked them to do anything.”

  An ugly red tide suffused Caldwell’s face. “Clovis Green has!” he snapped. “Lee Clark says he’s going to take it right up to the Commissioner.”

  “Oh?”

  Caldwell took several angry, stamping steps. “That’s not the way to handle this sort of thing!” Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked directly at Schuyler. “You may as well know. I called Abercrombie, so he could send a couple of his own pickets over. That trash downstairs won’t make any trouble, if they know there’s someone willing to take them on.”