The Longer the Thread Read online

  The news caused Humble to click his tongue disapprovingly and John Thatcher to muse.

  “So that’s the explanation for the sand.”

  “Yes. They figure it was Domínguez’ last bit of sabotage.”

  “I’m glad, of course, that they have that cleared up. But it wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Have they made any progress on the murder?”

  “The police asked a lot of questions. I think they’re pretty well satisfied that Domínguez was behind all the sabotage.”

  “But there’s no talk of an arrest yet?” Thatcher persisted.

  Olmsted was earnest. “Not yet. You know the police have a lot on their hands. On top of everything else, the students out at the university have called some kind of protest meeting. I guess the police are afraid it will turn into the kind of riots they had last year. You wouldn’t believe . . .”

  Thatcher forced himself to be patient. What he would not believe was that homicide investigations came to a halt whenever youthful protesters threatened to act up. After all, murderers had been arrested during the Battle of Britain and the Russian entry into Berlin. Still, it was clear that Pete Olmsted did not want to talk about murder. Like many another middle-aged man, he wanted to talk about student violence. And in this context, Thatcher knew, murder did not rank as violence.

  It was left to Dudley Humble to bring the conversation back to earth with a thud.

  “In the Bankers’ Club,” he murmured, “they’re saying that the police have narrowed down the murderer to someone in the management.”

  Thatcher was pleased to see that, even in the face of deliberate provocation, Olmsted retained enough balance not to constitute himself the universal champion of Slax’s front office. “I know that’s what it looks like,” he replied slowly. “But, for the life of me, I can’t see it.”

  “But how well do you know them, Pete?” Thatcher asked reasonably. “Most business executives don’t look like murderers at first blush.”

  “I know I’ve handled most of the financial details with Harry in New York. But I have met the others. And look what the police theory would have to be! Say Domínguez had a pocketful of sand from his last wrecking operation. Say he was insane enough to take a fistful of it and shake it in someone’s face. Then he brags that he’s been behind all the damage and has just caused more. Can you imagine Marten or Romero doing anything but reaching for the phone to call the police?” Olmsted gulped and continued resolutely. “Even Dave Lippert, and I grant you that he’s the dark horse, even he would have howled for the cops. He might have gone slightly hysterical. But you’re talking about someone going totally ape!”

  Dudley Humble was prepared to see the thing through. “In the Bankers’ Club,” he said cautiously, “they’re saying that Mrs. Lippert is without an alibi, too.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Olmsted turned to Thatcher in appeal. “John, you tell him. When we met her at the front office, did she look to you like a woman fresh from murder?”

  Thatcher knew his duty. “No, she did not,” he said firmly.

  What he did not say was that, of all four suspects, Norma Lippert was the one most likely to have dropped the murder gun daintily into a wastebasket and wiped the whole distasteful episode from her mind. And the gun itself, come to think of it, was a powerful argument against the spontaneous-combustion theory of murder.

  “I do not think, Dudley,” he said instead, “we will get anywhere trying to solve the problems of the police. So why don’t we address ourselves to the Sloan’s problems?”

  Humble and Olmsted instantly looked alert. Thatcher was not deceived into thinking either one had forgotten the fundamental contest.

  “Regardless of the murder,” he continued, “we have here a situation in which one of our clients has been the object of persistent sabotage and suffered considerable loss. Action against the sabotage has been hamstrung by the fear that it might boomerang in a delicate political climate. Now, first we should consider how delicate that climate really is. And second, how likely are other Sloan clients here to become similar targets? Dudley, you’re the expert on local conditions.”

  Immediately Dudley Humble began to exhibit his more trying characteristics. “I am not sure that the real problem is political in a meaningful sense,” he said magisterially.

  No one outside the Sloan would have realized that Humble was, in his own way, as redoubtable a font of information as Walter Bowman back on Wall Street. Thatcher, however, was willing to grant that Dudley really did know more about Puerto Rico than most Puerto Ricans, possibly including Francisco Ramírez Rivera and certainly including most youthful radicals.

  But here the similarity ended. Bowman was an enthusiastic disseminator of what he knew. Apart from protecting his sources, he was generous to a fault. Ask him about the eccentricities of the Federal Reserve or the drinking habits of an important fund manager, and the problem was to keep your footing as the tidal wave of facts broke over your head. By contrast Dudley Humble, and all of International for that matter, reminded Thatcher of witch doctors in some primitive African tribe. They acted as guardians and protectors of sacred mysteries, jealous of their arcane methods. Dudley and his colleagues doled out information, driblet by driblet.

  “. . . politically Puerto Rico is a commonwealth,” he was unbending enough to say, “and it will continue to be so. It—”

  “Why?” Thatcher interrupted baldly.

  Humble was startled enough to give an equally bald answer.

  “Costs,” he said tersely. Recovering himself, he began to elaborate. “Statehood, by introducing federal corporate taxes, would end the island’s special attraction to industry. Independence, in addition to introducing the costs of sovereignty such as defense, would raise a tariff barrier between the island and the mainland. Even the last plebiscite figures understated the strength of the commonwealth. Most commonwealth opponents are thinking in terms so distant as to be illusory. Asked what they want right now, most of them would probably settle for what they have. That, of course, is a gross simplification. The situation is far more complex.”

  He paused, his head bent in thought over his steepled fingers, a man overwhelmed at the task he had set himself.

  Thatcher thought he saw a shortcut. With deliberate malice he said, “I was talking to Ramírez the other day. He says that there has been a dramatic growth in the independence movement.”

  “Ramírez!” There was a snort. “The man is as biased as they come.”

  “He admitted that.”

  As Thatcher had expected, what Dudley was unprepared to disgorge as simple information he was prepared to marshal as refutation.

  It was fashionable in certain circles to be for independence these days, he conceded. There was the inevitable friction arising from the American presence on the island, ranging from sailors on leave to trouble with the Federal Maritime Board. There was, among the younger generation, a cultural renaissance emphasizing the Hispanic tradition. There was the ethnic and nationalistic fever gripping the whole Caribbean area. There was the stunning impact of Cuba, the usual fringe of Marxists . . .

  “None of these factors is important by itself,” Humble lectured. “They merely create a climate. In the absence of an incident giving them some cohesion, they will continue to be unimportant. But the right incident at the right time could give Ramírez and his friends enough votes to make them a power. I don’t mean anything like victory. I mean the power of being the officially recognized opposition.”

  Dudley Humble, Thatcher decided, was finally beginning to talk horse sense. “And you think that is a delicate enough situation to have caused Slax’s reluctance to follow up on the sabotage?”

  Humble became judicious. “It was certainly reasonable for them to be cautious.”

  “You do realize that at first there was some doubt as to whether Domínguez was acting on behalf of the Radical Independents or simply working out some personal spite.”

  “Good heavens! The radicals are
n’t important.” Humble was genuinely surprised. “It’s the workers who are important. The Radical Independents are a pitifully small group. They got a bad name when so many people were injured in the ROTC riots last year. Now they just number a few hundred. Their new leader is much better at getting headlines than at getting adherents. Even the students are leery of him. If you walk through the University of Puerto Rico, you’ll hear more evangelists preaching in the courtyard than Radical Independents. Unless they move out of the university and broaden their base, the party is of no importance. And that doesn’t seem very likely.”

  Thatcher reviewed what he had heard before coming to a conclusion. “You seem to have answered my second question, Dudley. We don’t have to anticipate a wave of terror and sabotage against all our other clients.”

  “I may be wrong, of course.” Dudley Humble grinned boyishly at this absurdity. “But I think it most unlikely. It’s an anomalous position, I grant you. A company hit by sabotage would have to be very careful. It could trigger a wave of anti-Americanism. On the other hand, the probability of sabotage is minute. I think there was trouble at Slax simply because the Radical Independents had a member working there. And that is a real rarity. I’m surprised they had even one member in Domínguez’ kind of job. As I said before, there’s been no attempt to broaden their base, and offhand I don’t see what inducements they have to offer to labor.”

  Pete Olmsted smiled broadly. Even Thatcher was forced to acknowledge the detachment of Humble’s discourse. Because if sabotage and Puerto Rican politics were not going to play havoc with American industry, then there was substantially less need for the peculiar expertise of Humble and his colleagues in International.

  “That’s a damn fair statement, Dudley,” said Olmsted in a wave of gratification. He would have continued in this vein if he had not been interrupted by the opening of the door. It was Mrs. Schroeder.

  “Mr. Olmsted, I have a call for you out here. Do you want me to switch it?”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “They said it was urgent.”

  Olmsted sighed and indicated he would take the call on her desk.

  As the door closed behind him, Thatcher felt honor bound to pay his own tribute to Humble’s performance. “I’m relieved to learn that our problems seem to be localized in Slax. And I won’t deny that the Sloan has always liked the idea of a man who knows steel in charge of making loans to steel mills. But there is more to doing business in Puerto Rico than I anticipated. And I expect the situation will get more complicated.”

  This seemed to be a day of unbroken selflessness for Dudley Humble. “No doubt we’re all going to have to become broader in our interests. There is no reason Olmsted can’t learn the ins and outs of the Puerto Rican situation. In the same way, I’m sorry you won’t have a chance to meet Gregorio. But he’s in the hospital having his slipped disk attended to.”

  “Who is Gregorio?” Thatcher asked, at a loss.

  “Gregorio is our new garment-trade expert.”

  Humble’s hearty chuckle was still resounding when Pete Olmsted burst into the room.

  “That was Romero from the Slax plant,” he said tightly.

  “My God, what’s happened there now?”

  “They just got an anonymous call. You were dead right, Dudley, about the Radical Independents needing to broaden their base.” His lips stretched in a parody of a smile. “They’re planning to do it in a big way.”

  The new look in the Student-Worker Radical Independence Party had started the night before, when two hundred people had straggled into a building on Avenida José de Diego, near the University of Puerto Rico.

  Outside, the signs read:

  RADICAL INDEPENDENTS PROTEST MEETING!

  PRUDENCIO NADAL SPEAKS TONIGHT!

  Inside, the hall was much too large for the assemblage. Most of the audience had huddled together in the first bank of folding chairs. But throughout the auditorium there were scattered groups and individuals who seemed to prefer isolation from their fellows. Some of them were students, feet draped over one seat, head lolling back over a second, books and belongings piled on a third. Some were intense young women. Some were amorous couples. Some were clearly visitors from another world. On one side of the entrance was a table where a bored girl sat, soliciting contributions. On the other, an unshaven youth hopefully offered for sale a smudged news sheet. The bare walls and high ceiling of the near-empty room cast back cavernous echoes of each word from the speaker.

  “Benito Domínguez Sánchez is a martyr to the cause—the cause of workers, the cause of students, the cause of humanity!”

  Prudencio Nadal was a slight young man with dark eyes burning in a thin face.

  “He died—unknown and unrecognized—for his comrades! While we were speaking and dreaming with each other, he was daring. Unsupported by us, even unrecognized by us, he took our words—and acted. While we hesitated, he marched forth alone—and was killed. Benito Domínguez died for us. Did Benito Domínguez die in vain?”

  “No!” roared one hundred lusty young voices. Several people at the back of the room moved forward to be closer to Nadal.

  “No, he did not die in vain,” Nadal agreed. “He has shown us what we were forgetting. He has shown us who our brothers are. He, a simple man, had the courage to defy the exploiters of Puerto Rican workers and students. Now the time has come for all workers and all students to join fraternal hands in his battle—the battle for social revolution!”

  There were ragged cheers.

  Nadal shook his head slightly. “But it is not enough for us to know our friends. We must know our enemies too. Who is draining the lifeblood of Puerto Rico? What forces have brutalized and dehumanized our society? Why have we become the pawns of every power interest?”

  Prudencio Nadal, for all his youth, was a practiced orator. He had spoken on the campus, on street corners, in many halls like this. Now that his audience was leaning forward expectantly, he broke off and laughed softly.

  “We know who our enemies are by now. They run our government, they own our factories, they spread their lies in our newspapers. They do all this because the commonwealth makes Puerto Rico a colony for Yanqui exploitation! I spit on them! I spit on the millionaire Governor in La Fortaleza! I spit on capitalistic American imperialists!”

  He took a deep breath. He still had one finger raised for his remaining target.

  “And I spit on their hireling, the Independence Party that has sold us out to both of them! We know their version of independence—the same corrupt hierarchy entrenched forever, bigger and better hotels, freeborn Puerto Ricans turned into pimps for American tourists!”

  During the blast of approval that followed, a man sitting inconspicuously in the rear said, “I don’t like this.”

  His companion protested. “But you’ve always laughed at him before, Uncle. He’s no wilder tonight than he usually is. You always say the Radical Independents are just a lunatic fringe.”

  Francisco Ramírez Rivera was grim. “Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped. “A handful of students may be a lunatic fringe. Nearly a million workers are not!”

  “But I don’t think there are any workers here,” Ernesto pointed out.

  “Nadal won’t be talking here much longer,” Ramírez said cuttingly. He looked back toward the speaker. “Why do you think he’s suddenly emphasizing this anti-Americanism? He’s never done that before.”

  Ernesto, who had been his uncle’s proxy at other Nadal performances, had to agree.

  “Now that he has a martyr for his cause,” said Ramírez thoughtfully, “I think this young man may have big plans.”

  Up on the platform Prudencio Nadal was already outlining the first of them. “The Radical Independent Party hereby calls for a massive strike and demonstration against Slax Unlimited! We will lead the workers to the picket line. We will provide them with instruction and support. We will make their cause our cause. Shoulder to shoulder, Puerto Rican workers and students will begin
the revolution!”

  “Viva!” yelled an excited member of the audience.

  The party stalwarts recognized their cue. Their feet began to pound a remorseless tempo on the wooden floor.

  “Viva!” they shouted. “Viva la huelga!”

  The chant was taken up by everyone as feet drummed enthusiastically, and the scattered chorus became disciplined. The room rang with enthusiasm.

  From the back row, Francisco Ramírez Rivera hastened to the door.

  The news reached Harry Zimmerman in New York at the same time it reached the Sloan Guaranty Trust in Hato Rey. For the first time he was near despair. A strike would cripple Slax for good. But what could he do? If three hundred and fifty workers wanted to strike, there was nothing to be done. It was useless to argue with them, it was useless to appeal to the authorities. The weapons were all on the other side. He needed big guns and he didn’t have any.

  Suddenly the frown lifted and a gleam came into Harry’s eye.

  “Of course!” he exclaimed. “I’ll get Annie!”

  Chapter 8.

  Union Maid

  Anna Luisa Galiano was a woman who had become a legend in her own time.

  There are, of course, different varieties of fame. One kind reduces its subject to living in the constant glare of publicity. If he enters a supper club once, he doubles its earnings for the next six months. He cannot get on or off a plane without flashbulbs popping. His marriages, his divorces, his children and his pet beagle are fodder for in-depth reporting. Then there is the other fame. The subject is virtually unknown to the world at large. His private life can be conducted with decent decorum. But within a restricted group he assumes the dimensions of an epic figure. As the inner circle consists of all the people whom he ever wants to influence, cajole, persuade or terrorize, this is a very satisfactory state of affairs.

  Annie Galiano’s fame was of the second sort—which was not surprising. Most things did become satisfactory from her point of view, sooner or later.

  She had been a power in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union for twenty-five years—yet she had never been commemorated by a profile in The New Yorker or a column in Time. She was a Puerto Rican—yet she had never served on a commission about minority rights. She was a woman—yet she had never been publicly asked for her views about equal pay for equal work or about new life styles. The only time her picture had ever appeared in the New York Times, she was in the second row of a group of union notables eulogizing David Dubinsky upon his retirement.