Youngblood hawke, p.83
Youngblood Hawke, page 83
Hawke stared out at the expectant audience. He could think of no more words. He stepped down from the platform.
He and Adam were pallbearers. When the casket was bestowed in the hearse, they both made their way through the vacuous onlookers, standing under umbrellas in the thick rain, to the car Hawke had hired. The two men settled into the car, both of them heavily spattered with rain. They did not speak for a while. Hawke was jealous of the intimacy Adam had achieved with Jeanne by taking over the funeral arrangements and handling the legal problems of the death. Honor's suggestion that Adam was in love with her haunted Hawke.
The cortege began to form up and follow the hearse through the midtown traffic. Adam broke the awkward silence once the car was in motion. "You spoke well. I think you comforted Jeanne, as much as anyone could."
"It seems to me I babbled. At the end I half-said something that might have made sense if I'd put it properly."
"You put it properly. The nub of this thing was its inconclusiveness. I agree with you that nothing could be more characteristic of Karl."
After a long silence, Hawke spoke again. "There was one more thing I wanted to say. Somehow I couldn't bring it out. It didn't seem to fit in a eulogy. Yet it's the point that mattered most to me in Washington."
"What was that?"
"I don't believe this country is dying because Karl talked, though that's how he left it."
The lawyer made a sardonic sound, not quite a laugh. "More likely Karl talked because he was dying."
Hawke said, "You think he'd have died like that, even if he hadn't knuckled under?"
Adam said nothing. Hawke glanced away from the wheel and saw the lawyer, who looked quite odd with a new large black hat covering his thick hair, staring at the dancing windshield wiper, his ruddy face frozen in an angry expression. Adam caught the glance. "Sorry. Funerals set me back, especially one like this. Would he have died the way he did? Who knows? Karl wasn't well. If you want to know, I'm feeling uncomfortably guilty right now. I feel I made a botch of Karl's affairs. He and Jeanne trusted me. I advised him years ago not to go to the FBI. I believed him when he said he wouldn't name people. I figured it was best to put this ordeal off as long as possible. But I seem to have misjudged my man. Maybe it would have been best to have had it out then, either plead the Fifth Amendment, or go through the naming, and be done with it. Pleading the amendment would have cost Karl his job. It would have put Jeanne in a cruel dilemma, because editing your work means so much to her. How could she stay on in the firm that fired her husband? This way they did have some years of peaceful work together, and they were happy. There was always the chance that he'd never be called. Do you think I did the right thing?"
This was a strange note from Adam. In the years Hawke had known the lawyer, Adam had never before come out of his shell of ironic, mock-modest omniscience. Hawke shrugged.
Adam said, "I also feel guilty about encouraging him to make the court fight. I may have given him support he didn't really want and pushed him into an exposed position. Telling him to put up or shut up, as it were. I hope this is nothing but the glooms brought on by a friend's funeral in the rain. I haven't felt like this since my wife died."
Hawke said, "Well, reading Karl's mind was impossible. Jeanne told me often that she never knew what he was thinking, but my guess would be he was ready for the fight and intended to make it, until the very last second."
Adam said, "I'd like to think so."
"Would you have won?"
The lawyer shook his head. "Who can say? I think we had a chance, but we'll never know." He picked up a briefcase on the seat and slid open the fastener. "Would it be inappropriate if we talked a little business? I mean no disrespect to Karl but it's a long way to the cemetery, and several things are going to require your immediate attention. If you hadn't come back I'd have called you in Hollywood and asked you to make a trip to New York."
The sound of the slide fastener on Gus Adam's briefcase had become ominous to Hawke. He said, "Well, after what's happened no news can seem very bad or serious. Troubles, no doubt?"
"I'm afraid so," Adam said. He took out a folder marked HAWKE in blue crayon, filled with white documents and yellow scratch paper, and lit his pipe.
"Bad?"
"Well, so far not very. The main thing is Paumanok Plaza. You'll recall that back in April when Scotty had to get the second mortgage, Newton Leffer insisted that you and Scotty personally guarantee the loan."
Hawke said, "Last April. That was when I was up to my ears in Haworth House, and also writing all night. Who's Newton Leffer again?"
"Newton's my friend, the lawyer for the Swiss people who put up the three hundred thousand for the mortgage."
Hawke nodded. "The little man with the purple growth on his forehead?"
Adam laughed. "That's Newton. Except he's since had the thing removed. Now Newton's a perfectly decent fellow and a very competent lawyer. Scotty got the three hundred thousand from him—from these Swiss people he represents—on a short term basis. It's supposed to be repaid in four equal installments, of $75,000 every six months. The first installment was due Wednesday before last. You remember Scotty told us he'd take care of this second mortgage and we could just forget about it."
Hawke said, "I remember that, all right."
The line of cars following the hearse was entering the midtown tunnel, and the drumming of the rain on the metal roof gave way to the louder noise of echoing motor roars in the white-tiled tube. Adam said, pitching his voice louder, "Well, Newton didn't get the check. Scott asked for a week's grace because he was involved in a large refinancing situation down in Kentucky, and of course Newton gave it to him. Newton is sitting pretty, with your two personal guarantees. Even if Scotty isn't good for the money, which seems rather unthinkable, he assumes that you are.
"I wouldn't be concerned about any of this, Arthur, except for two things. Scotty's made a special trip up here and asked for a meeting with me and Newton today. He told me not to bother you, but of course he didn't know then that you were coming east. I don't like the request for a meeting. What concerns me more is that there's an acceleration clause in the mortgage. That's a common practice, and what it means is that as soon as one payment is missed the whole loan falls due. Scotty's already ten days behind on the first payment. In theory you're personally liable right now to repay three hundred thousand dollars if Newton chooses to press you. I'm putting it in its blackest terms."
"Black is right," Hawke said. "It would bankrupt me."
The lawyer took out of the folder a white sheet of typed figures. "I don't think so. I had the accountant draw up your balance sheet again. Unless you've done something in the last couple of weeks that I don't know about, you could muster in an extremity almost a hundred fifty thousand in cash. I'm talking about the market value of your stocks, real estate and so forth, and the bank balances as of September first. Then there's your new book coming out. We have every reason to hope for a paperback sale and a movie sale of the usual size, more or less, in addition to the trade sales. You'd be left with some tax problems—of which you have a few as it is, and I'm coming to them in a moment—but I think by one means or another, you could actually meet a sudden cash call of three hundred thousand dollars." The lawyer grinned. "Which is quite a thing to say about anyone, let alone a literary artist not much past thirty, and an amazing tribute to the quality and quantity of your writings."
Hawke said, "It would strip me to the skin. I'd have to borrow heavily, and mortgage my whole future."
"Yes," Adam said, "but you could do it, that's the impressive thing."
Hawke said, "Well, what other good cheer have you for me?"
The car rolled out into a whipping rain that obscured even the garish billboards at the tunnel exit. Adam said, "I thought you ought to know about the shopping center situation. We can let the rest go for now."
"No no," Hawke said. "For God's sake, this is the time for lugubrious news. Karl's up ahead there in a box, and I'm alive and well. I defy you to depress me."
Adam said, "Well, frankly, there's nobody I know who has more reason than you to look to the future with confidence, and even with joy. Money troubles shouldn't penetrate an inch below the surface in a life such as yours is, or is undoubtedly going to be." The lawyer's tone in these last words caused Hawke to look at him. Adam was leafing through the papers in the folder, puffing on his pipe. Hawke felt that the lawyer had referred to Jeanne. He wondered whether Jeanne, with Karl still unburied, could have said something to Adam to give rise to that dry twanging hint. The lawyer said, "Well, if you've got the stomach for more bad news, here it is. We've had two tax defeats. You'll recall that we appealed to Washington on the movie contract of Chain of Command which was so badly worded that it seemed to throw all the money into one year. The afternoon that Karl died I was up at the Treasury checking on that one. We're going to get turned down."
"Which will cost me what?" Hawke said. "That came to about eighty thousand plus interest, didn't it?"
"Yes, but we're a long way from paying. The Treasury still has to write us a formal letter, giving us 90 days to pay the deficiency. I'll appeal it to the tax court, if you approve."
Hawke said, "What are my chances?"
Adam said, "The man who wrote the contract was an idiot. Your legal position is not all it should be. I think the intent of the contract is clear, and the recent cases have tended to support this kind of spread fee. I'm also hoping that the courts will see the essential predicament of a writer getting a lot of money in one year, and maybe no income the next. But nobody's going to shed tears of pity for Youngblood Hawke, I fear. It's worth a try. If we lose I won't charge you much. If we win I'll take a reasonable percentage of what I've saved you."
"All right, let's fight."
"I think so. That's what the tax courts are for. The other thing is a little disturbing. Maybe that same revenue agent put out a general alarm on you. They've pounced on last year's return already, and that seems very early. It's the deal with Scotty, of course. They want to know where all the income from your play is. I produced the documents in the Paumanok Plaza transaction. They say it's a subterfuge and you owe income tax on all the royalties. As you know, the play paid in about a hundred twenty thousand dollars to Paumanok before it closed."
"I never collected the royalties. How can I pay taxes on them?"
"That, of course, is your problem. This result doesn't surprise me, Arthur, I think you'll recall that I predicted it, but the theory was we'd be out of this venture with a profit before they ever examined your return."
Hawke said, "What's the status of the center? Is it finished?"
"You'll see it. It's virtually finished, some of the tenants are already beginning to move in. Scotty did a good construction job, it's a fine center. The finances are another matter. He didn't bring it in for a million six, he spent almost two million dollars. It may well be worth the money and I even think you may end with a capital gain. But right now—"
The cortege piled up in an approach to a parkway, and the two men sat in the stopped car, looking through the blurry swathes of the windshield wipers at long unmoving lines of automobiles, a motley string of beetle shapes in a dirty wet day. They could not open a window, so heavy was the rain; it drummed on the car with a sound like hail. Adam's pipe smoke wreathed in the stagnant air and wisped out of an angled glass vent.
Hawke said very calmly, after a long silence, "I'm no longer sure that we can look for much help from my new novel. I suppose I've gotten into the habit of success, and anything else seems unnatural. But you know, the movie people shied away from the book. Ferdie Lax went through one of his elaborate melodramas with a single typewritten copy a month or so ago, letting several of them read it under a pledge of secrecy with a forty-eight-hour limit, swearing he was betraying me by showing it before publication, and so forth. It's amazing that the Hollywood people should fall for the cloak-and-dagger claptrap that they've pretty much invented themselves, but Ferdie's scored some big sales that way. He ran into a wall with Evelyn Biggers. They all want to wait for the reviews. The one review so far is Quentin Judd's."
The lawyer said, "Well, that's a highly peculiar reaction. What about the paperback sale? Givney was talking in terms of a hundred thousand dollars, as I recall, which he was prepared to give you any time you wanted it."
Hawke said, "Givney is so mad about this novel that he can't speak of it without turning soprano. He feels, however—I quote him—that a paperback sale before publication, since he's a stockholder in Haworth House, would smack of collusion and might be questionable taxwise."
"That's utter gibberish," Adam said.
"I know," Hawke said. "Put into English, he wants to wait for the reviews."
"Has a book club taken it?"
"Yes. The wrong club. Little cachet and a small advance. The big club reported to Ross that they'd chosen too many novels lately with a similar theme. Maybe the rain and the funeral are getting me down, too, Gus, but so far all signs point one way. I seem to have picked the wrong book for starting my career as a publisher."
Adam said, "What about the one you're working on now?"
"Boone County? That's different. Crowds, gunfire and money again. There's not the slightest doubt, at least in my mind, that it will be my most popular book. Jeanne concurs. But, even working as hard as I possibly can, I'm a year away from finishing it. It's very long."
"Has Jeanne read any of it?"
"No. I'm stacking up the first half and then I'll turn it over to her."
Adam nodded. "In view of the Judd article, you may want to reconsider that. Perhaps even dissociate yourself from Hodge Hathaway entirely, for this book."
"To hell with Quentin Judd," Hawke said. "I need Jeanne."
"That was Judd's point," Adam said. "It's a very serious charge. What you mean is, it's more convenient and practical to have Jeanne, which is different."
Neither man said another word until they reached the graveyard. The cemetery, or the undertaker, had gone to some pains to soften the harsh facts of burial. The piles of dirt beside the hole were covered with mats of artificial grass, of a bright window-dressing green that made the real rain-soaked grass all around the grave seem quite dull and dismal. There was no shovelling of earth, no hollow strike of dirt on wood. Once the coffin sank gently out of sight on guide ropes, attendants laid boards across the brown hole—a little brown was inevitably visible for a few moments—and stretched more false grass across the opening; and then there was nothing but a small angry area of bright green, humped here and there, surrounded by the grass and tombstones of the graveyard. Jeanne walked a little apart from the knot of people at the service, and stood alone in the rain, looking down at the gay green mats. Hawke saw tears dripping from her eyes, though her sombre expression did not change. She straightened up after a while, and passed a handkerchief over her face; looked around as though she were coming awake, and strode toward him.
She said in a voice roughened with pain, "Thanks for what you said about Karl."
"It wasn't enough, Jeanne, I ran dry, I'm sorry."
"No, I think Karl would have passed it, and you know how hard he was on you."
Karl's son came beside her, an army trench coat over his uniform, and took her arm. She said with a faded smile to Hawke, "It wasn't so long ago I thought a twenty-two-year-old army lieutenant was a heavy date. Now I'm a stepmother to one and it seems quite natural, somehow. It all goes fast."
Adam said, "Shall we go back with you, Jeanne? Do you want anything?"
She shook her head and patted the soldier's arm. "Nicholas takes good care of me. And I've got mama. I just want to go home to the baby. I'm so full of dope I'll probably sleep for eighteen hours." Jeanne turned to Hawke. "I feel as though I've been out of the world for six months. Have you had any news on your book?"
"Nothing, Jeanne. Nothing at all."
Jeanne smiled again, the mournful dim smile. "Imagine me talking business here. Karl would understand. Editors have no hearts. Goodbye, Gus. Goodbye, Arthur."
Hawke and Adam drove to Paumanok Plaza.
Part Six
1952–1953
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1
THE shopping center was not exactly finished, but Hawke was staggered by what he saw. The architect's pleasing little sketch had become a stupendously large real thing, a two-storied U-shaped edifice of concrete, aluminum and glass, three city blocks wide and two deep, enclosing a ropy lake of liquid yellow mud that bubbled in the thick rain. The most striking feature of the scene at the moment was a gargantuan silver trailer truck in the very center of the morass, sunk in the mud to the tops of its wheels, slanting dangerously, squealing and groaning and shuddering, for all the world like a dinosaur of the horror movies caught in quicksand and going down. Workmen stood in hip boots around the trapped monster, bawling suggestions, thrusting planks at the wheels, and dodging showers of mud and splintered wood that the truck threw up in its roaring agony. Standing well clear of the mess, on a long path of rough planking that stretched across the yellow bog from the edge of the highway to the paved strip in front of the building, was Scotty Hoag, bareheaded, arms akimbo, with a transparent plastic raincoat over his green tweed jacket and gray slacks. He stood alone. At this distance he looked surprisingly old: a bald man, bulging at the middle. But when he noticed Hawke and Adam getting out of the car, and came trotting toward them, waving and smiling, Hawke could see again the Scotty of his college years, the pleasant, good-looking campus politician, not too much changed except for the loss of hair.
