Youngblood hawke, p.91
Youngblood Hawke, page 91
Adam had wound up the disaster of Haworth House by sub-leasing the ornate offices to a fashion designer. His remaining worry was taxes. He was appealing in the tax court both from the jeopardy assessment and the ruling that Hawke's diversion of the play money into the shopping center was "constructive receipt," the Treasury's dry term for a dodge that wouldn't work. There was a horrendous possibility that Hawke might not only lose all the income he had thus fed into Paumanok Plaza (besides the three hundred thousand he was paying for the second mortgage), but might have to meet heavy taxes on the money he had lost! Adam saw no point in harassing Hawke with this threat until a decision came. He had persuaded the district director to withhold a jeopardy assessment for this second amount by flatly warning that it would destroy the author financially and mentally. He suggested that Internal Revenue would be wise to give Youngblood Hawke a chance to recover and pay large taxes another day. The director, an amiable family man and not in the least an ogre, had seen the sense in this; all the same he was trying in tax court to fix the debt on Hawke. Adam couldn't blame him.
These problems of the author were grist for the legal mill, familiar messes, interesting only because a famous man was caught in them. Adam devolved most of the actual legal work on junior attorneys in his firm. His guidance of the author's affairs was half a hobby. It gave him pride and satisfaction to help a personage like Youngblood Hawke through this crisis of his career; and he also found a melancholy pleasure in serving Jeanne Fry by trying to rescue the author. His efforts for Karl Fry had really been efforts for Jeanne's happiness; and in a way he was still doing the same thing.
2
Hawke was at the gate to the plane, a solitary figure on the snow-swept Lexington airfield, in a bulky red and black checked lumberjacket, shapeless blue jeans, and a black wool cap pulled over his ears. "Welcome to the old country," Hawke roared over the whine of the wind and the plane motors, seizing the lawyer's hand in a great grip and pounding his back. "How the hell are you, Gus?"
The lawyer held his hand and gave him a keen scrutiny. "Well! You look thoroughly rusticated."
"I'm a goddamn hillbilly again and I love it. I never should have been anything else." He pried the briefcase from the lawyer. "Got all kinds of horrors cooking for me in here, hey?"
"No horrors, Arthur. Everything's under control."
"Great. So's everything at this end."
The lawyer thought Hawke looked better: fresh color, eyes clear and unusually bright. There was something wild and uncouth in his look and his hearty manner, almost as if he had turned hermit. He smelled of whiskey, though it was only a little past noon.
They drove up into the mountains in Mrs. Hawke's old green Chevrolet, which Hawke pushed along at seventy miles an hour, and Adam talked about finances as they went. Hawke listened in silence, watching the road and whipping around trucks. He said at last, "Gosh, things don't sound too bad. If that weasel Scotty really pulls through, I'll be back on my feet."
Adam asked cautious questions about Hawke's health, about the tremors, the headaches, the smell of sharpened pencils. Much, much better, Hawke replied; practically all better. The doctor who had brought him into the world was still practicing in Hovey, though he was nearing eighty, and he had told Hawke that it was all a lot of nonsense, nothing but nerves.
Adam asked about the capsules. Yes, Hawke was still taking them. Old Doc Eversill had said they could do no harm. If they helped him get over the shakes they were as good as anything else; probably the effect was mostly mental but what was the difference, as long as they worked? Hawke said he would take an old country doctor any day against these fancy Hollywood quacks. Doc Eversill had treated every ill known to man for fifty years. He knew the human body.
That evening, at dinner with the Hawke family, Adam made the mistake of praising the mother's soup. He thereupon had to down three bowls of it, to the accompaniment of Mrs. Hawke's great soup soliloquy. Nancy's husband fell fast asleep during the performance, his big bewigged head dropping heavily on his chest, and Nancy had to jab him hard with an elbow. When they moved into the parlor after coffee, Mrs. Hawke made a grand ceremony of urging the guest to sit in the poisonously green armchair, which she called "the new chair," though it was now six or seven years old. Many a time she had growled at Hawke for slouching in soiled work clothes and drinking beer in "the new chair." Adam packed his pipe, and said, "Well! Quite a meal. It seems almost a shame to talk business after that."
Mrs. Hawke said, "Well, I reckon you didn't travel a thousand miles just to eat my soup. Though some folks have said they would," and she laughed uproariously. Hawke was used to his mother's ways, but in the presence of a newcomer they were jarring, and he wondered whether she were not slowly turning senile. She looked the same as ever, perhaps a little grayer, with deeper shadows around the eyes, and she worked as hard as always—she had persistently disdained his and Nancy's efforts to get her a maidservant—but her garrulity and her cackling seemed much worse.
Adam said, "I'm here to do a little fact-finding, Mrs. Hawke, that's all. There's no change in the picture yet, no hope of recovering millions of dollars, I'm sorry to say."
"That'll come," said the mother placidly. "Now that I've got a smart lawyer."
John Weltmann, who was still drinking coffee rather noisily, held up a fat hand. "Excuse me. You are going to discuss the lawsuit against the Hawke Brothers Coal Company. I will go out for a walk and smoke a cigar."
Hawke's sister said, "Oh, don't be ridiculous, John, it's all in the family."
Weltmann said to the lawyer in his heavy Germanic manner, "In the Hovey Savings and Loan Association, in which I am an investment manager, Hawke Brothers is a substantial depositor and stockholder. This is what happens in a small town. Interests tend to overlap and crisscross." And the fat grotesque man rose heavily and waddled out.
Adam started by remarking that Mrs. Hawke really seemed to have no case. "Here's a major coal mining company," he said, "with what appears to be a clear line of title to the mineral rights of a piece of land. Without question, Mrs. Hawke, you were bilked by that old man who sold you the land and didn't tell you he'd disposed of the mineral rights years earlier. Hawke Brothers mined, and they lost money. Or they say they did, and your accountant confirmed it. Years later you popped up, having stumbled on an abandoned tunnel in the wilderness, and claimed old Mr. Crewes had sold you that land. All they could do was sympathize. They had documents of record showing that John Crewes had sold them the mineral rights first."
"That old rascal signed his name with an X to his dying day. He was just as dishonest as he was ignorant," said Mrs. Hawke.
The lawyer opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder. "There was, of course, the quitclaim Judge Crain had bought for you for five dollars, on a moribund senior patent, but the title report of their lawyer indicated this had no legal standing since Crewes had perfected his title under the junior patent by adverse possession."
Mrs. Hawke, wrinkling her nose and her forehead, said, "I always get lost when you lawyers start using language like that. Is it important for me to understand it?"
The lawyer laughed. "Not very. All I'm getting at is that their case seemed foolproof, Mrs. Hawke, and your claim just one of these very commonplace nuisance things, if you'll forgive me, just a family grudge." Mrs. Hawke tossed her head and sniffed. "But once I got to know Scott Hoag, a couple of things began to puzzle me. First of all, he did offer you, at the very outset, a thousand dollars. That was a decent and generous thing to do. The trouble is, Scotty is neither decent nor generous. He's a manipulator. Such people don't part with money except for compelling reasons. Generosity has no meaning for them, it's just a useful pose sometimes. The question is, why did Hoag need to strike that pose, when he already had a sound legal case?"
"I told you!" Mrs. Hawke shouted at her son, shaking her finger under his nose. "I told you, when that Lexington lawyer said Scott Hoag was being Santa Claus, that there was something fishy. Mr. Adam, I hope to die if I wouldn't have taken that thousand dollars, if that fellow hadn't said what he did about Santa Claus. Santa Claus!"
Adam said that the second peculiar fact was the offer, three years later, of twenty thousand dollars to settle the lawsuit, in order to clear the title on the whole ridge, for a sale to a West Virginia land investment company. Again, he said, this might have been a wise thing to do, except that Scotty Hoag was most unlikely to pay out that kind of money. Adam's assistant, checking back on the offer through a lawyer with whom he corresponded in West Virginia, had learned that, at the time the offer was made, Hoag had been a partner in the building of a motor court outside Wheeling. One of the other partners had been a man named Coffman, the same man who had written the letter offering to buy all of Frenchman's Ridge if the lawsuit with Mrs. Hawke could be settled.
"Ha!" said Mrs. Hawke to her son. "I smelled that rat, too, didn't I? That offer was a fake! You remember how riled you got when I wouldn't mail him that contract? Why, you were ready to tear me to pieces!"
Adam said, "Mrs. Hawke, I don't know that the offer wasn't bona fide. Coffman might have learned about Frenchman's Ridge through meeting Scotty in that deal."
"It was a fake," said Mrs. Hawke. "Fake as a wax apple."
The lawyer said he was trying to learn all he could about the Eleanor Coal Company, and about the accounting Mrs. Hawke had received which showed that the mine had lost money. He had come to Hovey just to see what he could stumble on. He was going back to Lexington tomorrow night to meet with Webber, although he was losing hope that he would get information that way.
Mrs. Hawke said, "They'll tell you nothing. They're a pack of bad men with bad consciences, and that white-headed old liar in Lexington is the worst of the lot, except Scotty Hoag. Santa Claus!"
Nancy said, "If Mr. Adam wants to dig around for dirt on Hawke Brothers, mama, maybe Phyllis Trosper is somebody he should talk to."
The mother nodded. "It's a thought."
Adam said, "I see. And who is Phyllis Trosper?"
Mrs. Hawke simpered ridiculously at her son. "Maybe Art would like to tell you. Hey, Art? Or is the wound still fresh?"
"Ye gods, ma!" Hawke turned to the lawyer. "Phyllis Trosper was Phyllis Hicks, the belle of Hovey High, Gus, the girl I was mad for. I kept sending lousy sonnets to her, until I finally realized she was showing them around for laughs. God, she was beautiful. She's a matron with three chins. I see her hauling kids and groceries around town."
Mrs. Hawke said, "Yes, and she's complained many a time to me about the way you high-hat your old friends. That's no way, Art, just because you're a famous writer."
"Ma, I've got work to do, Phyllis ought to understand that."
Adam broke in patiently, "May I ask what the belle of Hovey High has to do with Hawke Brothers?"
Mrs. Hawke said, "Oh, why, she was Will Hawke's secretary for years, that's all, and when Scotty Hoag and Glenn took over she left, and she was sore as a boil for some reason. Claimed she wasn't treated fair."
Nancy said, "Actually she was having babies one after another, and they were right to let her go. Phyllis is sort of a pill."
At this moment John Weltmann came plodding heavily in, and the conversation stopped. He looked around and said, "If I am interrupting I will go out."
Adam shrugged. "I'm finished. We're just chatting."
Weltmann dropped into a chair with a loud creak of old wood. The two women went to do the dishes. Nancy whispered at the men, turning with a mad gleam as she followed her mother out, "Millions! Millions!"
Weltmann glanced after them to the kitchen, and dropped his voice. "As I say, I don't mix in the family's affairs. But as long as your attorney is here, Arthur, let me make an exception and ask a question. In this town there's been a rumor that the New York papers say you're in financial trouble, maybe bankrupt. Is there any truth in it?"
Hawke frowned sullenly at his brother-in-law and at Adam. The lawyer said, "Arthur is overextended in investments. He's had to retrench. I believe that he's not in any long-range trouble."
Weltmann nodded. His big head kept nodding as though he lacked the power to stop it. Then it did stop with a jerk. He grinned at Hawke, a wide-mouthed idiotic grin, and said with an emphatic downward move of his extended fat thumb and forefinger, "I am interested in buying the second mortage of the Paumanok Plaza Shopping Center in Floral Gardens, Long Island."
The very sound of the name was startling. This was the first time anybody in the family had referred to Hawke's grand disaster. He had never talked about his investments with any of them. He said, "What do you know about it, John?"
It developed that Weltmann knew a great deal about it. He was a steady investor in real estate syndicates, and corresponded all the time with brokers and syndicators around the country. His favorite areas, he said, were California, Arizona, and the New York suburbs. Scott Hoag had approached him on several deals, but he had investigated and steered clear of the man. He considered Hoag a clever fellow and a fair builder, but slovenly and reckless in financing, and not exactly reliable in his statements. Hawke and Adam both smiled at the description. Hawke said, "What you mean is, John, Scotty's the biggest liar that ever came out of the state of Kentucky."
Weltmann said earnestly, "Well, that is a statement that takes in a lot of liars." When they both roared with laughter he seemed astonished, and grinned like a frog, and added, "But Kentucky is no different from the other states. It is merely bigger than some."
Hawke said, "What do you want with that second mortgage? It's a straight Scott Hoag venture, that plaza, and right now it's losing money."
"I believe the mortgage will be good."
"It's for three hundred thousand dollars."
"I am aware of the amount."
Hawke studied his ugly brother-in-law, the pasty, jowly, heavy-eyed man with the preposterous rich brown wig that stopped short at a line of white hairless skin. The Weltmanns lived in an old frame house two blocks away, not much larger than his mother's and very sparely furnished, and the man wore a cheap shapeless old gray suit. "John, since we're nosing into each other's affairs, can you swing three hundred thousand dollars in cash?"
The brother-in-law said, "As I told you when I proposed to Nancy, my net worth was then seventy-eight thousand dollars. It is now five hundred forty-seven thousand dollars, most of it in negotiable securities. I also have some real estate. I have been fortunate in real estate."
Hawke said, "Fortunate! For Christ's sake! What have you been in?"
Weltmann said, nodding, "Shopping centers, garages, private hospitals, garden apartments, motor courts, the usual things. I am offered many deals. I once figured that I participate in one deal out of about fifty. But I analyze every deal to the bottom. My arithmetic is good. I have been burned several times, but I'm willing to dig for the facts. It takes a lot of time and it's stupid work, I suppose, but it's what I do."
Adam said to Hawke, "You see, he doesn't waste time writing novels."
The brother-in-law slowly grinned at the lawyer, his mouth widening until his head seemed about to split horizontally. "That is true. I don't waste time writing novels. That is a very good joke."
Hawke said, "You've undoubtedly analyzed Paumanok Plaza, then, and you know it's shaky, and the second mortgage may not be worth anything at all."
"Paumanok Plaza is good," Weltmann said. "It may take as much as a year or two, but it's good."
Hawke said, "Obviously you know I'm stuck with that mortgage. That's what this is all about. Would you offer to buy it otherwise? As a straight investment?"
Weltmann paused for a long time. "We were making jokes about novels. Nancy and I are proud of you. You are writing this new one under difficulties. Your mother and Nancy and I all think you are working too hard. It would give me pleasure to stop worrying about you. As I say, I think the mortgage is good." He laughed irrelevantly and foolishly, looking from the author to the lawyer. "Too much mental work too fast is hard on a man's health."
Hawke had to clear his throat before he could answer. "John, I'll be goddamned if I'll let go of this juicy, gilt-edged prize of a second mortgage. I know a good thing and I'm hanging on to it."
Weltmann's big head bobbed. "I thought I ought to make the offer. I mean it, and it stands. Nancy and mama don't know about it. I see no point in mentioning it to them." He grinned again. "Your mother would be sure I'm trying to skin you."
3
When Phyllis Trosper opened her front door next morning at nine-thirty, she wore a low-cut black velvet dress, she was corsetted and rouged as though for a dance, and her hair was done up in pretty sweeps and whirls. She was quite transformed from the fat small-town slattern Hawke had been absently greeting on Main Street, to a plump living ghost of the high school beauty she had been; her eyes sparkled, and she was in a gay flutter. Her home had the look of having been flattened by a hurricane of housekeeping; it was all impossibly neat, and a great bunch of yellow chrysanthemums overflowed a vase in the parlor. She pressed cake and coffee on the two men, mentioning that it was her own cake, and regretting that she couldn't really bake at all. The cake was superb. She threw Hawke a languishing schoolgirl ogle over her coffee cup and said, "How is it you've never married, Arthur? Too busy becoming famous?"
"Bad luck, Phyllis. I'm hoping to get married next summer if all goes well."
"Oh? Anybody I know?"
"Well, she visited here a few years ago. She's my editor. I don't think you met her."
"Oh," said Mrs. Trosper shortly. "That small red-headed woman who stayed at the hotel."
"Yes, the small red-headed woman."
"I suppose she's from New York."
"Well, she's actually from a small town like this, in California."
Mrs. Trosper bridled. "I suppose she's very clever, if she's an editor, but—my, you went far afield, Arthur. There were an awful lot of nice girls around here who liked you."
