Establishment Page 4

  “I never walked in on you before like this,” he apologized.

  “Then you should have. Once a week, at least.”

  He went into the little parlor and put down the briefcase. She helped him off with his coat and asked whether anything was wrong.

  “No. Or maybe yes. Depending on how you look at it.”

  “What?”

  “It can wait. Where’s my grandson?”

  “Upstairs in his playpen, being happy and fat and content, the way no citizen of this world has any right to be. But Sammy’s too young and foolish to know that.”

  “Bernie home?”

  “He’s at the garage. Come on, what brings you here? Has my mother been talking to you?”

  “First I’ll see my grandson.”

  Barbara looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “All right. You want coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be in the kitchen.” She watched Dan as he mounted the stairs. There was a time when he would have taken them two at a time. Now he walked slowly. Strangely, it was the first time Barbara had ever seen him as an aging man. She did some quick calculations and arrived at fifty-nine. Almost sixty was not old, or was it? There were times when her own thirty-four years felt like the weight of ages. For a moment or two, she listened to his jovial, booming exchange with his grandson, wondering whether he didn’t frighten the little boy to death. Then she went into the kitchen and prepared fresh coffee.

  “He’s crying,” Dan said as he entered.

  “Well, either you scared him to death or he wants you back there. Either way, he’ll stop.”

  “I don’t scare my grandson. He understands me.”

  “You scare a lot of people, daddy, believe it or not.”

  “The hell I do. I’m a lamb.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She poured the coffee and they sat down at the kitchen table. “Well,” she said, “what brings you here—aside from Sammy?”

  “And you.”

  “Yes. What else? Bernie?”

  He nodded.

  “He went to see you yesterday?”

  Dan nodded again.

  “And?”

  “He told me the story, and he asked me to give him a hundred and ten thousand dollars.”

  “Just like that?” Barbara said in amazement.

  “No, not just like that. We talked. Tell me, Bobby, what’s with you two? Another woman?”

  “With Bernie?” She shook her head.

  “It’s not impossible. That’s something no man’s immune to.”

  “Would it sound crazy if I told you he’s very much in love with me, and I’m very much in love with him, and our marriage stinks?”

  “No. It would sound reasonable. It’s happened before. I never asked you how much you make, Bobby. I know the garage is no great shakes. Does Bernie take anything out of it?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “What do you live on?”

  “I’m supposed to head up the foundation when I have the time, which isn’t often. I do get to at least one meeting a week. They pay me four hundred and fifty a month.”

  “Princely.”

  “It was my decision, daddy. I don’t need the money. My last book earned over thirty thousand dollars, and I hope the next one will do as well.”

  “In other words, you pay for everything.”

  “Bernie works twelve, fourteen hours a day.”

  “That doesn’t solve anything.”

  “But it would if he earned the money and I took it,” Barbara said angrily. “Oh, I am so sick to death of this idiotic male notion of what is right and what is proper.”

  “I didn’t make it and neither did Bernie,” Dan said gently. “We’re just the result.”

  “If that isn’t the most self-serving, self-satisfying thing I have ever heard!” She drew a deep breath. “Now I’m getting very angry, and I shouldn’t. Not with you, daddy.”

  “You were right. He did stop crying,” Dan said.

  Barbara stared at him. Then she began to laugh. “Oh, I do love you. But you’re the strangest man.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve met some really strange ones.”

  “But what about Bernie?”

  “If he can’t get the money from me, will that change it? Will he give it up?”

  “Bernie? Daddy, if he wants that money, he’ll get it. He’ll rob a bank. He’ll blow up an armored car—or something equally insane. That’s the way he is, the way he thinks. But I understand why you couldn’t give it to him.”

  “Did you want me to?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Then you’d better make up your mind, Bobby, because that briefcase out in the living room contains one hundred and ten thousand dollars in cash, and it’s up to you whether I leave it here or not.”

  Moments went by while she stared at him, speechless. Finally she said, “My coffee’s cold. Do you want another cup?”

  He nodded. She went to the stove, put the gas on under the pot for a few minutes, and poured the coffee. Then she said, “Why?”

  “Why? You mean why am I ready to give him the money?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I have plenty of time. I have almost an hour before I have to feed Sammy. I’m sure you can explain it in that time.”

  “Now hold on,” Dan said. “I’m not giving the money to him. I’m giving it to you. You will give it to him or not, as you please.”

  “Great. Oh, just great. That’s just what I need.”

  “All right,” Dan said, “I’ll try to explain. I’ve never given you or Bernie a cent, and you haven’t asked.”

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “Will you let me talk? I’m not overly bright, but I’ve watched what’s happening to you two. It’s no good. Whatever you say about Bernie, he’s one hell of a man. You don’t find that very often. I guess that’s why you married him. I can understand him—maybe not the way you understand him, but in my own way. If he doesn’t do this, it’s all over between you two. You may stay married; it’s still all over. Am I wrong?”

  She waited awhile before she answered. “No, you’re not wrong.”

  “All right. Get back to the money. It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. It never has. And I don’t know one damn thing about this situation in Palestine except what I read in the papers. But I know something about what the Jews have taken, and the best friend I ever had was a Jew. I owe him. He’s dead. All right, this is my way of evening the score. Maybe you don’t understand that, but it’s the only way I can explain it. I think that if anyone can pull off this crazy stunt, Bernie can. If he does it and he comes back, he may feel that he paid his dues. And one more thing. I like him.”

  “So do I,” Barbara said. “Suppose he doesn’t come back? Suppose he’s killed.”

  “I thought of that. That’s why I can’t make the decision. I’m leaving the money here. It’s up to you.”

  “Why?” Barbara asked almost woefully.

  “Maybe because I respect you. Maybe because you always knew a lot more about everything than I did. I sat up with your mother half the night talking about this and trying to figure out what was right. I don’t know. I love you very much, Bobby. If you want me to walk out of here with the money and never mention it to Bernie, I will.”

  “No, daddy,” she said. “Leave it here. And thank you.”

  ***

  The foundation that Barbara referred to as the source of part of her income was the Lavette Foundation, with its headquarters on Leavenworth Street in San Francisco. It had an interesting history. Barbara’s grandfather, Thomas Seldon, had died in 1928. His will left 382,000 shares in the Seldon Bank to be divided between his two grandchildren
and to be held in trust for them by their mother for twelve years. In 1940, after five years of living and working in Europe, Barbara returned to San Francisco and decided to put the whole of her inheritance into a charitable foundation. By then, her share of the stock had a market value of something more than fifteen million dollars, so the gesture was not a small one. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to become the nominal head of the board of directors of the foundation.

  And it was this foundation that Brodsky spoke about, sitting with Bernie in his office at the garage. Cohen replied that it was out of the question. “I wouldn’t even suggest it,” he said. “This is a case of something being purer than Caesar’s wife. That damn foundation is sacrosanct. God Almighty, Irv, I am married to a very strange and unusual woman, who happens to be married to a sonofabitch. Suppose I didn’t go with you. You could still pull it off.”

  “Not without the planes.”

  “Why not take the money out of the two million you have in New York?”

  “Because the deal with those Czech bastards is for two million dollars. We get ten World War II Messerschmitt fighters and the rest in small arms. You’re the best small arms expert I know.”

  “What are they asking for the Messerschmitts?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars each.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, they’re our friends. But what do we do? Truman put an embargo on anything here. We could pick up war surplus fighters for five thousand dollars, but we’d never get them out of the country, and if we don’t get those C-54s—”

  “We’ll get them.”

  “How?”

  “Rob a bank if we have to.”

  “You’re kidding,” Brodsky said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  ***

  Barbara sat in her living room and stared at the bulging brown leather briefcase that her father had left on the floor just inside the doorway. Her house was one of those narrow, two-story Victorian structures that still line so many of the streets that descend from Russian Hill. Sam Goldberg, her father’s lawyer and subsequently her own lawyer and friend and protector, had built the house for his bride in 1892. It had survived the earthquake and the fire almost undamaged, and both Goldberg and his wife, childless, had lived there all their lives and finally died there, the wife first and Sam some years later. Barbara bought the house from his estate. It had two bay windows, triptych fashion, one above the other. The doorway, six steps above the street, was framed by wooden columns in a pseudo-Moorish style. The doorway and each of the windows had elaborately carved cornices above them, and each cornice, and the roof too, rested upon rows of dentils, each of which was carved as elaborately as the cornice it supported. The carving on the front of the house was a wonderful, uninhibited mixture of the Ionic, Corinthian, and Moorish styles, sitting upon white clapboard walls.

  Barbara loved the house passionately. After her years in Paris and the time she spent in the Far East and Africa as a war correspondent, it was her safe harbor, her refuge and cave. Many people shunned these old houses because of their small rooms, but Barbara enjoyed the feeling of closeness and intimacy. She had redecorated and refurnished most of the rooms and had installed a modern kitchen, but the little parlor, its walls painted a Wedgwood green, was still furnished in the black, horsehair-covered, tufted pieces that had been there since Sam Goldberg acquired them in the eighteen nineties.

  Barbara sat on one of these plump, comfortable chairs and contemplated the bag of money, herself, her past, her possible future, and her marriage. She had not opened the briefcase. Money did not fascinate her; neither did it repel her. Aside from its use, she was indifferent to it, which she had puzzled over for a long time and had finally accepted as a syndrome of at least some who are born to great wealth. Years ago, when she was a student at Sarah Lawrence and went to New York with some schoolmates, she had without much thought given a five-dollar bill to a beggar. She would never forget the shocked surprise of her friends. Now she stared at a briefcase filled with money that might or might not change the destiny of some six hundred thousand Jews in Palestine. It had already changed her own destiny. She felt a strange, ominous certainty that if her husband walked out of the house with the briefcase in his hand, she would never see him again.

  But she also was quite aware that she had such feelings in the past about people she loved, and that nothing had ever come of her intimations of doom. It was a question of mood and misery. Her mood was bleak, but the misery began to lighten. She was not unused to being honest with herself and facing and accepting her own feelings, no matter how deplorable they were. She had been alone in the past, and she could face the prospect of being alone again without any great qualms. If she had to choose between having a husband who was in a constant state of depression and frustration and having no husband at all, at least for a time, the latter was preferable. Her days were full. She was a mother, a housekeeper, a writer, and the president of a very large and complex charitable foundation. She would not retreat into the hurt of rejection; she had watched and sympathized with the utter terror and hopelessness of women who were rejected, and she had sworn to herself that she would never go that way; in any case, she felt that she understood her husband sufficiently to realize that he was not rejecting her. And in the very back of her mind, deep down where it was pretending to hide from her consciousness, was a tiny flutter of pleasant excitement at the prospect of being in command of her own household and her own time, of not having to plan ways and devices to cope with a morose man who agonized and apologized for not being able to have an erection.

  However he conceived of his manhood, it had dried up in the little Victorian house and in the profitless garage. Staring at the bulging briefcase of money, Barbara asked herself, Have I ever faced what he is? What he truly is? Or have I been unwilling to accept the possibility that a man as gentle and kind and loving as Bernie Cohen, who spent ten years as a soldier, can find his happiness no other way? Or have I been conditioned to believe that a Jew cannot be a professional killer?

  Once the phrase had formed in her mind, she was overcome with guilt and remorse. No, she told herself angrily, if I can’t understand what a sensitive Jew feels about what has gone on in Europe during the past ten years, then I am a total clod. She was overcome with sadness and tears welled into her eyes, then she told herself even more angrily that this was abject self-pity and she would have no part of it.

  “I am a mature, healthy woman,” she said. “I am a successful writer. I have had two decently successful books, and I am halfway through a third. I have family and friends and a beautiful son with a voracious appetite, and I have a fascinating husband who is a little crazy. I will not feel sorry for myself. I will do what I have to do and he will do what he has to do. Otherwise this marriage is not worth a damn.”

  She felt much better after that declaration to herself, and the sound of Sam yelling told her that he had awakened from his nap. By the time she arrived in the nursery, Sam was gurgling with laughter and bouncing in his crib. “You should thank God,” she said as she picked him up, “that your mother is descended from a line of oversized fishermen and gold miners. You get heavier and heavier. You’re also wet and smelly.”

  The doorbell rang just as she finished diapering Sam. She put him in his playpen, went downstairs, and opened the door.

  A rather stout, red-faced man in a dark suit stood there. He wore a sweater under his suit jacket, and his bulbous nose was heavily veined.

  “Are you Mrs. Bernie Cohen?” he asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Barbara Cohen, maiden name of Barbara Lavette, residing here?”

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket, took out an envelope, and handed it to her. “Killen, United States Marshal. That is a subpoena, Mrs. Cohen. You have now accepted service.” With that, he turned on his heel, went down the steps, and
walked away.

  ***

  Bernie returned to the house a little after five o’clock and called out cheerfully to Barbara, “Hey, kid, I’m back. Where’s the runt?”

  She came out of the kitchen and kissed him. “We’re both of us improved, aren’t we? Sammy’s upstairs. I fed him early.”

  “What the hell. You win some, you lose some.”

  To which Barbara responded, “You certainly do.”

  He went upstairs, and she heard him playing with Sam. “He’s wet,” he called down to her.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, change him! Don’t stand there shouting at me that he’s wet!”

  Pleased, astonished at what she had just said, Barbara stood and waited. A howl of anger and anguish came from Bernie. “I’m bleeding!” he yelled. “The damn pin went through my hand!”

  Sam was wailing. Barbara nodded with satisfaction. Then she climbed the stairs and diapered Sam while Bernie squeezed blood from his finger and changed his clothes. She put the child in his crib, and when Bernie came down, she had a pitcher of martinis and glasses ready in the parlor.

  “I was going to call you and ask you to get a sitter. I thought we might go out to dinner.”

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “Only that I’ve felt like a human being these past few days.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Barbara said.

  “Still upset?”

  “No. What’s to be upset over? Your husband tells you that he’s taking off on some lunatic caper—why be upset?”

  “Bobby, it’s not a lunatic caper.”

  “And I’m not upset. Maybe a little. Bernie, I’ve been brooding over this all day. You do what you have to do. Only come back safely and soon, please.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  Barbara sipped her drink and studied him. “Yes and no. I mean it and I don’t mean it. You know, Bernie, we’ve always been very honest with each other, very straightforward, very direct. A lot of folks think we’re the most unlikely couple in San Francisco, but they’re wrong. We’re not too different. It’s just that I’m a woman and you’re a man. I sometimes think that being a man in this ridiculous world of ours is more than any human being should have to bear. But there it is. If I keep you from going, you’d never forgive me.”