The Osterman Weekend: A Novel

  “You know, an undressed woman’s not particularly attractive in sunlight.”

  “You think you’re a portrait in beige?… Give.” She took the pages and reached for her large, tinted glasses. “Is this the finish?”

  Bernie nodded. “When are the kids getting home?”

  “They’ll call from the beach before they start back. I told Marie to make sure they phone. I wouldn’t want Merwyn to find out about naked girls in sunlight at his age. There’s enough aversion to that in this town.”

  “You’ve got a point. Read.” Bernie dove into the pool. He swam back and forth rapidly for three minutes … until he was out of breath. He was a good swimmer. In the Army they made him a swimming instructor at Fort Dix. “Speed-Jew” they had called him at the Army pool. But never to his face. He was a thin man, but tough. If C.C.N.Y. had had a football team instead of a joke, he would have been its captain. An end. Joe Cardone told Bernie he could have used him at Princeton.

  Bernie had laughed when Joe told him that. In spite of the surface democratization of the Army experience—and it was surface—it had never occurred to Bernard Osterman, of the Tremont Avenue Ostermans, Bronx, New York, to vault time-honored barriers and enter the Ivy League. He might have been able to, he was bright and there was the G.I. Bill, but it simply never entered his thinking.

  It wouldn’t have been comfortable then—in 1946. It would be now; things had changed.

  Osterman climbed up the ladder. It was good that he and Leila were going to the east coast, back to Saddle Valley for a few days. It was somehow akin to taking a brief, concentrated course in pleasant living whenever they returned. Everyone always said the east was hectic, pressurized—far more so than Los Angeles; but that wasn’t so. It only seemed that way because the area of action was more confined.

  Los Angeles, his Los Angeles, which meant Burbank, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, was where the real insanity was practiced. Men and women racing crazily up and down the aisles of a palm-lined drug store. Everything on sale, everything labeled, everyone competing in their psychedelic shirts and orange slacks.

  There were times when Bernie just wanted to see someone dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit and a buttondown broadcloth. It didn’t really mean anything, not actually; he didn’t give much of a damn what costumes the tribes of Los Angeles wore. Perhaps it was just the continual, overbearing assault on the eyes.

  Or perhaps he was entering one of his downswings again. He was wearying of it all.

  Which was unfair. The palm-lined drug store had treated him very well.

  “How is it?” he asked his wife.

  “Pretty good. You may even have a problem.”

  “What?” Bernie grabbed a towel from a stack on the table. “What problem?”

  “You could be stripping too many layers away. Too much pain, maybe.” Leila flipped over a page as her husband smiled. “Be quiet a minute and let me finish. Perhaps you’ll snap out of it.”

  Bernie Osterman sat down in a webbed chair and let the warm California sun wash over his body. There was still a smile on his lips; he knew what his wife meant and it was comforting to him. The years of formula writing hadn’t destroyed his ability to strip away the layers—when he wanted to.

  And there were times when there was nothing more important to him than to want to. To prove to himself that he could still do it. The way he used to back in the days when they lived in New York.

  They were good days. Provocative, exciting, filled with commitment and purpose. Only there was never anything else really—just commitment, just purpose. A few flattering reviews written by other intense young writers. He’d been called penetrating then; perceptive, incisive. Once, even, extraordinary.

  It hadn’t been enough. And so he and Leila came to the palm-lined drug store and willingly, happily trained their talents for the exploding world of the television residual.

  Someday, though. Someday, thought Bernard Osterman, it would happen again. The luxury of sitting down with all the time in the world to really do it. Make a big mistake if he had to. It was important to be able to think like that.

  “Bernie?”

  “Yes?”

  Leila draped a towel over her front and pushed the latch on the lounge chair so the back raised itself. “It’s beautiful, sweetie. I mean really very beautiful, and I think you know it’s not going to work.”

  “It does work!”

  “They won’t sit still for it.”

  “Fuck ’em!”

  “We’re being paid thirty thousand for a one-hour drama, Bernie. Not a two-hour exorcism ending in a funeral home.”

  “It’s not an exorcism. It happens to be a sad story based on very real conditions, and the conditions don’t change. You want to drive down to the barrio and take a look?”

  “They won’t buy it. They’ll want rewrites.”

  “I won’t make them!”

  “And they’ll hold the balance. There’s fifteen thousand coming to us.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “You know I’m right.”

  “Talk! All Goddamned talk! This season we’ll have meaning! Controversy!… Talk!”

  “They look at the figures. A rave in The Times doesn’t sell deodorant in Kansas.”

  “Fuck ’em.”

  “Relax. Take another swim. It’s a big pool.” Leila Osterman looked at her husband. He knew what that look meant and couldn’t help smiling. A little sadly.

  “O.K., fix it then.”

  Leila reached for the pencil and yellow pad on the table next to her chair. Bernie stood up and approached the edge of the pool.

  “You think Tanner might want to join us? You think maybe I can approach him?”

  His wife put down her pencil and looked up at her husband. “I don’t know. Johnny’s different from us …”

  “Different from Joe and Betty? Dick and Ginny? I don’t see he’s so different.”

  “I wouldn’t jump at him. He’s still a newshawk. Vulture they used to call him, remember? The vulture of San Diego. He’s got a spine. I wouldn’t want to bend it. It might snap back.”

  “He thinks like we do. He thinks like Joe and Dick. Like us.”

  “I repeat. Don’t jump. Call it the well-advertised woman’s intuition, but don’t jump.… We could get hurt.”

  Osterman dove into the pool and swam thirty-six feet under water to the far end. Leila was only half right, he thought. Tanner was an uncompromising newsman but he was also a sensible and sensitive human being. Tanner wasn’t a fool, he saw what was happening—everywhere. It was inevitable.

  It all came down to individual survival.

  It reduced itself to being able to do what one wanted to do. To write an “exorcism” if he was capable of it. Without worrying about deodorants in the state of Kansas.

  Bernie surfaced and held onto the side of the pool, breathing deeply. He pushed himself off and slowly breast-stroked back toward his wife.

  “Did I box you into a corner?”

  “You never could.” Leila spoke while writing on the yellow pad. “There was a time in my life when I thought thirty thousand dollars was all the money in the world. Brooklyn’s house of Weintraub was not Chase Manhattan’s biggest client.” She tore off a page and secured it under a Pepsi-Cola bottle.

  “I never had that problem,” said Bernie treading water. “The Ostermans are really a silent branch of the Rothschilds.”

  “I know. Your racing colors are puce and pumpkin orange.”

  “Hey!” Bernie suddenly grasped the ledge and looked excitedly at his wife. “Did I tell you? The trainer called this morning from Palm Springs. That two-year-old we bought did three furlongs in forty-one seconds!”

  Leila Osterman dropped the pad on her lap and laughed. “You know, we’re really too much! And you want to play Dostoyevski!”

  “I see what you mean.… Well, someday.”

  “Sure. In the meantime keep one eye on Kansas and the other on those cockamamie horses of yours.” r />
  Osterman chuckled and plunged toward the opposite side of the pool. He thought once more about the Tanners. John and Ali Tanner. He’d cleared their names with Switzerland. Zurich was enthusiastic.

  Bernard Osterman had made up his mind. Somehow he’d convince his wife.

  He was going to talk seriously to John Tanner next weekend.

  Danforth walked through the narrow front hallway of his Georgetown house and opened the door. Laurence Fassett, of the Central Intelligence Agency, smiled and extended his hand.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Danforth. Andrews called me from McLean. We’ve only met once before—I’m sure you don’t remember. It’s an honor, sir.”

  Danforth looked at this extraordinary man and returned the smile. The C.I.A. dossier said Fassett was forty-seven, but to Danforth he seemed much younger. The broad shoulders, the muscular neck, the unwrinkled face beneath the short-cropped blond hair: this all reminded Danforth of his own approaching seventieth birthday.

  “Of course I remember. Come in, please.”

  As Fassett stepped into the hallway, his gaze fell on several Degas watercolors on the wall. He took a step closer. “These are beautiful.”

  “Yes, they are. Are you an expert, Mr. Fassett?”

  “Oh, no. Just an enthusiastic amateur.… My wife was an artist. We used to spend a lot of time in the Louvre.”

  Danforth knew he shouldn’t dwell on Fassett’s wife. She had been German—with ties in East Berlin. She had been killed in East Berlin.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Come this way, please. Grover’s out back. We were watching the Woodward program on the patio.”

  The two men walked out onto the flagstone and brick back yard. George Grover rose from his chair.

  “Hello, Larry. Things are beginning to move.”

  “Looks that way. It can’t be too quick for me.”

  “Nor for any of us, I shouldn’t think,” said Danforth. “Drink?”

  “No, thank you, sir. If you don’t mind, I’d rather make this as quick as possible.”

  The three men sat down around the ceramic table. “Then let’s pick up from where we are right now,” Danforth said. “What is the immediate plan?”

  Fassett looked bewildered. “I thought it had all been cleared through you.”

  “Oh, I’ve read the reports. I just want the information firsthand from the man in charge.”

  “All right, sir. Phase one is complete. The Tanners, the Tremaynes and the Cardones are all in Saddle Valley. No immediate vacations planned, they’ll be there throughout the coming week. This information is confirmed from all our sources. There are thirteen agents in the town and the three families will be under constant surveillance.… Intercepts have been placed on all telephones. Untraceable.

  “Los Angeles has established the Ostermans’ flight on Friday to be Number 509, arriving Kennedy at 4:50 Eastern Daylight Time. Their usual procedure is to take a taxi directly out to the suburbs. The cab will be followed, of course …”

  “If, by then, they’re adhering to normal patterns,” interrupted Grover.

  “If they’re not, they won’t be on that plane.… Tomorrow we bring Tanner down to Washington.”

  “He has no inkling at the moment, does he?” asked Danforth.

  “None at all—other than the patrol car, which we’ll use if he balks tomorrow morning.”

  “How do you think he’ll take it?” Grover leaned forward on his seat.

  “I think it’ll blow his mind.”

  “He may refuse to cooperate,” Dansforth said.

  “That’s not likely. If I do my job, he won’t have a choice.”

  Danforth looked at the intense, muscular man who spoke so confidently. “You’re anxious that we succeed, aren’t you? You’re very committed.”

  “I have reason to be.” Fassett returned the old man’s stare. When he continued it was in a matter-of-fact tone. “They killed my wife. They ran her down on the Kurfürstendamm at two o’clock in the morning—while I was being ‘detained.’ She was trying to find me. Did you know that?”

  “I’ve read the file. You have my deepest sympathy.…”

  “I don’t want your sympathy. Those orders came from Moscow. I want them. I want Omega.”

  2

  Monday—10:15 A.M.

  Tanner left the elevator and walked down the thickly carpeted corridor toward his office. He’d spent twenty-five minutes in the screening room watching the Woodward tape. It confirmed what the newspapers had reported: Charles Woodward had exposed Undersecretary Ashton as a political hack.

  There had to be a lot of embarrassed men in Washington, he thought.

  “Quite a show, wasn’t it?” his secretary said.

  “Out-of-sight, as my son would put it. I don’t think we can expect many dinner invitations to the White House. Any calls?”

  “From all over town. Mainly congratulations; I left the names on your desk.”

  “That’s comforting. I may need them. Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. The F.C.C. called twice. A man called Fassett.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Laurence Fassett.”

  “We’ve always dealt with Cranston down there.” “That’s what I thought, but he said it was urgent.”

  “Maybe the State Department’s trying to get us arrested before sundown.”

  “I doubt it. They’d at least wait a day or two; it’d look less political.”

  “You’d better get him back. To the F.C.C. everything’s urgent.” Tanner crossed into his office, sat down at his desk, and read through the messages. He smiled; even his competition had been impressed.

  The telephone intercom buzzed. “Mr. Fassett’s on one, sir.”

  “Thanks.” Tanner pushed the appropriate button. “Mr. Fassett? Sorry I was out of the office when you called.”

  “It’s my place to apologize,” said the polite voice at the other end of the line. “It’s just that I have a difficult schedule today, and you’re a priority.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Routine but urgent is the best way I can describe it. The papers you filed with us in May for Standard’s news division were incomplete.”

  “What?” John remembered something F.C.C.’s Cranston had said to him a few weeks ago. He also recalled that Cranston had said it was unimportant. “What’s missing?”

  “Two signatures of yours for one thing. On pages seventeen and eighteen. And the breakdown of projected public service features for the six-month period commencing in January.”

  John Tanner did remember now. It had been Cranston’s fault. Pages seventeen and eighteen had been missing from the folder sent from Washington for Tanner’s signature—a point which the network’s legal department had made to Tanner’s office—and the service feature blanks were to be left open for another month, pending network decisions. Cranston, again, had agreed.

  “If you’ll check, you’ll find your Mr. Cranston omitted the pages you refer to and the specific service features were postponed. He agreed to that.”

  There was a momentary pause from Washington. When Fassett spoke his voice held a touch less politeness than it had previously.

  “In all deference to Cranston, he had no authority to make such a decision. Surely you have the information now.” It was a statement.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, we do. I’ll send it out Special Delivery.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not good enough. Well have to ask you to get down here this afternoon.”

  “Now, wait a minute. That’s kind of short notice, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t make the rules. I just carry them out. As of two months ago Standard Mutual Network is operating in violation of the F.C.C. code. We can’t allow ourselves to be put in that position. Regardless of who’s responsible, that is a fact. You’re in violation. Let’s get it cleared up today.”

  “All right. But I warn you, if this action is in any way a harassment emanating from the State Department, I’l
l bring down the network attorneys and label it for what it is.”

  “I not only don’t like your insinuation, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do. The Woodward Show yesterday afternoon.”

  Fassett laughed. “Oh, I heard about that. The Post did quite a story on it.… And I think you can put your mind at ease. I tried to reach you twice last Friday.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a minute.” Tanner pushed the hold button and then the local. “Norma? Did this Fassett try to get me Friday?”

  There was a short silence while Tanner’s secretary checked Friday’s call sheet. “Could be. There were two calls from Washington, an Operator thirty-six in D.C. for you to reach if you returned by four. You were in the studio till five-thirty.”

  “Didn’t you ask who was calling?”

  “Of course I did. The only answer I got was that it could wait until Monday.”

  “Thanks.” Tanner got back on the line with Fassett. “Did you leave an operator’s number?”

  “Operator three-six, Washington. Till 4:00 P.M.”

  “You didn’t give your name or identify the agency.…”

  “It was Friday. I wanted to get out early. Would you have felt better if I’d left an urgent call you couldn’t return?”

  “Okay, okay. And this can’t wait for the mails?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tanner. I mean I’m really very sorry, but I have my instructions. Standard Mutual’s not a small local station. This filing should have been completed weeks ago.… Also,” here Fassett laughed again, “the way you keep stepping on exposed toes, I wouldn’t want to be you if some wheels in the State Department found out your whole damn news department was in violation.… And that’s no threat. It couldn’t be. We’re both at fault.”

  John Tanner smiled at the telephone. Fassett was right. The filing was overdue. And there was no sense risking bureaucratic reprisals. He sighed. “I’ll catch the one o’clock shuttle and be at the F.C.C. by three or a little after. Where’s your office?”

  “I’ll be with Cranston. We’ll have the papers, and don’t forget the schedules. They’re only projections, we won’t hold you to them.”