Scruff

  Labels. A nation of labels, thought Trevayne.

  “Don’t you see?” continued Vicarson. “He doesn’t care about himself. He cares deeply about his work. And whatever the reasons—even justifications—he was a subversive. In the real meaning of the word. The prospects of ulterior motive could be attributed to every major decision he’s ever made. It’s called ‘dishonorable source.’ It usually overrides everything else.”

  “And that’s why you don’t want to write the report?”

  “Yes, sir. You’d have to meet him to understand. He’s an old man; I think a great man. He’s not afraid for himself; I don’t think the years he has left are important to him. What he’s accomplished is.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Sam?” asked Trevayne slowly.

  “What?”

  “The Bellstar decision. Didn’t you say it was full of holes? Are we to let the Genessee lawyers get away with the most corrupt sort of practice?”

  Vicarson smiled sadly. “I have an idea they wasted their time. Studebaker might have reached the same decision without them. Of course, we’ll never know, but he’s pretty damned convincing.”

  “How?”

  “He quoted Hofstader: antitrust is ‘a faded passion of reform.’ And Galbraith: modern technology has brought about the ‘industrialized state.’ Competition, per se, is no longer a viable, built-in regulator. The huge economic resources demanded by our technology bring about a concentration of financing.… Once this is accepted—and the law has to deal with practicalities—it’s the government’s responsibility, and the law’s, to act as the regulator, the protector of the consumer. The civilizer, if you will.… Put in blunt terms, the country needed the Bellstar products. The company was going under; there was no one else but Genessee Industries who had sufficient economic resources to assume the responsibility.”

  “He said that?”

  “Almost verbatim. It wasn’t so clear in the decision; at least, not to me. He told me I wasn’t the best student he’d ever met.”

  “But if he believed that, why didn’t he just say so? Why did he tell you all the rest of it?”

  Sam Vicarson got out of the chair; there was a restless, uncomfortable expression on his face. “I’m afraid I forced him. I said that if I didn’t understand the Bellstar decision, if I thought it was suspect—and for the record, I’m considered a bright bastard—then he had an obligation to make a public clarification. He flatly refused. No way; he was adamant. I felt awful, but I told him he was copping out, and I wouldn’t buy it. I was going to subpoena him.”

  “I would have done the same thing.”

  Vicarson was by the hotel window, staring out at the Boise skyline. “He didn’t expect that; I don’t think he realized we had subpoena powers.”

  “Honored in the breach, I hope,” said Trevayne. “We haven’t used them.”

  Vicarson turned. “It shook him, Mr. Trevayne. It was a terrible sight. And it wasn’t for himself; you’ve got to believe that.”

  Trevayne got out of the chair and stood facing the young man. He spoke quietly but firmly.

  “Write the report, Sam.”

  “Please …”

  “Don’t file it. Give it to me. One copy.” Andrew walked to the door. “See you at eight o’clock. My room.”

  23

  The coffee table served as a communal desk. The reports and memoranda were in file folders in front of each man. The conference in Trevayne’s room had begun with Alan Martin’s description of Ernest Manolo, president of the Lathe Operators Brotherhood of the District of Southern California and the all-powerful negotiator of the AFL-CIO. According to Martin, Ernest Manolo looked like a twelve-year-old bullfighter.

  “He travels with his own picadors; two big fellows, they’re always flanking him.”

  “Are they guards?” asked Trevayne. “And if so, why?”

  “They are, and he needs them. Fast Ernie—that’s what he’s called, Fast Ernie—has a goodly share of resentful brothers in his brotherhood.”

  “Good Lord, why?” Andrew was sitting next to Sam Vicarson on the couch. “He got them a hell of a settlement.” Vicarson started to interrupt as Martin answered quickly.

  “Sam knows. It was in his bio material. Incidentally, buddy,” said Martin to the young attorney, “that was a good job.”

  “Thanks,” answered a subdued Vicarson. “It wasn’t hard. When he was running for office he had a lot of promotion material circulated. Easy to zero in on.”

  “That’s why he travels with his two friends,” continued Martin. “Fast Ernie’s twenty-six years old. He had to jump over a lot of seasoned union stewards to get the job. Most of them don’t like the way he did it.”

  “Which was how?” asked Mike Ryan, sitting across from Martin.

  “A lot of the hard-hat brothers think he used dirty money. They figure it had to be dirty, because he had so much of it. He brought into office with him a whole new breed of union management. Young, bright, college-educated. They don’t shout arguments in union halls, they issue position paper with lots of charts and logistics. The old-timers don’t like it. They’re suspicious of three syllables.”

  “Still,” said Andrew, “he got them a decent contract. That’s the name of the game, Alan.”

  “It’s also the name of Fast Ernie’s problem. It’s both his best weapon and his highly suspect maneuver.… It was the quickest settlement Genessee ever made. No big fights, no all-night bargaining sessions; when it was concluded, there weren’t any celebrations; no dancing in the streets. No words of congratulation from the old war horses like Meany and his boys on the Labor Council. Most important, the settlement in the Southern California District will not be used as a guideline anywhere else. It’s isolated, jurisdictional.”

  Mike Ryan leaned forward in his chair. “I’m an engineer, not a union-watcher. Is that unusual?”

  “You can bet your blueprints on it,” answered Martin. “Any major labor contract serves as the basis for upcoming negotiations. But not this one.”

  “How do you know?” asked Trevayne.

  “I backed Manolo into a corner. I told him I was surprised, even astounded, that he hadn’t been given his proper due; that the D.C. Labor Council had brushed him off. I knew a few of those old buzzards, and I was going to raise the issue.… Manolo didn’t want any part of my solicitousness. In fact, he was goddamned upset. He began retreating to his charts and employment stats relative to district conditions. He reiterated more times than I care to recall how the old-time labor clods couldn’t understand the new jurisdictional economic theories. What was applicable to southern California wasn’t to west Arkansas.… Do you begin to see?”

  “He’s Genessee’s man. They put him in and bought him with the single contract,” interjected Vicarson.

  “They’re doing it all over the country—including west Arkansas,” said Martin. “Genessee Industries is well on its way to controlling its own labor markets. I made a surface check this afternoon, based on Manolo’s districting pattern. It’s surface, mind you, but I found similarities in Genessee companies and subsidiaries in twenty-four states.”

  “Jesus,” said Mike Ryan softly.

  “Will Manolo run to Genessee? That could be a problem for us right now.” Andrew frowned as he asked the question.

  “I don’t think so. I can’t guarantee it, but I think he’s going to sit on the tightrope; at least for a while. I told him I was perfectly satisfied, and I think he bought it. I also implied that I’d be just as happy if our meeting was kept between the two of us. If others got involved—especially Genessee management—I’d have to spend a lot more time in Pasadena.… I think he’ll keep quiet.”

  “So much for Manolo. What about this Jamison in Houston, Mike?”

  Ryan seemed to hesitate as he reached for the folder on the coffee table. He looked over at Trevayne and for several moments said nothing. The expression on his face was questioning. Finally he spoke. “I’m trying to figure out
a way to say this. I listen to Al’s words here and find myself nodding my head, saying, ‘Yes, sure, that’s the way it is.’ Because suddenly I realize he’s describing Houston. And probably Palo Alto, Detroit, Oak Ridge, and twenty or so other Genessee design shops and laboratories in God knows how many places. Only you substitute ‘scientific community’ for ‘labor markets,’ dirty up the players a bit more, and it’s the same ballgame.”

  Michael Ryan had flown into Houston International using a plane also chartered by Douglas Pace, flight plans filed under Pace’s name. After checking the Genessee laboratories, he found Ralph Jamison, metallurgical specialist, at a yacht club on Galveston Bay. It was in Megans Point, a haven for oil-rich Texans, the Southwest’s Riviera.

  Ryan feigned an unexpected reunion, completely accepted by Ralph Jamison. The two men had become friends while they were at Lockheed; each an extrovert, each a lover of good times and a good deal of good liquor.

  Each, too, a brilliant man.

  Afternoon became evening and then, swiftly, the early-morning hours. Ryan found that Jamison continuously evaded questions about his projects at Genessee. It was frustrating, because it wasn’t natural; shop talk among top aeronautical men—especially with both cleared for the highest classification—was the normal, anticipated, looked-forward-to indulgence.

  “Then I got an inspiration, Andy,” said Mike Ryan, interrupting his narrative. “I decided to offer Ralph a job.”

  “Where?” asked Trevayne, smiling. “Doing what?”

  “Who the hell cared? We were both fried out of our skulls; him more than me, I’m happy to say.… I made it sound like I was a lab raider. I was with a company that was in a bind; we needed him. I’d actually come looking for him. I offered him three, maybe four times what I figured he was pulling down at Genessee.”

  “You were pretty damned generous,” said Alan Martin. “What were you going to do if he accepted?”

  Ryan stared down at the coffee table. His eyes had a sadness about them. “By then I’d accurately predicted that he wouldn’t.” Ryan looked up. “Or couldn’t.”

  Ralph Jamison, faced with a firm, incredible offer made by a man who—drunk or sober—would not have made it without authorization, had to find explanations commensurate with his illogical refusal. The words, at first, came easily: loyalty, current projects that concerned him at Genessee, lab problems he couldn’t leave, again loyalty, stretching back over the years.

  Ryan countered each with growing irritation, until Jamison—by now nearly incoherent, and pressured by his total belief in Ryan’s extraordinary offer—dropped the words.

  “You can’t understand. Genessee has taken care of us. All of us.”

  “Taken care?” Trevayne repeated the words reported by Mike Ryan. “All of them?… Who? What did he mean?”

  “I had to piece it together. He never came out and made any blanket admissions … except one. But it’s there, Andy. All the top talent—especially lab and design—are paid below the line.”

  “Under the table, I presume, is another, more accurate description,” said Alan Martin.

  “Yes,” answered Ryan. “And not little driblets in expense vouchers. Fair-sized amounts, usually paid outside the country and wending their way to Zurich and Bern. Coded bank accounts.”

  “Unreported income,” supplied Martin.

  “Untraceable,” added Sam Vicarson. “Because no one cries fraud. And no country’s tax laws are recognized in Switzerland. Even when violated, it’s not fraud as far as the Swiss are concerned.”

  “It starts early, as I understand it,” said Ryan. “Genessee spots a comer, a real potential, and the loving begins. Oh, they check out the person; they work slowly, gradually. They find weaknesses—that was Ralph’s admission, incidentally, I’ll get to it—and when they find them they cross-pollinate them with plain, outright, hidden bonuses. In ten or fifteen years a guy has a sweet nest egg of a hundred, a hundred and fifty thousand salted away. That’s mighty inducive.”

  “And he’s inexorably bound to Genessee Industries,” said Trevayne. “It’s a collusion pact; he does what Genessee tells him to do. Because if he doesn’t, that’s conducive to something else. I assume payments are made by … let’s say, expendable intermediaries.”

  “Right.”

  “A rough estimate, Mike: how many Ralph Jamisons are there?” asked Trevayne.

  “Well, figure Genessee has a hundred installations—general and subsidiary—like the Houston labs. Not as big, certainly, but substantial. You can estimate between seven and ten top men at each site. Seven hundred to a thousand.”

  “And these people control project decisions, production lines?” Trevayne wrote on notepaper.

  “Ultimately, yes. They’re responsible.”

  “So for a few million a year, Genessee extracts obedience from a powerful sector of the scientific community,” said Andrew, scratching over the figures he’d written. “Men who have control over, say, a hundred project installations, which in turn make the decisions for all of the Genessee plants and subsidiaries. Assembly lines and contracts involving billions.”

  “Yes. I’d guess it’s growing every year; they start young.” The dejected, questioning expression returned to Ryan’s face. “Ralph Jamison’s a sad casualty, Andy. He’s better than that. He’s got a big problem.”

  “He drinks with the Irish crazies,” said Alan Martin gently, seeing the pain in Ryan’s eyes.

  Ryan looked at Martin, smiled, and paused before replying softly. “Hell no, Al, he’s an amateur. He goes out New Year’s Eve.… Ralph’s at the real genius level. He’s made great contributions to metallurgical research; we’d never have made the moon without him. But he burns himself out in the shops. He’s been known to work seventy-two hours straight. His whole life is committed to the laboratory.”

  “Is that his problem?” asked Andy.

  “Yes. Because he can’t take the time for anything else. He runs from personal commitments; he’s frightened to death of them. He’s had three wives—quick selections. They gave him among them four children. The ladies have bled him in alimony and support. But he’s nuts about the kids; he worries about them so because he knows himself and those girls. That was his admission to me. Every February he goes to Paris, where a Genessee small-timer gives him twenty thousand in cash, which he takes to Zurich. It’s for his kids.”

  “And he’s one of the men who put us on the moon.” Sam Vicarson made the statement quietly and watched Trevayne. It was apparent to all in the room that Sam was referring to something—someone else.

  And each knew that Sam had been to Seattle, Washington. To Joshua Studebaker.

  Andrew accepted Vicarson’s words and his unspoken appeal. He turned back to Ryan. “But you’re not suggesting that we disregard Jamison’s report, are you, Mike?”

  “Christ, no.” Ryan exhaled slowly. “I don’t like nailing him, but what I’ve learned about Genessee Industries scares the hell out of me; I mean really scares me. I know what those design shops and laboratories are turning out.”

  “That’s physical, not sociological,” said Vicarson quickly, firmly.

  “Sooner or later those two get together if they’re not already, fella,” answered Ryan.

  “Thanks, Mike.” Trevayne’s voice indicated that he wanted no tangential discussions at the moment.

  Vicarson leaned forward on the couch and picked up his file folder. “Okay. I guess it’s my turn,” he said with a shrug that conveyed far more than resignation.

  Andrew interrupted. “May I, please?”

  Sam looked at Trevayne, surprised. “What?”

  “Sam came to me earlier this evening. The Studebaker report isn’t complete. There’s no question that he was reached and threatened by Genessee, but we’re not sure of the degree of influence that had on the antitrust decision regarding Bellstar. The judge claims that it didn’t; he justifies the decision in legal and philosophical terms, using contemporary definitions. We do know the
Justice Department had no real interest in pursuing the action.”

  “But he was reached, Andrew?” Alan Martin was concerned. “And threatened?”

  “He was.”

  “Threatened with what?” asked Ryan.

  “I’m going to ask you to let me wait before answering that.”

  “It’s so filthy?” asked Martin.

  “I’m not sure it’s relevant,” said Trevayne. “If it turns out to be, it’ll be filed.”

  Ryan and Martin looked at each other, then at Vicarson. Martin spoke, addressing Trevayne. “I’d be a damn fool to start questioning your judgment after all these years, Andrew.”

  “So, what else is new?” said Ryan casually.

  “I’m leaving tonight. For Washington. Paul Bonner thinks I’m going to Connecticut; I’ll explain.… Genessee Industries is progressively eliminating all the checks and balances. It’s time for Senator Armbruster.”

  24

  Brigadier General Lester Cooper walked up the flagstone path toward the front door of the suburban home. The coach lamp on the lawn was lighted; the metal plate beneath it, suspended by two small chains from a crossbar, read: “The Knapps; 37 Maple Lane.”

  Senator Alan Knapp.

  There’d be at least one other senator inside, too, thought Cooper as he walked up the steps. He switched the attaché case to his left hand and pushed the button.

  Knapp opened the door, his irritation obvious. “For God’s sake, Cooper, it’s almost ten o’clock. We said nine!”

  “I didn’t have anything until twenty minutes ago.” The General spoke curtly. He didn’t like Knapp; he simply had to tolerate him, not be polite. “I didn’t look upon this evening as a social call, Senator.”

  Knapp feigned a smile; it was difficult for him. “Okay, General, call off the artillery. Come on in.… Sorry, we’re a little upset.”

  “With damned good reason,” added Cooper as he stepped inside.