Morton, a short and stocky man in his mid-fifties, with a neat round head crosshatched by thin but still black hair, looks mostly like a social science professor in a college somewhere within the city; maybe in Brooklyn. He moves slowly, and reacts thoughtfully, and knows an astonishing number of things. He doesn’t have the smoothness and easy affability of Oscar Cooperman, my lawyer out on the Coast, but New York doesn’t much prize smoothness and affability anyway; a combination of traditional learning and quick street smarts is the winner here, and Morton has it.
Coming out of the elevator on twenty-nine, Morton said to me, “Slip that in.”
“What?”
“The police suspicion,” he said as we walked down the corridor. “Don’t make a major point of it, and don’t act at all as though you thought there was anything to it. Just slip the story into one of your answers, that your house was broken into last night, there was gunplay with the police, one fellow’s dead, and the police took a great interest in our lawsuit.” He nodded at the floor, chuckling to himself. “They’ll become very nervous,” he said.
“But they didn’t do it,” I pointed out. “They’re innocent.”
“That’s why they’ll be nervous,” he told me. “They won’t have the first idea how to deal with innocence.”
29
It did make them nervous, too, and was probably responsible for the proceeding being rather shorter than anticipated. The company’s legal position was that PACKARD was no longer a commercially active property but had fallen into a commonality of use, like cartoon characters based on W. C. Fields or a trench-coated Humphrey Bogart, or like that ubiquitous smile face in a yellow circle that shows up everywhere. Our contention was that PACKARD was still actively in syndication and earning profits for its owners — including me — whose income would be put at risk if we didn’t protect our rights.
As to PACKARD being a moribund creation, my job was to testify that I was still identified in the public mind with the character — God help me, that was true enough — and that it was still potentially a current vehicle. Furthering that idea, I somewhat unfairly brought out Danny Silvermine’s scripts, explaining the idea of presenting them as dinner theater without expressly stating that I intended to do any such thing. This item pleased Morton and distressed the opposition almost as much as the invasion of my house, and when the two attorneys questioning me — decent, methodical men, doing their mundane nit-picking job — decided they’d had enough, Morton chuckled his way down the corridor from their offices, nodding at the floor, and saying, “A very nice touch, those little plays. Brilliant idea.”
“They happen to be legit,” I told him. “Though I’m probably not going to do them.”
Slowly, he shook his head at me, an elfin sparkle in his eyes. “Sam, Sam,” he said. “Why don’t you let me go on thinking of you as brilliant?”
“Because I wouldn’t be able to maintain it,” I said. Ralph and the limo were not due to pick me up until eleven forty-five, an hour away, so Morton suggested we go down to the bar in Grand Central for a celebratory bloody Mary, since he now believed the opposition’s attorneys would soon convince their clients to settle the case instantly, before it cost them any more wasted dollars. I said that sounded like a fine idea.
We had to stop by Morton’s office first, for him to touch base with his secretary, and while we were there I said, “Morton, I bet you could help me with something.”
“Something new?”
“Very new. I want to know if there’s actually an emirate along the Arabian Gulf called Dharak, and if so, is there a Minister of Justice there named Hassan Tabari. And if both exist, what do we know about them.”
He gave me a puzzled look. “I cannot begin to think of a context for you in which such a question would arise.”
“And yet, there it is.”
He studied me a few seconds longer, realized I didn’t intend to explain my interest, shrugged his acceptance, and said, “Well, come in, let’s see what we can find out.”
Morton is one of four partners in this small but good firm, and he won the Sloppiest Office award for so many years in a row, it was finally retired; or maybe it’s in his office somewhere, under something. Now, while he went nodding and thinking to sit behind his desk, I removed from a chair three newspapers, a law book, some mail, and two copies of a contract, put them atop the mountain of stuff already on the library table, and sat.
“Well,” Morton said slowly, tapping his cheek, “there is one fellow I know. I know him socially, his summer place is up near mine, in Danbury. Near Danbury. He’s South African, something with the United Nations, employed there, I think in public relations. He might be our man.”
“I knew you’d know somebody.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” he warned me, and turned to brood briefly at the telephone. He can be maddeningly slow, Morton, but eventually it all works out. Now, having assured himself that he remembered what a telephone was for and that he knew how to operate it, he reached forward to lift the receiver. Punching out the number, he leaned back in his swivel chair and studied me owlishly over the receiver while he waited, finally saying, “Tony Georgens, please.” Then he waited again, nodding, looking at me, tapping his desktop with his free hand. This was a longer wait, and then he said the same thing again, “Tony Georgens, please,” this time adding, a few seconds later, “Morton Adler.” A short wait and he said, “Tony? Morton here. I’m fine, thanks. Tony, I have an old friend in my office who has a question you just might be the man to answer. His name is Sam Holt. Yes, that’s the one, I’ll put him on.”
So saying, Morton leaned forward, extending the receiver to me, the coiled cord sweeping a small avalanche of papers to the floor. While Morton clucked at himself and went down on hands and knees to rescue it all, I said into the phone, “Mr. Georgens?”
“I was a huge fan of PACKARD,” said an English-accented voice. “One of the very few intelligent shows on the air. I was devastated when it went off.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
“I don’t suppose you were, though,” he said. “Time to go on to other things, eh?”
You bet; and past time. “That was mostly it,” I agreed.
“How can I help you?”
Red-faced from effort, Morton was getting off his knees and back into his swivel chair, papers rescued. I said into the phone, “I understand there’s an Arab country called Dharak.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “One of the noncrucial Trucials.”
“Their Minister of Justice is, I believe, called Hassan Tabari.”
“If you say so.”
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“I wouldn’t know anyone on the domestic side. I do know their fellow at the U.N., not very well.”
“Well, uh...” I didn’t know exactly how to present the problem. “What kind of country is it?”
“Dry, I expect,” he said. “Sandy. Small. I’m not sure what your question is.”
“Neither am I, I guess. I think I want to know, well, their politics?”
“They are Arabs,” he said, “and OPEC members. They are anti-Israel but pro-Western. Essentially, they link themselves with Kuwait more than with anybody else.”
“So they’re— What is it called? Moderates.”
“Ahhh,” he said as though this were a very prickly word indeed I’d just sent down the telephone line to him. “Moderates. Within the Arab context, yes. They are opposed to the fundamentalists in Lebanon and Iran and Libya and so forth. They like western movies and western clothing. On the other hand, they still have public whippings for various crimes, their women are limited to being household objects, and they haven’t forsworn the clitorectomy.”