"You want a cup of coffee, or not?"
"No, thank you, I've got to get dressed," Antoinette said, snippily, and left the sitting room.
"She's a little pissed," the Bull said. "She didn't know I was coming here. She thought I was going to Palm Beach."
"Palm Beach?"
"Lenny Moskowitz is marrying Martha Bethune," the Bull explained. "We got to get the premarital agreement finalized."
Mickey knew Lenny Moskowitz. Or knew of him. He had damned near been the Most Valuable Player in the American League.
"Who's Martha Whateveryousaid?"
"Long-legged blonde with a gorgeous set of knockers," the Bull explained. "She's damned near as tall as Lenny. Her family makes hub caps."
"Makes what?"
"Hub caps. For cars? They have a pisspot full of dough, and they're afraid Lenny's marrying her for her dough. Jesus, I got him five big ones for three years. He don't need any of her goddamned dough."
Mickey smiled uneasily, as he thought again of the enormous difference between negotiating a contract for the professional services of someone who was damned near the Most Valuable Player in the American League and a police reporter for thePhiladelphia Bulletin .
A few minutes later, two waiters rolled into the suite with a cart and a folding table and set up breakfast.
"I told you, I think," the Bull said, as he shoveled food onto his plate, "that you can't get either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?" Scrapple, a mush made with pork by-products, which was probably introduced into Eastern Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually Hessians) was sometimes referred to as "poor people's bacon."
"Yeah, you told me," Mickey said. "How do you think we stand, Casimir?"
"What do you mean, stand? Oh, you mean with those bastards from theBulletin? "
"Yeah," Mickey said, as Antoinette came back into the room, and Casimir stood up and politely held her chair for her.
"Thank you, darling," Antoinette said. "Has Casimir told you, Michael, that they don't have either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?"
"I could mail you some, if you like," Mickey said.
"It would probably go bad before the goddamned post office got it there," the Bull said, "but it's a thought, Michael."
"I never heard of either before I met Casimir," Antoinette said, "but now I'm just about as crazy about it as he is."
"Casimir was just about to tell me how he thinks we stand with theBulletin," Mickey said.
"Maybe you could send it Special Delivery or something," the Bull said. "If we wasn't going from here to Florida, I'd put a couple of rolls of Taylor ham and a couple of pounds of scrapple in the suitcase. But it would probably go bad before we got home."
"Of course it would," Antoinette said. "And it would get warm and greasy and get all over our clothes."
"So how do you think we stand with theBulletin?" Mickey asked, somewhat plaintively.
"You sound as if you don't have an awful lot of faith in Casimir, Michael," Antoinette said.
"Don't be silly," Mickey said.
"It would probably take two days to get to the Coast Air-Mail Special Delivery," the Bull said. "What the hell, it's worth a shot."
He reached into his trousers pocket, took out a stack of bills held together with a gold clip in the shape of a dollar sign, peeled off a fifty-dollar bill, and handed it to Mickey.
"Two of the big rolls of Taylor ham," The Bull ordered thoughtfully, "and what-five pounds?-of scrapple. I wonder if you can freeze it."
"Probably not," Antoinette said. "If they could freeze it, they would probably have it in the freezer department in the supermarket."
"What the hell, we'll give it a shot anyway. You never get anywhere unless you take a chance, ain't that right, Michael?"
"Right."
FOUR
The Philadelphia firm of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester maintained their law offices in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building at Twelfth and Market Streets, east of Broad Street, which was convenient to both the federal courthouse and the financial district. The firm occupied all of the eleventh floor, and part of the tenth.
The offices of the two founding partners, Brewster Cortland Payne II and Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, together with the Executive Conference Room and the office of Mrs. Irene Craig, whose title was Executive Secretary, and whose services they had shared since founding their partnership, occupied the entire eastern wall of the eleventh floor, Colonel Mawson in the corner office to the right and Mr. Payne to the left, with Mrs. Craig between them.
Although this was known only to Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne, and of course to Mrs. Craig herself, her annual remuneration was greater than that received by any of the twenty-one junior partners of the firm. She received, in addition to a generous salary, the dividends on stock she held in the concern.
Although her desk was replete with the very latest office equipment appropriate to an experienced legal secretary, it had been a very long time since she had actually taken a letter, or a brief, or typed one. She had three assistants, two women and a man,who handled dictation and typing and similar chores.
Irene Craig's function, as both she and Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne saw it, was to control the expenditure of their time. It was, after all, the only thing they really had to sell, and it was a finite resource. One of the very few things on which Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne were in complete agreement was that Mrs. Craig performed her function superbly.
Brewster C. Payne, therefore, was not annoyed when he saw Mrs. Craig enter his office. She knew what he was doing, reviewing a lengthy brief about to be submitted in a rather complicated maritime disaster, and that he did not want to be disturbed unless it was a matter of some import that just wouldn't wait. She was here,ergo sum, something of bona fide importance demanded his attention.
Brewster Cortland Payne II was a tall, dignified, slim man in his early fifties. He had sharp features and closely cropped gray hair. He was sitting in a high-backed chair, upholstered in blue leather, tilted far back in it, his crossed feet resting on the windowsill of the plate-glass window that offered a view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and Camden, New Jersey. The jacket of his crisp cord suit was hung over one of the two blue leather upholstered Charles Eames chairs facing his desk. The button-down collar of his shirt was open, and his regimentally striped necktie pulled down. His shirt cuffs were rolled up. He had not been expecting anyone, client or staff, to come into his office.
"The building is gloriously aflame, I gather," he said, smiling at Irene Craig, "and you are holding the door of the very last elevator?"
"You're not supposed to do that," she said. "When there's a fire, you're supposed to walk down the stairs."
"I stand chastised," he said.
"I hate to do this to you," she said.
"But?"
"Martha Peebles is outside."
Brewster C. Payne II's raised eyebrows made it plain that he had no idea who Martha Peebles was.
"Tamaqua Mining," Irene Craig said.
"Oh," Brewster C. Payne said. "She came to us with Mr. Foster?"
"Right."
One of the factors that had caused the Executive Committee of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester to offer James Whitelaw Foster, Esq., a junior partnership with an implied offer somewhere not too far down the pike of a full partnership was that he would bring with him to the firm the legal business of Tamaqua Mining Company, Inc. It was a closely held corporation with extensive land and mineral holdings in northeast Pennsylvania near, as the name implied, Tamaqua, in the heart of the anthracite region.
"And I gather Mr. Foster is not available?" Payne asked.