It was a good life.
He’d get on the phone with Joe if Ginny and Betty ever finished with their conversation. Then he’d call John and Ali. After Johnny’s television shows were over. Perhaps the six of them could go over to the Club for the Sunday buffet.
Suddenly the memory of the patrol car flashed across his mind. He dismissed it. He had been nervous, edgy, hung over. Let’s face it, he thought. It was Sunday afternoon and the town council had insisted that the police thoroughly check out the residential areas on Sunday afternoons.
Funny, he mused. He didn’t think the Cardones were due back so early. Joe must have been called by his office to get in on Monday. The market was crazy these days. Especially commodities, Joe’s specialty.
Betty nodded yes to Joe’s question from the telephone. It solved the dinner problem. The buffet wasn’t bad, even if the Club had never learned the secret of a good antipasto. Joe kept telling the manager that you had to use Genoa salami, not Hebrew National, but the chef had a deal with a Jewish supplier, so what could a mere member do? Even Joe, probably the richest of them all. On the other hand he was Italian—not Catholic, but nevertheless Italian—and it had only been a decade since the Saddle Valley Country Club first let Italians join. One of these days they’d let Jews in—that’d be the time for some kind of celebration.
It was this silent intolerance—never spelled out—that caused the Cardones, the Tanners and the Tremaynes to make it a special point to have Bernie and Leila Osterman very much in evidence at the Club whenever they came east. One thing could be said for the six of them. They weren’t bigots.
It was strange, thought Cardone as he hung up the phone and started toward the small gym on the side of his house, strange that the Tanners had brought them all together. It had been John and Ali Tanner who had known the Ostermans in Los Angeles when Tanner was just starting out. Now Joe wondered whether John and Ali really understood the bond between Bernie Osterman and him and Dick Tremayne. It was a bond one didn’t discuss with outsiders.
Eventually it would spell out the kind of independence every man sought, every worried citizen might pray for; there were dangers, risks, but it was right for him and Betty. Right for the Tremaynes and the Ostermans. They had discussed it among themselves, analyzed it, thought it through carefully, and collectively reached the decision.
It might have been right for the Tanners. But Joe, Dick and Bernie agreed that the first signal had to come from John himself. That was paramount. Enough hints had been dropped and Tanner had not responded.
Joe closed the heavy, matted door of his personal gymnasium, turned on the steam dials and stripped. He put on a pair of sweatpants and took his sweatshirt off the stainless-steel rack. He smiled as he noticed the embroidered initials on the flannel. Only a girl from Chestnut Hill would have a monogram sewn on a sweatshirt.
J. A. C.
Joseph Ambruzzio Cardone.
Guiseppe Ambruzzio Cardione. Second of eight children from the union of Angela and Umberto Cardione, once of Sicily and later South Philadelphia. Eventually, citizens. American flags alongside countless, cosmeticized pictures of the Virgin Mary holding a cherubic Christ-child with blue eyes and red lips.
Guiseppe Ambruzzio Cardione grew into a large, immensely strong young man who was just about the best athlete South Philadelphia High had ever seen. He was president of his senior class and twice elected to the All-City Student Council.
Of the many college scholarships offered he chose the most prestigious, Princeton, also the nearest to Philadelphia. As a Princeton halfback he accomplished the seemingly impossible for his alma mater. He was chosen All-American, the first Princeton football player in years to be so honored.
Several grateful alumni brought him to Wall Street. He’d shortened his name to Cardone, the last vowel pronounced very slightly. It had a kind of majesty, he thought. Like Cardozo. But no one was fooled; soon he didn’t care. The market was expanding, exploding to the point where everyone was buying securities. At first he was merely a good customers’ man. An Italian boy who had made good, a fellow who could talk to the emerging new-rich with money to spend; talk in ways the new-rich, still nervous about investments, could understand.
And it had to happen.
The Italians are sensitive people. They’re more comfortable doing business with their own kind. A number of the construction boys—the Castelanos, the Latronas, the Battellas—who had made fortunes in industrial developments, gravitated to Cardone. Two syllables only. «Joey Cardone,» they called him. And Joey found them tax shelters, Joey found them capital gains, Joey found them security.
The money poured in. The gross of the brokerage house nearly doubled, thanks to Joey’s friends. Worthington and Bennett, members, N. Y. Stock Exchange, became Worthington, Bennett and Cardone. From that point it was a short leap to Bennett-Cardone, Ltd.
Cardone was grateful to his compares. But the reason for his gratitude was also the reason why he shuddered just a bit when a patrol car appeared too frequently around his house. For a few of his compares, perhaps more than a few, were on the fringes—perhaps more than the fringes—of the underworld.
He finished with the weights and climbed on his rowing machine. The perspiration was pouring out and he felt better now. The menace of the patrol car began to diminish. After all, ninety-nine percent of the Saddle Valley families returned from vacations on Sunday. Who ever heard of people coming back from a vacation on a Wednesday? Even if the day were listed as such at the police station, a conscientious desk sergeant might well consider it an error and change it to Sunday. No one returned on Wednesday. Wednesday was a business day.
And who would ever take seriously the idea that Joseph Cardone had anything to do with the Cosa Nostra? He was the living proof of the work ethic. The American Success Story. A Princeton All-American.
Joe removed his sweatsuit and walked into the steam room, now dense with vapor. He sat on the beach and breathed deeply. The steam was purifying. After nearly two weeks of French-Canadian cooking, his body needed purifying.
He laughed aloud in his steam room. It was good to be home, his wife was right about that. And Tremayne told him the Ostermans would be flying in Friday morning. It’d be good to see Bernie and Leila again. It had been nearly four months. But they’d kept in touch.
Two hundred and fifty miles south of Saddle Valley, New Jersey, is that section of the nation’s capital known as Georgetown. In Georgetown the pace of life changes every day at 5:30 P.M. Before, the pace is gradual, aristocratic, even delicate. After, there is a quickening—not sudden, but with a growing momentum. The residents, for the most part men and women of power and wealth and commitments to both, are dedicated to the propagation of their influence.
After five-thirty, the games begin.
After five-thirty in Georgetown, it is time for stratagems.
Who is where?… Why are they there?
Except on Sunday afternoon, when the power-brokers survey their creations of the previous week, and take the time to restore their strength for the next six days of strategy.
Let there be light and there was light. Let there be rest and there is rest.
Except, again, not for all.
For instance, not for Alexander Danforth, aide to the President of the United States. An aide without portfolio and without specified activities.
Danforth was the liaison between the all-securities communications room in the underground levels of the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency in McLean, Virginia. He was the compleat power-broker because he was never in evidence, yet his decisions were among the most important in Washington. Regardless of administrations, his quiet voice was heeded by all. It had been for years.