The Young Apollo and Other Stories (15 page)

Amos's respect for his brother-in-law was in part generated by his deep devotion to his sister. Cora did everything well: her perfect manners were the same in all gatherings; she never seemed to be too callously abandoning the old or to be too eagerly cultivating the new. Did that mean she saw no difference between them? Amos did not think so. He knew that Cora would have been content with the social environment in which she grew up, but her husband was ambitious, and she had seen that compromises had to be made. The Herricks' high rung on the old Jacob's ladder could be an asset, but only if tactfully and astutely handled. Amos, she liked to point out, used it as a fort, she as an underground tunnel into the enemy's dens of the new rich. But their differences did not mar their deep attachment.

When Dexter had finished his little survey, Amos simply stated, without commenting on it, "Thank you, Dexter. You've been very kind. And I know you're right about the reception I would receive if I should apply to Coverly & Day. Nonetheless, I should very much appreciate it if you would use a touch of your undoubted goodwill there to procure me an interview with one of the tax partners."

Dexter was a bit taken aback by this, but he knew how stubborn his wife's brother could be, and he managed, not without some difficulty, to arrange the interview requested.

Amos, a few days later, seated in a paneled office before the paper-laden desk of Mr. Snell, the firm's junior tax partner, surprised the latter by opening the interview with a terse, obviously rehearsed little speech.

"I know your time is valuable, sir, so I shall take very little of it. I am fully aware that my Columbia Law School record is not what your firm expects of a new clerk. But I can point to my top grades in every tax course I took, and I took all that were offered. I am not interested either in the amount of my salary or in any future partnership. I have an income adequate for my needs. All I am seeking is the opportunity to match my wits and skill against those of the commissioner of Internal Revenue. I am bold enough to think that I could make it worth your while to employ me in that capacity at whatever stipend you see fit to pay."

Mr. Snell was intrigued. He had never met such an applicant. After only an hour's further talk he took it upon his own responsibility to hire Amos on the spot. Of course, he had already learned from Dexter that his new clerk was entirely respectable.

And so started Amos's highly individual career in the great firm. It was not long before his aptitude made its mark. The tax department was quick to realize that for all his rigid conformity to somewhat outdated habits of formal wear and speech, he had a mind always open to a new approach in seemingly doomed situations where every path appeared to have been explored. After he had reversed on appeal a decision in favor of the Treasury that the entire tax department of the firm had deemed unbeatable, he was given his own small office with his own full-time secretary and allowed to operate virtually unsupervised. He was in his office promptly at nine and left on the dot of seven at night, never wasting a minute in idle chatter with his fellows (he kept his door closed) and lunching on a sandwich sent in from a local grill.

Clients began to like him. Even corporate officers known for their tough business ways developed a kind of affectionate respect for the cool, trim figure of their tax counsel, with his jacket neatly buttoned and his collar still unfastened as he sat on the hottest summer day at a conference table where all else were in shirtsleeves, motionless except when he made a brief calculation on his slide rule. And he earned the admiration of many of Uncle Sam's auditors as well. For his manners were always, like his sister Cora's, though drier, perfect. He never, by so much as a flicker of the eye, betrayed that he deemed himself engaged in a holy war against the forces of nihilism. On the contrary, he gave the impression of taking part in a kind of sporting gentlemen's duel, with face masks and epees, artistically manipulated and inwardly exhilarating.

He had good reason to be home for dinner every night, for he was now married. He had always planned to be, though his relations with the daughters of family friends had never gone beyond a cool and pleasant amity, and he had kept an eye out for the spouse he was sure would suit him and whom he would suit. It would be part of an orderly life, and she must not object to living in the commodious and independent apartment into which he had converted the upper two stories of the brownstone where his mother and sister Thyra dwelt. Miriam Duer, small, blond, adequately pretty, and of a sweet and sober disposition, and of course of the Herrick world (though a little poorer), was just the person. He was quite perceptive enough to sense that she was after exactly the same thing that he was: a quiet, orderly, and respectable life, very like that of her own parents, but he deemed that an advantage, and he was right, by his own lights anyway. For Miriam was one of those rare creatures who not only know exactly what they want but who are perfectly content when they get it. She knew very well that Amos wanted to be near his mother, and she didn't mind so long as Mrs. Herrick ascended to her apartment only when invited, to which rule Amos's mother had the good sense to adhere. Everybody got on with everybody else in this ordered brownstone life, and Miriam and Amos even came to love each other in their own quiet way. One child, a son, was born to them.

Amos Jr. would eventually be a problem, because Miriam now had something not merely to love but to adore. All the hidden fire in her nature suddenly blazed with this infant, and its mother for the first time conceived of ambitions beyond the scope of her upbringing. The boy had to grow up to make his mark in a much larger world. She had taken no interest in her husband's tax work; his income had satisfied her limited though very definite needs and wants, but now she began to look ahead and wonder just where her spouse's brilliant mind was taking him. He was in his early thirties, almost past the age when most clerks were deemed eligible for partnership in Coverly & Day, and he was still an associate. Dexter, a year younger, was already a member of the firm. What was going on?

Miriam talked to her brother-in-law, who was eager to confide in her. Dexter was of the opinion that she might be a real help in the matter. Amos, it seemed, rarely took his advice, but he would have to listen to his wife. Dexter was very anxious to see Amos made partner; he had visions of their ultimately running the firm together. What he didn't tell Miriam was that he visualized himself as the senior partner, with Amos as his trusted executive officer. Every great leader needs a loyal number two. But Amos showed no interest in partnership, and there were some members of the firm who, knowing that because of his lack of ambition they were not apt to lose him as a clerk, questioned if he were not too odd a duck to place in their front rank. As one of them had put it to Dexter, "Do we really want a partner who's that far to the right of Louis XIV?"

And then Dexter told Miriam about the Connelly brothers.

***

There were three brothers, and they formed a partnership in the ownership and management of apartment houses and hotels in New York City that constituted a considerable empire. They were among the most important clients of Coverly & Day, their work occupying the major part of the time of two partners and half a dozen associates. Amos did most of their tax work. With two of the brothers he got on very well. They expected nothing but expertise from him, and that they got. They may have thought it odd that in two years of frequent conferences they and he had never reached a first-name basis, but this was hardly a matter that concerned them. They could joke among themselves with Irish bluntness about "the little tax prick" and sneeringly liken him to the haughty Brits who had once misgoverned their native isle. But his brain was at their service, and that was all that mattered.

Aloysius Connelly, however, was different from his brothers. The ablest and cleverest of the three, he was also the least attractive. While the other two were big and bluff and hearty, he was small and mean. The weighty log on his shoulder, begotten no doubt of his diminutive stature and unlovely features, bred in him the suspicion that he was being snubbed as a "mick" by any of Anglo-Saxon origin. When he asked Amos, at the end of one conference, with a slight but fixed grin that seemed anything but hospitable, if he and his wife would dine one night with the Aloysius Connellys in their sumptuous penthouse atop one of their apartment houses on Central Park West, Amos replied politely that it was his fixed policy never to have social relations with clients.

"I do not wish anything to interfere with the total independence of mind that must accompany my legal opinions," he explained smoothly but unconvincingly. "Even gratitude may do that."

Aloysius frowned, but he accepted it. When sometime later he encountered Amos at a cocktail party given by one of the Hudson River Livingstons, who was selling a lot to the Connellys and hoped to up the price, he challenged Amos to defend his theory.

"I see there are clients and clients, Mr. Herrick. Isn't our host's mother's estate administered by your firm? I believe I've been told so."

"Quite so," Amos replied without visible embarrassment. "But she was a second cousin of my grandfather Schuyler. One has to make exceptions for family."

Aloysius bristled as he took in the implication that the Connelly brothers could never by any stretch of the imagination be included as "family." But he still bided his time. At last, when he spotted Amos at a large Christmas reception thrown by the Bank of Marine Commerce, a principal client of Coverly & Day, he knew he had him trapped.

"Well, Mr. Herrick, is your blood so blue that even the azure of the ocean flows in it? Do you address our host as 'Grandpa Bank'? And will you deign now to dine with Mrs. Connelly and myself? Name your day, my friend."

But even this did not perturb Amos. His eye was cold. "You must forgive me, Mr. Connelly, if Mrs. Herrick and I limit the number of houses at which we dine out. Our schedule is ever now too full. Social life takes a heavy toll on energies that should be preserved to service clients like yourself."

Aloysius turned his back on Amos, and the next morning he summoned Dexter Post to his office and had a serious talk with him, following which Dexter telephoned Amos and forcibly insisted that he give up his daily sandwich and join him for lunch at his downtown club. When Amos got there, he found that Dexter had had time to get Cora to join them. The three were soon engaged in a tense discussion.

"I have already told you, Amos," Dexter pointed out emphatically, "that there are still members of the firm who, for all their appreciation of the great work you've done, shelter doubts as to whether your social and political convictions aren't too out of step with the times to justify their taking you in as a partner. I have been doing my darnedest to argue them out of this, and I think I can say I'm on the brink of success. But if this Connelly thing breaks, you've had it."

"Breaks?" Amos inquired. "What do you mean?"

"Simply that Aloysius Connelly has told me, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't know how much longer he and his brothers care to be represented by a firm that assigns their tax work to a lawyer who regards them as social pariahs."

Amos shrugged. "Which perhaps they should be, but which they certainly are not, in the amoral world we live in today."

"Oh, Amos, dear," his sister Cora exclaimed, "don't be like that! If the Connelly brothers walk out, the firm will never forgive you, no matter how hard Dexter pleads for you. You've
got
to learn to live and let live. Dexter tells me that if you will simply ask the Connellys to dinner, he thinks he may be able to smooth the whole thing over."

"The price is too great, Cora."

"But why, Amos, why?" Dexter demanded, exasperated. "What's so great about one silly dinner party? You should see some of the types your heroic sister has asked to the house for my sake!"

"That's your affair and hers. I don't interfere with that."

"But why can't you do likewise?"

"I shall tell you. It is because the Connelly brothers engage in shady deals and in tax evasion that is close to criminal."

"Not under your aegis."

"That I concede. Everything I do for them is strictly aboveboard. But there are aspects of their multifarious business dealings that are never brought to our attention. I have been told this on reliable authority. For these dealings they employ other lawyers. Less reputable ones."

"What business is that of ours? We're not even their general counsel. We represent them on particular deals, and those deals are fair and square. Why do we have to inquire into what else they may be up to?"

"We don't. We even make a point not to. An ethical doctor may remove an appendix even if he knows the patient to be engaged in illegal drug trafficking. But he doesn't have to dine with him. I don't choose to dine with dishonest persons."

"Even if your partnership is at stake?"

"Even so."

Cora now played what she appeared to regard as her trump card. "Even if Miriam asks you to do this little thing?"

"Miriam never would."

"Ask her!"

"There's no point. Miriam and I see eye to eye."

"Ask her!"

Amos was startled by her vehemence. At last he nodded. "Very well. I will."

His discussion with his wife that night did indeed contain a shocking surprise. He knew well that Miriam, usually so compliant with any expressed wish of his, could be on rare occasions absolutely unyielding, but he had never anticipated that anything in his office work, about which she had always been content to profess absolute ignorance, should prove one of these.

"You say that your partnership may depend on our asking these people to dinner?" she demanded in what for her was certainly a sharp tone.

"That has been suggested, at least."

"Then what are we waiting for? Ask them!"

Amos began patiently to explain the reasons he had offered to Dexter and Cora, but Miriam uncharacteristically interrupted him before he was halfway through.