Another Life (71 page)

It was Farago’s way to declare his own documentation “beyond dispute,” without showing it, usually on the grounds that it was far too dangerous and explosive to let out of his hands. On those occasions when I insisted on seeing some proof, Farago went to the opposite extreme and produced cartons of documents, all of them in Spanish, German, or Portuguese, either in the form of blurred photocopies or retypings of the originals. Either way, there was nothing to be gained by plunging into them. Seldom has the truth that the publisher is at the mercy of the author been proven more amply. Farago could prove anything, given his hoard of documents, so in the end you either had to believe him or not. But where I was cautious, Peter Mayer, who bought the mass-market rights from us for Avon for a small fortune, was a confirmed believer, perhaps because he had not grown up surrounded by Hungarians, as I had. Mayer was convinced that
Aftermath
was destined to be the most important book any of us would ever publish, and he eventually persuaded Dick, who was initially a skeptic, that Farago had the goods.

In a rare burst of synergy, Dick managed to procure an audience for Farago with the executives of Paramount, who were bowled over when he produced the beer bottle for them to look at, and Paramount soon
bought the motion-picture rights. Whatever else may be said about Farago, he was a brilliant salesman—at the time they bought the rights, Paramount had seen no more of the manuscript than Peter Mayer or I had.

As the manuscript, finally, did begin to come in, the S&S legal department raised all sorts of queries about Farago’s “proofs,” which he dismissed angrily. What, after all, did lawyers know? They were professional skeptics, trained not to be able to see the forest for the trees. Of
course
the documents were ambiguous and full of holes! Brave men had risked their lives to get him these documents. We were trying to expose a vast, dangerous Nazi conspiracy, well provided with funds and professional killers, with tentacles reaching to the highest levels of the Vatican, the CIA, and every South American government. Of course there would be gaps in the documents, ambiguous evidence, difficult puzzles—this was not a real-estate transaction, after all, this was living history, serious politics, the most explosive news story since World War Two. Certain assumptions had to be taken, certain risks accepted—this was not a book for the weak of heart to publish.

Since nobody wanted to be classed among the weak of heart—and since we had already invested a considerable fortune in Farago’s book—we proceeded, eventually convincing everyone, including ourselves and the S&S sales reps, that
Aftermath
was going to be a huge best-seller that would make front-page news. Even Hugh Collins acknowledged that in
Aftermath
we had the real goods—he pledged to get the book into the windows of every major bookseller in Chicago.

W
ELL
,
WE
did
make front-page news, well before publication—and above the fold in
The New York Times
at that. Unfortunately, it was with a story that the presumed Martin Bormann whom Farago had discovered and photographed was in fact a harmless Argentinean schoolteacher named Nicolas Siri. Before long, the Germans produced Martin Bormann’s skull and dental fittings, allegedly found in the rubble of Berlin, just where he had last been seen by Arthur Axmann, Baldur von Shirach’s successor as head of the Hitler Youth, during their escape from the
Führerbunker
in May 1945. Not to be outdone, the Russians revealed Bormann’s diary of his last weeks with Hitler, which he had left behind in the bunker. Although Farago argued that the skull was a fake
perpetrated by reporters from
Der Spiegel
and the diary a forgery by the KGB (for what purpose it was not clear), the air was definitely out of his balloon. The distinguished English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper gave the book the coup de grâce in a long, devastatingly destructive review in
The New York Review of Books
that would have led anyone but Farago to hide his head in shame.

Needless to say, the idea of doing so did not occur to him—shame was not one of the emotions he was capable of feeling strongly—however, the news scuppered
Aftermath
. Farago’s explanation that this was a simple and unfortunate case of “mistaken identity” that in no way reflected upon the rest of the book went nowhere, but did not dismay Paramount, since whatever they had in mind as a movie had nothing much to do with the facts anyway, nor with Farago’s book, come to that.

Apparently loyal to the old Hollywood belief that there is no such thing as bad publicity, they proceeded with their plans for the movie. The signature of the contract had been delayed for months, but when it was finally ready, Max Becker, Farago’s agent, a Central European with the sad face of a beagle and a quality of weary chutzpah, announced that rather than waste time sending it back and forth for signature, he and Farago would come to the Paramount office in New York to sign. There was a little personal request of Farago’s that he also wanted to convey, Becker said. Farago was a sentimental soul, deeply stirred by the trust that Paramount had shown in him. It would mean a great deal to him if Paramount could make something of a ceremony of the occasion—perhaps a bottle of champagne and a toast, as between friends, while the check was handed directly to Farago.

The bottle of champagne was not a problem, of course, but the check was. Normally, once a movie contract has been signed by both parties, the check request is made out and circulates through the accounting department for ages. In many cases, the documents are sent from New York to Los Angeles for multiple signatures of people who are either too busy to sign or on vacation, then back to New York, until, finally, the check is issued by some bank in Des Moines or Oklahoma City and sent on from there by the slowest possible form of mail—yak mail, if it existed—the object being to keep the money earning interest in the movie company’s account for as long as possible. The idea of actually handing a six-figure check to anybody struck at the very heart of motion-picture economics.

Still, under the monotonous drip-by-drip pressure of Max Becker, Paramount eventually caved in. Mountains were moved, miracles performed, as a gesture of faith and friendship the impossible was arranged. The check was to be handed to Farago as he signed the contract. Farago, Becker reported, had tears in his eyes when he heard the news, so moved was he.

On the appointed day, early in the afternoon, everybody involved in
Aftermath
gathered in a conference room at Paramount. Champagne was served, while Farago, dewy-eyed, made a small speech. He was a deeply sentimental soul, he emphasized, personal loyalties were what mattered to him more than anything. This was a vote of confidence that he would never, never forget. Even the hard-bitten film executives were moved as Farago went on about the Holocaust, his own experiences, the heavy weight of history. Finally, at about a quarter to three, he sat down and signed the contracts with a flourish. The envelope containing the check was handed to him.

Becker, it was noticed, had not taken a seat or drunk his champagne. He was, in fact, poised, like an Olympic runner in the blocks for the start of a sprint, overcoat on, hat wedged firmly on his head. Although he was the least athletic man imaginable—with the possible exception of Farago himself—he looked like a man determined to break some record, nostrils flared, hand outstretched, every muscle tense. No sooner had Farago received his check than he handed it to Becker, who ran, not walked, to the door, as if a starter’s pistol had been fired, and left, so quickly in fact that it was impossible to ignore his hasty departure.

Farago gave a shy shrug and smiled, like the good confidence man he was, then, his voice dropping low, he apologized for Becker’s haste. “You understand,” he said, “we wanted to get the check deposited before three o’clock, when the bank closes.”

He gave a gentle wink. “Just in case you should change your mind,” he added, man to man.

*
Bonanno’s garbage produced enough evidence to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant and eventually led to Bonanno’s conviction on a charge of conspiring to obstruct justice—a charge that Bonanno denied vehemently, pointing out with the pained air of a man whose professionalism is being attacked that if the papers in his garbage were
really
incriminating, he would have burned them.

CHAPTER 30

V
ery few events in my life as a writer have had more personal significance than writing
Charmed Lives
, the story of my father and his two brothers, and of the film empire they built. In the first place, it was the book I was born to write, as if I had been observing and storing up memories with just that purpose in mind for years. But it was also, in a way, a farewell to the people and events that had dominated my life for over thirty-five years, a kind of Oedipal exorcism, which may have been what was on my editor Jason Epstein’s mind when he came up with a phrase of Freud’s for the book’s subtitle:
A Family Romance
.

Since I began
Charmed Lives
at just about the time when my marriage to Casey was breaking up (and when Margaret’s already had), it was written under conditions of some stress—though the emotional complications of separation and divorce put me in the right mood, perhaps, for tackling the tangled lives of my father and his brothers; or at any rate, they gave me a greater understanding and tolerance for many things, including the feeling of abandonment I had experienced during my own parents’ divorce.

When it was done and I had finished basking in the warmth of the unexpectedly positive reviews, I began to worry about what I was going to write next. Already, the thought of
not
writing a book—of sticking to my last like the proverbial shoemaker—did not cross my mind. By now, writing a book was a fixed part of my life. Without a book contract to fulfill, I felt like a man with too much time on his hands. Besides, although I was happy enough to have put my family behind me by writing
about them, I was already beginning to miss them. The research for
Charmed Lives
had brought me closer to them, in some ways, than I had ever been in real life. In reading about them, I began, at last, to understand them, and many things that had hitherto been mysterious were clear to me. It was hard to give that up. Friends and acquaintances (not to speak of many of the critics) described
Charmed Lives
as the book of my lifetime, but I clearly couldn’t write another book about my own family, even had I wanted to.

On the other hand, the dark background of anti-Semitism in Hungary, which I touched on lightly in
Charmed Lives
, fascinated me. I decided that the only way I could persuade anybody to read about this unhappy chapter in Central European history was by putting it into the form of a novel, and to my surprise, Epstein agreed. After all, I thought, why not? I had written a book that had become a number-one bestseller in hardcover, with
Power!, Charmed Lives
had been a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, why should I not try a novel? I soon discovered that it is easier to tell writers what is wrong with their novel than to write one; still, I flattered myself that I eventually got the hang of it, and within a year
Worldly Goods
was written. It was chosen as a Full Selection of the Literary Guild, went to paperback for a lot of money, and sold more than enough copies to satisfy Random House—it was even optioned briefly as a feature movie.

I was more aware than most that for a first novel it was something of a triumph. It had the effect, however, for the first time, of attracting in-house attention to my second career. So long as I was writing nonfiction, however successful or highly praised, nobody at S&S or, more to the point, Gulf + Western, seemed to mind. Dick Snyder was delighted to have an editor who could actually write books and happy on my behalf when they were successful, while everybody else did their polite best to pretend that it wasn’t happening. I had never felt that there was any conflict, and on the whole it seemed to me better from everyone’s point of view for me to be a Random House author, rather than published in-house—which, in any case, nobody had ever suggested. Besides, I had a deep loyalty toward Random House, where I had been treated with great courtesy and genuine enthusiasm and recognized that my career as a writer of books owed much, if not all, to the efforts of Nan Talese, Jim Silberman, and Jason Epstein.

Perhaps because the movie rights to
Worldly Goods
were optioned, however (and perhaps too because I based the sinister billionaire hero of
the novel on Bluhdorn), questions began to be asked about why an S&S employee was making money for one of our competitors. It looked bad to the corporate people, even disloyal, and pressure was put on Dick to do something about it. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation in which I had to choose between being editor in chief of S&S and writing books, and I could see that this was the direction we were going in.