Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (6 page)

“We’ve gone over your qualifications and are now prepared to talk in more specific terms,” Walker said, smiling cheerily. “I think I should begin by saying that this isn’t just an ordinary job in the public-relations department we’re considering. What we’re looking for is a young man to work with Mr. Hopkins, the president of the company, on a special project. . . .”

He paused, apparently expecting Tom to say something. “That sounds very interesting,” Tom said.

Walker nodded. “As a matter of fact, this position wouldn’t really be with United Broadcasting at all, except in a purely technical sense,” he continued. “You would be working directly for Mr. Hopkins on an outside project completely unrelated to the company. One reason we think you might be suited for the job is that you would be working quite closely with the foundations. We hope that the project will eventually be sponsored by the foundations.”

“Just what kind of a project is it?”

“Mr. Hopkins has been asked to start a national committee on mental health,” Walker said.

There was a brief silence, during which Tom heard a fire engine, deprived of its siren because of the need to reserve the sirens for air raid warnings, go chortling down the street far below, uttering shrill but unsirenlike mechanical screams. “A committee on mental health?” he asked stupidly.

“Mr. Hopkins plans to get together forty or fifty national leaders from many different fields and devise a program to encourage people all over the United States to work for mental health,” Walker said.

“What kind of a program?” Tom asked incredulously.

“We don’t know yet. Perhaps it will be a drive for better mental hospitals, or community guidance clinics. Something which would do for mental disease what the March of Dimes has done for polio.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Tom said, realizing he was expected to register enthusiasm.

“What Mr. Hopkins wants now is a young man to begin helping him with research for the speeches he will have to make to kick the project off. Later he will want someone to help him draw up a prospectus for an organization and to start getting the people together. Are you interested?”

“I certainly am!” Tom said heartily. “I’ve always been interested in mental health!” That sounded a little foolish, but he could think of nothing to rectify it.

“This wouldn’t be a very high-paying job,” Walker continued. “We were thinking of a figure somewhere near seven thousand dollars.”

Tom knew then that Walker had talked to Dick Haver at the foundation and learned what he had been making. The union of bosses is the most powerful union in the world.

“I’d been hoping for more than that,” he said. “Ordinarily, salary wouldn’t be an important consideration for me, especially in connection with a job of this kind, but I have increasing personal responsibilities. I feel I should be making ten thousand dollars a year.”

“Wouldn’t that be quite a jump from your present position?” Walker asked bluntly. Ogden, who had been sitting almost motionless, put his hand in his pocket and took out a package of cigarettes.

“It would,” Tom said, “but there would have to be considerable incentive for me to leave the foundation.”

Walker, lolling comfortably in his chair, glanced at Ogden, who had just finished lighting a cigarette.

“We don’t have to make any decisions now,” Ogden said, in a casual, almost bored voice.

Walker nodded. “Perhaps the next step would be to have him meet Mr. Hopkins,” he said to Ogden, as though Tom were not in the room.

“All right,” Ogden said.

“Could you have lunch with Mr. Hopkins at twelve-thirty, day after tomorrow?” Walker asked.

“Certainly,” Tom said.

“Meet me here, and I’ll take you up and introduce you,” Walker concluded.

Tom thanked him and hurried out of his office. When he got in the elevator, he glanced at the operator, but it was a thin man he had never seen before. In a telephone booth in the enormous lobby downstairs he called Bill Hawthorne, who had told him about the job in the first place. “Come on down and give me some briefing,” he said. “I’m supposed to have lunch with Hopkins day after tomorrow!”

“With Hopkins!” Bill said in an awed voice. “Say, for a guy who hasn’t even been hired yet, you’re doing all right!”

They went to a bar two doors down the street and ordered Martinis. “Now tell me all about your boy Hopkins,” Tom said. “Walker tells me he’s starting a project on mental health. What’s it all about?”

Bill sipped his drink thoughtfully. “What do you already know about Hopkins?” he asked.

“Not much,” Tom said. “I’ve hardly heard of him. Somebody told me he started with nothing and he’s making two hundred thousand a year now. That’s about all I know–I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a picture of him.”

“Precisely,” Bill said professionally. “Precisely.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean it looks like the public-relations boys have cooked up a big deal to put Hopkins on the map, and you’ve stumbled into it.”

“I don’t get it,” Tom said.

“Figure it out for yourself. Here’s Hopkins, about fifty years old, and the president of the United Broadcasting Corporation. As you say, he makes about two hundred thousand dollars a year, and that doesn’t count stock deals and all the rest of it. Inside the company he’s the biggest shot in the world. The top comedians and all the famous actors are scared to death of him. But outside the company he’s nothing. Taxi drivers don’t call him “Sir.” Waiters in restaurants more than five blocks from Radio Center don’t give him a special table. Little boys don’t gape at him. Don’t you see how tough it must be?”

“I’m weeping,” Tom said.

“All right. Here’s a guy who works fifteen or twenty hours a day–inside the company he’s famous for it. He’s a regular
machine
for work. And he’s competent. Give him almost any business, and he’d double the profit in a year. And people like him–he knows how
to drive people and still make them like him. But whats he get out of life?”

“Money.”

“Of course! But if he made only a quarter as much money, he’d still be able to buy everything he wants. Hopkins is a guy of simple tastes. He has only one or two places in the country, and a small yacht, and three automobiles. He was able to afford all that long ago and could go on affording it if he quit work tomorrow. So what’s he keep working fifteen or twenty hours a day for?”

“Must be nuts,” Tom said.

“Nuts nothing! The poor son of a bitch wants fame! And he’s in a position to buy it. So he calls in Ogden and Walker and says, ‘Boys, make me famous. One year from today I want to be famous, or you’re fired!

“Oh come on,” Tom said, laughing. “You know damn well that’s nonsense.”

“Perhaps it wouldn’t work that way exactly,” Bill said, obviously enjoying himself. “He’d say, ‘Gentlemen, I believe that for the sake of the company, the major executives must direct more attention to their personal public relations, and I hope that in the immediate future we can work something out.

“I doubt like hell that a man in his position would say that either.”

“Okay–be a stickler for detail. What would really happen is that somebody would suggest that Hopkins head a committee on mental health–these guys are asked to do that sort of thing all the time. Usually they refuse. But this time Hopkins figures he’s got a chance for the national spotlight. You’re right about one thing–he’d never say anything about it. He wouldn’t have to. He’d call in Walker and Ogden, and they’re paid enough to
know
what he’s thinking without being told. The only thing they’d all say is that it’s every citizen’s duty to do something about mental-health problems. They’d be nauseatingly noble about it. But all the time they’d know damn well they were doing it to give Hopkins a shot of publicity, and that’s the reason why you, my boy, will be on the United Broadcasting Corporation’s payroll, and why every cent that Hopkins spends on this project will come off his company expense account!”

“Why mental health?” Tom asked. “Why a subject like that?”

“Figure it out for yourself. What would you do to make Hopkins famous? You can’t play up the success he’s had in business, because
nobody much cares, and because newspapers and magazines don’t like to publicize radio and television companies any more than they have to–they’re all in competition for advertising. You’ve got to play up something about his personal life, not his business. And you can’t have him marrying chorus girls, or winning a prize for water skiing–you’ve got to keep it dignified. What would you do?”

“All right, I’ll give the answer you want,” Tom said. “I’d advise him to start a national committee on mental health, or some other public-service thing, and I’d publicize hell out of it.”

“Precisely,” Bill replied, finishing his drink and ordering another one. “You would follow the newest maxim of the public-relations boys: ‘If you want good publicity, do something good!’ It’s all very profound. Want another drink?”

“I think I’d better stay sober,” Tom said. “And I also think there’s something wrong in your theory.”

“You’re going to be a
good
public-relations man!” Bill said admiringly. “You’re defending him already!”

“Nuts!” Tom replied. “I just want to take all the possibilities into account. You say he’s doing this because he wants publicity–yet all his life, he’s apparently detested publicity. Certainly he could have had it long before now if he’d wanted it. Why has he waited all this time, and what’s made him change?”

“All right, all right, there may be more to all this than meets the eye,” Bill said. “Maybe he personally doesn’t want publicity. But maybe the board of directors is worried about the bad name the company’s getting by making the television shows just as bad as the radio programs. There’s been a rumor going around lately that United Broadcasting is just trying to make money and is half-hearted about improving people’s minds. One thing the company could do is actually to improve the programs, but it would be cheaper to tell all the company’s top executives, and particularly the president, to go out and acquire a reputation for doing good. After all, Hopkins will always be identified as the president of the United Broadcasting Corporation, and if he’s doing something good, and kind of intellectual, that would be about the least expensive way the company could get respectable.”

“Maybe,” Tom said.

“Or perhaps it’s more complicated,” Bill continued. “Hopkins has had a taste of power inside the company. Maybe he likes it and
wants more. He can’t get any more inside the company. So it’s just possible that he’s made up his mind to go into politics. He’d have to do some public-service thing first–right now he’d be political poison. But after he was known all over the country as the man who started the very successful mental-health committee, who knows? You may be the first campaign man in the Hopkins-for-President drive!”

“Haven’t we left one possibility out?” Tom asked.

“What?”

“That he might be sincere. That he might want to do some good. That after concentrating on his personal fortune all these years, he may have come to the point where he wants to do something for the public welfare, with no strings attached.”

“It’s possible,” Bill said doubtfully. “But it would be awfully dull if it were true!”

“Do you really know him?” Tom asked. “Do you really know what kind of a guy he is?”

“Hell,” Bill said. “I’ve been working for this damn outfit for four years, and I’ve never laid eyes on the guy. There are all kinds of stories about him–they used to say he had two children and had been home twice in the last twenty years. I think his son was killed during the war–anyway, nobody talks about that any more. They say he needs less sleep than Edison did. They say he’s got his whole filing system memorized, practically, and can quote from any important letter or contract in it. Some say he’s got a little blond girl on Park Avenue. Some say he’s sleeping with some actress who flies in from Hollywood once a month. I’ve even heard it said that he’s queer. But nobody who passes that stuff around really knows him. The only people I know who actually work with him are Walker and Ogden, and of course they never talk about him. To tell the honest truth, I have no idea in the world what kind of man he is, except he must be pretty damn smart to be where he is.”

“He ought to be interesting to work for,” Tom said.

“Maybe,” Bill replied, “but I ought to tell you one more thing: everybody says he’s tough as hell. If you can’t do what he wants, he’ll fire you without batting an eye. I don’t
know
that’s true, mind you, but it’s what everybody says.”

“Sounds fair enough, if you can do what he wants,” Tom said. “If you do it real well, is he quick with the raises?”

“I don’t know. You’d be surprised how a company this size can pinch pennies–they even got an order out the other day cautioning us all to put our office lights out when we weren’t using them and asking us to quit stealing pencils. But I’d say it’s always a good bet to work for a man making two hundred thousand a year. At least you’ve got a long way to go before you start competing with the boss!”

“If I can get the job, I think I’ll take it,” Tom said.

Bill finished his drink and lit a cigarette. “If you don’t, you’re crazy,” he said.

T
OM THOUGHT
Betsy would be excited when she heard he had a luncheon date with the president of United Broadcasting, but as soon as he stepped into his house that night he knew something was wrong. The house looked as though a herd of wild horses had stampeded through it. Soiled laundry was scattered about the living room. In the kitchen a mixture of dirty luncheon and breakfast dishes littered the table and counters.