The Road to Omaha (5 page)

“Yeah, I know, boss. Sam’s been kind of off the wall every now and again.”

“You’ve noticed then?”

“Hell, you’ve had me pick him up at Logan Airport a dozen times or more this year. As I say, every now and again he seemed a little squirrelly, and it wasn’t just the boyo booze. He’s troubled, Mr. Pinkus. The lad’s got a trouble in his head.”

“And that head contains a brilliant legal mind, Paddy. Let’s see if we can find out what the trouble is.”

“Good luck, sir. I’ll be out of sight but
in
sight, if you know what I mean. And when you hear my beep, get the hell out of there.”

“Why do I feel like a bony, overage Jewish Casanova who couldn’t scale a trellis if a horde of pit bulls was snapping at my rear end?” Pinkus understood that he asked
the question of himself, as his driver had raced around the hood of the limousine so as to climb inside and vanish—in sight but out of sight.

Aaron had met Eleanor Devereaux only twice over the years since he had known her son. The first time was the day Samuel came to work for the firm several weeks after his graduation from Harvard Law School, and then, Aaron suspected, it was because his mother wanted to look over her son’s workaday environs as she might inspect the counselors and the facilities of a summer camp. The second and only other time was at the welcome-home party the Pinkuses gave for Sam upon his return from the army, said homecoming one of the strangest in the chronicles of military separation. It took place over five months past the day that Lieutenant Devereaux was to arrive in Boston as an honorably discharged civilian. Five months unaccounted for.

Five months, mused Aaron, as he started toward the gate in the white picket fence, nearly half a year that Sam would not talk about—would not discuss except to say he was not permitted to discuss it, implying some type of top-secret government operation. Well, Pinkus had thought at the time, he certainly could not ask
Lieutenant
Devereaux to violate a sworn oath, but he was curious, both personally as a friend and professionally in terms of international legal negotiations, and he did have a few connections in Washington.

So he telephoned the President on the private White House line that rang in the upstairs living quarters and explained his conundrum to the chief executive.

“You think he may have been involved in a covert operation, Aaron?” the President had asked.

“Speaking frankly, I wouldn’t think he’s at all the type.”

“Sometimes they go for that, Pinky. You know, rotten casting turns out the best casting. Also speaking frankly, a lot of these lousy long-haired, dirty-minded directors stink up the big screen with that kind of thing. I hear they wanted Myrna to use the
S
word a couple of years ago, can you
believe
it?”

“It’s difficult, Mr. President. But I know you’re busy—”

“Heck no, Pinky. Mommy and I are just watching
Wheel of Fortune
. You know, she beats me a lot, but I don’t care. I’m President and she’s not.”

“Very understanding. Could you just possibly make a few inquiries for me on this matter?”

“Oh, sure. I wrote it down. Devereaux—D-e-v-a-r-o, right?”

“That will do, sir.”

Twenty minutes later the President had called him back. “Oh, wow, Pinky! I think you stepped into it!”

“Into what, Mr. President?”

“My people tell me that ‘outside of China’—those were the words—whatever this Devereaux did had ‘absolutely nothing to do with the United States government’—those, too, were the exact words, I wrote them down. Then when I pressed them, they told me I didn’t
‘want to know’
—”

“Yes, of course, the exact words. It’s called deniability, Mr. President.”

“There’s a lot of that going around, isn’t there?”

Aaron paused on the path and looked up at the grand old house, thinking about Sam Devereaux and the rather odd, even touching way he had grown up in this gracefully restored relic from a far more graceful era. In truth, considered the vaunted attorney, the sparkling restoration had not always been in evidence; for years there had been the aura of neat but shabby gentility about the place rather than the current facade of spanking new paint and a manicured front law. These days, care was lavished continuously, no expense spared—spared, that was, ever since Sam had returned to civilian life after a five-month disappearing act. As a matter of course, Pinkus always studied the personal and academic histories of each potential employee of his firm so as to avoid heartbreak or a mistake. Young Devereaux’s résumé had caught his eye as well as his curiosity, and he had frequently driven by the old house in Weston, wondering what secrets were held within its Victorian walls.

The father, Lansing Devereaux III, had been a scion of the Boston Brahmin elite on a par with the Cabots and the Lodges, but with one glaring aberration. He was a bold risktaker in the world of high finance, far more capable of losing money than hoarding it. He had been a good man,
if somewhat wild and tempestuous, a hard worker who had opened doors of opportunity for many, but for himself saw too few initiatives come to fruition. While watching a stock market report on television, he had died of a stroke when Sam was a boy of nine, leaving his widow and his son a fine name, a grand residence, and insufficient insurance to maintain the lifestyle to which they were accustomed and the appearance of which Eleanor refused to abandon.

As a result, Samuel Lansing Devereaux became that contradiction among the wealthy, a scholarship boy who waited on tables at Phillips Andover. While his classmates attended proms, he tended a snack bar at those proms; and when his increasingly distant acquaintances in the social set entered regattas on the Cape, he worked on the roads they traveled leading to Dennis and Hyannis. He also worked on his studies, like a young man possessed, fully understanding that academia was the only route back to the affluent world of the ancestral Devereauxes. Besides, he was sick of being merely an observer of the good life instead of a participant.

More generous scholarships followed at Harvard and its Law School, his expense monies supplemented quite nicely by a heavy schedule of tutoring his brother and sister classmates, the preponderance of whom were the latter as there were frequently bonuses having nothing to do with finance. There followed an auspicious beginning at Aaron Pinkus Associates, menacingly interrupted by the United States Army, which, in the era of massive Pentagon expansion, desperately needed all the lawyers it could dredge up to forestall wholesale indictments of its procurement personnel on bases at home and abroad. The fascist military computers unearthed a long-forgotten deferment granted one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, and the armed services gained a handsome, if pathetic, soldier, but one with a superb legal brain, which they used and obviously abused.

What had happened to him
? questioned Pinkus in the silence of his mind.
What horrible events had taken place years ago that had come back to haunt him now? To warp and, at times, to short-circuit that extraordinary mind, a
mind that cut through legalistic abstractions and made common sense out of the most abstruse constitutional interpretations, so that judges and juries alike were in awe of his erudition and his deeply penetrating analyses
.

Something
had happened, concluded Aaron, approaching the huge front door, replete with antique beveled panes of glass in the upper panel. Also, where did Sam ever get the money to restore the damn house to begin with? Pinkus was, indeed, generous with his outstanding and, in truth, his favorite employee, but not to the extent that he could pour a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars into the renovation of the family residence. Where had the cash come from? Drugs? Laundering money? Insider trading? Selling illegal armaments abroad? None made sense where Sam Devereaux was concerned. He’d be a total bust at any of those endeavors; he was a
klutz
where subterfuge was concerned. He was—God in heaven be praised—a truly honest man in a world of worms. This judgment, however, did not explain the apparently inexplicable—the
money
. Several years ago, when Aaron had casually mentioned the fine improvements made on the house, which he drove by frequently on his way home, Samuel had, with equal casualness, offered that a well-to-do Devereaux relative had passed away and left his mother a very decent bequest.

Pinkus had pored over the probate rolls and the taxable inheritance records only to discover that there was no such relative and no such bequest. And he knew deep in his religious heart that whatever was plaguing Sam now had something to do with his unexplained affluence. What
was
it? Perhaps the answer was hidden inside this grand old house. He rang the bell—bass-toned chimes, naturally.

A full minute passed before the door was opened by a plumpish middle-aged maid in a starched green and white uniform. “Sir?” she said, somewhat more coldly than was necessary, thought Aaron.

“Mrs. Devereaux,” replied Pinkus. “I believe she’s expecting me.”

“Oh,
you’re
the one,” responded the maid, perhaps even more icily, thought Aaron. “Well, I hope you like the damn chamomile tea, Buster, it sure isn’t my taste. Come on in.”

“Thank you.” The celebrated but less than physically imposing attorney walked into the foyer of Norwegian rose marble, his mental computer estimating its extravagant cost. “And what variety do you prefer, my dear?” he asked pointlessly.

“A cup laced with rye!” exclaimed the woman, laughing raucously and jabbing her elbow into Pinkus’s frail shoulder.

“I’ll remember that when we have high tea at the Ritz some afternoon.”

“
That’ll
be the Jesus-lovin’ day, won’t it, little fella?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Go on through those double doors over there,” continued the maid, gesturing to her left. “The hoity-toity’s waiting for you. Me, I got work to do.” With that command-
cum
-explanation, the woman turned and walked without precision across the expensive floor, disappearing beyond the elegantly balustraded winding staircase.

Aaron approached the closed double doors, opened the right panel, and peered inside. At the far end of the ornate Victorian room sat Eleanor Devereaux on a brocaded white couch, a glistening silver tea service on the coffee table in front of her. She was as he remembered her, an erect, fine-boned woman, with an aging face that must have launched a thousand yachts in its prime, and with large blue eyes that said far more than she would ever reveal.

“Mrs. Devereaux, how good to see you again.”

“Mr. Pinkus, how good to see
you
. Please come and sit down.”

“Thank you.” Aaron walked inside, conscious of the huge, priceless Oriental rug beneath his feet. He lowered himself into the white brocaded armchair to the right of the sofa, the spot indicated by a nod of Mrs. Devereaux’s aristocratic head.

“From the rather frantic laughter I heard in the hallway,” said the grand lady, “I gather you’ve met Cousin Cora, our maid.”

“Your cousin …?”

“If she weren’t, do you think she’d last five minutes in this house? In a family sense, being more fortunate imposes certain obligations, doesn’t it?”

“Noblesse oblige, madam. And very nicely said.”

“Yes, I suppose so, but I wish to hell nobody ever had to say it. One day she’ll choke on the whisky she steals and the obligation will be over, won’t it?”

“A logical conclusion.”

“But you’re not here to discuss Cora, are you?… Chamomile tea, Mr. Pinkus? Cream or lemon, sugar or no?”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Devereaux, but I must resist. An old man’s aversion to volatile oil.”

“Good! An old woman’s, too. This fourth little dear I fill myself.” Eleanor picked up a Limoges teapot to the left of the silver service. “A fine thirty-year-old brandy, Mr. Pinkus, and
its
kind of acid couldn’t hurt anybody. I also wash the damn thing myself, so Cora doesn’t get ideas.”

“My very favorite, Mrs. Devereaux,” said Aaron. “And I shan’t tell my doctor, so
he
won’t get any ideas.”

“
L’chaim
, Mr. Pinkus,” toasted Eleanor Devereaux, pouring them each a good dram and then raising her teacup.

“
À votre santé
, Mrs. Devereaux,” said Aaron.

“No, no, Mr. Pinkus. The Devereaux name may be French, but my husband’s ancestors migrated to England in the fifteenth century—actually they were captured during the battle of Crécy but stayed long enough to raise their own armies and be knighted by the crown. We’re High Anglican.”

“So what should I say?”

“How about ‘Up your banners’?”

“That’s religious?”

“If you’re convinced He’s on your side, I imagine it is.” They both sipped, and replaced their cups in the delicate saucers. “That’s a good beginning, Mr. Pinkus. And now shall we plunge right into the puzzling issue at hand—namely, my son?”

“I believe it would be prudent,” nodded Aaron, glancing at his watch. “Right now he’s about to go into a conference entailing an extremely complex litigation that should take the better part of several hours. However, as we both agreed over the telephone, these past months he’s frequently
displayed erratic behavior; he might very well leave the conference in midsentence and drive home.”

“Or go to a museum or a movie or, God forbid, to the airport and take a plane to heaven knows where,” interrupted Eleanor Devereaux. “I’m all too aware of Sam’s impetuous proclivities. Only two Sundays ago I returned from church and discovered a note that he’d left for me on the kitchen table. In it he wrote that he was out and would call me later. He did so during dinner. From Switzerland.”

“Our experiences are too painfully similar, so I will not take up our time recounting my and my firm’s variations.”

“Is my son in danger of losing his position, Mr. Pinkus?”

“Not if
I
can help it, Mrs. Devereaux. I’ve looked too long and too hard for a successor to give up so easily. But I’d be less than honest if I told you that the status quo was acceptable. It isn’t. It’s not fair to Sam or to the firm.”