James Cain - The Institute

But in my secret soul I knew I wasn’t the only one worrying about that handshake, and I knew she and I weren’t fooling anyone.

The seat he waved me to was beside the desk. He took the swivel chair behind it, talking about his trip and how glad he was to be back. But he didn’t quite look at me, only occasionally, when he seemed to be making himself do it. Soon he blurted: “Well, let’s get on. I’d say the first thing is to get it incorporated, this institute we’re starting. Fortunately, Delaware makes a specialty of it, so it should be easy, with no snags. I thought the boys could drive down to Dover tomorrow and get the thing over with. I’d like you to go with them, to familiarize yourself with details and get acquainted with my staff. With incorporation out of the way we can do the actual exchange of securities — from ARMALCO to the H.G. Institute. Malcolm McDavitt is in charge of the securities for ARMALCO, and for the Institute, I’ve asked Sam Dent to come up. He’s chief of my legal staff, but bases in Washington.” I said I was at his disposal, for Dover or any place I might be needed.

He drummed on the desk with his fingers, then went on: “I think you should meet McDavitt, but I have to tell you about him so you don’t think I’m nuts to have him. He’s in charge of all our investments. His desk is piled high with reports. He must do something about them, because he always knows what they say. But all I see him read, and I ever see him read, is his belly button. He sits at his desk, his feet up in a chair, studying it, as his father did before him. He was my father’s investment chief. This is how it works: His father, back around World War I, did his umbilical research and then, suddenly announced: They’re lining it with concrete.’

“Lining what with concrete?’ asked my father.

“ ‘The whole Mississippi Valley. They’ve gone nuts over flood control. We’re buying Portland Cement.’

“So my father bought Portland Cement — plants in California, Indiana, and Illinois — and they made him rich. They’re still making me rich. Mal frightens me a little. He says he bets on my hunches, my knowing a thing from a thing. Well” — waving a hand toward the things on the shelves — “so far it’s worked. But suppose I come up with a dud. Which I can do, Dr. Palmer. Which I can do so easy it scares me to death.”

“I’d say, no use borrowing trouble.”

“It’s all you can say. Let’s go in and see Mal.”

So we went in there, Garrett first knocking on a door with no name on it; and sure enough, there was a rumpled, potbellied man sitting behind a desk, his feet in a swivel chair, his fingers covering his belly, and his eyes fixed on his navel. He didn’t look up when we came in. Apparently he could see out of the side of his head, as he said to Garrett: “Not ARMALCO. You transfer that stuff yourself.”

“What stuff?” Mr. Garrett asked.

“The securities for this thing you’ve decided to back. It’s not a corporate enterprise — it’s your private project, and you have to endow it yourself.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what I meant, of course.”

“You said ARMALCO would do it.”

“Okay, then I do it.”

Mr. McDavitt slid a paper across his desk, at last taking his feet down. “There’s the securities I’d think would do it — give this thing, whatever it is, a nicely assorted portfolio with some growth potential and still leave you well assorted. I mean, you’ll kick in with quite a few things, so you’re not left lopsided. There’s a tax angle, of course. Here’s a memo on that.”

Garrett picked up the papers, had a look, folded them, and put them in his pocket. “This is Dr. Palmer,” he said, “who’ll be in charge of our institution from now on.”

Mal paid no attention. He didn’t even look at me. “Okay, then,” Mr. Garrett said after a moment, “is that all?”

Mal didn’t answer, merely hoisting his feet again and going back to his belly button. Mr. Garrett led the way out. “Five minutes from now,” he whispered in the hall, “he’ll call me with what he thinks of you, and I’d better listen, believe me. He didn’t look at you, did he? In a pig’s eye, he didn’t.”

Back in his office we sat down and waited. The phone on his desk tinkled, and he answered. “Thanks, Mal,” he said, “it’s what I wanted to know.”

“He says you’re okay,” he murmured, hanging up.

Several minutes went by, and I realized that Mal’s report and Mal’s assorted memos and admonitions had been very important to Garrett.

“O.K., Dr. Palmer, let’s get started. What’s on your mind?”

I said the next step, I thought, once we were incorporated, was our application to I.R.S. for a ruling on our tax-exempt status. “It’s a job for lawyers,” I said. “Even so, I would have to sit in, as the nub of the matter is the supplementary outline, our bound, typewritten booklet setting forth our aims and purposes. It has to be inclusive, covering everything we may conceivably want to do, so later on, if something comes up, we don’t find we’ve booby-trapped ourselves by leaving something out. I’m the one who knows, the only one who knows in detail, what we’ll want to do and how we expect to do it. So, if Mr. Dent is to be in charge as your lawyer, you should instruct him not only to work with me but to let me pass on his booklet before he actually submits it.”

Mr. Garrett made a note. “I get the point,” he said. “What next, after we get our ruling? How long does it take, by the way? Or do you know?”

“No more than a week or two.”

“And then what?”

“There’s the question of where we set up shop. I have some ideas on that, if you’d care to hear them.”

“I’m listening. Go ahead.”

I said that though our headquarters should be convenient to Washington, it needn’t actually be in the city. “I would think, by building a place out in the suburbs, say in Prince Georges County, we could save quite a lot of expenses — if the building were in the style of a colonial mansion, no more than three stories, we wouldn’t need elevators, for example, and at the same time we’d have ample space for books, records, offices, and so on. If we harmonized it with colonial architecture—”

“With a deer park, perhaps?”

“Why not? Those miniature Indian deer would cost very little and be quite a feature, especially for children.”

“Swan lake?”

“In Europe they have them.”

“Box hedges?”

“They give off a beautiful smell.”

“Well, you can take your deer park and swan lake and box hedges and do what you want with them. But don’t ask me to come in. I hate mansions and everything connected with them. Dr. Palmer, there’s more comfort, more safety, more health, in a modern apartment building than in all the mansions ever built. I hate swan lakes, especially. They’re nothing but frog ponds, reflecting the light of the moon. Poor old John Charles Thomas. I dropped in on him once before he died, in Apple Valley, California, where he lived the last years of his life. And he was telling me about the Hollywood Bowl and how some genius had the bright idea of putting a fish pond in, between the seats and the shell. ‘Maybe some fish were there,’ John Charles said, ‘but all you could hear was frogs. I’d hate to tell you what they did to me one night. That’s nice, isn’t it? You’re singing The Trumpeter, you hold the last verse, and then you start it. You breathe it at them, you’ve got them. You finish, and there comes that moment you pray for, of utter, reverent silence before the applause breaks out. Then a goddam frog goes glk.’”