Brass Go-Between Read Online Free Page B
quickly, rested his elbows on the bar, and began a careful study of the labels on the bottles behind it.
Only Winfield Spencer’s name would cause you to look at him twice if you were interested in money and three times if you were concerned with power. Even in August he wore a three-piece gray worsted suit that could have been tailored this year or in 1939; it was that kind of material and that kind of cut. His hair was pewter gray and it looked as if he trimmed it himself, but had botched the job. He had no sideburns and the back of his neck was irregularly shaved an inch or so above a frayed white collar displaying a few threads that the manicure scissors had missed.
Over the years Spencer seemed to have created a face for himself that was at once both shy and forbidding. It was an ugly face, purposely ugly, I thought, because the mouth was always pursed, the forehead was always frowned, and the chin, a little small by some standards, was always thrust out in an aggressively unpleasant manner. The clip-on maroon bow tie that he wore beneath it didn’t help things any either.
I found it difficult to believe that Winfield Spencer had once shot down nine Messerschmitts for the Royal Canadian Air Force. I found it even more difficult to believe that he was either the fifth- or sixth-richest man in the nation.
The Spencer fortune had been founded in the 1850’s on Pennsylvania coal. It was augmented by Colorado gold and silver, Montana copper, some short-line railroads, and later by Texas, Oklahoma, and California oil, and much later by Utah uranium. It was now buttressed by refineries, a fleet of tankers, and a Washington bank whose deposits, including the considerable pension funds from Teague’s aluminum workers, had been used to buy into some of the nation’s most profitable businesses; and Spencer’s bank made sure that these businesses continued to be profitable by a complicated, almost unravelable tangle of interlocking directorates.
Just out of Princeton in 1939, Spencer had joined the Canadian air force in September and got nine of his own before he was shot down over the Channel in the late summer of 1942. He was invalided back to the States that fall because of injuries, some said, while others claimed that he was eased out because of psychological reasons.
Since then Spencer had devoted himself to anonymity, the family fortune, and art. It was art that had brought him and Amos Coulter together. In the early 1950’s a Matisse had been auctioned in London by Sotheby’s. Spencer’s agents had been instructed to buy it; Amos Coulter was on hand to do his own bidding. But Coulter’s new fortune proved no match for Spencer’s older and considerably larger bankroll. Spencer got the Matisse and when informed how high Amos Coulter had bid for it, he had had the picture crated and sent to Coulter without any notice, not even a card.
The two men subsequently became friends, or close acquaintances at any rate, since Spencer was said to have no friends. Coulter was one of the three dozen or so persons who had been invited to view the Spencer collection that was carefully housed and guarded in a private gallery built on his plantation near Warrenton, Virginia, and which supposedly contained the world’s finest collection of postimpressionists. But despite the fact that he had been as close to Amos Coulter as he had ever been to anyone, it still took three personal phone calls from the President himself before Winfield Spencer agreed to serve as chairman of the Coulter Museum’s executive committee.
Some of this went through my mind as I stood at the bar between the Senator and the labor leader and half listened as they gossiped about the state of the union, and some of it I looked up later. Frances Wingo now stood at Spencer’s left, talking to him in a low voice while he continued his study of the labels on the bottles behind the bar. When the bartender slid my drink over to me I turned to Senator
Only Winfield Spencer’s name would cause you to look at him twice if you were interested in money and three times if you were concerned with power. Even in August he wore a three-piece gray worsted suit that could have been tailored this year or in 1939; it was that kind of material and that kind of cut. His hair was pewter gray and it looked as if he trimmed it himself, but had botched the job. He had no sideburns and the back of his neck was irregularly shaved an inch or so above a frayed white collar displaying a few threads that the manicure scissors had missed.
Over the years Spencer seemed to have created a face for himself that was at once both shy and forbidding. It was an ugly face, purposely ugly, I thought, because the mouth was always pursed, the forehead was always frowned, and the chin, a little small by some standards, was always thrust out in an aggressively unpleasant manner. The clip-on maroon bow tie that he wore beneath it didn’t help things any either.
I found it difficult to believe that Winfield Spencer had once shot down nine Messerschmitts for the Royal Canadian Air Force. I found it even more difficult to believe that he was either the fifth- or sixth-richest man in the nation.
The Spencer fortune had been founded in the 1850’s on Pennsylvania coal. It was augmented by Colorado gold and silver, Montana copper, some short-line railroads, and later by Texas, Oklahoma, and California oil, and much later by Utah uranium. It was now buttressed by refineries, a fleet of tankers, and a Washington bank whose deposits, including the considerable pension funds from Teague’s aluminum workers, had been used to buy into some of the nation’s most profitable businesses; and Spencer’s bank made sure that these businesses continued to be profitable by a complicated, almost unravelable tangle of interlocking directorates.
Just out of Princeton in 1939, Spencer had joined the Canadian air force in September and got nine of his own before he was shot down over the Channel in the late summer of 1942. He was invalided back to the States that fall because of injuries, some said, while others claimed that he was eased out because of psychological reasons.
Since then Spencer had devoted himself to anonymity, the family fortune, and art. It was art that had brought him and Amos Coulter together. In the early 1950’s a Matisse had been auctioned in London by Sotheby’s. Spencer’s agents had been instructed to buy it; Amos Coulter was on hand to do his own bidding. But Coulter’s new fortune proved no match for Spencer’s older and considerably larger bankroll. Spencer got the Matisse and when informed how high Amos Coulter had bid for it, he had had the picture crated and sent to Coulter without any notice, not even a card.
The two men subsequently became friends, or close acquaintances at any rate, since Spencer was said to have no friends. Coulter was one of the three dozen or so persons who had been invited to view the Spencer collection that was carefully housed and guarded in a private gallery built on his plantation near Warrenton, Virginia, and which supposedly contained the world’s finest collection of postimpressionists. But despite the fact that he had been as close to Amos Coulter as he had ever been to anyone, it still took three personal phone calls from the President himself before Winfield Spencer agreed to serve as chairman of the Coulter Museum’s executive committee.
Some of this went through my mind as I stood at the bar between the Senator and the labor leader and half listened as they gossiped about the state of the union, and some of it I looked up later. Frances Wingo now stood at Spencer’s left, talking to him in a low voice while he continued his study of the labels on the bottles behind the bar. When the bartender slid my drink over to me I turned to Senator
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