The Gun Runner's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t have the heart. She hadn’t really needed to fight, anyway:
Pauly, as always, had done it for her.
    “You want her in the family business, Dad? Another Rosenthal gonif?”
    It was at the Shabbos dinner table, and her father had paused in incomprehension, then suspicion.
    “What’s that supposed to mean, David?”
    Her heart was pounding as she watched, but Pauly seemed as calm as usual when he answered.
    “For God’s sake. I know what you do for a living. You think I’ve forgotten meeting Oliver North in this very house? Or Amiram Nir? Let’s go ask Amiram Nir. Oh, wait,
he’s dead, right? That’s what you want Alley to go to law school for? Or what, you going to introduce her to Greg Eastbrook in the NSC, and she’s going to carry on the family
business? ‘Rosenthal and Daughter.’ Sounds like the smoked-fish store on Houston Street. Except you don’t sell fish, do you, Dad?”
    Her father had listened to Pauly’s speech, his jaw falling lower and lower with each name: not even his only son had ever talked to him like this before. Perhaps no one had. When his son
had finished, he’d been too surprised to respond for long seconds. Then he’d asked the maid to leave the room, and addressed Pauly with restrained fury.
    “What do you know about my work, David?”
    He was nearly shouting, his face flushed, his body tensed against the table edge.
    “I can
read
, Dad. You’d have to be
blind
not to see your name in these damn books, the library catalog
indexes
, the footnote references. I’ve seen
enough
of you in the papers.”
    Her father nodded, as if, despite his anger, Pauly was merely confirming what he had long suspected about his son.
    “Calm down. I know you can read. Now tell me what you know about Greg Eastbrook.”
    It clearly surprised Pauly that her father had picked that name out of others. He calmed somewhat with his answer.
    “I don’t know what’s your particular business with that scumbag, Dad, but by your response I’d infer that it’s particularly insalubrious.”
    Her father answered now, decisively, and in the language of his business. “Infer, would you? Who made you the jury? And didn’t the judge instruct you that if you see fit to
‘infer’ from ambiguous evidence, the law requires you to favor the exculpatory inference?”
    For a few moments, silence reigned in the ornate, high-ceilinged dining room while her father considered his son. And then he turned to his daughter.
    “Now you listen to me, Essie, not to this child, okay? You want to talk about my business, then you’d better be ready to be a big girl. First off, the law isn’t about truth,
it’s about appearances. David wants to judge me, fine, but let him learn what he’s talking about first. Then I’ll debate the issues, not the emotions. You go read Thomas
Jefferson, you go read Madison, then read
Curtiss-Wright
, and you’ll see that what I do is the same as WASP businessmen in Washington do every day, okay? I work every day with the
Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA. I change my name to Gladstone and no one’s going to pay any attention to me. Only, I’m Rosenthal, get it? You ever read about the mail Bill
Cohen and Arthur Liman got during Iran-contra? You see even the Hawaiian or Italians on the committees getting mail like that? And Cohen only sounds Jewish, he’s a WASP himself.”
    He paused now, thinking so deeply that Alley was afraid to interrupt.
    “Secondly, this isn’t about me, and it’s not about David. It’s about you. Men have a lot more latitude. You be whatever kind of lady poetess you want to be, but
you’re going to do it with a law degree, okay? You do what your daddy says now, Esther. You get a law degree. I don’t care if Farrakhan joins forces with the Michigan Militia,
you’re gonna be protected as sure as you got a gun. You follow me? This is
America.
The country’s
made
for the people who know how to use the law. Okay?”
    There was no arguing