The Road to Omaha Read Online Free PDF Page B

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