describe-the people who shouldn’t fight each other are doing just that.
Nevertheless. rve nearly accomplished what I set out to do. Soon I’ll have
a list of thousandsl Thousandsl Who’ll do as we wand
January, 1925 My dear Kroeger:
This is my last letter. I write from Zurich. Since Herr Hitlees release he
has once again assumed leadership of the party and I confess there are deep
divisions between us. F~exhaps they will be resolved. 1, too, have my
followers. To the point We are all of us under the strongest surveillance.
The Weimar is frightened of us—as weU it should be, I am oonvinced my
mail, my telephone, my every action is senitinized. No more chances. But the
time approaches.- A bold plan is being conceived and I have taken -the
liberty of suggesting Heinrich Kroegees inclusion. It is a master plan, a
fantastic plan. You am to contact the Marquis Jacques Louis Bertholde
60
of Bertholde at Fils, London. By mid-April. The only name he knows-as
mywff–b Heinrich KroeBer.
A gray-haired man of sixty-three &at at his desk looking out the window
over K Street in Washington. His name was Benjamin Reynolds and in two
years he would retim Until that time, however, he was responsible for the
functions of an innocuous-sounding agency attached to the Department of the
Interior. The agency was titled Field Services and Accounting. To lea than
An hundred people, it was known simply as Group Twenty.
The agency got its shortened name from its origins: a group of twenty field
accountants sent out by Interior to look into the growing conflicts of
interest between those politicians allocating federal funds and those of
the electorate receiving them
With America!s entry into the war and the overnight industrial expansion
necessary to sustain the war effoM Group Twenty became an overworked unit.
The award ing of munitions and armament contracts to businesses throughout
the country demanded an around-the-clock scrutiny beyond the capabilities
of the limited number of field acootintants. However, rather than expand
the silent agency, it was decided to use it only in the most sensitive-or
embarrassing-weas. There were a sufficient number of these. And the field
accountants were specialists.
After the war there was talk of disbanding Or9up Twenty, but each tune such
action was considered problems arose that requiz-ad as talents. Generally
they were problems Involving highly placed public sermts who dipped a bit
too greedily into the public jewel box. But in Isolated cases Group Twenty
assumed duties shunned by other departments for any number of reasons.
Such as the Treasury Department’s reluctance to pursue a vapor called
ScarlattL
11″, Gloverr’ asked the gray haired man. “The question is why? Assuming
there’s an ounce of prosecutable proof, why?-
‘Vhy does anyone break a law?” A man roughly ten years younger than
Reynolds answered him, with another
61
questiom “For profit. And theres a lot of profit in Prohibition.”
“Nol God damn it to hell, nol” Reynolds spun around in his chair and
slammed his pipe on the desk blotter. “You’re wrongi This Scarlatti has
more money than our combined imaginations can conceive of. It’s like saying
the Mellons are going to open a bookmaking parlor in Philadelphia. It
-doesn’t make sense. . . . Join me in a drinkr,
It was after five and Group Twenty’s staff was gone for the day. Only the
man named Glover and Ben Reynolds remained.
“You shock me, Ben,” Glover said with a grin.
“nen to hell with you. I’ll save it for myself.”
“You do that and ru turn you in…. Good stuff?”
“Right off the boat from old Blighty, they tell me.” Reynolds took a
leather-bound flask out of his top drawer and two water glasses from a desk
tray and poured.
“If you rule out profits, what the devil have you got left, Ben?”
“Damned if I know,” replied the older man, drinking.
‘What are you going to do? I gather no one else wants to do anything.”
“Yes, sireel That is no, sireel Nobody wants to touch this. . . . Oh,
they’ll go after Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones with a vengeance. They’ll
prosecute the hell,out of some poor slob in East Orange, New Jersey, with
a case in his basement But not this onel”
“You lost me, Ben.”
I-rhis is the Scarlatti Industriest This is big, powerful friends on the
Hilll Remember, Treasury needs money, too. It gets it up there.”
“What do you want to do, Benr
“I want to find out why the mil-moth’s tusk is phinging into bird feed.”
“Howr’
“With Canfield. He’s partial to bird feed himself, the poor son of a
bitch.”
“He’s a good man, Ben.” Glover did not like the sound of Reynold’s
invective. He liked Matthew Canfield. He thought he was talented, quick.
There but for the money to complete an education was a young man with a
future. Too good for government service. A lot better than either of them.
. . . Well, better than him-
62
self, better than a man named Glover who didn’t care anymore. There weren’t
many people better than Reynolds.
Benjamin Reynolds looked up at his subordinate. He seemed to be reading his
thoughts. “Yes, he’s a good man. . . . He’s in Chicago. Go out and call
him. His routing must be somewhere.”
“I have it in my desk.”
“Then get him in here by tomorrow night.”
63
CHAPTZR 6
Matthew Canfield, field accountant, lay In his Pullman berth, and smoked the
next to last thin cigar in his pack. They had no thin cigars on the New
York-Chicago Limited and he inhaled each breath of smoke with a degree of
Sacrifice,
in the early morning he would reach New York, transfer to the next train
south, and be in Washington ahead of schedule. That would make a better
impression on Reynolds than arriving in the evening. That would show that
he, Canfield, could close a problem quickly, with no loow ends left
dangling. Of course, with his current assignment it wasn’t difficult. He
had completed it several days ago but had remained in Chicago as the guest
Of the wnator he had been sent to confront about Payroll allocations to
nonexistent employeas.
He wondered why he had been called back to Washington. He always wondered
why he was called bacIL probably because he believed deeply that it Was
never just another job but, instead, that someday, somehow Washington would
be on to him. Group Twenty would be on to hiDL
Ibey would confront him.
With evidenm
But it was unlikely. It hadn!t happened. Matthew Canfield was a
professional-minor level, he granted to himseif-but still a professional.
And he had no regrets whatsoever. He was entitled to every wooden nickel he
could dig up.
why not? He never took much. He and his mother de-
64
served something. It had been a federal court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had
pasted the sheriff’s notice on his father’s store. A federal judge who had
rendered the determination-Involuntary Bankruptcy. Ile federal government
hadn’t listened to any explanations other than the fact that his father no
longer had the ability to pay his debts.
For a quarter of a century a man could work, raise a family, get a son off
to the state university-so many dreams fulfilled, only to be destroyed with
the single banging of a wooden gavel upon a small marble plate in a
courtroom.
Canfield had no regrets.
“You have a new occupation to get under your belt, Canfield. Simple
procedures. Not difficult.”
“Fine, Mr. Reynolds. Always ready.”
“Yes. I know you are. . . . You start in three days at pier thirty-seven in
New York City. Customs. I’ll fill you in as best I can.”
But, of course, Benjamin Reynolds did not “fill in” Matthew Canfield as
thoroughly as he might have. He wanted Canfield to “fill in” the spaces he,
Reynolds, left blank. The Scarlatti padrone was operating out of the West
Side piers-middle numbers-that much they knew. But someone had to see him.
Someone had to identify him. Without being told.
That was very important.
And if anyone could do that it would be someone like Matthew Canfield, who
seemed to gravitate to the nether world of the payoff, the bribe, the
corrupt.
He did.
On the night shift of January 3, 1925.
Matthew Canfield, customs inspector, checked the invoices of the steamer
Genoa-Stella and waved to the shakeup foreman to start unloading hold one
of its crates of Como wool.
And then it happened.
At first an argument. Then a hook fight.
The Genoa-Stella crew would not tolerate a breach of unloading procedures.
Their orders came from some-
65
one elm Certainly not from the American customs officials.
Two crates plummeted down from the cranes, and underneath the straw packing
the stench of -uncut alcohol was unmistakable.
The entire pier force froze. Several men then raced to phone booths and a
hundred apelike bodies swarmed around the crates ready to fend off