Almost immediately, he realized that couldn’t possibly be the case. Their relatively simple business relationship had gone on long enough to work effortlessly; all the little problems that inevitably occur had been resolved.
In their own bottoms, or hired bottoms, Howell (Venezuela) shipped Venezuela crude to Buenos Aires. This was most often (and now almost always, with the war) off-loaded directly into the tanks of the refinery that was to process it. Since there was an import tax, the government determined precisely how much crude there was. The government inspectors were kept honest during off-loading by the presence of representatives of the refiner (who wanted to make sure the inspectors had not been paid by SMIPP to report a greater tonnage than was the case) and of SMIPP (who wanted to make sure the inspectors had not been paid off by the refiner to report the off-loading of a lesser amount of crude than was the case).
Within forty-eight hours of off-loading, the refiners paid SMIPP for the crude. And within twenty-four hours of receipt of their check, SMIPP paid into Howell (Venezuela)’s account at the Bank of Boston the amount they were due: gross receipts less taxes, stevedoring, and, of course, SMIPP’s commission.
Handling of Refined Products (cased motor oil and lubricants) from Howell Petroleum (which Mallín thought of as Howell USA) was a bit more complicated. But this was still done in much the same way. There was, of course, a greater problem with pilferage: Refined products were shipped as regular cargo aboard freighters that were not owned or controlled by Howell, and the crews of these freighters had discovered that oil products floated (even in cans and cases), and that some of the operators of boats on the River Plate would make gifts to seamen in proportion to the number of cases of refined products they found bobbing around in the river.
But over the years, even that problem had been minimized by the payment of bonuses to ship’s masters and crews for their special care of Howell Refined Products. It was impossible, of course, to keep a half-dozen cases of motor oil from falling over the side when a boat operated by one’s wife’s cousin showed up to wave hello. But large-scale theft was really a thing of the past.
After the Refined Products were counted by a government inspector to make sure the government took its tax bite, they were unloaded into bonded warehouses, with a SMIPP representative watching. And when they were sold by SMIPP, it was on a Collect On Delivery basis at the bonded warehouses. A SMIPP representative was there to collect the check before he authorized release of the merchandise. Within twenty-four hours, SMIPP deposited a check to Howell USA’s account at the Bank of Boston representing the total amount the wholesaler had paid, less taxes, stevedoring, SMIPP’s commission, and the value of goods spoiled in transport.
Mallín generally succeeded in keeping the value of goods spoiled in transport (including goods actually damaged, say, when a cargo net ripped; goods “fallen” overboard; and bonuses paid to ship’s crews) below one point five percent of net to Howell.
On reflection, Enrico could not imagine anything in his operation that could displease the old man.
So what is this all about? And why the grandson? He’s nothing but a boy!
Mallín had met the grandson. In 1938. He was then a student in New Orleans, a tall, rather well-set-up young man who suffered from acne. The old man, Mallín recalled, doted on him. The boy’s mother was dead, and the father had vanished when the boy was an infant (Mallín did not know the man’s name).
If the boy was then—what, seventeen, eighteen years old?—what is he now? Twenty-one or twenty-two; twenty-three at most. If you are dissatisfied with someone, you don’t send a twenty-odd-year-old to conduct an investigation.
Maybe that was why the other expert was coming. But if that was the case, why send the boy?
As a matter of courtesy to me? Highly unlikely. The old man is the antithesis of subtle.
Then the real reason flashed in his mind:
The war. The bloody damned war! If the boy is twenty-odd, he’s liable to be called up for service. Young men are killed in wars. Even Argentineans. And we’re not even in this war. Humberto Valdez Duarte’s boy was killed—it was in La Nación—at Stalingrad, of all places.
The old man dotes on the boy. The mother is dead and the father a scoundrel. So the boy had been raised by the old man, and an aunt and uncle in Texas.
That’s what this is all about. The old man doesn’t want him killed in the war. So he’s arranged to send him out of the country. He’s a powerful man; he’s arranged for him to be declared essential to Howell Petroleum. Sending him to Buenos Aires will keep him out of sight.
But who is the other fellow, Pelosi, coming with him?
We’ll just have to wait and see.
He walked back to his desk, picked up a pen, and scrawled a note to his secretary, asking her (a) to please make reservations for an American gentleman, Señor Pelosi, at either the Alvear Palace or the Plaza, for at least a week, starting November twenty-first (a small suite, to be billed to the SMIPP account); (b) to please remind him to inform his wife that they would be entertaining the young grandson of Cletus Marcus Howell for an indefinite period beginning November twenty-first; and (c) to please contact Schneider to ask if their meeting tomorrow could be rescheduled for later in the day; two-thirty or three, if possible, but no earlier than one-thirty.
[FIVE]
Aboard “The Ciudad de Rio de Janeiro”
(Pan American Airlines Flight 171)
1815 21 November 1942
One of the stewards (Clete Frade had serious doubts about his masculinity) came through the cabin, knelt in the aisle by each quartet of seats, and announced they were preparing to land in Buenos Aires. They should be on the ground—or, titter, on the water—in about fifteen minutes.
In fact, Clete’s aviator’s seat-of-the-pants instincts had already told him they’d been letting down slowly for about fifteen minutes. He had noticed a slight change in the roar of the Martin 156’s quadruple thousand-horsepower engines, and a just barely perceptible change in attitude. Without taking it out of Autopilot, the pilot had just touched the trim control, lowering the nose maybe half a degree.
Clete was slept out and bored, so he had been doing his own dead-reckoning navigation since they’d left Rio de Janeiro. He used his Marine Corps-issue Hamilton chronograph and several sheets of the notepaper engraved “In Flight—Pan American Airways.” Pan American had provided the paper—along with a good deal else—for the comfort of its passengers. He could only guess at the winds aloft, of course, but putting them at zero for his calculations, it was time to arrive in Buenos Aires.
He’d thought quite a bit about the watch, starting with the amusing notion that a diligent Marine Corps supply officer was almost certainly at this very moment trying to run down First Lieutenant Frade, USMCR, to make him either turn it back in or sign the appropriate form so the cost thereof could be deducted from his pay.
He got a strange feeling sitting in the softly upholstered seat of the Martin (every time they landed—first at Caracas, Venezuela, and
then at Belém and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil—the crisp linen head cloths of the seats were replaced, and the ashtrays emptied) computing time and distance with the same watch he’d used when he had to wonder if he had enough gas to bring his Grumman Wildcat back to Midway or Henderson. Same identical watch, except for the strap. He replaced the old, mold-soaked strap with a new leather band in New Orleans.