Terminal Compromise

"It doesn't matter anymore. Do what you want." Hugh Sidneys hung up on Mason. It was as close to a confirmation as he need- ed. He wrote the story.

At 39, Scott Byron Mason was already into his second career.

Despite the objections of his overbearing father, he had avoided the family destiny of becoming a longsh.o.r.eman. "If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my kids." Scott was an only child, but his father had wanted more despite his mother's ina- bility to carry another baby to full term.

Scott caught the resentment of his father and the doting protec- tion of his mother. Marie Elizabeth Mason wanted her son to have more of a future than to merely live another generation in the lower middle cla.s.s doldrums of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Not that Scott was aware of his predicament; he was a dreamer.

Her son showed apt.i.tude. By the age of six Scott knew two words his father never learned - how and why. His childhood curiosity led to more than a few mishaps and spankings by the hot tempered Louis Horace Mason. Scott took apart everything in the house in an attempt to see what made it tick. Sometimes, not often enough, Scott could rea.s.semble what he broken down to its small- est components. Despite his failings and bruised bottom Scott wasn't satisfied with, "that's just the way it is," as an answer to anything.

Behind his father's back, Marie had Scott take tests and be accepted to the elite Bronx High School of Science, an hour and a half train ride from Brooklyn. To Scott it wasn't an escape from Brooklyn, it was a chance to learn why and how machines worked.

Horace gave Marie and Scott a three day silent treatment until his mother finally put an end to it. "Horace Stipton Mason,"

Evelyn Mason said with maternal command. "Our son has a gift, and you will not, I repeat, you will not interfere with his happiness."

"Yes dear."

"The boy is thirteen and he has plenty of time to decide what he's going to do with himself. Is that clear?"

"Yes dear."

"Good." She would say as she finished setting the table. "Dinner is ready. Wash your hands boys." And the subject was closed.

But throughout his four years at the best d.a.m.n high school in the country, Horace found ample opportunity to pressure Scott about how it was the right thing to follow in the family tradition, and work at the docks, like the three generations before him.

The issue was never settled during Scott's rebellious teenage years. The War, demonstrating on the White House lawn, getting ga.s.sed at George Was.h.i.+ngton, writing for the New York Free Press, Scott was even arrested once or twice or three times for peaceful civil disobedience. Scott Mason was seeing the world in a new way. He was rapidly growing up, as did much of the cla.s.s of 1970.

Scott's grades weren't good enough for scholors.h.i.+ps, but adequate to be accepted at several reasonable schools.

"I already paid for his education," screamed Horace upon hearing that Scott chose City College to keep costs down. He would live at home. "He broke every d.a.m.n thing I ever bought, radios, TV's, washers. He can go to work like a man."

With his mother's blessing and understanding, Scott moved out of the house and in with three roommates who also attended City College, where all New Yorkers can get a free education. Scott played very hard, studied very little and let his left of center politics guide his social life. His engineering professors remarked that he was underutilizing his G.o.d-given talents and that he spent more time protesting and objecting that paying attention. It was an unpredictable piece of luck that Scott Mason would never have to make a living as an engineer. He would be able to remain the itinerate tinkerer; designing and building the most inane creations that regularly had little purpose beyond satisfying technical creativity.

"Can we go with it?" Scott asked City Editor Douglas McQuire and John Higgins, the City Times' staff attorney whose job it was to answer just such questions. McQuire and Mason had been asked to join Higgins and publisher Anne Manchester to review the paper's position on running Mason's story. Scott was being lawyered, the relatively impersonal cross examination by a so-called friendly in-house attorney.

Scott's boyish enthusiasm for his work, and his youthful appear- ance allowed some to underestimate his ability. He looked much younger than his years, measuring a slender 6 foot tall and shy of 160 pounds. His longish thin sandy hair and a timeless all about Beach Boy face made him a good catch on his better days- he was back in circulation at almost 40. The round wire rimmed gla.s.ses he donned for an extreme case of myopia were a visible stylized reminder of his early rebel days, conveying a sophisti- cated air of radicalism. Basically clean cut, he preferred shav- ing every two or three, or occasionally four days. He blamed his poor shaving habits on his transparent and sensitive skin 'just like d.i.c.k Nixon's'.

The four sat in Higgins' comfortable dark paneled office. With 2 walls full of books and generous seating, the ample office resem- bled an elegant and subdued law library. Higgins chaired the meeting from behind his leather trimmed desk. Scott brought a tall stack of files and put them on the gla.s.s topped coffee table.

"We need to go over every bit, from the beginning. OK?" Higgins made it sound more like and order than responsible journalistic double checking. Higgins didn't interfere in the news end of the business; he kept his opinions to himself. But it was his respon- sibility to insure that the City Times' was kept out of the re- ceiving end of any litigation. That meant that as long as a story was properly researched, sourced, and confirmed, the con- tents were immaterial to him. That was the Publisher's choice, not his.

Mason had come to trust Higgins in his role as aggravating media- tor between news and business. Scott might not like what he had to say, but he respected his opinion and didn't argue too much.

Higgins was never purposefully adversarial. He merely wanted to know that both the writers and the newspaper had all their ducks in a row. Just in case. Libel suits can be such a pain, and expensive.

"Why don't you tell me, again, about how you found out about the McMillan scams." Higgins turned on a small micro-ca.s.sette re- corder. "I hope you don't mind," he said as he tested it. "Keeps better notes than I do," he offhandedly said. n.o.body objected.

There would have been no point in objecting even if anyone cared.

It was an unspoken truism that Higgins and other good attorneys taped many of their unofficial depositions to protect themselves in case anything went terribly wrong. With a newspaper as your sole client, the First Amendment was always at stake.

"OK," Scott began. His reporter's notebook sat atop files full of computer printouts. "A few days ago, on September 4, that's a Friday, I got an anonymous call. The guy said, 'You want some dirt on McMillan and First State S&L?' I said sure, what do you have and who is this?"

"So then you knew who Francis McMillan was?" Higgins looked up surprised.

"Of course," Mason said. "He's the squeaky clean bank President from White Plains. Says he knows how to clean up the S&L mess, gets lots of air time. Probably making a play for Was.h.i.+ngton.

Big time political ambitions. Pretty well connected at Treasury.

I guess they listen to him."

"In a nutsh.e.l.l." Higgins agreed. "And...then?"

Mason sped through a couple of pages of scribbled notes from his pad. "My notes start here. 'Who I am don't matter but what I gotta say does. You interested'. Heavy Brooklyn accent, docks, Italian, who knows. I said something like, 'I'm listening' and he says that McMillan is the dirtiest of them all. He's been socking more money away than the rest and he's been doing it real smart. So I go, 'so?' and he says he can prove it and I say 'how' and he says 'read your morning mail'." Mason stopped abruptly.

"That's it?" Higgins asked.

"He hung up. So I forgot about it till the next morning."

"And that's when you got these?" Higgins said pointing at the stack of computer printouts in front of Mason. "How were they delivered?"

"By messenger. No receipt, nothing. Just my name and the pa- per's." Mason showed Higgins the envelop in which the files came.

"Then you read them?"

"Well not all of them, but enough." Scott glanced at his editor.

"That's when I let Doug know what I had."

"And what did he say?" Higgins was keeping furious notes to back up the tape recording.

"'Holy s.h.i.+t', as I remember." Everyone laughed. Ice breakers, good for the soul, thought Mason. People are too uptight.

Higgins indicated that Scott should continue.

"Then he said 'we gotta go slow on this one,' then he whistled and Holy Shat some more." Once the giggles died down, Mason got serious. "I borrowed a bean counter from the bas.e.m.e.nt, told him I'd put his name in the paper if anything came of it, and I picked his brain. Ran through the numbers on the printouts, and ran through them again. I really worked that poor guy, but that's the price of fame. By the next morning we knew that there were two sets of books on First State." Mason turned a couple pages in his files.

"It appears," Scott said remembering that he was selling the importance of the story to legal and the publisher, "that a substantial portion of the bank's a.s.sets are located in numbered bank accounts all over the world." Scott said with finality.

Higgins interrupted here. "So what's wrong with that?" he chal- lenged.

"They've effectively stolen a sandbagged and inflated reserve ac- count with over $750 Million it. Almost 10% of stated a.s.sets.

It appears from these papers," Scott waved his hand over them, "that the total of the reserve accounts will be taken, as a loss, in their next SEC reporting." Mason stopped and looked at Hig- gins as though Higgins would understand everything.

Higgins snorted as he made more notes.

"That next morning," Mason politely ignored Higgins, "I got a call again, from what sounded like the same guy."

"Why do you say that? How did you know?" Higgins inquired.

Mason sighed. "Cause he said, 'it's me remember?' and spoke like Archie Bunker. Good enough for you?" Mason grinned wide. Mason had the accent down to a tee. Higgins gave in to another round of snickers.

"He said, 'you like, eh?'" Mason spoke with an exaggerated New York accent and used the appropriate Italian hand gesture for 'eh!'. "I said, 'I like, but so what?' I still wasn't sure what he wanted. He said, 'they never took a loss, yet. Look for Friday. This Friday. They're gonna lose a bunch.' I said, 'how much' and he said, 'youse already know.'" Mason's imitation of a Brooklyn accent was good enough for a laugh.

"He then said, 'enjoy the next installment', and that was the last time I spoke to him. At any rate, the next package con- tained a history of financial transactions, primarily overseas; Luxembourg, Lietchenstein, Switzerland, Austria, Hong Kong, Sidney, Macao, Caymans and such. They show a history of bad loans and write downs on First State revenues.