“Which means they’ll be watching and listening to you.”
That meant, be careful with mobile phones. There was nothing secure about them.
“It’s that damn FDR,” he said. “This is all his fault. He was the luckiest bastard in the world.”
“He was crippled.”
“Which didn’t stop him. His greatest successes came after the polio. Before that he was just another spoiled rich kid, an only child, a mama’s boy. All he ever did his whole life was exactly what he wanted. He didn’t know the meaning of the word no.”
She knew a little about Roosevelt. His father died when he was eighteen and his mother had indeed become an overriding influence. As a young man he was attractive, clever, and ambitious, using family money and connections to steadily climb the political ladder. But there was nothing wrong with that, anybody in the same position would have done the same. Still, he lost two elections prior to contracting polio in 1921. After that he went 6–0. Two terms as governor of New York. Four terms as president of the United States.
“I’ve read a lot about dear ol’ FDR,” Danny said. “I never realized, but he wasn’t all that bright and never amounted to much of anything at school. He talked more than he listened, and was not opposed to stretching the truth when it suited him. Teachers did not speak highly of him. He knew little to nothing about either money or economics. Why would he? His family on both sides were rich. Everything was always provided for him. His grandfather, on his mother’s side, sold opium to China. Can you imagine what the press would do with that today?”
She wondered about the rant, which seemed a bit out of character.
“His first two terms as president were a failure,” he said. “Unemployment in 1939, after six years of Roosevelt, was worse than in 1931, before he was ever elected. Stock values had also plummeted to new lows. And the national debt? That’s his greatest gift. It grew more in the 1930s than in the previous 150 years. All he did was print money, spend it, then print more. If it hadn’t been for World War Two he would have been a two-termer, gone and forgotten. War saved this country, not FDR.”
“But he offered people hope,” she said.
“Stephanie, he just plucked at their heartstrings and told them what they wanted to hear. He stood for flag, God, and motherhood. Today he would have been filleted by the press. His flip-flops on the major issues would have been the jokes of late-night TV. Instead he lived in a time when no one even reported he was crippled. The press was more than friendly—they were downright complacent. Look at 1940 when he campaigned on a pledge to stay out of the war. Then, in 1941, as soon as he was sworn in a third time, he implemented Lend-Lease to the Brits. Is that staying out? We supply them equipment, they take that equipment and fight. How long did he think the Germans were going to stand for that? If Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the Germans surely would have made a move on us of their own. But no reporter ever took him to task. No one ever said a word. Roosevelt had a free pass.”
“What’s all this about?” she asked. “Why does it matter about FDR?”
“Because he was a condescending prick, patronizing and humiliating. And those aren’t my words. Those came from Dean Acheson, who worked for him and saw it for himself. Now here we are, decades later, faced with the results of that arrogance.”
She was still puzzled.
“The man preached moral leadership, yet he had too many mistresses to even count. We talk about Kennedy and Clinton and their indiscretions. They were amateurs compared with FDR. He lied to his wife on a daily basis. Any man who can do that will have no problem lying to the country. He chose to go after Andrew Mellon simply because he could. But he lost, big time. He underestimated Mellon. That old man was not stupid.”
“You held back with the ambassador,” she said. “You didn’t tell him what this was all about. But you know, don’t you?”
“That’s another two-faced SOB. China wants what FDR was supposed to find.”
“Care to tell me what that is?”
“We know that Mellon gave something to FDR when they met in 1936. It had to be that page with numbers. The code. That’s what FDR was supposed to figure out. Mellon probably had possession of certain documents that could have been harmful to the United States. They probably concerned Haym Salomon. There was some sort of internal Treasury investigation in 1937. That we know, too. Larks copied its report. He also copied other classified papers.”
“Cotton has the documents in sight,” she said. “You heard him.”
“Which gives me some comfort. I don’t want those falling into the wrong hands.”
The name Haym Salomon finally rang a bell. “There’s a big bronze statue in downtown Chicago, near the river. George Washington, Robert Morris, and Haym Salomon. I’ve seen it.”
He nodded. “It’s been there since ’41. Roosevelt called it this great triumvirate of patriots. It’s one of the few memorials erected to Salomon. He’s a forgotten figure, but appears to have been an important one. Hell, we might owe his heirs $300 billion.”
“But you and I know that could hardly be what this is about?”
“I agree. But in 1936 that debt was still in the many billions and would have been a big deal. The same was true in the 1920s, when Mellon first came across the information. Repayment then could have bankrupted the nation. Not to mention the pure embarrassment of the whole thing. So Mellon, being Mellon, used what he knew to his advantage and managed to stay in power until the Depression made his blackmail irrelevant. That’s when Hoover got rid of him.”
“There has to be more to this than just that.”
“There is.”
They’d been inside Tipton’s house a long time, and she sensed that their conversation should be finished in the car where they would be alone.