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“I don’t believe we have. But didn’t I see you in Washington on Monday?”
“Across the dining room,” the mayor said, waving him into a chair. “I need a cup of coffee. Do you have the time?”
“Thank you very much,” Payne said. “I’d love one.”
“Dianna, please?”
“Right away, Mr. Mayor.”
“Would it be impolitic for me to ask what you and the senator seemed to be talking so intently about?”
“My firm represents Nesfoods,” Payne said. “The senator chairs the Agricultural Subcommittee. We were talking about tomatoes, United States and Mexican.”
Nesfoods gave me one hundred thousand for my campaign. I wonder how much they gave to the senator?
“The tomato growers here are concerned about cheap Mexican tomatoes?”
“That issue has been resolved by the Free Trade Agreement. What I hoped to do-what I think I did-was convince the senator that it’s in everybody’s best interests for the Department of Agriculture to station inspectors in Nesfoods processing plants in Mexico, so that we can process the tomatoes there, and ship the pulp in tank trucks to the Nesfoods plants here and in California. That will both save Nesfoods a good deal of money and actually increase the quality of the finished product. Apparently, the riper the tomato when processed, the better the pulp.”
“And what was the problem?”
“As hard as it is to believe, there are those who are unhappy with the Free Trade Agreement,” Payne said, dryly, “and object to stationing Agriculture Department inspectors on foreign soil.”
“But after you had your little chat, the senator seemed to see the light?”
“I hope so, Mr. Mayor.”
Dianna Kerr-Gally came into the office with a silver coffee service and poured coffee.
When she had left them alone again, the mayor looked over his coffee cup and said, “I wasn’t aware until this morning that your son was a policeman.”
“I think of it as the firm’s loss is the city’s gain,” Payne said. “Actually, Matt’s my adopted son. His father-a police sergeant-was killed before he was born. I adopted Matt before he could walk.”
“You’d rather he would have joined Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester?” the mayor asked.
“Wouldn’t your father prefer to see you in a pulpit?” Payne responded.
“Whenever I see him, he shakes his head sadly,” the mayor said. “I don’t think he’s given up hope that I will see the error of my ways.”
“Neither have I given up hope,” Payne said. “But in the meantime, I am as proud of Matt as I daresay your father is of you.”
“I like to think public service is an honorable, even noble, calling.”
“So does Matt,” Payne said. “He thinks of the police as a thin blue line, all that separates society from the barbarians.”
“Unfortunately, he’s probably right,” the mayor said.
Payne set his cup down.
“I don’t want to keep you, Mr. Payne,” the mayor said. “But I did want to say hello. Could we have lunch one day?”
“I’d be delighted,” Payne said. “And thank you for the coffee.”
He stood up, shook hands with the mayor, and walked out of the room.
Commissioner Mariani told me that if I didn’t send that young man to Homicide as promised I could expect trouble from the Fraternal Order of Police. He didn’t tell me that the FOP would be represented, pro bono, by Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.
The Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon, Philadelphia’s district attorney, devoutly believed that at least seventy percent of the nurses under fifty in the surgical department of the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania would rush to console Benjamin A. Solomon, M.D., the moment he started to feel sorry for himself because his wife-the-D.A. had become careless about her appearance.
