Wild Bill Donovan, his gray-flannel-covered elbows on the table, said, “Longy says you’re the guy that can buy and sell foreign currency and then make it disappear and appear again.” Julian chewed an olive from his martini. Donovan was in his late fifties, a burly corporate lawyer with distinguished white hair and jowls. “Longy forgot to mention you’re a mute.” Not that Julian didn’t trust Donovan, but during Prohibition he’d been a US attorney chasing bootleggers. He’d come out of World War I with the Medal of Honor, and last year Hollywood had made him extra famous with a movie about his unit, The Fighting 69th, with James Cagney as a coward punk who becomes a hero, Pat O’Brien as the wise chaplain, and George Brent as Wild Bill himself. Abe knew Donovan from the city and, since it couldn’t hurt having friends in high places, had shoveled some cash at him when Wild Bill had run for governor of New York. Donovan had lost the election, but lately he’d been working for FDR, speaking on the radio about the necessity of the country’s readying itself for war.
