Page 524 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
somewhat of a father figure to him. He also invested in Coronet Capital, indirectly, through Arthur’s much larger piece. (Norman offered me the opportunity to invest, and I, in my conservatism, declined; I don’t think that that pleased him.) I liked Stuart.
And, finally, there was Fred Warshaw, a totally different story. Fred was one of the most loathsome people with whom I had ever dealt, and it didn’t take much time for me to come to that conclusion. An accoun- tant (a “CPA,” he would hasten to add), Fred ran the financial side of the operations, but, more important, he was the executive who spent the most time with Norman and essentially bossed everybody else around, dancing away from responsibility by acting as though he were a mere messenger (which, it transpires, he probably was). In fact, he was Nor- man’s dark side—and he enjoyed it. Fred never had an original idea, it seemed, and he never took ownership of any real problem. Everything that Fred said came directly from the chief. No, it was never Fred who wanted you to do something. He was perfectly capable of passing on instructions with a tone that suggested that he was hesitating to ask you but was compelled to do so. There were few sentences that came from his mouth that did not start with the words “Norman wants” or “Nor- man says,” each sentence delivered with the pretense that Fred knew that what he was asking might be wrong or an imposition but that that was the way things were. If something did go wrong, Fred’s fingerprints were nowhere near it. But he always managed to know whom to blame.
If Fred, who was about sixty and slight of build, asked you how you were, bending toward you and affecting what, for Fred, passed as sincer- ity, his tone clearly suggested that he was not, like anyone else, merely going through a normal social ritual. In fact, however, Fred clearly didn’t care how you were, and he managed in his over-the-top oiliness to con- vey that message. He apparently thought that he was a convincing human being, but his unctuousness easily conveyed the contrary. Fred would purport to make you his confidante, but it was clear to anyone with the least perception that Fred was merely setting you up so that he could troll for what he felt was damaging information that he could delight in carrying to Norman. On top of this, Fred, who would con-
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