America 1982-Chapter 573 - 122: Sacrifice_3
After the break, Schlaefer was subsequently offered the position of CEO following his tenure as the ambassador to France, chez his in-depth experience and connections. He was hired when the National Bank of France established the French California Bank in the United States, where he moved his work to the West, a region that would never be affiliated with the Kennedy Family. Later, he led the acquisition of a Western bank, eventually becoming the chairman of its board.
Today, most of his investments and business interests are concentrated in California.
Oh, right, Schlaefer’s daughter, Maria Schlaiff, now hosts a news program on Tommy’s VOX TV network. She is currently on maternity leave, and her husband’s name is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Following Schlaefer into the room was Pete Binn, Stephen’s father and Tommy’s closest uncle in California. Tommy embraced Pete Binn warmly, "It’s been a long time, dear Uncle Pete. Did you receive my gift to you and auntie? I assure you, it was the finest Cuban scarf and cigars that Miami has to offer."
Tommy was much more familiar and comfortable with Stephen’s father. Over the years, many of Tommy’s business ventures were in their infancy, and on the surface, it seemed Stephen was the busy one. In reality, it was the old man who had been weaving a network of contacts and seeking investments for him. Sargent Schlaefer was introduced to Tommy by Pete Binn; both men had served in the Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson administrations. One as Assistant Secretary of Health, and the other as the head of the White House Economics Office. They also had worked together to co-found the Special Olympics, forging a deep camaraderie.
Pete Binn patted Tommy on the back and said with a laugh, "How should I answer? The honest truth is that I haven’t had the chance to sample it before my wife, worried about the tobacco’s harm to my health, re-gifted them. The scarf is beautiful, and she adores it, told me to thank you for sure, but she’ll remember the cigars for a while, warning you to be careful." 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
Walking in last was Stephen Binn, who behaved as obediently as a little boy in front of a priest. Only after watching the two older men take their seats did he sit down properly at the conference table. Once Schlaefer sat down, he looked at the Japanese news on the TV with curiosity and asked Tommy, "This is what’s making you laugh? I thought your favorite football team had won."
"No, what made me happy was another piece of news. New York’s top legal shark, Roy Cohen, has finally passed away. The combination of Roy Cohen and Rupert Murdoch gave me chills. Now the symptoms are completely gone," Tommy explained, picking up the remote and muting the TV as he responded to Schlaefer’s inquiry with a smile.
Feigning surprise, Schlaefer said, "That terrorist of the justice department, Roy, has been dead for quite some time, hasn’t he? I remember Stephen telling me that you once said you would find a group of gay men with AIDS to ’play games’ with patient zero."
The Roy Cohen mentioned by Tommy was infamous. At 21, he followed in his father’s footsteps to become a prosecutor, working with Senator McCarthy in the fifties to instill the terror of McCarthyism and the Lavender Scare into America. After McCarthy fell from grace, Cohen returned to New York as a lawyer until his death. Having lost his political life, he abandoned any pretense of attorney decorum and played the role of a maddened legal shark perfectly. In the first few years back in New York, he was unscrupulous in winning cases, directing his investigators to steal evidence, extorting clients, intimidating witnesses, committing fraud, fabricating evidence, altering testimonies, and even bribing judges.
He was even bold enough to drive around New York City, stop the cars of opposing witnesses, and openly threaten them.
His audacity stemmed not only from being a lawyer but also because his father, Albert Cohn, was a judge of the Supreme Court of New York. This father-son duo was a perfect match, making Cohen’s win rate in New York close to one hundred percent. From New York senators and representatives to the five families of the New York mafia, almost all were his clients. Not to mention, he also served as a personal legal advisor to Presidents Nixon and Reagan. This gave him the power to dominate the judicial world of New York, earning him the title ’King of New York.’
Murdoch’s first act in laying out his American business was to make a high-profile, high-salary offer to Cohen to serve as his personal legal advisor in the United States. In return, Cohen helped Murdoch quickly forge a political and business relationship with President Reagan, rapidly expanding Murdoch’s ventures across America.
So, when Tommy mentioned the unnerving duo of Roy Cohen and Rupert Murdoch, he was not joking. The fate of many American newspapers after Murdoch set his sights on them was first for Cohen to find and blow up problems within the newspaper group. Then as the owners were at their wit’s end, Murdoch would appear as the helpful good Samaritan, and together, they would take over the target.
Luckily for them, that guy caught AIDS because of his promiscuity, and even after trying every available drug against HIV, he couldn’t survive.
"Stephen! What exactly did you tell Mr. Schlaefer? When the hell did I say I wanted to find..." Tommy, hearing Schlaefer mention the other man’s death in connection with himself, shot an angry glance at Stephen, then helplessly explained to the older man, "It has nothing to do with me. I can’t demand that control freak Cohen interfere with anyone’s backside. I don’t have the ability, nor the interest. Let’s just say, Cohen was at a terrible place at a terrible time and encountered a few terribly unhealthy gays. It was all God’s arrangement."
