WILLIAM PHILLIPS
233
FBI men Lloyd Robins and John Hastings arrived and began to in–
terview residents in the vicinity of the accident. Both men looked as
though they easily could be forgotten. Robins was thin and wiry, about
five foot nine, with graying black hair and a mustache trimmed to look
like a toothbrush. His skin was dark and blotchy. Hastings was a little
taller and a little huskier than Robins, with kinky brown hair. He moved
quickly and nervously, and carried himself with an air that was both
modest and self-confident. Both had the lightfootedness of men who
kept themselves physically fit. Robins pumped iron; Hastings played
squash. Robins had three children, two boys and a girl. Hastings felt
marriage meant a loss of freedom.
No one they spoke to in the neighborhood knew anything of value
in solving the case. But Robins and Hastings found their first clue when
they discovered that the truck had been rented, and after calling car
rental companies in Manhattan, they learned that it had been rented by a
Donald Somers. But who was Donald Somers? He had no papers to
identify him. It took a month of tireless pursuit of one clue after an–
other, such as tracing what was left of the clothing of Donald Somers,
which came from expensive stores, and checking his dental work, which
experts said was superb, to find out that Donald Somers was Alfred Gi–
anelli, an Italian Communist who had become an American citizen and
had been associated with the Communist Party here under the name of
Donald Somers. He had started a small publishing house in New York,
World Wide Books, and because of his European origins and contacts,
and because he was at home in several European languages, he published
a number of foreign writers. But there was something strange about Gi–
anelli's politics, as the FBI men learned, in that while he was a seemingly
loyal and committed Communist, he published writers, including some
Russian dissidents, who were critical of the Soviet Union and the Com–
munist Party. He also published some pamphlets put out by anarchist and
terrorist groups. Neither Robins nor Hastings could understand this ap–
parent contradiction. They could grasp someone's being a double agent.
But a double thinker was outside their field. Had their field been wider,
they would have said he was an intellectual, since intellectuals are known
to double and even triple think.
But what was Gianelli doing with a truck and a bomb? Robins and
Hastings began a patient and drawn-out questioning of anyone who
might have known Gianelli. He lived in a brownstone on West Eleventh
Street. His landlady was an elderly widow who could testify to little
more than that he paid his rent on time. Neighbors knew only that Gi–
anelli was a short, stocky man who had a slight stammer and hiccupped
frequently. They all said he was very polite, with a European courtliness,
but impatient. They noticed that he had very few visitors. Occasionally a
