“So this is the writer guy you’ve been telling me about, Thomas?”
Honey nodded.
“My boyfriend’s a writer too and he’s read your stuff,” she said. “He might be coming in tonight, and if he does, I’ll introduce you if you’re still here.”
Ram said sure, not knowing whether or not he wanted to meet another writer, or whether he intended to stay for more than one drink. Honey nudged him and directed Ram’s attention to the end of the bar. Two men in dark suits entered and looked the room over. One stayed inside, scanning about while the other stepped outside. “Barry Bailey,” said Honey. “The Governor’s coming.”
A minute later, a different man in a dark suit reopened the door and half a dozen more men walked in, among them, the Governor. He was a slightly built man, medium height, with a sallow complexion and dark eyes with hooded lids. His eyes flitted among those standing alongside the bar, pausing when he recognized one and stopping to say a word or two. He moved purposely toward the backroom where Ram and Thomas Honey sat, his entourage surrounding him and clearing the way. At the back of the smaller room, another porthole door opened and a middle-aged man with a Beatle haircut came forward, meeting the Governor’s entourage just opposite Ram and Honey’s table, whispering briefly in the Governor’s ear, who then followed the man with two of his entourage through the door. Honey watched the exchange, grinned, then pulled out a notepad and made some jottings.
“Who was that guy and where did they go?” asked Ram.
“That was Emile Donner, and where they went is where this bar gets its name. They’re in the backroom. I’m gonna see what I can find out,” said Honey, rising and walking to the bar. He stopped alongside a man with curly blond hair and a mustache talking with a member of the Governor’s entourage. When Honey returned to the table twenty minutes later, the man came with him.
“Ram, this is McGeorge Britten—Mac Britten to his friends. Mac’s a lobbyist, the guy I was telling you about. Mac, this is Ram Le Doir. Ram’s a poet and he’s also my partner on the Golden State stuff.”
Ram extended his hand and said hello.
“Any friend of Honey’s is also a friend of mine,” said the lobbyist smiling.
“And a suspect,” he interjected and laughed. Honey laughed with him.
Ram nodded. “I guess I could say the same thing,” he managed.
“Touché!” said the lobbyist, raising a tequila shot and downing it. “Call me Mac. Ram, is it? What kind of name is Ram?”
Ram sighed. “I always get that. It’s an old family name, but it’s a long story and I won’t bore you.”
Mac shook his head and smiled. “You’re not getting off that easy. Anyway, I like a good story and I’ve got plenty of time.”
…One thing leads to another. In Sagrada, it did for Ram, and never more so when it came to his family and how he had gotten his name.
Ram told the lobbyist that his name was an anagram, that it was derived from the first letters of the three Christian names (Reynolds Aloysius Muir) that preceded the Le Doir surname. Ram told Mac that his family had immigrated to New York and then on to California from Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s. The family prospered in Sagrada, starting with a butcher shop, and then moved into ranching. The offspring of Charles Le Doir, the patriarch of the family, inherited a cattle and ranching estate upon Charles’s death near the end of the 19th century, and divided it between them and started other businesses.
Ram was a fifth generation Le Doir and he’d heard these tales since he was eight years old when his father used to take him along on research trips up the Omochumnes River, where one wing of his family once held a Mexican land grant. His father was writing a book, he said, although it was never published and he never spoke of it again after he and Ram’s mother divorced. But Ram remembered the tales, or pieces of them, and he related the story to the lobbyist and Thomas Honey who both seemed fascinated.
“That’s an amazing story,” said Mac. “Is it true?”
“From what I can tell,” said Ram. “I’ve seen pictures of most of the people I told you about, and my dad used to fill my ears with that stuff when I was a kid.”
“You said that Ram was an old family name. Was there an original Ram Le Doir, an original Reynolds whatever whatever?”
“Yeah, there was. He got shot in the leg at San Juan Hill, at least that’s the story. My dad gave me the original Ram’s shattered leg bone when I was a kid and I tied it on a string from the window above my bed, and when the wind came up, it would whistle through it. I called it the windwhistle bone.”
“Where is it?” asked Honey.
“Damned if I know,” said Ram. “My mom might still have it.”
“You should find out if she does.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s your history,” said Honey. “That bone is a part of your legacy and it belonged to your namesake.”
“That’s my father’s history,” said Ram. “For me, it’s just an old story.”
“Well, it’s a better story than the one you guys are covering,” said the lobbyist.
“Yeah, but that one’s paying us money,” said Honey.
“So be it,” said Mac. “But if I were you, Ram—”
“—Hold it,” said Ram. “We’re getting off track, but thanks. Now it’s your turn, Mac, tell Thomas and I something about lobbying.”
Mac pushed his chair back, leaned back, and laced his hands behind his head.
“What do you want to know?”
“What’s the most valuable asset that you can have as a lobbyist?” asked Honey.
“It’s your information. You’re only as good as your information. And you’d better be accurate with it because you only get one bite at the apple.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ram.
“I mean, it’s like this. You’re representing a client who’s trying to get a bill through a process, the legislative process, and whether it’s an insurance bill or a banking bill or a trial lawyer’s bill, you’d better know it inside and out when you meet with a legislator. If you know the information and can answer their questions and provide them with all the supporting data, then you have credibility and you earn their trust. But if you don’t have your information down, or misrepresent what it is, or they find out it’s about something more than what you tell them it’s about, then you’re finished. That’s the last time they’ll talk to you. Then the word goes out on you. Then you’re history.”
“Okay, so it’s the quality of your information that’s the most important thing?”
“It’s the only thing,” said Mac, throwing back his tequila.
Then he held up his hand in a stop gesture and nodded toward the exterior door, directing Honey and Ram’s attention there. A giant of a man entered the bar, at least six feet five, with close-cropped, blondish-gray hair and a beard, wearing a khaki safari jacket and matching chinos. People cleared to make a space for him. He took a stool at the bar’s far corner. The bartender came over. The man’s voice boomed across the room, “Brandy.”
“Who the fuck is that guy?” asked Honey.
“That,” said Mac, “is the most dangerous man in California politics. His name is Wesley Llewellyn and he scares the shit out of me and almost everyone else around the building. He doesn’t have anything to do with lobbying or the Restoration Gala, but if its clout and muscle you’re covering, then Llewellyn might be someone you want to talk to, if you’re crazy enough to risk getting close to him.”
Before Mac was finished, Ram had risen and was moving toward the end of the bar. He pushed through a knot of New Wavers drinking Harvey Wallbangers until he was standing directly in front of the still standing giant, who noted his approach with a brief appraising glance.
“I’m Ram Le Doir,” Ram said, “and I hear you’re the most dangerous man in California politics.”
The white-haired man paused, his brandy near his lips, and looked at Ram, sizing him up. He drained the snift
er, signaling the bartender for another. He smiled softly, then chuckled. “Sometimes it can be useful to have a notorious reputation,” he said. “And you would be just who that wants to know?”
“Ram Le Doir,” he said. “I’m a writer for Golden State magazine and I’m new here in Sagrada,” said Ram, “at least new in the press corps. I’m supposed to be covering a couple of stories up here.”
“You don’t look like a journalist,” said the big man looking Ram over. “You don’t dress poorly enough and you have too much healthy color.”
Ram laughed. “Like I said, I’m new. I don’t know anything about journalism. I just came along for the ride if you want to know the truth.”
The bearded man took a sip from his refilled snifter and then leaned with his back against the bar, finally taking Ram’s outstretched hand.
“The first thing you should know about reporting politics is that the truth is relative and is not often a marketable or desirable commodity. Tell the truth, Mr. Le Doir, and you’re likely to find yourself in a whole lot of trouble. I apologize for my initial reticence, Wesley Llewellyn, at your service,” he said smiling broadly. Then he snickered and shook his head. “The most dangerous man in California politics, huh? That’s not bad, it makes a good headline. Who said that?”
Ram nodded toward the distant table where Mac and Honey were watching. “The guy with the mustache and curly hair, Mac somebody. You know him?”
“I do,” said Llewellyn, nodding solemnly. “A small toothache of a man, some kind of construction or labor lobbyist, I believe. Not a Gladstone bagman; more an information relay runner, as I recall.”
Ram laughed.
“Did I say something amusing?” asked Llewellyn, standing straight again and looking down. He seemed even bigger closer up and the air around him was charged with a certain, if yet undefined, threat and power.
“Yeah, actually,” said Ram, ignoring the danger of the possible insult. “That’s exactly how that guy Mac characterized himself, as someone who provides information.”
Llewellyn relaxed, his expression softened. Then he laughed. “The most dangerous man in California politics; I wish that it was so but it’s not, maybe just the most notorious.”
“What’s the story all about anyway?” Ram ventured.
“It was probably due to that infamous, some might say scandalous press release I wrote,” said Llewellyn, exhaling three plumes of Pall Mall smoke. “I called Maria Getz a dyke… well, not literally, although she said that I did. Do you know Ms. Getz, Le Doir? The feminist attorney from Los Angeles?”
Ram said that he didn’t, and for the rest of that first evening at Emile’s Backroom, the first of what would come to be hundreds of evenings at Emile’s for Ram, Llewellyn filled Ram in on his background and qualifications for most dangerous man status.
Llewellyn called himself a “Man of the Right.” He was a monarchist who had little use for America and its staged democratic institutions. Like Ram, Llewellyn dropped out of college and left America to live abroad in exile, mostly in Spain. From Spain, he went to Guatemala, to Antigua, a city alongside a lake 4,000 feet high. When he was deported from Guatemala for suspected gun running, Llewellyn returned to the states and moved to D.C. where he took a job as a speechwriter for the congressman from Llewellyn’s home district in Indiana. Then he became more deeply involved in right-wing politics, that and the occasional trip back to Central America, where what he did, Llewellyn didn’t say.
From the conversation, Ram could tell that he was leaving much out: there were gaps in the chronology as Llewellyn related places persons and events. But the details that he did relate were colorful and outsized, and Ram was surprised to find a sense of warmth and tenderness beneath Llewellyn’s intended air of malice, figuring, correctly, as it turned out, that the malice was Llewellyn’s method of armoring himself, intended to neutralize those until he learned whether or not they could be trusted.
After a while, Thomas Honey came down to join Ram and Llewellyn’s conversation. He introduced himself to Llewellyn expecting that Llewellyn knew who he was, telling him he was the conceptual artist who ran for governor against Barry Bailey. Llewellyn nodded and said he remembered. Ram could see that Llewellyn was just being polite. After a half-hour, Honey excused himself and returned to the table with Mac. Llewellyn shook his head and laughed. “You’re working with that guy?” he sighed, shaking his head. “Whose idea was that?”
“His,” Ram said.
“I thought so. I can’t say I’m impressed. Just what is a conceptual artist?”
“Kind of like what it sounds,” said Ram. “A con artist of the art world.”
Llewellyn nodded and laughed.
“Like I said, I’m mostly along for the ride.”
“Okay then, but since you’re here and you’re supposed to write something about, what was it? Lobbying and the Restoration Gala as I recollect, give me a call and I’ll do what I can to steer you in a direction you might find interesting,” said Llewellyn, pulling out a card that identified him as chief consultant to the Senate Constitutional Amendments committee. “How did you get started in the news business anyway?”
When Ram told him the story, Llewellyn nodded, picked up his brandy and raised it to his lips. “You know what Hemingway said about journalism, don’t you?”
Ram said he didn’t.
“Hemingway said that for a writer, journalism can be a good exercise, but you don’t want to do it for too long because it will dull the instrument. You might want to remember that. Do your stories and enjoy your moment in the sun, but remember that you’re just part of a game. You’ll want to watch as to where a story can lead you, especially if it’s one that involves big money, because they can break you just as quickly as they make you. On that cautionary air, I bid you good evening, sir,” he said, rising quickly and shaking Ram’s hand. “Give me a call. Who knows? We might have a little fun while you’re here.”
Llewellyn pushed open the door and disappeared into the foggy night.
When Ram returned to the table, Mac asked what Llewellyn had told him.
“Not much,” said Ram, “but enough.”
“Come on, give us the details,” said Honey, grinning and displaying his gapped and gilded teeth.
“Another time. I’m beat and I’d like to get to the motel and make some notes,” Ram said firmly.
Honey shrugged, drained his glass, and he and Ram said goodnight to Mac after setting a lunch date with him. They drove into the center of Refugio, near the state capitol where their motel was. It was a cheesy little Motel 6-like affair. Honey asked Ram if he wanted to have a nightcap, which Ram declined. “If you change your mind, I’ll be at The Torch Club,” Honey said. “It’s kind of a famous bar—”
“—I know about The Torch Club,” Ram interrupted. “I used to have to fish my dad out of there when I was a kid.”
Honey smiled. “That’s where I’ll be. Come fish me out if you change your mind.”
The next morning, Ram awoke early and slipped a note under Honey’s door, telling him he’d meet him on the capitol’s west steps at 11, where they had an interview lunch scheduled with Mac and another lobbyist Mac was bringing along with him. Then Ram wandered through downtown Sagrada.
Little had changed in the years since Ram had left it. He meandered northwards on Twelfth, toward Alkali Flat, passing the Reno Cafe and the shabby house on G Street that Ram shared with Jaime during the heroin days. The area had cleaned itself up some, but there was still action alongside the Reno. Ram turned west on E, walking past a small park fronted by two massive Eastlake Victorians, then turned north and walked until he reached the levee overlooking the Nacionalé. The water was hard green with white flecks of foam whipped by the wind. The sky above the alluvial plain was a deep marbled gray with black swatches on the western horizon signaling rain was soon coming. He turned south on Seventh Street, making his way to the center of town. When he reached K. Street, the once lively artery of fancy shop
s and department stores and swank restaurants and ornate movie palaces from the thirties were almost deserted, just drunks and drifters now. The smart shops had fled, the restaurants were no longer swank and the theaters were shuttered. There was a stench of urine along the street.
On Tenth, Ram turned right, walking the last block south to the spot across the street from the capitol that his dad had shown him right after they first moved to Sagrada. This was where the grand mansion of Charles Le Doir Sr. once stood.
Ram remembered what his father had told him about Charles Le Doir—the first Le Doir—the patriarch who altered the family name from O’Dwyer to Le Doir before he immigrated to America in 1846. The stories were over a hundred years old, passed on verbally for five generations, and what Ram’s dad had passed on to him was that Charles Le Doir started off as a butcher and then became a rancher with vast holdings, including three large ranches in Sagrada County and a huge 50,000 acre spread in northern Arizona, when he died in 1895. His wife, would join him in the afterworld a month later, leaving the estate to be divided among six remaining sons.
The seventh son (Christian Richard Le Doir) had drowned in the Sagrada River on his seventh birthday, and Charles Le Doir Jr., Ram’s father’s father, was with Chris that day along with two older boys. Ram’s dad had told him that his dad blamed himself for his brother’s death, he should have been watching him more closely than he was. He was busy doing something with the other boys until he was brought back suddenly into the moment by his brother’s cries for help. By then, it was too late. The swift running Sagrada was carrying Christian away.
There was nothing left of the mansion or any of the other grand homes on 10th; they were all bulldozed in the early 1920s when Ram’s father was still a boy. The two square blocks where Sagrada’s elite once resided were now occupied by the State Treasurer’s office and the California State Library. Ram stood on the spot, cataloging the memories, then came back to the moment of what he was supposed to be doing in the present and walked across the street, bounding up the west steps where Thomas Honey and Mac and a bald man in a blue suit and tortoise shell glasses were waiting for him.
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