William F. Buckley Jr.

by Brothers No More

  Henry paused. His exercise had deeply wearied him. He looked up from his notes, a heavy sadness etched into his face. He looked into Danny’s eyes.

  Danny’s fingers clutched at the cushion he sat on. His mouth moved, but at first nothing was heard. Finally his jaw tightened. He spit out the words.

  “You’re a fucking coward, asshole.”

  “I figured you’d bring that up.”

  “Bring that up! It will hit the hot wires, what you did at Arno. You bet, asshole. ‘Time Correspondent Henry Chafee/Revealed Coward Under Fire 1944.’ Cover story there? Asshole?”

  “Danny. If you want to think about what to do … you can. As long as you want. They won’t come up to take you.”

  “Think about what? Think about what, Henry?”

  Henry paused. And then, “Do you really want to go back to New York?”

  Suddenly, Danny understood. He looked slowly about the suite. His eyes rested on the little balcony.

  “We’re what, eight floors up?”

  “Yes. Counting the lobby floor.”

  “That would do it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Danny looked down at his cummerbund, hooked his thumb into it, and snapped it. A smile broke out.

  “I could use a drink.”

  Henry walked over to the chest, opened the top drawer, removed a bottle of white wine and a second bottle, champagne. Both had been decorked. He brought out a glass, put it down on the night table by the couch where Danny sat, the two bottles alongside.

  “Which do you want?”

  Danny pointed with one finger to the champagne.

  Henry filled the glass and went back to his chair. Danny reached over for it, raised it to his lips, held it, then, slowly, brought it down again, untouched. He put it back on the table. And spoke now with a strange calm.

  “I do see your point, Henry. And I’m, well, sorry about the stuff just now, what I said.… Wasn’t your fault, the Poughkeepsie thing. Though this”—he raised his voice slightly, circling his pointed finger vaguely, to suggest policemen surrounding the hotel—“this has to be your fucking fault; can’t imagine how, after fifteen years, the frog police ran into Pauline, et cetera, et cetera, without you. God knows what put you on the trail.

  “I think I got to tell you something, Henry. When I plugged that little pimp-gigolo-pornographer—whatever you want to call him—I didn’t have one, not un seule moment of remorse. Hell, quite the opposite. I remember saying to myself when I held the pistol over his snotty nose: I’ve shot a lot nicer guys than”—the tone changed suddenly, back in the direction it had been—“I shot, Henry. You weren’t so good at shooting, were you, Henry? You were too busy in the hospital, being taken care of like a war hero. The only person you ever shot was—”

  Danny began a ribald laugh. “Yourself! Henry Chafee! Decorated for it! Nice touch that, wasn’t it, Henry? You didn’t like it much when I did that. But after all, it was your old buddy who set you up! Just being a little bit mischievous—so he gets you a medal for shooting yourself after you refuse to shoot the Nazis. Refuse to act like a man. Like a—”

  Danny was distracted. He opened and closed his eyes. He was trying to focus them. He slowed the tempo of his talk.

  “No,” he said deliberatively, “I didn’t give a shit about plugging that little bastard. But maybe I am just … just what, Henry? Ah, I am a sinner! Your sister—dear Caroline. I do love her, in a way. But I have a feeling every time she pours me a gin and tonic she is praying the tonic will exorcise me.

  “Yeah.” Danny looked over at the champagne. “So living with Caroline hasn’t been a bunch of roses, Henry. I know how you feel about her, and I don’t give a shit; the hell with how you feel about her.… The hell with how I feel about her. You haven’t been married to her for thirteen years. You haven’t been told, no fuckee, Danny, Good Fridee, Danny.” He laughed, and reached in the direction of the champagne, but stopped.

  “No. No no no no, Henry. Caroline is a Wonderful Woman. Et cetera, et cetera. And I’m not suggesting I’ve been a chaste—wonderful word, chaste—Dixie-cup-dick husband. I bet you’re a chaste husband to that Jew-girl Barbara, right, Henry? Did she check to see you were circumcised? Assuming she found anything down there? You got anything down there, Henry? Or did you leave it in Italy? In the foxhole?”

  Henry Chafee’s expression didn’t change—the muscles in his face tightened. He waited.

  “You’re right, Henry. Some people pluck ripe apples if they’re handy, some people don’t. Not if there’s a No Trespassing sign there. You don’t. You wouldn’t. You will die a respectable death and the pious will pray over you, you fucking bore. Me? Well, Henry, I was born to take opportunities!”

  Now Danny reached for the glass, and brought it to his lips.

  “I mean—so it didn’t work out. The Martino raid. But it was a honey, wasn’t it? I mean, sometimes things don’t work out—that’s true in every situation. It didn’t work out for Alexander Hamilton, after all. Didn’t work for Romeo—that’s ‘Romeo’ as in ‘Juliet’—come to think of it.

  “You know, Henry, Romeo and I have a lot in common. I could give you any number of witnesses who would confirm that. Maybe my foreplay isn’t so—poetic. On the other hand, maybe Juliet would have preferred it! Never occurred to me, that. But on the other point, do you think if I came up with, oh, three, four witnesses, to how, well, super chivalrous I am with the ladies, the frogs downstairs would let me slip out?”

  He refilled his glass, drank it all. “Ah.” He poured until his glass was full again, and spilled over. “I don’t care. But I do see your point.… You know something, Henry? I’ve never really liked heights. You notice, I never took up skiing? Never climbed mountains, all that shit? You probably never noticed—after all, on Wednesday you didn’t fly first class. But if you had, and you’d been looking at me, you might have noticed.

  “Ah yes, you’re saying weightily, since weightily is how you usually say things, dear Henry. I mean, what you’re thinking weightily is: So Danny slips out of the Negresco Hotel—where does he go? Good point, Henry, very good point. There is that problem, the police in the good old U.S.A. They’re all excited. About?

  “That little creep from the University of Chicago. I bet that’s what really did it to you, Henry. Not Paul Hébert, it was”—Danny’s voice was mock funeral-parlor solemn—”the graduate student.

  “But so—what was I supposed to do? Get in line in an academic procession? ‘And summa cum laude, ladies and gentlemen, for Dr. Whatever his name—Max. Dr. Max Huxley—author of the prizewinning dissertation on The Great O’Hara Raid on Hyde Park. How Grandson Tried to Screw President Grandpa.’

  “After the ceremony we all march off to the penitentiary, where they leave me off.

  “I usually close my eyes on takeoff, in airplanes. No reason for you to know that. I’ve said that. But the idea of … jumping out the window … I mean, that’s creepy. Creepy stuff, Henry. I’m just plain scared of things like that. I can understand now about the Arno business—you were just plain scared of getting up and running into—bullets. That’s the last time you were scared, you bet. You certainly weren’t scared of running tackles or heavyweight boxers. No—not heavyweight: You were middleweight, I remember. But you weren’t scared anymore. Just that one time.” Danny’s voice trailed off.

  “Well, I’m scared of jumping out of a window. Though I do see your point, Henry, never mind how much vino I’ve got in me, I see your point loud and clear. I wish I had my trusty old pistol—”

  Henry reached in his pocket. “You have your old pistol and you know you do. I looked in your bag. It’s where you always kept it.” Henry stood and opened the drawer under which he had kept the champagne. He lifted the familiar .22 Colt from it.

  “God, Henry, you do think of everything.” Danny stretched out his hands as if to catch a football. Henry obliged, lobbing the pistol across the room.

  Danny caught it and brought it down
on his waist. Almost absentmindedly he opened the magazine, sliding three bullets out, then reinserting them.

  “Yes, I wouldn’t confuse this little beauty with any other. Got it for Christmas when I was fourteen, last civilized thing my father ever did, that I can remember. I wonder if I inherited a lot of, you know—of this and that from him? But you never knew him, Henry, no. Before your time.

  “Well, you can’t put these things off forever, can you, and right now I’m wondering whether to have a little more of that—no. It’s all gone. I’ll have to dip into the wine. But please don’t apologize, Henry. White wine is okay, especially,” Danny examined the bottle, “a nice Pouilly-Fumé. So the question becomes, Shall I have a glass of wine? And you know something, Henry, when these great cosmic questions hit me—that one in particular, Shall I have another glass?—my tendency is to answer, ‘Yes, Danny!—Yes, Danny Badboy, one of my dear … friends called me once. I’ll have another drink.’ ”

  He leaned over, recovered his glass, and drew it to his lips.

  “There are right ways and wrong ways to do this thing, you know, Henry. Nothing worse than to do it wrong, I mean, nothing worse than fucking up on this kind of thing. I’d rather go to Sing Sing or wherever it is your friends in New York would stick me. Would stick me if I showed up. But you know something, I don’t want you, sort of, right here, you understand, Henry? I mean—”

  Henry stood up. “Danny, you tell me when, I’ll go.”

  “Yeah, Henry, there’s just one thing now, but it’s important, and I know what your reaction is likely to be. But though I’m not in a position to lay down any conditions”—Danny tilted the glass, drank it down, and filled it again—“let me just put it this way: I got a half-million bucks in a Swiss account.” He reached into his pocket, brought out his leather appointment book. “The details are there … last page. The number, which is all you need, just that number, and my I.D.” He brought it out from his wallet, laid it on the coffee table.

  “Now, dear Henry, you’re going to say it’s not my money, it’s Giuseppe’s. And therefore Hyde Park’s. But I’m telling you, most of it came—no, all of it came, as a matter of fact—from my salary, stuff discreetly slipped away. Rainy-day stuff.”

  Henry was tempted to ask if it included returns from the sale of his mother’s necklace. But no, no interruptions; nothing contentious.

  “It belongs to Caroline and the children. Will you get it to them?”

  Henry reasoned to himself: Say yes. Whatever you end up doing, say yes now—give Danny that peace of mind.

  He nodded his head. “Yes.”

  “No fingers crossed?”

  “No fingers crossed.”

  “Well”—Danny drank down the last of his glass—“I hate to leave an unfinished bottle, but these are special circumstances, wouldn’t you say, Henry? Yes, time to go. And time for you to go—”

  Henry walked toward the door to the corridor. He thought it best to say nothing. Because whatever he said might prove to be the wrong thing to say. He turned his head as he reached the door. He could see only the back of Danny’s head, leaning over the end of the couch, the hair graying. His right hand was clenched around the empty glass. Henry needed to close his eyes, to reaffirm his purpose, to invoke the broad canvas and dwarf the scene in the room he was leaving.

  He closed the door behind him, turned left for the elevator, thought better of it and engaged the staircase, down eight flights.

  He arrived at the lobby. The concierge was jabbering in rapid, excited French to M. Gilbert. Someone from the seventh floor had reported hearing a shot. Gilbert motioned with his finger and four plainclothesmen materialized from the corners of the lobby. Another signal, and two elevators were summoned, while a third agent began the precautionary walk up the staircase.

  Gilbert paused to address Henry. “C’est fini, il paraît.”

  Henry nodded, and reminded M. Gilbert, one more time: No word to America for forty-eight hours.

  Henry would be with Caroline by then.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am most grateful to David Butler and Charles Benoit for helping me to research the chapters that deal with Vietnam. I leaned heavily on Dorothy McCartney of National Review for research. Tony Savage typed the manuscript, Frances Bronson coordinated the entire operation. Chaucy Bennetts did her invaluable job as copy editor, and Joe Isola as proofreader.

  For general editing I am grateful to Sam Vaughan and to Bruce Tracy of Doubleday. I am indebted to Steve Rubin of Doubleday for his encouragement, and to Lynn Nesbit, my most helpful agent.

  My thanks also to those who read my manuscript and gave me helpful suggestions, including my son Christopher, my wife Pat, my sisters Priscilla Buckley and Patricia Bozell, Charles Wallen, Jr., Thomas Wendel, and Richard Clurman.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  William F. Buckley, Jr., is the author of ten novels that dealt with the cold war. He is the founder of National Review magazine, which he serves now as Editor-at-large. He writes a syndicated column and serves as host on the weekly discussion program Firing Line. He has written many nonfiction books, has won the American Book Award (for Stained Glass), and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.