Senator

by Richard Bowker

  "That's right. Are you suggesting that you might support the amendment?"

  "Now you know I can't do that, Jim. We've made our position clear, and it wouldn't look good to flip-flop. However, I think I can swing a couple of votes your way. Dayton, for example, and Larmore. If I could tell them this would get your vote on the farm bill, I believe they'd be happy to oblige."

  It was a good deal: two votes for my bill in return for one vote for his. The two votes might be enough to get it passed. The deal was so good that I had considered trying to pull off something like it myself. It wouldn't have been hard; vote trading like that goes on all the time. But the very fact that Kenton was offering the deal made me reconsider. If the bill was so important to him, perhaps it was important to me that it not pass. Not now, certainly, but down the road, if I were to face him in two years.

  But how could I be worrying about the next election when I was in deep trouble in this one? I could use a victory on my amendment. Besides, I hadn't come close to making a decision about running against Kenton. I had forbidden Harold even to bring up the topic in my presence. I had enough to worry about without planning a run for the presidency.

  Still, I thought, if I had Carl Hutchins on my side, my amendment could make it even without Dayton and Larmore. And I didn't feel like doing Kenton any favors, whether or not he would ever be my opponent in an election. I shook my head. "Sorry, Mr. President. I wish I could oblige."

  Kenton raised an eyebrow. He was still smiling, but his dark eyes became a little harder, his language a little blunter. "Your amendment isn't going to pass without some help, Jim," he pointed out.

  "Oh, I think it has a good shot. Besides, anything can happen at the end of the session."

  "That election of yours is going to be tough. Getting your amendment passed would give you a boost."

  "Not really. I've got the law and order vote. This isn't going to change any minds." I didn't believe that, but I wasn't going to let Kenton know what I believed.

  And then I had an awful thought: What if Kenton knew about the tape, knew about Jackie Scanlon? What if they all knew? It wasn't impossible. If Cavanaugh had the tape of Danny's interview, he would certainly tell Finn, and Finn might tell the President. Perhaps they had all sat around thinking about how to use the knowledge to inflict the most damage on me. If that were true, Kenton would know that he had nothing to worry about from me; Cavanaugh makes the tape public after the session ends, and my career is finished. And the longer they waited, the tougher it would be for the Republicans to field another candidate if I had to withdraw. In the meantime, why not give me my little amendment if in return I could help Kenton with his farm bill?

  Maybe I would end up inside one of those prisons my amendment would help build.

  "Jim," the President said, "I hate to say this, but I've heard that Bobby Finn is coming on strong up there in Massachusetts." He didn't look as though he hated to say it. "My political people were opposed to me offering you any help on your bill," he went on, "because they think we've got such a great shot at taking your seat, and they didn't want me giving you any advantages. But I feel so deeply about the importance of this farm bill that I overruled them. So I'm asking you one more time for your support. What do you say, Jim?"

  "I say that you'd better get some new political people, Mr. President, because Bobby Finn isn't going anywhere. He's been down eight to ten points for weeks, and even this supposed scandal I've had to deal with hasn't helped him much. To have any shot at beating me, he'll have to give the Gettysburg Address at our debate. And frankly he's lucky if he can say his own name without making a grammatical error."

  The President shrugged. "Well," he said, "who knows what can happen when you've got a scandal to deal with?" And what did that mean? I didn't respond; I just gave him a cold stare. The President smiled his just-one-of-the-boys smiles. "Anyway, I get the picture, Jim. I guess I'll just have to win this one without you." He stood up and extended his hand. "Give my regards to your lovely wife, Elizabeth."

  "I certainly will, Mr. President." Obviously he had been briefed before our meeting. Not very well, though: No one called Liz "Elizabeth," even though she hated her nickname. But was bringing her name up some sort of oblique dig about Amanda?

  Kenton can be had, I thought as I left the White House. Mediocre political advisers, bad staff work—and he himself just wasn't very likable. But would I be the one to take him? I had the feeling he was sending me messages all through our chat. Or was I just becoming paranoid?

  Back at the office Mrs. Sullivan reported that there had been four urgent calls from Harold. Was this it? I wondered. Had the bad news finally arrived? I shut the door of my office and called him back.

  "We've got him," Harold said.

  "Who?"

  "Finn. The war record. Just like you said. How'd you do that? We've got him, Jim. We've got him."

  I had never heard Harold so excited. He couldn't have sounded happier if the Supreme Court had thrown out the exclusionary rule. "Take a deep breath, Harold," I said, "and tell me what you found out."

  "Not over the phone. You've got to come back. You've got to talk to this guy."

  "What guy?"

  "Not over the phone. He's no Gary Cooper, but I've done some checking, and I think he'll do. You've got to come back."

  "Look, Harold, I can't possibly get out of here. The place is crazy. I just got in from talking to the President, and the bells are ringing for a vote on the floor, and I'm up to my ears. Can't it wait till the weekend?"

  "Fuck the President, Jim. Fuck the vote. This is important. This is the election."

  "I really can't do it tonight, Harold. Maybe tomorrow—"

  "Tomorrow night then. I'll charter a private plane for you, bring you into Hanscom Field; that'll be closer. Fly back afterward, you won't even lose any sleep. Except you'll be too excited to sleep."

  "This better be good, Harold."

  "It's good, Senator. Trust me."

  I did trust Harold. If he thought we had Finn, we had him—except that, unknown to Harold, Finn might also have me. And where would that leave the two of us?

  * * *

  I talked to the majority leader, who assured me that the crime bill wouldn't come up before the end of the week at the earliest. So there was no reason not to make the trip back to Massachusetts.

  Except that I was scared. Scared of a private plane flying in the darkness and rain and fog, for one thing. Too many members of Congress seem to crash in the damn things. And scared of the decisions I might have to make after I had heard what Harold's prize discovery had to say. It would be good news, apparently, but even the best of news would complicate a situation that was already getting far too complicated.

  The plane managed to land without going up in flames, and I was at Hanscom Field in Bedford, just northwest of Boston. Harold was waiting for me, and we drove off in his Porsche.

  "Where to?" I asked.

  "Waltham," he replied. "Massachusetts Gear Works."

  "Gear Works?" I said, not quite sure I had heard right.

  "Gear Works. Somebody has to make the things."

  "This guy works there?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Second shift or something?"

  "Or something. Remember, he's not the most impressive specimen you've ever seen, but I think he's okay."

  "How did you find him?"

  "Wasn't difficult. He wrote us a letter after Finn was nominated. It got ignored, wouldn't you know, but someone decided to save the thing, and it ended up in a miscellaneous file on Finn's background. I went through the file after you brought up this war record business."

  "And you checked out his story?"

  "Working on it. I'll tell you after you've talked to him."

  We drove along Route 128 in silence; then Harold turned off the highway into Waltham, an industrial city a few miles away from Bedford. Massachusetts Gear Works occupied a dreary brick building along a street filled with dreary brick buildings.
Rows of chrysanthemums blooming along the front walk showed that someone cared, but a couple of boarded-over windows on upper floors showed that nobody cared very much. There were few lights on in the building. "Not a very big second shift," I said.

  "He is the second shift," Harold replied.

  We parked in a visitor's space next to the front door and got out. Harold pounded on the door, and a few moments later a guy in a security guard's uniform was peering at us from inside the building. He unlocked the door and let us in.

  The guard was a big man, but it was an unhealthy bigness; he could have been a hundred pounds overweight. His hair was thin and greasy and combed straight back. His eyes were dark and peered out at you like distant black holes from deep inside the flesh on his face. He was sweating and breathing heavily, apparently from the effort of coming to answer the door. He looked to be in his forties; I wouldn't have bet on him reaching his fifties.

  "Larry Spalding, this is Senator Jim O'Connor," Harold said.

  "I'm honored to meet you, sir." The security guard shook my hand; he had a limp, sweaty grip. His voice was strangely high for such a big man. "Let's go back to the office."

  We followed him past a receptionist's desk and into a small room with a metal desk and imitation wood paneling. A calendar from a plumbing supply house hung on the wall; the desk was bare except for a copy of the Herald, open to the comics. Spalding sat behind the desk on a swivel chair that looked ready to break under his weight. Harold and I sat on metal folding chairs on the other side of the desk. Spalding opened a drawer and produced a flask. "Anyone like a drink?" he asked.

  We both shook our heads. I was not impressed.

  He looked at the flask for a moment, and then put it back in the drawer. "I shouldn't," he said. "Should keep my head clear. I'm kinda nervous. But see, if I don't drink, I think I'll hafta smoke." I suppose we couldn't hide our reactions because he hastened to add, "I know it's obnoxious, but see, this isn't gonna be easy, and I can use all the help I can get."

  He looked at me as if for permission. "Larry," I said, "I want you to do whatever you need to do. And I also want you to understand that I appreciate your talking to us like this. It must take a lot of courage."

  I had no idea at this point if it did or not, but that seemed to be what he needed to hear. Spalding smiled at me in relief. "Thank you, sir." He took a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and lit up. I thought of Marge and her damn secret. Everyone had a secret; only this guy was going to tell me his. He was the picture of unhealthy living, sitting there with the sweat pouring out of his flesh and the smoke pouring out of his lungs, and he realized it. "I guess if the diabetes doesn't get me, then the lung cancer will, right? Or maybe it'll be the booze." He shook his head. "Didn't think I'd end up like this. But who does? It just sort of happens. You guys weren't in Vietnam, right?"

  "That's right," I said. I braced myself for a you-can't-know-what-it-was-like speech, but I didn't get one.

  "Then you're lucky—or smart," he said. "Prob'ly smart. Jeez, it sure screwed me up. I used to think about becoming, like, an engineer or something. Study electronics maybe. But it's all I can do to hold on to a job like this, where you basically don't have to do anything but show up and not get too drunk. People run out of sympathy after fifteen, twenty years, you know? Can't really blame 'em. Especially when there's nothing wrong with you except what you do to yourself. Vietnam didn't make me fat exactly. And I could always go on a diet, right? Some guy lost his leg over there, he ain't gonna grow it back."

  "I talk to a lot of Vietnam veterans' groups," I said. "We could be doing more to help you guys."

  Spalding shrugged. "Ah, that's all right. If it hadna been the war, it probably woulda been something else. Some guys make it, some guys don't. You know?" He lit another cigarette.

  "Bobby Finn," Harold murmured.

  "Right. He was my second lieutenant, okay? God, he was somethin'. He was the only guy I knew really seemed to like it over there. Slogging through the jungle with the heat and the insects, and every second you think you're gonna die. You stop thinking about it for a while—you smoke some dope, or you start talking to someone about back home—and then it hits you like, oh, Jesus, I stopped thinking about dying. Like you made a big mistake, let your guard down or something. But Bobby Finn wasn't like that. He seemed to think it was all some big adventure. Like we should be grateful for the opportunity the government gave us to go marching through a rice paddy ten thousand miles away from home and catch some tropical disease and get our ass shot at.

  "It was the weirdest thing. See, my theory is that he didn't believe he could get hurt. Like he was indestructible or something. And for a while there it looked like he was. He'd lead us into the heaviest fighting and come out without a scratch. 'Men,' he'd say, 'you're just as likely to die if you're cowards, so you might as well be heroes.' Which makes absolutely no sense, right? But some of the guys believed him. And they'd end up in a body bag, a lot of them. He still gets away with that sort of thing today, ask me. He's got this force about him, this determination, and people just go along because he looks like he knows what he's doing. Well, I didn't get it back them, and I don't get it now."

  This struck me as a very accurate analysis of Bobby Finn, but it was clear that we would have to keep Larry Spalding focused. "What was it then," I said, "that—"

  Spalding nodded. "Right. Okay. I'm sorry." He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. "See, his luck didn't hold. We came into this village was supposed to be deserted. Of course, you never believe that, you're always on your guard. But Finn was out front as usual, and he was the guy who got hit when someone opened fire from one of the huts. So a couple of us dragged him out of the way while everyone else returned fire and leveled the hut. It was some kid, figured he had nothing to lose, I suppose, we were going to find him anyway, so why not take one of us out first.

  "He hit Finn in the shoulder. It wasn't serious, but Bobby went wild. Not just because of the pain, see, but because it was like his illusion was shattered. This war really could hurt him. Sid Blomberg and I tried to bandage up the wound, but he was too angry to let us. He went stompin' off, shootin' his gun in the air, and swearing at, you know, the friggin' gooks, that sort of thing, with Sid and me trailing along behind, trying to calm him down while the rest of the guys were still attacking that hut.

  "And that's when we heard a noise from another hut. We tried to get Finn down, you know, let someone else handle it, but he was too angry, he just marched right up to the hut and went inside. Sid and I followed him.

  "It was dark in there, and it took a coupla seconds for our eyes to adjust, and then we saw a little Vietnamese woman squatting in the corner. She was kind of whimpering, you know? Not quite crying, but she couldn't keep quiet either. She was too scared to know what to do, so she just crouched there, lookin' at us.

  " 'C'mon, Lieutenant,' I said. 'Let's get outa here.' But he didn't pay any attention to me. He just took his rifle and aimed it at the woman and blew her away."

  Spalding fell silent. The little office was hot, and the air was filled with smoke. It was becoming difficult to breathe. Spalding had started to cry, his tears mingling with his sweat so that his face glistened with moisture; it looked as if it were melting. Harold passed him a handkerchief, and he wiped himself off. "Take your time, Larry," I said. "I know this must be very difficult for you."

  "Just blew her away," he repeated. "Squattin' there one second, the next second she was just, like, a heap. A bloody heap. Sid and I looked at each other like I can't believe this. And then we looked at Finn, and he was just staring at the woman, with his rifle up, like he was ready to shoot again if she moved. But she wasn't gonna move. And then he seemed to come out of it, and he looked at us, and I guess he must've seen how, you know, horrified we were, because he brought the rifle down right away and he said, 'I thought she had a gun. I saw metal. It was dark in here, and I thought I saw metal.'

  "But he didn't see any metal, Senator, he
didn't see any gun. He was mad 'cause they hurt him, so he wanted to hurt them back. That was all. He thought he was indestructible, but no one's indestructible. Not even Bobby Finn."

  Spalding mopped his face again and lit another cigarette. "Tell the senator what happened then, Larry," Harold prompted gently.

  "Nothin', really. Everyone else came running, and they wanted to know what was goin' on, and Finn just kept repeating about the gun. No one believed him, but what are you gonna do? It was dark in there. He was the officer, and he was so damn sure of himself. That sort of thing happened all the time, I suppose. But that doesn't make it right."

  "So no one made a report or filed charges or whatever?" I asked.

  Spalding shook his head. "We just bandaged him up and left the village. Guys asked me and Sid about it, and we told 'em what we saw, but that was it. We all went back to fighting the stupid war and thinking about dying. Finn got his ribbons and his Purple Heart and then he goes into politics and he's a big war hero and he becomes governor. And here I am. I don't think I've been right since that day. It just sort of took somethin' out of me, seeing him kill that woman like that. I understand about war, and I realize you've gotta have soldiers, and sometimes things get out of hand, but what he did wasn't right. And it isn't right for him to be a senator either."

  "It's been a long time since this happened, Larry," I said. "Why did you finally want to talk about it now?"

  "Because I've been scared," Spalding said softly. "I don't wanna get mixed up in anything. Finn's a powerful guy. I see how things happen. You make charges, get your face on TV, all of a sudden people are rootin' around in your life, tryin' to prove you're crazy or something. All I want is to lay low, stay out of trouble. I got enough trouble just gettin' out of bed every day. But you're a good guy, Senator, and he shouldn't take your job away from you."

  "Well, this is very brave of you, Larry, and I certainly appreciate the sacrifice you're making."