Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  INTERVIEWER: Then the volume after The Coming of Winter will be concerned with your Presidency?

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: Yes. The Servant of the Nation. A pretentious title, but it expresses the ideal of the Presidency. All Presidents fall short to one degree or another. Of recent Presidents, I would say I fell farther short than Kennedy, not as far as Johnson.

  INTERVIEWER: Yes. Uh, which leaves one more volume?

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: Two.

  INTERVIEWER: Two? I’m sorry, I understood there were to be seven volumes in all. The Temporary Peace is the fourth to be published, then The Coming of Winter and The Servant of the Nation. Doesn’t that leave one more?

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: It did. Toward Tomorrow, a sort of book-length farewell address. Watch out for this and that. My opinions about the future of this country, if any. But now there’s another volume to go ahead of that one, after The Servant of the Nation. It’s to be called The Final Glory.

  INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry, I should have been briefed, I hadn’t heard of that title.

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: No one has. This is the first I’ve mentioned it to anybody.

  INTERVIEWER: Ah. And what will, uh—

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: The Final Glory.

  INTERVIEWER: Yes, thank you. What will The Final Glory be about?

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: Let’s wait and see, shall we? No use spoiling the suspense.

  INTERVIEWER: Yes, uh—Well, then, let’s return to The Temporary Peace, shall we? Apart from the lessons for today, I imagine those were exciting years to be in the United States Senate.

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: Not particularly. We kept our heads down, most of the time. Joe McCarthy kept showing us two-headed calves and other marvels. It takes an Irish Catholic to think up a carnival where no one has a good time.

  INTERVIEWER: Um.

  (The interview continued, circling the same topics for another eighty-five minutes, and concluded: )

  INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you, Mr. President.

  PRESIDENT LOCKRIDGE: You’re entirely welcome, George.

  iv

  “GOOD GOD,” GEORGE SAID. He was sitting in a brown Naugahyde chair in the reception room. One of the staff men had handed him a paper cup containing tepid Jack Daniels half-and-half with tepid water, and he had taken a quick deep swallow that had made his eyes burn. But that wasn’t why he’d said good God, or why he said it again, twice more.

  Bradford was gone, he’d shaken hands all around and left right after the taping, with Evelyn and—who was he? Her new boy friend? Robert Pratt.

  George had other things to think about besides the purpose or role of Robert Pratt. He wasn’t even concerning himself right now with whether or not Marie was approving of the way he sat, what he said, how he behaved.

  George’s co-producer from Coe-Stark came in and sat down in the Naugahyde chair facing him and said, “Well.” He also looked stunned, but not as stunned as George.

  George shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He looked over at Howard, who was sitting in a third Naugahyde chair, his attaché case propped on his lap as he made notes with ballpoint pen on a sheet of yellow paper propped on the attaché case. George said. “Howard?”

  Howard looked up.

  George said, “What happened?” He sounded very lost and helpless.

  “I’ll be damned if I know,” Howard said. He was taking it all very calmly. “I guess he was in a mood, that’s all.”

  “A mood,” said George sadly. He turned to his co-producer. “Can we get twenty-seven minutes out of it?”

  “God knows. I’ll call you when it’s processed, we can take a look at it. You’ll be out on the Island?”

  “More trips to the city,” Marie told the world. “How lovely.” She was sitting by herself on the Naugahyde sofa, deliberately flicking cigarette ashes on the floor.

  George paid her no attention. “Should we scrap the whole thing? Start over with a brand new interview?”

  “Beats me. He’s your grandfather, you want to make the suggestion?”

  “What reason do I give him?”

  “No film in the camera,” Howard suggested. He was still making notes.

  George turned to him. “Howard,” he said. “What’s with the eight books?”

  Howard looked over at him again. “I never heard of it before in my life,” he said. He consulted his notes. “The Final Glory,” he read. “It isn’t a bad title, but shouldn’t it be for the last book?”

  “What the hell is it about, Howard?” George was getting a little shrill, which he himself heard in his voice. He finished the Jack Daniels and held the paper cup over his head for God or somebody to replenish it.

  “That’s hardly the issue,” the co-producer said. “He didn’t want to talk about it, and that’s that. Let’s figure out what to do with what he did want to talk about.”

  Howard said, “Why not show it? The whole ten hours, or however much you have on tape. Exactly as he did it, an American statesman one layer closer to the truth than the great over-informed public has ever seen before. Why not?”

  “Don’t joke, Howard,” George said. “I wouldn’t come over to Random House and make fun of you if it was your desk that got shat on.”

  Marie snapped to her feet. She detested George to use foul language. “I’ll be outside,” she said coldly.

  Nobody paid her any attention at all. As she walked out, Howard was saying, “I’m not joking. What’s the problem? You think Bradford will have second thoughts? He won’t, I’m sure he won’t.”

  The co-producer said, “You’re a relative of his, too, aren’t you?”

  “A nephew, actually. Why?”

  “Maybe I come from a different kind of family.”

  Howard spread his hands, the right one still holding the ballpoint. “Am I being stupid?”

  “Yes,” said George. He was in no mood for his usual effort toward amiability. The cup had been taken from his hand, but had not yet been returned.

  “Let’s see if I’m trainable,” Howard said. “Explain the situation to me.”

  “Shit,” George said, more in despair than anger, and the cup was given back to him. He sipped, and this time it was completely Jack Daniels, and even warmer than before. They must be keeping the damn bottle on the roof.

  George thought he was probably going to get drunk, and the idea filled him, suffused him, with a kind of morose joy. He knew Marie would give him hell for it, he knew his own head would give him hell for it tomorrow, but sometimes a situation simply called for an alcoholic stupor, and this was definitely one of those times.

  Howard was saying, “Shit? Is that television jargon? Does that go down as an explanation in the global village?”

  George shook his head, but while he was trying to decide what to say his co-producer said, “Howard, look. May I call you Howard?”

  “You can call me Little Mary Sunshine, if the sentence also includes an explanation.”

  “Howard,” said the co-producer, “I can see from the global village reference you’re a man above television, so I want to—”

  “I don’t need defensiveness.”

  “You’re not going to get defensiveness.”

  “We’re bickering,” George said. He was feeling the Jack Daniels already. “We’re bickering, and the guy we’re really sore at isn’t even here.”

  “And if he was,” the co-producer said, “we wouldn’t be bickering. Just let me talk for a minute, George.” To Howard he said, “Television transmits images. You may think I’m being a snot right now, talking down to you, all that cat-fight stuff. I’m not. I mean that television transmits images, in every possible sense of that phrase. In the technical sense, it transmits images, that’s obvious. But in another sense, too. In the people sense, in the sense that I’ve got an image of you and you’ve got an image of me. This is a different thing from a book, a book doesn’t transmit an image, it transmits part of a mind, that’s something else again. What television transmits i
s an immediate, specific, all-in-one-package interpretation of an entire human being. An image. That’s what television does, it’s what it knows how to do. Are we in agreement so far?”

  “Neck and neck,” Howard said.

  “All right. Now. Some people already have an image, and when the public sees them again on television they expect the same old image. It makes them comfortable, they feel safe. Change the image, everybody gets upset. You take one of the night-time talk shows, on comes a guest, a comic, he’s known as a very funny man. But tonight he doesn’t tell jokes, tonight he wants to do some serious talking about astrology. Why not, nobody’s one-dimensional. But you know the kind of thing I mean?”

  Howard nodded. “People get embarrassed,” he said.

  “That’s right. The audience gets embarrassed. The guy has fallen out of his image, it’s like his fly was open. The emcee, Johnny Carson, whoever, he cuts this guy short, he brings out the next guest, this is a famous expert on children’s diseases. Everybody sits back, they’re ready for a serious discussion about crippled kids. Only, tonight this guy is in a mood for mother-in-law jokes, all he wants to do is yuk it up. But let me tell you something, this guy could have the funniest mother-in-law routine this side of Henny Youngman, he’s gonna lay an egg. He fell out of his image.”

  “I take it you’re saying Bradford fell out of his image just now.”

  “That’s only the beginning,” the co-producer said. “With Bradford Lockridge, we’ve got a whole new level to deal with. Here we’ve not only got a personal image, we also have our national image. There’s an American image, too, and it’s what we show on the screen, and if we deviate from that we’ve got more than embarrassment, we’ve got a mess on our hands. Remember the Democratic Convention in Chicago in sixty-eight?”

  “Far too well,” Howard said.

  “A lot of people got mad about that. And you know who they got mad at? The kids, you think, for causing the trouble? The stupid politicians, for letting it happen? Not a bit of it. They were mad at television, for putting it on the screen, it was the wrong national image. They didn’t send letters to Senator McCarthy or Mayor Daley, they sent them to the networks and the FCC. They don’t care if the child disease expert tells mother-in-law jokes, but not on television. They don’t care if the comic is ape over astrology, but not on television. They don’t care if the cops beat up college girls, but not on television. And that last one is a lot tougher than the first two.”

  “Go on,” Howard said. His tone and expression were sour.

  “Bradford Lockridge,” the co-producer told him, “is an elder statesman, a part of America. That’s his image. Americans love all elder statesmen, and they especially love all ex-Presidents. Even Johnson, once he was safely out of the White House. Bradford Lockridge was defeated for reelection, but the same people who voted against him nine years ago think of him as a grand old man today. He served his country well, all that bullshit.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Howard said, “he did serve it well.”

  “Sure he did. Who’s arguing? What I’m saying is, the man has a public image, both as an individual and as a representative of the whole goddamn United States. Now, here we have an interview with him where he insults Irish Catholics, where he accuses the entire United States Senate of cowardice and himself of being a blundering chief executive, he plays childish guessing games with the interviewer—”

  “He leaves the image,” Howard finished.

  George, who had just finished his second Jack Daniels, held his paper cup ceilingward again and said, “He kicks the image in the crotch, Howard, is what he does. A little technical term from the global village there for you.”

  Howard said, “But isn’t that up to Bradford? What the hell, the man isn’t running for office any more, what does he care what the public image is? He didn’t ask you to protect him.”

  “Protect him?” The co-producer seemed honestly shocked. “Excuse me for saying this about a relative of yours, but screw Bradford Lockridge, may he be mugged every day of his life. But not on television.”

  George, his cup having again been taken, waved a slightly wavy finger at Howard and said, “That’s the point, Howard, that’s exactly the point.”

  Who do you think the public would get mad at? the co-producer asked. “You think they’d get sore at Lockridge? The hell they would. They’d get mad at television again.”

  “That’s stupid,” Howard said.

  “Did I say it was smart? I said it would happen. Evil George over there would have entrapped his famous grandfather, he would have maliciously distorted the interview for the purposes of sensational journalism. I am pre-quoting The New York Times.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nobody’s asking it to make sense. Look, Howard, Eisenhower was the biggest bigot since Babbitt, and everybody knew it, but nobody said it, did they? Grand old man. Talk about golf, and hope he doesn’t say anything about keeping the coons off the courses.”

  “It’s only been the last couple of years,” George said, as a refilled paper cup was placed in his hand, “that we could tell the truth about Millard Fillmore.”

  “It isn’t the man that matters,” the co-producer insisted, “it’s the image. If he does something counter to the image, you don’t notice it. You most particularly don’t put it on television.”

  “No matter what?”

  “What do you mean, no matter what?”

  Howard shrugged and said, “What if it turned out that for the last four years Brad has been a rape-murderer of little children all over Pennsylvania? Thirty-seven children. They finally catch him red-handed and—”

  “Ooog,” said George, whose brain became more image-conscious when he was drinking.

  “Anyway,” said Howard, “there he is. That doesn’t go on the news?”

  “It goes on the news,” the co-producer agreed. “And right with the report, here come thirty-seven trained psychiatrists—I mean trained in the way a dog is trained to the paper—thirty-seven experts, one for each nymphet, to explain the heavy burden of national service that caused this mighty brain to crack, that Bradford Lockridge is more to be pitied than censured, that the image is still safe because this guy has flipped out and is now a nut. A nut is the same as being dead, the accomplishments before the tragic event aren’t altered by how bad the smell gets afterward. Meantime, the government is locking him away in the middle of Fort Knox, and very soon nobody talks about him any more.”

  “Easier than that with Bradford,” George muttered. “They threw him out.”

  “That’s right,” the co-producer said. “If he was really causing trouble, and wouldn’t get out of the public eye, you just shoot him down. The voters’ instinctive reaction justified. Nine years ago the American voter showed the true strength of democracy by sensing in Bradford Lockridge the mental and emotional weakness that nine years later would tragically result, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “Tragically result in that goddamn interview,” George said. His cup was emptying faster each time, and now when he raised it over his head his arm wobbled back and forth.

  Howard said, “You can’t use it? You really can’t use it?”

  “We’ve got ninety minutes of tape,” the co-producer said. “We need to find twenty-seven minutes of sanity in it. Television sanity. I know the way you look at it Lockridge was never saner than he was today, but all I am is a poor struggling orphan trying to make a living in the communications biz. I think we can find twenty-seven minutes there.”

  “Fill,” George said, cupping his refilled cup. “I talk about the book. Minutes and minutes.”

  “If necessary,” the co-producer agreed.

  “If you want me to talk to Bradford,” Howard offered, “I will. I could get him to do it again, if you want. I mean do it different.”

  “Thanks,” said the co-producer. “Let me take a look at what we’ve got. If we need help, George can SOS you.”

  “SOS,” George
mumbled. It was occurring to him, a bit too late, that he’d had no lunch.

  “Frankly,” the co-producer was saying, “I don’t understand what made him kick over the traces like that. He already knows everything I’ve just been telling you, he has to. A politician doesn’t make it to national prominence without understanding that.”

  “Maybe he just got bored,” said Howard. “I’ve seen him do it in the books sometimes, too. He always changes it back later on, but that’s because the books are the real record, the permanent statement of his accomplishments. You can’t expect him to take a television interview as seriously.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” said, the co-producer.

  “What the hell does that mean?” George demanded. He stared with one open eye at his partner.

  The co-producer looked at him in surprise. “What?”

  “Kick over the traces,” George said. He was slurring slightly. “What the hell does that mean, exactly? What are the traces? Why kick them over?”

  “George, you’re plastered.”

  “I’m three sheetrocks to the wind. Sounds like horses, all that kick over business. Some goddam agrarian fossil.” He slid over agrarian like an ice skater struggling to retain equilibrium. “I bet you don’t know what traces are any more than I do.”

  Howard said, “I think it would be a good idea if George and I went away now.”

  “Right,” said the co-producer. “George, I’ll phone you in the morning.”

  “Becomes eclectic,” said George. “How do you like that, Howard? We did a special on a rock and roll funeral one time, four-five years ago. Mourning Becomes Eclectic. I thought of that.”

  “It’s lovely,” said Howard.

  “It was never shown,” said the co-producer.

  Howard looked at him. “Wrong image?”

  “You bet your bird.”