Permanent Interests

by James Bruno

  "You can't complain about cash for the campaign. I've got a steady flow coming in. And I found some slick accountants from Miami who are laundering it faster than your mother did your shirts."

  The unsmiling Selmur fixed his gaze on the Secretary.

  "My mother never did shirts."

  "Oh."

  "We need more. Our traditional contributors are all bailing out. They're not even bothering to cover all bases.

  They're shoveling it Jalbert's way by the ton. It's Christmas every day in the other camp."

  Dennison summoned up feelings that he thought were courage and, putting on a stern face, said, "Money alone isn't going to win this thing, Howard."

  "You're

  right."

  Dennison was taken aback by this sudden agreeableness on the part of his White House colleague. "You agree then?"

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  "Why, absolutely. All the cash in the world isn't going to win this for us as long as Jalbert is riding high in the polls."

  "What are the PACs up to?"

  "Ah! Screw the friggin' PACs. They're effective within limits. Mobilizing single-interest groups is their thing."

  Selmur plucked a blossom from the small vase on their table and studied it with a detached interest. As his eyes contemplated the gentle construction of the flower, his mind seemed to move farther away.

  "Well, the state party chairmen and organiza--"

  "Too late. Jalbert's already swept the primaries. The nomination is his. He'll be the darling of the nation when he wows the party convention in New Orleans next month."

  Selmur tore one delicate petal from the flower stem.

  "I guess the President's got to hustle. Get out on the stump and--"

  "Not his style. Corgan doesn't like people. Can't get him to leave Pennsylvania Ave. these days except to go to the golf links or a good fishing hole." He pulled another petal off.

  "I know. Pretty bad situation. What if we got some early endorsements…?"

  Selmur remained transfixed in another dimension as he pulled the remainder of the flower apart. "You see the movie, The Untouchables?"

  "With Robert DeNiro? Yeah." Dennison was confused by this twist in conversation.

  "Remember the scene where Al Capone has all his associates over for dinner? He walks around the table giving a pep talk…"

  "And then bashes in the head of one of them with a baseball bat. What's that got to do with us?"

  Selmur remained silent.

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  Finally, after several uneasy minutes, he spoke. "If we didn't have to contend with pretty boy Jalbert, we'd clinch this election."

  "What are you saying Howard?"

  "I'm saying what I'm saying, that's all."

  "Are you suggesting that we should…"

  "I'm suggesting that you might want to talk to some of your contacts about possibilities."

  Dennison became indignant. "If you're suggesting violence, count me out. I don't condone--"

  "Stuff it, Roy. Who're you trying to kid? There's Mortimer, Wheeler, Wells. Hell, even Horvath. Who else?

  I'm losing track."

  Beet red and breathing heavily, Dennison stammered, "I didn't…agree to any extreme actions being taken against those people. Or anybody! Things got out of control…beyond my means to…"

  "Bullshit. You hobnob with some pretty scary characters there, Roy. What do they say? 'You shake hands with the devil only once.'"

  Dennison again summoned ersatz courage. "We're in this together! As was Horvath. We sink or swim together, Howard. We've had only the President's…and the nation's…best interests at heart--"

  "Shut up! Listen to me and listen good. I haven't said boo or even met any of your…interlocutors. Isn't that what you State Department types call people you talk with?

  Interlocutors. Hmmm. It depersonalizes people who either kill for you or whom you one day kill yourself -- via the instruments of government and all in the name of 'policy', of course. Funny how the military and intelligence communities have fucked up the language, especially during the cold war. 'Collateral damage', 'peace through strength', 'balance of terror.' To use another strangelovean 332 JAMES

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  term, my friend, I got 'plausible denial.' You don't."

  Selmur had that triumphant air of a chess master who had once again checkmated an opponent.

  Dennison came as close to violent rage as he ever had in his silverspoon life. A bestial urge that rarely invests those of gentle upbringing seized him momentarily, an urge which, had it been allowed to run loose, would have had him tearing Selmur's throat out with his fish knife. As this urge dissipated, it was supplanted by one of ignominious defeat. It also was a bestial urge, one of lying prostrate before a predator in order to signal no threat. Dennison, blue-blood, Exeter and Harvard grad, Establishmentarian to the core, felt filthy, shameful, vanquished. As ambition was shed fleetingly, the remnants of conscience reemerged.

  But it was too late.

  He lowered his head. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Do what you have to do."

  "Jalbert to be out of the picture."

  "Enhance the President's chances to the max. That's what we're talking about here." Selmur ordered another vodka.

  "This, all of this, everything we've done so far, can be blown at the flick of a reporter's laptop switch. We're playing with fire. State Department security can't tell me where two renegade FSOs are hiding. And the FBI is dragging its heels on the case. You saw Senator Weems's reaction. The hay we made on the case as a diversion from our other problems is now turning to muck. There are loose cannons out there aimed right at us." Dennison's lips quivered. He began to weep.

  Selmur looked hurriedly around the nearly empty restaurant. Then huffed, "Get hold of yourself. Stop it!"

  Dennison wiped his face with his napkin.

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  "You get our Cuban friends onto that case. They're the best in the business. And discreet. We got the money to hire them. Do it! All we need now is two flat-footed bureaucrats on the lam shitting on our whole plan. Do it!!"

  The great cathedral which loomed over Innes and Colleen dwarfed them. It was as if their monumental problems had been cast into concrete and gothicized, and now would topple over onto them and crush them under the massive weight. They looked up at the soaring structure and were held in awe. On an unusually clear day, the sun, ripe and golden, cast its final, glowing rays through Golden Gate park and caressed the city on the bay in gentle warmth.

  "It's beautiful. And imposing," Said Colleen, craning her neck up at the 265-foot spire.

  "Let's go in," Innes said.

  The large, gilt bronze doors at the entrance depicted a welcoming Renaissance Florentine scene. "The Gates of Paradise," it was called.

  As they entered the church, a cascade of tinkling bells sounded from above. It was as if a guardian angel beckoned them, heralded their arrival.

  They felt tiny under the 92-foot high vaulted ceiling of Grace Cathedral, on Nob Hill.

  "It makes one feel insignificant," Colleen whispered.

  "In the grand scheme of things, we really count for very little."

  "These gothic cathedrals were meant to do that -- as well as to extol the magnificence of God, of course. It took two generations to build this. Imagine devoting one's entire life to such a project."

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  More than sixty stained glass windows lined each apse; the holy figures depicted therein seemed to echo the chants and prayers of saints of long ago. The rose window of faceted glass just above the main portal reflected soft pinkish beams that caressed their faces and hair.

  Colleen wore her hair tied over her neck. Reddish-brown curls played teasingly on her forehead. The rose light gave her a surreal look.

  "You're so beautiful," Innes said. "So beautiful." He touched her cheeks tenderly.
>
  Colleen felt like a teenager again. Goose bumps tingled on her skin. She reflexively lowered her eyes shyly.

  Before they could consummate a kiss, the bass strains of an organ commenced a low, solemn wail. They looked up but couldn't see the organist. They looked at each other and smiled. Hand-in-hand, they walked slowly up the darkened nave. They sensed that all the saints, all the apostles and all of the holy people of Christendom looked down upon them, judging them against centuries of both wise and folly human behavior.

  The lugubrious lamentations of Albinoni's Adagio filled the vast cathedral and echoed from all its surfaces, giving it an even eerier and sadder effect.

  "I want to marry you. I want us to wed in such a setting, invoking the ages of the romantic love of long, long ago,"

  Innes said.

  Tears streamed down Colleen's cheeks. "Oh, Bob. I love you so much." She threw her arms around him and pressed her head tightly against his neck.

  The shuffle of leather sole on stone broke the spell. Still in embrace, Innes and Colleen looked toward the rear of the church. Nothing. "Must be the organist's wife coming to drag him home for dinner," Colleen joked.

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  They continued up the nave, holding hands. At the crossing, they turned right toward the east transept. The organist stopped playing, perhaps to proceed home for dinner. An old woman who lit candles and said prayers for the dead crossed herself and departed. The whole cathedral was theirs now. The atmosphere was one of stolid peace, of refuge from the myriad burdens of daily existence. A reassuring ethereal presence manifested itself. The two lovers felt secure and welcome in this place. Running and hiding and evading threats were momentarily distant from their minds. They basked in the glow of peace from this structure and of love from each other.

  A black cassocked priest shuffled quietly near the confessional at the transept. He looked briefly at Colleen and Innes and smiled. He knelt at a shrine to the Virgin and began to pray. He was dark, tall and broad-shouldered.

  Innes guessed that he was in his late 30s.

  "I don't know what it is exactly," Colleen said. "But, for the first time in weeks, I feel safe. I also feel that we've been on our own too long, Bob. We need to talk to someone we can trust. Maybe we can hide out in a seminary or retreat or something somewhere around here until things blow over. I'm tired of running and having to look over our shoulder all the time."

  "I know," Innes replied.

  "Let's talk to this priest when he's finished praying.

  Shall we?"

  Innes

  shrugged

  agreement.

  The priest made the sign of the cross, kissed his rosary and rose.

  "Father." Colleen approached him.

  The priest turned and faced her. He smiled again. He had Latin dark eyes and wavy black hair.

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  There was the shuffle sound of shoe against stone flooring again behind Colleen and Innes. They turned to see another priest, also olive in complexion and in his 30s, genuflecting before the high altar. He stood and walked in their direction.

  "Father, we would like to talk to you."

  "Yes, certainly," he said. Innes thought the accent was Spanish.

  He signaled with an open palm to follow him. They did so and approached the crossing, where the other priest awaited them. He stood erect, his face expressionless.

  Innes's mind flashed back to his boyhood in upstate New York. He recalled hunting with his best friend, Gary Hams.

  They would spend hours stalking deer. When they found one, the boys separated, each moving ever so quietly through the brush, seeking to flank the animal. Nine times out of ten, however, the deer sensed the danger approaching, perked its ears and dashed lithely into the dark woods. To catch the deer, they learned to think like them by keenly observing the wind against the brush, listening to the warbling of birds, and smelling the ground.

  That "deer-sense," as Gary used to call it, suddenly returned to Innes. He tightened his grip on Colleen's upper arm and halted.

  All his senses became magnified, as if some drug were taking effect on him. The buzz of a fly overhead, the sounds of San Francisco's traffic outside, the odor of burning candles, the clamminess of the concrete-enclosed air each commanded his highest attention. And these priests. Were they not flanking them? Just as the deer of Innes's childhood could sense something alien to the woods in their midst, Innes felt uncertain as to the presence of these cassocked men in this holy place.

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  In this heightened state of alert, Innes's ears picked up behind him the ever so audible sound of stiff metal brushing against fabric. His senses told him that this man didn't smell like a priest. Faint odors of liquor and tobacco wafted through the air from his direction. Everything moved in slow motion now. He was aware of every detail of every physical thing around him. The deer-sense in him commanded him to bolt.

  Innes used his grip on Colleen's arm to shove her down to the floor. In slow-motion, Innes saw Colleen's expression of fear and confusion as she hurtled downward, her eyes imploring, "Why are you doing this to me?"

  Innes turned his head to the rear. Priest Number One pulled a long silvery blade from under his robe. His face was contorted as he lunged at Innes. Priest Number Two produced a revolver with a long barrel and pointed it at Innes. Events moved now in real time.

  Innes bent down and hurled his body against the knife-wielder. His 180-pound frame caused Priest Number One to go flying backwards and down to the hard floor. The blade went flying from his hand. Priest Number Two fired two rounds, one of which tore flesh from the arm of Priest Number One. Innes shoved himself rearwards toward the frame holding the dozens of flickering candles to the dead.

  With each hand gripping the struts connecting the legs, he raised the structure and used all his might to thrust it at the gun-toting priest. The thing knocked the man to the floor, but not without two more shots being fired, this time at the vaulted ceiling. He was covered with candles which ignited his cassock.

  The first priest got up, grabbed his knife and went for Innes like an enraged tiger. Colleen picked up a missal and threw it at him. It hit the attacker in the jaw, knocking him off balance momentarily. Innes took Colleen and pulled 338 JAMES

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  her away. They ran across the transept, stopped for a second at the presbytery and began to run down the nave.

  Two more men coming from the main entranceway caused them to stop in their tracks. They looked back. Priest Number One had thrown holy water onto his partner to put out the flames. They felt trapped. Colleen jerked Innes toward the high altar. All the splendor of this magnificent temple of worship would not save them.

  "Oh, Lord! If you really exist, save us!!! " Colleen shouted at the top of her lungs.

  The killer-priests were now back on their feet and bearing down on Innes and Colleen. They looked all around them. Coming across the presbytery right at them were their attackers. To their backs was the glittering high altar -- sacrificial altar, it occurred to Innes. They were aware of the two other men at the far end of the cathedral beginning to make their way up the nave.

  "Sacristy!" Innes shouted. "Where's the darn sacristy?

  All cathedrals have them." He turned left, then right. A white curtain concealed something. Was it a statue? Or a door? "Quick!" Innes hissed, and signaled toward the curtain with his head. They ran for it. He yanked the curtain down. There was a door. It opened. They hurled themselves in and slammed the door shut. Inside the small sacristy were all the accoutrements of the sacred Anglican mass: priests robes, vessels of different sorts, altar boy garments, images of saints, tall candle bearers, incense burners, altar bells.

  "Help me, Colleen!" Together they moved a stone statue of St. Francis and propped it against the door. Just then, two bodies slammed against the door. There was the crack of wood, but it held.

  Innes pic
ked up another, smaller statue, this one of St.

  Paul. Like a shot-putter, he stood back, took three steps PERMANENT INTERESTS

  339

  forward and heaved it into the small window. There was a second assault against the simple door. This one caused the hinges to loosen from the wall. Innes and Colleen stuck their heads out the window.

  "It's high. We won't make it," Colleen warned.

  "Do we have a choice?"

  The crack of gunfire filled the cathedral. The siege against the door halted abruptly.

  Innes pulled Colleen to the window ledge. "The tree.

  We've got to get into the tree," he said. He stood on the ledge and squatted.

  "Bob. Noooo!!"

  Innes jumped up and forward out the window. His hands caught a branch and held on tightly. He quickly wrapped his legs around it and shimmied toward the tree's trunk. When he reached the sturdy middle portion of the branch, he carefully stood up and reached for the branch above. With his weight pulling it down, the branch's tip touched the sacristy window.

  "Colleen! Grab it! Come!"

  Colleen made the sign of the cross and grabbed the branch. With her eyes shut tight, she jumped. The branch transported her downward as though she had wings. Softly, she landed on the ground, not believing that she'd made it unhurt.

  Innes scrambled down the trunk, the rough bark scratching him and tearing his clothes. Without looking back, they ran down California Street toward the Embarcadero. Out of breath and panic-stricken, they ran as fast as their legs could carry them. They ran on pure adrenalin. Perhaps in the back of their collective consciousness they saw the sea as haven, or perhaps they fantasized that they would stow away on a ship at one of the wharves. Whatever, they were escaping from the 340 JAMES

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  cathedral, the holy place where their lives, for the second time, had came within a communion wafer's breadth of violent death.

  Morales and Ramirez lay sprawled at the high altar, blood from their lifeless bodies spread over the floor and down the steps of the church's most hallowed spot. One FBI agent looked over them. The other searched frantically with his eyes from the sacristy window, cursing himself for losing Colleen McCoy and Bob Innes.