The Shadow Cabinet

by W. T. Tyler

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wilson said. “Grace Ramsey owns this house.”

  “She inherited it from her husband,” Edelman said. “He died a few years ago.”

  “So what’d her old man do?” Kramer asked Wilson. “Let’s hear it! What’d he do?”

  “He was a lawyer.”

  “He was a fed, like you! CIA, wasn’t he? C’mon, Wilson, don’t fuck with me.”

  “I knew him as a lawyer,” Wilson said. “But maybe your information is better than mine; it makes less sense. That’s the way it usually is.”

  “What’d he say?” Kramer asked Edelman.

  “He said your information is better,” Edelman said dryly.

  “It sure as hell is,” said Chuckie Savant.

  “What’s your angle, Wilson?” Kramer continued. “You and this lawyer Donlon that don’t show his face. He was CIA too, wasn’t he? How come is it you’re giving us all this grief? What is it—you think our pedigrees won’t wash? C’mon, Wilson, what’s this all about? You’re a fed too, aren’t you?”

  “Artie, please,” his wife said.

  “What the hell are you after?” he continued indignantly. “All this nosing around. My wife comes east to buy a house real quiet like and a couple of feds try to hustle her this one. A couple of days later, someone’s frisking my offices in L.A. The immigration dicks send a couple of snoopers around to my dress plant, looking for Mexes, then I get a raid and gotta lay off two lines. Then pretty soon some twerp from IRS is giving my accountant some shit about my ’78 and ’79 returns and says I’m gonna get an audit. So what the hell’s this about, Wilson? Who tied you to my tail? What do you think—that I’m washing someone’s dough to buy this place, that I’m gonna put slots in the front room, a couple of roulette wheels in the basement?”

  “I think you’re a little confused about something,” Wilson said.

  Kramer turned to Edelman. “Tell him!” he demanded.

  Edelman removed his glasses, took out his handkerchief, and wiped his glasses very carefully, looking out across the river. “Mr. Kramer feels he’s been victimized by some very clumsy scrutiny recently, ever since his name was mentioned for a political appointment. Something of a pattern …” He smiled wanly, as if to dissociate himself from his client’s suspicions.

  “What does Grace Ramsey’s house have to do with it?” Wilson asked.

  “Since Grace Ramsey’s husband was at one time a senior deputy at the Agency, as was this lawyer Edward Donlon, he draws a connection—”

  “That’s not the whole story,” Chuckie Savant interrupted. “You got it all wrong.”

  “Shut up,” Artie said. “Let’s hear what Wilson has to say. C’mon, Wilson, lay it on us, the way you did in the old days when you were a fed over at Justice. Maybe you’re still a fed, huh? Working some sting? C’mon, Wilson, we’re not stupid. Who’s pulling your string these days? What’s this shakedown all about?”

  “Please, Artie,” Rita Kramer pleaded quietly. “This isn’t the place.”

  “I think Mrs. Kramer is right,” Edelman said.

  “Who the hell cares what you think! I’m talking to this fed here! C’mon, answer me, pal. Tell me about all this hassle you’ve been dishing out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only problem was the price. That caused the delay, nothing else—”

  “Lemme tell you about the price,” Kramer broke in. “You wanna talk about price? O.K., we’ll talk about price! For all these Gs you took Rita for, it don’t even have no screening room, not even a place to put one! Nothing! It hasn’t got no sauna, no hot tub, nothing but a crummy little bar and a pint-sized pool you couldn’t even get five fat ladies in! You know what that kind of dough will buy in L.A., Wilson? You know what it’ll bring? No, you don’t know. You don’t know nothing, Wilson, because you got shit in your ears, same as Edelman here, who I told not to do nothing without checking with me, same as I told Rita when I sent that telex from Palm Springs telling her to hold up till I got here! You think I can’t smell some kind of shakedown in all this shit you an’ this lawyer been dishing out?”

  Kramer’s composure, like his grammar, had broken apart. Confused or not, the anger was genuine, Wilson thought, looking at a white-faced Rita Kramer. “You received a telex?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I never got it,” she whispered.

  “I said it, didn’t I?” her husband shouted. “Didn’t I say it?” He looked angrily at Wilson. “What do you want, an affidavit! I got a copy. Give him the copy, Chuckie.”

  “It’s in my briefcase.”

  “Well, go get it the fuck outta your briefcase.”

  Chuckie Savant hurried across the terrace and disappeared around the walk. Rita Kramer still knelt near the picnic basket, but her hands were idle, her shoulders slumped. Edelman brooded silently across the river, his arms folded, his back to Artie Kramer.

  Wilson stood up and opened his briefcase. “The house isn’t worth all of this,” he said. “If you don’t want the house, I’ll void the contract.”

  Rita Kramer looked up; Edelman turned in surprise.

  “Don’t shit me, Wilson,” Kramer said suspiciously.

  “No, I’ll void it, the sooner the better—”

  “Sure, listen at him,” Kramer said. “He cuts off my balls and when I get rough he calls it a vasectomy.” He laughed, looking around for an echo of assent, but Chuckie Savant wasn’t there. “Then I get a lawyer and you tell me I can have ’em back, gold-plated. I can wear ’em around my neck. Just smooth, sure, like it never happened.”

  Wilson removed the copies of the contract. Clipped to the top was the certified check for $150,000 he’d been holding for Matthews’ return from Florida the following day. “Like it never happened,” Wilson said.

  “But you got bad memories, right?” Kramer continued. “Real bad memories. How much to take away the pain?”

  “A receipt,” Wilson said, “a receipt and a statement withdrawing any claims.” He gave the documents and check to Edelman, who looked at them, still surprised, and then at Artie Kramer, who was impatiently holding out his hand. “Lemme see ’em.” Rita Kramer stood up and went into the house without turning. Her husband didn’t look up. “Sure,” he agreed finally, handing the contract and check back to Edelman. “Write him out what he wants, but no residuals, O.K.? Nothing left on the books—right, Wilson?”

  “Nothing on the books.”

  “No fingerprints, nothing.”

  Edelman followed Rita Kramer into the house. Chuckie Savant hurried back along the walk, carrying a briefcase, and handed Artie a sheet of telex newsprint, which he studied silently. Then, beckoning for Savant’s briefcase, he took it on his lap, opened it, and searched for something, while Savant hovered by in embarrassment. “What’s this shit?” Kramer asked, taking out two nudist magazines and waving them accusingly at Savant. “What’s this—a tit show, a nooky rag? You oughta be ashamed, a man your age, playing with himself like this. Go get yourself a two-hundred-dollar date, like Frankie.” He put one magazine over the newsprint, like a straightedge, and tore it in two. One section he handed to Savant. “Show him this, show him his affidavit.”

  “It’s all right; I’ll take your word,” Wilson said.

  “What’s wrong, you don’t trust us?” Savant said. “Read it for yourself.”

  Wilson still declined. “You sent it from Palm Springs, you say?” he asked. “When was that?”

  “Listen at him.” Kramer laughed. “Listen at him, would you? What’d I tell you? These guys don’t forget. Last Sunday, yeah. I was in Palm Springs last Sunday, playing golf. You wanna know my handicap? On the eighth green, I get to thinking about Rita, worrying about her, how she might make a mistake. I send for my secretary, who’s waiting for me in the clubhouse, drinking tomato juice on account of his ulcer. It’s a foursome I’m not gonna leave for nothing. I got five grand riding on the next hole. So my secretary hustles out in a golf cart and
I tell him to send this telex to Rita. So he calls L.A. and sends the telex. What else do you wanna know?” He was still smiling. “I got contacts, Wilson. You think I don’t have contacts? I got your number, you and this here lawyer Donlon.”

  “This was last Sunday?” Wilson said.

  “Yeah, Sunday. Give Wilson some bubbly, Chuckie.”

  “Where’d she hide that bottle?” Chuckie Savant finally found the Chablis under a napkin in the wicker basket and refilled Artie Kramer’s glass, but Wilson declined. Edelman returned from the house with a neatly printed legal document which Kramer signed and passed to Wilson, who read it, folded it in his pocket, and stood up.

  “Cool—right, Edelman?” Kramer said, watching Wilson. “Look at him. He turns over a hundred and fifty Gs and don’t bat an eye. You got class, Wilson. They must be playing you big, real big. They must be working you on a million-dollar gig. C’mon, we’re pals now. I’ll show you a little class too. C’mon, whose pants are you guys trying to get into?”

  “Isn’t there something for him to sign?” Chuckie Savant said.

  Kramer turned in annoyance. “How about the Rams game?” he asked. “Aren’t they playing?”

  “It’s on at four,” Franconi said.

  “Yeah, go watch and see. I wanna talk to Wilson. You too, Edelman.”

  “I’ve got an appointment,” Wilson said. “I’ll take a raincheck if you don’t mind. Some other time.”

  “I thought you had balls, Wilson,” Kramer said. “C’mon, relax. Have a little bubbly and let’s talk.…”

  But Wilson left him sitting there, with Chuckie Savant and Franconi standing nearby, no longer knowing what was expected of them.

  Edelman followed at Wilson’s heels. “It’s a little confusing for you, I suppose,” he offered as they emerged from the walk and climbed the steps in front. “Artie Kramer is a self-made man,” he continued as they reached the station wagon. “He’s jealous of what he has and not particularly at ease with those he doesn’t know, particularly government people.” Wilson nodded, watching Rita Kramer leave the front door. “I can’t always explain his logic,” Edelman continued with a sigh of self-absolution. “His contacts with the government have generally been confrontational. By some instinct of self-preservation, he measures others purely in—” he hesitated, as if conscious of violating a client’s confidence—“in adversarial terms.”

  “You mean he’s a paranoid,” Wilson said, as Rita Kramer approached. “Who told him I used to work at Justice?”

  “He did some inquiring, I’m not sure how. Any interpretation he gave was purely his own.…”

  Rita Kramer joined them. “I’m sorry,” Wilson said.

  “I could have handled it,” she said. “If you hadn’t given back the check, I could have talked him out of it—all those goddamn crackpot conspiracy theories of his, all those crummy reasons he dreams up for everything that happens, and him the first to know.” She was still annoyed. “Sometimes I think he ought to be locked up.”

  Surprised, Edelman discreetly moved his eyes away, studying the blue spruces.

  “It seemed the best thing to do.”

  “Maybe it was,” she said. “I’m the one who’s got to listen to him all day long. If what he said today didn’t make any sense, wait till you get him talking about the Kennedy assassination—Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Castro, even the KGB. Or the Bay of Pigs. Or Iran. You want to see a volcano about to erupt, ask him about Iran.” She paused, dismayed by her own voice. “Anyway, he thinks everything in this town is wired up by the CIA, the FBI, or the White House. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it’d be funny, but that’s the way he grew up, a street-wise kid from Brooklyn who’s never really made it out of the tenth grade. He’s still reading comic books, but now he makes them up as he goes along. He thinks being street-wise can explain everything. He’s patriotic, that’s no joke, and maybe that’s what makes it so pathetic. Can you see him on a White House appointment list?” She looked at Wilson, who didn’t answer. “Neither can I. That’s what makes me think something funny’s going on.…”

  Franconi emerged from the terrace and came up the steps toward them. Seeing him, Edelman displayed a lawyer’s prudence and moved discreetly away. They watched him disappear into the house.

  “So now you know why I wanted this thing nailed down before Artie came,” Rita continued as she watched Franconi open the rear door of the Cadillac and rummage about in the back seat. “The worst part is he makes me suspicious sometimes. That’s what hurts.”

  “Suspicious in what way?”

  “Raising all that fuss back there was just the excuse. I picked out the house; it was my idea, not his. For someone like Artie, he decides, no one else. When he doesn’t get his own way, he cheats on you until he does. Now he’s got his own way. What are you looking for?” she called impatiently to Franconi, who remained at the rear door, his movements very deliberate.

  “The doctor bag. Artie feels a migraine coming on.”

  “It’s in the front seat on the floor.”

  “That’s just the way it is,” she said. “I was in analysis once and I thought it might help him. It didn’t.” Franconi had lifted the bag from the front seat and was searching through it. She watched him suspiciously. “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Then get out of here, you creep.”

  They watched Franconi go down the steps and onto the terrace.

  “It must all seem pretty infantile to you, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “Not particularly. I’m sorry it worked out for you this way. I know how much you liked this place. It’s too bad. If he changes his mind, give Matthews a call.”

  “He won’t change his mind. We’ve got a hotel suite downtown now; we can have it as long as we need it.” She turned to look at him. “Do I get to keep the roses or should I send them back?”

  “No, I think Grace Ramsey would want you to keep them.”

  “Grace Ramsey?” She gave a small laugh. “You’re a goddamned liar, honey, but thanks anyway.”

  Betsy was sitting on the rear couch in the study as he came in the door. She was wearing a set of foam rubber earphones as she listened to a new Bach recording brought by Dr. Mercer, also wearing earphones, who sat on the ottoman nearby. He was wearing jogging togs. He was slim and spare, a nonsmoker, nondrinker, and vegetarian, an ascetic gray-haired bachelor who taught community college physics and astronomy. Wilson had seen his ten-speed bicycle propped against the breezeway post. Lanky arm lifted, Mercer gave him a friendly wave. Betsy lifted her head in a delighted smile. Silently, he retrieved the Post and the New York Times from the table and went downstairs to the game room. The Redskins were playing the Cardinals in St. Louis, but he didn’t turn the television set on. He read through the first sections of both papers, sitting in the leather armchair, but finally, out of curiosity, turned on the game to hear the score.

  The Cardinals were up by nine, but the Redskins were driving late in the fourth quarter. He feigned disinterest, fiddling with the tuning knobs. On the third play after he’d adjusted the picture, the Redskins wide receiver caught the Cardinal secondary changing coverage, broke free on a fly pattern, took the deep pass over his left shoulder, and loped into the end zone without breaking stride, not a Cardinal defensive back within five yards.

  He sat there in astonishment. “Did you see that goddamned pass?” he heard himself say.

  There was no one, of course—just himself in the sun-filled game room. Over the stereo behind him hung his sons’ pennants, travel posters, beer signs, and high school letters. Nearby was a map of the world suspended from a narrow wooden box—they’d found it in a secondhand store—racks of long-playing records, and a covered pool table. Upstairs, Bach was playing. Outside, the bright sun lay on the patio, not a California synapse but a magnificent autumn afternoon along the Atlantic seaboard, yet the leaves were still unraked and the sack of pine mulch was still unopened near the garden shed.

  The m
oment had lived for him, miraculous in a way few others had been these recent autumn days. He sat on his heels in front of the television set, awaiting another miracle.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang upstairs, but he ignored it. Betsy was halfway down the stairs, calling to him. “Didn’t you hear the phone?”

  “I heard.”

  “It was Ida Straus calling, looking for Nick. She thought he might be here. Have you seen him?”

  “Not recently.” The Cardinals had moved the ball twenty-five yards in three plays, keeping to the ground as they ran out the clock.

  “She sounds very worried.”

  A blitzing Redskins linebacker was trapped inside; the Cardinal ball carrier broke two arm tackles and rambled for nine more yards.

  “I really don’t want to get involved in their arguments, Betsy,” he said, “not just now.”

  He stood up, the spell broken. He turned toward the stairs, but she’d disappeared without a word. Looking back at the television screen, he hesitated and then switched it off.

  Betsy heard the basement door slam and waited for the car to start, but the sound didn’t come. Curious, she moved to the study window to look down onto the terrace and saw her husband standing below, wearing an old corduroy yard jacket, holding a fifty-pound sack of pine-bark mulch. He was as motionless as a garden statue, holding the heavy bag in his arms as he looked toward the woods. He didn’t move, still looking down into the woods. Then he dropped the bag to the flagstones. It split open, but he had already turned away. A few minutes later, she heard the car start.

  Thank God, she thought.

  10.

  Although the inner courtyard of the Pentagon was now in full shadow, in the windowless warren of offices between B and C rings the sterile white lights burned on, day and night interchangeable, the air within as unchanging as a tomb.

  Nick Straus sat at Colonel Roscoe Dillon’s desk in the inner office, exploring his chief’s pending file, a folder crammed with staff studies and policy recommendations forwarded for comment by other Pentagon offices or bootlegged to Dillon by his network of cronies scattered about the building. Leaning against the wall behind the door was a new poster, prepared that week by someone in DIA graphics for inclusion in the Gallery but removed by Colonel Dillon, who had once been assigned to NATO headquarters in Brussels, and thought it a slur against his former commander in chief.