The Rake
Page 19
“This guy says he didn’t do it?”
“Right. And Belcourt’s case is pretty circumstantial, though he’s certain he’s got the right guy. Meanwhile, Senator Castle issued his press release—”
“I didn’t know about that.”
“It was while you were flying here. He did a press release on one or two of the 60 Minutes allegations. He said he had never even stepped foot in Saint Anne’s Church in Letellier.”
“Well,” Allard said, “maybe that’s right? There’s no extant documentation on that marriage.”
Justin crawled up from where he was seated with his wine and the skinned duck and groped his way to his backpack. He came back with an eight-by-ten print stapled to a negative, and handed it over. Allard studied it for a moment.
“Holy smoke! So this is what they burned and killed trying to suppress! Who’s seen this?”
“Nobody. I was prepared to show it to the 60 Minutes people, but only if I had to. So—nobody.”
“Not your mother?”
“No.”
“Not Eric Monsanto?”
“Allard, you probably never heard of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but I spent time on him in the Civil War course last year. He was a very colorful guy. When an aide asked him the same question again and still again, General Forrest said—I’ll write it out for you in English. It doesn’t work in French.” Justin tore off the top of the shell box and wrote the graphic words: “‘I tole you twicet, goddamit, no.’”
Justin continued: “Nobody but you has seen it. And you know, what I’m thinking is…what good is it?
“Commander Belcourt is trying to find out who commissioned the fire. Who had a motive to commission that fire, Allard?”
“Your father?”
“That’s right. Nobody else I can think of. So if I burn this, they can’t use it in making a murder case against…my father. I kept him maybe from being president. Maybe I can now keep him out of jail.”
He put the print and the negative into the roaring kerosene flame. Allard raised his wine glass, and bowed his head. “Tu es bon, Justin. Très bon, mon ami.”
Acknowledgments
This novel was written in Nassau, our adopted winter home. My Swiss passport, after forty-five years, was stamped NE PLUS SKIER—the dreadful fate that hits all skiers when their time has palpably come to do something else. In Nassau one can swim and sail and play tennis and golf, none of which attracts me any more: so this novel came quickly to fruition, from an idea I had long ago played with, the life of an American rake.
I am enormously indebted to Michael Seringhaus, who took a brief leave from his graduate studies in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale. We had become friends aboard my boat, on which he had undertaken a summer’s chores a couple of years earlier. His schedule permitted him to spend a month with us in Nassau furnishing ideas, corrections, and inspiration.
As is almost always so, the next step was to deposit my manuscript with Samuel S. Vaughan, who has invested literacy and spark and subtlety in more than thirty of my books. His patience and ingenuity keep me alive and, as will be acknowledged by readers of The Rake, my writings perdurable. I am ever so grateful to him.
Lois Wallace, my agent, gave the manuscript her usual sharp-eyed reading. Linda Bridges of National Review was helpful and wonderfully informed. Frances Bronson kept us all in order, and I thank her for her talent and patience and affection.
This is my first outing under the patronage of Cal Morgan, the talented executive editor of HarperCollins, who has provided many helpful suggestions.
—WFB
Stamford, Connecticut
January 2007
About the Author
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. is the legendary founder of the modern conservative movement. The author of many celebrated nonfiction books, including God and Man at Yale, he has also written a series of bestselling novels, among them the Blackford Oakes spy series and Elvis in the Morning. The founder of the National Review and for many years the host of Firing Line, Buckley lives in Connecticut.
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Also by William F. Buckley Jr.
God and Man at Yale
McCarthy and His Enemies (with L. Brent Bozell)
Up from Liberalism
Rumbles Right and Left
The Unmaking of a Mayor
The Jeweler’s Eye
The Governor Listeth
Cruising Speed
Inveighing We Will Go
Four Reforms
United Nations Journal: A Delegate’s Odyssey
Execution Eve
Saving the Queen
Airborne
Stained Glass
A Hymnal: The Controversial Arts
Who’s on First
Marco Polo,
If You Can
Atlantic High: A Celebration
Overdrive: A Personal Documentary
The Story of Henri Tod
See You Later Alligator
Right Reason
High Jinx
Mongoose, R.I.P.
Racing Through Paradise
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Public Figures
Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country
Tucker’s Last Stand
In Search of Anti-Semitism
Windfall: The End of the Affair
Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist
A Very Private Plot
Brothers No More
The Blackford Oakes Reader
Buckley: The Right Word
Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith
The Redhunter
Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches
Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton
Elvis in the Morning
Nuremberg: The Reckoning Getting It Right
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography
Last Call for Blackford Oakes
Credits
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
Front Cover and spine photograph by Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE RAKE. Copyright © 2007 by William F. Buckley Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition July 2007 ISBN 9780061751806
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