by Howard Fast
“All right, Al.”
In the car she said, “I didn’t think you would come. Why did you, Al?”
“Because I wanted to see you again.”
“Why?”
“Because I still love you. Because when this kind of love comes for the first time at the age of forty-seven, to let go of it is like dying.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me. I mean it. In my whole life that’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”
“I didn’t mean it as something nice.”
“I know.”
“Pain isn’t nice,” I said, “Agony isn’t nice. To stop caring whether you’re alive or dead isn’t nice. To live in fear, to look at every man you see as a possible killer, isn’t nice.”
“I know.”
“And to think about tomorrow, and to think about it as something that is meaningless, empty, bleak—that isn’t nice either. To go to sleep and not give a damn whether you wake up or not—that isn’t nice—oh, the hell with it! I spoke to Evelyn today. She’s down at Acapulco, you know. She asked me whether I was going through with the divorce, and I said I was. I told her I would take an apartment and she could have the house. She offered to decorate the apartment, with abstract painting and bright, modern rugs. She’s going to be my friend.”
“I’m glad you decided to go through with it.”
“I can thank you for that.”
“I don’t mind being thanked for that,” Millie said. “We had good times together. We had fun together.”
She was right. With all the terror and fear and macabre humor of the five days, they were the best five days I had known or in all probability would ever know. They were five crazy, glorious and terrifying days. But they were over.
At the restaurant, Mike Casabrea and his wife, Maria, who own the place and spend fourteen hours a day there, went out of their way to be pleasant and gracious to Millie. Like everyone else who knew me, they had heard about the divorce, and like most of my friends, they did not love Evelyn.
Mike took the opportunity to whisper into my ear, “That’s one hell of a girl. Where did you find her?”
“In my office. She’s been working for me six years.”
Millie overheard the last of that, and after we had ordered and were sitting with our drinks, she said, not without a trace of bitterness, “I worked for you six years, Al. Why didn’t you ever look at me?”
“I looked at you.”
“Like hell you did! We could have had something. We could have had a life together all these years.”
“That’s no good, Millie. What’s done is done. What good is it to weep over something that never happened?”
“I’m not weeping. I’m only trying to get through to you. It’s ahead of you, but it’s all behind me, six years in that wretched apartment, six years of being alone.”
“A woman as beautiful and bright as you doesn’t have to be alone.”
“Is that the way you see it? Talk to me six years from now.”
“I’m not beautiful and I’m not bright.”
“Oh, come off it, Al,” she said.
The steaks came, but she pushed hers away. “I’m not hungry. Why are you always buying me food? I’m no waif. You pay me three hundred and fifty dollars a week.”
“I haven’t much else to offer.”
“Bullshit! I am sick and tired of your putting yourself down. You’re one of the brightest and most attractive men I have ever known. You still think I am lying when I say I love you?”
“No, I don’t think you are lying.”
“Then what is it, Al? You said you love me. You came out on top last night. What kind of a deal did you make?”
“Seven hundred thousand dollars for the stuff. Cash—in clean money.”
“My God,” she whispered. “Seven hundred thousand, tax-free. Al, the whole world, it’s all there, just pick it up and take it. We don’t have to be two lousy flaks in this shithole town. Al, we’re not perfect—who is in this cruddy world we inhabit? But we love each other, we know each other.”
“I don’t know you, Millie,” I said, feeling sadder inside, emptier inside than ever. “There are maybe five, six hundred thousand addicts in this country. Maybe more, maybe less. Nobody really knows. They’re a cancer that’s destroying us all, but that’s an abstraction. Long, long ago I had a kid brother who got hooked on heroin. Simple, stupid kid. He ran with a gang and he had to be with it. They say you can kick it—I don’t believe that. I remember the day and nights I spent with him, pleaded with him, worked with him, wept with him. You’d have to know what my life was when I was a kid to know how I loved him. I still wake up nights, sweating and trembling, hearing his screams. Ah, hell—what’s the use of going into all that? He died of an overdose at age fourteen. I’ve known prostitutes I would have trusted with my last dollar. I’ve known crooks I liked and respected and played poker with. I knew a reformed Detroit torpedo who had murdered eight men, a stupid, mindless contract man, and I lent him fifty dollars. I operate in a profession that stinks, and I live in a world that’s without decency or any real sense of right and wrong, and I include myself, but for a man who peddles horse, I have only hatred, and I would see him in hell if it took my last dollar or my life itself. So you mustn’t say I know you. I don’t know you at all.”
As she listened to all this, her face became as tight as steel, a face of cold anger. Then she said, “But seven hundred thousand dollars, tax-free, changed all that.”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
“No, I don’t understand, Al. Not one damn word you said. I don’t understand at all.”
“Then let me make it plain, and you listen. They trusted Capestone to bring the stuff in from Mexico, and he and Leone decided to double-cross them. Capestone bought two bags of garden lime, emptied them, put the heroin in the two bags and placed them in the potting shed behind my house. The general’s men tore my house to pieces, but they didn’t look twice at the two bags of lime. Maybe you remember Poe’s story, ‘The Purloined Letter.’ When I was up there at the lodge, I didn’t even know what they were talking about until they told me. Capestone told me nothing—nothing. I never lied to you. I told you the truth. I made the deal because I needed time and I wanted to leave that place alive. This morning my gardener found the stuff, and I paid him to drive up to Big Sur and leave the two bags of heroin in a greenhouse behind the lodge. Then I spoke to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and told them the story, and tonight they raided the lodge. They got the heroin. The general’s dead, and I imagine they got most of the rest of them. It’s been on radio all night, and if you had turned on your radio you would have heard it.”
White as a ghost now, and silent, she sat and stared at me. I suppose she sat two or three minutes like that, just staring at me out of those dark, knowledgeable eyes.
“You’re lying,” she said finally.
“I never lied to you, Millie. By now you ought to know that.”
She was silent for a minute, then she said, “You’re lying. There wasn’t time for them to get there.”
“For Christ’s sake, Millie, I don’t lie to you! They came out of Monterey or San Francisco. They used helicopters. It’s finished, over, done with.”
Then she accepted it. She was silent again. Her face changed. The hardness went out of it, and fear replaced the cold fury. A frightened little girl, conquered and submerged so long ago, looked out of the dark eyes and pleaded with me.
“What are you going to do with me, Al?”
“Nothing.”
“You said if a man peddled dope, you would see him in hell.”
“You’re not a man, and you didn’t peddle dope. You did a job for money. I’m not a cop or a judge. If I were you, I’d get out of Los Angeles, but that’s up to you.”
But it was a rationalization, because the only thing that really mattered was that I loved her. We left the restaurant then, and I drove her home. There were no good-byes
. She got out of the car and walked into her house. I never saw her again.
4
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I stayed late at the office, covering twenty pages with a carefully written and documented story. I made six carbons. On Friday, at precisely ten A.M., Senator Bellman called. I had been expecting his call and waiting all week for it.
“Hello, Al,” he said cheerfully. “I think you and I ought to have lunch together. What do you think?’
“I think it’s a good idea,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for you to call.”
“The Brown Derby on Wilshire? That’s a sort of halfway point. It’s quiet, and they have a booth where we can be alone.”
“Twelve-thirty?”
“Twelve-thirty will be fine. Can you make the reservation?”
“With pleasure.”
I canceled my previous luncheon date. The senator was eager. When I got there, a few minutes after twelve-thirty, he was waiting. He did not offer to shake hands, for which I was grateful. He was already drinking, but when I ordered a beer, he asked for another Rob Roy.
“Well, Al,” he said, “I underestimated you.”
“I don’t think so, Senator. I was provoked. Even a mild man can be provoked.”
“I was waiting for you to blow the whistle. Why didn’t you?”
“I was waiting for you to call me, Senator.”
“I gathered as much. You put the stuff in the greenhouse, didn’t you?”
“I had it put there.”
“Well, by God, you certainly played a cool hand. It was a superb double cross—it makes history.”
“I didn’t double-cross you, Senator. I played my own hand.”
“Is Millie in it with you?”
“No, she’s in it with you,” I said.
“She’s gone?”
“So I understand.”
“Do you know where?”
“I haven’t any idea, Senator.”
“Well, the little ones can run. That’s the virtue of being small.”
“You can’t run, Senator.”
“Not likely, Al. There’s too much at stake. You want to make a deal, don’t you?”
“Yes, I want to make a deal.”
“All right. I don’t know what’s on your mind, Al, but I’m ready to listen.”
I took out of my breast pocket one of the carbon copies of the document I had prepared and handed it to the senator. “I don’t want you to read it now, Senator. But you might glance through it. That will give you an idea of the contents.”
He thumbed through it, then turned back to the beginning and began to read. He read in furious haste.
“You’ll do better to read it at your leisure,” I said. “You can see what it is. The thing to remember is that I made seven copies of it. You have one. One is in my safe deposit box. One is in my lawyer’s safe. The other four are safely stashed away in places that will remain unknown to you. All of them are marked to be opened in case of my death or unexplained disappearance for more than twenty-four hours.”
“That’s a hell of a note, Al!” he burst out. “You shouldn’t be walking around with this damn thing on you.”
“It’s not on me. You have it. The others are safely out of sight, signed and notarized.”
“You could drop dead tomorrow.”
“I could.”
“For Christ’s sake, Al, am I supposed to live with this damn thing hanging over me?”
“The answer is yes, you are.”
“I’m younger than you! Goddamn it, I’m in better shape than you and I’ll outlive you! You can’t do this to me!”
“It’s done.”
The senator drained his second drink, pulled himself together and said, in a reasonably businesslike manner, “Very well, Al, you’ve made your point. How much does it take to buy the whole lot of them—all six. Name your price.”
“Isn’t it rather silly to talk price to me after I blew seven hundred thousand dollars?”
“That was different.”
“I suppose it was. Well, there is a price—but not for the six documents. I keep those. There’s a price for me not to take one of them and deliver it to the D.A.’s office.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” I asked, smiling slightly. “The thought enchants me.”
“Because for one thing, the Capestone caper would come out, and that would blow your business to hell.”
“It’s a lousy business. I wouldn’t think twice about it.”
“Al, you’re playing with fire.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s a hard, desperate game, Al. I say you’re playing with fire.”
“That’s nonsense, Senator, and you know it as well as I do. You can’t have me killed. It’s too late for that.”
“That document would never stand up in court. It’s hearsay evidence at best.”
“I don’t know,” I said, remaining undisturbed. “If I were killed, it might stand up. Then again, it might not. But it would sure as hell destroy you, wouldn’t it?”
He thought about that. He signaled the waiter and ordered another drink, and he thought about it until the drink came. Then he said, “All right. What’s the price, Al?”
“Very little, actually, when you consider what it might be. First of all, you resign your seat in the Senate. Plead bad health. Plead anything you want to. But you resign your seat. Secondly, you get out of the country and don’t come back.”
“I just don’t believe you,” he said slowly. “God damn you to hell, why don’t you go to the district attorney?”
“I’m not sure I can explain that, Senator. In so many ways this country is the asshole of creation. But in so many ways it’s the most beautiful and wonderful place God ever made. I never went away when I didn’t come back and say that to myself. Whatever it is, a little bit of it is mine. It gave me whatever I have and whatever I am, which isn’t much, but there it is. I have no blinders about corruption. It’s in the air I breathe. Maybe there are twenty men like you in Congress—maybe there are fifty. I don’t know. I only know one of them, Senator Bellman. And if I go to the D.A., the stink of Senator Bellman is going to float right across the world. I don’t want that. We’re dirty enough. We have enough to repent, enough to be ashamed of, enough to atone for. We don’t need Senator Bellman as a lousy, rotten drug peddler. Do I make myself plain?”
I have never seen such controlled rage and hatred in a man, yet it was controlled. His face turned purple, he choked, he clenched his fists, yet he controlled himself.
“You make yourself plain,” he whispered.
“You are still my client,” I said to him. “I will prepare the press statement this afternoon and release it in time for the morning papers.”
“For Christ’s sake, give me twenty-four hours.”
“No. You have no alternative. Either this or your total destruction. I think you should go to France. You have enough money to live there comfortably for the rest of your life. But if you ever return to this country, I swear by the Holy Mother of God that I will destroy you.”
Then I put down ten dollars for the drinks and walked out. It was the second meal I had left without eating.
5
I wrote the press release myself, and I wrote it with great pleasure: “Due to ill health and under the instructions of his physician, Senator Ronald Bellman announced today that he will resign his seat in the Senate and go abroad with his wife. He will make his home in France for an undetermined period.”
I called Anne Jones in and handed it to her. She read it with astonishment but not with displeasure.
“When did this happen?”
“Today.”
“It couldn’t happen to a nicer man.”
“Save your comments. I want it in tomorrow’s edition, so you and Charlie get on the phone and start calling. Give it to the wire services and the large locals. I also want you to call long distance and give it to every major daily
in Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, New York—you know, right down the list.”
“That will cost a fortune, and we’ll be on the phone all night.”
“I’m spending the money, and I also pay overtime.”
“I got a date tonight.”
“Cancel it.”
“You’re all heart, aren’t you?”
“It’s been said. Now get to it.”
“Wait a minute,” Anne said. “Do you realize that it’s two weeks since we heard one word from Andrew Capestone? He could be dead.”
“He could.”
“Well, aren’t you going to do anything about it?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s what I might expect from a white man.”
“Save your politics. You got fifty telephone calls to make. Also the networks. Don’t forget the networks. I want to make the six o’clock news.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Brody,” she replied.
“And leave my door open.”
Then I sat there at my desk, smoking a sixty-cent Flamenco and listening to Anne and Charlie on the telephone. One thanks God for small pleasures.
A Biography of Howard Fast
Howard Fast (1914–2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast’s commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.
Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast’s mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London’s The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.