by Ward Just
Mitch Rising looked at Townsend and smiled. “The press of business,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Wanted to make it on Tuesday but couldn’t. Just couldn’t manage it.”
Dana asked, “Is that the governor?”
“None other,” Mitch said.
“Is he coming to the funeral?”
“No, dear,” Mitch said.
“I didn’t know he knew Grandpa,” Dana said.
“He didn’t,” Mitch said. “The governor’s a much younger man but Dad supported him the last time out. Governor’s grateful. As he damn well should be.” Mitch grinned.
Townsend looked at the girl. “Amos—your grandfather—was the senior publisher in the state. And a very fine man, and there won’t be another like him for a long time. That’s why the governor called, to pay his respects.” A glance at Mitch. “He was first on the line.”
“Let’s have those drinks, Jake.” Charles took the three drinks from the boy and placed them carefully on the table. Dana smiled. Her father’s expression was sour. She could tell that the drinks were weak, and her father did not care for weak cocktails. He picked up his drink and returned to the liquor cabinet with it. He did not look at Jake. He took a long swallow, then filled it to the brim with Scotch. “I’ve taken the phone off the hook. We’ve got some decisions to make.” He was looking at Elliott Townsend but he was talking to Mitch. “We’ve got to decide about the pallbearers. Who. And how many.”
The older man nodded, at ease finally in the role of counselor. He said what he always said at the beginning of business conversations. “What is it that you want to do?”
“I want to do it right,” Charles said. “If it were me—” He caught himself and stopped. “But it isn’t me. It’s him. And the problem is that there aren’t any old friends left. Just you and old Mr. Reilly and Reilly’s in Florida and won’t be making any trips back here. Someone ought to tell him, by the way, be a nice gesture, a family member calling him—” Charles smiled bleakly. “So that lets out old friends because there aren’t any old friends, except you.”
“Well,” Townsend said tentatively He stretched back on the couch, his fingers laced over his belly. “There are plenty of fellows around, not of your father’s age perhaps, but good, close friends—”
“Compatriots,” Mitch said.
“Compatriots,” Townsend agreed. “Let me see. Just to . . . open the bidding. There would be myself and Haight, Steppe, Tilberg and Tiny Axelsen for sure. That’s five.”
Charles tonelessly identified them. “That’s you, the sheriff, the chairman of the county board, the state’s attorney and the circuit judge.”
“Yes. And possibly Brandon. If Brandon can get back from Washington, Congress is in session—”
Mitch laughed. “Oh, I think he can.”
“—and perhaps de Priest and Roth.” He paused. “Judge Kerrigan.”
Charles said, “The county chairman, the county treasurer, and the county judge.”
Townsend nodded. “I think that would do it. If that’s what you’ve got in mind.”
Charles said, “I guess I would have to wonder why Kerrigan.”
“An old friend. And the senior judge.”
“He’s a cynical bastard,” Charles said.
Townsend steepled his fingers and looked up. “The law has nothing to say on that point.”
“Um,” Charles said. “And if we’re having Elmer Tilberg, why not what’s his name—Aces Evans. He’s the senior state rep. And an old friend or compatriot or whatever term you’re using. Why not Aces?”
Townsend nodded slowly, and said nothing.
Mitch looked at his brother and smiled. “Charles, Aces and Dad were feuding.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, they were.”
“Mitch is correct,” Townsend said. “There was some turbulence. Amos thought that Aces had gotten a bit big for his britches. He was spending quite a lot of time in Springfield. Spending time and making money. He’d acquired quite a taste for poker—again.”
“Oh,” Charles said, puzzled.
“Yes, he was winning. Your father had the exact amounts. I don’t remember what they were, but they were substantial.”
Charles nodded, understanding now. “If Acres was winning, who was losing?”
“Apparently there were three or four losers. But the big loser was the contractors’ association. And I believe the bankers’ association, or anyway that was the scuttlebutt that your father heard. And, I might add, believed,”
Mitch said, “It’s true. I checked.”
Charles said, “Do you know it for a fact?”
“I talked to Dad about it. He confirmed it, in an oblique sort of way,”
“How oblique?”
“Well,” Mitch said. “It was a funny kind of poker game. It was a game where Aces’ two pair always beat the bankers’ full house or the contractors’ three of a kind. And the games were always held the night before an important vote—”
Townsend turned to Charles. “Your father spoke to Aces. In his office, and very firmly. Aces denied it at first, then he admitted it. Oh, there were extenuating circumstances. There always are. His wife is very ill, you know, and Aces is getting on. I think he’s fifty-seven years old and hasn’t managed to put much away. But your father told him to stop and of course Aces promised he would. According to Amos, he was ashamed of himself. But he didn’t stop. Or hadn’t, as of a couple of months ago. As recently as September he was still in the poker game, to which a number of other, ah, interested parties were added. The doctors, the highway people, and the oilmen.” Townsend leaned forward, looking first at Charles and then at Mitch, and then at Dana standing silently by the fireplace. Jake had remained near the liquor cabinet but he was listening, too. Townsend thought it was as good a time as any for the children to have their first civics lesson, though he wished Dana was not there. A sixteen-year-old girl would not understand these facts; she’d have no context in which to put them. “That was quite a game, usually five or six fellows and it lasted only ten minutes. It only lasted as long as it took to cut the cards and deal.” He lowered his voice. “Charles, I do not think it would be appropriate for Aces Evans to be your father’s pallbearer. It would rehabilitate him. The story is out. Not the details, who and how much, but the broad outlines. It is known by a number of men who are waiting to see what your father would’ve done. They are assuming that something will be done. Your father was not a man to sit idly by—” Townsend paused and put his drink on the table. “No one knew what, uh, obligations Aces had acquired. But your father was going to cause him to retire at the end of the next session. Retire gracefully and for good.”
“I always liked Aces Evans,” Charles said. “The goddamned fool.”
“Everybody likes Aces. That’s part of the trouble, and it’s true he was a fool; a fool to do it and a fool to get caught.” Townsend said, “It appears that someone in the game was doing double duty.”
“Well, Dad was always wary of him.” Mitch leaned forward, nodding at his brother. The three heads were only inches from each other. “We can’t do it, Charlie. It’s too damned awkward.”
Charles threw up his hands. “Hell, it isn’t my idea—” He turned to Townsend.
“Trouble is,” the old lawyer said smoothly. “Trouble is, that’s not the really tough question. No one gives a damn about Aces, in the final analysis. The really tough one is Kerrigan.”
She was listening carefully now. Jake had moved from the liquor cabinet to the fireplace and was now standing next to her. He asked her, whispering, if she was following the conversation. Partly, she said; she was following it partly. He said, “It’s criminal. stuff.” She clucked twice and shook her head. “How awful.” Jake looked at her a long moment, trying to decide whether she was being sarcastic. Dana was standing aslant, smiling, her eyes bright and wide open. He thought she was really wonderful looking with a spectacular body, though she was reserved and sometimes sharp-tong
ued. Sometimes she was a stuck-up little bitch, an embarrassment to her parents; impetuous. She was known in the family as impetuous, inhabiting a different world from the rest of them. He said, “You don’t have to be sarcastic.” She said, “Sorry, Jake,” and meant it. She had no desire to bait him; his uncles did that better than she could. He looked at her and wondered if she was a virgin. It would be exactly like her to purposely set out to lose her virginity. She would plan it the way Eisenhower planned D-day, with nothing left to chance; she’d have the weather reports and the estimates of enemy resistance on the beaches. Dana’s trouble was that she was too smart for her own good. It would get her into trouble someday, if it had not yet gotten her into trouble. He turned away from her then and stood listening to the men.
“... so what’s the problem with Kerrigan, except that he’s a cynical bastard. What the hell,” Mitch said. “Was he in the poker game, too?”
“No, no, nothing of that sort at all. My God.” Townsend laughed. “Tom Kerrigan!” The older man kneaded his hands together, dipped his head, and waited, It was inconceivable that Mitch did not appreciate the situation between Kerrigan and Amos.
“Oh, of course,” Mitch said at last. “I didn’t connect it. I didn’t connect that with this.”
Dana nudged Jake. What was all this about? Jake shook his head and put a finger to his lips. She nudged him again. Then he looked sheepishly at her, and said he didn’t know what it was about.
Townsend said, “The thing’s before Judge Kerrigan now, on the docket next week, I believe. It was something your father took very seriously it was one of the last things he mentioned to me. We talked about it quite a little.”
“The zoning,” Charles said, wanting it in the open.
“Oh, yes,” Mitch said.
“Yes,” Charles said. He glanced at his daughter and at Tony’s boy Jake. It would be awkward to send them away now, but neither of them had the experience to appreciate the subtlety of the situation. They would surely get the wrong impression. Charles said, “I argued with him about it, to the extent that anyone actually argued with Dad. I don’t want to go into details”—he nodded almost imperceptibly top-ward the fireplace—“but Dad was dead set against. I don’t know, he had some damn sentimental feeling about the bog. He’d dug in his heels and that was the end of it. He simply refused to deal with it in any realistic way. He didn’t understand that it was on the track and there was nothing to be done—”
“Not exactly,” Townsend said. “He was dealing with it. He was against it and proposed to fight it. And things that are on the track sometimes fall off. Happens all the time,” he said mildly.
“So you delay it for a year, so what?”
Townsend smiled. “You delay it for a year, that’s what. And then another year and another if need be and you’d be surprised how soon folks just seem to forget about it.”
“I don’t buy that reasoning,” Charles said.
Townsend began to explain it, laboriously. point by point. Dana tried to follow him but she had no real interest in Kerrigan or the bog or the lawsuit. She was thinking about Nicole Diver and Tommy Barban at Nice. She was supplying the details that the author had omitted. She felt her face redden, and her body begin to fill. Oh God, she thought, if just once.. Jake turned to her. Are you hot? he whispered. She began to laugh but stopped at a look from her father. Oh no, she said. It’s so cozy, the fire, It’s warm all right, Jake agreed. Her face not quite straight, she turned back to listen to Elliott Townsend, droning:
“... he thought it would create problems, more problems than it would solve. He didn’t think the country was ready for it, a thousand houses, new people ... a drunk loose in a saloon ...”
She thought of drunks loose in the saloons of the Riviera. Loose in their clothing, nothing clinging, then a long run on the moonlit beach, yachts anchored offshore, and laughter, unending laughter in the night
Her father said, “There are cross-controls ...”
Townsend: “Too many twists and turns ... ”
She moved closer to the fire. She wasn’t listening to them at all anymore. Day and night she thought about sex, her own sexuality, an expectation of—excitement. It was always with her now. her knowledge of herself giving her strange gratification when boys called her “cold.” Well, she would wait. She was very good at waiting and she could wait a while longer, until one fine day a man would step into her life, She believed she was too old for awkward boys—
“... now your man Eurich is apparently a crackerjack,” Townsend said. “But there’s a problem he’s got to solve and he hasn’t solved it yet. He’s got to get the zoning variation and he’s got to get past the suit in Kerrigan’s court. He’s got to establish there won’t be a health hazard and then he’s got to prove that the houses won’t be ticktack.”
Charles smiled. “Now you’ve gone too far, counselor. I don’t recall that ‘ticktack’ is a phrase in our building code. Maybe you could find that for me, refresh my memory.”
Townsend smiled back. “Look it up. You’ll find a similar word. And maybe you’d better get your friend Eurich to look it up, too. It’s an old code but it’s a good code. It’s very stringent and I’d be the first to admit that it hasn’t been used much in recent years. It’s a code that’s been more honored in the breach, as you might say. But it covers a multitude of sins. And I ought to know. I wrote it.”
Charles shook his head. “Okay, I give up. Or, rather, I don’t give up. I’ll just give up arguing about it tonight. And anyway, you’re the one who brought up Kerrigan’s name, Kerrigan as a pallbearer—”
Townsend shrugged. “Just exploring all the possibilities.”
“Well, I gather that one isn’t, then,”
“Depends,” Townsend said. “Depends on your relationship with Tom. From your point of view, I suppose it’d make some sense. Bring him under the tent right away.” He smiled thinly and reached for his glass. “But if you have Tom, you’ve got to have the others. You can’t have one without having them ali.”
Charles said, “Very foxy.”
“Accurate,” Townsend said.
Charles looked at the older man affectionately. “You and Dad. How long—”
“Just about forty years. Forty-five, if you stretch it.”
“Times are going to change, Elliott.”
“I expect that they will. They usually do.”
“We aren’t going to be able to run it the way you and Dad ran it.”
“Why the hell not?” It was Mitch. “Why not? Same paper, same family. Nothing has changed except Dad’s gone. We’re going to carry on exactly as he would’ve. Nothing has changed—Townsend was nodding vigorously.
Charles looked at his brother, expressionless. Inside he was angry. That idiot. Everything has changed. Every single thing. “Perhaps,” he said mildly “But we’re different people.” He was speaking to both men. “It’s a different world, or going to be. It’s beyond politics, it’s business. The guy on top isn’t the guy who spends his life obstructing—”
“Jesus, Charles,” Mitch said. “Jesus Christ, can’t you wait a week?”
He looked at his brother, and then at Townsend. “Dad’s gone.”
“Well, Christ—”
“We have to live with things as they are.”
“We can wait till after the funeral,” Mitch said.
“Sure, Mitch.”
“if Dad was against it, then—”
“Dad didn’t understand it,” Charles said. “You don’t either.”
Townsend intervened. “Amos was told that most of the financing, the real financing, would come from Chicago.”
“True. It’s a complicated arrangement.”
“I reckon it is,” Townsend said. “Now the boys in the legisiature—”
Charles held up his hand. “Elliott, that’s part of the problem between us. No offense, but you don’t understand how it’s being done. It doesn’t have anything to do with the state, And that’s why they’re
angry as hell down there. We bypassed the capital entirely, there isn’t one dime of state money or state control, either. It’s federal. It’s FHA. And it’s the first goddamned thing that Dick Brandon has ever done for us.” He wagged his fingers, expecting Townsend’s protest. “I know Dick did a hell of a job on the Committee. It’s a great committee, he and Velde and the others. I take my hat off to them. But between some pinko movie star and a federal loan guarantee, I’ll take the guarantee. Dick finally got off his ass and started paying attention to his constituents. in addition to the Reds.”
Townsend looked directly at him. “Better the crook you know than the crook you don’t. You think I’m kidding. But I mean it.”
Dana was listening carefully now. They had forgotten all about her and Jake. She was fascinated with their language, so hard-edged and practical. The room was abruptly stilt, the three men lost in thought. She imagined the old man, lifeless in a mortuary, his skin going to gray, his eyes glazed over, his muscles and tendons stiffenitig, his life’s blood inert and congealed. But the force of his personality continued, was continuing; she felt his presence in the room. She realized then that she had never seen a dead man, though she’d read scores of descriptions in Tolstoy and Fautkner...
Townsend said, “It’s for Kerrigan to decide. The suit’s in his court. I b’iieve, by the way, that he’d reached an accommodation with Ammos.”
“Is that right?”
“So I believe,” Townsend said.
“It would be hard to enforce that agreement,” Charles said.
Townsend replied, “That would depend on the nature of the agreement. What was promised. And by whom. And in return for what.” He turned to Charles. “You know, Amos wasn’t always wrong.”
Charles returned his look, hurt. What kind of remark was that? It seemed to him sometimes that all his life people had tried to move him into a niche, to fit him into their own puzzle; to place him where they thought he belonged, at the right hand of the father. He said, “Of course not.” Then, brusquely: “I guess, Elliott, I ought to have some expression from you, which side you’re on. Now that Dad’s dead. If push comes to shove, who you’ll be working for. Because this is likely to drag can for a little.”