‘I’m flattered,’ I said. ‘I’ll be with you about eight.’
When I got to the hotel, Priddy was already in the lobby, making a phone call from a booth beside the reception desk. He registered my arrival with the briefest nod, turning his back to me and taking his time with the call. He was wearing slacks and a beautifully cut lightweight jacket. He’d never been fat, but he’d lost a little weight since we last met and it suited him. The flesh on his face looked tauter, better toned, and hours by some pool or other had given him a fetching tan.
‘Nice holiday?’ I enquired when he finally crossed the lobby and extended a languid hand.
He smiled at my little quip, guiding me towards the elevator. Only inside, did I ask where we were going.
‘Dinner,’ he said lightly. ‘Where else?’
The Skyline restaurant occupied most of the top floor of the hotel. From eighteen storeys, the view over Dallas was breathtaking. Priddy had reserved a table in the far corner. He ordered me a large Margarita and a bourbon on the rocks for himself. We toasted his promotion, but when I began to ask him how he felt about it, he shrugged the question aside. Of far greater interest, it seemed, was my own career. What on earth was I doing in Dallas?
‘Just passing through,’ I said. ‘Stopped to see a couple of friends.’
‘Old friends?’
‘Good friends.’
‘Friends who farm you out to a motel?’
‘Had to.’ I smiled at him. ‘Two young kids. Tiny apartment.’
‘Ah,’ Priddy nodded. ‘No room at the inn.’
I accepted the rebuke as I was meant to, with a certain grim amusement, changing the subject as soon as I could. I’d seen the piece in the local newspaper. I was intrigued to know just how demanding these transatlantic junkets really were. Priddy, true to form, ignored the question.
‘How did you know where I was staying?’
‘I phoned the Chamber of Commerce,’ I said. ‘I told them we were friends.’
‘Ah, I was wondering.’
‘About the hotel?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘The other bit.’
The meal was quite beyond me. The house sirloin turned out to be larger than the plate, and the accompanying salad would have kept most rabbits going for months. Crunching my way slowly through the ice-cold radishes, I finally managed to stir the beginnings of a proper conversation. Priddy, it turned out, was heading a trade delegation, in the States for ten days. The schedule would take him and his buddies from Dallas, through the Sun Belt, to a handful of important get-togethers in the fleshpots of the San Fernando Valley. In parliamentary parlance, he was factfinding. What that actually meant Priddy never specified, but I got the impression that his pals back in Westminster and Whitehall would – at the very least – expect a report on likely sales outlets for key parts of the British manufacturing sector.
‘Like arms sales?’ I queried.
Priddy looked briefly pained. ‘Must you?’ he said. ‘At this time in the evening?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s a third of what the country lives on, isn’t it?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Then I just thought it might crop up.’ I paused. ‘That’s all.’
Priddy studied me a moment.
‘As it happens,’ he said at last, ‘it does.’
I grinned at him. ‘So what’s the commission? Two per cent? Have I got that bit right, too?’
Priddy looked away, saying nothing, wiping his mouth with his napkin. The smile I’d expected wasn’t there.
‘Joke,’ I said, ‘in case you were wondering.’
After dinner, we left the hotel and set out on foot for an open-air nightclub which Priddy had been recommended. The resident group evidently featured a talented slide guitarist and he thought I might enjoy it. I wondered for a moment whether he knew what a slide guitar was, but I decided I wouldn’t pursue it. He’d never before expressed the remotest interest in what I might like, and I was impressed, as well as wary.
En route, at his suggestion, we made a three-block detour, emerging at a street corner beside a tall, pre-war building. Across the street was an area of grass, and further down, a railroad bridge. A train was crossing the bridge, an endless succession of freight wagons, and I was still watching them when Priddy touched my arm.
‘Over there,’ he said softly.
‘Where?’
‘There.’
I followed his pointing finger. Where the bridge crossed the road, there was a grassy hillock. The road curved away beneath it, disappearing under the clanking line of wagons. I glanced back at Priddy.
‘Nineteen sixty-three,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you were even born.’
‘Barely,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘They shot Jack Kennedy from there,’ he said.
I frowned, looking around again, newly curious. I knew as much as anyone my age about the Dallas assassination. I knew about Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. I knew, too, about all the conspiracy theories, the conviction in some quarters that the whole thing could have been cooked up by big business, or the Mafia, or the CIA. The authorized version said three bullets, in quick succession, from the building behind me. I looked up at it now, then down at the road again, measuring the distance by eye, trying to imagine the motorcade crawling past, the back of the president’s head cross-haired in the telescopic sight. It all seemed feasible enough. I looked again at Priddy.
‘Oswald, wasn’t it?’ I said lightly.
He glanced down at me, genuinely amused, ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘it wasn’t.’
We went to the club. It was over-loud, phoney and awful, a honey-pot for out-of-town visitors with a taste for early deafness. Looking round, I could see no one under thirty, and after two numbers I suggested we could do better elsewhere. Priddy agreed. Our beers were barely touched. We left at once.
Back at the hotel, we went to the bar. By now, for the first time ever, I was beginning to enjoy Priddy’s company. Away from London and the social strait-jacket of Westminster, he was almost human. Two or three times, his guard had begun to slip and although he never began to accept my story about friends and kids and passing through, he gave out a certain charm that wasn’t simply the usual hunt for advantage. Now, with a gentleness I’d never suspected, he reached out and touched my face.
‘Remarkable,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘How little it shows.’
I gazed at him, astonished. ‘What?’ I said again.
‘In your behaviour, I meant. How little it’s affected you. I can see it. It’s there. But you carry it well.’ He paused. ‘And that’s a compliment.’
I looked at him, wanting to believe him. ‘Carry it?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He leaned forward, across the table. ‘Nasty incident. I’m amazed you survived at all.’
‘You know about all that?’
‘Second hand.’ He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘How?’
He shook his head, refusing to go into details. After a moment or, two’s close attention to his fingernails, he glanced up. ‘So why are you really here?’ he said.
‘I told you. I’m on leave. Vacation.’
He nodded, smothering a yawn, not bothering to comment.
‘That boss of yours,’ he said. ‘Eric Stollmann.’
I blinked. ‘Yes?’
‘He’s either very brave. Or very foolish.’
I frowned. Neither word, in my experience, was remotely applicable to Stollmann. And anyway, who was Priddy to pass judgement?
‘I’m not sure I like that,’ I said. ‘It sounds like a warning.’
‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘just a spot of friendly advice.’
‘Why would I need that?’
‘Because …’ he sighed, toying with his second bourbon, ‘these things can be more complicated than you might think. You’re in deep enough as it is. Just be careful. That’s all. I’d hate…’ He touched his own face, just below his ear, a
gesture rich in implications.
I chose the obvious. ‘You’re saying I’m in some kind of danger?’
‘I’m saying you should keep your eyes open,’ he smiled, ‘and your powder dry.’
‘But tell me …’ I hesitated, only too aware of the rules of this curious game, nothing obvious, nothing attributable, just a handful of dust drifting innocently in the wind. Priddy was inspecting me from a distance, his fingers drumming some rhythm on the table top. The concern on his face looked close to genuine, and for a second or two I thought there was a real chance I might prise a little more from him.
‘Listen.’ I leaned forward. ‘I’m not trying to tie you down but—’ I broke off, staring at him. ‘What’s the matter?’
He was laughing out loud now, rocking in the chair. Finally, he mopped his eyes with a handkerchief and reached across the table, his hand covering mine.
‘You tried that before,’ he said at last, ‘and I’m not sure it was entirely successful.’
In the lobby, saying goodbye, I thanked him for his hospitality. It had been a genuinely pleasant evening, and to my relief he’d not tried to end it in bed. He kissed me on the cheek and then began to shepherd me towards the waiting cab. By the door, he paused.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I didn’t mention tomorrow.’ I looked blank. Tomorrow was Saturday. I was hoping for a little sunshine and an hour or so by some pool.
‘What about it?’ I said.
‘I’m going out of town. To a barbecue. I thought you might be interested.’
‘Why?’
He looked down at me, smiling. As ever, he’d saved the best line until last.
‘Little place called Fairwater,’ he said, ‘Harold Beckermann’s spread.’
When I finally coaxed Wesley to the phone, it was past midnight. I was back at the motel, a map spread beside me on the bed. Fairwater was down to the south. Priddy would pick me up at nine.
‘Wesley,’ I said, ‘it’s Sarah.’
‘Hi,’ he said drily. ‘I thought we had an agreement.’
‘We do. I need to talk to you.’
‘That may be a problem.’
‘Why?’
‘Can’t say. Not on this line.’
I smiled. ‘Is that the problem?’
‘Of course it fucking is.’
‘Too bad.’ I paused. ‘There’s a man called Beckermann. You obviously know who he is. I don’t want details. I just want a one word answer. How much do we need to know about him?’
‘Lots.’
‘So how hard should I try?’
‘Very.’
‘Thanks.’ I was still looking at the map. ‘How are you, by the way?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Classified?’ I said. ‘Or just bloody?’
‘Bloody.’ He paused. ‘You get hold of our friend in DC?’
‘Where?’
‘Washington. D fucking C.’
‘No.’ I smiled again. ‘He’s next on the list.’
I sealed the conversation with a big, wet kiss and rang off. Wesley was probably right to believe that his calls were being monitored. Even Curzon House would have the wit to order a tap, though after Priddy’s veiled asides about Stollmann, I’d begun to wonder quite what was happening. Stollmann was a high flyer. Of that I was certain. He was shrewd, painstaking and immensely dogged. But brave? Or foolish? I shook my head, still unable to find a place to file the comment, folding the map, beginning to wonder again about Beckermann.
Priddy had hired a car of his own. Typically, it was twice the size of mine, a big Cadillac with deep-stitched leather and tinted windows. Next morning we purred south at a steady fifty-five miles an hour, Otis Redding on the eight-speaker sound system, Priddy at the wheel in jeans and a plain white shirt. For the second time in twelve hours, he took me by surprise: relaxed, cheerful and glad – he said – to have slipped the parliamentary leash for at least a day. Beckermann’s barbecue was evidently a private affair, a few old buddies plus his nice new friend from England. There’d be plenty to eat, plus a bucket or two of ice-cold beers, and a little something to keep the boys amused. When I enquired about the latter, Priddy shrugged.
‘God knows,’ he said. ‘I only met the man on Monday.’
For miles, we drove on across the flat, parched landscape, views that reminded me of the duller parts of South America. Finally, in the distance, I saw a white fence, miles of it, enclosing paddocks. There were horses grazing. There were trees beside a modest creek. And in the middle of it, there was a sprawl of buildings: a silo of some kind, a couple of barns, and a big L-shaped house, wooden, newly painted, the clapboard a brilliant white against the surrounding browns and greens.
We turned into a working drive, the big Cadillac soaking up the ruts and bumps. Outside the house, beside a line of sturdy four-wheel-drive runabouts, Priddy pulled the car to a halt. It was a hot day, hotter than Dallas, with a fitful wind eddying up from the creek. The wind smelled rich, of mud and silage. I paused by one of the four-wheel drives. It was white, a Cherokee Chief, brand new, with huge knobbly tyres and bull bars at the front. The windows at the back were curtained and it was impossible to see in, but there was something moving inside. On the back window, there was a tattered Reagan/Bush sticker, the colours bleached by the sun. The sticker must have been infinitely older than the Chief, a treasured relic from the elections of 1984.
I glanced across at Priddy, meaning to point it out, but he was already half-way to the house. There were steps at the front of the house, up to a long wooden stoop, and I recognized the figure standing there. He must have been six foot six, the big spare frame barely touched by his sixty-five years. He was wearing an old pair of jeans and a denim shirt, and the cowboy boots reached half-way to his knee. His eyes were narrowed against the sun and he had a spent match dangling from the corner of his mouth. Priddy was climbing the steps now, his hand already out, the working politician again.
‘Harold,’ he was saying, ‘nice to see you.’
We had coffee and muffins inside the house, a big open kitchen, a gaggle of men around the table, not a woman in sight. The men were, by and large, Beckermann’s age. They were loud, brash, and self-confident. They danced a kind of ceaseless attention around the brooding figure of Beckermann, quietening when he grunted some remark or other, laughing when he made a rare joke. Beckermann’s voice was extraordinary, a low growl, part Hollywood, part hillbilly. When I first heard him, shaking his hand, trying to make sense of his gruff welcome, I thought he was sending me up, playing Lee Marvin to my Julie Andrews, but as the morning wore on I began to suspect that he really did believe this brutal, tough-guy persona. The way he moved, just crossing the room, was all part of the act, the slow cowboy lope, stooping to top up the big enamel mugs with fresh coffee, distributing dollops of maple syrup for the hot muffins.
His conversation was mostly body-language, too, the words few and far between, the eyes fixing on yours, a curious yellow. He had a face that belonged to another age, wind-burned, heartless, deeply seamed, a face I’d seen in half a dozen Hollywood Westerns, the guy who rides in from nowhere and throws his weight around, and an hour of his company was quite enough to understand his appeal. If you happened to be Grant Wallace, hero-starved and barely out of the egg, Beckermann would be truly awesome. If, like me, you belonged to the rest of the human race, he was weird and rather frightening. The bullwhip, I thought, as I watched him toying with Priddy, quarts of Jack Daniels appearing on the table, the laughter growing more coarse.
At noon, two young men appeared from the depths of the house. They were overdressed for the weather, heavy working jeans and thick sweatshirts, and one of them had leather chaps of some kind strapped to his forearms. They picked their way through the guests and one of them had a quiet word in Beckermann’s ear. I was back with Priddy at this point, who was busy putting names to the faces around the big kitchen table. They were all, it seemed, from the upper reaches of the Dallas business world,
weekend cowboys with Timberland boots and flabby, downtown faces. One of them headed a big insurance conglomerate. Another was vice-president of an oil company. A third owned huge swathes of Fort Worth real estate. Between them, Priddy confided, we were looking at a gross worth of not less than three hundred million dollars.
The money came out a few minutes later, hundred-dollar bills tossed on to the table, Beckermann up one end, licking the stub of a pencil, drawing careful lines on the back of a feed catalogue. As the pile of money grew, he went round the table, asking each man for a name, scribbling it down, making a note of the size of the wager. There were three or four names. One of them, as far as I could judge, was Mogul. The others I didn’t catch. When he got to us, Priddy’s hand was already in the back of his jeans, but when he produced his wallet, Beckermann waved it away.
‘Guests go free,’ he said. ‘House rules.’
Priddy nodded, ever the gentleman, pocketing his wallet again. When Beckermann moved on to the next man at the table, I nudged him lightly on the knee.
He glanced across at me. ‘No pay, no play,’ he murmured. ‘Thank God.’
‘What’s that mean? You understand any of this?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I do.’
He leaned forward, confecting a laugh at some joke or other. The Jack Daniels was going round again, hand to hand, and Beckermann was hauling in the money. There must have been at least five thousand dollars on the table, probably more.
I looked at Priddy again. ‘Give me a clue?’ I said. ‘Just one?’
The men were on their feet now, heading for the door, and Priddy was getting up, too. He had one hand on my shoulder. He gave it a squeeze.
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
18
We walked down from the house to the creek. It was very hot by now, the kind of heat you associate with high summer, and the ground was bone-hard beneath our feet. The men sauntered down the dirt path. They formed a kind of loose cohort around Beckermann, joshing with each other, belly laughs at one-line jokes I never quite caught. Beckermann towered above them, grim-faced, oblivious, his face shadowed by a large stetson.
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