by Irwin Shaw
There was no sense in staying for the whole weekend anymore. She had a quiet dinner with Rudolph and Jean and took the morning train down to New York.
When she got back to her hotel, there was a message from Evans saying that he couldn’t have dinner with her that night.
Chapter 6
1967
On the plane down to Dallas, Johnny Heath, sitting next to him, was going through a briefcase full of papers. Rudolph was going through his own briefcase full of papers. He had to submit the budget for the next year to the town council and he frowned as he went over the thick booklet which contained the Comptroller’s estimates. The price of everything was going up, the police and fire departments, the public school staffs, and the clerical employees were all due for a rise in salary; there was an alarming increase in the number of welfare recipients, especially in the Negro section of town; a new sewage-disposal plant was on the books; everybody was fighting tax increases; state and federal aid were being kept at their old levels. Here I am, he thought, at thirty thousand feet, worrying about money again.
Johnny Heath was worrying about money in the seat next to his, too, but at least it was his own money, and Rudolph’s. Brad Knight had moved his office from Tulsa to Dallas after his father had died, and the purpose of their trip was to confer with Brad about their investments in the Peter Knight and Son Oil Company. Suddenly, Brad had seemed to have lost his touch, and they had found themselves investing in one dry hole after another. Even the wells that had come in had suffered from a series of disasters, salt water, collapsing shale, unpredictable, expensive formations to drill through. Johnny Heath had made some quiet investigations and was sure Brad had been rigging his report and was stealing from them and had been doing so for some time. The figures Johnny had come up with looked conclusive, but Rudolph refused to move against Brad until they had had it out in person. It seemed impossible to him that a man he had known so long and so well could turn like that. Despite Virginia Calderwood.
When the plane landed, Brad wasn’t at the airport to greet them. Instead, he had sent an assistant, a burly, tall man in a brown straw hat, a string tie, and a madras jacket, who made Mr. Knight’s excuses (he was tied up in a meeting, the assistant said) and drove with them in an air-conditioned Cadillac along a road that throbbed in heat mirages, to the hotel in the center of Dallas where Brad had rented a suite with a salon and two bedrooms for Johnny and Rudolph.
The hotel was brand new and the rooms were decorated in what the decorator must have thought was a Lone Star improvement of Second Empire. On a long table against the wall were ranged six bottles of bourbon, six of Scotch, six of gin and vodka, plus a bottle of vermouth, a filled ice bucket, dozens of bottles of Coke and soda water, a basket of lemons, a huge bowl of oversized fruit, and an array of glasses of all sizes.
“You’ll find beer and champagne in the refrigerator in the closet,” the assistant said. “If that’s your pleasure. You’re the guests of Mr. Knight.”
“We’re only staying overnight,” Rudolph said.
“Mr. Knight told me to make you gentlemen comfortable,” the assistant said. “You’re in Texas now.”
“If they had all this stuff at the Alamo,” Rudolph said, “they’d still be holding out.”
The assistant laughed politely and said that Mr. Knight was almost sure to be free by five P.M. It was a little past three now. “Remember,” he said, as he left, “if you gentlemen need anything, you call me at the office, hear?”
“Window dressing,” Johnny said, with a gesture for the suite and the table loaded with drink.
Rudolph felt a twinge of irritation with Johnny and his automatic reflex of suspicion in all situations.
“I have some calls to make,” Rudolph said. “Let me know when Brad arrives.” He went into his own room and closed the door.
He called his home first. He tried to call Jean at least three times each day. He had finally taken Gretchen’s advice and there was no liquor in the house, but Whitby was full of liquor stores and bars. No worry today. Jean was cheerful and bright. It was raining in Whitby. She was taking Enid to her first children’s party. Two months before, she had had an accident while driving drunk with Enid in the rear seat. The car had been demolished but aside from a few scratches neither of them had been hurt.
“What’s it like in Dallas?” she asked.
“All right for Texans, I suppose,” Rudolph said. “Intolerable for the rest of the human race.”
“When will you be back?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Hurry,” she said. He hadn’t told her why he and Johnny had had to come to Texas. Sober, she was depressed by duplicity.
He then called his office at the Town Hall and got his secretary on the phone. His secretary was a young man, a little effeminate, but usually serene. He wasn’t serene this afternoon. There had been a demonstration of students that morning in front of the offices of the Sentinel because of an editorial in favor of the continued existence of the ROTC at the university. Rudolph had approved the editorial himself, as it was moderate and had not advocated compulsory military training but said it should be open to those students who felt that they wanted a career in the armed forces or even those students who felt that in case of need they would like to be ready to defend their country. The sweet voice of reason had not helped to mollify the demonstrators. A rock had been thrown through a plate-glass window and the police had had to be called. President Dorlacker, of the university, had phoned, in a black mood, the secretary said, and had said, quote, If he’s the Mayor, why isn’t he at his desk? Unquote. Rudolph had not deigned to tell the secretary the nature of his business. Police Chief Ottman had been into the office, looking harassed. Something very, very important, Ottman had said. The Mayor was to get back to him soonest. Albany had telephoned twice. A Black delegation had presented a petition about something to do with a swimming pool.
“That’s enough, Walter,” Rudolph said, wearily. He hung up the phone and lay back on the baby-blue, slippery silk bedspread. He got ten thousand dollars a year for being Mayor of Whitby. And he donated the entire amount to charity. Public service.
He got up from the bed, maliciously pleased to see that his shoes had left a stain on the silk, and went into the living room. Johnny was sitting at a huge desk, going over his papers in his shirt sleeves. “There’s no doubt about it, Rudy,” Johnny said, “the sonofabitch has taken us for a ride.”
“Later, please,” Rudolph said. “I’m busy being a devoted and self-sacrificing public servant at the moment.” He poured a Coke over some ice and went to the window and looked out at Dallas. Dallas glittered in the baking sun, rising from its desolate plain like a senseless eruption of metal and glass, the result of a cosmic accident, inorganic and arbitrary.
Rudolph went back into his bedroom, and gave the number of the office of the Chief of Police in Whitby to the telephone operator. While waiting for the call to come through he looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a man who needed a vacation. He wondered when he was going to have his first heart attack. Although in America only businessmen were supposed to have heart attacks, and theoretically he had abandoned all that. Professors lived forever, he had read somewhere, and most generals.
When he got Ottman on the phone, Ottman sounded mournful. But he always sounded mournful. His métier, which was crime, offended him. Bailey, the former Chief of Police, whom Rudolph had put in jail, had been a hearty and happy man. Rudolph often regretted him. The melancholy of integrity.
“We’ve opened up a can of worms, Mr. Mayor,” Ottman said. “Officer Slattery picked up a Whitby freshman at eight-thirty this morning in a diner, smoking a marijuana cigarette. At eight-thirty in the morning!” Ottman was a family man who kept regular hours, and the mornings were precious to him. “The boy had one and one-third ounces of the drug on him. Before we booked him he talked and talked. He says in his dormitory there are at least fifty kids who smoke hash and marijuana. He says if
we go there we’ll find a pound of the stuff, at least. He’s got a lawyer and he’ll be out on bail by this evening, but by now the lawyer must have told a few people and what am I supposed to do? President Dorlacker called me a little while ago and told me to stay away from the campus, but it’s bound to be all over town and if I stay away from the campus what does that make me look like? Whitby University isn’t Havana or Buenos Aires, for Christ’s sake, it’s within the city limits and the law’s the law, for Christ’s sake.”
I picked a great day to come to Dallas, Rudolph thought. “Let me think for a minute, Chief,” he said.
“If I can’t go in there, Mr. Mayor,” Ottman said, “you can have my resignation as of this minute.”
Oh, God, Rudolph thought, honest men! Some day he was going to try marijuana himself and see what all the fuss was about. Maybe it would be just the thing for Jean.
“The lawyer for the kid is Leon Harrison’s lawyer, too,” Ottman said. “Harrison’s already been in here and asked what I intend to do. He’s talking about calling a special meeting of the board of trustees.”
“All right, Chief,” Rudolph said. “Call Dorlacker and tell him you’ve spoken to me and that I’ve ordered a search for eight o’clock tonight. Get a warrant from Judge Satterlee and tell your men to leave their clubs at home. I don’t want anybody hurt. The news’ll get around and maybe the kids’ll have the sense to get rid of the stuff before you hit the dormitory.”
“You don’t know kids these days, Mr. Mayor,” Ottman said sorrowfully. “They ain’t got the sense to wipe their ass.”
Rudolph gave him the number of the hotel in Dallas and told him to get back to him after the raid that evening. He hung up and finished his Coke. The lunch on the plane coming down had been dreadful and he had heartburn. He had foolishly drunk the two Manhattans the stewardess had plunked down on his tray. For some reason he drank Manhattans when he was in the air. Never on the ground. What significance there?
The phone rang. He waited for Johnny to pick it up in the other room, but it wasn’t ringing in the other room. “Hello,” he said.
“Rudy?” It was Gretchen’s voice.
“Yes.” There had been a coolness between them since she had told him that Jean was an alcoholic. Gretchen had been right, but that only made the coolness more pronounced.
“I called Jean at your house,” Gretchen said, “and she told me where you are. I hope I’m not disturbing you.” She sounded disturbed herself.
“No, no,” Rudolph lied. “I’m just dawdling idly in that well-known holiday spot, Dallas Les Bains. Where are you anyway?”
“Los Angeles. I wouldn’t have called you, but I’m out of my mind.”
Depend upon families to pick the right time and place to be out of their minds.
“What is it?” Rudolph asked.
“It’s Billy. Did you know he dropped out of school a month ago?”
“No,” Rudolph said. “He hardly ever whispered his secrets to me, you know.”
“He’s down in New York, living with some girl …”
“Gretchen, darling,” Rudolph said, “there are probably half a million boys Billy’s age in New York right this minute living with some girl. Be thankful he isn’t living with some boy.”
“Of course it isn’t that,” Gretchen said. “He’s being drafted, now that he’s not a student anymore.”
“Well, it might do him some good,” Rudolph said. “A couple of years in the Army might make a man of him.”
“You have a baby daughter,” Gretchen said bitterly. “You can talk like that. I have one son. I don’t think a bullet through his head is going to make a man of my son.”
“Now, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, “don’t make it so automatic. Induct the boy and two months later send the corpse home to mother. There are an awful lot of boys who serve their time and come home without a scratch.”
“That’s why I’m calling you,” Gretchen said. “I want you to make sure that he comes home without a scratch.”
“What can I do?”
“You know a lot of people in Washington.”
“Nobody can keep a kid out of the draft if he’s goofed school and he’s in good health, Gretchen. Not even in Washington.”
“I’m not so sure about that, either,” Gretchen said, “from some of the things I’ve heard and read. But I’m not asking you to try to keep Billy out of the Army.”
“Then what are you trying to get me to do?”
“Use your connections to make sure that once Billy is in, he doesn’t ever get sent to Viet Nam.”
Rudolph sighed. The truth was that he did know some people in Washington who could most probably do it and who would most probably do it if he asked them. But it was just the sort of petty, privileged, inside politicking that he despised the most. It offended his sense of rectitude and cast a shadow on his entire reason for going into public life. In the world of business it was perfectly normal for a man to come to you and ask you to place a nephew or a cousin in some favored position. Depending upon how much you owed the man or how much you expected to get from him in the future, or even how much you liked him, you helped the nephew or cousin, if you could, without thinking twice about it. But to use the power you had gained by the votes of people to whom you had promised impeccable representation and the sternest respect for the law to deliver your sister’s son from the threat of death while actively or tacitly approving of sending thousands of other boys the same age to their destruction was another thing.
“Gretchen,” he said over the slight buzz of wire between Dallas and Los Angeles, “I wish you could figure out some other way …”
“The only other person I know who might be able to do something,” Gretchen said, her voice rising, “is Colin Burke’s brother. He’s a general in the Air Force. He’s in Viet Nam right now. I bet he’d just fall all over himself with eagerness to keep Billy from hearing a shot fired.”
“Not so loud, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, holding the phone away from his ear. “I hear you perfectly well.”
“I’m going to tell you something.” She was shouting hysterically now. “If you don’t help, I’m coming to New York and I’m taking Billy with me to Canada or Sweden. And I’m going to make one hell of a loud noise about why I’m doing it.”
“Christ, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, “what’s wrong with you—are you approaching the menopause or what?”
He heard the phone slam at the other end. He got up slowly and went over to the window and looked out at Dallas. It didn’t look any better from the bedroom than it had from the salon.
Family, he thought. Without reasoning it out, he had always been the one to try to protect his family. He was the one who helped his father at the ovens and made the deliveries for the bakery; he was the one who had kept his mother alive. He was the one who had had the shabby dealings with detectives and the painful scene with Willie Abbott and had helped Gretchen with her divorce and befriended her second husband. He was the one who had made the money for Tom, so that he could escape the savage life he had fallen into. He was the one who had gone to Colin Burke’s funeral on the other edge of the continent to comfort his sister at the worst moments of her sorrow. He was the one who had taken the responsibility of taking Billy, ungrateful and derisive as he was, out of his school when Billy was suffering there; he was the one who had gotten Billy into Whitby, when the boy’s marks were hardly good enough to get him into a trade school. He was the one who had hunted down Tom at the Aegean Hotel, for his mother’s sake, and had learned all about West Fifty-third Street and put up the money for Schultz and made the arrangement with the lawyer for Tom’s reunion with his son and his divorce from a prostitute …
He had not asked for gratitude and, he thought wryly, he had gotten damn little for it. Well, he hadn’t done it for gratitude. He was honest with himself. He was conscious of the duties owed to himself and others and wouldn’t have been able to live comfortably with himself if he hadn’t fulfilled them.
He went over to the phone and asked for Gretchen’s number in California. When she answered, he said, “All right, Gretchen. I’ll stop over in Washington on the way North and see what I can do. I think you can stop worrying.”
“Thank you, Rudy,” Gretchen said in a small voice. “I knew you’d come through.”
Brad arrived at the suite at five-thirty. Texas sun and Texas liquor had made him ruddier than ever. Also heavier and more expansive. He was wearing a dark, summer-weight, striped suit and a ruffled blue shirt with huge pearl cufflinks. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport, but I hope my boy treated you all right.” He poured himself a slug of bourbon over ice and beamed at his friends. “Well, it’s about time you fellas came down and paid me a visit and took a look for yourselves at where your money’s coming from. We’re bringing in a new well and maybe tomorrow I’ll hire a plane and we’ll fly over and take a look at how it’s doing. And I’ve got tickets on the fifty-yard line for Saturday. The big game of the season. Texas against Oklahoma. This town’s got to be seen to be believed on that weekend. Thirty thousand happy drunks. I’m sorry Virginia’s not here to welcome you. She’ll be heartbroken when she hears you’ve been and gone. But she’s up North visiting her Pappy. I hear he’s not too well. I hope it’s nothing serious. I’m real fond of the old critter.”
It was too painful, the Western heartiness, the lush hospitality, the desperate rush of Southern blarney. “Cut it out, please, Brad,” Rudolph said. “For one thing, we know why Virginia’s not here. And it isn’t to visit her Pappy, as you describe him.” Two weeks ago Calderwood had come to Rudolph’s office and had told him that Virginia had left Brad for good because Brad had taken up with some movie actress in Hollywood and was commuting between Dallas and Hollywood three times a week and was having money troubles. It was after Calderwood’s visit that Rudolph had begun to suspect something and had called Johnny.
“Pardner,” Brad said, drinking, “I don’t know what all you’re talking about. I just talked to my wife and she said she expected to be coming home any day now and …”