Benchley, Peter - Novel 06

by Q Clearance (v2. 0)

  "No safe haven." Evelyn smiled.

  Burnham took the phone. "Burnham."

  "Sergeant Pingrey here, sir. He's out. The Navy should have him in about ten minutes."

  "Thanks, Sergeant. You've been a big help."

  "My pleasure, sir."

  The President was leaning back in his high-backed, spring-loaded leather chair, his feet propped up on the desk, the phone cradled on his shoulder, picking at his cuticles with a letter opener. At the sound of the door opening, he snapped his head around and glowered, but when he saw Burnham he smiled and waved him in.

  "The problem is," the President said into the phone, "he tests as if he was a damn Ubangi. I've got to say I know he's smarter than his test scores, but I'm gonna need reinforcement. I need you to promise you'll make him an intern next summer. You don't have to do it. Just tell me you'll do it, and back me up if anybody asks. . . . No . . . The damn place doesn't take a dime of federal money, or I'd have 'em by the balls. . . . Okay. ... I appreciate it. Thanks."

  He hung up the phone, swung his feet to the floor and stood up. "Children," he said to Burnham. "Children are like pancakes: You should always throw out the first one."

  Burnham smiled and thought: I'll tell Sarah. That touching thought will secure the President a place in her heart.

  “Well?" said the President. "Where are we, Tim?"

  "He's out, sir. No fireworks. The Navy will pick him up in a couple of minutes."

  "Damn!" The President grinned. He came around his desk, grabbed Burnham's hand and shook it. With his other hand, he squeezed Burnham's shoulder. "Damn! How'd you do it?"

  Burnham tried to appear casual, matter-of-fact, but he couldn't suppress a smile, couldn't contain the adrenaline that flooded his arteries. This, he thought, must be how Doug Flutie felt after he threw that 64-yard touchdown pass in the last four seconds of the game against Miami. Sheer, unalloyed pride. "I . . . talked him down, sir."

  "I thought he wouldn't talk to us."

  "Yes, sir. Well ... I ..." Don't tell him the whole truth, don't make it seem too easy, don't dilute your triumph. "It took some work, but I got to him."

  "Damn! That's delicate stuff. You done that before?"

  "Here and there." Burnham looked at his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets. "I—"

  "Never mind. I don't want to know. You did it, son. That's what counts with me. Results."

  "Yes, sir. Ah . . . you should know, Mr. President, I had to promise him a couple of things. Nothing too—"

  "Look here, Tim." The President squeezed his shoulder harder. "I don't care if you had to promise him a shiny new galvanized dick."

  "Not quite, sir." Burnham chuckled.

  "You got us out of a nasty fracas down there, so whatever commitments you had to make, I'll honor 'em."

  When that requisition comes in, Burnham thought, I believe I would like to be in Fiji.

  "Now, Tim ..." The President led Burnham toward his desk. "I want you to help me with a little personal problem."

  "Of course, sir."

  The President explained the quandary he was in regarding his nephew. The boy was not qualified to go to Amherst, should never have applied to Amherst, should have been content to attend a state university or one of those third-rate party schools named after an obscure Civil War colonel. But

  the boy's mother's father had gone to Amherst, and since the boy's mother—"a stuck-up, contrary bitch, all she likes to do is come here and suck up champagne with the Brits and the Frogs"—worshiped her father and believed that Amherst could compensate for whatever qualities had been omitted from her son's genetic makeup, she had insisted that the boy apply to Amherst.

  "I don't care if they pitch him out after half an hour," the President said. "That's no reflection on me. They all go bad someday. But if he can't even get in! Shit, if Brooke Shields can get into Princeton, my nephew can damn well get into Amherst."

  He had pulled out all possible stops. His problem was with the letter he had agreed to write on the boy's behalf. It had to be laudatory but not absurd, general but full of specifics, brief but comprehensive.

  "Would you take a shot at it for me, Tim?"

  "Of course, sir."

  The President handed him a yellow legal pad and MacGregor's draft of the letter, which appeared to have been attacked by pencil-wielding termites. It was scratched, torn, covered by lines, Xs and such exclamations as "Horse shit!”

  Burnham turned toward the door.

  "No! No!" the President said, taking his arm and guiding him to the couch. "You sit right here. I'll make a couple of calls. I've gotta call a little girl in Nebraska who saved her dog from drowning. Or maybe it was her brother. Maybe it was the dog who saved her brother. Whatever.'' He returned to his desk, flung himself into his chair and, over his intercom, told Evelyn to place the call to Nebraska.

  Burnham hummed to himself to blot out the President's voice as he studied MacGregor's draft of the letter. It was a serviceable letter, but obviously written by someone who did not know the President's nephew. It was full of phrases like "inquiring mind," "eager to learn" and "significant contribution to the Amherst community." It said nothing, in about 250 carefully chosen words.

  Again Burnham was impressed by the President's acuity. He could spout empty rhetoric, sign vapid letters, ooze with unfelt treacle—as long as nothing was at stake. But when substance mattered, he could spot its absence as quickly (as he once told Cobb) "as a fly finds shit."

  Burnham began to scribble, as in the background the President lavished praise on the Nebraska girl, who had begun the conversation as "a brave and selfless child" but had by now evolved into "a shining example of the kind of dedicated, fearless Americans this country will be counting on as we forge ahead to face the challenges of the twenty-first century.''

  Under Burnham's pen, the President's nephew was being transformed. No longer was he "eager to learn"; instead, he had "begun to find himself after a painful growth spurt" (the miserable test scores had to be acknowledged, however tacitly). If the lad had neglected his studies, it was so he could spend time at the President's side, earning a "lunch-pail degree" in the business of government (as far as Burnham knew, the kid had never been in Washington). What had most impressed the President, however, was a time when his nephew had broken his ankle and, defying doctor's orders, had insisted on joining a protest march against rent-gouging by slumlords in his home town (a complete fabrication: Burnham suspected that if the kid knew what slumlords were, he applauded them for being pretty clever).

  Burnham read over the new paragraphs. Too much, he concluded. An utter fiction. An insult to the President to imagine that he would endorse such a patent lie.

  "Well, Tim?" The President stood over him, hand extended. "What've we got?"

  "Oh! I . . . I'm not ... I don't think you could read it, sir." Burnham tried to crumple the paper, but the President plucked it from his hand.

  "No time for modesty, Tim," he said.

  The President began to read the letter, squinting at the hastily written words, speaking the sentences silently to himself.

  Now you've tom it, Burnham thought. He was sweating again. His stomach complained at the sudden onset of anxiety and, vengefully, fired a fart that was silenced by the thick upholstery of the couch.

  "This, Tim ..." The President looked at Burnham. His face was solemn. He held the piece of paper in one hand and slapped it rhythmically with the other. "This is what I call writing."

  "Wh . . . oh . . . thank you, sir."

  "This is . . . it. This is a portrait of my nephew."

  "It is? I mean ..." For what reason Burnham wasn't sure, but he felt compelled to disclaim his own lie. "I was worried it might be a little . . . exaggerated."

  "Not a bit. It's true, that's what's important. Facts aren't important, as long as they support the truth." The President smiled. “ 'Lunch-pail degree.' I'd forgotten that. Damn right!"

  Forgotten it? Burnham thought. How do you forget so
mething that never was?

  The President dropped the piece of paper on his desk, turned and sat on the comer of the desk. He said, "You've been a big help to me the past couple of days."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Now, about this business with Andrei ..."

  The door to the private office opened, and Epstein hurried in, followed by Duggan.

  "Damn it, Mario!" the President said. "You forgotten how to knock?"

  "Sir?" Epstein stopped. "I'm sorry. I—" He saw Burnham then, but he did not acknowledge him.

  "Never mind. What is it?"

  Epstein waved a telex. "This just came in. He's out. We've got him."

  "Who?"

  "The lunatic in Havana. The Navy's got him."

  "Old news, Mario, old news."

  "Sir?"

  The President gestured at Burnham. "Tim got him out, just like he said he would."

  Epstein looked at Burnham. His eyes were as cold as a crocodile's. "I see."

  "Jolly good," said Duggan, and he saluted Burnham with his pipe.

  Epstein scowled at Duggan as if the man had a booger on his lip.

  A buzzer sounded on the President's desk. He snatched up the phone and said, "What?" He listened for a few seconds. "Oh. Okay. Be right there." He hung up and said, "What the hell's a Young President?"

  "Sir?" Burnham wondered if he was being asked a riddle.

  "They tell me I've got to go speak to some group called the Young Presidents. Don't they know there's no such thing as a young President? Soon as you take the oath of office, you're as old as the hills and twice as mossy."

  "It's a youth group, sir," Epstein said. "Movers and shakers."

  "Plotters and schemers, more likely. Did you write it, Tim?"

  "No, sir."

  "Damn. Well, I'll go spin 'em a yam or two." The President patted Burnham on the back, and, ignoring Epstein and Duggan, marched out of his office.

  Nobody else moved. Burnham didn't know what was expected of him, so, with a feeble attempt at a polite smile in Epstein's direction, he turned to go.

  "Who are you?" Epstein might as well have shouted, "Halt!"

  Burnham stopped and turned his head. "Nobody."

  Epstein nodded. "You know it, and I know it. How come the President doesn't know it?"

  Burnham said (and immediately wished he hadn't), "He must be an extraordinary judge of character."

  "Listen, you ..." Epstein took a step toward him. "I'm gonna find out who the hell you are."

  "Feel free. I have no secrets."

  "I don't trust you," Epstein said, "and I don't like you."

  "And I don't blame you." Burnham was wearying of Epstein's bluster. "Now, if you've finished threatening me, I'll be on my way." He nodded to Duggan, who raised his pipe in civil reply, and walked out into Evelyn Witt's office, closing the door behind him.

  Evelyn was typing. When she saw Burnham, she picked up a sheet of yellow legal paper and held it between her fingertips as if it were a dead mouse. "This," she said, ''this one is going to be sent to Amherst College? On White House stationery? Who is this supposed to be about?"

  "It contains a cosmic truth, Evelyn," Burnham said, grinning. "The President saw it right away. Our problem is, we can't see the forest for the trees. That's why we're not President."

  "If I didn't know you so well, Timothy," Evelyn said with a bemused look, "I'd say you were becoming a dangerous man."

  Dyanna was preparing to leave for the day, a ritual that took her from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending on the weather, for she regarded her daily emergence into public view with as much care and concern as if she were Laurette Taylor making an entrance in The Glass Menagerie: First appearances formed an audience's impression of a character. If it was windy, she sprayed her hair; rainy, she covered it with a scarf; sunny, she chose one shade of makeup; cloudy, another shade.

  Her mirror was propped on her desk, and she was creating a self-portrait in lip-liner.

  "I owe you an apology," Burnham said.

  "For what?"

  Sly minx, he thought. Trying to make believe it didn't happen. Get angry! Tell me off! Then it won't gnaw at you.

  "My impetuous assault upon your person."

  "Don't be silly, it was nothing." She stretched her mouth.

  But you won't forget it, will you? "No, really, I do apologize."

  "Mr. Burnham ..." She looked at him now. "It wasn't like it was the greatest kiss I've ever had."

  Good, he thought, there you go. "No. But it was stupid of me."

  "Yes," she said, and closed the subject with, "we all make mistakes."

  The floor of Burnham's office was littered with papers. He gathered them into a pile and dropped them beside the shredder. Before he left, he would separate the sensitive papers from the routine and would shred them. If he tried to shred everything, page by page, he'd be there till midnight.

  Before he left? Where was he going to go? Back to the Y, to watch Dynasty in the common room with a Fuller Brush man and a couple of out-patients?

  No. He was going home. Now was the time to play his trump with Sarah.

  He dialed his home number. It rang four times before Sarah picked up.

  "Hi, Sarah," he said cheerily.

  "Hello." She sounded as effusive as a slug.

  "How are you?"

  "All right."

  She was not going to make it easy for him. He spoke quickly. "I talked to Cobb. He promises me he'll launch a full-scale investigation into that bug m your car. He can't believe the Administration had anything to do with it—neither can I, frankly—but if it did, he'll get you an answer."

  "Get me an answer? What about you? Don't you care?"

  "Of course! I just meant—"

  "No, you don't. You just want to come home."

  "Hey—"

  "You think I'd believe anything Warner Cobb told you?"

  "What would you believe, then?"

  "I'd believe it if they admitted it. Fat chance. Look, Timothy, I've got to go . . ."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Out."

  Hurry up, Burnham told himself. "I saved your precious cousin Toddy Thatcher today."

  "Toddy? From what?"

  "From being blown up, that's all." Burnham gave her an abbreviated version of the Toddy/Teresa saga. At the end, he said, "I really felt proud. I did something good, for once."

  He waited for her praise.

  "Timothy," she said, "you're pathetic."

  "What?"

  "This fairy tale and a dollar will get you a ride on the Metro."

  "You don't believe me? Call Evelyn Witt. Call the President! I spent the whole afternoon in his office. He thinks I'm terrific."

  "He has no taste. Goodbye, Timothy."

  "God damn it!" Burnham shouted. "I'm coming home."

  "I thought you might say that," she said evenly, "so I changed the locks."

  "You what?” Sonja. This was a Sonja trick. Sarah even sounded like Sonja.

  "Goodbye."

  "No! Wait!" But she hung up.

  Congratulations, he thought. Welcome home.

  He looked up. Dyanna was standing at the outer door. She had to have heard the entire conversation.

  "I understand," she said. "Now." She pulled open the door.

  Burnham rested his fist on his forehead. Wonderful. Now she thinks I kissed her because my marriage is breaking up. I couldn't help myself. I was propelled by something deep.

  Like mortal loneliness. Or existential sadness. Or terminal hominess.

  When he looked up again, Dyanna still had not left. She was standing in the open doorway, talking to a black cleaning woman, who was pointing at him.

  “It's all right," he said to Dyanna. "Let her in." He stood up and walked around his desk. "I've only got one more call to make, and I can do it from your desk."

  Dyanna stepped back, and the cleaning woman shoved her cart forward with such vehemence that it rose up onto two wheels as it rounded the come
r into Burnham's office. She was in her fifties, Burnham guessed, and she had a pronounced limp. Her hair flew out from her head, and her eyes were glazed.

  Silly woman thinks she's Mario Andretti, he decided. She looks wired. But then, if I had to push a cart around the E.O.B. all day, I think I'd stick something up my nose, too.

  As Burnham left his office and headed for Dyanna's desk, he noticed that as soon as she was alone the cleaning woman seemed to calm down. She was still breathing heavily, but she began meticulously to dust around every picture in the office, only occasionally glancing his way.

  He rooted through his pockets until he found the slip of paper. He stared at it for a long moment, sighed and ^aid to himself. What the hell . . .

  Then he dialed Eva.

  NINE

  The dustrag was a metronome in Ivy's hand. Flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flop, it danced over the top of the dark wood frame of the old painting of the square-rigged sailing ship. Her hand lived independent of her, powered by an internal battery that she couldn't turn off. Her feet shuffled in rhythm with her hand, sending pennants of pain up her bad leg. The pain was curious: She knew it was there, but she was detached from it, didn't seem to care about it.

  Her eyes wandered out into the secretary's office and landed on the Burnham fellow, sitting at the secretary's desk and cooing to some honey on the phone. She sent him a thought that said, Scram: Don't you have anything better to do?

  She had been waiting for hours to get into this office. At first she had been so anxious that she prowled the halls and cleaned everything in sight. Suppose she couldn't get any more papers for Mr. Pym and Mr. Pym lost interest and wouldn't get Jerome his diploma? Jerome would fall in with a rough crowd and start mugging people, and he'd pick the wrong dude to mug, and the dude would blow him away. The thoughts made her more anxious, and the anxiety generated more bad thoughts, and soon she was flitting around the halls like a hummingbird trying to distract herself, with the result that she tripped on a doorstep and pulled something in her bad leg. She took one of Mr. Pym's pills, and not only did the pain fade but the anxiety did, too, so she took another one.

  After an hour or so, she felt bathed in confidence and control, and whereas, before, she had stayed away from this