"I don't know, Hotch."
"Oh, sure. The hunting season has already started."
"Yes, but... all the work I've got to do . . . listen, I left a bottle of Scotch in my room. Be sure to get it when you go back."
We were at the plane. "I'll wire you about Coops as soon as I get to London," I said.
"And let me know about the five hundred G's."
"Good-bye, Papa. Good trip."
"You really think it's all right about Abercrombie's? I'd sure as hell like to get my guns."
I assured him again.
When we got back to the hotel I went to his room to get the bottle of Scotch. It was on the writing desk. There were several pieces of Suecia stationery covered with handwritten lists of things to do, and on a page of typewriter paper he had written in neat diagonally ascending lines a paragraph which ultimately appeared in The Dangerous Summer.
"Nothing is as much fun any more as it was when we first drove up out of the grey mountains above Malaga onto the high country on the road to Madrid we drove so many times that year. Everything you read in the paper every morning makes you feel too bad to write. Probably the moral is you never should have got mixed up with bullfighters. I knew that once very well and I should not have had to learn it twice."
Chapter Fourteen
Rochester ♦ 1960
There was a telegram from Ernest waiting for me when I returned to New York on October 22nd, i960, from seeing Gary Cooper in London. It contained two items: Ernest had been told that Wald wanted the Nick Adams film badly; I was to inform "our guests, if arrived," that they had "no financial problems, no worries."
I could not understand the euphemism of "guests" in reference to Honor, who was coming to live in New York but had not yet arrived. As long ago as Cuba, Honor had discussed going to New York and it was Mary who had suggested that since Honor had been interested in the theater in Glasgow she might like to study at a good drama school, and Ernest had offered to pay her tuition.
I telephoned Ernest in Ketchum to tell him that everything was fine with Cooper and that we would draw up contracts in Hollywood. I started to say that Honor had not yet arrived, but he cut me off and said it was best not to use names on the telephone.
"I have just sent you a check for fifteen hundred dollars to apply on our guest's tuition at the dramatic academy," he said, "and for her living expenses in New York during her studies this semester. I do not want her to arrive in New York and not know that she has something to back her up in her studies. New York is a murderously expensive place to live. Not only room but to eat properly."
He said all this in a rather stilted voice, as if it were a formal announcement. I asked him how the hunting was; he said he had not yet had a chance to get out but that he would catch up when I arrived. I said I would probably not be able to go hunting with him because I had been traveling so much and had a backlog of work. This disturbed him very much. He said he had been counting on my coming and if I didn't it would be the first fall we hadn't hunted; he was so insistent and disturbed that I said I would get there if I possibly could. I promised to call him the moment "our guest" arrived.
Honor flew in from Madrid a few days later, and in the course of my telephone conversation with Ernest, while informing him that our guest was established at the Barbizon and had already gone to see the people at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the long-distance musical tones danced in and we were disconnected. When I got Ernest back on the phone a few moments later he was very agitated. He said we should not talk any more but that I positively had to get out there, the sooner the better.
"Wire me your date of arrival," he said. "Don't use the phone any more."
I subsequently received a letter from him asking me to find out whether anyone had spoken to Honor about what she was doing in New York, or how her trip was financed or anything else of that nature. His handwriting had changed: the letters were broader and less carefully formed; straight lines, as in the letter i, were open loops, and most of the fs were uncrossed.
The Portland Rose, scheduled to arrive at nine in the evening, arrived in Shoshone a few minutes early. I went into the bar across from the railroad station where we always had a drink before starting the long drive to Ketchum, knowing that Ernest would find me there.
He did. Duke MacMullen was with him. But instead of coming over to the bar to have a drink as usual, he asked me to finish mine as soon as I could and meet them outside. While he was speaking to me he kept looking nervously at the men at the bar and the people sitting at the tables. I left my drink and paid up and followed them out to Duke's car. Duke is a cheerful, outgoing man, but he was very subdued and had greeted me the way you greet a friend you meet at a funeral.
During the first part of the drive, to break the heavy silence, I started to tell Ernest about our project with Cooper (good progress), and the Twentieth Century-Fox situation (no progress beyond the hundred twenty-five thousand dollars), when Ernest interrupted me abruptly: "Vernon Lord wanted to come but I wouldn't let him."
"Why?"
"The Feds."
"What?"
"Feds. They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke."
"Well. . . there was a car in back of us out of Hailey . . ."
"That's why I wanted to get you out of the bar. Was afraid they'd make their move and pick us up there."
"But, Ernest, that car turned off at Picabo," Duke said.
"Probably took the back road. That would take them longer, so I wanted to be out of Shoshone when they got there."
"But, Papa," I said, trying to collect myself, "why are federal agents pursuing you?"
"It's the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They've bugged everything. That's why we're using Duke's car. Mine's bugged. Everything's bugged. Can't use the phone. Mail intercepted. What put me on to it was that phone call with you. You remember we got disconnected? That tipped their hand."
"But long-distance calls are often cut off. How can that mean . . . ?"
"I have a pal with the phone company in Hailey. He traced the disconnect for me. It was here, at this end, not the New York end."
"But what does that have to do with it?"
"For God's sake, Hotch, use your head—you placed the call, didn't you? A legit disconnect would be at your end. But the disconnect was here, in Hailey, where our phone calls are relayed. That means the Feds were monitoring the call here and that caused it to cut out." He was very agitated. I settled back into the rear darkness of the car. There were no other cars in either direction and Duke was driving very fast. I wanted to ask Ernest why he thought he was being tailed and bugged and why Vernon couldn't come to the station, but I just sat in the darkness, watching the white corridor of the headlights, feeling dispirited.
We rode for miles in absolute silence; I thought Ernest had fallen asleep, but suddenly he asked: "What did our guest say? Anybody talk to her? Anybody come around asking questions?"
"No, no one."
"They call her in about her passport?"
"No."
"Nobody from Immigration called her in or talked to her?"
"Not a soul."
"I'll be a son-of-a-bitch if they haven't bought her off."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean she's lying. She's gone over to them."
"Oh, that's impossible. I'm sure no one has—"
"She's turned state's evidence. Let's write her off and forget it. I don't want to hear any more about her."
We turned off the main highway into Ketchum. It was November 14th and there had not yet been any snow to attract skiers, so the streets were empty. Ketchum only comes out of hibernation when the lifts at Sun Valley start working after the first good winter snow. There was one bar open and the diner had a few customers, but the rest of the town was dark.
As Duke turned onto the street that would take me to the Christiana Motor Lodge, Ernest said in a very quiet voice, "Duke, pull over. Cut your lights."
Ernest rolled down his win
dow and peered across the street at the bank. It was lighted and you could plainly see two men working in back of a counter. Ernest had his head partially out of the window, fixedly watching them. Then he carefully looked up and down the street and inspected the dark store fronts adjoining the bank. He rolled up his window and Duke turned on his lights and drove on. "What is it?" I asked.
"Auditors. They've got them working over my account. When they want to get you, they really get you."
"But how do you know about those men? That it's your account?"
"Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it's my account." "But what have you done? What will they find?" "Hotch, when they want to get you, they get you." We had pulled into the Christiana, which adjoins Chuck Atkinson's supermarket and is also owned by him. Duke helped me carry my bags to my room while Ernest waited in the car.
"Hotch, you've got to do something," Duke said desperately. "Nobody's doing anything and let me tell you, somebody has got to do something."
"But what can / do, Duke?"
"You see how he is. Everybody whispers about it, but. . . Jesus!"
When we got back to the car, Ernest asked me to come up to the house in the morning as soon as I could for breakfast. "I'll be watching for you," he said. "I'll come early," I said.
Those first few days in Ketchum, Ernest's close friends sought me out, one after the other, and confided their worries and fears about him. He had changed so. He seemed depressed. He refused to go hunting. He carped about old friends. He no longer invited a Friday night group to watch the fights. He looked bad.
In the beginning I naively tried to deal with Ernest in a straightforward and logical way, as a month before Bill and I had dealt with his anxiety over his excess baggage. But he refused to talk either in his house or in my room at the Christiana because both were bugged, so we put on our jackets and walked a little way up the hill beside his house, along the bank of the rushing Wood River, until we found a log to sit on. Ernest began by repeating most of the things he had said the night before. The Feds were after him because of Honor. The Feds were immigration agents and they were getting the goods on him. For what? Impairing the morals of a minor. I pointed out that Honor and he had never been together in the United States—only in Spain and Cuba—so United States Immigration could not possibly sustain any such charge against him, even if it were true, but he just got up and began walking around the log agitatedly, saying that she had just functioned as his secretary and there was absolutely no truth in the charge but they were out to get him and rather than go through any more of this he would turn himself in and get it over with. I led him back over the illogic of his surmisal, but the more I tried to dissuade him, the more irritated he became with me for challenging the danger that he was sure threatened him; I finally realized that he was using the phrase "impairing the morals of a minor," not for what it specifically meant, but for its menacing sound. The phrase could just as well have been "murder with intent to kill" or "with malice aforethought," almost any words that could be strung into the evil noose that the Feds were attempting to slip around his neck.
He wanted to know whether I had been questioned by the immigration agents about Honor and him, and when I said I had not he gave me a look, his face totally disbelieving, and my stomach was hit by the awful realization that in Ernest's eyes I too had now become part of the conspiracy.
Ernest sat down on the log again. He wanted to know whether, as he had asked me to, I had told his lawyer about declaring his four-thousand-dollar winnings on the Johansson fight. I said I had and that it was being included in his return. "Well, it's too late," he said gloomily. "You saw those auditors at the bank. They're on to it." I said that there could not possibly be an infraction, since this was the proper year in which to report the winnings, and since there was more than enough in his tax account to cover it, the men at the bank could not possibly be interested in that. Ernest said summarily that I was wrong—gambling winnings had to be reported the moment they were received and he was definitely in arrears and the evidence had been turned over to the Feds. Then he warned me that Vernon Lord was not to be told any of this because Vernon was a great guy and had taken very good care of him and he did not want to get him into any trouble. That was why, he said, he had not let Vernon come to the station to meet me.
"But, Papa," I said, "Vernon is your doctor. His communications with you are privileged. You don't have to worry about him." He said he did have to worry about him because a doctor is not privileged in a federal court. I decided to make my stand on this. Ernest knew that I had practiced law for a brief time, so I attempted to force him to see that at least in this one matter his anxiety was unfounded. The more I documented the fact that doctors are as privileged in federal courts as anywhere else, the more Ernest battled me, his arguments veering from allegations about the federal courts, as if they were Star Chambers, to attacks upon my knowledge of the law and, eventually, my fidelity to him. But I did not give ground. I did not try to mollify him. We were both off the log, pacing about. Finally he turned on me and said in deadly accusation, "Let's get it straight, Hotch. Either you make me out to be a liar, or a crazy—which is it?"
His head was thrust forward; his chin was unsteady and his face drained of color. "I'm sorry," I said. "Let's have a walk and forget it." We started back to the house.
I tried to get Ernest to go hunting, but every day he had some flimsy or imagined obligation that kept him from getting out; having to write a single letter to his lawyer or publisher was reason enough. I felt that if I could get him out of the house and away from his worries, doing one of the things he enjoyed the most, it might improve his entire temperament; that the beauty of the autumn fields and the excitement of stalking the big brilliant birds might loosen him up so we could get through the tenseness that was blocking everything out. Eventually I did get him to go on a pheasant shoot but its dismal conclusion convinced me that it should be my last effort.
I had assembled all his favorite hunting pals: Bud Purdy, Pappy Arnold, Don Anderson and Chuck Atkinson. You need at least that many guns to hunt pheasant in the open field properly. Pheasant was scarce that fall but we drove down to Picabo, where Bud Purdy had a farmer friend who had given him permission to hunt his fields. It was huge acreage, some of it containing dried corn stalks, which, as we knew from our previous experiences, often attract pheasant.
When we reached our destination and got all our gear ready and our guns loaded and started over the barbed wire that bordered the field, Ernest balked. Going into that field was trespassing, he said, and he didn't want to be shot. In addition to the fact that Bud knew the owner and had talked to him, it was also the custom in that wide-open country that fields could be hunted unless they were posted, and these were not posted. But Ernest said he could not afford to let the Feds get anything else on him. He wanted us to go ahead while he waited in the car. It took us a half hour to coax him onto the field, but even then he remained desultory.
Pappy Arnold took the first shots at a pair of cocks that broke a little out of range; Ernest insisted on waiting to see if anyone showed up to protest the shots, and again it took coaxing reassurances to get him moving. We were fanned out in an arc, about thirty yards apart, Ernest holding down the left wing, and had been combing the fields for almost an hour without results when three absolutely wonderful cock pheasant suddenly winged up not more than ten yards from Ernest's position. It was a hunter's dream and with Ernest's ability to reload quickly he had a good chance at a triple; he flicked off the safety and snapped shut the breech in one move as he snugged the knurled butt of the gun into his shoulder and cheek, now swinging with the birds, that graceful and effortless fluidity of his locking the gun into the flight of the cocks.
But he did not fire.
The birds rose fast and disappeared. "I'll be goddamned if
I'll get myself shot as a trespasser for a couple of lousy birds," he said, breaking the breech and removing the s
hells.
We all stood there for a few minutes, not able to say anything; then Bud suggested that we hike to the farmhouse, which was a tiny roof on the horizon, and recheck about the permission. Ernest was agreeable to that. Nothing flew up on the way there, but I don't think any of us would have shot if it had.
Bud knocked on the kitchen door and the wife of the farmer greeted Bud, who introduced Ernest and the rest of us. She said her husband had gone to the market in Twin Falls but that it was perfectly all right to hunt the fields. She suggested an old corn field not far from the house.
When we started again, spread across that corn field, a single bird broke out in front of Chuck and he put him down on the rise. Ernest went over to look at the dead pheasant. He said he was still spooked about hunting there because it was one thing to get permission from the farmer's wife but what if the farmer came driving in and saw them shooting up his field, mightn't he just take a shot at them as trespassers? Ernest said emphatically that he thought we shouldn't hunt any more but should wait at the farmhouse until the farmer got back.
I felt beaten by an accumulation of hopelessness. Not just this afternoon, but the days before, and the fall and summer before that; I had reached the moment of facing up to serious reality about Ernest. I did not want him to see my thoughts, so I turned my head down and looked at the desiccated soil; the others were also helplessly silent, except for Bud, a gentle man, who took over and said, "To tell you the truth, Ernest, there aren't enough birds in there to bother about. Let's drive over to my place and have some cider."
That was the evening that Ernest had agreed, out of consideration for Mary's long kitchen duty, to let me take them to the newly opened Christiana Restaurant for dinner. This was the first time Ernest had been out of the house in the evening since his return. It turned out much the same as our last restaurant venture at the Callejon.
Ernest had one cocktail and one glass of wine with his meal (a regimen he was strictly adhering to); he seemed at ease as he pleasurably recounted some amusing stories about his days in the old Ketchum when there was gambling and it was as wide open as a gold-rush town, when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence and said we had to pay up and go. Poor Mary, who had been so enjoying her evening out, her meal only half-eaten, asked what was wrong. Ernest gave his head a little nod toward the bar. "Those two FBI men at the bar," Ernest mumbled. "That's what's wrong." Mary asked how he could possibly know they were FBI men and Ernest told her to keep her voice down. "Don't you think I know an FBI man when I see one?" he said. "We've got to get out of here, Hotch."
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