Korolenko's curving driveway, protected from the wind by a high wall and a double row of poplars, had collected enough sleet to cause the taxi to slide as it braked to a stop. Cotton stood for a second, hunched in his coat, admiring the house. It was a graceful place, warm and dignified, fitting its occupant.
Korolenko met him at the door, hung his coat in the entryway closet and ushered him through the dark living room. In the light from the door to the den, the bigger room looked formal and unused and somehow lonely. No logs in the fireplace, no magazines on the coffee table, every chair exactly in place. Cotton remembered that Mrs. Korolenko had died five or six years ago. Did the old man live all alone in this big house?
"If you haven't eaten," Korolenko said, "I can get you something like a sandwich. But Mrs. Ellis is always off on Tuesdays. Goes to visit her sister."
"Thanks," Cotton said. "I've eaten."
"A drink then? You still take a sip of bourbon and no water?" He waved Cotton toward a deep leather-covered chair.
"You've got quite a memory, Governor. It's been three years since I've been here."
Korolenko poured, his back to Cotton. "Too long. Much too long. But I even remember you don't have that uncivil prejudice against whiskey in the morning."
The den was a startling contrast to the living room. Here, obviously, the old man lived. A fire burned in the grate. Sections of the Morning Journal, yesterday's Tribune and the Capitol-Press were scattered on the worn sofa and the table beside it. A coffee cup sat on a Newsweek atop the television set. A chair beside Cotton's was stacked with bound editions of county-by-county voting tabulations from past elections. The walls were lined with framed photographs of bird dogs and paintings of ducks; the parts of a disassembled shotgun, oily rags and a cleaning kit littered Korolenko's big desk.
Korolenko delivered the drink and waited in easy silence while Cotton sipped.
The whiskey was good, warming the mouth and the throat and, finally, the stomach. Cotton hadn't realized how badly he had needed it. It had been a hell of a long night.
"Drink up and I'll fix you another. You look shot."
"Thanks. Maybe later." Cotton paused, looking for a way to start. What he had to say would be bad news for the old man. It could only reflect on the Roark administration, on Korolenko's wing of the Democratic party.
Behind his desk, Korolenko polished a part of the dismantled trigger assembly, put on his bifocals, and inspected his work. Cotton took another slow sip of the bourbon, savoring the warmth and the comfortable silence.
"I saw in the Trib that you're on sick leave," Korolenko said. "I hope it's nothing serious." He smiled at Cotton. "If Catherine was still here, she'd be having us both saying prayers for your recovery."
"It's nothing serious. In fact I'm not really on leave at all. That's part of what I want to talk to you about." He put down his glass. "What I want to do is tell you about some bad business in the Highway Department, and in the Park Commission, and maybe in the Insurance Commission. Then I'm going to remind you that I once ran an errand for you. And then I'm going to ask you to return the favor by backgrounding me on what you guess is behind this bad business."
"You don't have to remind me I owe you something. I don't forget." Korolenko's smile was gone now. "But I hope this business isn't too bad. There's an election coming up."
"Here's what you've got. You've got bid rigging in the Quality Experiment highway projects. You've got one contractor getting these special jobs. Then you've got change orders increasing his high-bid items and reducing the parts of the job where he bid low. Then you've got..."
"Who's the contractor?"
"Reevis-Smith."
The old man's frail hands were still at work on the shotgun parts-polishing cloth on metal. But his eyes were on Cotton, his face totally intent. "Yes," he said. "It would be Reevis-Smith."
"That doesn't amount to a lot of money. Not the change orders. Where it gets big is in cement." Cotton explained how the cement shipments were diverted into the park improvement, into the Wit's End projects. And then he outlined his suspicions that another dimension of the affair involved Midcentral Surety, which bonded all of the companies. "I don't have that pinned down yet," Cotton said. "But I'm sure it's there."'
"So that part's speculative," Korolenko said. "How much of the rest of it is guesswork?"
"None of it. Except for Midcentral I've got a lock on everything I told you about. It's solid."
"So you plan to print it." It wasn't a question. It had a toneless quality, a sort of despair that touched Cotton and then touched off a conditioned alertness coupled instantly with a sense of self-disgust. He looked down at his coffee cup, away from Korolenko's still face.
"Yes," Cotton said. "The people have a right to..."
"Let's save that," Korolenko said. It was a tone Cotton had never heard him use before. "Have you thought about the implications if you print it now? The timing? The effect on the election?"
"Sure, I've thought about it. It won't do Paul Roark any good. I can see that. But maybe it won't hurt much." He wanted Korolenko to understand. "That's why I'm here. I want you to tell me what's behind it. What the implications are."
"Don't you see them?"
"I see it with the Roark campaign," Cotton said. He was leaning forward, his voice earnest. "We nail corruption in the Highway Department and probably in the Park Commission. Roark reacts immediately by firing his commission chairman, rooting some people out of the department, cleaning house over in parks. He calls a series of press conferences. He gets the Attorney General to investigate. On one hand, he's hurt by it at first. But in a week or so, he's the man on the white horse. He's Mr. Clean again, brushing out the stables."
"Is that what you think?"
"It makes sense," Cotton said. "What I need to know from you is another sort of implication. Flowers isn't the brains behind this business. Who is? And where did the money come from to take over Reevis-Smith? Where did the money come from to set this up? That's the important question."
Korolenko ignored it. "You see Paul being Mr. Clean again," he said. He got up, stiffly, unlocked the glass door on the gun case behind the desk and replaced the reassembled shotgun in the rack between an automatic with a choke on its barrel, and an old-fashioned-looking pump-action duck gun. "What do you think of Paul?" he asked. "How well do you know him?"
They were not casual questions. Cotton thought before he answered. "Not as well as I know you, I guess. And I like him. I respect him. He's a good man."
"Better than Eugene Clark?"
Cotton laughed. "I'd say that."
The weight of the glass gun-case door was swinging it slowly open. It reflected now Joe Korolenko's profile, a fragile skull covered with taut translucent skin. In the reflection, Cotton noticed that part of the lobe of Korolenko's left ear was missing. He had never noticed that before.
"So we'll start with that, then," the old man said. "Roark's better." He walked around the desk and stood looking out at the rattling sleet. "It would be tolerable if Clark believed in anything. I can respect a man who is conservative. Who believes it. You need the Tafts and the Dirksens, and even the Goldwaters." Korolenko was talking to the window, his hands clasped behind him. "But Clark believes in nothing but opportunism. Did you notice his vote on the forestry conservation bill last week? He voted with the Republicans. A lot of honorable men voted that way because they think it will bring the price of lumber down. But Eugene Clark voted because the Hefrons and the Federal Citybank are up to their ears in papermill investments."
"Hefrons?"
"Richard Hefron, Randolph Hefron," Korolenko said. "And their kinfolks. They own that new shopping center here, and Commercial Credit, and a lot of small loan interests, and real estate, and now big interests with Citybank in paper and lumber." Korolenko turned away from the window, hands still behind him. "Or take his vote on that second phase of the disarmament treaty. Clark tells the Democratic grassroots bunch that he'll probably be for it and
three days later he has lunch with some people in Washington and they remind Clark that Citybank had underwritten all those defense-industry bond issues. Anyway, Clark votes no." Korolenko turned now, away from the window, looking at Cotton. "That's always been the story with Clark since he was the youngest man in the state Legislature. When it counts, Clark's vote has always been where Clark benefits and to hell with philosophy." Korolenko paused. "He's talking to the dentists at lunch today. He'll be conservative. Next week he speaks at the AFL-CIO meeting. He'll be liberal."
Cotton was uncomfortable under Korolenko's eyes. "No argument," he said. "Roark's better."
"Look at Roark then. City Commission chairman at twenty-nine. Broke the hold of the real-estate people on zoning and planning. Straightened out the Police Department and got rid of the shakedown artists. And on the State Board of Finance he's the one who forced the holding banks to pay interest on state general-fund deposits. And he's..." Korolenko shook his head. "I don't have to recite what you already know. Roark's a dedicated Jeffersonian. He's..."
"O.K.," Cotton said. "I buy it. I like him. I like his politics. But I don't let whom I like show in how I do my job."
"Goddamn it. Listen to me. Only a fool can be neutral. You're not a fool. I don't think you're a fool."
"Look," Cotton said. "You listen." He was tired, exhausted, and feeling the bourbon and his rising anger. "You fault Gene Clark for having no political philosophy. Well, I've got one. I believe if you give them the facts the majority of the people are going to pull down the right lever on the voting machine. A lot of them are stupid. And a lot of them don't give a damn. And some of them have closed minds and won't believe anything they don't want to believe. But enough of them care so if you tell them what's going on they make the right decisions." Cotton paused, thinking how to say it. "So I don't believe in playing God," he said. "I don't buy this elitism crap. I don't go for suppressing news because the so-called common man won't know how to handle it. I don't..."
"Sure," Korolenko said. "Sure. But in this case that leaves a question. You just print part of the facts. Sometimes there's a difference between facts and truth. Here you show them the dirt you've uncovered in the Roark administration. But you're not going to say: `On the other hand...' You're not going to say, `But this mess is relatively minor. Because Eugene Clark has sold out to Citybank. Because the Senior Senator doesn't represent you people, he represents only the financial interests which benefit him.' You won't say that because that's another level of truth. It's not the `verifiable truth' you people talk about in the pressroom."
"That's part of not playing God," Cotton said. "It's not enough to just think it's true."
Korolenko turned from the window, walking slowly back behind his desk. He stood there, leaning on his knuckles, staring at Cotton.
"How can you say you don't play God? Is destroying a good young man not playing God? Let me tell you what happens when you print that story. You say Roark cleans his own nest and survives. But here's what happens. George W. Bryce is District Attorney in this judicial district. George is part of what Clark is building in this state. He's Clark's boy. While Roark is asking the Attorney General to investigate, George Bryce is summoning a grand jury. Some of this stuff you have is criminal and a lot must be at least on the border. And I don't have to tell you how a D.A. can manipulate a jury. He can string it out from now until primary day. And Roger Boyden will be right at Bryce's elbow, looking for the dirt and telling George where the damage needs to be done, doing Clark's hatchet work as he always does." Korolenko stopped, took a deep, sighing breath, looked down at his hands and then back at Cotton. "Boyden's already at it, you know. Ever since he flew in from Washington he's been collecting the mud for the primary campaign. You know how it will work with Boyden and Bryce. There'll be a dozen indictments released the day before the election. And what difference does it make if the court throws half of them out six months later? And what difference does it make if the trial jury finds them innocent? He builds the impression that Roark's administration is a mare's nest of corruption." Korolenko paused, with the orator's instinct for impact. "And you've ruined the best hope this state has had."
Cotton said nothing. He was thinking of Boyden. Boyden-who had been AP's second man at the statehouse for ten years before becoming Clark's press secretary. Boyden-who would know exactly how to start a political reporter hunting where Boyden wanted a hunt made. Boyden-who would have access to the sort of information given to McDaniels. He saw with sudden certainty that Boyden must be the author of those three unsigned and arrogant letters. On the other end of the string which had pulled McDaniels and now pulled him was Gene Clark's hatchet man. The fourth letter, the one addressed to him, was another matter. Flowers wrote it, probably. Or someone working with Flowers.
Korolenko was talking again. No anger in his voice now. Just a flatness. "So what do you decide?" Korolenko was asking. "Do you print it?"
But the decision was made. Or maybe Janey had made it. If she believed in him, the copy had already been handed to Rickner, had already been teletyped to the city desk, already converted into part of the day's merchandise of news, capped with a headline. And what would it say? graft found in statehouse, state corruption aired. He thought of Paul Roark. Roark behind his desk, with his wry smile, discussing his future. He saw Roark the man, with a razor cut on his chin and wrinkles around his eyes, and he turned away from the thought. The headline wouldn't shout, paul roark's hopes slain, gov. roark's career ends.
"Look, Governor," Cotton said. "It's not as black as you make it. Roark has his own access to the press and you know it. And we'll be watching Bryce. He can't get away with much and the Governor can make it clear that he wasn't personally..."
Korolenko held up his hand. "Then you intend to print it."
"I haven't told you all of it," Cotton said. He was talking fast, desperately wanting the old man to understand. "Not quite. When Mac died last week. That wasn't an accident. He was working on the same story and somebody pushed him over the railing and then tried to get his notes. And Robbins. That wasn't a hit-and-run case. He was driving my car, and the next night I got a death threat. And three days ago they tried to kill me. It was..."
Cotton's voice trailed off, stopped by the pain in Korolenko's expression. The old man's face was bloodless, slack. What was it? Shock? Or grief?
Cotton half rose from the chair. "Governor, are you all right?"
Korolenko turned away, one bony hand on the gun-case door. "I'm all right," he said.
Cotton looked away, out the window, out at the sleet blowing through the barren trees, out at the gray, cold, bitter world. "How could I suppress it? I could run away again. I did it once and I could do it again. Run away and leave it. But damn it, Governor, the people need to know about it. You've got to believe in them. You've got to believe in something. Can you understand how I feel about it?"
Korolenko's voice was dim, barely audible in the silent room. "I can understand," he was saying. "And you can understand what I'm doing, and why I have to do it."
Korolenko was holding the pump shotgun, its barrel pointed approximately at Cotton's chest. He could see the blackness of the muzzle and above it the bright bead sight. "But knowing you're the kind who understands won't make it any easier," Korolenko continued. "It makes it harder."
"Put it down, Governor, put down the shotgun."
"I can't possibly let that story be printed."
"You're not going to shoot me," Cotton said. And he laughed, a laugh touched with hysteria. This was beyond reason, beyond belief. He sat back in the chair, dizzied by this, trying through the alcohol and fatigue to digest it. "You wouldn't do it."
"I would," Korolenko said. "But you need to know why that story can't be printed. Not ever. If it is, if it gives Bryce the leads for a grand jury there's no hope for Paul or the party. No hope." Korolenko raised his left hand slowly from the desk top and rubbed it downward across his face-wiping away something invisible. "Because the
grand jury will find that Midcentral Surety is the principal-almost the only-contributor of funds to the Effective Senate Committee. And it will find that the Effective Senate Committee bank account has been used to pay for Paul's precampaign expenses. Underwriting the organizing costs."
Cotton stared at the shotgun. None of this was real.
"You're telling me Roark sold out," Cotton said.
"The Governor doesn't know about it. Not unless he's guessed. But you can see that doesn't make a damned bit of difference. The voters would never believe it. The point is Bryce's grand jury would have subpoena power. It would tie everything in your story right to the Governor's campaign."
The shotgun wasn't loaded. Korolenko, the bird hunter, wouldn't keep anything loaded in his gun case. It probably wasn't loaded. This was just a desperate bluff. "But for God's sake," Cotton said, "how could Roark possibly not..."
Tony Hillerman - The Fly on the Wall Page 19