Tony Hillerman - The Fly on the Wall

by The Fly on the Wall(lit)

  "Come on," Korolenko said. His voice was impatient. "You know how it works. There are always approaches. Every day. Every campaign. A trucking company would like to contribute ten thousand dollars to a campaign fund and it would appreciate a little sympathetic understanding by axle weighers at the ports-of-entry scales. Or a real-estate developer would like to kick in to the kitty and he could afford to do it if he was fairly sure where interchanges would be located on one of the interstate highways. Or the State Manufacturers Association is looking for a place to spend its political-action funds and it wonders if the Governor would veto any bill increasing workmen's compensation rates. Or Citybank and First National and Financial Trust would like to help finance a campaign, but they're worried about a proposed branch banking law and they want a little reassurance. You've seen it."

  "Sure," Cotton said. The shotgun had dipped. It pointed now about at Cotton's lap. "But there's a little difference, Governor. In cases like that you can argue that all the contributor is buying is someone who sees things his way. What Roark sold was a license to steal. And..." Cotton paused, choked suddenly by his anger. "And a license to murder. How much did Paul charge for the lives of McDaniels and Robbins?"

  "You're very moral, aren't you?" Korolenko's voice was shaking. "Let's talk about morality then. What happened to those two men shouldn't have happened. You can't forget it, and you can't forgive it, and you go to your grave thinking about it. But let's talk about murder. You were covering the Legislature when the Taxpayers Association had the votes in the Appropriations Committee to gut the Health Department budget. This state damn near had tuberculosis under control then. But the testing program went down the drain and the outpatient medication project was cut, and the rate slipped back up again. And the home nursing program was chopped back. And the sanitation inspections. And how many died because of all that? And six years ago, when Governor Hill vetoed that income-tax bill and cut back on the Welfare Department budget. I remember reading in your Tribune about a suicide that year. You remember that? Turned on the gas in the hovel she was living in and killed herself and her three kids. And you remember the note? She said her relief check had been cut from $160 a month to $118 and she just couldn't feed 'em. If you want to talk about morality, there's all kinds of morality. And there's all kinds of murder." Korolenko paused, staring at Cotton. "And, as I told you, Roark didn't know about it."

  "He had to."

  "He didn't have to, and he didn't. All Paul knew was what we told him. If Jason Flowers was named chairman of the Highway Commission and a couple of changes were made in the State Park Commission, we could assure ourselves of adequate financing for a statewide senatorial primary. That's all he knew. It's been done by every administration."

  "We? We would be you, and Congressman Gavin, and who else? And how much money is `adequate financing'? And where did it come from?" As he asked the questions, Cotton realized Korolenko couldn't answer them-not with an empty shotgun. What he was really asking was, "Governor, is the shotgun loaded? Would you really kill a man?"

  "It was $200,000," Korolenko said.

  The shotgun was loaded. Cotton felt his stomach tighten.

  "About half of what it will take," the old man was saying. "But in cash. On deposit." Korolenko put the telephone receiver on the desk top and dialed while he talked, still cradling the shotgun on his right arm. "It's there for the early organizing, where it attracts the bandwagon boys, the bet hedgers. With that much to start we can run a $500,000 campaign. Clark can't raise much more than that and it's all we'll need. It means we can tie up television time in advance. And we pay an agency for the effective spots and the slick TV telethons and have a committee working in every county. And it means..."

  The receiver Korolenko held against his ear made a squawking noise. "This is Joseph Korolenko," the old man said. "Get Jason Flowers on the phone. Right now. It's important."

  The receiver squawked again.

  "Call him out of the meeting, then. Tell him he'll talk to me now or he'll go to jail." He looked back at Cotton. "And it means organized labor knows we can win and the unions will go all out. And it means all those who would help if they weren't afraid of Clark will help because they see a chance to be rid of him. With early money, we'll have our share of the uncommitted professionals. There won't be any more of this trying to campaign by borrowing cars, and using borrowed credit cards, and signing notes, and hiding from the bill collectors, and finding the prime TV time all contracted by the other side before you get the cash to-

  "Flowers. I'm standing here holding a gun on a reporter. He's got you cold. I gather you turned out to be pretty greedy. Anyway, he has all your dirt dug up. I want you to..."

  Squawk, squawk-squawk. Squawk-squawk-squaaawk-squawk.

  "Shut up," Korolenko said. "It's John Cotton. Your connections seem practiced at taking care of problems like this. I gather they took care of McDaniels and Whitey Robbins."

  The telephone made fast unintelligible sounds.

  "Wait a minute," Cotton said.

  "That or go to prison," Korolenko said. "I don't care about you, you son-of-a-bitch, but I care about Roark. Don't talk to me. Just do whatever dirty thing you have to do. I'll keep him here."

  "Wait," Cotton said. "Governor, it's too late."

  Korolenko was listening to the sound from the telephone, looking at Cotton. "Yes," he said, and hung up.

  "It's too late. The story's already filed," Cotton said. "I teletyped it to the Tribune this morning-just before I came out here."

  Korolenko held the shotgun in both hands now, pointing approximately at Cotton's throat. His eyes were fixed on Cotton's. Somewhere in the old house a timber creaked. A flurry of sleet rattled against the window.

  "I don't believe you."

  "It's true."

  "If it's true, it's all over with. Roark won't have..." Korolenko stopped. "When will it be printed?"

  Cotton thought about it. But there was no use thinking. Either Janey had believed in him or she hadn't. "It should have made the mail edition." He glanced at the clock above the fireplace. "That's on the street in less than a hour."

  "We'll wait," Korolenko said. He lowered himself wearily into the chair behind the desk and sat, looking at the shotgun. Almost, Cotton thought, as if he couldn't believe it was in his hands.

  "I believe you're lying," Korolenko said slowly. "Because why would you come here if the story was already at the paper?"

  "Because I wanted to be done with it. Done with it once and for all. I wanted to tie up the loose ends, clean it all up, put it in a package so I wouldn't owe the Trib a thing. And then I was going to quit."

  "Quit? Isn't it a little late to quit?" Korolenko laughed, but the sound was bitter. "Why not stick around and watch? The man who dynamites the dam should enjoy the flood."

  Cotton ignored it.

  "What's Flowers going to do?"

  Korolenko laughed again. "He is going to wring his hands, and feel sorry for himself. And then he will call whoever it is... probably a man I can think of in Chicago... whoever it is who arranged for McDaniels to be pushed and for you to be shot at. And he will tell this man what I told him. And then he will walk into his private bath and wash his hands thoroughly."

  "And somebody will be coming here after me. The people who tried to kill me..."

  "That's how I understand it. But now we'll all wait. If the story is in today's Tribune, all of this is done and over with. There's no more damage left for you to do."

  Cotton pushed himself to his feet. "I'm not waiting for anything. I'm walking out of here."

  "Not yet. Not alive."

  "Governor. Don't be silly. You wouldn't shoot me. I never thought for a moment you would. You wouldn't shoot anyone."

  Cotton turned, took one step, and the blast of the shotgun was deafening thunder in the room. By the door to the living room the wallpaper blossomed into an explosion of dust where the pattern of pellets smashed through paste, lathe and plaster. And then there was
the clack-clack sound of the pump action putting a second shell into the chamber.

  "Sit down, John. Please. Do me that favor. If you try to leave, I'll kill you. And maybe it will be for nothing. If the story's in the Tribune it would be for nothing at all. You'll have destroyed Roark, and destroyed everything I've worked for. But you can spare me having blood on my hands for nothing."

  Cotton sat down. "This doesn't make sense," he said.

  "Yes, it does," Korolenko said. "It does if you understand." The shotgun still pointed at Cotton, blue smoke trickling thinly from its muzzle now, the room filled with the acrid blueness of burned gunpowder. "It does when you know the kind of man Eugene Clark is."

  "What don't I know?"

  "You weren't here when I made my run for the United States Senate. I was fifty-four then. In Congress. Too old to wait. And the time was right. Old Senator Johnson died and the central committee gave me the nomination for the special election to finish the two years left in his term. The Republicans put up old Judge Ainsley and there was no doubt how it would come out. And then about three weeks before the election the word started going around that I had cousins who were officials of the Communist party in Yugoslavia. It was during the Joe McCarthy days, the red-scare days with the right-wingers in full cry and the liberals on the run and the public frightened."

  "I heard about that campaign," Cotton said. "That it was dirty."

  "You heard about part of it. Ainsley was too good a man to use that stuff, but it was used. Used everywhere, by something called Save America... Mostly direct mail and handout pamphlets... It was all documented, names, party titles, the whole thing. And it was killing us." Korolenko smiled-a painful thing. "I remember talking to Eugene Clark about it. He was on the ticket too, running for his second term from the Sixth Congressional District against a nobody. I remember apologizing to him because it was hurting the party." Korolenko was in the past now, talking not to Cotton but to the room-reliving it.

  The voice droned on, slow words without expression, as if the old man were listening to them himself.

  "... we got the last poll the Saturday before the election and it showed I was marginal, trailing the slate. And then election night it was obvious early, almost from the first precincts. The people were afraid of Communism and they were afraid of me. We were watching the returns right here. Gavin was here, and some of the younger people who had been working with me, and Catherine was in and out serving coffee and seeing about things and being the hostess. Catherine always stayed away from politics. She didn't understand it. She just understood being a wife, and my ambitions. And she was here that night because she knew that this was really all I had wanted all of my life. She didn't know why I wanted it, but she wanted it for me. So she was here that night-mixing with the politicians-because she sensed it might be going wrong and she wanted to be close in case she could help."

  Korolenko drew a long, shaking breath and sat for a moment looking past Cotton through the doorway into the cold, dark living room. "So she heard the talk about the Communist cousins in Yugoslavia, and my people wondering where the radical right had found out about it, and, after a while, I noticed she was gone. And I found her up in our bedroom." He stopped again, looking at Cotton. "Crying. I'd never seen her cry before," he said, hoping this stranger before him could understand. "She asked me if I was losing, and I said I was, and she asked me why, and I told her. God help me. I told her it was because somehow they had found out about my family in the old country. And, and..." The old man's voice shook. "God help me, Catherine got down on her knees there, and begged me to forgive her, and told me that she had been the one who had ruined me. That she had talked about it to Eugene Clark's wife, chatted about the family coming from Pula, down the coast from Trieste, and how our grandfathers had known each other, and how my own family was split between Royalists and Social Democrats, and how some of my uncles had sided with Mikhailovitch Royalists and some with Tito's partisans, and how I now had a cousin who was the Mayor of Pula and another who was an official in the Bosnian People's party, and another was in Tito's Foreign Office."

  Korolenko's voice stopped again. The electric clock behind him clicked. The pale light from the window reflected from a film of moisture in Korolenko's eyes, on his cheek. And then the voice began again, still flat and emotionless, the voice of a man reciting to himself a story he has repeated a thousand times. "And she begged me to forgive her, and I told her there was nothing to forgive. But she never forgave herself. She had always been a happy woman, a joyful woman, but it was never the same after that. She did penance for years and then she got pneumonia. That was her chance. She died of it because she didn't want to live."

  The room was silent now. The sound of sleet on the windows. The sound of time ticking by.

  "Have you ever loved a woman, John? Most men haven't. But, if you have, I think you know I'm willing to kill you if it would help retire Eugene Clark from the Senate."

  "But Clark was a Democrat," Cotton said. "Part of your slate. Do you think..."

  "I know. I took the trouble to find out, and to find exactly how he got the word out, and who he got it to. It's easy to see why he did it. Ainsley beat me and two years later, when he ran for the full six-year term, Clark got the nomination and beat him in the general election. If I had won, Clark could never have beaten me. Not in the Democratic primary. He did it to keep the job open for himself."

  Korolenko made another call then, long distance. Asking someone to go down to the Tribune office, pick up a street edition as soon as it was out, and call him back.

  And then they waited. The old man sat slumped in his chair, the shotgun on the desk in front of him, his eyes looking past Cotton at nothing. Cotton tried to think. His problem now had been reduced to a single dimension. If Janey had given Rickner the story he need only wait. In less than an hour the telephone would bring that news to Korolenko and it would be over. But, if she hadn't, he should be doing something. He should be trying to get out of here, to get the shotgun away from Korolenko before the call to Jason Flowers bore its fruit, before whoever had hunted him arrived here and found him helpless. Right now, at this moment, a car must be moving through the sleet toward this house-its driver knowing the quarry had been finally cornered. A sudden sense of desperate urgency overcame the buzzing fatigue in Cotton's brain. Korolenko's face was still, blank, intent on some remembered landscape of the mind. The ashtray on the table beside his chair was thick, heavy glass. Cotton reached his right hand toward it, hoping the motion would seem casual.

  "No," Korolenko said. "Don't do that."

  Cotton left his hand where it lay, feeling the polished varnish of the table under his palm, looking into Korolenko's eyes. He saw the dark brown pupils behind the film of old age. Opaque eyes which looked back at him now as upon an object. Cotton was aware of the lingering smell of burned powder, aware that the shot Korolenko had fired past him had not really convinced him that the old man would, indeed, be willing to kill him. Now the blankness in Korolenko's eyes convinced him. He withdrew the hand, dropped it in his lap, looking at Korolenko and considering this new insight into the human species. The thought led him to Leroy Hall. It explained what had baffled him for two days. Hall had suppressed the story-done the unthinkable-for the same reason old Governor Joe Korolenko was prepared to kill. Like Korolenko, Hall saw himself as part of it all. Involved. Hall hadn't been bribed. He had known more than Cotton. Known a lot more and felt a lot more.

  Cotton stopped thinking of the peculiar nature of Hall's betrayal. He thought of Janey Janoski. Then he noticed the change in Korolenko's face. The tension had left it.

  The old man sat behind the shotgun looking somehow content-as if some inner doubt had been resolved. The question shaped itself in Cotton's mind-normally not a question that he could ask, but the shotgun between Korolenko and him formed a sort of link, creating an odd intimacy.

  "Governor," Cotton said, "I want to ask you something about Mrs. Korolenko. Were there times
when she thought what you were doing was wrong? And if that happened, how was it then? How was it between you?"

  Korolenko looked surprised. "Weren't you married once?"

  "No," Cotton said.

  Korolenko was thinking about it. "Yes," he said, "there were times. But it was all right with us. Because she knew I did what I did because I had to do it." He stopped, trying to frame the words to explain-giving up. "Catherine understood me."

  "If you were the reporter," Cotton persisted, "would she have understood why you had to write it? Even if she thought it was a terrible, damaging thing?"

  "Yes. She would have." There was no hesitation in the answer. "And now I have a question for you. Entirely aside from the personal situation we have here now, would you publish that story knowing what I've told you?"

  "I don't know," Cotton said. "Not for sure. I'd have to think about it. But I guess I would. Who am I to be judge and jury? I don't think I'd have the right not to print it."