Aram admitted to himself that encountering Sullivan was not entirely unexpected. Perhaps he had secretly hoped he would find Sullivan in the hotel, hoping that Sullivan's image was hateful enough to excuse all their excesses.
Was it easier to hate a man by investing him with imagined evils or by close observation?
Looking at Sullivan now, up close, a pale, rather shopworn figure, Aram had all he could do to stifle his sense of disappointment. Damn him, the man engendered pity. He was not at all like the great John J. Sullivan he had seen in pictures, on television, a commanding figure, awesome in his confidence and dignity. He looked tired and weak.
"You're running one hell of a competent campaign," Sully said, smiling thinly. Aram waannoyed at himself for not saying the first words. His tongue seemed awkward as he searched for something banal to say.
"I heard about your injury, Mr. Sullivan. I hope you're all right."
"I'm fine."
"Get our telegram?"
"Yes."
The smell of sour booze was overwhelming in the close air. The big red-faced man steadied himself with one hand on the wall and glared at them.
"This is my wife, Sandra, and my mother-in-law, Mrs. Margolies, and Alby Winters, my campaign manager. And this gentleman is Mr. Marbury."
"We've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Marbury, haven't we, Marvin?" Sully said. "This is Marvin Perlmutter, who runs our campaign." Marvin nodded nervously. "And this is my AA, Mr. Fitzgerald."
Fitz shook his head.
"Bastards," he snarled.
Aram heard. They all must have heard. He looked at Alby, whose eyes registered danger signals. Mrs. Margolies still sat in the chair, her face white, sniffing a handkerchief wrapped around the smelling salts.
"I can't believe that you're _also_ planning a rally here," Perlmutter said.
"Oh, no," Aram said, too quickly. His eyes darted around him helplessly.
"You see, we're planning to have a rather important rally here ourselves," Perlmutter pressed. He turned and spoke directly to Marbury. "You're supposed to give us your answer today, Mr. Marbury. You wouldn't be giving our date away to the opposition."
"It's a great old place for a rally," Sully said, pointing down the vestibule to the entrance to the ballroom. "Many a great political rally was held here. Tradition. That's what this place has. Roots!" He continued to stare in the direction of the ballroom, as if listening for the voices of old friends, searching the semidarkness for their faces.
"It's a hellhole," Perlmutter said, then added quickly: "But you can't beat tradition."
"Bastards," Fitz hissed again. His face was beet-red and shining with perspiration. Aram saw Sullivan reach out to steady him with a gentle pat on the arm.
"Well, Mr. Marbury. What will it be?" Perlmutter asked. "We don't need
your kitchen. We'll have everything catered."
Marbury shrugged and looked at Mrs. Margolies. Sandra, who must have sensed the dynamics of the situation before any of them had a chance to react, reached under her mother's arm. "Well, I guess we've got to go now," she said quickly and tried to raise the seated Mrs. Margolies, who resisted weakly.
"…it was the one hotel in Brooklyn that had any class, any class at all," Sully said, as if he were catching a private thought in mid- sentence. "We'd make the rafters ring with applause. Standing ovations. Every speaker got standing ovations…."
"I remember," Mrs. Margolies said suddenly, waving Sandra aside. "My father loved this old place, too. He always said it had character."
"Ah, yes, character."
"Mother," Sandra said sternly, "it's time to go."
"You know this place?" Perlmutter asked.
"I own it," Mrs. Margolies said, conscious of a compelling need to blurt it out. All eyes turned toward her.
"Oh, Jesus," Sandra gasped.
"Keep cool," Alby said.
"You own this place?" Perlmutter said incredulously. "You own this place? Congressman Sullivan, his mother-in-law owns this place. We've been had."
"I can't believe you would do a stupid thing like this," Sandra hissed at her mother. "It's absolutely incredible." She jerked her arms at her mother, forced her to rise from the chair, and began guiding her toward the elevator. Marbury dashed ahead of them and pressed the button. They waited awkwardly as the old elevator motor began to hum.
Sully seemed indifferent to the revelation. He continued looking around the vestibule.
"So this is where the pressure came from, Marbury. Correct?" Perlmutter asked.
Marbury swallowed. He appeared awkward and uncomfortable.
"You had to come here," Sandra railed at her mother as the elevator door opened noisily.You had to see your lousy property. What do you know about it? You're just a spoiled empty-headed woman."
"I think I'm going to throw up," Mrs. Margolies said. She gagged into her handkerchief and turned white again.
Suddenly the big bulk of Fitzgerald loomed in front of them, his eyes heavily veined and glazed.
"You lousy two-bit shit bastards," he cried. "You dirty motherfuckers." He stumbled and leaned against the open elevator door.
"I'll call the police," Sandra screamed. "I swear I'll call the police if you don't get that pig out of my way." Sully looked at her strangely.
"Come on, old Fitz," Sully said, an arm around his shoulders, dragging him away from the elevator.
"They've ruined us, Sully. They've played a dirty game. Bastards."
"He's right, you know," Perlmutter said. "You've played dirty pool."
"Stop being so damned self-righteous," Alby exploded. "You know the game. Don't be so thin-skinned about it. You'd do it to us, if you could."
Perhaps it was the suddenness of Alby's remark or the pitch of his voice, strident and emphatic, that triggered something in Fitz. He broke away from Sully and lunged at Alby, who sidestepped quickly, forcing the already-unbalanced man to fall to the floor.
Sandra saw him and screamed, letting go of Mrs. Margolies, who fell against the wall, gagging.
Marbury and Alby, with Sandra's and the black porter's help, moved Mrs. Margolies onto the elevator. The door closed quickly.
"I'll walk," Aram shouted to them, his eyes searching for the red exit sign. Perlmutter was helping Fitzgerald get to his feet. Aram looked for a moment across the vestibule corridor at Sullivan, and their eyes
locked. What was there to say?
"I'm sorry about all this."
"I guess we all should be sorry," Sully answered.
Surely, Aram thought, there was more to be said, much more. He started toward the exit. As he reached the lobby floor, he heard the rumbling of feet behind him, unsteady steps, making a gre at noise as they echoed in the stairwell. "Come on back, Fitz," he heard. someone yell, a compelling enough reason for Aram to quicken his pace. Sandra and the others had paused in the lobby to wait for Aram, but the noisy presence of Fitzgerald, who suddenly lurched from the stairwell door, made them all hurry toward the car.
The chauffeur, startled to see the group almost running toward the car with Mrs. Margolies being literally dragged forward, jumped out and opened the door.
"Get inside and start the car," Alby shouted, as Aram crawled head first into the right jump seat. Mrs. Margolies, ashen white, sank back in the interior and gasped for breath. Jumping into the front seat, the chauffeur gunned the motor smoothly and began maneuvering the car out of the parking space.
Before he could get the wheels fully turned, they heard a thunderous pounding on the back window as Fitzgerald's fists beat against the glass. Perlmutter and the black porter tried to pull him off, but blind anger had increased Fitz's strength beyond anyone's capacity to restrain him.
At last the chauffeur maneuvered the big car out of the parking space and began to accelerate. Still Fitz clung to the side of the car, his fingers curled around an open side vent with a deathlike grip. Alby reached for the fingers and pried them free, and Fitz rolled heavily onto the street. "My God, you'l
l kill him," Sandra screamed. They watched him attempt to stand, then fall backward again as the car moved swiftly away.
"I never told him he could have the rally," Mrs. Margolies said quietly.
"Let him have his goddamned rally," Aram said. "Who cares?"
———— *17* SULLY recalled it, summoned it from somewhere deep in the old memory bank, and the fact that the place was still there seemed even a greater miracle than his recollection of it.
Leary's. The name of the bar had stuck in some backwater of his mind, an authentic place where his father stopped to imbi on those long-lost meandering afternoons. He had confirmed that the old place still existed in this cemetery of a borough by a simple act of looking it up in the telephone directory.
The street was once a long line of taverns, each with its own special flavor and crowd. Now only Leary's survived. A smeared sign hung awry over a crumbling facade that was barely familiar even to Sully, who remembered the place so clearly in his mind's eye. Inside, the big wooden bar had sustained itself over the battering of countless generations of Irish guzzlers.
The bartender, a huge bald man with an apron stretched taut over his expansive gut, looked suspiciously at Sully, then waddled slowly to the far end of the bar to get him a bottle of J and B. This was beer territory, attested to by the three old-timers who briefly lifted their heads to this sudden gust of affluence. Looking around the old barroom, Sully could find subtle signs of its long journey through the generations — a bruised cuspidor in a corner, a faded metal FREE LUNCH sign tacked haphazardly as decoration in an unused spot behind the bar, an old street photograph of Leary's as he remembered it, with a trolley car in the foreground. _It's the same Leary's all right,_ Sully thought, _and it's too good to be here, Pop, you old Irish shantyman_. He wondered where his father had stood, elbowed in among the tall beery men who once lined this bar.
"Why there?" Timmy said when Sully had called him, and Sully, understanding his son's doubts about his sudden interest after three years, replied, "It's Irish," as though that explained everything. Timmy laughed into the phone, and Sully felt the old pull of paternity.
Sitting there now, waiting for Timmy, Sully knew that it was indeed the ancient pull of the blood, that Hibernian tug, that made him feel at home in this lost crumb of a place, still a beacon for any stray Irishman.
He wondered where the hell all those boozy Irishmen and their progeny had gone. _Their mark is everywhere_, he thought. He thought of Jack Kennedy, who once had whispered to him, "You shanty-Irish bastard," and how he had reveled in the joy of it and snapped "Boston lace-curtain" back at the young President as they both grinned knowingly.
Sully had treasured that exchange, which ensued in a formal reception line during a White House dinner, reminding them both who they were and where they had come from.
He downed his scotch and reordered. "I belong here," he wanted to say aloud. "I have more of a right to be in this bar than any of you." That was something Fitz would do, good old Fitz, who had let it all out yesterday and who, he hoped, was sleeping it off somewhere, somehow. Where does a doomed Irishman disappear to in this city now? He hoped God, or somebody or other who cared for wild drunken Irishmen, would keep an eye peeled for that crazy bastard.
Sully now knew that he had seen through everything from the beginning. Deegan's defection. The sudden drying up of dollars. The leaked research. The newspaper stories. But now that he had determined to lose, to finish with it, he could not summon up either hurt or outrage. Aram Yomarian had struck him as frightened, a dark spider caught in his own web and unable to break free.
So Yomarian would be the next Congressman from the Eighth District, and what would that mean to anyone but Yomarian and himself? He could see the sickness in the dark younger man's eyes, that smoking intensity, the corroding, oxidizing relentlessness of ambition.
He sipped deeply and watched the entrance. Timmy and he hadn't seen each other for three years, and even then it was only for a brief moment as he said good-bye to him in their Washington apartment. It had been nearly midnight.
"He waited to see you," Jean had said, as if it couldn't possibly have mattered to him at all.
Timmy had looked tall and strikingly handsome, his hair carefully combed, his light-blue eyes flashingly alive even in that late hour. He was on his way out asully had arrived.
"Hi, Dad," Timmy had said, holding out his hand.
"Hello, son."
"Good to see you, Dad," Timmy had said.
"And you, Timmy."
They had stood awkwardly facing each other, and Sully could not remember what he had felt. He had gone for years with barely a memory of Timothy Francis Sullivan intruding on his thoughts. So why now? The need to see his son again had become powerful, overwhelming. It was impossible to deny one's blood, he thought, no matter what.
The door to Leary's opened with a flash of blinding sunlight. Then Timmy was peering into the room. Sully stood up as his tall form approached.
"Dad." He came toward him, and Sully wanted to grasp his son in his arms and hold him. But he held himself back. _Perhaps he would not want that_, Sully thought. Instead, he held out his hand.
"Tim," he said, awkwardly pumping his son's hand, conscious of the handshake as a true touching, not the political variety. Timmy sat down beside him at the bar, a trim figure, carefully dressed, his face high- cheeked and delicate. He looked around the room and smiled.
"It is Irish," Timmy said. "Authentic, down-and-dirty Irish." _Can they tell from the way he is groomed that he is queer?_ Sully thought as the surly bartender placed a beer heavily in front of the younger man. Sully signaled for a refill.
He could feel Timmy's light-blue eyes searching his face.
"I'll bet you're wondering what this is all about?" Sully said, putting a hand on his son's upper arm.
Timmy sipped his beer and placed the glass noiselessly in front of him.
"Well, I do know that this Yomarian is apparently giving you a bad time, Dad." He paused. "As a matter of fact, I thought of calling you, but then we haven't exactly been much to each other over the years. Besides, I thought that my making contact might hurt, not help, the cause." He said it very matter-of-factly, revealing his own grasp of the political realities.
"I don't care anymore about it," Sully said.
"You don't?"
"No. It's not of any consequence anymore."
Timmy looked at his father in puzzlement. He shook his head. "You mean you're getting out?"
"Getting off at the next stop," Sully said. "It was wrong from the beginning."
"You're not making too much sense, Dad," Timmy said. "I mean I don't understand. Are you saying you're giving up politics? My God, that's your whole life. That's everything. What the devil would you do?"
"Is it that difficult to understand?"
"Difficult?" Timmy exclaimed. "It's impenetrable. How many terms has it been? Twelve or more? Hell, Dad, you're one of the most senior Congressmen in the House. You just giving it up without a fight? That's not like you." He was conscious of Timmy's assuming the role of a coach during halftime. Sully shook his head and watched his son.
"How has it been with you, Timmy?" Sully asked gently.
"With me?"
"Yes, Timmy. How has it been with you?"
He was conscious of his son's discomfort, as if the question were out of context, beyond the ritual of their relationship.
"I make out," Timmy said, averting his eyes. "It's not as bad as it used to be. There seems to be more tolerance in the air."
"I'm glad, Timmy," Sully said. "I've become concerned about you."
"Come on, Dad," Timmy said, good-naturedly. "You know that I've been wiped out of your mind years ago. I've been a pariah. I know it. Sometimes I truly wished that it — that I — had turned out differently, something more in concert with the American image of what a politician's son should be. But that just wasn't in the cards. In any event, I long ago decided to l ive my life the way it had to
be lived, without alarums and cymbals. I think I've been pretty good about it. I've never been an issue in your campaigns, have I, Dad?"
"No, Timmy."
"I haven't hurt you in any way, have I, Dad?"
"No, Timmy, you haven't hurt me. It's I who have hurt you. "Oh, Jeez," Timmy cried, banging his knuckles on the bar. "Not guilt. Please, Dad, no guilt. You're an intelligent man. Nothing is your fault. Absolve yourself. Stop with that Catholic-confession shit. You are not guilty. Don't try to lay it on you or Mother. It's all right. I've found a way to live with it. And frankly, I like it this way."
Adler, Warren - Banquet Before Dawn Page 20