Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Buck smiled. “What would I do without you, Dick? Try it.—Bet she’ll go. If you have trouble, let me know. Tell her tomorrow’s for the birds—closed session inquiries, I’m out for lunch, and plooped by five in the afternoon.” Still, Buck managed a laugh at this awful prospect.

  “That’s just what I wanted to go over again with you, sir. The picture is this.—Yes, let’s both sit down. This whole thing is so enormous, this arms sale—”

  “The media’s blowing it up!”

  “I meant—it’s widespread and involves a lot of people, sir. So many, that I think it’s safe to say a couple of these air carriers, never mind how many or even when, got hijacked, captured by fundamentalist nuts. I don’t mean it’s true, sir, but we’ll say it. Arms and money’re missing. Maybe some of these air shipments had been destined for Israel, so what, perfectly legal. If this has been going on five or six years, we—”

  “Ten months.”

  “That’s what you say, sir, and what you believe and what you’ve been told.”

  “In other words, I’m right,” said Buck with his most convincing look as he gazed at Dick Coombes.

  “Yes, sir. You stick to that, that’s fine. My point is about reality. Because those guys tomorrow are going to confront you with a couple of billion dollars’ worth of stuff, not just millions, and a long period of time, and names galore, from Israel to Turkey to—”

  “Turkey?”

  “Well, never mind Turkey, he’s just a guy from Turkey. Back to the point. This has been going on a long time by land, sea and air. The money—what there is left of it—has been going to fight Communism in Central America, true. You didn’t know about that till a few days ago, that’s what you’re going to say tomorrow, because your staff—the ones connected with this—were going to save it as a surprise for you on your birthday next month, in March.”

  “As I recall—recall,” said the President thoughtfully, “the freedom fighters in Central America claim to’ve received just about twenty thousand bucks—in all.”

  “First, they’re lying, as usual. Second, their own leaders have pocketed God knows how much. We mustn’t try to pin ’em down, sir.”

  “Oh, no,” the President agreed.

  “Back to tomorrow. You’re bitterly sorry about the seventeen American hostages who were beheaded on television ten days ago. I would mention that, seriously, sir.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Buck solemnly.

  “I’ll make a note to make a three-by-five card about that beheading. But our selling to both sides—which you have known a little about—was meant to make friends of both countries, you see. No use making a friend of one country and an enemy of the other, is there?”

  “Agreed, Dick. And what the hell, look at the profit! It’s led to more fighting, true, but that means more arms sales, doesn’t it? What I can’t understand is why some of these people’re so hopping mad!”

  “Because arms sales are forbidden without knowledge of Congress, sir.”

  “Congress be damned! I had enough of them when I ordered the mining of—What harbor was that?”

  “Yeah, but mining a harbor’s an act of war, sir, same as war, and in the Constitution only Congress can declare war.”

  Buck Jones shook his head, bored. “Too complicated for me. Congress has too many people in it. They just sit there—while American hostages are taken and their heads cut off one week and their brains blown out the week before that, and Congress doesn’t do a thing. We—I—my folks here in the White House at least tried.”

  “But that’s what you can’t say tomorrow, sir. The arms sales weren’t anything to do with hostages, because you’d pledged to stonewall it there. ‘No knuckling down to terrorists,’ you said, we said.”

  The President nodded, letting it sink in.

  Buck and Millie watched a film before bedtime, a tale of American derring-do in the Old West, with a hero who was his own man and took orders from no one. Millie sipped a rum and cola. Buck, in a good mood after the film, was afraid to mention the Atlanta trip to Millie, lest she blow up and say she wasn’t going. She did not like these little official junkets where she had to cut a ribbon, make a brief speech, smile at journalists and photographers. She preferred to be at home, supervising the polishing of her silverware collection (tea sets, sugar bowls, gifts from heads of state), and checking that the housemaids had done their waxing of the furniture, and conferring with her secretary Ethel on the maintenance and improvement of the public image of herself and Buck.

  Still Buck had a hard time falling asleep, unusual for him. He was trying not to think about tomorrow—things always came out fine for him, always had, hadn’t they?—but he couldn’t get his mind away from the hearing, which was to begin at 10 a.m. He conjured up the nervous but optimistic face of Fulton J. Phipps, good old Phippy ever eager to serve, to help. Phippy would be ready with the answers tomorrow, in case the President faltered. No one had said that he was going to be questioned alone in a closed room. No, he’d have his loyal friends around him.

  At last Buck slept. But when he was awakened by a buzzing beside his table lamp, it seemed to Buck that he had just dropped off. He picked up the house telephone.

  “This is Dick Coombes, sir. Fulton Phipps’s wife just telephoned me and—she’s in a state. Phippy’s dead, sir.”

  “What?—What d’y’ mean dead?”

  “Overdose, sir. According to his wife. She noticed—Well, she’s so shook up, she hasn’t phoned a doctor yet or a hospital, just me, because she knows I can reach you any time and. . . .”

  Buck saw on his luminous dial clock that it was twenty past 5. Suicide. That didn’t play. Buck’s brain began to work intuitively, the way it worked best. “Listen—” he cut through Dick’s stammerings. “Phippy’s got a swimming pool, hasn’t he?” Phippy had a fine property in Fairfax just outside Washington, DC. Buck had been there a few times. “You get that arranged so Phippy drowned himself accidentally. Got that, Dick?”

  “But—It’s February, sir, and nobody’s swimming.”

  “Do it! We can’t have a suicide in this scenario!” Buck shouted, as if he were the hero of the film he’d seen a few hours ago. He hung up.

  “Darling—”

  Buck’s loud voice had awakened Millie, despite her sleeping pill. Buck was putting on his dressing gown. “Trouble at the ranch. Got things to do. Go back to sleep, Millie.”

  “. . . time is it?”

  Buck didn’t bother answering. He was thinking. Coffee, barrels of it, he remembered as a line from a good film he had seen, when things had suddenly swung into action in a US army camp because of an enemy attack. Real American efficiency, tough fighting by tough marines had carried the day. That was the way it would be now.

  With his first cup of coffee in the living-room where the fire still glowed, Buck was on the telephone with his Secretary of State John B. Sprague. “Sorry to wake you at this hour, John, but something’s happened.”

  “Not another kidnapping—”

  “Worse. Phippy’s killed himself. . . . Yes, I just heard from Dick Coombes, who heard it from Phippy’s wife. Now look—we can’t have this. It may be that we have to postpone the hearing this morning, for some reason, because I sure as hell am not going to face ’em without Phippy. You get me?”

  Sprague did. Sprague was a bearish kind of man, slow and heavy, wordy when he talked, but the kind who could always keep his nose clean, consequently the noses of others clean too. “Suicide,” he murmured as if pondering the fact.

  “Which is going to be an accident. Now—you telephone the Attorney General, John. We’ve got to have an official statement—”

  “Attorney General? Don’t you mean—um-m—maybe a coroner, sir?”

  “Y-yeah, you’re right, sorry, I mean the guy who certifies—what’s happened. This is going to be a drowning . . . Well, don’t ask me to explain now, because I have to go see Phippy’s wife and pronto. Just get the head coroner in Washington, whoever he is, and ask him
to get to the Fulton Phipps house in Fairfax now. Tell him it’s an emergency and the President’s orders.” Then Buck tiptoed into the bedroom, where Millie had fallen back to sleep, got an address book and returned to the living-room. He dialed Phippy’s private number. By now it was five minutes to 6.

  “Hello?” said a female voice, shaky and tear-filled.

  “This is Buck, Laura,” said Buck in a deep masculine voice, having just seen in the address book that Phippy’s wife was named Laura.

  “You haven’t called the hospital yet?”

  She gave a sob, a burst of pent up sorrow. “I—Phippy’s dead!”

  “You’re by yourself,” Buck continued with the same calm. “Okay, we’ll be there, dear. Don’t you get overwrought. Make yourself some tea. We’ll be there in—maybe fifteen minutes.—Is your swimming pool full?”

  “Swimming pool? It—It’s full but with the cover over it for winter. You know, to keep the leaves out?—Why’re you asking about the pool?”

  “See you very soon, Laura dear.”

  Next was Coombes, who in fact had been waiting on another line to get through to the President. While the President was speaking with Dick Coombes, a servant knocked and entered, wanting to know if he was ready for his breakfast.

  “Orange juice and a croissant, please, Tim. And more coffee.” Buck continued to Coombes, “I heard from his wife that the pool’s full but with a winter cover over it. So we’ll remove the cover.”

  “Well—sure, I understand, sir. But it’s occurred to me, water’s not going to go into the lungs, not in the same way, maybe not at all—once a person’s dead.”

  That rang a bell with Buck, he’d heard it somewhere, and the hitch galled him, as did a lot of other hitches lately, and he stood up, gripping the phone. “Okay, we’ll damn well pump it into the lungs if we have to! Via a tube! What’re we paying the chief coroner for? He’s got a job today and he’d better do it! You read me, Dick?—Can you pick me up in about ten minutes? Door of the West Wing.”

  A powerful lever had occurred to the President. Mrs, Fulton J. Phipps would not want it known that her husband was a suicide. There was something shameful about a suicide, something that implied that a man hadn’t been able to face what he’d been supposed to face. Whereas, if her husband had died by drowning in his swimming pool, having an early morning dip before an important hearing, this suggested that he’d been in top form, exercising body and mind before his appointed tasks. Chilly morning, yes, Phippy had always been game, but this time a cramp must have caught him and finished him.

  Millie awakened as Buck was tying his blue and yellow tie, and straightening it under the collar of a fresh white shirt. “Why so early, Buck?—What’s happening?” she asked sleepily.

  “Phippy—” Buck turned toward her, prepared for this. “Phippy was taking a swim this morning in his pool and drowned. They’re trying to bring him around, but I don’t think it’s going to work. So I’m going over to see—”

  “Swimming? In this freezing weather?”

  “Maybe they’ve got a heated pool, I don’t know.”

  Millie raised her head a little. “Did you say he’s dead?”

  “Yes, honey! I swear! That’s what I heard from his wife this morning. That’s what woke me up.”

  “Well, who’s—That so-and-so! To kill himself now! Letting you down!”

  Sometimes Millie’s intuition was uncanny. “Don’t yell it for the whole house to hear!—I’m going to do what I can, call off the agenda today, if I can.”

  Dick Coombes collected Buck Jones a few minutes later, Buck having declined to be accompanied or trailed by the usual pair or quartet of gorillas. They sped out of Washington in the thin traffic of early morning, and entered the plush residential area of Fairfax with its handsome two-story mansions nearly obscured by great oak and walnut trees that stood on well-kept lawns.

  Unfortunately, a woman neighbor had joined Laura. Both women were in the kitchen when Buck and Dick arrived.

  “Laura,” said Buck tenderly, recognizing her, giving her a gentle embrace with one arm when she stood up. “I’m really sorry.”

  “He couldn’t face it,” said Laura, looking at the President with reddened eyes. “He knew he was supposed to lie this morning—as much as he could—to protect you. And he hated it!”

  “What d’you mean lie?” the President asked. “This silly business of selling arms to two countries—You’d think it was the crime of the century! It’s Phippy who matters, who—”

  “I’m sick of it!” Laura said.

  “Mr. President, Phippy wrote a suicide note. Would you like to see it?” asked the woman neighbor in a gentle voice.

  “Don’t show it to him, I won’t have it!” said Laura.

  “Try to be calm, please, ma’am,” said Dick Coombes soothingly.

  At that moment, they all heard the knocker at the front door. The coroner had arrived, accompanied by a man with a kit such as doctors carry.

  The President shook the coroner’s hand. The coroner introduced himself as George Davies, and introduced the other man, Dr. Munzie, there were murmured introductions all round, then they filed into the bedroom where Fulton J. Phipps lay on his back with the covers pulled up to his chin.

  Buck Jones at once began his speech. “Ladies and gentlemen—and especially you, Laura. We all know that suicide is a terrible thing, a shameful thing—in the eyes of most of the world, and especially in the eyes of the people of our great country. Consequently, both I and my closest advisers deem it appropriate that Phippy’s death be attributed to drowning in his own swimming pool after taking an early morning nip—dip,” the President corrected himself, frowning with earnest thought.

  The neighbor spoke up. “Why, the pool’s got its winter cover on it still! And the water’s icy!”

  “You have my orders,” said the President, looking at Coroner Davies. “May I remind you that I am your commander-in-chief.”

  “We are going to remove that pool cover now, ma’am,” said Dick Coombes to Mrs. Phipps, in a firm voice that a hypnotist might have envied, or respected anyway.

  Things began to move. The doctor and Dick Coombes went out of the back door and got to work on the pool cover. Leaves had to be raked out of a puddle in the center of the cover first, then ropes untied from stakes that held the cover by rings around its edges. Beneath, the water looked reasonably clean and clear. They folded the canvas cover and got it out of sight in a tool shed near the house.

  Within the house, the President had expressed his wishes to Coroner Davies: he was to certify that Phippy had died from drowning. Even Laura Phipps seemed by now to take the attitude “What did it matter?” since her husband was dead, anyway. But her hostility toward the President was apparent.

  “Can’t you force water into the lungs?” asked Buck Jones in a soft voice, with a glance at the pale profile of Phippy just a couple of meters from where he stood.

  “Why bother, sir?” replied Coroner Davies, looking not at all happy. “If we say it—if I say it—that he died from drowning, and if Mrs. Phipps agrees—”

  “Be damned to the lot of you!” said Mrs. Fulton Phipps.

  “You’ll be well recompensed, Laura,” the President intoned. “Never fear—for the rest of your life—”

  With something between a scream and a moan, she quit the room, heading for the kitchen.

  “—no one’s going to challenge us and perform an autopsy,” the coroner continued. He had just been promised a very handsome fee for his services today.

  And so it was announced to the media by 9 that morning that Fulton J. Phipps had drowned in his Fairfax pool, just a couple of hours before he was to testify before the Special Investigating Committee on the selling of arms to the two opposing Gulf region countries at war with each other, and on possible embezzlement of huge sums by a party or parties unknown. Laura Phipps had to be hospitalized and put under sedation, which, it was assumed by Buck Jones and his aides, the public would consider
normal. Before 9 a.m., Buck had told someone to inform the head of SIC that the hearing scheduled for that morning would have to be called off, because of the sudden death of Fulton J. Phipps, a key testifier, by drowning earlier that morning. “Phippy had been keen to go and speak,” was a statement attributed to Mrs. Phipps, the peppy tone of which implied that Phippy had been so on top of the world that morning that he had decided to take a swim.

  By 12 noon, however, this disorderly but still understandable scenario had taken a sharp turn, or come into very sharp focus. Someone—maybe the neighbor of Laura Phipps, maybe even a joker, though jokes could not surpass reality in the Buck Jones Administration—said that Fulton J. Phipps, known as Phippy, had taken an overdose at home, that his wife had found him dead in bed very early Monday morning, that he had left a suicide note which his wife had not allowed anyone to see. And worse, the joke or the rumor went on, it was “the Administration” that had stepped in at once and tried to attribute the death to drowning in an outdoor pool, when the temperature had been three degrees above freezing. Macabre and touching political cartoons were inspired by this story. But one thing was certain in everyone’s mind: Fulton J. Phipps had had the choice of lying or of telling the truth, and plainly hadn’t been able to face either prospect.

  Television, radio and satellite had this dramatic story all over the world by noon and I p.m. Washington time. Another cover-up? Could it be that the Administration had somehow bumped Phippy off? In truth, there was not much left to cover up. Buck Jones and his aides, even John B. Sprague, the sturdy water buffalo, had all lied, some more than others, and knew more than they admitted knowing. That day on the air and on TV there were suggestions that Buck Jones was about to or ought to resign, that he was finished, that no one at home or abroad believed anything he said any more.

  Millie Jones was most upset, though she took an attitude of holding the fort, the fort being the White House and its chief her husband. She had that morning learned about and asked her secretary Ethel to cancel the Atlanta date, with her regrets. At 10, having switched on the news while dressing and doing her make-up (with extra care), Millie heard a joke at the conclusion of a program: the announcer had said that, though the Administration might have no recognizable foreign policy, it had a plain-as-day domestic policy, which was that the top men in Buck Jones’s circle intended to hang on to their jobs and salary no matter what.