Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  “Yes, indeed I have.” Roger was assuming the pomposity of the newly expert. He was no longer a general but, in his own mind, an ambassador-at-large. “I think you should run it.”

  Cleo looked down the table at Alain. “Do you lift your veto?”

  Alain had once been gracious, up to a point; now he appeared to have lost that virtue. In a surly tone he said, “It seems I’m out-voted.”

  She resisted the temptation to tell him that he had been out-voted the first time the editorial had been presented but he hadn’t let the fact sway him. She showed him a little graciousness of her own: “No, Alain. I’ll still spike it if you wish.”

  “No, run it.” He waved a hand as if he no longer cared. “I just hoped we don’t have to regret it.”

  Cleo knew that the other editors at the table were silently applauding her for having won her point. She did not look at Tom for his silent approval; she had noticed that Alain had pointedly ignored Tom’s presence. She stood up, thanked Roger and Tom and they were shown out. Then she got on with the rest of tomorrow’s news, keeping her triumph mute.

  When the conference wound up Carl Fishburg stayed behind. “Something’s come up that might give us an angle on that story Tom did on the Mob. Billie Locke is in an upstate hospital dying of cancer. Maybe we could send Tom up to see her. She might have something to say.”

  When Cleo had got home last night from the Courier, Tom had been waiting for her. She was almost dizzy with hunger for him; it was as if he had been away a year instead of only a week. Her hands conquered him like soldier crabs; she had him for supper. Love and lust, she thought, were wonderful when they were the same thing.

  “When you go to work for the Times, never let them send you out of town. I’ll call Abe Rosenthal and tell him that’s an order from your wife.”

  “You sent me to Cairo.”

  “I know I’ll never do it again. From now on I shan’t even send you up to the Bronx.”

  Now she said to Carl Fishburg, “Carl, Tom is leaving us at the end of the month. Joe Hamlyn knows, but no one else. Tom and I are going to be married and we think it best he doesn’t go on working here. He’s going over to the Times.”

  Carl was torn between being an editor and a friend. “I’ll hate to lose him, especially to the Times.”

  “You’ll be losing him to me, too.”

  “That’ll be bearable,” said Carl, giving her his blessing. “When do you make the announcement?”

  “We thought we’d keep it till the last minute. Next week.”

  “The Empress doesn’t know? Or Alain?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut. In the meantime I’d like one last good story out of him. Let him try Billie Locke. It may prove a dud, but it’ll only take him a day. I’ll see he doesn’t stay away from you overnight.”

  “You’re a dirty old man.”

  “That’s always been my ambition, ever since I was a dirty young man.”

  Tom was sent upstate next day to see if he could interview Billie Locke. She was in a hospital on the outskirts of a small town between Saratoga and Utica, a hospital dedicated, it claimed on the peeling sign at the gateless gateway, to the care of the dying. It was an institution built in the days before euphemisms were included in health care as palliatives: dying was dying, by golly, and nothing else. The place looked as out-of-date as its honesty.

  Tom had looked up pictures of Billie Locke in the morgue (an inappropriate name for the files in view of his subject) and in the flesh he would not have recognized her except that the name-plate on her bed said that she was indeed Wilhelmina Locke. She was all thin bone and huge dull eyes, a crone thirty years before her proper time. But her eyes took on some shine when she took in that she was being visited by a man. Not a flash, well-dressed one, but still a man all the same.

  “None of my gentlemen friends, the bastards, ever come to visit me. Not one a the sons-of-bitches.” Her voice croaked its way out of the tangle of cords that was her throat; two spots of anger appeared in her sunken cheeks like misapplied daubs of rouge. “I shoulda shit in their beds instead of letting ‘em fuck me.”

  Two very old ladies in neighbouring beds came awake at the language, determined to live a little longer; one cackled in glee and the other raised a clenched fist that looked like a chicken’s elbow. Tom, embarrassed, wondered how often Billie Locke had regaled the old women with stories of her lurid past.

  “Billie, I’ve looked up everything that was written about you when you testified at those crime hearings back in 1974. There was the day you socked a guy named Tony Rossano when you were coming out of the court. Why?”

  “That shit Tony Rossano!” There was another cackle from the neighbouring bed. “He made a rude remark, I can’t tell you what he said, it was filthy, and I socked the son-of-a-bitch. I knew he was doublecrossing Frank Apollo—he’d gone to my boy friend, Vito Asaro, and told him I used to go with Frank. So I did, but that was only for a month, maybe two, back in Chicago when I was just starting.” Tom refrained from asking what she had been starting. “I thought I loved Vito, but he was another shit!”

  One of the old ladies had enough life left in her to clap, a sound like two pieces of paper being slapped together. Tom felt more and depressed, suddenly wishing he hadn’t come. Death did not upset him unduly; but dying did. He felt he was sitting in the midst of an obscenity far worse than Billie’s language.

  “Vito, he beat the hell outa me, then he kicked me out. Out on the street! I hadn’t been on the street since I was fifteen years old! You know what it’s like to have all your friends turn their back on you? They didn’t want me in their social circle no more. I give the best years of my life to some of them bastards. I wasn’t just Vito’s girl friend, I was friendly with some of the others before I met him, big guys people looked up to. I had a heart of gold, like they say, that was my trouble—”

  “Billie, why didn’t Vito mind you having gone with the other guys if he got so steamed up about Frank Apollo?”

  “Because Frank was his enemy, that’s why. Frank was trying to muscle in out in Kansas City and Sebastiano Giuffre, up in Chicago, he didn’t like that. They were all set to get rid of Frank when that little shitty snitch Rossano told Vito about Frank and me.”

  “What happened after Vito kicked you out?”

  “They went ahead and done what they was planning to do anyway. Tony Rossano set Frank up for Vito. Vito organized it for Sebastiano Giuffre. They got the hit men to come in from Philly.”

  “You’re sure of all this?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I heard ‘em planning it, didn’t I, and when I read about it in the papers, it happened just like I’d heard: There was a girl and a guy from some newspaper, they was lucky they didn’t get hit, too. I dunno what they was doing there.”

  Tom was suddenly aware of the silence on either side of him and Billie. The two old women had fallen asleep; or died. All at once he wanted to be out of here.

  “Billie, can I use all this you’ve told me? I’ll have to turn it over to the D.A.’s office. I don’t know if they’ll try for an indictment on it, but my story could stir up some trouble for the Mob.”

  “So long as it stirs up trouble for any of the bastards! Sure, write it up. But use one of the old pictures, the good ones, of me, will you?”

  “Billie, I’ve got to warn you—if I use it, some hit man from Philly or wherever, might come looking for you.”

  She gestured at herself with a yellow claw. “He’ll do me a favour.”

  Tom went back to New York, riding through a summer’s day that mocked death. Once back at the Courier he went in to see Cleo.

  “Can the cash box spare Billie a thousand bucks? She’ll be dead in three months, the doc told me. Let her buy herself something that won’t last.”

  “Have you talked to the D.A.’s office?”

  “Just now. I got the feeling they have other things on their mind. Vito Asaro has moved to Chicago anyway. The gu
y I want is Tony Rossano, for what he did to Hal Rainer.”

  “Right, we’ll run the story and see what happens. Make it as hard-hitting as you can.”

  He paused by the door on his way out. “Can I make this my last outside story? I didn’t enjoy today.”

  She understood and loved him for his feeling towards the dying. It seemed that she only gave a thought to the dead. “Of course. Oh—”

  “Yes?”

  “My father rang me from London this morning—he’s over there on another parliamentary junket. He’ll be here Friday. I’d like to be married Saturday, so he can give me away.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the busy newsroom, then back at her. “Sure,” he said, elaborately casual. “Any time.”

  She looked past him; it seemed to her that everyone in the big room was covertly watching them. She smiled widely, as if she were pleased at the story he had just brought in. After Saturday she could give up acting in public how she felt for him.

  II

  Rosa Fuchs, in a new dark wig and with a passport that said she was an Austrian named Romy Tischbein, flew into Kennedy Airport that evening. She had an address in Peter Cooper Village and she went there and was welcomed by two girls who were in awe of her reputation. She did not tell them what her mission was, only that she was going on to San Francisco in four days’ time and wanted a place to stay over. The two girls were thrilled to have her stay with them; who knew, she might take them with her, allow them at long last to put their theories into practice. She had no intention of doing that. She was here on her own initiative, not the group’s.

  III

  Jack Cruze was not really surprised when he walked into the VIP lounge at Heathrow and saw Sylvester Spearfield sitting by a window. He waited a moment, partly to see if Spearfield was with anyone, partly gathering himself for an encounter that he knew was unavoidable. Around Europe he always flew in the company plane, but on Atlantic flights he flew on a scheduled airline and took his chances that he would not be plagued by some busybody. He protected himself as much as he could by booking the last two seats in first class and putting his brief-case and coat on the spare seat. It sometimes resulted in a little ill-feeling from other passengers, but that never worried him.

  Even if he avoided Spearfield now, it was inevitable that, if they travelled on the same plane in the same class, Spearfield would at some time in the six-and-a-half hour journey come up and speak to him. He was an Australian and a politician: one couldn’t get a more garrulous combination.

  Sylvester saw him coming, was on his feet at once. His smile was genuine, his handshake firm. “You going British Airways, too? Of course you would be. Got to fly the flag, I suppose. I’m with another all-party committee. The other blokes have gone home the way we came with Qantas, but I’m going right round. I’m spending a few days in New York with Cleo.” Then he quietened for a moment. “I gather you two no longer speak to each other.”

  “Oh, we speak. It’s all very civilized.”

  “Sure, sure. But it hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

  Jack suddenly withdrew all his reservations about the man. “Yes. But as you once said, I’m old enough to be her father.”

  “If you had ever been a father you’d know it’s not all beer and skittles.”

  But he didn’t elaborate and Jack had no time to ask him what he meant; the call came for them to board the aircraft. Jack, taking a chance on being bored but all at once wanting company, asked the flight attendant that Senator Spearfield be seated next to him. He could not have Cleo, but for a few hours he might hear something from her father that would revive sweet, but painful, memories of her.

  Once in their seats, however, Sylvester surprised him by being very quiet. They were halfway across the Atlantic before their conversation was flowing freely. Sylvester did not mention Cleo again and Jack was suddenly afraid to bring up her name; instead, they talked about the state of the world in general. Jack found, as he had found so often amongst the socialists of his acquaintance, that Sylvester had drifted, if not to the Right, at least towards the Centre. Nothing mellows a man’s belief so much, he thought, as disillusion. Never having had any illusions, except about Cleo, he could be objective.

  Sylvester said, “I remember something Willy Brandt told some of us when we were over in Europe on a junket several years ago. He said all Western politicians had promised the voters too much and we were never going to be able to deliver. I’d add to that. We promised them so much they’ve now all become greedy. I grew up as a union organizer. In those days we thought about the unemployed as much as we did about the employed—because the unemployed had been our mates. Not any more. All the blokes in work, especially the tradesmen, have become little capitalists interested only in Number One.”

  “It’s the way of human nature,” said Jack, who had always been interested in Number One. “I’m surprised it took you so long to realize it.”

  Sylvester nodded reluctantly, sipped his scotch: disillusion needed the best of salves. “I’ve been spouting off in the Senate for years about rich tax dodgers—they’ve been getting away with murder back home. Then a couple of months ago I saw some brickies—bricklayers—working on a place next door to my house. They were all being paid in cash at the end of the day. I got the builder on the side and asked him what was going on. He told me if he didn’t pay the brickies in cash, they’d go somewhere else and work for a builder who would. They were making five hundred dollars a week and declaring only half of it as income.” He shook his head. “I’ve spent more than half my life working for people like that and I find out they’re just like the bastards I’ve been fighting against.”

  “People like me?” said Jack.

  Sylvester nodded solemnly; then abruptly let out the belly-laugh. Jack grinned at him and the two touched glasses and drank to each other. Jack knew that life was just a Hall of Mirrors: the trick was to recognize that each and every one of the distorted reflections was part of the truth. Sylvester believed that the mirrors were to blame, that they had been put in by some shoddy builder. Jack, who could feel sorry for himself in love but not in business, felt sorry for his newfound, if only temporary, friend.

  When they landed at Kennedy, Cleo was waiting for Sylvester. Jack was catching a connecting flight to Charleston, but Sylvester grabbed him by the arm and told him he had to meet Cleo.

  “Jack, you’re still her boss. Some day you’re going to have to meet her again, talk to her. Do it now while I’m with you, it’ll be less awkward. If she sees how friendly I am with you, she’s got to accept you.”

  It’s a case of me accepting her, Jack thought; but didn’t voice the thought. Against his own instincts he went out to meet Cleo; and immediately wished he hadn’t. She looked as beautiful in his eyes as she ever had; the memories of her flesh enveloped him till he felt he was going to break out in a sweat. But the effect on him wasn’t all physical; the presence of her, which had nothing to do with her face or body, weakened him till he felt he was ready to fall at her feet. Her smile, her voice, the occasional sidelong glance from her eyes bruised him like blows; but behind all the surface attraction that was killing him was the core of her. It was indefinable, as it is in any person: it was, he guessed, her deepest nature, the one he had found amongst all the mirrors.

  “Emma wished to be remembered to you.” It wasn’t what he had meant to say, but the words slipped into the vacuum on his tongue.

  “She was at Dorothy’s funeral? I felt guilty—I should have been there.”

  “Well, we can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “No.”

  It was Sylvester who broke up the meeting, recognizing he had done the wrong thing in bringing them together. He shook Jack’s hand warmly, said he would look him up next time he came to London—“You never know, I might get Malcolm Fraser to put me in the House of Lords. That’s the last haven for idealists, isn’t it?”—and took Cleo out to the limousine she had waiting for them.

  Jack wat
ched them go; it was like watching his life recede. He stood there in the midst of the bustling, careless crowd, an untidy, forlorn multi-millionaire who looked in need of Travellers’ Aid.

  IV

  Going into Manhattan in the limousine Cleo said, “Did he suggest coming out to meet me or did you?”

  “I did. It was a mistake, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “It was harder for him than it was for me. I have Tom. He has no one. I have some news for you, something I hope you’ll like. Tom and I are being married Saturday. You can give me away.”

  He had always been an emotional man; he could hardly see her for tears as he hugged her. “Oh sweetheart, I’m so bloody happy for you! I don’t know Tom, I can hardly remember what he looks like. But if he’s the one for you, then he’s all right. You’ve taken your time, God knows—”

  “That’s why I know he’s the one. He’s at my apartment now. You’ll like him. You’d bloody well better,” she threatened.

  He grinned, kissed her warmly on the cheek. The years fell away, he felt he was embracing the child he had adored all that time ago when he and Brigid would sit and watch their youngest and wonder what traps lay ahead of her. She had negotiated a lot of traps since then, but he was not so cynical as to think that marriage was one. He might no longer believe in the voters but he still believed in love and romance.

  “There’s just one thing,” Cleo said. “I made the mistake of mentioning at a board meeting yesterday that you were arriving. Claudine Roux, my other boss besides Jack, the big boss, if you like, is having a dinner party for some Republican senators. I gather it’s for her brother’s benefit. He’s the one who was the general and now he’s trying to be a foreign affairs expert. He and Claudine thought it would be a good idea to have a voice from Down Under.”

  “Whoever listened to us in Washington? We peed all over the Senate floor back home when Mal Fraser came to Washington and Jimmy Carter introduced him as ‘my friend John Fraser.’ They had to draw him a map to show him where Australia was, just north of the American base at the South Pole, someone said. Shall I speak English or give them a bit of aboriginal dialect?”