Just before they entered the house, Dill looked back at the pool. He saw Anna Maude Singe chatting with Mrs. Strucker. A moment later, they were joined by Daphne Owens. Singe, laughing, said something to Mrs. Strucker and then dived into the pool. Dill, who knew something about diving, thought she dived very well.
The outside heat, which already had reached 100 degrees, made it seem almost chilly in the air-conditioned house. After the Mexican slid back the library’s twin doors, Dill went into the room, where he found Spivey seated behind the desk and Strucker standing in front of it, as if about to leave. Spivey called to Dill, “How you, Pick?”
“Fine,” Dill said.
“You know the Chief here.”
Dill said yes, and nodded at Strucker, who nodded back and said, “I was just leaving.”
“I’d like to talk to you later,” Dill said.
“Fine,” Strucker said, turned back to Spivey and added, “We can go over all that this afternoon.”
Spivey rose. “We’ll work something out.”
“Guess I’d best go mix and mingle,” Strucker said, grinned and left. Spivey thoughtfully watched him go. After Strucker closed the twin sliding doors, Spivey smiled at Dill. “Thinks he’d like to be mayor. That’s for starters.”
“What’s for afters?”
“Congressman. Or governor. Or senator. One of ’em anyway. The vote bug’s done bit him.” Spivey smiled again. “Course, his wife’s been egging him on some. You meet her?”
“I saw her.”
“She’s something. Rich as greases, like we used to say till you found out who Croesus was.”
“Speaking of money, Jake, I need some. Today.”
Spivey frowned. “Jesus, Pick, it’s Sunday. How much you need?”
“A thousand in cash.”
Spivey’s frown went away. “Shit, I thought you said money.” He reached into a pocket of his faded jeans and brought out a roll of bills that was bound with a rubber band. He snapped off the band and counted ten one-hundred-dollar bills onto the desk, picked them up, and offered the money to Dill. After Dill accepted it, Spivey snapped the band back around the roll. It was still more than three inches in diameter. Dill took out his checkbook, sat down at the desk, and started writing a check.
“You ain’t short, are you?” Spivey asked. “If you’re short, just mail it to me sometime.”
“I’m not short,” Dill said, tore out the check, and handed it to Spivey, who folded and tucked it away in the pocket of his blue chambray shirt without looking at it.
“Want a beer?” Spivey asked.
“Sure.”
Spivey sat down, took two cans of Michelob from his desk refrigerator, and handed one to Dill. After opening his beer, Spivey drank several long swallows, smiled with pleasure, and said, “First one today, if you don’t count the one I had with breakfast, which I don’t.”
“Who’re all your pretty new friends?” Dill asked.
Spivey grinned. “You mean the young and the restless out there? Well, sir, lemme tell you who they are. They’re all veterans of our recent turbulent past. In sixty-five you’d’ve found a couple of ’em out in Haight-Ashbury. Or down in Selma. Or in sixty-seven marching with Mailer on the Pentagon. But when all that shit ended they came back home and went back to school, or into daddy’s oil company, or his bank, or his construction company, or married somebody who did, and registered independent and made a pot of money and voted for Reagan, or for old John Anderson anyway, and now that they’re forty, or prid near, they figure they’re ready to do some real moving and shaking. After all, they got their weight back down, and they’re doing aerobics, and they don’t smoke dope no more, except maybe a little on Saturday night, and they don’t do coke hardly at all and never ever touch hard liquor. So now, by God, they figure it’s time they went and did their civic duty and elected somebody to something. Well, I’m kind of their glorified political guru and precinct captain on account of I got the most money except for Dora Lee Strucker, who’s got more money’n anybody.”
“And Strucker’s your boy?” Dill said.
“Providing the Hartshornes’ll go along, which I reckon they will.”
“A law-and-order mayor, right?” Dill said.
Spivey grinned. “You ain’t for lawnorder? — which you notice is one word in this house.”
Dill smiled, drank some of his beer, and then gazed up at the ceiling. “You might pull it off, Jake.”
“What I figure I’m really doing is growing my own briarpatch. Grow it high enough and thick enough, there ain’t nobody gonna come poking around in it.” He paused. “Except maybe that kid Senator of yours.”
“I talked to him,” Dill said, still staring up at the ceiling.
“And?”
Dill shifted his gaze from the ceiling to Spivey. “I think he’s going to fuck you over, Jake.”
Spivey nodded calmly. “He’s going with Clyde, huh?”
“I think he thinks he can nail you both.”
“No way he can nail Brattle good without me, and he won’t get me unless I get immunity.” Spivey lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “You see my boy on the gate?”
“I saw him.”
“And the kid parking cars?”
“I saw him, too.”
“I figure old Clyde’s gonna come after me.”
“Himself?”
“Lord, no. He’ll get Harley and Sid to find somebody.” Spivey chuckled. “Maybe they’ve already run an ad in Soldier of Fortune. Or maybe Sid’ll try it himself. Old Sid likes that kinda shit.”
“You want to talk to the Senator?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. He and Dolan are coming in at four.”
“When’s he seeing Brattle?”
“At seven.”
“What d’you think, Pick, should I go first or last?”
Dill didn’t hesitate. “First.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe I can get you some insurance.”
“What’ll it cost me?”
“How much leverage have you got with Strucker?”
Spivey shrugged. “Enough, I reckon. What d’you want?”
“I want him to sit down and tell me the facts.” Dill paused. “Whatever they are.”
“About Felicity?”
Dill nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jake Spivey said.
Dill did not meet Dora Lee Strucker until after he performed a not quite perfect half gainer off the twelve-foot board. As he went into the water he thought his back could have been a trifle straighter, but he also knew it was still a fairly good dive. Diving was the only sport Dill had ever participated in seriously — probably because it was essentially a solitary sport. He had pursued it through junior and senior high school, and well into his freshman year in college, when he realized he would never be any better than he was at that instant, which was not quite good enough. He had abandoned it without regret and even with some sense of relief. The only diving he did now was into the pool at the Watergate gym when the mood seized him, as it did fitfully every two weeks or so.
When he climbed out of the pool, Anna Maude Singe clapped mockingly three times and said, “Show-off.” She was wearing a dark-red swimsuit consisting of two small triangles up above and a mere suggestion of something down below.
If she took everything off, Dill thought, she would look a lot less naked. He said, “I just wanted to see if the brain could still tell the body what to do.”
“I don’t think you’ve met Mrs. Strucker, have you?” Singe said and turned to the woman in the one-piece black suit. “Ben Dill.”