“He flew around the world with Wiley Post in thirty-one,” Dill said, not caring whether the Senator knew who Post was.
He apparently did, because he said, “Oh,” in an appreciative tone, gave the airport another sweeping glance, added, “Nice airport,” and again turned to Dill. “What’s Jake Spivey’s last price?”
“Immunity.”
“What d’you think?”
“Take it,” Dill said.
“Tim?”
“Take it under advisement.”
Again, the Senator nodded, thoughtfully this time, and said, “At least until we find out what Clyde Brattle’s got to say for himself.”
“Right,” Dolan said. “Never let the contract till you know what Paddy will pay.”
One of the Senator’s elegant eyebrows went up. “Boston folklore?”
“It’s in the catechism.”
“Well,” the Senator said, “what we’ll do is talk to them both and then make up our minds.” He turned to give the bronze statue another inspection. “William Gatty, huh? He looks like quite a guy.”
As they stood waiting for Jake Spivey to bring his car round, Dill examined the Senator, who was still examining the statue. You come, young sir, Dill thought, unfettered by either compunction or conscience, not to mention common sense. You come armed only with ambition of the ruthless and burning kind, which may or may not be enough. It’ll be interesting to see the battle joined. It’ll be even more interesting to see who wins.
“Jesus,” Tim Dolan said, as Spivey pulled his hundred-thousand-dollar machine to a stop in front of the airport entrance.
The Senator smiled slightly. “Somehow,” he said, “I knew it would be a Rolls.”
It wasn’t really a suite that Dill had reserved for Senator Ramirez and Tim Dolan on the sixth floor of the Hawkins Hotel. Instead, it was merely two connecting rooms — one of them with twin beds and the other with a single bed, a couch, and a few additional chairs. They had had coffee sent up. The empty cups now sat on the round low table along with the ashtrays and Tim Dolan’s yellow legal pad on which not a word had yet been written. Spivey smoked a cigar; Dolan his cigarettes; the Senator and Dill nothing. They were all in their shirtsleeves, except for Dill, who still had the revolver stuck down in his hip pocket. The meeting, only forty-five minutes old, had already reached its impasse.
Jake Spivey settled back in his chair, put the cigar in the corner of his mouth and smiled cheerfully around it. “Tim, what you’re asking me to do is climb up on the scaffold, stick my head in the noose, let you fellas give it a few yanks — just to make sure it’s snug — and then I’m supposed to say what an honor it is to be there on the occasion of my own hanging. Then, depending on how you all’re feeling that day, maybe you’ll spring the trap, and maybe you won’t.”
“Nobody’s going to spring any trap, Jake,” Dolan said.
Spivey looked at him quizzically. “You got the votes on the full committee?”
“We’ve got them,” Senator Ramirez said.
Spivey turned to study the Senator with interest. “Well, sir, I’m sure you can add as well as I can, and probably better because I’m not real good at it. But I hired me some lawyers up in Washington who everybody says are damn good at their adds and takeaways. God knows they oughta be. They charge enough. Well, these lawyers up there — after they got through adding this and subtracting that — well, they say you’re gonna be between two and three votes shy. Probably three.”
“Then I suggest you retain different counsel,” Ramirez said.
“Senator, lemme ask you one simple question.”
“Of course.”
“What you want me to do — when you boil it all down — is help you hang Clyde Brattle, right?”
The Senator nodded.
“So what’s in it for me?”
“You’re asking for total immunity.”
“That’s what I’m asking for. But what am I gonna get?”
“Immunity is a distinct possibility,” Ramirez said.
Spivey smiled. “Possibility don’t quite hack it, distinct or otherwise.”
“It would be premature for us to say anything else at this stage, Mr. Spivey. You know that.”
“Jake,” Tim Dolan said.
Spivey turned to look at him. Dolan leaned forward, selling. “Let me put it this way, Jake. Brattle’s bad and we want him bad. You’re, well, you’re only half bad, or maybe even only one-quarter bad, so if we have to choose between you and Brattle — choose who we’re going to put the blocks to — then we’ll go for real bad and Brattle and so will Justice and I can almost damn near guarantee you total immunity.”
Spivey smiled once again and Dill noticed that each time the smile grew colder. “There’s that ‘almost’ again,” Spivey said, “which is almost as bad as ‘distinct possibility.’” The cold smile grew icy. “You know what I think you guys are really trying to do?” The cold smile was still there as he looked first at Dolan, then at the Senator, and then back at Dolan. His glance slid over Dill.
It was the Senator who finally said, “What?”
“I think you’re trying to jug both me and old Clyde. I think you’re fixing to do a deal with Clyde where he’ll go rest up in one of those federal country clubs for a year or two and, in exchange for that, he’ll give you me — and maybe a couple of other guys I can think of. Or he says he’ll give us to you. Clyde lies a lot, you know. Thing is, he lies all the time — morning, noon, and night. But I’m gonna give you the facts: Clyde can’t hand you me — no matter what he claims.”
“What about all that stuff in Vietnam, Jake?” Dill said.
Spivey seemed grateful for the question. “Well, all that happened a long time ago, didn’t it? And nobody gives a shit anymore anyhow. But what I did there I did as a contract employee of the United States Government. And while what I did wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t any worse’n what some of the rest of ’em did. So if you think you can scapegoat me on that, you’re flat wrong. To do that you’d have to have more’n Clyde Brattle. You’d have to have Agency backing and that you’re just not gonna get.”
“And afterward?” Dill said.
“You mean after the last chopper took off from the top of the Embassy and we lost and went home? Well, after that I bought stuff and sold it. That’s all.”
“Trading with the enemy is what some might call it, of course,” the Senator said.
The small half-smile that appeared on Spivey’s face was mean for its size. Here it comes, Dill thought. The one he’s been saving. He looked at Dolan and Ramirez and saw that they, too, had sensed it.
Spivey’s voice was low and almost gentle when he said, “They haven’t called it trading with the enemy yet — and you wanta know why?”
Dill didn’t think anyone really did. Finally, it was the Senator who quietly asked, “Why?”
“I was told to,” Spivey said.
“Who told you to?”
“Langley.” The half-smile was back now, no longer mean, but triumphant. Or vindictive, Dill thought. “It was a long time ago, Senator,” Spivey went on, “almost ten years ago and maybe you don’t remember, but—”
The Senator interrupted. “I remember.”
“—we bugged out and left it lying around. Tons and tons of it. Heavy stuff, light stuff, you name it — just lying around. The spoils. Well, it was over and old Ho’s folks’d finally won just like everybody with a lick of sense knew they would. They didn’t need all that stuff though. Some of it, of course, but not all. But Langley knew folks who did. Folks in Africa and the Middle East and South America and Central America and you name it. So our job, me and Clyde, was to buy it from Ho’s people for cash money and sell it for cash money to those folks who had their own little insurrection going — or counterrevolution or half-ass uprising or what have you. These were all folks that Langley was sort of looking after and encouraging. So that’s what we were told to do, and that’s what we did, and that’s how we by God got rich. So if you wanta indict me for that, you’re gonna have to indict half of Langley and a whole bunch of other people, and to tell the truth, Senator, I don’t think you got the git to make it go.”