“It isn’t over, Senator.”
He was the one who was astonished. He looked at me in disbelief. In the moments after his wife and daughter had left the room he’d managed to convince himself that everything was fine again.
“It isn’t?”
“You beat up Will Neville pretty bad tonight.”
“He didn’t have it coming?”
“He’s in police custody right now.”
The dark eyes narrowed. He was beginning to understand what I was about to say. A part of it, anyway.
“Will is going to tell them everything he can to stay out of prison. You need to get to him before that happens.”
“He’s a blackmailer.”
“He’s a blackmailer who can take you down with him.”
“Why are you trying to help me? You hate my politics and I’m sure you hate me.”
“Because if you lose — and I hope you do — I want it to be because you’re a shill for every crooked big businessman in the country. But I don’t want to see you lose because of blackmail.” Then: “Call your favorite local lawyer and get him to the hospital fast. I asked that he be looked at. He was in bad shape. Get him before Cliffie starts asking him any serious questions. Then you can bribe him or whatever it takes to keep him quiet about the blackmail photos. I scared him. I told him he was going to prison. You can tell him he isn’t — if he’ll do what you tell him. He’ll be so relieved, he’ll go along with anything you say.”
“I trust everything that was said here tonight—”
“I like Lucy too much to say anything to anybody. And for the first time in my life, I like your wife. I think this experience gave her some humility, even if you’ll never understand it that way.”
He smiled. “And me—”
“You’re just another whore for the robber barons. They’re training your replacement now. If you win this time, it’ll be your last term.”
Anger filled the dark eyes. “I never realized until right this minute how much I detest you, McCain.”
I tapped my chest. “Badge of honor, Senator. Badge of honor.”
And that was where I left him.
I walked out to the ragtop and turned the key in the ignition. A blast of Chuck Berry. A cleansing blast of Chuck Berry. One I needed badly.
28
I saw Stan Green’s Studebaker parked at the A&W on my way back to my office so I wheeled in, ordered myself a tenderloin and fries, and then walked over to Stan’s car while I waited for my food to be deposited on the window ledge of my own car.
There was a time when the Studebaker with its futuristic grill and futuristic taillights looked downright... futuristic. Now it just looked sort of weird, like a sad mutant version of a real car.
“Still headed for outer space, I see.”
“Oh, yeah,” Stan said. “Headed for Mercury tonight. All those blue-skinned Mercurian babes.”
Stan and I used to buy a magazine called Planet Stories. Sure, the half-naked women were green and mauve and blue sometimes, but they had breasts and hips that appealed to every boy who’d ever locked himself in his room with a magazine. The stories themselves were as ridiculously splendid as the sexy blue babes on the covers.
“Anything new for an intrepid reporter?”
“Not at the moment. Sorry.”
“I still like Anderson and Hannity for it, don’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
He ate the last piece of his cheeseburger. I knew it was a cheeseburger because he had dollops of melted cheese on his tie. The blue-skinned people who lived on Mercury had a strict dress code. Those cheese stains might get him barred.
At this time of night, just after nine-thirty, the testosterone parade was at its peak. There were the tough guys who walked around with the sleeves of their T-shirts rolled up so you could see their muscles. There were the boys in the cars with the glass-pack mufflers that could shake an entire building when the boys floored the gas pedals. And there were the lover boys, the ones all the carhops smiled at and sort of aimed their cute little bottoms at, the lover boys being too cool to acknowledge this in any way but all the other boys knowing that these bastards could have their pick of any carhop they wanted. And there were some sweet sweet carhops.
“I talked to Marie Denham tonight,” Stan said.
“What about her?”
“She’s getting discouraged. Wonders if the police are working as hard as they would if David had been white.”
“Well, I admit everything’s pretty confusing right now. Especially since somebody killed James Neville.”
“Yeah, she said she’s surprised nobody’s arrested Will Neville. She said he’s already violated his probation.”
I saw the carhop bringing my food. “Well, just tell her we’re doing our best. I don’t blame her for being frustrated. We all are.”
I finished my meal listening to Miles Davis on the Iowa City jazz station. The bleakness of his horn probably wasn’t what I needed right then but it was too cool and too perfect to turn off.
I was thinking of something Stan had just said — or trying to remember what Stan had just said, something that had bothered me afterward — when I saw him back out of his slot and exit the root beer stand.
But the yawn that made me lay my head back against the seat put curiosity out of my mind. Not being a tough guy, and not being a guy who can get by on little sleep, the past few days of violence and quick naps were starting to sink me.
I’d been planning on going to my office, but right now that six-block trip seemed far too long. There was a phone booth on the west corner of the A&W. I’d check my messages from there and then head on home.
“Hi, it’s McCain. Any messages?”
“One. Aaron Towne. He said you’d know the number.”
“Thanks.”
“For what it’s worth, he wasn’t very nice.”
“He never is. I’m sorry, Julie.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry — for you.”
Aaron answered and as soon as he realized who it was, he said, “You took your own sweet time.”
“Aaron, now’s not a good time to push it. Believe me. Now what the hell’s going on?”
“She’s decided she wants to go there tonight. She doesn’t want anybody to see us leave town.”
“I’m just glad she’s going.”
“She wants to talk to you.”
“She’s been avoiding me.”
“If I had my way, she’d still be avoiding you. I don’t see where this will help her at all. But I’ll go tell her. She’ll pick up from the den. She’s making lists of things for me to do.”
“Poor baby.”
He went away.
I scanned the action at the root beer stand while I waited for her to pick up. One scene involved a lover boy trying to steal the attention of a girl who was talking to a kid who looked even more insecure than I had at his age. To the tutored eye insecurity is as obvious as deformity. The other was a cute little girl sitting on the back bumper of a pickup track sobbing into a handkerchief while all around her girls laughed and talked. Some real friends she had there.
No hello. “I’ll be there for a month. Or so they tell me.”
“I’m glad you’re going.”
“Of course you are. I won’t be there to make sure you earn your paycheck.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s why you hired me. Because I’m so lazy.”
A hesitation. “There’re an awful lot of people who’ll get a good chuckle out of me going to a hospital for drunks.”
“To hell with them. You’re doing what you need to do.”