“The state!” Harrison said in contempt. “Let them stay in Sacramento, let them do something about the welfare rolls! The Mexicans! Let them do something about the real problems in this state!”
“Will they find anything?”
Patricia had turned around from the window when Bradford’s questioning had begun, and had watched with an increasingly grim expression on her face. Now, before Harrison could splutter out a reply, she snapped, “Bradford, that’s none of your business.”
Harrison twisted around in the chair in sudden irritation. “Dammit, Patricia, don’t you go making things worse!”
“He isn’t God,” she told her husband angrily. “He isn’t even your father. He’s just a man, like anybody else.”
Harrison wasn’t meeting anybody’s eye. “Nobody said he was anything else,” he cried desperately. “Naturally, he’s concerned, Patricia. Naturally, if it looks like there’s any kind of static going to come out, Brad wants to know about it, he wants to be in a position to help.”
“Help?” Patricia glared at her husband’s profile. “Is that what you call it?”
“Of course!”
Bradford, still speaking quietly, said, “Patricia, if Harrison is involved in selling homes to people in a community that doesn’t have the natural water supply for the number of families contemplated, I think he needs help. And so do the people who are buying the houses.”
Harrison was on his feet, slapping his palm on the desk. “Dammit, nobody has the right to say such things! The county itself paid for a study of the water table, the county cleared our plans, there’s never been any question—”
“There is now,” Bradford said.
Patricia glared at him. “Only from you,” she said.
“Not just from me. The state is asking—”
Harrison, in a sudden rush, leaned over the desk, staring at Bradford, and said, “That can be taken care of, Brad. Do you think the men I’m dealing with are fools? That can be taken care of. There’s publicity-hungry little twerps up there in Sacramento, but they’re only twerps, Brad. Don’t you think we can handle them?”
Bradford looked sad. He shook his head and said, “What about the first time someone in this town turns on his cold water faucet and nothing comes out? Can you handle that?”
“If it happens,” Harrison said, straightening again and holding a finger up in a declamatory posture, “and I say if it happens, there’s always water elsewhere in this state. Water can be piped in from a reservoir, it’s done all over the—”
“Water from where? There isn’t a water source for three hundred miles that isn’t already spoken for, mostly by Los Angeles. Harrison, you know I do my homework, so don’t try to kid me. What are you going to do when this town runs dry?”
Patricia, half-hidden behind Harrison now that he was standing, said, “That’s none of your business.”
“Patricia, please!” Harrison, looking pained, spread his hands and said to Bradford, “Excuse Patricia, she’s just upset.”
“What are you going to do, Harrison?”
Harrison glanced around the room, as though looking for an answer, or an escape, and when for a second his eyes met Evelyn’s she was startled at just how much fear was looking out from in there. She felt suddenly very nervous, as though she had all unknowingly entered a dark cave where there was something moving.
Bradford wouldn’t let go. He never would, that tenacity was part of what had brought him the Presidency. And part of what had lost him the Presidency again four years later. He would never let go. He said, “Harrison?”
Harrison stopped his trapped search, and met his brother’s eyes again. “I swear to you, Brad,” he said, “I swear to you there’s water for ten years. A minimum of ten years. I swear that, by all that’s holy.”
“And ten years from now?”
“Brad, ten years from now none of us may be alive.”
“The people who bought the houses will be alive. And let’s say you are, too.”
“Brad, I’ll be so far out of all this ten years from now, nobody will even mention my name. Herbert and I need capital, that’s all it is, that’s the only reason we’re in this.” Then, in a much calmer tone, “Herbert’s sorry he couldn’t make it today.”
Bradford ignored the aside. He said, “Harrison, you’re selling garbage and calling it gold.”
“Well, that’s the American way, isn’t it?” Harrison’s attempt at humor was brittle, nearly hysteric. “Put a pretty package on and jack the price, isn’t that how we do it?”
“This isn’t soap, Harrison, it’s homes. People’s homes. You can’t knowingly do this, Harrison.”
Harrison flung his arms out in exasperation. “What am I supposed to do, will you tell me that? This chance came along and I grabbed it, and so would you if you were in my position. You think you’re the only one that lost, nine years ago? You think the Defense Department likes me as much now as they did when you were in office? In the last four years, Brad, I haven’t sold a slingshot to a boy scout. I’m hurting, Brad, the civilian market just won’t support the kind of operation Herbert and I had set up. We need the money, I need the money. This thing came along, and I leaped in with both feet. What do you want me to do, give these cretins their pennies back and go live on the beach?”
“I want you to get out,” Bradford said quietly.
Patricia, still back by the window, snapped, “That isn’t for you to say. All you have to do is keep out of our business.”
This time both men ignored her. Harrison, lowering his voice, said, “If you want me out, why’d you come here? Why go through the opening?”
“Because,” Bradford told him, “this way you can still maybe get out with clean skirts. I obviously have no axe to grind here, no money to make. And no one would believe my brother would knowingly use me for a shill in a con game.”
Harrison flinched, and put a hand up as though to protect himself from a thrust. “Brad, it isn’t—”
“This way,” Bradford said, over-riding him, “it can look as though you knew nothing about the truth. A week from now, or two weeks from now, you can announce a temporary halt in the selling of new homes, while rumors about the water supply are checked out. There’s enough water for the people already here, and maybe some more. You scale down the operation, scale it right down to fit the water supply.”
“My partners wouldn’t go along with that for a minute, Brad, and I wouldn’t blame them. You know, two of the principal land owners in this project haven’t realized a penny in plot sales yet, we’ve been concentrating on the north end of town. People don’t like to be isolated, so we’ve been building and selling one area at a time.”
“It’s a lucky thing you did.”
“Brad, these men have money sunk in this. In the shopping centers, in the high school, in construction and publicity and salaries. They won’t stand for it, Brad.”
“You can walk away from it, Harrison.”
“Not broke. I can’t walk away broke.”
Patricia came forward at last, to stand beside her husband and glare at Bradford. “Do you want to give us a million dollars? That’s what we need, you know. And why? Because you lost. It wasn’t Harrison who lost, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t anybody but you. You were too pigheaded, you couldn’t do what you had to do to win, you had to shoot yourself down in flames.”
Harrison clutched at her arm. “Patricia! For God’s sake!”
“Well, it’s true! Whose fault is it we need money? Is it ours? It’s his, and now he sits there, holier than thou, and tells you to walk away from the one thing that can save us. He doesn’t care, he’s well off, he’s got your father’s estate, he’s got all the money he needs. He can afford to be noble.”