“Well, it might do him some good,” Rudolph said. “A couple of years in the Army might make a man of him.”
“You have a baby daughter,” Gretchen said bitterly. “You can talk like that. I have one son. I don’t think a bullet through his head is going to make a man of my son.”
“Now, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, “don’t make it so automatic. Induct the boy and two months later send the corpse home to mother. There are an awful lot of boys who serve their time and come home without a scratch.”
“That’s why I’m calling you,” Gretchen said. “I want you to make sure that he comes home without a scratch.”
“What can I do?”
“You know a lot of people in Washington.”
“Nobody can keep a kid out of the draft if he’s goofed school and he’s in good health, Gretchen. Not even in Washington.”
“I’m not so sure about that, either,” Gretchen said, “from some of the things I’ve heard and read. But I’m not asking you to try to keep Billy out of the Army.”
“Then what are you trying to get me to do?”
“Use your connections to make sure that once Billy is in, he doesn’t ever get sent to Viet Nam.”
Rudolph sighed. The truth was that he did know some people in Washington who could most probably do it and who would most probably do it if he asked them. But it was just the sort of petty, privileged, inside politicking that he despised the most. It offended his sense of rectitude and cast a shadow on his entire reason for going into public life. In the world of business it was perfectly normal for a man to come to you and ask you to place a nephew or a cousin in some favored position. Depending upon how much you owed the man or how much you expected to get from him in the future, or even how much you liked him, you helped the nephew or cousin, if you could, without thinking twice about it. But to use the power you had gained by the votes of people to whom you had promised impeccable representation and the sternest respect for the law to deliver your sister’s son from the threat of death while actively or tacitly approving of sending thousands of other boys the same age to their destruction was another thing.
“Gretchen,” he said over the slight buzz of wire between Dallas and Los Angeles, “I wish you could figure out some other way …”
“The only other person I know who might be able to do something,” Gretchen said, her voice rising, “is Colin Burke’s brother. He’s a general in the Air Force. He’s in Viet Nam right now. I bet he’d just fall all over himself with eagerness to keep Billy from hearing a shot fired.”
“Not so loud, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, holding the phone away from his ear. “I hear you perfectly well.”
“I’m going to tell you something.” She was shouting hysterically now. “If you don’t help, I’m coming to New York and I’m taking Billy with me to Canada or Sweden. And I’m going to make one hell of a loud noise about why I’m doing it.”
“Christ, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, “what’s wrong with you—are you approaching the menopause or what?”
He heard the phone slam at the other end. He got up slowly and went over to the window and looked out at Dallas. It didn’t look any better from the bedroom than it had from the salon.
Family, he thought. Without reasoning it out, he had always been the one to try to protect his family. He was the one who helped his father at the ovens and made the deliveries for the bakery; he was the one who had kept his mother alive. He was the one who had had the shabby dealings with detectives and the painful scene with Willie Abbott and had helped Gretchen with her divorce and befriended her second husband. He was the one who had made the money for Tom, so that he could escape the savage life he had fallen into. He was the one who had gone to Colin Burke’s funeral on the other edge of the continent to comfort his sister at the worst moments of her sorrow. He was the one who had taken the responsibility of taking Billy, ungrateful and derisive as he was, out of his school when Billy was suffering there; he was the one who had gotten Billy into Whitby, when the boy’s marks were hardly good enough to get him into a trade school. He was the one who had hunted down Tom at the Aegean Hotel, for his mother’s sake, and had learned all about West Fifty-third Street and put up the money for Schultz and made the arrangement with the lawyer for Tom’s reunion with his son and his divorce from a prostitute …
He had not asked for gratitude and, he thought wryly, he had gotten damn little for it. Well, he hadn’t done it for gratitude. He was honest with himself. He was conscious of the duties owed to himself and others and wouldn’t have been able to live comfortably with himself if he hadn’t fulfilled them.
Duties never end. It is their essential characteristic.
He went over to the phone and asked for Gretchen’s number in California. When she answered, he said, “All right, Gretchen. I’ll stop over in Washington on the way North and see what I can do. I think you can stop worrying.”
“Thank you, Rudy,” Gretchen said in a small voice. “I knew you’d come through.”
Brad arrived at the suite at five-thirty. Texas sun and Texas liquor had made him ruddier than ever. Also heavier and more expansive. He was wearing a dark, summer-weight, striped suit and a ruffled blue shirt with huge pearl cufflinks. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport, but I hope my boy treated you all right.” He poured himself a slug of bourbon over ice and beamed at his friends. “Well, it’s about time you fellas came down and paid me a visit and took a look for yourselves at where your money’s coming from. We’re bringing in a new well and maybe tomorrow I’ll hire a plane and we’ll fly over and take a look at how it’s doing. And I’ve got tickets on the fifty-yard line for Saturday. The big game of the season. Texas against Oklahoma. This town’s got to be seen to be believed on that weekend. Thirty thousand happy drunks. I’m sorry Virginia’s not here to welcome you. She’ll be heartbroken when she hears you’ve been and gone. But she’s up North visiting her Pappy. I hear he’s not too well. I hope it’s nothing serious. I’m real fond of the old critter.”
It was too painful, the Western heartiness, the lush hospitality, the desperate rush of Southern blarney. “Cut it out, please, Brad,” Rudolph said. “For one thing, we know why Virginia’s not here. And it isn’t to visit her Pappy, as you describe him.” Two weeks ago Calderwood had come to Rudolph’s office and had told him that Virginia had left Brad for good because Brad had taken up with some movie actress in Hollywood and was commuting between Dallas and Hollywood three times a week and was having money troubles. It was after Calderwood’s visit that Rudolph had begun to suspect something and had called Johnny.
“Pardner,” Brad said, drinking, “I don’t know what all you’re talking about. I just talked to my wife and she said she expected to be coming home any day now and …”
“You didn’t just talk to your wife and she’s not coming home, Brad,” Rudolph said. “And you know it.”
“And you know a lot of other things, too,” Johnny said. He was standing between Brad and the door, almost as if he expected Brad to make a sudden run for it. “And so do we.”
“By God,” Brad said, “if you fellas weren’t my lifelong buddies, I’d swear you sounded hostile.” He was sweating, despite the air-conditioning and his blue shirt was darkly stained. He filled his glass again. His stubby, manicured fingers were shaking as he fumbled with the ice.
“Come clean, Brad,” Johnny said.
“Well …” Brad laughed, or tried to laugh. “Maybe I’ve been stepping out a little on my wife, here and there. You know how I am, Rudy, I don’t have the strength of character you have, I can’t resist a little bit of soft, cuddly poontang when it’s waved in my face. But Virginia’s taking it too big, she …”