“He’s doing this wrong,” he said. “Why her?”
“Picture in the papers?”
“Below the fold,” Bunny said, dismissive.
Ben watched the newsreel cameras track her as she moved to the table, motors whirring. “Who is she?”
“Priscilla Lane. Diana Lynn,” Bunny said, casting.
“I mean here.”
“Probably a Schaeffer picture at Fox. But he just did that. There’s no build. Carol Hayes.”
“The cameras like her.”
Bunny frowned. “Something’s wrong.” He leaned across again to one of the publicity staff and whispered, sending him out of the room.
“And you talked to Mr. Schaeffer about the script?” Minot was saying.
“I didn’t want to,” she said. “You know, you don’t like to make trouble. But I just didn’t feel comfortable with some of the lines.”
“On the seventh take,” Bunny said under his breath.
“And why was that?”
“They didn’t seem- I don’t think it’s like that in this country. I mean, my dad was a businessman and he just wouldn’t have done that, what happens in the picture.”
Ben thought at first that Minot was heading somewhere with this, but after a while saw that he was just treading water. Everything Hayes said, her fear of being used to promote an underlying message, had been said. After she stepped down, another break, Bunny caught Minot as he passed.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” he said quietly, a private conversation as people passed around them.
“No? Not exactly what we agreed, is it? I don’t like sloppy seconds, either. You people,” Minot said, an undisguised contempt. “Look at that.”
Off to the side, Carol was smiling, her face lit up by flashbulbs.
“Then why did you-”
“You want to protect your property? That it? And I get this. So the surprise is on me. Live and learn. Who’d you use? Him?” He jerked his finger at Ben. “Handy Andy. No, he wouldn’t have the balls. One of your studio goons probably. But I’ll tell you something. The next surprise is on you. I can’t call her without the file-that’ll take a while to put together again. But there’s always another way. A little whisper and there’s no end to the shit they can stir up.” He turned his head toward the reporters. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Minot dropped his voice. “Who do you think you’re playing with? You fix parking tickets. You don’t fix me. Not me.”
“I still don’t-”
“No? Then maybe she did it herself. Such light fingers,” he said, wriggling his. “It doesn’t matter. You’re both fucked.”
“Ken-”
“Can I get a word in edgewise?” A voice behind them.
“Polly,” Minot said, rearranging his face, stepping back. “You there all this time?”
“Now don’t run away. I’ve been trying to get you all morning. They’re running the column out front.”
“As the news?”
“In addition. Two stories. And a picture.”
“That’s a mighty good start,” Minot said, smiling.
“Mm. I’m doing the color. Bunny, you don’t mind, do you? I’ll bring him back in a minute. Who else are you calling? Schaeffer?”
“You bet.” He looked at Bunny. “And that’s just the first day.”
“What was that about?” Bunny said when they left. “Light fingers?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said, a little shaken, back in the supply closet, waiting to be caught. But she wouldn’t be called. Something for Danny.
“I’ve never seen him like that.”
“That’s who he is.”
Bunny’s face, ashen just a minute ago, hardened. “He’s not going to do a thing about the consent decree.”
“Then make it harder for him. Don’t give him people.”
Bunny looked up. “Well, now I haven’t, it seems. This isn’t your doing, is it? Is that what you were- But why would you?” he said, talking to himself. “You know what he’ll do now.” He turned toward the door, watching Minot leave. “He’ll feed her to Polly. Before we go into release.”
Henderson seemed to have disappeared, now just another hat in the crowd, but Ostermann was there, standing alone by a window, looking out.
“It’s usually gone by this time,” he said, nodding to the fog. “Not today. No sun. Dark times, eh?”
“You haven’t been taking any notes. Are you really going to write about this?”
“If he calls Germans, then it’s something for Aufbau. Brecht, at least, I would think, wouldn’t you? He’d make an interesting witness.”
“It’s a farce.”
Ostermann nodded. “It always begins that way. Nothing to trouble about. Then each day a little more. Well, that’s not so serious, either. And then one day-”
“You’re writing your piece,” he said, one eye still looking for Henderson.
A short man with wire-rimmed glasses, surrounded by lawyers, was crossing the hall, drawing photographers away from Carol Hayes. Schaeffer, he guessed.
Ostermann smiled. “Just thinking out loud.” He looked at the crowd. “They don’t see it. It’s new to them. But it’s the same. A farce. So say nothing and then it’s too late. Like us.”
In the hearing room, Bunny was still talking to the lawyers at the witness table so Ben was forced to take the open seat next to Dick. Their shoulders touched as he sat down, a slight brush, then a quick drawing away, and suddenly Ben was aware of him as a body, the height of his shoulders, his bulk filling the suit, hands placed on his knees, waiting. His tanned face oblivious to any change in the air around him, Ben invisible.
What had it been like? Had Dick stood by the pool’s edge, watching her legs open and close? Or had that scene been just for him? The sounds, the way she clenched him. Ben turned, facing the long table. Something that only happened to you, what everybody felt, each time. Was it over? Someone else she hadn’t loved. Still Danny’s wife.
The sound of the newsreel cameras made him look up. Minot was calling Milton Schaeffer. The tone in his voice, with its hint of blood sport, almost gloating, had made everyone sit up. Carol Hayes, even Dick, had just been there to set the stage-Schaeffer was actually a Communist. But as the cameras followed him, Ben’s attention shifted to them, the familiar whirring sound suddenly distracting, like someone whispering in his ear. Newsreel cameras.
Minot shuffled through papers, a promise of evidence to come, as Schaeffer approached the long table and was sworn in. He seemed slighter than he had in the hall, wiry and pale. Minot kept putting his papers in place, letting a hush fall over the room before he pounced.
“Mr. Schaeffer, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
No one had expected a direct jab at the opening, and it might have worked, caused the excitement Minot had clearly been hoping for, if Schaeffer had been defiant or uncooperative or even evasive. Instead, he answered Minot’s questions with a resigned fatalism that seemed to diminish their importance. Yes, he had been a member of the Party. No, he had resigned in August 1939, after the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact. No, he had not attended meetings since. He knew the names of the national Party officers (known to everyone) but not any of those in the local chapter.
“Don’t know or don’t want us to know?” Minot said.
“Names weren’t used.”
“No names. But they had faces? You’d recognize them if you saw them?”
“I suppose. It’s been six or seven years.”
“You didn’t stay friends?”
“It was a discussion group. Not-well, just a discussion group.”
“What did you discuss?”
“Political theory.”
He still believed in the plight of the underprivileged, but no longer felt the CP was an effective tool to help them. His testimony was listless and damp, like the fog outside, waiting to be burned off. Minot had clearly been expecting something else and finally he saw that Schaeffer’s answers, easily given, made him seem no more threatening than the bank clerk he resembled. The cameramen looked disappointed, not interested in the quieter drama, Schaeffer politely ending his career.