Charles laughed, but neither Vera nor Minkowski joined him. He said that Minnie Moody had actually purchased a ticket to come and see him sing Pergolesi the night after the earthquake.
“Goddamn them all to hell anyway,” said Minkowski vaguely, meaning not Minnie Moody, or Charles, but some others.
“Anybody been round to see you?” asked Vera.
“I guess they have!” Minkowski shouted with sudden fury. “Him and his pals in various combinations.”
Vera turned to Charles, but kept Minkowski in view, giving him significant looks as she spoke. “He refers to a man we believe to be more or less running San Francisco’s secret police.”
“Secret police,” Charles murmured appreciatively.
Minkowski stared with unblinking neutrality at him, then glanced at Vera, who went on. “His name is Rudy Swanson and he used to work, we believe, for the Pinkerton Agency, but now heads something called the Public Utilities Protection Bureau, an organization formed by Pacific Gas and Electric, the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company, and who else.?”
“PTT,” holding up three fingers. “And, ummm—”
“Right, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph,” said Vera, holding up four fingers, “and Western States Gas and Electric.” Up came her thumb. “The Northern Electric Railroad. I think that’s it, isn’t it?” Minkowski nodded, then shrugged. “If we have the right fellow, he was the one sitting next to the public prosecutor at Tom Moody’s three Martinez trials.”
“You know Tom Moody, do you?” Minkowski asked Charles.
“We met, yes, coupla times, upstairs, downstairs.” Charles gestured over his shoulder. “We spoke very briefly.”
“They’ve been trying to frame dear Tom for several years now,” said Vera wistfully. “And this person Swanson, who has absolutely no business being in a courtroom, was there helping pick the goddamn jury, whispering advice — but failing, here’s my main point about Swanson, failing three times to get a conviction.”
“He has been all over Farnsworth,” said Minkowski, “for three weeks now.”
An awkward silence ensued. Finally Vera looked expectantly at Charles, who said nothing, waiting.
“He offered Warren some money,” said Minkowski.
“Don’t tell me how much,” pleaded Vera.
“Five grand.”
“Oh my God.”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“That’s too much for Warren to bear!”
“Then he waltzed over here and offered me the same.”
“He did not!” shouted Vera incredulously.
“I told him he should keep his money as he was going to need it when the subornation market heated up. Then I told him to get the hell off my bus. And he says, with a grin that looks like he should be pie-eyed but he’s not, those pale baby blues burning away in their sockets, he says he guessed he could have my jitney license just like that, and he snaps his fingers, if he wanted it, and rip it to shreds right under my big fucking Jew nose. Which he then pretends to do, like a mime, you know, very detailed and precise, ripping it eight times and then brushing his hands off. You’re doomed, he tells me, why don’t you wise up, URR’s gonna have you off the heavy traffic streets within a matter of weeks, and then out of business altogether, so wise up, wise up, wise up, it’s like a little refrain he singing to me now, wise up and I said I guessed I could make a living some other way than a nickel at a time driving a goddamn bus and he sings some more at me, wise up wise up wise up, only this time he’s friendly as can be, almost sweet, you know. ‘Won’t take much,’ he says, ‘to convict the sonofabitch, just a little circumstantial what-have-you, and, by the way, what do you have, a detail or two or some general notion we can cook up for show-and-tell later on?’”
Minkowski’s eyes widened startlingly, and Charles prepared himself to laugh at the joke he thought was surely coming, but Minkowski merely whispered, “Here comes the sonofabitch now.”
It was the man Charles had noticed earlier, the man of marble. He was now entering the bus, which dipped, as if with great statuary weight, toward the curb. The man, Swanson, smiled hugely, with his mouth open and red, and raised the narrow slits through which he gazed back out the door at them so wide it became comical and then unsettling. They entered the bus. Swanson appeared to relax: it was as if a statue were coming to life. He held out a nickel to Minkowski, who took it with a show of distaste.
“Remind me,” said Swanson with a rough, deep voice, “to buy you a decent cigar one of these days.” He sniffed the stale air of the bus’s interior and shot a reproving glance at its driver.
“Don’t smoke,” said Minkowski.
“Hell you don’t. Seen you do it.” He touched the wide brim of his marble hat and said to Vera: “Seen you too. Daring for a dame.”
“No, sir,” said Vera, “I do not believe that you have.” She beamed.
“What’s your name again.?” asked Swanson amiably.
“Pardon me,” said Vera, still smiling prettily. “I do not hand my name out to just any old clown who happens along with a wish to know it.”
“Warum nicht? Got something to hide?” Swanson’s round face got rounder and redder. “I’m only kidding you, miss!”
“What is your name, sir?” asked Vera. It was unlikely but possible that Swanson did not in truth know who she was, merely of her and not by sight, as Vera had been peripheral to his and his employer’s concerns for several years, and figuring hardly at all on the West Coast. So she pretended not to know his name or face, either.
“Swanson,” said Swanson, “Rudolph Swanson,” leaning toward Vera over the back of a seat and holding out his hand, but looking Charles up and down. “I’m with the public utilities. What do you do, miss? If you don’t mind my asking like you did your name, which I respect but do not understand. Still in school? This must be your boyfriend! Say, don’t look like that! I’m a friend of your owner/operator here, and I guess you are too, by the way you’ve been chatting here so earnestly. So that makes us friends or at least I hope so. That’s how I like to approach folks. Don’t mean to pry, I most sincerely do not.”
Within the narrow confines of the space left in the air by the detective’s bullying garrulousness, Charles thought he ought to say something, felt something like a manly duty to speak up firmly but diplomatically, but was confused and could think of nothing to say. He felt naked and afraid of what would happen next — not an actor at all. If the man was a big-time Pinkerton or ex-Pinkerton, why did he not know who Vera was? And himself too: How could he not know he was talking to William Minot’s son? Was he pretending not to know? If he was in deep with the URR people, he was capable of any grotesquerie Charles could imagine. He decided, in that moment of equal and opposing forces — youthful bravado working on youthful fear with traces of erotic mania still filtering out of his blood — to act as if he knew the answers to these and other questions. It was a kind of dramatic irony, not as he and Sir Edwin theorized and practiced it, where the real and the faked real were both unreliable, but as he’d understood the idea from lecturers at college: he would know something his audience, the marble detective, did not, thus giving himself the upper hand and perhaps causing the man to see the episode as a show, and be amused, entertained by it, rather than as a part of life and therefore requiring action, a judgment and an action, such as: they are a threat to the public welfare and I must crush them. Yes, that was it. The idea blazed past his eyes, streaked through his mind like comets crashing into planets that awoke and trembled with lust — who would be the actor on this stage? Who would get to act, and in the service of what would that action occur? He raised his head imperiously, and stared with rich-boy hauteur into Swanson’s pale eyes. Swanson closed his mouth and blinked. Charles felt unimaginably powerful. He relaxed.