“Sad,” said George. “Very sad.”
“The day Kevin fell in front of the train he was on his way to meet her. Probably the excitement of going to see her had something to do with the heart attack. In any case, he had it and was badly ground up. The poor son of a bitch. She waited for him, and she didn’t know anything about what had happened to him till the next morning when she saw it in the papers.”
“And they can be pretty bad,” said George.
“She couldn’t even go to Kevin’s funeral. She was left with nothing, except one thing. The terrifying thought that he could have had the heart attack while he was in bed with her. Can you imagine what that kind of guilty feeling can do to a Catholic? No, I guess you can’t. You’d have to be that kind of Catholic to know. I was brought up a Catholic, but I had a hard time putting myself in her place. She told me. First, the guilty feeling because he was on his way to meet her, the narrow escape. Then to add to it, the feeling that she must do penance. But worst of all, the knowledge that she was still in love and that that part of her life was finished. It is, too. She told me she felt sinful about asking me to get Kevin’s rosary beads, but that if she didn’t have something of his she would go out of her mind.”
“I hope you got them for her,” said George.
“I did. His wife was only too glad to see any sign that I was getting religion. And of course when I pretended that I lost the beads, she thought it was typical of me. Fuck her. I didn’t care what she thought. It was Kevin’s girl I was thinking of. The one he loved, and that really loved him. She goes to Mass every morning, and if you think it’s a comfort to her, it isn’t. She’s only about fifty, but I’ll bet she doesn’t live another year.”
“I’m really sorry about Kevin. He was a nice guy,” said George.
“And this is a son of a bitch of a life, George. And now comes your turn.”
“My turn?” said George.
“As if you hadn’t had enough with your brother,” said O’Byrne. “How much do you know about that kid of yours?”
“Which one? My daughter, or my son?”
“Your son. Bing? Isn’t that what they call him?”
“Yes,” said George. “We’re not very close. He lives in California, and the only time I’ve seen him since college was when he came to my brother’s funeral. He’s making a lot of money, I know that much.”
O’Byrne nodded. “And headed for trouble.”
“Which kind?”
“I was out there last winter. I spent a month in California, getting to know people in the oil business. Do you remember a fellow at Princeton named Jack Murphy?”
“No, I don’t believe I do. Jack Murphy? It’s a fairly common name.”
“A class behind us. He was never any particular friend of mine, but he was Irish and we had the same feeling at Princeton that you and Harbord would have had if you’d been at Fordham. But I looked him up last winter and he was exceedingly cordial. Hospitable. He asked about you and of course wanted to know about your brother and what happened there. I wasn’t able to give him any inside dope, which caused him to infer that you and I weren’t very great buddies, and therefore he spoke freely. He said you had a son out there— which I didn’t know—and that the son was going to be the next Lockwood that got in the papers. Don’t you know any of this, George?”
“Nothing about any trouble,” said George. “What kind of trouble?”
“Well, Murph told me that if your son doesn’t get a bullet in his head from some jealous husband, he’s liable to get one from somebody in the oil business.”
“The jealous husband part doesn’t surprise me. The other part does. I had the impression that he was making quite a name for himself in the oil business.”
“Quite a name is right,” said O’Byrne. “According to Murph—and some other fellows I met—there are lots of dirty tricks in the oil business, and your kid knows every one of them. Apparently he made a nice pile of money legitimately, through some friend of his.”
“The father of a friend of his,” said George.
“But he wasn’t satisfied with that,” said O’Byrne. “Who ever is? And when you’re that young—”
“Don’t start making excuses for him, Ned. You’ll only confuse the story. Go on.”
“I may have been making excuses for myself, too,” said O’Byrne. “At all events, he pulled a real fast one. This is the way I got it from Murph. Your kid went into business for himself, as a wildcatter. He bought or leased a lot of equipment and went around to people who had land leases but couldn’t raise the money to dig wells. He dug a well for a man named Smith. Not Smith, but that’s a good enough name. After a month or two he went to Smith and said he had no more money, knowing that Smith had none, either. He told Smith that unless they got more money, he was going to have to abandon the well, and that it didn’t seem to him that there was much hope anyway. Smith of course wasn’t very happy about that, and he wasn’t going to make any effort to try and raise more money. So they agreed to forget the whole thing, and your kid began to remove his equipment.”
“He actually moved the equipment away?”
“Dismantled the derrick and so on and put the stuff on trucks. Just one more dry well. Charge it off to experience. Better luck next time. Your kid said he heard about some property in Mexico that he thought he’d try next, but he was convinced there was nothing on Smith’s property. Then some guy came along and offered Smith a few dollars an acre for grazing land. And Smith, short of cash, sold his lease to the stranger. A week later the derrick was back in place, all the equipment in working order, and digging was resumed. Two weeks later they had a gusher.”
“And my son was the owner of the oil leases? How clever of him.”
“Well, it was clever if you don’t mind living under a sentence of death. Smith has threatened to get even with him, and your kid takes the threat seriously enough to carry a gun. Never goes anywhere without one. Comes home at night and makes sure no one is hiding in the bushes around his house.”
“It doesn’t seem to me that Smith was very smart. Why did he believe my son when he said it was a dry well?”
“I guess because your son really knows the oil business. And until then he had a good reputation.”
“That probably would explain how my son knew there really was oil there,” said George. “If Smith got a good lawyer, he could probably sue my son for misrepresentation. The man who bought the lease from Smith—”
“A small ranch-owner. Nobody.”
“But a man who might be subpoenaed to testify against my son. Therefore a potential blackmailer. Otherwise it was a good scheme, wasn’t it? Not admirable from the standpoint of ethics, but I believe they have a different set of ethics in the oil business.”
“You don’t seem very shocked by this,” said O’Byrne.
“Why pretend? I’m not shocked. It would be nice if our children grew up to be respectable and successful. But if they can’t be both, it’s some comfort to know that they’re successful. You have no children, so you wouldn’t understand that.”
“Then I didn’t have to worry about telling you all this?”
“Thank you for worrying, Ned. But I’m certainly not going to worry much about my son,” said George. “Looking at it another way, with complete selfishness, if he’d turned out differently, I would be the scoundrel. I practically banished him, you know. He was expelled from Princeton for cheating, and I was very unsympathetic. So he went out to California and got in the oil business. Made a fortune legitimately, made a second fortune crookedly, and thereby confirmed my harsh opinion of him. Frankly, Ned, what you’ve told me here makes me sigh with relief.”