It’s just like a business, Kelly thought, except all that they have to sell is labor and if they don’t get enough for their product, then they take it off the market for a while until the price goes up, and there you go oversimplifying again.
The twelfth-floor corridor was carpeted and the walls were paneled in some imitation plastic that looked a little like walnut, but not much. Another receptionist, this time pretty enough to have had a job with some trendy ad agency, smiled pleasantly at them and asked how she could be of help.
“Where’s the men’s room?” Cubbin said.
“Do you have an appointment?” the pretty girl asked.
“Not with the men’s room, sweetie,” Cubbin said. “With Barnett, but if I don’t find the men’s room, I might pee all over that fancy rug of his.”
“It’s just down there to your left.”
“Let’s go, kid,” Cubbin said as he turned and headed down the hall.
Kelly grinned at the girl. “Just think, that man’s my dad.”
“Lucky you.”
“Come on, Kelly,” Cubbin called.
“Next week he starts going all by himself,” Kelly said as he turned toward Cubbin.
Inside the men’s room, Cubbin put a finger to his lips and then knelt down to peer under the doors of the stalls. By the time he rose, Kelly had the half-pint open. “Here you go, chief,” he said, “a drop of the best.”
Cubbin drank, sighed, and handed the bottle back. “Well, since we’re here we might as well use it. Go when you can, they say.”
As father and son stood in front of the urinals, Cubbin said, “This reminds me of something about Barnett I’d almost forgotten.”
“What?”
“He’s piss-shy.”
“So?”
“You can never trust a guy who’s piss-shy.”
“Why not?”
“Because most of them are nances.”
“I never heard of one with nine kids,” Kelly said.
Jack Barnett looked up from something that he was writing when Cubbin and Kelly were shown into his office. Then he looked back down and said, “What do you want? Hello, Kelly.”
“Hello, Jack,” Kelly said.
“Well, take a seat someplace,” Barnett said as he continued with his writing. Kelly took one of the chairs in front of Barnett’s desk. Cubbin selected one farther away so that Barnett would have to turn his head to see him.
Kelly had been in Barnett’s home countless times because three of the Barnett children were about his age and they had all spent nearly as much time in each other’s homes as they had in their own. Even when the feud had reached its most bitter point in the mid-fifties after Barnett had helped finance Cubbin’s opposition, neither of the fathers had ever objected to their children’s choice of friends.
But Kelly had never been in Barnett’s office before and he decided that it was just the thing for either the president of a large labor union or the chief executive of a prosperous dog-biscuit company. None of them can escape that “Hey, gang, just look at me now,” appearance, Kelly thought. Barnett’s office had a thick brown carpet, walls paneled with real walnut, a big, neat desk, a console telephone, a brown leather couch, some comfortably upholstered chairs, a coffee table, and about two dozen framed and autographed photographs on the wall of prominent politicians from throughout what Barnett still referred to as the free world.
Cubbin said nothing until Barnett stopped writing and turned to look at him. “Well?” Barnett said.
“I want you to keep your fuckin nose out of my union,” Cubbin said, making his tone a calm growl.
“Aw, shit,” Barnett said and flung his ball-point pen on his desk. He turned to Kelly. “Is he drunk again? I know he’s your old man and it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning, but I’ve seen him drunk before eleven.”
“He’s not drunk, Jack,” Kelly said.
“If you don’t get your fuckin nose out of my union, and keep it out, I’m going to have your ass,” Cubbin said, putting just a little more growly menace into his tone and enjoying every second of it because for once he was certain that he was absolutely in the right.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You’re a goddamn liar.”
“Who you calling a liar?”
“You, you greasy little prick,” Cubbin roared, hugely enjoying himself.
Barnett was up now, leaning over his desk at Cubbin, pointing to the door with his left hand, leaning on the phone with his right. “Out!” he yelled. “You got just ten seconds.”
“Play it, Kelly,” Cubbin said, just like Bogart and then smiled nastily at Barnett. “You’re gonna love it.”
“Out!” Barnett screamed. “Get your ass outa my office!”
“You’d better hear it, Jack,” Kelly said as he took the Sony tape recorder from the attaché case and placed it on the desk.
“Hear what?” Barnett said.
“Just listen,” Cubbin said.
Kelly punched the play button and the tape recording started. Barnett was standing when the tape began. By the time it was over he was sitting in his chair, his hands folded on the desk, his eyes straight ahead. “It’s a fake,” he said.
“Show him the rest, Kelly,” Cubbin said.
Kelly placed on the desk pictures that had been taken by Ted Lawson of the interior of the motel room and of the two men leaving it. He also put before Barnett three samples of what the mimeograph machines had run off. Barnett looked at the pictures without touching them. He picked up a letter opener and used it to shove them to one side and to move the mimeograph sheets over so that he could see them better.
“You don’t want to hear this again, do you?” Kelly said, indicating the tape recorder.
Barnett shook his head. Kelly put the tape recorder back in the attaché case. “You can keep the pictures and that other crap,” Cubbin said.
Barnett picked up the pictures and the mimeographed sheets and dropped them into his wastebasket. After that he turned slowly toward Cubbin and said, “So?”
“So call ’em off.”
Barnett seemed to think about Cubbin’s demand for a moment. Then he shrugged and smiled. It was the smile of a man who has just thought of something vicious to say and who knows that he will enjoy saying it. “They don’t matter now,” he said. “You’re already whipped.”
“That’s your ass talking, pal,” Cubbin growled. “Your face knows better.”
“In three weeks you’re gonna be a has-been. You’re gonna be ex-President Cubbin.”
“Let me catch you just one more time,” Cubbin said, his voice rising, “and I’ll have you up on charges.”
“You’re done, Cubbin. You’re finished! Through!” Barnett’s last word was a shout. He had risen and was leaning over his desk toward Cubbin who now was also up.
“If I go down, I’ll take you with me!” Cubbin shouted.
“Don’t threaten me, you son of a bitch!”
“I’m not threatening you, you little cocksucker!” Cubbin said, roaring the words, “I’m telling you!”
Barnett moved rather well for sixty-one. He was around his desk and the right that he aimed at Cubbin almost connected. Cubbin retreated, the back of his knees caught the edge of his chair, and he sat down hard, not hurt, but surprised and angry.