But his high spirits weren’t to last long. Soon after Teddy left the office, Swope had discovered something that threatened to ruin a lot more than his day. It happened by accident. He’d been playing phone tag for two days with Roger Tench, chief counsel at EarthWorks headquarters, about whether to sue the Pennsylvania hatchery. Late Friday, Tench had left a message instructing Swope to call him at home the following afternoon. Swope phoned from his study, eyes fixed on the five convex reflections of his face swaying at the edge of his blotter. A surly sounding kid answered. It took Tench a few minutes to come to the phone. He was out of breath.
“Just had the court rolled,” he explained.
They spoke for ten minutes. In the background Swope could hear the pock of struck balls. During the conversation he began to suspect that Tench had been drinking. Not much. A couple martinis. In the end they decided to give the hatchery two more weeks to come up with an offer before filing anything.
“Could you send me a copy of the initial agreement?” Tench asked.
“Sure.”
“No rush. Just have Earl bring it in on Friday.”
“Um, sure,” Swope said after a moment, hearing the surprise in his own voice.
Something changed in Tench’s voice as well. The usually serene Mid-westerner began to stutter and chortle.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I must be confused. Wooten’s not coming this week. Is he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I must be thinking … look, just mail it. That would probably be best.”
Swope sat in brooding silence for a few minutes after hanging up, unable to comprehend what he’d just heard. Roger Tench was the most highly organized lawyer he’d ever known. There was no way he’d think Earl Wooten was coming to Chicago if he weren’t. A couple of drinks or not. And then there was that unconvincing attempt to cover up his mistake. But why would Wooten be traveling to EarthWorks headquarters? And why was Swope not supposed to know about it? He set Teddy’s gift in motion, his eyes tracking the hypnotic action. This simply didn’t compute. He and Wooten always kept each other fully informed about their dealings with headquarters. It was them against Chicago. That was understood. There was no conceivable reason for Wooten to go there secretly.
And then a connection was made deep in Swope’s mind. Something terrifying and profound. He remembered Savage’s threat about the manager’s job. Suddenly, it didn’t seem quite so hollow. Maybe there really were other candidates for the post.
Maybe Wooten was one of them.
But that couldn’t be right. There was no way Earl would go after the job. He would never do that to Swope. They were friends. Their sons were practically brothers. They’d built a damned city together. Besides, the man had no interest in power or politics. And yet, no matter how hard Swope tried to dismiss the thought as the paranoid residue of a dismal day, it persisted. Bad facts began to accrue, easily dismissable on their own yet harder to discard when taken together. Those consecutive articles in Look and Ebony, for instance. Sure, they could simply be a happy coincidence. But they could also be the work of some publicity flak back at EarthWorks. Which would mean they were grooming Woo-ten for something. After all, there was a certain logic to the whole grisly idea. A popular black man appointed to help ease racial strife. The dark horse becomes a unity candidate.
This was crazy. There was no way Earl Wooten would stab him in the back. Not after everything they’d been through together. They were friends, even though Swope knew he wasn’t the easiest man in the world to call a friend. There had been too much silence and struggle in his life for him to possess the casual, locker-room conviviality of his former partners. Nothing had ever been easy for him. Not one single thing. Having to go to Michigan when they wouldn’t take him at Harvard or Yale. Fighting like a cornered animal to keep his newborn son alive while other fathers strutted around with their healthy kids. Settling for the job doing property deals at Barger, Green when the white-shoe firms wouldn’t hire him; then getting blackballed at Congressional because he was with the wrong outfit. Being treated like a stamp licker by the Montgomery County GOP when he approached them about a run for state assembly.
All the while watching his wife stoically swallow back the disappointment when they didn’t get the invites to the best parties and weekend retreats. And then, finally, John Mitchell shows some interest, only to turn out to be a crook. Swope knew none of this had anything to do with smarts or hard work. Those he had in abundance. He’d simply never got the knack of being on the inside. There had been too much solitude when he was a boy. He’d had to figure it all out for himself. No brothers or sisters to show him the way. Parents too old to pay attention. Local kids mocking him because his clothes and hair and slang were never quite right. There was a time to learn how to be one of the gang just as surely as there was a time to master reading and writing. And Swope had long understood that it was a lesson he’d missed.
And yet in spite of that—or maybe because of it—he and Wooten had become close. Somehow, it was this uneducated black builder who had come to understand him better than the golf buddies and conference room colleagues. Swope thought of the dozens of times Wooten had been there for him recently, ready to listen or help out. Like that day the previous autumn when he’d arrived for their weekly meeting to find Swope mired in the worst spell of his tenure atop Newton Plaza. It had been a real shit week, with problems piling up like cars on an icy highway. The first big fight had just happened at the high school. A lawsuit by a carpenter who’d lost a leg up in Juniper Bend was about to be lost. And Chicago was going nuts over cost overruns on the mall. Worse still, Teddy’s recent DWI scrape in Cannon City looked like it might have to be settled with a nolo contendere plea rather than a dismissal. By the time Wooten showed up, Swope was climbing his office’s glass walls.
“Come on,” Wooten said after listening to his friend gripe for a few minutes. “I know just what you need.”
They drove in silence to the southern edge of the city, Wooten’s mischievous smile deflecting all questions about their destination. Though happy to be out of the office, Swope soon grew annoyed. He was too busy for games. Finally, they arrived at a former dairy farm Swope had prized away from a stubborn old coot named Atholton. A demolition crew was on the site, having already reduced the two barns to piles of dust-haloed rubble. The modest ranch house still stood, though it had been stripped of doors, fittings and roof. A Caterpillar tractor was parked in the front yard, its jagged scoop pointing at the facade like the crooked finger of a hanging judge.
The wrecking crew, a half dozen hard-eyed Viet vets Swope had hired to knock down the relics of old Cannon County, had gathered around someone’s mud-splattered pickup for lunch. Wooten parked his Ranchero near the Cat and told Swope to stay put. The men watched him approach warily, though they relaxed after he began speaking. There were a few shrugs and nods. Whatever he had in mind was fine with them.
“Let’s go,” Wooten said when he returned to the Ranchero, handing Swope a hard hat he snatched from the truck’s bed.
Though he was nearing the end of his patience, Swope dutifully followed the builder across the pocked earth, careful not to soil his wing tips in the patches of sucking clay. Wooten stopped beside the Cat and smiled.
“You ready?”
“For what?”
Wooten chucked his chin up at the seat above them. It took Swope a few seconds to understand. When he did, an illicit, boyish thrill ran through him.
“Are you serious?”
“As a deacon, Mr. Swope.”
Swope grabbed the roll cage and pulled himself up into the driver’s seat. His leg brushed against the engine’s greasy housing and for a moment he worried about soiling his suit’s hundred-dollar-a-yard fabric. But once he was perched on the obdurate saddle, he wasn’t thinking about any of that. There was just him and the tractor and Atholton’s doomed ranch.
Wooten jumped up onto the running board to show him how it worked. Sim
ple, really. Forward, stop, reverse. He then cranked on the engine to demonstrate the scoop’s controls. He had to shout these final instructions over the diesel chug. Swope listened carefully, not wanting to make any mistakes, aware of the wrecking crew’s stony stares.
And then there was nothing left to do but tear the place up. Wooten jumped off the tractor and spurred it on with a sharp slap to its splattered flank. Swope carefully slipped the gearstick forward and released the clutch. The tractor lurched, bouncing him painfully on the hard seat. He put some pressure on the clutch to regulate its momentum. By the time the scoop’s teeth bit into the warped clapboards, he was traveling an unstoppable three miles per hour. The moist crack of old wood was almost inaudible beneath the motor’s rumble. Swope let the scoop carry on deep into the house, stopping only when the roll cage reached the structure’s edge. He continued to use the clutch instead of the brake, filling the yard with deep revs. He shot a quick glance at Wooten, who was smiling and nodding, like a proud father who’s just released his son’s two-wheeler for the first time.
Swope went at it for twenty minutes. Of course, there was only so much damage he could do. Even as the machine gradually came under his control and he mastered the truculent scoop, certain walls and support beams remained beyond his reach. But still, by the time he’d called it a day, Atholton’s house was in ruins. Drywall had splintered like frosting on a stale cake; beams were transformed into kindling. Arches of piping and fronds of electrical wire had been exposed. A blizzard of fine powder blew through it all, making the once-cozy house look like some blasted tundra hovel.
As Swope dropped the Cat into a final reverse, the day’s troubles suddenly seemed far, far away. The crack and moan of debris beneath the treads was one of the purest sounds he’d ever heard. The thick fumes tasted sweet in the back of his mouth. When he reached Wooten he cut the engine. It took a few seconds for the rattling to stop.
“Thanks, Earl,” Swope said, his voice muffled by gratitude.
“Sometimes,” Wooten replied, “you just got to knock down somebody’s house.”
Remembering this now, Swope realized how wrong he’d been to doubt Wooten. There was no way the man would betray him. When he saw him later he’d find out what was going on. He’d just have to be careful to weave the question into the conversation so Wooten wouldn’t know he’d had these shameful suspicions. Either the builder had simply forgotten to mention it, or Tench was hitting the bottle harder than anyone suspected. One way or another, his distrust would be shown for the paranoid nonsense it was.
The doorbell rang. Somebody’s eager, Swope thought. He stood his ground. Sally would greet them, attended by Evelyn, who’d volunteered to help with gatekeeping duties. He let his eyes travel back to those diminutive chefs, wielding their machetes with daunting aggression. After weeks of agonized soul-searching, Sally had finally decided upon shrimp and pork kebabs, wild rice and some sort of vegetable terrine. And of course the cake, organized under conditions of strictest secrecy and currently locked in the pantry.
Voices approached from inside the house. Swope stole a look at himself in the sliding-glass door to make sure all was in order. Tonight’s costume comprised a vested azure suit from his namesake, Austin Reed, and a yellow silk tie. White-on-white shirt, its sleeves anchored by four-teen-carat cuff links depicting the city’s tree-and-apple emblem, presented to him three years earlier by Barnaby Vine to mark the purchase of the last required acre of Maryland farmland. His black loafers radiated a deep obsidian luster.
Sally appeared, leading, of all people, John Truax and his wife. Swope felt a wave of annoyance at their presence. Sally, flush with some legendary victory at the Newton bridge round-robin, had invited them without clearing it with him. The last person Swope wanted to deal with tonight was some salesman sniffing around for a job. Sally, to her credit, had a slightly peeved expression, as if she too were beginning to realize she’d blundered. And rightly so—the couple looked like audience members on Duckpins for Dollars. Truax was dressed in a checked sports coat and white shoes, that nasty-looking glove still on his right hand. The woman standing next to him seemed to have stepped fully faceted from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. She had a fleshy, once-beautiful face dolloped with cheap makeup. Her pale blue eyes were rheumy and obscenely ardent; her ill-fitting chiffon dress looked like it had been tailored in a thresher.
“Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Truax,” he said. “You’re the first.”
They smiled dully. Without thinking, Swope extended his hand to Truax. After a moment the salesman took it with his inverted left hand. Even with the clumsy grip, Swope could feel his strength. He remembered some details from their interview. Master sergeant with nineteen years’ service in the army. Three combat tours in Nam. The guy might not be able to sell houses, but he’d probably seen some stuff tonight’s party people could only guess at.
“Mr. Swope, this is my wife, Irma,” Truax said in a grim, clipped voice.
Swope offered her his hand. Her flesh was cool and damp. Her front teeth were streaked with lipstick.
“Happy birthday,” she said.
Swope smelled the liquor. Whisky sours, he guessed. Multiple, by the look of her. What a nightmare, he thought. And yet there was something about her that held his eye for a moment. A remnant of beauty, a last call for lust.
“Well, thank you, Irma,” he said.
She blinked several times, desperate to respond but unable to conjure the words. Sally hovered with a waxen smile. She looked tall and sleek in her lemon chiffon pants suit. Her Joy perfume sent the evening’s other odors—the petroleum whiff of the bug lamps, the sharp tang of redwood stain, the woody rot from the surrounding forest—to flight.
Swope decided to put the couple out of their misery.
“So how are things down at the models?” he asked Truax.
“Good,” the sergeant lied. “Fine. Excellent.”
Silence reclaimed them. Ring, doorbell, ring, Swope thought. He took a last drag on his Tiparillo, then dropped it onto the deck, where he quickly shepherded it into the crack between two planks with the toe of his loafer.
“So,” he said. “I understand our children are friends.”
“Oh, yes,” Irma answered expansively. “Teddy and Susan. He’s so intelligent, your Teddy. You must be very proud.”
Swope met her eyes, which pulsed with coquettishness. Once again, he found himself momentarily unable to turn away. What was it about this woman?
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Sally said.
Irma continued to stare at Swope. Her eyelids slowly lowered into a squint.
“So,” Swope said. “I understand your daughter’s seeing Earl Wooten’s son.”
The effect of his bland words on her was astonishing. The grinning flirtatious face in front of him changed immediately into a venomous mask.
“Not for long,” she said sullenly.
“Irma …” Truax warned.
“Really?” Swope said, suddenly interested in this. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not,” she said.
The others had arrived, a knot of couples who lingered at the edge of the deck, unwilling to interrupt. Music began to pour from the nearby speakers. “Tijuana Taxi.” Good old Teddy.
“Problems?” Swope probed.
“It’s not right,” Irma said.
“Not right as in …”
“It’s wrong.”
“Ah.”
“The two of them,” she persisted. “Together.”
Swope understood. The Truaxes hated Joel Wooten. For reasons that were none too hard to guess at. He looked at Truax, who suddenly found the cracks in the deck compelling.
“Well,” Swope said. “I’d better …”
He nodded toward the other guests. Truax looked like he wanted to say something but thought better of it. Swope nodded a manly good-bye to him, then looked back at Irma. She was staring out at the dark woods, her eyes sharp with spite. She was trul
y a wreck. And yet, at the same time, there was something about her.
Truax watched Swope join the other couples, young EarthWorkers who knew what time to arrive. People who could talk to a man like Swope with confidence, instead of standing tongue-tied like some pathetic rube. People who knew how to ask for a job.
“I’m going for a drink.”
“Irma …”
But she was already gone, weaving across the deck to the bar. She was drunker than he’d thought. Somehow, she’d held it together until they arrived. Then the floodgates opened. Truax was tempted to plead illness and spirit her away. But Swope had already seen the state she was in. Leaving now would make it worse. There would certainly be a tussle. The only thing to do, he knew from long experience, was weather the storm.
His eyes followed the thick black smoke drifting from the torches into the woods, an image that unexpectedly brought back long-dormant memories of the shit fires at My Song, the conflagrations fueled by diesel oil poured into the halved fifty-five-gallon drums they used as latrines. New guys would cheer for the smoke to blow over the hamlet’s hated citizenry, though old-timers like Truax knew it was better to have it waft into the treeline, where it would win them a couple hours of mercy from the mosquitoes. Something flashed in the corner of his eye—the chefs down by the marquee. Their knives, catching the light from the torches. He watched them work for a while, admiring their skill and focus. He could see by their faces they were Filipino. Cane cutters. He’d once served under a colonel who’d fought with MacArthur. That must have been something. A real war with a real commander.
Truax looked around the deck. It was filling fast with EarthWorks management types and their ostentatiously sober wives. Everybody on their best behavior—nursing watery drinks, speaking quietly, keeping an eye out for Swope. Irma’s voice suddenly rang through them. She was talking to a couple of married engineers Truax had recently sold a Ticonderoga. They stared at her with dread.
“… but it’s just bullshit anyway …”
The New City Page 14
