It was a good thing to have come to know. Especially now that he really needed it. Anybody could read the books. Christ, an infinite number of monkeys working an infinite number of typewriters could write the damned things. But only a few realized that there was, ultimately, nothing between the covers but sweat and will and blood. A great lawyer, Austin Swope now knew, was like a mathematician who spent a lifetime learning every theorem and axiom knowable to the human mind, only to discover in the end that the universe was nothing more than the random fancy of a capricious god. Two plus two equaled four on a strictly provisional basis. Once it benefited the big guy, it would add up to five. And pity the fool who complained. Law was simply the refined grammar of power, more efficient and less messy than its grunting, slobbering twin, violence. Savage knew this. The Kennedys. Dick Nixon, though he’d become sloppy. The humiliating thing was that Earl Wooten, who’d probably never read a book cover to cover in his entire life, seemed to have figured it out while Swope was poring over his useless tomes. The man must have taken a crash course in the Fundamentals of Applied Asskicking. He’d shown himself to be a master. So good that he was close to taking away Swope’s job.
Close, but not quite there. The game wasn’t over yet. The moment Truax had said he’d seen the foreman stepping on that Chicago plane, Swope realized that he’d have to act. Wooten’s free ride was over. The question was where to start. Swope’s eyes traveled to that scrawled address: Bldg 5. #27.
“Austin?”
Sally stood in the doorway, concern creasing her normally serene face.
“Is everything all right? I thought I heard voices.”
“Just me on the phone.”
“Oh.” She looked at him more closely. “Why are you sitting here like this? Are you sure nothing’s the matter?”
He met her eye. He’d have to tell her something. She’d seen him in too many battles not to sense that another was looming.
“There might be some sort of problem with the city manager job.”
Sally scowled dubiously.
“Really? What makes you think that?”
Swope hesitated, wondering if he should tell her about Wooten. But then she might start noticing the measures he was being forced to take. And she would never understand. As good a woman as she was, she couldn’t fathom how bad things could get—or what had to be done to set them right. She may have defied her rich Grosse Pointe parents and prep school friends to marry him, but that didn’t mean she would ever comprehend what it took to keep their heads above the deep, dark water. Swope had protected her from that reality ever since they met. He wasn’t about to start letting her in on it now, when she was just beginning to get the life she deserved.
“Nothing specific,” he said. “Just a feeling I’ve been getting from Chicago. They might be looking at someone else for the position.”
“Nonsense. Have you talked to Gus about it?”
“That’s not how it works, Sal.”
She gave her head a brief, frustrated shake.
“Austin, come on. I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Get all paranoid and defensive. Wasn’t that the idea behind moving here—to get us away from all the brooding and distrust? Isn’t that why we left that viper’s nest in D.C.? So you wouldn’t have to sleep with one eye open?”
“It’s not that simple, Sal.”
“Only because you won’t let it be.” She pointed a tapered finger at the desk. “Pick up the phone and call Gus. Right now. Let him know what’s on your mind and I guarantee you he’ll tell you to stop being so silly.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why on earth not?”
“It would make me seem weak.”
“Weak? Austin, for heaven’s sake …”
She walked across the room and perched on the edge of the desk.
“Listen to me. You are the strongest man I have ever known. That’s what drew me to you in the first place. Forget those pampered little boys with their sports cars and Daddy’s money—it was you I wanted. Don’t you think I remember when Teddy was sick. …”
Her voice caught. A bright mist coated her wide eyes.
“Any other man would have let him die. But you didn’t. You wouldn’t. You saved him with your strength. People depend on you, Austin. Not just me and Edward but everyone else in this town. Gus Savage knows that just as well as Barnaby. He’s no more likely to think you’re weak than that you’re from Jupiter.”
Swope looked down at his desk, unable to bear the righteous intensity in her eyes. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was reading too much into the situation. They would never deny him the job. And Earl would never betray him. He’d come to his senses. They all would. Because they depended on him. They knew he was the one.
But then the facts that had been accumulating since his birthday rushed back into his mind, obliterating the small particle of hope his wife’s words had brought. Tench’s call. The NHA meeting. Wooten’s trip. That hitch in Ardelia’s voice. There was simply too much to deny. Yes, it would be nice to think that the world was as Sally described, where promises were kept and friends did not betray each other. Where people played by the rules, whether it was at bridge or business. But such a world existed only for those who had others to fight for them.
“Austin?”
He met her eye.
“You’re right,” he said. “I should talk to Gus. Look, I have to go into the office for a little while. I’ll call him from there.”
She leaned across the desk and kissed him. Her lips were so soft and sweet. He hated to lie to her, though there was no way she’d know about this. Ever. It was up to him to be the strong one. The fighter.
“Now this is the last time I want to find you sitting in the dark brooding,” she lovingly scolded as she pulled away.
He managed a smile.
“No more brooding. I promise.”
When she was gone Swope noticed that the balls had fallen still on the Newton’s cradle. He reached forward and set them back in motion. Sally may not know much about how the world worked, but she was right about one thing. Sitting here worrying was futile. It was time to start taking action. He looked down at that address one last time, consigning it to memory before blotting it out with his pen. As he turned out the desk lamp a phrase began to echo through his mind. Something Wooten had said last fall on a remote site.
Sometimes, you just got to knock down somebody’s house.
18
The express elevator moved through the skyscraper with that strange combination of stillness and speed that always gave Wooten a boyish thrill. A dreamlike sensation, similar to yesterday’s takeoff, though thankfully without the shrieking intimations of mortal splatter. The flight from BWI had been a bad one, jostled by turbulence that belied the clear blue skies over Pennsylvania and Ohio. It had almost spoiled the pampering they gave him in first class, the champagne and hot towels and coy smiles from the stewardess, who looked a whole lot like Pam Grier. Almost, but not quite.
He was finally in Chicago. City of his future. After nearly two weeks of constant anticipation and guesswork, he was at last making his way up to the place where the mystery would end. Wooten looked at the brass indicator panel above the door. The light hadn’t even begun to register yet, wouldn’t until they reached 38. Staggering elevators had been one of Barnaby’s many innovative ideas, a way of keeping people who worked on the upper floors from suffering a second stop-and-go commute. Every time he came here, Wooten wondered what it must be like to build so tall, to cut right into the sky. The highest he’d ever got was co-contracting on a fourteen-story bank building in Clayton. And then of course Newton Plaza. Strange to think of Vine cutting his teeth in this vertical metropolis, building higher and higher while dreaming of a city where next to nothing rose above the trees. Wooten had once joked with him about designing his ground-hugging city in such a tall building.
“I like skyscrapers, Earl,” he’
d answered in his reedy Midwestern twang. “I just happen to be of the opinion we’ve enough of them on this particular planet.”
As the floors began to tick by, Wooten wondered how the old man was doing. From what little he’d heard, the second stroke had been bad. Flying into O’Hare last night, it occurred to him that it had been almost a year since his last actual conversation with Vine, the day they’d opened the lake’s sluiceway. Savage had hinted there might be a meeting with him later in the day, before Wooten caught his five o’clock back to BWI. He hoped so. He missed Barnaby.
The elevator reached the seventy-eighth floor, the executive level of EarthWorks World Headquarters. He announced himself at the big reception desk and then sat in a real leather chair beneath a photo of one of the massive digging machines EarthWorks had recently deployed in Saudi Arabia. The company was moving into the region in a big way, doing battle with archrivals Bechtel for some of those petrodollars bubbling up out of the sand. Desalination. Aqueducts. Air-conditioned shopping malls. Wooten suddenly worried that they might have something like that in mind for him. He hoped not. Ardelia would definitely not be up for wearing a veil. He looked into the aquarium on the small table next to him. Phlegmatic fish swam through a plastic shipwreck; strands of shit hovered like kites in the water’s murk. Down the hall there was laughter, a ringing phone.
So here you are, he thought. Waiting to hear what they have in store for you. It was all happening so fast. Last night he’d been picked up by a limo at O’Hare and driven to the Hyatt. There was a fruit basket in his suite and an invitation from the manager to dine on the house. Before he’d even washed his hands a Miss Robert from Savage’s office called to tell him the limo would return for him at nine the following morning. Wooten didn’t remember her from his last visit. She sounded black. Just. He phoned Ardelia, who said that Swope had already called looking for him. Wooten fretted about that for a while after hanging up. He couldn’t wait to get back home and square this thing away.
“Mr. Wooten?”
A beautiful mocha-skinned woman had materialized in front of him. She was truly gorgeous, as fine as anything you’d see in a magazine. Definitely new. Wooten stood, straightening the lapels of his suit coat.
“I’m Cheryl Robert, Mr. Savage’s personal assistant.”
It took him a moment to realize she’d offered a thin hand. Wooten took it. Her tapered fingers were as cool as lettuce.
“Earl Wooten,” he said without thinking.
“Oh, yes, we know who you are,” she said slyly. “Won’t you come with me?”
For the next thirty seconds Wooten looked everywhere but at Miss Cheryl Robert’s swaying behind as she led him through the maze of corridors. They passed dozens of big offices where men in shirtsleeves leaned back in recliner chairs like anglers reeling in a big one. Some talked on phones, others bullshitted with colleagues. After moving through a heavy oak door they entered a hallway where the walls changed from industrial white to burnished wood, the floor from scuffed tile to burgundy carpeting. The doors were more widely spaced. Secretarial anterooms guarded inner sanctums that were decorated with chandeliers, dark paneling and thick rugs. The voices echoing inside were quieter. Slower. Deeper.
Savage’s lair was at the end of the hall, guarded by consecutive outer offices. The first had two secretaries furiously typing dictation from earphones. Neither looked up as Wooten passed. The second room, he supposed, belonged to Miss Robert. It smelled of lavender. She knocked twice on the final door, then nodded for Wooten to enter.
Savage’s office had no desk. That was the first thing you noticed about it. He’d once explained that he considered them “moribund barriers to interpersonal communication.” Wooten and Swope had laughed themselves silly over that one back at the Hyatt, Swope referring to the restaurant’s table as a “facilitator of strictly personal digestion.” In lieu of a desk, the room’s half dozen black chairs formed a precise, dead-center rectangle. Each had a small stand for folders and drinks. Savage’s seat—democratically identical to the rest—faced the door. The only concession to his status was a small phone on its stand. Directly behind Savage’s chair were the office’s two windows, thin vertical slits shrouded with louvered shutters. Light came from discreet conical lamps and muffled halogen bulbs. The walls were bare except for a series of Mondrians that Wooten knew to be real. There were no plants, no magazines or photos. No pictures of orthodontured children. No paper anywhere.
Savage was standing with his hands on the back of his chair. He leaned forward slightly—something about his posture suggested a tennis player about to serve.
“Earl.”
As Savage came around the chair Wooten recalled how short he was. Five-five on a good day. It was a quality you never seemed to remember unless looking right at the man. He wore a dark blue Italian suit with broad lapels. No tie, though the collar of his beige madras shirt was buttoned tightly beneath his prominent Adam’s apple. His longish hair was brushed back behind small ears; broad sideburns covered his temples. His small brown eyes were set close together, giving his gaze an added intensity. The Fu Manchu mustache that had perched above his mouth like a sunning snake last time Wooten saw him was gone. Wooten knew that he was fifty-one, though he looked ten years younger. The company he ran was now the eleventh largest in the nation. And growing.
“Gus, good to see you.”
They shook hands and Savage gestured to the seat on his right. Wooten dropped into it. Pockets of air slowly escaped from the cushion beneath him. Savage sat slowly, almost reluctantly. Wooten noticed a stack of poster board leaning against his chair.
“Call Seven Oaks and see to it they’re ready for us in two hours.”
For a moment Wooten thought Savage was speaking to him. He turned when he realized that Miss Robert was still in the room. He made sure not to watch her leave.
“Barnaby wants to see you,” Savage said.
“How is Barnaby?”
Savage grimaced.
“Not well, Earl. The last stroke … you should brace yourself.”
Wooten nodded gravely. He noticed something next to Savage’s phone—a black bowl filled with small, fetal oblongs. Savage tracked his gaze. He picked up the bowl and offered it to Wooten.
“Garlic,” he explained. “Thins the blood. Want one?”
“No. Thanks.”
Savage returned the bowl to the table. He ran his fingers along its smooth rim for a moment before speaking.
“Well, I suppose you’re anxious to hear why we dragged you all the way out here.”
“You could say that.”
“Earl, how are you set up for Phases III and IV?”
“Set up?”
“How essential are you to their completion?”
“Well, not very, I suppose. I’d like to see it through, but we’ve cracked all the big problems out there. Well, the gaslights. But basically those units are going to pretty much build themselves.”
“So I thought. In that case, we’d like to transfer you to another project that needs immediate attention.”
“I’m all ears.”
Savage lifted those poster boards from beside his chair and placed them on his lap. Wooten could see charcoal and crosshatching and bold letters.
“Earl, for the past year we’ve been secretly buying up tracts of land out on the Virginia-West Virginia border. Clarke County? Not far from Winchester, if that helps you. All very hush-hush. The process is ongoing, though we’re just about there. The idea being to build … this.”
He handed Wooten the poster boards. The top card was a crowded sketch of what at first appeared to be a bustling urban community. It took Wooten several seconds to realize what he was seeing. He read the name at the top of the card at the same moment Savage spoke it.
“ AmericaWorks.”
“An amusement park?”
“Theme park. Yes.”
Wooten looked back at the drawing, with its serpentine pathways and clustered buildings and happy f
amilies. He realized why it had taken him a minute to get it—the rides were all hidden inside replica monuments. A roller coaster snaked its way through various facial orifices on Mount Rushmore, some sort of water ramp sent little barges hurtling across the Mississippi River, and a Ferris wheel was enclosed in the familiar curve of the Gateway Arch. God knew what that thing wrapped around the Statue of Liberty was. Between the rides were various ersatz communities. An Indian encampment. A settler’s fort. Something that looked like a turn-of-the-century tenement street. A rodeo.
The New City Page 25
