“Earl,” Swope said, his voice free of emotion. “Didn’t Holmes contact you?”
“Yeah,” Wooten said. “He contacted me.”
“Well, then, I appreciate your coming in to lend a hand, but we’ve got things under control. I think it’s for the better that you weren’t on the premises.”
There was no malevolence in Swope’s voice. No aggression. Just the slight weariness of a man absolutely in the right.
“We have to talk.”
Swope took a quick drag of his cigarillo, its end pulsing like one of those fires behind him.
“Now’s not good.”
Wooten said nothing. He just stood there, massive and undeniable.
“If this is about your suspension, Earl, I have to tell you that you better take it up with Savage.”
“You know what this is about.”
Swope held his ground behind the model. Waiting.
“You sent the letter to Ardelia.”
Swope exhaled, masking his face with smoke.
“Earl, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist you leave.”
“What happened at the lake, Austin?”
“You know what happened.”
“Teddy did something to that poor girl and you’re pinning it on Joel.”
Swope stared evenly at him. Not answering. Neither affirming nor denying. Suddenly, Wooten saw his opening. The man was simply afraid for his boy. All he had to do was let him know that he’d never do anything to harm Teddy. Just make him understand that he’d be willing to do whatever it took to help Swope protect his son. After all, they were friends. They’d built a city together. They could overcome this.
“Come on, Austin,” he said gently. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Listen, whatever happened, let’s just you and me sit down and decide on a way out. To hell with Chones and Savage and everybody else. Let’s just protect our families here. I’ll do whatever it takes. Get Joel to say it was an accident. You know I will. You know that about me.”
Swope continued to stare at him, those small, colorless eyes unreadable.
“Look, they never even offered me the job,” Wooten continued. “That’s the thing you’ve got to understand. It was all a crock. Not that I would have taken it anyway. They want me to build an amusement park down in Virginia. It was supposed to be a big secret. You see? We’re not against each other here. I know why you think we were but it’s all right. It’s always been all right.”
Finally, there was a break in the impenetrable facade of Swope’s face. Worry creased his brow. His thin lips parted slightly. Wooten pressed on. Sensing victory now.
“Call Gus if you don’t believe me. Ask him. And then let’s get our boys out of this trouble.”
Swope absently flicked ash onto his carpet. For a moment he looked ready to agree. But then something happened. Slowly, his expression hardened. That coldness returned to his eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said softly.
“Austin …”
“Earl, you’re under a lot of pressure. That’s understandable. No one will blame you for flying off on tangents like this.”
“They aren’t tangents, Austin. They’re the dead center.”
“I strongly urge you to take the plea bargain on offer. Otherwise Joel is in grave jeopardy.”
Wooten realized there would be no appealing to their friendship, to past heroics or a sense of camaraderie. All that was as dead as Susan Truax. Killed by a single malignant drop of suspicion.
He took a step forward, anger boiling up in him.
“What happened on that pier, Austin? Did Teddy try to rape her? Is that it?”
Swope gave a disgusted shake of his head. But there was no conviction in his scorn.
“You’re so wrong. …”
“What I can’t believe is that you’ve done all this about a job. A goddamned job.”
“It’s not about a job, Earl,” Swope said with a bitterness Wooten had never before heard.
“No,” Wooten answered slowly. “I guess it isn’t.”
“Take the plea, Earl.”
“I’ll tell …”
“What? That you weren’t putting the wood to that pathetic junkie down at Renaissance Heights? That you didn’t lay hands on Joe Vota? That your son didn’t hump that girl in her father’s house?” Swope paused to allow the remainder of his confidence to return. “What, Earl, are you going to tell the jury down in Cannon City that Joel isn’t black?”
Wooten took a step forward.
“You motherfucker.”
Swope pointed a thin finger at him.
“Stand back. Or this is going to get a lot worse for you.”
Wooten continued to move forward.
“See, that’s your mistake. You’ve made it so it can’t get any worse for me. But I’m still standing. I’m still able to come at you.”
He reached the edge of the model. Swope’s eyes began to flutter, looking for a way out of this. Vast tracts of carpet lay on either side of him. It was clear that Wooten could easily catch him if he tried to flee.
“What, you afraid now?” Wooten asked.
Swope’s eyes dropped to the model. As if that were some sort of protection. Some sort of barrier. Wooten gripped its edge. It would be easy to flip it over, pinning Swope against that tinted glass, maybe even pushing him through. But he knew before the thought was even complete that he wouldn’t do it. Not because he didn’t want to. But because it was what was expected of him. And he was done with what was expected of him.
“I’m going to fight you on this, Austin.”
“You’ll lose.”
“Probably. But I get the feeling you will, too, once I start talking. First I’m going to call Gus and the papers and everybody else. Give them my side of this. And then I’m going to make Teddy tell his lies to the whole world. I’m going to hire the best lawyer they got and he’s going to put your son on the stand. For days. Weeks, if he can. I’m going to fight you, Austin. I’m going to keep the pressure on you until something breaks.”
Before Swope could respond there was a sound, the fleshy arrival of another body. The fear left Swope’s face. Wooten turned. It was Chones. There was a walkie-talkie in his hammy right hand. He pointed it at Wooten.
“Should he be in here?”
“Not really,” Swope said.
“You want me to put him out?”
“There’s no need for that,” Wooten said. “I’m not the dangerous one here.”
He turned back to Swope.
“It’s not over.”
“Whatever you say, Earl,” Swope said, though there was no ease in his voice.
Wooten turned and walked out of the office, careful to avoid the beefy shoulder Chones left in his way.
He saw the boys just before he got to his car. The same pack he’d already seen twice tonight. Two were leaning through the just broken window of an LTD. Wooten recognized the car by its faded PEACE WITH HONOR bumper sticker—it belonged to Chad Sherman. The third boy, the lookout, was tracking a flashing siren as it raced by on Newton Pike. Nobody had seen Wooten.
He walked over to them, his footfalls deliberately silent on the asphalt. It wasn’t until he was three car lengths away that the sentinel finally spotted him. He grabbed the T-shirt of the nearest looter and pulled him backward. The boy turned to protest but then saw Wooten. He bolted without a word. The lookout followed, leaving the third boy behind. A swatch of underwear showed above his pants, its Fruit of the Loom label visible in the artificial light. Wooten was suddenly struck by an image of some loving, futile mother buying this hoodlum a pair of boxers. And with it came the realization that the boy was, like everybody else out here, nothing more than somebody’s son.
The looter finally rose out of the car, an eight-track player in his hands. Wires dangled from it like the roots of some tenacious plant. The fisted pick Wooten had seen earlier had slumped to an unmenacing angle. The boy looked around for the others. Then he saw Woo
ten. His eyes briefly widened, then quickly hardened into their customary defiance.
“Go ahead,” Wooten said. “Tear it up. Take it all.”
The boy stared at Wooten for a long moment. Then he snorted silently, a bitter, knowing smile tugging at his cracked lips. He turned and strutted off slowly, certain that no one would touch him tonight.
36
Teddy was getting a cold. Typical. This happened every time he went into the water. And this one was gearing up to be a real doozy—clogged sinuses, throbbing headache and a low-grade fever that no amount of Bayer would chase away. By tomorrow morning he’d be sick as your proverbial dog. Which meant three days of sucking Sucrets and trying to avoid his mother’s stifling ministrations. Summer colds were the pits. He’d have to keep the air conditioner jacked up to cool out the fever, which would in turn make his head ten times worse. Bebe Rebozo would definitely not be able to blow his nose-oh. This was why he never went in the pool. Not because he was ashamed of his “bod,” as Susan so artlessly maintained. He just didn’t want to have to deal with the inevitable sickness immersion brought.
Susan. The name rang through his mind like an explosion in a slumbering city. He wasn’t supposed to mention it. He’d made a deal with himself to keep her exiled in the oblivion she’d joined the previous night. It was the only way he was going to get through the next few days.
He checked his bedside clock: 9:34. Which meant he’d been trapped in his room for almost eight hours, trying to figure a way out of this mess. Normally, that would have been more than enough time. But no matter how hard he focused today, he couldn’t seem to get anywhere. Whichever mental route he took, he always seemed to wind up back at square one. Half-formed thoughts swam elusively through his mind, like answers on Eight Ball that never adhered to the window. Each time he’d begin to come up with a new plan its evil twin would loom in his mind, contradicting and nullifying it. Yin kicks the shit out of Yang. Fischer draws with Spassky. McCartney smothers Lennon’s poetry with a glib tune.
It was his interview with the two meatheads from the SBI that finally brought home the gravity of the situation. In the hour before that, he’d been able to kid himself that the whole rotten episode was in some way provisional, just another pickle for his father to jar. But when he was confronted by those two slouching, unintimidated cops, he finally knew that this was for real. The lie he was telling was going to have serious consequences. If he didn’t do something, Joel was history. Through the dawn hours it had been easy to think his dad would sort it all out with no harm done to anybody. But not now. There were some things even he couldn’t control.
So it was down to Edward M. Swope to find a way to get Joel out of this jam without frying his own ass in the process. After the cops left, he cloistered himself in his room and got to work. His imagination fired by a steady stream of bong hits and Lennon tunes, he began to run through all the permutations. First, he dispensed with the moves that were obviously wrong. Confessing, for openers. Not an option. It would only bring ruination on himself and his family. Besides, he hadn’t done anything that needed expiation. His dad understood that and Joel ultimately would. What happened was an accident. There was no way Teddy was going to put his faith in some jury.
The first option he came up with was helping Joel escape. Bust him out of that podunk jail. Getting his hands on a gun would be hard but not beyond his capabilities. They could be in West Virginia within the hour, Mexico in two days. But it didn’t take long to realize that escape was no good. Although a jail break was not without its visceral attractions for a guy who’d sat through Butch and Sundance three times one rainy afternoon, it was simply too fraught with risk. And then there was Harvard. As Swope pointed out Tuesday night, unless you were Ellsberg, Leary or Kissinger, they tended to frown upon blatant criminality up there.
He could always change his story. Say that the whole thing had been a terrible accident that happened while they were messing around at the end of the pier. Joel had playfully pushed the girl, who’d fallen in the water and drowned. After that the two friends panicked and tried to cover it up. If they were guilty of anything it was rampant immaturity. But he soon realized that this wouldn’t cut it, either. It was too late to change his story. It had already gone to press. The big ugly printing machine was up and rolling. You only had to take a look at those two cops to see that. The questions would be too knotty for even Teddy to answer, much less a dazed and confused Joel. Why hadn’t they simply admitted it was an accident in the first place? Why hadn’t Joel, the better swimmer, gone in the water to rescue the woman he loved? And why had Teddy turned against his friend? Even the dolts in Cannon City would see through that one. There was no changing his story. There would be no escape and certainly no confession. The dice had been rolled. Joel was going to jail. Like the Swope said, it was fate.
This is how it went, all afternoon. Round and round. And now night had arrived, bringing with it a bad cold. If only there was some way to effect a brief suspension of the space-time continuum so he could undo that insignificant little nudge. It would make things so simple. The Truaxes and the Wootens and the Swopes would all be happy citizens once again. Joel would be free and the mental snot clogging Teddy’s brain would finally clear. This was what he didn’t get. Why was this thing that everybody wanted so impossible? Why did that silly girl have to hit her vacant head and screw everything up?
“Teddy?”
His mother stood in the doorway.
“Hey, Ma.”
“Do you need anything?”
“The powers of resurrection.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Teddy, listen …”
“Yeah?”
“If there’s anything you want to talk to me about, I mean, you can. Whatever you want to tell me, it’ll be all right.”
“No, Ma. I’m cool. Dad’s been a big help.”
“I know he has, sweetheart. But your father sometimes asks a lot of people. And if you start to feel that it’s all too much, I want you to know you can come to me.”
Teddy looked up at her. For a moment he wondered if maybe he should talk to her. She might have some ideas on what he could do. She could be a pretty sensible woman. But then he remembered what his father had said. No one should ever know. Not even her.
“Right, Mom. Sure. Appreciate it.”
After hovering for a few more seconds she disappeared. Teddy checked the clock: 9:41. He donned his headphones and punched on his customized Lennon tape for the umpteenth time. He considered firing up yet another bowl but decided against it. Better to lay off the herb until he sorted this one out. Toking now would only bring on coughing fits, amp his headache and make his schnoz run like Victoria Falls. Instead, he reached for the bottle of prescription cough syrup he’d found in the medicine chest earlier that evening. He’d got it from the family doc for his last bad cold after he announced that he categorically refused to fuck around with Vicks. It was the good stuff, codeine based, dispensed with great reluctance by a doctor who couldn’t afford to lose Sally Swope’s business. The dosage was written in big, cautionary letters on a label that was so soggy with red liquid it looked like a dressing to a fatal wound. Do not exceed two teaspoons. Blah blah blah. Teddy exceeded, downing a quarter of the bottle, enough to provide a sufficient buzz to get him through the night.
The tape’s first song came on, that supremely meaningless ditty Teddy usually fast-forwarded right through. Not Lennon’s finest hour. But still, it was part of the man’s oeuvre. You had to take the good with the bad. That was how genius worked. After last night, Teddy should know.
And then, suddenly, it happened. Straight out of the blue. Just as the backing brass went through their first rendition of those five familiar notes, his answer came. Without even thinking about it, Teddy understood what had to be done. Jesus, it was right there in the song. John Himself providing the answer in his shallowest-ever tune. Teddy rewound and ran through the stanza again.
No one you can s
ave that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.
And it was. Easy. Teddy couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. Joel was already saved. Nothing had to be done. He just had to learn how to be himself in time. The answer wasn’t in keeping him out of jail. It was too late for that. A certain stupid girl who shall remain forever nameless had settled that matter when she started running her mouth last night. The thing to do was to make sure the right stuff happened to Joel while he was there. It was after he was in prison that Teddy would save him. In fact, when he thought about it, incarceration would be good for Joel. It would focus him on what was important. He’d have time to read and think and understand the things Teddy had been trying to tell him these past few years, when the world’s distractions had begun to lure him away. He’d be able to forget about you know who and learn how to be himself in time. Best of all, there would be no more of this running away talk. Never again was Teddy going to get ditched.
So there it was. Teddy would look after Joel in jail. Look after him like no friend had ever done. And, to do so, he was going to make the ultimate sacrifice. He’d bag Harvard and transfer to Hopkins. Maybe even Maryland, if that made things easier. This is what he would do for his friend. Give up his place at the best college in the world so that he could be near Joel. And if they transferred him to some prison out of state, Teddy would follow him there. With visits and letters and phone calls, he could bring Joel around to see how last night’s accident was a good thing, saving him from a life of mediocrity and drudgery, enabling him to go through this rite of purification that would lead to a higher state of consciousness. Teddy could give him countless books. Hesse and Suzuki and Laing. Gandhi and George Jackson and Huey Newton. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. Joel’s mind was good, but it lacked discipline. There’d been too many years in which he’d been allowed to limp along on the crutches of charm and good looks. But Teddy would have time on his side now. Joel wasn’t going anywhere. He would be rapt.
The New City Page 45
