Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  Now they were at work on the fourth volume, The Temporary Peace, concerning the postwar years of the late forties and early fifties. Bradford had still been a Senator then, and had seen much of the turbulence of that period from the inside, since the various Congressional committees had become all at once the most important single factor in setting the tone of national life. This volume was late, one deadline having already been missed, not because Bradford had grown tired of the work but because he considered that split decade after the war perhaps the most important and crucial era in American history. “Everything that’s wrong with us today,” he said once, “comes from that decade, and everything that’s right with us today comes from before that decade.” He also believed the nation was more and more returning to the attitudes of that time, which he feared would be a disaster, and therefore he wanted to be sure he got the message of The Temporary Peace absolutely right.

  The three projected volumes were The Coming of Winter, concerning the Cold War in its endless phases, The Servant of the Nation, concerning his own controversial Presidency, and finally Toward Tomorrow, which was to be both his summation of events since he’d left office and his projection of the future. There was a body of material already done on each of these books, notes and general outlines, but the real writing of each book was being taken in order, with Bradford dictating a first draft into a tape recorder, then going over the typewritten transcript to make what changes he thought proper, and then Howard putting the whole thing through the typewriter all over again, polishing the prose and straightening out Bradford’s occasionally over-convoluted sentences. The final step was for Bradford and Howard to argue their way line by line through Howard’s revised version, then agree together on the order of the chapters, and send a copy of the once-more-retyped manuscript to Sterling for one of his students at Lancashire to do the index.

  Bradford wasn’t Howard’s only author, of course, nor even the most profitable one, but he was—in addition to being his uncle—the most prestigious name on Howard’s list, so he seemed always to have unlimited time to spend with Bradford. He’d been known to move out to Eustace for weeks at a stretch, sometimes with Grace and the kids but more often by himself, and it was no surprise that he was now taking the opportunity of Bradford’s presence in New York to work with him some more. The Temporary Peace was overdue, and even ex-Presidents have to meet their deadlines.

  Howard now came over to Evelyn’s table carrying a tray full of sandwiches and coffee cups. He gave Evelyn her fresh cup, and that left two for himself, plus three sandwiches, all white bread and wrapped in clear plastic. He sat down opposite Evelyn and said, “Joe says he should be down by twelve, so take your time.”

  “I wish I’d brought Dinah,” Evelyn said, thinking of the little girl at home in Eustace with only the servants. “To keep me company.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Howard said. He was unwrapping one of the sandwiches, which turned out to be two slices of bread and one slice of American cheese. Howard studied it gloomily and said, “Why do I always buy this stuff? I know what it’s going to be like, why do I do it?” He took a huge mouthful and sat moodily chewing it.

  Evelyn sat there stirring her coffee. Howard made her nervous, and never more so than when she met him on neutral ground, away from the safety of Eustace. He had never been anything but kind to her, though at times impatient, but she lived in fear of his saying something brutal to her. He could be incredibly caustic, and it seemed inevitable that some day he would turn that verbal knife loose on her. Why did it seem inevitable? She had no idea.

  Howard shoved bread and cheese into one bulging cheek and said, “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “What?” She had no idea what he was talking about, and that increased her nervousness.

  “When it hit him,” Howard explained. “Out in sunny California.”

  Evelyn remembered how strongly Howard had opposed Bradford’s going out there, how he had characterized it as a “supermarket opening,” and she supposed now he would blame that trip for Bradford’s condition no matter what Uncle Joe and the other doctors decided. She said, “Yes, of course, I was sitting right beside him.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Howard, I really don’t like to go over it and over it. It was very frightening.”

  “I’m sure it was,” he said, and washed down sandwich with coffee. “I’m not on a curiosity binge,” he said. “I’m Brad’s editor—face it, I’m his biographer—and I want to know what happened. I wouldn’t ask Harrison, and I wouldn’t believe his answer if I did, so that leaves you.”

  Evelyn looked at him in surprise. “You’re writing a biography of Bradford?”

  “Naturally,” Howard said impatiently. “Doesn’t the Boswell in me stick out all over? Tell me what happened.”

  “Does Bradford know you’re doing it?”

  “Yes. We don’t talk about it, but he knows. Enough of that, tell me about it.”

  So she told him about it, the suddenness of the attack, the conversation that had preceded it, the symptoms that followed it, and he sat chewing his sandwiches and drinking his coffee and nodding until she was finished. Then he said, “This land deal of Harrison’s. Has Brad talked to him about it since?”

  “I don’t think so. He mentioned it the other day, that he wanted to talk to him, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t.”

  Howard frowned at the one sandwich he had left, then looked at Evelyn and said, “Has he seemed forgetful since it happened? Distracted?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her expression troubled. “I suppose so, some. Uncle Joe said he might be for a while, but it would pass away.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Howard said, his expression sour.

  “Is there trouble with the book?”

  “I get the damnedest feeling,” Howard said, “that Brad can’t remember what the hell he’s writing it for. I don’t mean amnesia, I don’t mean anything I can put my finger on at all. He just doesn’t seem to be—there, if you know what I mean.”

  “That could be because of being in the hospital,” Evelyn said. “I know I’d be distracted, under the circumstances.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Howard said. “In the meantime, The Temporary Peace is becoming a permanent pain in the ass.” He looked at his watch and said, “I’m not doing anything useful here except ruining my stomach. Tell Brad I’ll see him this afternoon.”

  “All right.”

  “You want this sandwich?” He held it up. “Still in its little shroud and everything.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “No, thanks.”

  He grunted and said, “I’ll give it to my secretary, she loves little treats.” He tucked the sandwich away like a puffy square envelope in his inside jacket pocket, and got to his feet. “Expect me out to Eustace this weekend,” he said. “For an indefinite stay.” His expression was sour.

  “With Grace?”

  “No, as a solitary sinner. I’ve got to drag that book out of Brad’s head. I suppose you’ll be here when I come back this afternoon?”

  “Probably.”

  “See you then,” he said, and nodded, his forehead and glasses gleaming in the overhead lights. He made a little wave motion with his right hand and went away.

  Evelyn watched him till he passed through the doorway and out of sight, and then she looked at her watch. Five past eleven. Bradford wouldn’t be back in his room until twelve.

  Evelyn shifted position on the plastic chair, rested her elbows on the plastic table, sipped at her lukewarm coffee. Nothing happened.

  iii

  MARIE SAID, “I’M AFRAID you didn’t have a very good time in the big city, poor dear.”

  They were standing in the foyer, Evelyn’s suitcase on the floor between them as they waited for the elevator to come up. Marie had propped the door of the apartment open and Spanish guitar music wafted out, pale shadows on white walls, mysterious eyes in the semi-darkness, lust in the afternoon. Marie was wearing la
rge hoop earrings and tight green slacks, and it occurred to Evelyn for the first time to wonder if Marie had ever been unfaithful to George.

  She answered Marie’s remark without reference to its condescension, saying, “Well, with Bradford in the hospital and all, I didn’t expect to have much of a good time.” She’d begged off, pleading tiredness, when Marie had tried to repeat Tuesday night’s fiasco on both Wednesday and Thursday nights, and had spent both evenings in front of the television set instead.

  “Well, you’ll have to come in again,” Marie said, “under happier circumstances, and we’ll see if we can find a nice man to squire you around. That fellow George came up with Tuesday was incredible, wasn’t he? If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was a mortician.”

  Evelyn smiled despite herself, as she frequently did with Marie, and said, “He wasn’t that bad. He’s just very unhappy, that’s all.”

  “You’re too good, Evelyn, that’s your problem,” Marie said dismissingly, and the elevator arrived. Marie looked at the operator—not the elderly Puerto Rican but a young man in his twenties, with a ferocious moustache—who simply stood at his controls and looked back at her, until Marie said, “There’s a suitcase here.”

  Evelyn had been just about to pick it up herself, but now, embarrassed, she stood to one side while the elevator operator came out in sullen haste to pick up the pale blue bag and carry it into the elevator.

  Marie was a proponent of overkill. “If this were Christmas week,” she said loudly, “he’d carry you on. Smiling all the way.”

  “It’s all right,” Evelyn mumbled. She hated to go to restaurants with Marie for the same reason; sooner or later the woman got into an argument with one of the help. The fact that she was usually right didn’t make things any easier for Evelyn, who preferred public appearances to be smooth and quiet and unobtrusive.

  “It is not all right,” Marie announced, glaring at the elevator operator, who was once again at his controls, facing neutrally front. But then she abruptly switched tone, laughing and saying, “Never mind, he’s my problem, not yours. Our love to Brad, and we’re sorry we couldn’t get over to see him, but you know what our schedule was like this week.”

  “Yes, I already explained to him. He said it was all right.” In fact, Bradford had said, Thank God for small favors.

  “But we’d love to come out to Eustace,” Marie went on. “What is it, four hundred miles? We’d love to drive it, when the weather gets a little nicer. Perhaps in May.”

  “That would be nice,” Evelyn said, knowing Marie would never come. She could be induced by George to leave New York only when the destination was some equally cosmopolitan city: London or Paris, San Francisco or Tokyo.

  “And write us about Brad’s health,” Marie said, her expression momentarily serious.

  “I will.” Evelyn felt that she was delaying the elevator operator. She stepped aboard and said, “Thanks for everything. I did appreciate it.”

  “The least we could do,” Marie said, smiling cheerfully as the door slid shut. Evelyn’s last view was of her smiling and waving, calling something Evelyn didn’t catch, with the word love in it.

  The limousine was out front, a black Cadillac with a separate chauffeur’s compartment and bearing New York license plate BL-1. Evelyn had carried her suitcase through the lobby, but as soon as she emerged onto the rain-wet sidewalk—it was a lazy, windless, steady March downpour—the chauffeur leaped out and came trotting around to take it from her and open the rear passenger door. Evelyn got in, the chauffeur shut the door and stowed the suitcase in the trunk, and then he got behind the wheel and drove them down Fifth Avenue and east to the hospital, on York Avenue.

  Bradford was not quite ready when Evelyn arrived, so she waited in the office the hospital had given Uncle Joe during his temporary stay here, sitting alone at first because Uncle Joe was in another room talking with reporters.

  There were two kinds of men who formed a kind of invisible background wherever Bradford went, and since Evelyn almost invariably traveled in Bradford’s company they formed her invisible background, too. They were security men, it being normal government policy for Secret Service agents to guard all living ex-Presidents as well as the man currently in office, and reporters. The security men tended to be neater though more conservative dressers, but other than that Evelyn had never found any way to distinguish at once which breed a man might be. If he hovered around in the corner of one’s eye, he was either a guard or a reporter, that was all she knew for sure.

  Anything becomes normal, if it goes on long enough, and the guards and reporters had existed in the periphery of Bradford’s life almost as long as Evelyn could remember. She thought nothing now of the fact that Uncle Joe was out talking to reporters, and she would think nothing of it when their limousine was trailed all the way out to the airport by a Pontiac containing two anonymous men in black raincoats. It was simply the way life was.

  Uncle Joe came in about five minutes after Evelyn arrived. “That’s that,” he said. “I didn’t want those fellows draped all over Brad’s neck when he came down, so I gave them all they wanted and now they’re gone. Excuse me while I give Brad the all-clear.”

  Evelyn waited till he was done on the phone, and then said, “Is he really all right now?”

  He looked up at her in some surprise. “Well, of course,” he said. “If I’m half as healthy as Brad at his age I’ll consider myself lucky.”

  “Was it a stroke he had?”

  “From the evidence, it seems to have been,” he said. “A little stroke, a temporary thing. No permanent blockage, no apparent damage.”

  “And it’s all over.”

  “Well, there are diet things he should think about now, and we’ll want to keep an eye on his blood pressure. Brad has sense enough to do what he’s told, though, so he should be home free.”

  “It’s awful to be old,” Evelyn said, and the door opened.

  It was a nurse, in crisp white. “Excuse me,” she said, not sure whether she should enter or not.

  Uncle Joe looked over at her. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Dr. Holt, Mr. Lockridge is going out the back way, through the emergency entrance. His car has been sent around, they wanted me to tell you.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “I believe there’s a television truck out front,” she said. “Mr. Lockridge didn’t want to be filmed leaving the hospital.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Uncle Joe said. “He’s on his way down now?”

  “Yes, Doctor. He may be there already.”

  “Thank you.” He got up from his desk as the nurse left. “Come along, Evelyn. I thought I’d satisfied those boys, but apparently not.”

  They took an elevator down one flight and then walked through endless green halls until they abruptly arrived at a busy little white tile corner with half a dozen worried people sitting in the corridor on wooden benches and quick glimpses of muddled hurried movement taking place in the open-doored rooms to either side. The waiting people looked at Evelyn and Uncle Joe in open curiosity, and Evelyn wasn’t surprised when a gray-uniformed guard approached and said in a stage whisper, “He’s already in the car, Doctor.” The people on the benches had recognized Bradford, of course, so now they would be speculating about who she might be. Her face had appeared hundreds of times in the corners of photos of Bradford, but no one ever recognized her, and every time there was a situation like this Evelyn felt again the same inadequacy at having nothing to offer the world but a blood relationship with a famous man.

  The limousine was just outside the wide double doors, under a sign reading AMBULANCE PARKING ONLY. Uncle Joe held the rear door open for Evelyn to get in, and she saw Bradford already seated in there, looking slightly irritable, a black attaché case like a Cubist lap rope on his lap. She got in and sat beside him and he said, “Did you want to be on television?”

  “Not at all,” she said, unconsciously touching her hair. The limousine was under a r
oof, but there was still the rainy dampness all around, and she could feel her hairdo eroding away like a sand castle.

  Uncle Joe stuck his head in. “You’ve got my little list of do’s and don’ts,” he said to Bradford.

  “Yes, and I suppose Evelyn has a carbon copy.” He was being very surly.

  “As a matter of fact,” Uncle Joe said, “she doesn’t. But it might be a good idea for me to send her one.” He grinned at Evelyn and patted her knee and said, “Don’t let him get you down.”

  “Bradford couldn’t,” she said, smiling, nervous as usual to be made the center of attention when Bradford was around. He was supposed to be the center of attention.

  The spotlight didn’t last long. Uncle Joe said, “See you in a few weeks,” and backed out of the car again, shutting the door.

  “Won’t he, though?” Bradford grumbled, and called to the chauffeur to drive on.

  iv

  THE LAST LEG OF the trip always seemed the longest, and with Bradford still in the bad mood it seemed this time even longer than usual.

  The first leg had been driving through the rain to LaGuardia Airport, which meant over the East River via the Triborough Bridge and out Grand Central Parkway to the airport. Bradford had been immersed in the contents of the attaché case all the way, it turning out to contain sections of Howard’s re-write of The Temporary Peace, which Howard had flatly insisted Bradford approve by next Monday, threatening to have the book published without Bradford’s final corrections if he didn’t get to work at once. Evelyn didn’t mind being left to her own devices. New York is an ugly but fascinating city, and it was enough to simply look out at it, to see how its appearance changed in the rain, becoming both softer and more bedraggled and somehow two or three centuries older.

  The second leg had been the flight to Hagerstown, in the plane the government made available to Bradford as required. Bradford was still grumpily involved in his work, but there were magazines aboard the plane, and the stewardess prepared a meal for them all, mostly out of frozen food packages. Also, one of the security men, a new one, tried to flirt with her slightly, which was both pleasing and displeasing, the former because being flirted with was always good for a woman’s ego and the latter because there were unspoken distinctions between the Lockridge family and the government employees around them, and in ignoring those distinctions the security man was in a way insulting her. Bradford looked up from his work long enough to scowl at the security man, after a while, and that was the end of that. In a way it was too bad (trying not to remember the feeling that had passed through her in George and Marie’s apartment the other morning), but in another way it was just as well. Without regret, Evelyn returned to her magazine.