Alone, the old dog faced the children
Eager to teach it their games.
Of falling, of tying up, of punching and playing pretend
It doesn’t hurt.
Backing deeper into the darkness of the trees, the old dog
Explained
He would never be a child,
That good fortune was never to be his.
Though
The phone rang. He put down his pencil at once, but waited for the second ring before picking up the receiver. “Hello,” he said.
“Wellington?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d call.”
“How soon can you be here?”
Wellington closed his eyes. “Thirty minutes,” he said.
“Good.”
Wellington hung up. He pulled the binder close again, leafed through it, and stopped at the page one past the one he’d withdrawn before. He removed the sheets of white paper from this next plastic sheet, and once again there was an extra piece of paper in the middle, this one blank. He reread his yellow paper draft, crossed out the last two lines, and copied everything down to and including the line He would never be a child. Then he put the sandwich of white paper back together again, reinserted the papers in the plastic sleeve, and closed the binder.
Next he got to his feet and carried the binder over to its bookcase and put it away. Back at the desk, he put the pen and pencil back in the glass and gathered up the yellow worksheets. These he carried out of the room and across the narrow dark hall into the bathroom, where he burned them in the sink and ran water to carry the ashes down the drain. He then went downstairs, told the housekeeper—still reading Ebony at the kitchen table—to tell Carol that he might be late, and left the house. He got into his station wagon, backed it out of the garage, and drove back to Washington.
ii
THE MAN AT THE desk was listening to a tape recording when Wellington walked in. Wellington heard, “. . . without making him suspicious. I’ll see what I can find.”
That was Howard’s voice. It was followed by Joe Holt saying, “I’ll be there by the end of the week, Howard. I’ll have to make an excuse to give him a medical onceover.”
Black leather sofas faced one another from the left and right walls. Currier & Ives prints were massed on the walnut paneling above the sofas, and large framed portraits of George Washington and the current President frowned and smiled down from the wall behind the desk. The carpet was dark green, and on it stood a dark wooden chair with a spindle back and flat arms, facing the desk. Indirect lighting in gutters under the acoustical ceiling supplemented the fluorescent lamp on the desk.
On the tape, Sterling was saying, “Robert, I think we should arrange a leave of absence for you from the university, and that you should take a place in Eustace or Chambersburg, somewhere close by, so you could be reached in an emergency.”
Wellington sat down on the wooden chair. He watched the man behind the desk, who was watching the reels turn.
Robert Pratt’s voice came from the machine: “Fine.”
Wellington looked at his watch. Thirty-five minutes since he’d been phoned. So this was an act. Pointless.
Eugene White said, “As for the rest of us, at the moment I think there’s nothing for us to do but cudgel our brains. We want to stop Bradford without publicity, and we’ll have to do it without his cooperation, which is a tall order. I’m willing to serve as a clearing-house for ideas, a sort of liaison within the family. I don’t know if we’ll want any more large meetings like this, but if we do I can handle the arrangements. For now, I think we should adjourn for lunch and start to think things out. Unless there’s something else to say?” Then there was silence, in which a small sound gradually became apparent, a faint rasping noise.
The man at the desk said, “What’s that sound?”
“My brother crying,” Wellington said.
The other man glanced at him, lifting an eyebrow. “Bradford, Junior? The military man?”
In a toneless voice, Wellington said, “His fixation has always been on our father’s invincibility, and his own inability to measure up to the old man. He should probably be watched for a while now. Adolescent rebellion can be severe when it strikes a man of forty-three.” There were other faint noises on the tape now, rustlings and scrapings. Wellington said, “That’s all of it. They’re leaving now.”
The other man reached over and switched off the tape. He had a yellow legal pad on his desk—like Fanshaw’s—and he now picked up a yellow pencil and made a notation. Wellington sat and waited, watching the pencil move, and when he was done writing the other man said, “Tell me about Eugene White. He seemed to be running things.”
“He’s with the State Department.”
“I know all that business. Tell me who he is, and what makes him family.”
“Marriage makes him family. His wife is Bradford’s wife’s niece, and his daughter just married Bradford’s son-in-law’s nephew. There’s also some family relationship through my uncle Sterling’s wife.”
The other man shook his head. “I can’t trace out these families,” he said. “You all intermarry in the same tight circle, and after a while everybody’s in the same family.”
“It seems that way,” Wellington said, deadpan.
“I come from . . . the midwest. We didn’t have families like that. But then, we weren’t upper class.”
Wellington said nothing.
The other man peered at him. “Don’t start understanding me, Wellington,” he said.
“You come from Omaha,” Wellington said. “Your father was a grocer. You know I know that.”
The other man shrugged. “Habit,” he said, his tone betraying his irritation. “Eugene White,” he said.
“The jolly good boy,” Wellington said. “He has a place in Florida, and a boat, and he goes sailing. Very casual man, but an organizer by nature. Likes to put things in rows, with tags on them. That’s what he does for State, he’s a China watcher. He’s too casual to be a scholar, otherwise he’d be a college teacher now. Treats his work like a jigsaw puzzle, meaningless fun, and doesn’t take his job home with him.”
“Home life?”
“All happy families are alike,” Wellington said.
“So I’m told,” the other man said. Their eyes met, and neither said what he knew about the other, though each was aware of the other’s knowledge.
Wellington said, “He set this up because that’s his style. He organized a Little League team once, even though he doesn’t have a son.”
“Anything there?”
“No. He just has a compulsion toward organization. And he was one of the first involved in this thing, so it was natural for him to be the one to set it up. How did he happen to pick that conference room?”
“His course was determined for him,” the other man said.
“Anybody else bugging it?”
“The Navy, believe it or not. We smeared their tape.”
“Why the Navy?”
“We may never know. What about Dr. Joseph Holt? He was Lockridge’s physician in the White House, wasn’t he?”
“And still is.”
“Does that make him family?”
“His brother married my sister. It was his son that just married Eugene White’s daughter.”
The other man smiled, thinly. “It becomes funny after a while,” he said.
“Possibly. We don’t think about it, we’re used to it.”
“I know.” The smile disappeared. “Tell me about Holt.”
“Average man, average ability, average ambitions, average everything. Thrust into the bigtime because he became the nephew-in-law of the President. Nervous about it ever since, full of feelings of unworthiness. Joins good causes.”
“Anything on our list?”
“Not for several years. A few fringe things in the sixties, when that was popular.”
“Any trouble now?”
“No. He’d love to
consecrate himself to a cause. He sees Bradford as it. He could be made to see other things.”
“Another happy family?”
“Yes.”
“Robert Pratt.”
“I don’t know him,” Wellington said. “I intend to find out about him. He seems to be involved with Bradford’s granddaughter, Evelyn.”
“Yes, we’ll get to her.” He looked down at his pad. “Meredith Fanshaw I know. He wouldn’t cause trouble. George Holt.” He looked up.
Wellington said, “Hen-pecked, nervous, ambitious, insecure. Cowardly.”
“Good.” The other man looked down again. “Harrison Lockridge. I know him, too. Sterling Lockridge and Howard Lockridge.” He looked up. “Is that where our trouble lies?”
“Yes.” Wellington turned his head suddenly, and blinked at the prints on the side wall.
“Wellington?”
He faced the other man again. “A son must be forgiven moments of weakness,” he said.
“Of course. And there’s no reason things can’t be worked out.”
“That would be best,” Wellington agreed. “Easiest to live with.”
“But tell me about Sterling and Howard just the same.”
Wellington nodded. “Father and son,” he said, his voice still emotionless. “Sterling is the most solid man I know, bar none. Bradford has always been theatrical, which was good for politics but bad as a character trait. We see where it’s led.”
“Sterling doesn’t have that?”
“He has Bradford’s strength without the theatricality. He also has position and prestige. I doubt he could be intimidated, and I know he couldn’t be bought. I don’t know how we’d handle him.”
“Persuasion?”
“Unlikely. He doesn’t have our priorities. None of them have. You heard the way they reacted to my hypothetical case.”
“Sterling pretended he hadn’t heard it.”
“He didn’t want to think ill of his nephew.”
“You?”
“Me.”
The other man made a note. “We’d better do some prying,” he said. “Just to be on the safe side. What about the son?
“Howard is a belligerent liberal. He has the theatricality, but less strength. You know, Bradford and Sterling are a tough act to follow. We’ve all been affected by it, from their younger brother Harrison through my cousins Howard and Edward to BJ and me. We’ve all kept our sights low, one way and another.”
“Edward?” He frowned at his notes. “Sterling’s son Edward? He wasn’t there, was he?”
“He’s with our embassy in Paris. You know him, his son, Edward Jr., is with that expatriate radical group over there.”
“The high school boy?”
“That’s the one.”
He smiled bleakly. “The theatricality keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“Let’s return to Howard. He’d be a hothead, would he?”
“Yes.”
“Which makes him less troublesome than his father. A hothead can always be made a fool of.” His pencil moved again on the paper. “One more person,” he said. “The granddaughter, Evelyn. Evelyn Canby, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about her. She’s the key to this whole thing, you know.”
“I know. She’s a widow, late twenties, one small daughter. Her husband was with the Army, killed in Asia.”
“Unfortunate.”
“Yes,” said Wellington. Voice still flat, he said, “She might be unwilling to make another sacrifice for the nation.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“I know.”
Their eyes met, and unspoken hostility and resentment arced between them for just an instant. But it seemed to be no more than a repetition of an old moment, as though they had long ago understood that the feelings would never burst out into the light. The other man looked away first, glancing down at his notes again as he said, “Tell me about Evelyn Canby.”
“I’m not sure about her. Women are harder to read, they have less individual life styles. In her youth she was an ordinary cheerful girl. Her parents were killed in an air crash, and then her husband died. She lives alone with her grandfather, and she’s very quiet. I’m not sure sometimes if she’s dull all the way through, or if she’s bright inside with a dull surface. She dislikes me, I’m not entirely sure why. With all the deaths around her, she’s very protective of her grandfather.”
“More trouble.”
“But a woman. And a young woman. Sterling is still the main concern.”
“I disagree,” the other man said. “Evelyn Canby is the only one in Bradford Lockridge’s confidence. She’s emotional and over-protective, and in the last analysis she’s running the show.”
“I wouldn’t say she was running the show.”
“I would. I did. You people at that meeting today, you can’t make any decision at all without clearing it with Evelyn Canby. You know that, Wellington.”
“She has to be consulted, yes, but—”
“She has veto power.”
Wellington considered. “I suppose she does,” he said. He sounded faintly surprised.
“And if she smelled anything in the wind at all,” the other man said, “she’d warn Lockridge. Sterling wouldn’t, he’d wait to be sure, so would any of the others, but Evelyn Canby would blow at the first sign.”
Wellington nodded reluctantly. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right.”
“Is there any chance at all of getting her out of there, replacing her with some other family member?”
“None.”
“I didn’t suppose there was. All right, she’s the key. We’ve got to know what she’s doing and what she’s thinking every minute.”
“I don’t believe you’ll find her complex.”
“What about this man Pratt? How close are they?”
“I don’t know. It’s a fairly recent relationship, though.”
“We’ll have to find out. He might even be sympathetic, if approached properly.” He made a note. “Is there anything else? Anybody else I should know about?”
“Not so far. There may be.”
“We’re taking a chance, you know. He could pop any time.”
“You don’t have him covered?”
“Of course I have him covered,” the other man said irritably. “That isn’t the point. What you were all saying at that meeting is perfectly true. Having Bradford Lockridge stuffed away in an asylum is almost as bad a public black eye as having him do a Lord Haw Haw in Peking. I don’t want him to pop because I don’t want to have to put him under restraint.”
“Agreed.”
“It’s chancy. But your idea is still worth trying first. If the family can work out a way to contain him without a news leak, fine. If they can’t, I suppose it’s Dr. Holt we’ll have to go to work on.”
“Why him?” Wellington asked.
“Because with Sterling and Howard and the granddaughter in the picture, it’ll have to look one hundred per cent natural. One slight suspicion that it wasn’t natural and all three could blow. For that, you can’t do better than the family doctor.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Wellington said.
“We all are.”
“Is there anything else?”
“No. Keep me in touch.”
“I will,” Wellington said, and got heavily to his feet. He started for the door, and the other man called his name. He turned and looked back toward the desk, and the other man said, “I don’t suppose you’ll answer this, but I have a question. For my own information only.”
“I’ll answer it if I can.”
“Did you know the Navy would bug?”
Wellington frowned. “Why should I?”
“That would give another reason for you telling me the situation,” the other man said. “You see the way it works. This way, the Navy has a smeared tape, I have the only existing record, and you have access to me. If yo
u’d kept it a secret, the Navy would have the only record and you wouldn’t be able to affect any of the decisions.”
“Clever of me,” Wellington said.
“Of course, if you claim it, I’ll want to know how you knew about the Navy.”
“Then I don’t claim it,” Wellington said.
The other man frowned at him. “I wish I knew, one way or the other,” he said finally.
“Some things just remain mysterious,” Wellington said.
“I know. I can’t stand that.”
“I know.”
The other man pointed a finger at him. “You’re understanding me again. Don’t do it.”
“Sorry.” Wellington nodded at the portrait beside George Washington. “Has he been informed?”
“Not yet. I have a private briefing with him Friday. I’ll tell him then.”
“Should I come with you?”
“I’ll give your arguments,” the other man said. “And don’t worry about it, in any event. He’ll go along with you. He’ll avoid the alternative as long as he can. Presidents get very nervous when they think about killing other Presidents.”
5
EVELYN LOOKED AROUND THE small room—patterned linoleum floor, aged wooden furniture, peach-colored curtains on both windows, three bare light bulbs in the old-fashioned ceiling fixture—and said, “Are you really going to live here?”
“It was the best I could do on short notice,” Robert said. “With any luck I won’t be here long.”
She went over to one of the windows, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out. Three stories down was a weedy and bare-patched back yard, enclosed by three different kinds of fencing: chain link on the left, white picket on the right, tall gray vertical wood slats at the rear. From a tall pole at the rear of the yard clotheslines dipped down and up to pulleys attached to the back of the house, one of them just to the left of this window. To left and right were similar yards, poles, lines. Straight ahead was either a giant block-long mirror or the backs of houses and lots identical to these. A slight odor, something like damp wood, like a long-empty barn, had been in her nostrils since she’d first entered this building.
Ex Officio Page 33
