Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  “We shouldn’t have had to go through this,” the elder Patricia said. She stood behind her daughter, who was sitting on one of the sofas, her face gray with shock. The mother’s hands were on the daughter’s shoulders, the daughter had one hand up to hold her mother’s wrist; the usual cat fighting had ended at once, with the news of Earl’s death.

  Eugene White said, “Of course we shouldn’t have had to go through this. Nobody wants to be involved in this situation. But it’s with us, and we—”

  “Why?” She looked around, apparently hoping for someone else to join her at the barricades, but her husband Harrison was looking at the carpet between his feet, as were Meredith Fanshaw and George Holt. Marie Holt, sitting beside Patricia Chatham, was limiting her gaze to that Patricia’s face.

  The elder Patricia went on at last by herself: “Why do we have to be in this? The man’s crazy, isn’t he? Why can’t we admit he’s crazy, just admit it, and lock him up, the way you would with any other man?”

  “Because he isn’t any other man,” Joe said quickly. He sounded shocked by what Patricia was saying.

  “Oh, of course not,” she said. “He’s Bradford Lockridge, isn’t he? That’s something special, isn’t it?”

  “He’s done a lot for this family,” Joe said.

  “He’s done a lot for you, maybe. Turned a third-rate doctor into a world authority, maybe. But what’s he done for us? I’ll tell you what he’s done for us. My brother is dead by his own hand, and Bradford Lockridge is responsible. He killed Herb as much as if he’d pulled a trigger and shot him in the head. And now my son-in-law is dead, and that’s Bradford Lockridge, too. Earl is dead, defending Bradford Lockridge. From whom? From Bradford Lockridge!”

  Joe Holt, obviously stung by the third-rate doctor remark, said angrily, “Bradford Lockridge got you that son-in-law in the first place. He got you the dress on your back. If it weren’t for Bradford Lockridge, your husband would have starved to death forty years ago.”

  “Bradford Lockridge didn’t get me my brother!”

  “If it weren’t for Bradford, your brother would be a hardware store clerk in Eustace, Pennsylvania, right this minute.”

  “That’s worse than dead?”

  “You seemed to think so when you latched onto Harrison.”

  “Latched on? He wasn’t pregnant, you foul-mouthed twerp!”

  Eugene White, trying to calm things down a little, said, “Patricia, you and Joe are both getting excited. All he means is that Bradford made it possible for Herbert to have a lot better standard of living than he would—”

  “Herbert’s standard of living is lousy right now, thank you.”

  Joe said, angrily, “Bradford gave Herbert all the life he ever had!”

  “Oh, yes? Bradford Lockridge gives, and Bradford Lockridge takes away? Now he’s God, is that it?”

  “He’s been a god in this family!” Joe shouted. “Yes, he gave me a bigger career than I would have had on my own, and he did the same thing for your goddamn brother Herbert, and he did the same thing for Harrison, and he did the same thing for Sterling downstairs, and for George there, and for Howard and Edward and BJ and—”

  “BJ, yes, there’s another one. Poor BJ’s in a mental hospital now, and whose fault is that? Is that what we can expect now, Bradford Lockridge gave us all everything we’ve got, and now he’s going to take it all back again?”

  Eugene White said, “We hope not, Patricia. There’s no need to—”

  “You hope not? Well, let me tell you something—and you, too, Wellington, you especially. This con job you worked on my husband yesterday at that meeting up in Boston—”

  Eugene White said, “Con job?”

  “Just you listen to me. You did a lot of talk there about how everything had to be decided right away at that meeting, it had to be yes or no, there wasn’t time to go home and think it over. Well, let me tell you something, we have community property in the state of California and Harrison’s agreement doesn’t mean one single thing without me! And I say no! I say I wouldn’t give one penny for that stupid idea, not this year, not every year, not any year! And do you think I’m the only one in the family feels that way? Let him go into a regular mental hospital just like anybody else. Let him go in with BJ!”

  Eugene White said, “You’re upset, Patricia, naturally you’re upset. When you’re calmer—”

  Marie Holt said, “I’m calm.” And from the sound of her voice, she was.

  It got the effect she’d wanted; everyone shut up and looked at her. When she was sure she had everybody’s undivided attention, she said, “And I agree with Patricia. I think my husband was rushed into a decision he shouldn’t have made by himself. This is an annual expenditure from our household budget, and it isn’t going to be cheap, not from the numbers you people were apparently tossing around at that meeting. George and I have talked it over, and we think it was all done too hastily.” George was now absorbed in a study of the carpet between his feet.

  “If you want to have another meeting—” Patricia started.

  Wellington said, “The agreement has been made. The money is already being spent.”

  “Make one of your famous phone calls,” Patricia told him. “Tell them to stop a minute, there’s been a hitch in the plans.”

  Eugene White, still trying to be reasonable, said, “We can’t do that, Patricia. The family agreed—”

  “Do you think so? What do you think we ladies talked about in the cars going out to the cemetery and back? Casserole recipes? This family is split right down the middle, and don’t you kid yourself about that.”

  “If it is,” Joe Holt said angrily, “you did it, you and your daughter.”

  The younger Patricia glared at him. “If we’d done it sooner,” she said, her voice raspy, “my husband would still be alive.”

  Her mother said, “Don’t think a lot of us haven’t thought about that. Don’t think a lot of those women downstairs won’t start wondering whose husband is next, all to keep Bradford Lockridge out of the insane asylum he belongs in. I hate to be the kind of person who says ‘what have you done for me lately,’ but when I ask Bradford Lockridge that, the answer I get is, ‘I killed your brother and your son-in-law, I drove my son crazy, I made a mockery out of my sister-in-law’s funeral, and I’m going to cost each and every member of my family twenty percent of its annual income for the rest of my life.’ That’s what he’s done for me lately, and that’s what he’s done for everybody in the family lately, and if you think the Russians would be happy to see an American president in the booby hatch, believe me they won’t be half as happy as the Lockridge family!”

  Eugene White said, “Patricia, you can’t do this to the family.”

  “I can’t? I can and I will. And my daughter will help me. And Marie will help me. And I know half a dozen others who’ll help me.”

  Wellington said, quietly, “No.”

  As with Marie’s calm statement, this one drew immediate and total attention. But Patricia wouldn’t allow the enemy a pregnant pause; she snapped, “You don’t scare me, Wellington, with your looks and your silences and your cloak and dagger routine. Some of the more impressionable members of the family use you to scare their children to bed in place of the boogie man—‘You be good, or Uncle Wellington will get you!’—but I’m not one of them.”

  “I know that,” Wellington said, still quietly, as everyone else looked very embarrassed. “And that’s why,” he said, “I’m going to have to do something just a little melodramatic before saying what I want to say. So I’ll be sure I have your attention.”

  “Are you going to dance, Wellington?”

  “If you will all go to the windows,” Wellington said, “you will see six automobiles parked in a row across the street.” As they hesitated about moving, he said, “Please go look.”

  “A show, Wellington?” Patricia saw the momentum being lost, and didn’t like it.

  “A very brief show,” Wellington said. “I promis
e.”

  Reluctantly, the other eight all went over to the three windows and looked out at the street. Wellington, still in the center of the room, said, “The driver of the first car is going to wave to you now. The driver of the second car is going to get out of the car now, and kick the front left tire, and get back into the car. The driver of the third car—”

  Meredith Fanshaw had turned from the window. “What the hell are you—”

  “Bear with me,” Wellington said. “The driver of the third car will get out, fiddle with the windshield wiper, and get back. What would you like the driver of the fourth car to do?”

  No one said anything. They kept looking out the windows.

  Wellington said, “Well? What would you like him to do?”

  Marie, not turning from the window, said, “Take a bow.”

  “Fine,” said Wellington. “He will get out of the car, bow in this direction, and get back in. What about the driver of the fifth car?”

  Meredith Fanshaw said, “No. The driver of the sixth car. He should start the engine, back up, and drive around the block.”

  Wellington repeated the instructions, and said, “Now, the fifth car.”

  Eugene White, in a thoughtful voice, said, “He shouldn’t do a thing.”

  “He does nothing,” Wellington agreed.

  They all turned to look at him. Patricia, still trying to retain her momentum and mood, said, “All right, it’s cloak and dagger. So what?”

  “The men in those six cars,” Wellington said, “were guarding Bradford every inch of the way today.”

  Eugene White said, doubtfully, “They’re Secret Service?”

  “No. Bradford only has two regularly assigned Secret Service guards. It was thought unnecessary to have them come along today. Unusual, but we wanted to prove a point.”

  Meredith Fanshaw said, “What point?”

  “That Bradford’s family had the desire, the spirit and the brains to take care of him. Patricia, it all seems simple to you. Bradford is sick, put him in a hospital like any ordinary man. But as several of us keep saying, he isn’t an ordinary man.”

  “No,” she said sarcastically, “he’s God. Joe Holt said so.”

  “He’s an ex-President,” Wellington said, “which is the fact at issue here. Whether he’s done anything for or to anyone in this room doesn’t matter. He’s an ex-President. And there are offices within the governmental structure which will not permit an ex-President of the United States to publicly enter a mental hospital.”

  “What do you mean they won’t permit it?”

  “I mean they won’t permit it. I mean they will kill him first.”

  Harrison said, “That’s the most inane piece of fiction I ever heard in—”

  “It is not,” Wellington told him. “I am potentially getting myself in grave trouble by telling you this. The choice is not between my plan and a public institution, the choice is between my plan and Bradford’s dying peacefully in his sleep before he can cause embarrassment to the country.”

  Meredith Fanshaw said, “If that were true, don’t you think I’d know it?”

  “No. The elected officials of the Federal government haven’t been aware of more than a quarter of the activity of their government since I first went to Washington, and probably not for a good long while before that. Since the First World War, I would imagine. Did you know the CIA was financing all those youth groups and little magazines, or did you hear about it first in the newspapers, along with everybody else?”

  “You’re talking about murder, man!”

  “There have been a minimum of ten murders so far in this operation, and there may be more. Done by our side, ordered by me. The Chinese agents we replaced at Eustace, what do you suppose happened to them?”

  “I assumed they were arrested.”

  “A trial? Publicity?”

  Joe Holt said, “Wellington, is this on the level?”

  “I’m making you all accomplices,” Wellington told them. “I deal in an area where everything is known, we can never get away with euphemisms and little white lies, and I’m dragging you people in with me because it’s the only way I can think of to save my father’s life. This may be my first selfish act.”

  Harrison said, “Nobody could get away with a thing like that. They would have—it would have—murder will out!”

  “Will it? Joe, I would have gone to you. I would have explained the alternatives. I would have proved to you, Joe, because it would be true, that an honorable death would be better for Bradford than a shameful public moldering in a mental hospital. And you would have agreed with me, Joe, and when I whispered the word euthanasia in your ear, Joe, you would have hated the word, but you would have done it.”

  Joe was shaking his head, saying, “I can’t believe you—”

  “If not you, there were other ways. Can a doctor kill a patient without anyone knowing, Joe?”

  Joe didn’t answer.

  Harrison said, “But now that you’ve told us, it can’t work, can it? They wouldn’t dare kill Brad now, not if you told them about us knowing.”

  “They already know it,” Wellington said. “This room is bugged, I always take it for granted I’m talking for the microphone. I can do nothing about it, I just accept it. And it won’t stop them. If they decide Bradford has to die for the good of the nation, they will find ways to assure your silence, all eight of you.”

  Patricia, regaining her sarcasm, said, “Kill us all, Wellington? I thought you were done with the melodrama.”

  “You won’t have to be killed,” he said. “You’re all sane, you can be reasoned with. Bradford can’t be reasoned with, that’s why killing him is the only official answer. But all of you have things short of your life that you don’t want to lose.”

  Meredith Fanshaw said, “Even a Senator?”

  Wellington looked at him. “Especially a Senator.”

  Patricia said, “Because he has so much to lose? I’m not a Senator, Wellington, I have nothing to lose.”

  Wellington’s expression didn’t change. “I mention Stockton,” he said.

  The flesh around Patricia’s eyes seemed suddenly paler, her eyes more deepset. She said nothing, and Harrison, frowning at her in perplexity, said, “Stockton? What the hell is Stockton?”

  Wellington faced Harrison. “To you,” he said, “I mention the Crocker Citizen’s Bank.”

  Harrison blinked, and then stood there with his mouth open.

  No one said anything. Wellington studied each of the eight faces, seeing the same fear of him in each, and was both sickened and relieved at that unanimity of expression. He said, “I’ll let you talk it over. I don’t have to be here for your decision, my superior will be listening in. I’ll know what you decide by what orders he gives me. But I would like to say something from a personal point of view. If you force me to kill my father, I will do it, because I long ago gave up the idea that I should have attitudes about the orders I was given to carry out. But through whatever small channels of influence I may have constructed for myself over the last twenty-three years, I will make sure that every one of you regrets it.”

  Harrison cried, “You can’t put that kind of responsibility on us!”

  Wellington looked at him. “I can’t?” He turned away and left the room. Downstairs, he said goodbye to Sterling, collected his wife and daughter, and started the long drive back to Washington.

  10

  ON MONDAY, THE TWELFTH of November, Bradford came back from his mid-day walk smiling and cheerful and full of his news. It was a cold day, the coldest of the season so far, sunless and crisp under high clouds, and when Evelyn saw him, in a downstairs parlor, his cheeks were so red, his mood so good, his whole manner so boisterous with health and good spirits, that she felt at once a kind of helpless rage at the fact that the façade was a lie, that beneath the apparent robustness was a crippled mind that would never be whole again.

  “Action at last!” he said, in a stage whisper, and took her arm, d
oing a parody of secretiveness, looking over his shoulder, peering this way and that, touching his finger to his lips.

  She had no idea what he was talking about. So far as she knew, things were still as they were. Robert had come back from last Thursday’s meeting in Boston full of the plans for the defense of Bradford at the funeral but vague about any plans for Bradford’s future. Apparently the second meeting had been just as fruitless as the first in producing any solution for this impasse.

  So what could the action be? When he was finished with his mock-undercover game, Bradford finally told her: “First stop, Paris!”

  “What?” The sentence made no sense to her, and at this stage whatever she didn’t understand was potentially a threat.

  “Paris,” he said. He was delighted. The last time he’d looked this pleased was when he’d first told her of his plan to run for his old seat in Congress. And if he hadn’t been argued with then, if he’d been permitted that modest dream, would they all be in this position today? She kept telling herself it would have wound up here anyway, he wouldn’t have settled for such a spear-carrier’s role in world events, but none of them could ever now be sure.

  But what was this he was talking about? She said, her voice ragged with tension, “I don’t understand. Bradford, for God’s sake don’t play with me!”

  The sharpness in her voice, from a nervousness and fright he didn’t know existed, obviously startled him, and he looked at her in some surprise. “Well, of course, Evelyn.” Then, thinking he understood, he smiled gently and rested a hand on her arm. “I know this is a strain for you,” he said. “Sneaking away like cat burglars, committing ourselves to self-exile in such a completely alien land. But to me it’s an adventure, I can’t help that. I can’t help being excited by it, and that keeps me from feeling the strain.”