by Howard Fast
STATE DEPARTMENT THREATENS ANDREW CAPESTONE
ADMINISTRATION STRIKES ANOTHER BLOW
AGAINST BLACK LIBERATION
“We can’t miss. Oh, sure, some of the media will clobber Capestone, but what of it? Don’t you agree, Al?”
“No.”
She rose, walked around the desk to face me and said, “What do you mean, no? That’s pretty all-inclusive and casual.”
“Andrew Capestone is no longer our client.”
“And just when did you decide that? When that crumb waved the flag at you?”
“Sit down,” I said to her. “Sit down and listen to me, because we have a lot to talk about.”
It must have been on my face, because without answering she went back to the chair and did as I said.
“All right, Millie,” I began. “Andrew Capestone is no longer our client because Andrew Capestone is dead.”
“Oh!” All her petulance fled. “Oh, I am sorry, Al. I didn’t know. When did it happen? Did they kill him?”
“No, they didn’t kill him. He died of natural causes four days ago.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no, Al. You’re putting me on.”
Then I told her the whole story, beginning to end, leaving out nothing. I finished, and she simply sat there and stared at me without ever saying a word.
“Some comment, please,” I begged her. “I have been working up my courage all morning to tell you this.”
“I don’t know. I think I understand why you did it, Al.”
“Tell me why,” I begged her, “because sure as God, I don’t know.”
“I think you know. These images you create—part of every one of them is you, Al. You wanted a big one, all yours. You poor dope.”
“I thought you’d be sore as hell.”
“Why should I be sore?”
“I lied to you, tricked you, made you an accomplice in this idiot crime.”
“Al,” she said, “what makes you think it’s a crime?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering about that. But whether it’s a crime or not, when it comes out I am finished. There isn’t a part of the media anywhere in the country—newspapers, magazines, TV—that won’t write me off as a crumb. Then I’m finished. Alvin Brody, Public Relations ceases to exist.”
“Maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world.”
I found myself smiling for the first time that day. “No? Then tell me, my dear, where am I going to find fifty or sixty thousand a year for alimony?”
“You’re going through with that, Al?”
“If I can stay alive.”
Millie looked at me thoughtfully. Then she reached out for my phone and told Anne to hold all calls for herself and Mr. Brody.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Because I want to think. Now open your mail or something, Al, and let me sort out the pieces if I can.”
She closed her eyes and sat there while I took her advice. When I opened the fourth letter and took out the contents, I felt that sick sense of horror that had become familiar during the past few days. I glanced up at Millie, who had opened her eyes and was nodding reassuringly.
“It’s not a lost cause, Al. In fact, it’s very simple. Andrew Capestone is somewhere in Rhodesia. No one knows where. He dies there. It’s a noble death in a noble cause. His body is never recovered, thereby no fuss about passports or State Department irritation. It’s true that we put our saints and saviors in jail when they are alive, but once they’re dead, we always enshrine them. Andrew Capestone becomes a martyr in the cause of human liberation. We hold one last press conference to honor him, and maybe we even donate a small scholarship fund to Harvard in his name. Or a Capestone prize for the best senior essay on colonialism. You can afford that, and think of what it will mean in public relations to the firm.”
I just stared at her without speaking.
“Well, isn’t it a great solution?”
“You have forgotten about his body,” I said bleakly. “He was never incinerated.”
“That could have been a mistake. All we have to do is to find the body and have it incinerated under the name of Andrew Smith.”
“You have also forgotten about Joe Leone,” I said even more bleakly.
“No, I haven’t forgotten about him. Perhaps because I am not under the same pressures as you, I can’t regard the Joe Leone thing as meaning anything. The fact that it appeared on the same page in the Times is no more surprising than a thousand other coincidences that happen every day. You told me that Capestone was an addict at one time. Well, Leone could have been his connection, the man who supplied him with his drugs. That would account for his name being in his wallet.”
“Would it also account for this?” I handed her the last envelope I had opened. In it was the clipping with the account of Joe Leone’s death.
She read it through slowly and then handed it back to me. “I don’t know what that means, Al, and I don’t want to think about it right now. I am trying very hard to remain cool and unflappable, because one of us must. First things first, and the first thing still remains—the incineration of Mr. Andrew Smith.”
“All right, I’ll go back to the hospital. I didn’t want to, but that’s the only way, isn’t it?”
“I’m going with you.”
“Why?”
“You keep asking me why,” she said. “Don’t you understand why?”
3
Sister Mary Sullivan was sympathetic but not very helpful. “The plain fact of the matter is, Mr. Brody, that I listed you in place of next of kin. We are permitted to do that when a friend instead of next of kin must claim the body. When the hearse arrived for the body, the driver must have presented burial papers signed by you. Otherwise the body could not be released to him. I must say that nothing like this has happened since I have been at the hospital.”
“Were the papers presented to you, Sister?” Millie asked.
“No, that would be done at the ambulance entrance, at the pathology office.”
“Could we speak to whoever received the papers?”
She hesitated a moment. “That’s off limits to visitors—but well, yes. We should clear this up.” She dialed a number on her desk phone and told the person at the other end that she was sending us down to pathology. “Are you sure you want to go with Mr. Brody?” she asked Millie. “It’s not a very pleasant place.”
“I have a strong stomach, Sister.”
“Then go straight back to the elevators and down one stop. Sister Plunkett will talk to you.”
Sister Plunkett, an elderly, stern-faced woman, received us coldly, giving the impression that no civilian came to pathology for honest reasons. Through the glass behind her I could see two operating tables, one with a sheet-covered corpse and the other with an uncovered corpse that a cheerful young man was expertly digging into. Behind those, shelves of uninviting jars with things floating in them. Millie hurriedly turned her gaze away to study the papers that Sister Plunkett had removed from her files.
“It’s not Mr. Brody’s signature,” she said. I looked at the paper and confirmed her observation.
“This is most unusual,” said Sister Plunkett.
“Sister, you deal with so many funeral parlors. Have you ever heard of the Hillrest Mortuary?”
“It’s on the order there.”
“But aside from this instance?”
“No, I can’t say that I ever have.”
“Sister,” I said, “in spite of the fact that my name is on that receipt, isn’t it possible that a mistake might have been made and that some other body was taken away?”
“Anything is possible. But It’s hardly probable.”
“Where is your morgue?”
“Directly behind the pathology room, but no unauthorized personnel are allowed there.”
The cheerful young man behind the glass paused in his explorations, wiped his hands and appeared with a bright smile. “Anything I can do?”
Sister Plunke
tt told him.
“Anyone close to you?”
“Just a friend.”
“Misplaced corpse. That’s cool, very cool. Sister Plunkett here is a demon for efficiency.”
“And also for courtesy, Doctor.”
“Right on. But I don’t see any harm in letting Mr. Brody take a gander at the corpses. They certainly won’t mind. Male or female, Mr. Brody?”
“Male.”
“We’re short on males. Only two of them. The choppers upstairs have been on their toes, and the fatality count has gone down.”
“That’s hardly a proper manner in which to talk, Doctor,” Sister Plunkett said sternly.
“Anyway, come on in and I’ll open the icebox for you.”
Sister Plunkett protested silently. Millie stood firmly where she was, averting her eyes from the pathology room, and I fought my heaving stomach and followed the doctor through pathology into the morgue. He opened doors and rolled out two bodies for me to look at. Neither bore any resemblance to Andrew Capestone.
I thanked the doctor and apologized to Sister Plunkett for the trouble I had caused. She asked me whether she should notify the police.
“I hardly think that will be necessary. I’m sure this will clear itself up as soon as I get to Hillrest Mortuary. Possibly the other funeral home has some sort of agreement with them—I mean the one I made my arrangements with.”
“It appears to me, young man, that you should have thought of that before you put us to all this trouble.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”
Outside, Millie filled her lungs with fresh, moderately smog-free California air and sighed with relief. “Poor Sister Plunkett. Can you image how wretched it is to sit there all day with that grinning hippie type cutting up corpses before your eyes?”
“I am too sorry for myself to worry about Sister Plunkett.”
“Oh, come on, Al, you put your finger right on it. We go to the Hillrest Mortuary and the puzzle is cleared up.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“It’s one o’clock. Let’s get some lunch. We don’t go to the Hillrest Mortuary because there is no Hillrest Mortuary.”
“There isn’t?”
“There isn’t.”
“Are you sure?” she asked desperately. “It’s such a proper name for a mortuary. There has to be one.”
“There isn’t.”
We got into the car, and for a while Millie sat in silence. Then she said softly, “My name is Millicent Patience Cooper, and I was born in Boston of proper Unitarian parents. I went to Wellesley College and majored in Lit. I married an impossible man and made it for just twelve months. I fled to California to escape him and my parents, and I took a job with a press agent because it was the only thing around. I worked for him six years and lived in a three-room apartment in West-wood. Because I was tall and skinny, because I wore a size thirty-two A bra and had brown hair and brown eyes, he never made a pass at me, and whenever he thought I was going to quit, he raised my salary. Then I had dinner with him and went to bed with him, and he decided to divorce his wife, and because he was fat and bald and had a low opinion of himself, he decided to make a dead man President of the United States.”
“What’s that for?” I asked her.
“I’m trying to make sense of it.”
“You really think I wanted to make a dead man President of the United States?”
“It’s been done.”
“You’re a real smartass broad, aren’t you?”
“I’m not smart, I’m just clever. Anyway, Hollywood dialect doesn’t become you.”
“Why do you always throw in that bit about my being fat and bald?”
“Because you’re nice and sweet-looking and kind-hearted, and I am trying to restrain myself.”
“You always can.”
“No, I can’t. Anyway, I’m scared. Are you, Al?”
“I’ve been scared since this started. Now I’m more scared.”
4
We went to the Brown Derby, on Wilshire in Beverly Hills, and in the cool darkness of the place I began to relax a little, but I had no appetite. I drank a Bloody Mary for lunch—the first time in months—and finally asked Millie to stop insisting that we lived in a real world and that there must be a perfectly plausible explanation for everything that had happened, and to call the office and see whether we were still in business.
A few minutes later she returned to the table with a most peculiar expression on her face.
“What now?” I asked her.
“This one is a beauty, but it’s no worse than having bodies filched.”
“Then don’t tell me. Let me guess.”
“You won’t guess.”
“Capestone has turned up in Africa.”
“Almost, but not quite. I spoke to Anne. She said a very tall and good-looking black man is sitting in our waiting room. He represents the Ad Hoc Committee for Black Liberation—Rhodesian section.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, you invented it. You’re jumping on my face while I am down. You hate me and I ought to fire you.”
“All right, if that will make you happy. But I think we ought to go back to the office.”
“That’s what Anne said?”
“Al, what in hell is going on?” she asked desperately. “What have we started?”
“I started.”
“We. We.”
“Don’t panic,” I said as soothingly as I could. “You remember the man from Ebony. He made a point. He said that any liberation committee could properly be called an ad hoc committee. So there’s a liberation committee in Rhodesia. I would be surprised if there weren’t. And they have a man here. Why not?”
“Because you don’t believe a word of that,” she said.
“All right, we go back to the office.”
My hand shook as I paid the bill. Millie asked me whether I wanted her to drive.
“I can drive all right. I’m not sick. I am just going out of my mind.”
She put her hand on mine. It was a nice gesture.
The black man was waiting at the office. He was about six feet tall, wearing a modest Afro, dark suit, white shirt and black bow tie. If you didn’t look too carefully, you might think he was wearing dinner clothes. He sat waiting for us with a Madison Avenue-type portfolio on his lap, a Homburg resting upon it. He nodded and showed a set of handsome white teeth as I walked up to him.
“I’m Mr. Brody,” I said. “This is my associate, Miss Cooper.”
“And I, sir, who have the honor now to address you, I am Mr. Akubee—Marumba Akubee, delegate unofficial of the Rhodesian people’s extension of the Ad Hoc Committee for Black Liberation. I am delighted, no, I am enchanted to meet with you. Honor for me. Honor for my people. Honor for people’s liberation.”
“Yes—yes, we are also delighted.”
He had a deep bass voice that filled every corner of the office, an accent not unlike that of Barbados or some such place, and a manner that was warm and embracing. All work in the office had halted, and Anne Jones, Miss Herzog and Charlie Ghent were staring at him with delight.
“Would you come into my office, please,” I said to him, and he grinned his appreciation and walked in with the stride and bearing of an uncrowned king. Millie followed him, and as I closed the door behind me, he looked around the room and said:
“Fine, elegant office. Befitting. Truly befitting, Mr. Brody. Someday in my country, offices like these, black men behind the wheels of Cadillacs, and smog, too. Smog is a sign of civilization. When we make our own smog, we have arrived, no?”
“God forbid,” said Millie.
“Oh, no, sir, Mr. Brody, I must not prattle like a fool. I am here for a purpose, not to prate and prattle, rather not, I think. On the other hand, I am not a diplomat, no, sir. I have no official standing from white Rhodesia. I am no tool or cur of the masters in Salisbury. I represent the Committee, and as the representative of the Committee,
I have come to tell you that I have been informed from Rhodesia that the people’s friend is there. I am the first to bring you word.”
“What word?”
“Word that Andrew Capestone is safely in Rhodesia, not in white Rhodesia—heaven forbid—but in black Rhodesia. Safe in the arms of the people. Safe in the bosom of the black people, so that he may give them of his wisdom and guide them.”
I looked at Millie. Millie looked at me. I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again, and then I walked around my desk and sat down in my chair. I had lost all faith in the power of my legs to sustain me, and once again I stared hopelessly at Millie.
“What good news,” Millie said weakly. “What very good news indeed!”
“You are pleased, relieved, enchanted,” cried Marumba Akubee.
“Yes,” Millie said. “We are pleased, relieved and enchanted. Would you tell me, Mr.—?”
“Akubee.”
“Mr. Akubee. Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me how this wonderful news reached you?”
“You have your channels—we have our channels.”
“By cable?”
“No, Madam—?”
“Cooper,” Millie said.
“Ah, yes, Cooper. I have trouble with American names—come a cropper and all that, you know. Have you ever heard of Radio Free Rhodesia? But surely you have, with the splendid Mr. Capestone as your client?”
“Oh, yes—yes, Radio Free Rhodesia.”
“All of us, voices, technicians, all of us trained by BBC. Why not? We use the white man for what he can teach us—and then go on to create our own liberation, our own culture.”
“Yes, of course,” Millie said. I remained speechless.
“So I bring you my message of good cheer. What word do you send to Brother Capestone?”
“Tell him our hearts are with him,” Millie replied. “As he bears his load, so will we bear ours.”
“Good—rather! Poetic and succinct.” He shook Millie’s hand and then reached across the desk to shake mine. “Peace! And discomfort to our enemies—rather.” And then he strode to the door and exited.
