Tony Hillerman - The Fly on the Wall

by The Fly on the Wall(lit)

  Cotton looked at Alan Wingerd, the Governor's press secretary, who had handed out ditto copies of a Roark statement announcing the appointment of Tommy Gianini, identified as a prominent Tahash County civic leader and businessman, to the State Pardon and Parole Board, and was leaning against the wall, looking bored.

  "He's late, Alan," Cotton said. "If he's not going to show we've got work to do."

  "Got tied up on the telephone," Wingerd said. "He'll be here."

  Governor Roark walked in. "Here he is now," the Governor said. "Sorry I'm late."

  "You have anything besides the handout?"

  "No," Roark said. "I'm available for questions."

  "This guy you're putting on the parole board," Volney Bowles said. "Isn't he the Tahash County Democratic Chairman? How does that fit with your campaign statement about not giving jobs to party officials?"

  Roark's smile lost nothing. "Delmar is the chairman, Tommy is his brother."

  "O.K.," Bowles said. "See any conflict there?"

  "None," Roark said. "If you rule out everybody related to party officials you don't have much left to appoint."

  "Has Gianini got any kinfolk in stir?" Bowles asked. "Why did he want the job?"

  Roark's smile frayed. "Mr. Gianini has no relatives in prison to my knowledge."

  "To my knowledge," Bowles said. "Are we supposed to quote you as saying you know Gianini doesn't have any felons in the family, or that you don't know whether or not your new Parole Board member has kinfolk in prison?"

  Roark laughed. "Come on, Vol," he said. "I said I was sorry I was late."

  "Vol's on a diet," Cotton said. "A hard-boiled egg for breakfast, a hard-boiled egg for lunch and a broiled steak for dinner. It makes him mean as hell."

  "I've got a couple for you," Junior Garcia said. "Will you sign or will you veto House Bill 178? And what are you going to do about that situation down in LeFlore County?"

  "What's House Bill 178?" Roark asked.

  Everybody laughed except Wingerd, who looked glum. House Bill 178, if signed, would legalize parimutuel racetrack betting. The Democratic National Committeewoman, a woman of grandiose temper and considerable clout, raised racehorses. The word in the pressroom was that Roark had made a secret primary campaign commitment to the Committeewoman that he would sign a race betting bill on the unlikely chance she could get one passed. The word was, further, that the secret had leaked, as political secrets tend to do, and that Republican leadership had conspired with the tourist and gambling blocs. The press table subsequently had witnessed the spectacle of the Senate Minority Leader, a Baptist layman of notorious piety, voting for legalized gambling. The Governor had thus been handed the choice of outraging the Committeewoman and Motel Association with his veto, or the do-gooders with his signature.

  "I've forgotten about House Bill 178," Roark said. "Why don't you guys join me? If you concentrate hard on more pleasant things, like suicide, you can forget all about House Bill 178."

  "We're making book on it," Garcia said. "Eight to three you'd rather piss off eighty thousand Baptists than tangle with the old lady."

  "The Constitution gives me fifteen days to make the choice," Roark said. "For the record, the Governor said he has not yet studied the bill and is not fully cognizant of its contents."

  "How about LeFlore County then?"

  Cotton wasn't interested in LeFlore County. The affair involved an employee in the circulation area of Garcia's paper who had got himself involved in some sort of conflict-of-interest controversy of no particular importance. He pulled out the McDaniels notebook and looked again at the pages of figures, looking for enlightenment.

  Borrow 28 34

  P M Asp. 1.09 1.50

  A1 C.C. Half Sec. 24 in. D 16 ga. L.F. 8.50

  15.00

  16 ga. 16 gauge was the bore of a light shotgun, or it might be the thickness of metal. The numbers which followed seemed to be in dollars, but might be simply decimals representing something else. And what did "borrow" mean? It meant borrow, to go into debt. Cotton snapped the notebook shut and slipped it back into his pocket. It might as well be Sanskrit.

  Roark had managed to dispose of Garcia's question without saying anything damaging and was responding to the UPI man's question about a bill to make the directors of conservancy districts elected instead of appointed.

  There were patterns in McDaniels's numbers, that was clear. Many of them ran in sets of two's or three's, as if they were comparisons in weight, or price, or size. And they weren't code. Cotton was sure of that. The abbreviations were from some technical jargon, further complicated by the reporter's personal shorthand. But the sense of the pattern continued to elude him. And he could not find any clues in the calls Merrill had been making in the days before his death. In the Supreme Court library Mac had checked out the briefs in an unimportant four-year-old civil suit and spent-if the court librarian's memory was accurate-more than an hour reading them. But his notes reflected only the case numbers and the date of trial. Whatever information Mac had gleaned from his reading must have been general, trusted to memory. The following day he had gone to the Utilities Commission. There he had chatted with the commission clerk about a pending telephone rate hearing, as reflected in his notes. But he had also pulled the incorporation file on Wit's End Inc. In his notebook, he had written the names of the incorporators, and the date of filing, and the word "crossed" followed by a question mark. A call to Marty Knoll in the Park Board information office established that McDaniels had called on Knoll the next day, asking about Wit's End state-park resort concessions. ("I got him the hearing files and he read them," Knoll had said. "What's going on?" And Cotton had lamely replied that he was just curious, which-unlikely as it must have sounded to Knoll-was true.) And the curiosity remained. On the surface it seemed likely that Mac was checking out a tip that the politicians were moving in on the state-park concession profits, and that the tip-like 80 percent of such tips-had proved sour. The trouble with that guess was the names of the five incorporators of Wit's End rang no political bells in Cotton's memory-and his memory stored the name of every county chairman of both parties, every legislator for the past five sessions, and most of the motley clan of aides, assistants, well-connected payrollers, henchmen and hangers-on. The only name he remembered seeing before was A. J. Linington. A. J. Linington had been one of the attorneys in the civil case McDaniels had checked-the attorney of a labor union which had been sued by a construction company in some sort of labor disagreement. This opened a second alternative-that Mac was interested in Linington. But the connection was tenuous.

  Whitey Robbins had just asked the usual question about Roark's political plans and Roark was giving his usual noncommittal answer. "In sum," the Governor was saying, "this is the season for worrying about our tax-reform program and our project to bring this state's highway system into the twentieth century. Later, after the Legislature adjourns, I may find time to worry about politics."

  "Governor," Cotton said, "were you surprised by the move in the House to double-refer your highway bonding authorization bill?"

  "I was surprised." His smile denied the statement.

  "Did you notice that most of the Democrats who often vote against you voted with you this time?"

  Roark grinned. "I didn't notice." His grin broadened. "Which ones do you mean?"

  "Let's call them friends of Senator Clark," Cotton said. "Do you see any significance in their voting with you this time?"

  "On the record, no, I don't. Can I talk off the record?"

  Cotton glanced around the conference room. Robbins was shaking his head.

  "No," Cotton said. "No off the record. But I'd buy attribution to an informed source on the Governor's staff. How about you, Whitey?"

  "That's okay."

  "Not with me it isn't," Roark said. "Leave the answer as `No,' or `No comment.'"

  "That's all I have," Cotton said. "Anybody else? Thanks, Governor."

  The conference had lasted only fifteen minut
es, far shorter than usual.

  Cotton obeyed a sudden impulse, caught the Governor in the doorway. "Paul," he said. "How about a few minutes in private?"

  The view from the high windows in the Governor's office was to the west, across the wooded hills where the capital city's most expensive residential district was built. Cotton noticed that the trees were leafless, the morning continued to be bleak, and the Governor-standing by the window-was in a good mood, which might mean he would be talkative. He was talking now. Yes, he had said, there was something to be said for giving Cotton a frank, off-the-record, for-background-use-only analysis of the Senate race. And now he was philosophizing about the anatomy of politics.

  "This tax-reform plan, for example," Roark was saying. "If we can punch it through the Legislature about a half-million taxpayers will like it and ten thousand will hate my guts. The half-million taxpayers don't care much, and don't understand it very well, and have short memories. But the utility companies, and the bankers, and the big real-estate operators, and all the fat cats who have been getting a free ride-those birds don't forget who gored their ox."

  "They don't," Cotton said. "But that's not important to you unless you're running for the Senate nomination. Have you decided?"

  "I'd rather talk completely off the record."

  "Make it not for attribution, for my background only."

  "None of this sources-close-to-the-Governor crap?"

  "If I use anything you tell me, it'll sound like it came right off the wall."

  "Well," Roark said, "I've decided in a sense. I've decided I want to run. I think you reporters know that. If it was now, I'd run. I think it looks fairly good for me. A fair chance. But it may not look good by April. Something could sour it. A hundred things could screw it up."

  Roark walked slowly from the window to his desk and sat down, a trim, handsome man who moved with a natural grace that Cotton admired and envied. He looked at Cotton for a long, silent moment. Then he said: "Korolenko thinks I could beat him, and so does Bill Gavin. They're both old pros and they know a lot of people, but maybe they hear what they want to hear. Both of 'em hate Clark. What do you think, Johnny? Can Clark be beaten?"

  "I don't know," Cotton said. "He'd kill you on the East Side and he runs strong in the suburbs. You'd need a heavy turnout unless you get more party help than I can see now, and you'd need a good batting average on your legislative program, and you'd need a break or two between now and election. And you'd need maybe five hundred thousand dollars."

  "Exactly," Roark said. "Exactly. Today it looks pretty good. Next month we could have my highway program killed, and my tax reforms gutted, and somebody caught stealing in one of my agencies, and two or three bad headlines about something else, and it could look hopeless. A hundred things could screw it up."

  "But as of now you're getting ready," Cotton said. "Have you found the money? Or are you going to spend your own?"

  "I don't have that much. And nobody ever won in this state spending his own money," Roark said.

  "That's right. So who's going to finance the campaign?"

  "Some of it's committed, more or less. At least Korolenko tells me we can count on enough."

  "How much does Joe think is enough?"

  Roark evaded the question, as Cotton knew he would. He talked generally of campaign costs. With television spots costing $2,000 a minute money wouldn't stretch far. Gene Clark would be superbly financed by banking and defense industries, as always, but Clark's enemies would spend something to get him out of the Senate. After fifteen minutes, Cotton had a fair picture of the Governor's tactical thinking and a few specific odds and ends of facts. The shakeup in the Randolph County Democratic Central Committee had been Roark-inspired, to eliminate a diehard Clark booster. An appointment last month to the State Fair Board had cemented Roark's command of support from the Dales City municipal organization. A current League of Women Voters project to investigate tax-collection procedures had been indirectly and secretly inspired by the Clark organization in hopes it would air inefficiencies in Roark's State Revenue Bureau. And so forth. Some of it would have to be checked, but most of it would be useful.

  "What I think I'll do is wait until the Legislature adjourns, and then get a little polling done by some reliable outfit and take a look at the results. Then I'll make the decision. I may not announce until just before the filing deadline. And now I've got to get some work done."

  "One more question," Cotton said. He watched Roark's face. "Merrill McDaniels had an appointment with you last week. What was he asking about?"

  Roark leaned back in the swivel chair. He looked at Cotton, surprised.

  "I wouldn't ask a question like that normally," Cotton said. "And I wouldn't expect you to answer it. But it can't matter now. He's dead."

  "And what do you think about that?" Roark asked. "Did he jump?"

  "I don't think so. He was drunk, but he was happy drunk. He didn't do it on purpose. Merrill was feeling good that night. He was going to give me some dope for my column. I don't know what it was. So I'm asking around."

  "Let's see," Roark said. He made a tent out of his fingers. "He wanted to know about pay scales for state capitol personnel in the new budget... how much raise and that sort of thing. And he asked me... Wait a minute." Roark leaned his elbows on his desk and grinned at Cotton. "Now I've got a question for you. McDaniels asked me a bunch of questions about that highway-bond-issue plan of ours. You bastards weren't supposed to know about that until I sent the message to the House. How'd he find out?"

  "Simple," Cotton said. "Somebody told him. He found himself a leak."

  "Like who?" Roark asked. "Nobody knew about it. Just Alan Wingerd and he wouldn't leak anything out of this office."

  "Somebody had to know about it. Where'd you come up with that $136 million cost estimate? Somebody did that work for you."

  "That came out of a study the Highway Commission made last year."

  "But somebody in highways had to know about it. You didn't just spring that out of the blue on your Highway Commission."

  "I discussed it with the chairman," Roark said thoughtfully. "But I think you'll agree that Jason Flowers isn't likely to get chatty with the press-and especially not with a reporter from the Capitol-Press."

  "No," Cotton said. Flowers was a prominent capital lawyer, big in the social set, who had feuded with the local paper for years over a dozen civic issues and once sued the editor for libel. "But you know how it works. Flowers tells some guy on the golf course, and the guy tells his wife, and before long somebody knows, and somebody talks to McDaniels."

  "But he didn't put anything in the paper about it," Roark said. "How come? He knew about it at least two days before I sent the message to the House."

  Cotton had been asking himself the same question. He didn't want to discuss the possible answers until he had thought it through. "Who knows?" he said and shrugged. "What else did he ask you about?"

  "I'm not sure I remember all of it. He wanted to know whether I would push for adoption of the higher-education budget without any cuts, and how active I thought the Motor Carriers Association would be in fighting the highway bonding plan, and he asked me whether the Highway Commission cleared it with me when they appointed Chick Armstrong as Executive Engineer, and..."

  "Did they?"

  "I'm not sure I remember. I think Flowers mentioned they had picked Armstrong. But it might have been that he discussed it with me after the appointment was announced."

  "And what else did Mac ask about?"

  "Something about concession policies at the state parks. And he asked about that goddamn House Bill 178. That's about it."

  An idea was taking vague shape for Cotton-a nebulous idea of the sort of story McDaniels must have been shaping.

  "Governor," he said, "did Merrill ask you whether you were a stockholder in any companies doing business in the state? Did he ask you what stocks you owned?"

  Roark's face showed brief surprise and then anger.
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  "He did. I told him that was none of his business. And I'll tell you the same thing. I resent the casual way you reporters presume that nobody's honest except yourselves. My personal property is my private affair."

  "It would be my business if there's a conflict of interest," Cotton said.

  "Well, there isn't," Roark said.

  "One more question. How much did you tell Mac about your highway bond plan?"

  "Not much. He already knew all about it. I told him I hoped to hell he'd wait two or three days until it was official. I asked him to hold off on it but it didn't occur to me he would." Roark looked at Cotton. "Imagine," he said. "Finding a nice guy in the pressroom. It boggles the mind."