Things were falling into place, it had a whole feel about it.
He held the ladder while I climbed carefully with the stuff on my shoulder. And this was not a home videocam, this was a piece of network equipment supplied by Belton. You held it on your shoulder but it wasn’t light.
We could only do it by remote camera. It would transmit what it saw to a van that would pull up after Alberta and W.T. had gone inside. (Timing!) Ditto the mikes. The whole thing would be mixed in the truck.
That way if we were caught the product would be safe from seizure. And there was a chance of being caught. The camera made a noise and I’d be stationed in a bedroom closet pointing it out the door.
This was terrain I was used to of course but it wasn’t the most discreet way to do things. When the FBI set somebody up they do it right. They rent the next room and shoot through the air vents, put in two-way mirrors. We didn’t really have time for that.
Timing. It was all timing.
Shoop performed the surgery and slid the door open. No dog. He flashlit us through, did the thing with the other door, packed his tools and we were in the hall tiptoeing, I don’t know why.
We got tape on the door, stepped quickly into the Area of Uncertainty, clipped on a buzzer and danced with the cameras. It was harder climbing with the stuff but we made the seventh floor in two legs.
Fire door. Oh, no! One-way lock.
“You got a credit card?”
“I told you, no!”
He was stymied. Seconds passed. And seconds out in that stairwell was a long time. I stood there with him licking my lips.
“Hah!” he whispered, smiling. He reached for his tool belt and tapped the pins out of the hinges. “Dumb motherfuckers put the hinges on the outside.” He shook his head.
We squeezed in, set the door back in place and scooted down the hall. No agent, that would have been bad.
Whole thing had a feel.
He hooked the door up to the electroencephalograph, made the required incisions and was inside looking out at me. I joined him, Mission-Impossible giddy, and he closed up and fixed the locks.
We worked by flashlight. Never know who’s watching. Shoop kept his gloves on even when he went to the toilet. Not that he didn’t want his name connected with this but the job had to look right.
When they investigate a burglary they go straight to the john for the prints and the DNA, he told me. Your thief is so nervous he always goes and he always takes his gloves off. Not Shoop. Kind of thing he knew.
We substituted just slightly brighter bulbs in the lamps to bring things in clear but of course we couldn’t test the effect. Just had to go with them.
The mikes we put in the light fixtures. High, out of the way, catch anything. Give you that tinny Abscam soundtrack you want, everybody sitting too low in the picture.
The walk-in closet would be best. It had a hinge door and just an inch or two open it gave me most of the bedroom. And it didn’t creak.
And there was a generous crack on the hinge side that gave me a tight shot of the hall and part of the living room. Maybe they could widen it out in the lab or something.
As long as he didn’t walk into the closet. That was her job.
I got in there with the camera on my shoulder and Shoop went out and locked up. When they were gone he’d be back to get me. I gaged the door just right.
It was dark. The camera weighed on me. I shifted it on my shoulder but I didn’t want to put it down because it would be noisy to pick up when they came in.
I tried a little shot. ZZZ, it went . Jesus, there was no way he wouldn’t hear that!
I was getting restless. The burglar-in-the-bathroom syndrome. I had to pee.
No use waiting. I opened the door and crept out into the hall and bumped the door jamb with the camera. I felt it for damage. It was like having another head.
I went into the can and stood pumping bilge in a nervous, squeezed-off sort of way, praying they wouldn’t come now. When I flushed it I heard the key in the door.
Bang, I was out in the hall and in the bedroom, bumped the camera again, scrunched up and whipped into the closet and they were inside. A light went on.
The toilet tank was still running. It was a loud one!
Alberta’s look came down the hall at me. Wordy, it said, you didn’t really flush the toilet.
But if it hit him at all it was as something from another apartment.
“Yes, I knew her,” she went on. “She lost a little weight after her breast-reduction operation. Let’s turn some lights on.” She went out of view.
I didn’t see why I shouldn’t start shooting. There was no tape to use up, this was just a transmitter.
ZZZ.
God, it was loud.
The hiss from the toilet stopped with a thump but a sudden glare of light distracted him. “Fuckin’ shit, woman!” He raised his arm against it.
“You’re just nervous. If you took your sunglasses off once in a while you wouldn’t have that problem.”
He went into the kitchen and made drinks while she turned more lights on and then came back squinting and gave her one.
“Look,” he said, “I’m ready now. We could just do this.”
“Certainly not. We’re going to do it right, that’s what this whole evening is about. Remember what happened last time.”
“Yeah,” he said. He was apprehensive. Didn’t seem to know where to look.
“Take it easy on that drink.”
“Yeah.” He gulped it.
“Do you have everything?”
“Yeah.” He jerked a glance at an overnight bag.
“Well, come on. That’s not going to help.” She took his glass away.
He looked around. “You mean here?”
“Would you be more comfortable in the bedroom?”
“Uh—”
“It’s that way.” She pointed.
They came down the hall. He shambled behind her like a bad bear. Uneager, really.
“Don’t be shy,” she said.
He dropped the bag and she sat on the bed. Her dress was short at both ends but he didn’t seem to be in forward.
“All right,” she said, “strip. I’m going to watch.” She kicked her shoes off and leaned back on her elbows.
“Can I have another drink?”
“No.”
He craned as if he could see the agent out in the hall.
“He can’t hear.”
“Ah’m a very impo’tant man,” he reminded her.
“Don’t forget the r, darling.”
Bending submissively he unbuckled his pants and took them off over his shoes. One foot, the other foot. His shorts were vast.
He turned towards the closet.
“Oh, Wayne, don’t spoil it! A stripper doesn’t hang his things up!”
He tossed the pants away with solemn bravado and began unbuttoning the shirt.
She leaned forward with her chin on her fist and whispered huskily, “You’re a lot of man.”
Certainly he occupied considerable volume, though his shape suggested an upsidedown lightbulb. He pulled off his tank top and tugged his shorts away from the welt at the waistband. The shoes, the socks. He stepped wide of the pile and stood bare, arms down as at attention.
“Mm,” she said. “Now: let’s put on our plonkidoopers.”
He dropped to one pudgy, almost undulating knee and unzipped the bag. From it he took a faded pair of overalls, a red gingham handkerchief and a baseball hat, and handed them to her.
While she put these on, knotting the kerchief around her neck, he took out and arranged in a row a pair of red diving flippers, a rubber glove, an orange cone-shaped party hat and a feather duster. But he did so with a reluctance of manner that seemed to me to be entirely out of character.
What was wrong? The W.T. I knew had a certain aggressiveness about realizing his fantasies. Where was the old fart-n-light-it W.T.? Would he perhaps strike the wary psychologist as a trifle too motivated? T
he face in my view-finder was subdued.
The answer, I think, lies in a conversation he’d had with Alberta on their first date. She’d kept him there drinking after dinner and under the influence of a lot more alcohol than he’d had tonight he had shared with her that what really cranked his starter was, well it had to do with the anal-erotic, can we use that term?
He’d tried it with enemas, he loved the rubber syringes. He’d tried it with a soda stopper, little bartender’s device to keep the mix bubbly. After insertion you press a lever and it bulges to twice its girth, he liked that. But best of all was—
Now, look, I’m not prettying this up for you. You want the truth, right? Because when you’re dealing with a phenomenon like Washington as you probably know there is a true truth and there is a false truth. This is the true truth.
Best of all was reenacting his first conscious erotic experiences. These savored of a certain rusticity of course, and had tended to involve poultry. Chickens, ducks, that sort of thing. Geese. Domestic birds.
All right. He had fixed on those. Fine.
But there had taken place in little Wayne’s psyche something that, to give it a professional term, we call object envy. Now bear with me. That is to say that he identified, at a basic level, with the desired object. With the bird.
And, now get this, the moment of visualization that had crystallized in his image bank, the moment that sucked him under and induced sexual frenzy, was that unbearably vulnerable one when the pick-up pulls into the farmyard and the hens scramble and somehow just barely squeeze out from under the wheels? That’s what did it, he told her.
So, really to merge with himself he had to get into these longjohns he had with feathers stitched all over them and the fly cut away, put on the flippers and the party hat beak-wise, stretch the rubber glove on over his head and, trap door down, work the handle of the duster into place.
I’m just reporting this.
Well, naturally when the question of a second encounter had arisen Alberta had referred to this refinement of his obsession and proposed to him that they try something really special. Something guaranteed.
Certainly it suited her. She had no intention of appearing on television and going into the National Archives as a porn star.
But W.T., now that he had his suit on, seemed caught between his embarrassment and his desire. He had been having a fantasy he couldn’t possibly realize in actual space-time, he seemed to be thinking.
Her legs were crossed into a spiral, toes together and pointed down. “Darling!” she said in her spoiled-girl’s voice. “Don’t disappoint me!”
Bending heavily under the burden of his secret life he coated the handle with cooking oil, probed for the passage and, holding a wince in place, hula-ed it home.
Then, while he circled the room clucking and scratching for seeds Alberta had to put a chair on the bed and make driving noises as she wheeled through the yard. This she now did.
“Vrum, vrum!” she said, gunning it.
“Braaa! Brup-brup-brup-braaa!” he said.
When he was almost there she was supposed to jump down and pump the duster.
“Vrum, VRUM!” she said, steering wildly.
It wasn’t working. He stood rubbing at a speck on his glasses, I got a good shot of him. He was sweating under the light.
“I thought this’d do it,” he said, somewhat muffled by the cone.
“It’s your first time,” she cooed. “You’re just bashful. I remember my first time. My first real time. I met my husband at a party and he took me straight to an empty room and put his tongue in my throat. Then he threw a cushion on the floor and made me kneel on it. I was horrified! He had an appendage like an oil derrick!” She cuddled herself sympathetically.
W.T. began to breathe audibly.
“Of course I resisted but he wouldn’t let me go.”
“Hey,” he said. He bent to see past his belly. “Hey.”
“Of course my shoulders were bare, that must have excited him. And what he did to my tits, I almost called the police!”
“Hey! Ah’m gettin’ ready!”
“While I was entertaining his rod he said things one just doesn’t say.”
“Ah’m ready! Ah’m ready!” He began to jump up and down.
“When I managed to pull away he ejaculated on my make-up.”
“BRAAA! BRAAA!”
“Vrum, VRUM!” she said.
Hobbled by the flippers he chicken-walked towards her and made a grab.
“Oh! You’re not going to—Oh!”
“BRAAA!”
She bounced off the bed and dodged past the door and I retracted too quickly and bumped the camera.
“What was that?”
ZZZ.
“Someone’s airconditioner, I suppose. Don’t you want to put your hands on me?”
“Okay!” He strutted for her.
But the door came to a little and creaked. Did I say it didn’t creak? It creaked.
There was an awful silence.
Flippers flopped in my direction. The door wrenched open. He stood there like Big Bird, no longer, you know what I mean, rampant. Pendant, I think is the word. Shrinking.
“What—” He breathed uncomprehendingly. “What—” He looked around at nothing.
“Hi,” I said. I mean what do you say?
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIN’ IN THERE, BOY?”
The duster clattered to the floor.
“GOD-DAMN FUCKIN’ SON OF A BITCH, BOY! I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT IS BUT—”
He threw himself at me and tore the camera away, held it in profile as he turned and then smashed it to the floor, picked it up and smashed it, seized it by the handle and smashed it, smashed it, smashed it. Beat the bejesus out of it. Killed it.
Her look accused me. See how it’s done?
An engine started below and pulled away. He clomped to the curtain and ripped it down, gouged at the lock and hauled the glass aside, struggled to the railing.
We followed carefully. The network logo flashed by in the light from the lobby.
“BELTON!” he yelled. Anguish. Outrage. Lord-of-the-jungle sort of thing. “BELTON!”
He ran along the balcony to the living room, lifting his feet as if he were riding a giant bicycle. He yanked at the door, clawed at it. Locked.
Back he came flop-stepping along the balcony, fat-man sidestepped in, took the bed like an obstacle and raced into the hall. We stood back as he passed and followed him.
He stood over a phone in the living room hitting numbers. It was a dashboard thing with a speaker and we could hear the digits click in. He knew them by heart.
He turned to Alberta. “What did you DO to me?”
She smiled sadly. Sex subverts everything her look said. She didn’t even shrug.
We heard it ring.
“Hi, Wayne.”
“Belton! I can have you stopped before you make the river.”
“Better change first, Wayne. You don’t want the guy in the hall to think you’re chicken.”
“I can do it right from here.”
“Freedom of the press, Wayne. You wouldn’t look nearly as good on it as you do in your feathers. Got you real good there. Think we’re going to have to renegotiate the deal.”
W.T. ran a hand up over his face and, remembering the rubber glove, snapped it angrily off.
“What deal?” said Alberta. “Belton, what deal?”
Belton laughed. “We’ll talk in the morning, Wayne.”
“You be careful with that TAPE, Belton!”
“Don’t you worry about the tape, Wayne. The tape’s safe with me.”
“Safe with you!” She ran to the telephone. “Belton, what deal?”
W.T. tore it from the table and kicked it where it hung by the cable. “What deal,” he sneered.
He kicked the phone again.
“What a dumb country boy you played me for! I tell you we got a third man. Huh!”
He walked away in disgust.
“And you’re workin’ for him.”
23.
You see.
There was a third man. And it was Belton Haines.
So we sort of blew that.
I figured if it was anybody it had to be Stolkov. I thought I sensed something evil going on there. Of course I’m not very good at sensing things.
And once you got used to the idea it did sort of make sense. Belton had gone about as far as he could with the TV show. And what was it anyway but a quest for public approval? Ratings. Votes, really.
And in Washington that translates into power.
He was tired of being a political groupy. Tired of controlling public opinion while other people took the bows. It was time for a news man in the White House. Walter Cronkite had passed up the chance; well, Belton Haines was going for his.
Run the country on television, why not? I think that must have been his thinking. And I could understand it. I’d had a turn in the driver’s seat and it was okay!
Not that he was ready yet to step into the actual presidency. His deal with the other two must have given him a cabinet post or something like that. White House chief of staff, maybe. Something where he could use his clout with the viewers.
Because what he had to deliver was America, or a sizeable chunk of it. He would be speaking on behalf of the new government to an audience that knew him, and trusted him. It would be his job to pacify those who weren’t captivated by the c-and-w style of the other two.
But. But. A party in power shifts its ground by the month, not to say its personnel, and nobody knew that better than Belton. He could be dispensed with. Whereas he wanted in, and he wanted in tight.
Three and a half years down the line, assuming the normal procedure stayed in place, he wanted to be in a position to make his own move. And W.T.’s Roadrunner act was his ticket.
For it is a hard fact of political life—I don’t want to say anything too cynical, it’s easy to strike attitudes about Washington—but in the sordid world of politics, if you want someone’s cooperation and loyalty it’s real handy to have something on him. And that’s the way it is.
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy Page 26
