Bread to the Wise--Book I of The Libertine

by Angus Brownfield

  “You’ve got a lot of girlfriends, don’t you, Gattling.”

  “Not so many.”

  He said, “Maybe one too many?”

  “What makes you say that?” I developed an itch where I couldn’t reach. I didn’t think Rutledge would want to scratch it for me.

  Rutledge said, “Moose Meany called me at home before I had a chance to get out of bed this morning. He’s still very pissed off. He’s Gene Krupa and you’re the bastard trying to steal his drums. You’d have been better off messing with his wife.”

  “Moose?” I said, “you call him Moose? And before you say anything else, I wasn’t messing with anyone. What she did she did of her own accord.”

  Rutledge said, “But she moved in with you.”

  “Which is not a matter for the penal code, so why are we having this conversation?”

  “I’m not leaning on you, Gattling, I just don’t like to see a lot of unhappy people around.”

  “It’s a thankless job you’ve got, Sergeant.”

  “And it’s not actually why I came.”

  He was suddenly all cop, asking more questions about Homer, before, during and after my kidnapping, taking notes in a notebook he took from his inside breast pocket.

  When Rutledge closed the notebook, I asked him, “So how’d he get to be called Moose?”

  “High school football.”

  “Why didn’t they call him ‘Bear?’ He’s a lot more like a bear.”

  “Cause there was already an upperclassman named Bear Tempkin on the team when Moose came along. Moose played tackle—offensive and defensive, everyone played both ways in those days—and started every single game from his freshman year on.”

  “Was he any good?”

  “Strong sonofabitch, and, naturally, big. You needed a yard for a touchdown or a first down, you hit the line behind Moose.”

  “Sounds like you were a running back.”

  “Single wing. Moose made me a star.”

  I said, “Small world, isn’t it?”

  Sergeant Rutledge said it wasn’t such a small world, lots of persons he and Meany had gone to school with were still around the valley. The Concord Chief of Police. The oldest county supervisor. The father of the youngest supervisor. Meany had lots of friends.

  “All as solicitous as you?” I took the recitation of friends as a subtle warning.

  “Not all,” he said. “And that’s the real reason I’m bothering you in the hospital.”

  Rutledge had a niece, a “little wiseacre,” he called her, though I could sense some solid admiration in his use of the sobriquet. She was a reporter for the Diablo Valley Courier. He’d managed to stop her from visiting me, citing my delicate condition, but she smelled a rat. “She’s bound and determined to do a story about your capture of Homer Smith, and the angle she’s gonna take is the naked lady. Gattling, I don’t care if she makes you out as the hero of the decade, bagging that bum. I do care, though, if she makes out Miss Cutie Nudie as the mistress of our mutual friend. That would create a great deal of unhappiness up and down the valley, and as I’ve said, I don’t like to see unhappy people around.”

  I said, “Can’t you just bark and scare her away?”

  “Like you, she graduated from Berkeley, and if you so much as frown at her First Amendment rights, she shrieks like a wounded eagle. Besides, she figures it’s just a matter of time before someone from the Oakland Tribune or the San Francisco Chronicle moves in and aces her.”

  “I promise I won’t bring up the lady if she doesn’t.”

  He said, “Count on her asking about Miz Morrison first crack out of the box.”

  “I’ll try to stonewall her,” I said.

  “Don’t try, Gattling—do it; it won’t do your sweetie any good either, having her name dragged through the mud.”

  I offered a wink and a nod as reassurance.

  “Be an Ethan Allen, Gattling, not a Benedict Arnold.”

  “I understand where you’re coming from, Sergeant.”

  “Good, Gattling, I had a hunch I could count on you.”

  “But tell me,” I said, as his body language signaled he was shoving off, “did Meany ask you to talk to me?”

  He gave me a look as if I’d insulted both him and Meany. All he said was, “Hell no.”

  “I’m sorry I rattled his cage. I’m not sorry about getting Mary Clare out of his penthouse.”

  He went deadpan. “Remember, Gattling, an Ethan Allen.”

  As he stepped into the hall he replaced his hat.

  La Morinda

  one

  The visit from Sergeant Rutledge was a warning. It was one of the old guard telling a newcomer not to mess with the status quo in La Morinda.

  Jake jokingly called La Morinda “your average white suburb,” and, as one of the bedroom communities tied to San Francisco by Bay Area Rapid Transit, it was all of that. It was actually much more. It was the East Bay seat of Reactionary Republicanism. It was also the fiefdom of V.M. Meany, who made most of his campaign contributions to Democrats but at the same time—on his La Morinda turf—practiced unadulterated Reactionary Republicanism as his philosophy of life.

  La Morinda had been on the map from earliest railroad days, when Martinez, now merely an old-fashioned county seat backed up against the Carquinez Strait, had been the port through which more wheat was shipped than from any other port in the United States. Only the stumps of pilings that once supported the many wharves give a hint of the extent of the shipping.

  Back then La Morinda was simply the name of the place where the Central Pacific trains could take on water as they returned, empty, from disgorging their loads of wheat.

  Some say Meany created the modern La Morinda, and what he created looks like a city designed by one large neighborhood improvement association. There is nothing to recommend La Morinda but peace and quiet. There is nothing to attract the tourist. The golf course is not actually in La Morinda but across the border, in county territory, part of one of the regional parks. The clubhouse is rented out on weekends during the rainy season for wedding receptions.

  On the other hand, nothing’s wrong with La Morinda. There’s no slum there. Although the average value of private dwellings is less than in Hillsboro across the Bay, there is actually a lower proportion of substandard housing—in fact, practically none. A friend who lived in both places explained that there are no guest houses over here, no chauffeur’s quarters above garages, built in the days when codes were less strict.

  La Morinda has no hospital, no halfway house nor trailer park. In newer residential areas the streets have sidewalks and utilities are all underground, but in older sections of town, where lots are often half an acre (to the south are plenty of five acre lots zoned for horses) it is thought to be an omen of neighborhood decline if the city put in sidewalks.

  It isn’t surprising that La Morinda, in its 1950s sort of blandness, would be dominated by BART, the Interstate and Mount Diablo. BART wouldn’t have touched La Morinda at all if it weren’t for Meany. He convinced the citizens to incorporate in order to get a station, while selling the BART directors on the idea of the location because he was willing to practically give away a large plot of land which BART needed for parking for the commuters from communities farther south. He also sold the directors on the idea of putting the station in the basement of an office building. This experiment did not become a model for other communities, as there are sticky problems with seismic codes, and the height of the building over the tracks shrank until it was hardly worth putting up. As it stands now, a mini mall opens off the ticket lobby, with pedestrian connections to twin towers flanking the tracks, housing in one the regional offices of a large, multiline insurance company, in the other the home offices of a medium-sized regional bank.

  The non-clerical staff of these companies live elsewhere and commute to La Morinda, but not on BART. They drive in early and park around the station before the scads of San Francisco-bound commuters arrive to fight over th
e remaining spaces.

  The Interstate dominates more than BART. It splits the community, La Morinda lying symmetrically along the interstate south of the junction with Highway 24, just where BART turns north towards its terminus in Concord. This makes sense to the Southern Californians who moved there to get away from the congestion and smog. They can zip right out on the freeway, Los Angeles style, with choices of north, south and westerly directions of travel.

  To old-timers the freeways were a source of noise, lead from exhaust pipes and coal tar-laced rubber dust scrubbed off the tires of autos whizzing by, a mixture bound to make La Morinda a future locus of lung and liver cancer, as well as Alzheimer’s syndrome. Those who say this openly to their neighbors are invited to move over the hills to Berkeley, where they can join the lunatic fringe who want to ban nuclear weapons and organophosphate insecticides.

  Like the golf course, La Morinda’s most imposing landmark, Mount Diablo, isn’t in La Morinda. It’s closer to Danville (south) and Clayton (east). It is not the forbidding peak the name implies, modest in size when measured against other California mountains, seeing snow only once every five years or so. Yet it fills Westerners’ need to have high ground close by. It is mentioned a lot in conversations around La Morinda.

  Those with the right view will, at the season that puts the rising sun on the mountain’s shoulder, remark what a pretty sight it is. Some persons drive up Mount Diablo at wildflower time, to remind themselves of the context in which they live, and once each spring a clique of serious bicyclists race up the mountain—not recommended for any but the most heart-healthy athlete. As mountains will, when caught sight of while in a certain mood, evoke feelings of eternity, the insignificance of man, and the enduring sameness of the earth.

  *****

  Sameness and endurance were imprinted on the minds and souls of the Jim Rutledges and Moose Meanys growing up in La Morinda, and living there a short while in no way gave me a right to mess with the tranquility of their home town.

  And, lying helpless in the hospital, I wasn’t in a mood to try.

  Jake had lived down the road from La Morinda since Amanda passed her boards. He warned me of its reactionary nature and recited a lot of its recent history, but he’d never heard of V.M. Meany until he rented an office from him.

  Since moving into Bobwhite Court he found out a lot about Meany by asking around: the horse-trading the man did, particularly around Mount Diablo State Park, his land for park land, allowing the state to consolidate its holdings while he did the same. Then there was his betting on young, untried candidates for office, backing but not horse-trading, yet winning friends for life. An old-timer told Jake he was standing at a bar when a tired local candidate for the California Assembly walked in and ordered a whiskey and soda. Two minutes later Meany walked in, and although the candidate didn’t know Moose was a big-time donor, he struck up a conversation, commenting on how tough campaigning was on the wife and kids. As they parted company, Meany stuck a fifty dollar bill in the man’s breast pocket.

  “That’s not a campaign contribution, son, that’s to take your wife out to dinner. No accounting, no receipt. You tell anyone I gave it to you, I’ll deny it. And good luck.”

  The young man had tears in his eyes when he walked away. He won, and ever after, in a crowded room, Meany was the first man he’d greet.

  two

  In this duet on the Bobwhite Court doings, this is, of necessity, a Jake solo:

  Shortly after Meany visited Robert’s hospital room, I got a call from Mary Clare. I was surprised, but she said Robert had talked about me (when, pray tell, had they time to talk about me?), said I was a friend and wise to boot, and could she talk to me.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m tied up this week.” I explained I was giving a paper at the APHA annual meeting in San Francisco the next day and marketing in a big way all through the conference.

  “Could I prevail on you to have a drink with me tomorrow, after you present your paper? It would mean a lot to me.”

  “As a matter of fact, since it’s me I’m marketing, having a beautiful woman on my arm is only going to boost my marketability.”

  She laughed and demurred modestly, and we arranged to meet at the registration desk in the lobby of the convention’s headquarters hotel.

  Sharing a drink with Mary Clare earned me new insight into her mentor, Meany. For various reasons I believe that was part of her agenda, namely, to make him out as a human being instead of a predator. I learned, for example, that Robert’s hunch about why Meany bought the Bobwhite Court white elephant was correct. He liked to visit Mary Clare afternoons, when work slackened. He was married, had three grown children, one daughter still at home, so his evenings in La Morinda were pretty predictable. He never talked to subordinates about what was on his mind, because he wasn’t grooming any of them to take his place. He’d quit talking to his son, Bob, because Bob didn’t listen. His son figured out—so young it ruined him—how to risk his father’s capital promoting faddish enterprises and get out before the shine wore off. Everything Bob owned was for sale at all times, right down to the wine he cellared, and it disgusted his father.

  Mary Clare listened when Meany spoke. She realized she had a rare opportunity, learning from an authentic genius. Because she was attentive and asked intelligent questions, Meany told her he could make her a millionaire if she wanted, she was one of the persons in the world who deserved it, she knew how to value things.

  He wanted very badly to do something other than rescue her before they parted ways.

  “You’ve talked about parting ways, have you?” That surprised me.

  “He has.”

  “What did he rescue you from?” I finally had the gumption to ask.

  “Degradation.”

  I laughed. Mary Clare? The thought was as annoying as the smell of clam chowder dominating the oyster bar where we had cocktails. I wanted it to smell of oysters. I wanted Mary Clare to be as pure as her wide, clear brow, as virginal as her eyes said her soul was.

  “You can believe anything you want, Jake, but I’ve been bad.”

  “Oh Sam, I’ve been bad, you don’t know how bad,” I declaimed in a falsetto. “—Mary Astor to Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.”

  “Hey, have you ever shared a woman?” making defiant eyes as she said it.

  “I looked around to see who might be listening. “Come again?”

  “Come again and again, that’s the idea. I’ve had sex every way you can imagine two men and a woman doing it. —I can get more explicit if you like.”

  “Not unless it has something to do with how Meany rescued you.”

  “He wasn’t a witness, if that’s what you mean. I wasn’t part of a live sex show. I’d just . . . I’d just gotten in over my head. I was strung out on drugs. I would do anything for a fix.”

  “And Meany?”

  “You know Geoff O’Reilly, the former Congressman?” she asked.

  “I know who he is.”

  “I went to a fundraiser, to see an old friend and try to bail myself out with a little help. Only he wasn’t the old friend I thought he was. Meany, with his deep pockets, was there. He helped me instead.”

  “And of course he’d never think of degrading you.”

  “Never!”

  I had ordered us oysters on the half shell and a bottle of Wente Grey Riesling. That ‘never’ reverberating in my brain, I called the waiter over and ordered a martini while Mary Clare finished the wine.

  She told me about the tapestry and Parzival’s wife. She told me about the men in her life, boys she used sex to dominate in high school, the ones she had to fall in love with in college, who used the same commodity to dominate her: the All-American fullback, the Rhodes Scholar, finally the son of a very prominent liberal journalist, who disappeared from Boston one day in the slushy snow of spring, ice fragments in the Charles River, ice in her heart, knowing if he called she would come, already having heard the rumor he was using her to cover
a homosexual affair with a very pretty boy, a dancer from a New York chorus line, she wanting to deny it and having no way to prove the rumor a lie but recalling the immense quantity of sexual energy he lavished on her—it had become her drug of choice—how could he have any left over for anyone else?

  But cracking up anyway, already feeling herself coming apart, because this was a reentry into grad school after an officially sanctioned absence to get herself together back home in San Diego, her father having hush-hush bought her a post on the campaign staff of the local Assemblyman intent on reaching Congress, where she met the blue-eyed and broad-shouldered Andy Morrison, who flew the would-be congressman about in a rented Cessna and on week-ends raced sports cars: sweet sweet Andy, poor and goyishe, Lupe could screw around with holy communion and white dresses, no sonofabitch goy was going to marry Zev Panin’s daughter without his say-so (the score of other goyim she’d laid since age fourteen lurking in his nightmares like corpses rising from a quicksand of filial retribution neither father nor daughter had the courage to speak of, since then she would come back to the night sounds of her childhood, the harsh ‘Halt zich shtill!’ uttered amid the rhythmic creaks, the grunts and whimpers, in Russian, Spanish and English as well as Yiddish, as if he wanted the child to hear, indeed her mother protesting not so much the loveless use of her body but that her daughter would be frightened.

  (Was.) This same daddy who by day bought her everything she wanted except clothes, he bought her the clothes he wanted her to be seen in, the ones that advertised her as the daughter of a clothier to the rich and chic in La Jolla and Scottsdale, he dandled her on his knee well beyond the age it was seemly—I have to use that old-fashioned word—there was a deadly game going on, that much I understood, that much made me thirsty for another martini and another, this dread investing my heart as we worked up to Berkeley, where she said her ‘boys,’ as she called them, after a particularly long and energetic use of her body, were speculating on what sort of fourth they might introduce to their orgies, boy or girl, black or white, slim or fat (Mary Clare was edging towards fat, her life style promoting it) and when, in disgust, she suggested they get a goat, they laughed and repeated the litany: boy or girl, black or white, slim or fat?