by John Lawton
‘That’s like what? A brigadier?’
‘Yep. And he was one of the youngest. And he came home in 1946, and it really was like that Myrna Loy moment. Just to touch him. Knowing he was safe wasn’t enough. I had to touch him. Young Walt was born nine months later to the day. Then in ’47 he puts in his papers and says he’s running for the Senate. His grandfather’s old seat. And I said, “I thought you’d had enough of scuttlebutt and lies” . . . but he couldn’t see the comparison. He won the seat easily enough. Catch Cormack’s grandson and a war hero to boot. How could he lose? Even had enough of the adman in him to open the campaign in uniform, with all those medal ribbons across his chest. Soon switched to a suit. That’s Cal. Wasn’t a soldier any more so he couldn’t pretend he was. I said yes to a soldier. For all but the first five years I’ve been married to a politician. Even that was tolerable. But now I’m married to a candidate. And if all goes well for him, the candidate. It’s like being married to a suit.’
They’d just made love. Twice. She had mused away the afterglow talking of her husband. It was as well not to mind. Later, as Kolankiewicz had warned him, Troy’s insomnia returned. She slept, he blazed as though floodlit in the darkness. He tried an American version of counting sheep, working out the names of all those presidents who had been bachelors, not trusting Kitty’s knowledge of history any more than he’d trust her knowledge of quantum physics. Sleep through ephemera. Jefferson had been a widower – one of his daughters had been First Lady . . . which said nothing of the Second Lady, the black mistress, or of their children, born into slavery . . . and Buchanan, had he been a bachelor? Who remembered the first thing about Buchanan? He was about as important as Neville Chamberlain for much the same reasons. Woodrow Wilson had been a widower too, but remarried . . . Perhaps the only contender was Grover Cleveland, who had married during one of his disparate terms of office . . . but which one? However, this altered nothing. Underlying Kitty’s assertion was the inescapable truth that there’d never been a divorced president. In a land that stamped ‘In God We Trust’ on its coins, biblical rectitude was never far away and could be invoked by the most godless of critics. The infidelities of Ike and the curious marriage that had been Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s notwithstanding, Kitty could unseat Cal at the first hurdle. He wouldn’t win a primary, let alone the nomination, without a loyal wife by his side.
§ 27
He was the worst gumshoe Troy had ever seen. ‘Encountered’ might have been a better word. Troy had not seen him, not face to face and not clearly, but he knew he was being followed. Reflections in shop fronts, a stout man who feigned interest in window displays, turning too quickly on his heel, far too careful to look in Troy’s direction. Troy had spotted him yesterday, which probably meant the man had been tailing him for three or four days – Troy being far from alert, but his tail almost as bad.
He decided to pick the moment and the place. They were at Seven Dials now. Troy dawdled: it would be too easy to lose him now, and he didn’t want that. He led off down Mercer Street, turned left into Shelton Street and left again up Neal Street. One more left turn and the gumshoe would surely get the message. Troy turned right into Short’s Gardens, right again into Endell Street and into the first greasy caff he came to. Three in the afternoon was the right moment, the place was empty – and hence the place was the right place. He ordered two cups of tea and took a table in the middle of the room, facing the window. Gumshoe pretended great interest in the menu tacked to the A board on the pavement. Troy summoned the waitress, slipped her half a crown and asked her to invite the man inside.
He couldn’t hear a word, but the shape of the gumshoe’s lips said, ‘What?’ The waitress pointed back to Troy. For the first time Troy and Gumshoe looked directly at one another. Troy beckoned. Gumshoe looked from him to the waitress and back again. Pushed his trilby hat up his forehead, sighed and stepped into the caff.
‘I ordered for both of us,’ said Troy.
Gumshoe looked at the traditional mess of scum that was a London cuppa. ‘I’m kind of a coffee man, but what the heck?’
An unmistakable New York accent. He stuck his hat on the table and sat down. A man of roughly Troy’s age. Much the worse for wear – stout, balding and red-nosed. Pugilistic, but pleasant. A blue-eyed smile, like the ones Troy so rarely saw on Onions these days.
‘What gave me away?’ He sipped at the tea. Pulled a face and reached for the silver-topped sugar pourer.
‘The hat doesn’t help. Weather’s too warm for a hat. Hats are hardly fashionable in England any more.’
Gumshoe swept the offending object on to a spare chair. ‘Jeez, and I thought I blended in like I was part of the wallpaper. Back home I’d wear a straw skimmer this time of year. Half the men in Manhattan still do.’
‘And your feet.’
‘Not much I can do about them.’
‘You have copper’s feet.’
‘So I should. Nineteen years in the NYPD. I guess we should introduce ourselves. Joey Rork.’ He held out his hand for Troy to shake. ‘I’m a private dick now.’
‘I’m Frederick Troy. And I’m very much a public dick. I’m Chief Superintendent of the Murder Squad at Scotland Yard. But you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘Not at first. I found out yesterday you were a cop. And I’d no idea you were quite such a ranking cop.’
‘Really?’ Troy said. ‘Then why have you been trailing me?’
Rork looked around. Caught the waitress’s eye. ‘Say, can a man still get lunch at three in the afternoon?’
‘No, love. But I could do you egg an’ chips and some bread an’ butter.’
‘Sounds fine.’ He turned to Troy. ‘And you?’
Troy shook his head. The thought of egg and chips made him queasy.
When the waitress had gone Rork slurped at his tea. Troy did not prompt him.
‘In two words,’ Rork said, stringing the moment out. ‘In two words . . . Mrs Cormack.’
‘Calvin Cormack hired you to follow Katherine?’
‘No,’ said Rork. ‘I sincerely hope the Senator doesn’t know. The committee of Democrats to Elect Calvin Cormack hired me. It’s quite a mouthful – they usually just call themselves the Deeks.’
‘The Deeks?’ Troy said, scarcely keeping the tone of incredulity out of his voice.
The waitress slapped a plate in front of Rork, a good half-loaf of skimpily buttered bread. Rork swallowed the first slice in the great maw of his mouth without seeming to chew.
‘Sure. Senator Cormack is a contender.’
‘“He coulda been somebody, Charlie,” ’ Troy said.
Rork almost choked on his second slice. ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me . . . Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, right? Him and Karl Malden.’
‘Rod Steiger.’
‘Steiger? Right. Anyways, it’s for real. There is a . . . shall I say a substantial slice of the Democrat Party that prefers the Senator to Hubert Humphrey, to Jack Kennedy, and God knows anyone’s better than Lyndon Johnson. A Texan in the White House. Can you imagine that?’
‘Perhaps next year is the Republicans’ year. Perhaps Mr Nixon is also a contender.’
‘The Veep? Huh? You want to waste thirty minutes one day, sit down and list for yourself the names of all the Vice-Presidents of the United States. It’s a list of losers.’
‘Harry S Truman?’
‘So . . . there’s always gonna be exceptions.’
‘Teddy Roosevelt?’
‘Jeez. I’m beginning to be sorry I spoke. Let me kill this line of conversation once and for all. Veeps get to be pres if the Pres gets blown away. No one is going to assassinate Ike. I like Ike. You like Ike. Everybody likes Ike. There is no way Richard M. Nixon is ever gonna be President.’
‘And Cal is?’
‘Cal? Sounds like you know him?’
‘Knew him.’
‘When?’
‘During the war.’
‘But he was in the Pacific. Enou
gh medals to build a bridge.’
‘And before that, before you lot were in the war, he was in England. How did you think he met Katherine?’
‘I didn’t know, I guess. Nobody told me.’
And Troy guessed that it was a slow-witted gumshoe who hadn’t been able to work this out for himself.
The waitress served Rork his egg an’ chips. He stared at it, knife in one hand, slice of bread in the other.
‘Now you put the chips on the bread and make a sandwich.’
‘You do? Great.’
‘Preferably with this.’ Troy held up a gummy-necked bottle of tomato ketchup.
‘Catsup? Great.’ Rork beamed across the top of his red-running chip butty. A man who had come late in life to one of the great delights of gluttony. Troy refrained from teaching him how to stir the yolk of his egg with a chip, as it looked affected when done by anyone past puberty.
‘Sho . . . you and the Shenator’s wife go back a waysh.’
‘Yes.’
‘Wish kind of bringsh me to the point.’
‘You’ve been sent to prevent any scandal that might endanger Cal’s chance of getting the nomination.’
‘You’re way ahead of me.’
You bet.
‘However, you ain’t the problem. In fact, if you and the Senator’s wife are playing hide the salami, then I admire your discretion.’
Troy had to think about this, but when he did work out what ‘hide the salami’ meant he could only wince inwardly at such a disgusting turn of phrase. ‘I’m not the problem?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then who is?’
Rork pulled last Sunday’s Observer from his pocket, folded open to the showbiz page. He tapped a large box advertisement with his forefinger. ‘Dis palooka.’
It was an ad for the London Hippodrome, a theatre in the Charing Cross Road, only yards from Troy’s house and only half a mile or so from where they were sitting. For the next month its stage would be filled and, doubtless, its stalls packed by the presence of one Vince Christy, a smoke-voiced American crooner who owed a lot to Frank Sinatra but had been sharp enough to learn a thing or two from Johnnie Ray. He wasn’t as big as Sinatra, and never would be, but he’d outlasted Ray, survived the Elvis revolution, and had a reputation as a singer nowhere near as newsworthy as his role as one of Sinatra’s Ratpack.
‘Tell me,’ Troy said.
Rork was well into his trough. Face stuffed full of what he undoubtedly called French fries. ‘You know much about Vince?’
‘No. I know he’s in the Ratpack. And I don’t think he’s married to June Christy.’
‘He ain’t. And he can’t sing half as well as her. Fact – his name ain’t even Christy, it’s Cristofero da Vinci.’
‘Any relation?’
‘To Leonardo? Nah. When he was a teenager in Hoboken he was a house painter – painted my mom’s apartment on West 47th once – so bad she wouldn’t pay him. So I figure not. But he’s Italian. That’s what matters. Italian, connected and proud of it.’
‘Proud enough to change his name?’
‘That’s showbiz. That’s America. Take me, for example. Rork, R-O R-K. A hundred and more years ago the name was O’Rourke. I don’t know what happened to all those missing letters. America just does that. Your ancestor gets off a boat, finds himself facing an Immigration and Natz guy who can’t spell pretzel, and the next thing you know Suleiman Yuriakamsohn from Lodz is Jack Solomon from Brooklyn. Believe me, that happened to my sister’s father-in-law. Word for word. Then, maybe a generation later, a little fame beckons and a guy whose old man got through with his name in one piece feels he has to sound like he’s an Anglo. You know who Angelo Siciliano is? Course you don’t. ’Cos everybody knows him as Charles Atlas. It’s just showbiz. It don’t mean nothin’. Changing his name don’t make Vince less than Italian, don’t make him less than Sicilian. If you catch my drift.’
Troy caught it. And said nothing. His father had changed the family name too. Troy was more ‘Anglo’ than Troitsky. Troy had no feelings about it one way or the other.
‘So,’ Rork was saying, ‘Vince is connected. Not a made man you unnerstand but . . . connected. There are people who say he owes a few career breaks to those connections. You remember that war film from a few years back, Hell Is a Crowded Place? Vince gets pulled from the quicksand by William Holden?’
‘The one set on a Pacific island? Christy, Holden and that tall chap – wooden actor, can’t remember his name.’
‘Ronald Reagan, used to be a sports commentator, “Dutch” Reagan. Shoulda stuck to it. Anyways, Ole Vince beat off some serious competition for that part. Actors who could act the pants off him – Dana Andrews wanted it, I heard, but Vince got it and he didn’t have to sing a note. So, you see, Vince has influence, so when he and Mrs Cormack became, like, an unofficial item . . .’
Rork did not finish the sentence. Plied his elbow to finishing his chips instead.
‘When?’ said Troy.
‘’Bout two years ago. The Senator’s wife took to spending a lot of time on the West Coast. After all, the kids are in private schools, her husband is up to his keyster in paperwork . . . A woman gets lonely.’
Bored more like, Troy thought. Bored would be much more like Kitty. She’d changed less than he had imagined in all those years away. Cal was still a cuckold.
‘So she took up with Vince?’
‘Vince fell for her hook, line and sinker. Nobody’s sure how long it lasted, and everybody got lucky. The only paper to run with it was a Los Angeles scandal sheet, a kind of Who Boffs Who, a one-man gossip operation. The Party sent round some heavies and gently persuaded the guys to drop it. Week or so later some of Vince’s compadres went to see him and broke both his arms. Guy runs a laundry now.’
‘So you’re not here because Katherine’s actually having an affair. You’re here to stop her taking up with an old flame.’
‘Something like that. Once we got word that they’d be in England at the same time, it seemed like something should be watched. So I’m watching. And instead I find you.’
‘But I’m discreet?’
‘Believe me, if my hat hadn’t just gone out of fashion I’d take it off to you.’
‘So, what’s your problem?’
‘Vince knows she’s here. This tour of his is a very last-minute thing. He’s come to London for Katherine Cormack. I think he thinks no one will be watching, or maybe that no one will care. Think about it, who gives a plug nickel about the reputation of Senator Cormack over here? Who’s even heard of him? I figure the average Londoner has heard of Ike and Adlai and that’s about it. You and I could stand on any street corner in this town with photos of Nixon or Kennedy and most people wouldn’t know ’em from Charlie Chaplin.’
‘If Katherine and Christy get back together, and if our press picks up on it, and all it would take would be one Slickey of a gossip columnist, you realise they can’t be leant on?’
‘I was kind of hoping to get to them before that stage. I was kind of hoping that you might slip me the goods ahead of the press finding out.’
‘Mr Rork, whatever makes you think I’d do that?’
‘The old quid pro quo. You let me know if Vince comes sniffing, I don’t tell no one about you and Mrs Cormack.’
‘That sounds ominously like blackmail.’
‘Nah . . . it’s like you guys always say, you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Troy.
Rork had finished his plateful. Sat clutching his last slice of bread.
‘Usually,’ Troy told him, ‘one wipes the plate with it.’
‘One does?’
‘De rigueur,’ said Troy.
‘Jeez. And there was I thinking of all that lovely gloop going to waste and it would be the height of bad manners to mop it all up.’
‘Only amongst the middle classes. The rest of us don’t give a damn.’
Rork polished the china, sat bac
k and grinned. ‘So, Topcop, whaddya say?’
Troy thought about it, watched the contentment of repletion spread like a roseate glow across the man’s face, watched him pop the first button on his flies, heard him belch politely into his clenched fist. This man was too stupid to get involved with, but he could see no merit for himself or Kitty in being the focus of a scandal. ‘You know where I live. I think you’d better tell me where you’re staying.’
‘Cheap hotel in Gower Street, the Cromarty. My expense account don’t run to Claridge’s.’
‘Well, I hope it runs to egg and chips and two teas,’ said Troy. He got uptoleave.
Rork twisted his bulk in his chair to say to Troy’s retreating back, ‘You gonna keep in touch or what?’ but Troy had gone.
§ 28
Troy dug last Sunday’s Observer out of the rubbish and found the advertisement for Christy’s concerts. He wasn’t due to open for another week – unless he was completely winging it that meant he was here now, resting and rehearsing. He folded it open and dropped it on the coffee-table hoping it would look casual. It didn’t. He twisted it this way and that and gave up. She’d spot it or she wouldn’t. She’d comment or she wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to raise the name of Vince Christy with Kitty. He owed Cal nothing – Rork and the Democrats absolutely nothing. If she wanted to fuck Cal out of the presidency Troy would not care – but it came to him as he sat and tune-pootled at the piano, weaving ‘My Old Flame’ into ‘The Man I Love’ and wondering somewhat slightly at the nature of his own unconscious, that Kitty didn’t care either, that she had stated her wishes the first night she had tumbled him into bed. Cal wanted the White House; she didn’t. He began to wonder if she had set this up to stop him. He did not doubt that Gumshoe was right. A sex scandal would sink Cal, even at second hand. Middle America would have no regard, no sympathy for his own innocence and probity: Cal would be damned by his wife’s actions. A sexual liaison between the putative First Lady and a Mafioso crooner would rock America. God help their delicate sensibilities if they ever found out the truth about Senator Kennedy. When Troy had known Jack before the war he would, as the cliché had it, fuck anything with a pulse.
