by Don DeLillo
“All right. Personal level. It’s not the kind of thing that turns me on.”
“What do you want, a nude torso in his freezer?”
“It’s not political. It has no ramifications.”
“You’re wrong, Grace.”
“Could be. Prove it to me.”
“He’s got a man on staff who runs around the country buying this bric-a-brac. That’s travel dollars plus the guy’s salary.”
“This sun feels so good.”
“Obviously taxpayers’ money.”
“You’re boring me, Moll.”
“Sex is boring?”
“I guess I miss conspiracy.”
“Like how?”
“A sense of evil design.”
“Well, Percival’s investigating this PAC/ORD operation. That’s where the evil design lies, presumably.”
“That’s it, see, I miss an element of irony.”
She swung around in her chair to face Moll.
“Our investigation into Percival’s affairs should yield precisely what the Senator’s investigation into PAC/ORD will eventually yield. I miss the symmetry of this.”
“Grace, we’re not weaving Persian rugs.”
Delaney took a silver flask out of her desk and had two quick snorts, her head jerking mechanically.
“Conspiracy’s our theme. Shit, you know that. Connections, links, secret associations. The whole point behind the series you’re doing is that it’s a complex and very large business involving not only smut merchants, not only the families, not only the police and the courts, but also highly respectable business elements, mostly real estate interests, in a conscious agreement to break the law. Or haven’t you heard.”
“I heard.”
“If you examine the matter, Percival’s got nothing to do with any of this. He’s an art collector with a taste for the erotic. I see it, if at all, as a fun thing.”
“What can I say?”
“I don’t see it as major.”
“You’re telling me not to pursue it.”
“I miss ramifications.”
“One last talk with the man.”
“He won’t let you anywhere near his collection.”
“I have possible access without him.”
“How?”
“Mysterious source.”
“Close to the Senator?”
“Close enough.”
“I have my doubts.”
“Let me work on it.”
“Knucklehead,” Delaney said.
Her voice was husky and a little intimate and sometimes made insults sound like endearments. Often she purred obscenities. In her carefully tailored way, surrounded as she was by photos and layouts, by crushed paper cups, overflowing ashtrays, cellophane mobiles, by books and scattered magazines, she managed to suggest the rigor that dwells at the heart of successful concealment. Moll watched her pour lotion on her wrists and over the backs of her hands and then slowly, dreamily even, begin rubbing it in. They knew about this even in Sunnyside. It was the way she dismissed people.
It was late afternoon when Moll hailed a cab that took her past the Little Carnegie, where a special Chaplin program was playing. She found Selvy waiting in her apartment and decided not to ask how he’d gained entry. Bad taste, such questions. An insult to the ambivalence of their relations.
Her sweater crackled as she pulled it over her head. Static cling. Current in the tips of her fingers. When he touched her, she jumped. They crashed together onto the bed. The mild shocks ceased as their bodies came to resemble a single intricate surface. She began tossing her head, free and clear of garments, straddling him, noting the blends and scents rising.
Their eyes locked. A reconnoitering gaze. She sensed his control, his will, a nearly palpable thing, like a card player’s unswerving determination, the furious rightness of his victory.
She ran a finger along his mouth. He lifted her then, driving with his hips, pounding, so high she tumbled forward, a hand on either side of his head for balance. They remained that way, reaching the end slowly, without further bursts and furies. On hands and knees she swayed above him, licking her lips to moisten them against the dry air.
Propped on an elbow he watched her walk out of the room. When she came back she brought a can of beer, which they shared.
“You have a third baseman’s Walk.”
“I walk crouched,” she said.
“Like you’ve been spending a whole career too close to home plate, expecting the hitter to bunt but always suspicious, ready to dart one way or the other.”
“Suspicious of what?”
“He might swing away.”
“So that’s my walk. A third baseman. What about my body?”
“Good hands,” he said. “Taut breasts. A second baseman’s.”
“I just remembered something.”
“Won’t get in your way when you pivot to make the double play.”
“We’re going to the movies. I just realized. There’s a Chaplin program at the Little Carnegie and we’ve got four and a half minutes to get down there.”
The dictator in uniform.
Each of his lapels bears the double-cross insignia. His hat is large, a visored cap, also with insignia. He wears knee-high boots.
The world’s most famous mustache.
The dictator addresses the multitudes. He speaks in strangulated tirades. A linguistic subfamily of German. The microphones recoil.
The story includes a little barber and a pretty girl.
An infant wets on the dictators hand. Storm troopers march and sing.
The dictator sits on his desk, holding a large globe in his left hand. A classic philosophical pose. His eyes have a faraway look. He senses the vast romance of acquisition and conquest.
The celebrated scene.
To a Lohengrin soundtrack, the dictator does an eerie ballet, bouncing the globe, a balloon, this way and that, tumbling happily on his back.
The dictator weeps, briefly.
The little barber, meanwhile, studies his image as it appears on the surface of a bald man’s head.
The dictator welcomes a rival tyrant to his country. The man arrives in a two-dimensional train. The leaders salute each other for many frames.
The prerogatives of dictatorship are easier to establish, they learn, when there is only one dictator.
There is a ball in the palace. The dictator and his rival eat strawberries and mustard. A treaty is signed. The two men team up.
The dictator goes duck-hunting and falls out of his boat.
Mistaken identity.
The barber, or neo-tramp, who is the dictator’s look-alike, assumes command, more or less, and addresses the multitudes.
A burlesque, an impersonation.
In a restaurant nearby, Moll said, “The really funny thing is that I remember the movie as silent, and it’s not of course. I even forgot the speech at the end. Incredible. But I guess the visual memory is what dominates. I’ll tell you what I never, ever forget when it comes to movies.”
“What?”
“Who I saw a particular movie with.”
“Who you saw a particular movie with.”
“I never forget who was with me at a given movie, no matter how many years go by. So you’re engraved, Selvy, on the moviegoing part of my brain. You and Charlie Chaplin forever linked. Charlie said he would never have made The Great Dictator later on in the war or after the war, knowing by that time what the Nazis were capable of. It’s a little naïve, in other words. He also said something strange about the dictator being a comedian. But Charlie’s so related in my mind to silent film that I completely forgot this was a talkie. Ten, twelve years ago it must have been. Probably more. Fifteen maybe.”
“Shut up and eat.”
“I do run on at times.”
“Just a bit,” he said.
Over dessert she said, “Let’s go drinking downtown.”
“Serious drinking.”
“Our original hangout. Some serious d
rinking. A couple of roustabouts out on the town.”
“What’s it called, I forget.”
“Frankie’s Tropical Bar.”
“Can we find it?”
“Ask any cabbie. It’s famous.”
“The guy with the bandage on his head.”
“Who tried to throw a bicycle at that fat lady.”
“It all comes back,” he said.
“Local color. Good talk. Festive music. Disease.”
At two in the morning they were still there. Two men and an elderly woman sat at the other end of the bar. On a step leading down to the toilets another man sat sprawled, mumbling something about his landlord working for the FBI. The FBI had placed cameras and bugging devices not only in his apartment but everywhere he went. They preceded him, anticipating every stop he made, day or night.
“Ever get swacked on absinthe?”
“Missed out on that,” Moll said.
“Serious derangement of the senses.”
“I went through a disgusting mulled wine phase several years ago. It started in Zermatt and I allowed it to continue much too long and in far too many places.”
“Doesn’t beat a Caribou,” Selvy said.
“Yes, very nice. But not to be mentioned in the same breath as a Bellini, which goes down especially well if you happen to be lounging on your terrace in Portofino, overlooking the bay.”
“Nothing beats a Caribou.”
“This is boring,” she said. “Stupid way to converse.”
“You’re in Quebec City. Picture it. Twenty-two below zero Celsius. People running around everywhere. It’s Carnaval. Somebody hands you a glass that’s pure alcohol plus red wine. You take a drink. Three days later your body comes hurtling through a snow-blower.”
“Dull. Stupid and dull.”
Huge stains, as of disruptions in the plumbing, covered part of one wall. The place smelled. There were inclines in the floor, some unexpected grades and elevations. An unfinished mural—palm trees—covered a section of the wall behind the bar.
“Where are you from?” Moll said.
“Originally?”
“Originally, lately, whatever. Or are you the kind of person who sees himself as a man without a history—no past, no relatives, no ties, no binds. You’re the kind of person who sees himself as a man without a history.”
“But you like that kind of person.”
“I like that kind of person, true.”
“Because they tend to be mean bastards,” he said.
“And I like mean bastards.”
“They tend to be very, very mean.”
“And I’m attracted to that, yes.”
The bartender was a Latin with a terrible complexion. His shirt cuffs were folded over twice. He seemed to tiptoe back and forth, a stocky man, his head wagging. The lighting in the room was dim.
“Arak,” she said. “I got wiped out on arak—where?”
“Cyprus.”
“Cyprus, that’s right. Although I don’t think I’ve been to Cyprus. No, I’ve never been to Cyprus. So that’s not right. You’re clearly mistaken, Selvy.”
“It wasn’t Cyprus and it wasn’t arak. It was ouzo and it was Crete.”
“Well, now, I admit to having been on Crete.”
“And it was ouzo, not arak. You’ve never touched a drop of arak in your life.”
“I don’t think I like ouzo. So why would I want to get wiped out on it?”
“You thought it was arak,” he said. “But it wasn’t. And it wasn’t Crete either. It was Malta.”
“It was malteds. It was chocolate malteds.”
“Right. That’s correct. You’re making sense for a change.”
“Do I get to see the collection?”
“Not a chance,” he said affably.
“Is it in Georgetown?”
“Forget it.”
“He’ll see me. I know he’ll see me. Whether or not he’ll grant me a real live interview is a whole ’nuther question. But I couldn’t care less about the whole thing unless I know the collection’s in his Georgetown house. I just want to get near it, understand. I want to know I’m close. So is it in Georgetown? I want to know I’ve got half a chance.”
Selvy was drinking Polish vodka. He drained his glass and pushed it several inches toward the inner rim of the bar. The man sitting on the step near the toilets hadn’t stopped talking about the FBI. He was able to see the cameras and listening devices. They were installed everywhere he went. If he went to another bar around the corner, they would be there. If he took a bus uptown, he’d see the little bugging devices, the little cameras under the seats and along the metal edges of the windows. People kept telling him he had the DTs. But the DTs were when you saw rats and birds and insects. It was little cameras he saw. Tiny transmitters. And they were everywhere.
The bartender filled Selvy’s glass. The old woman at the other end of the bar started an argument with one of the two men who were with her. It was her son, evidently. The bartender stared at Moll.
“Headhunter Zombie,” she said. “It’s coming back to me. This hotel bar someplace—the Dutch Leewards? Where are the Dutch Leewards? You mix in papaya, peach nectar, some dark rum, some more dark mm, some light rum, some lime juice, some shaved ice and I think some honey. Add a dash of bitters.”
The first three-round burst took out the bartender and sent glass flying everywhere. Moll felt herself thrown to the floor. There was a second burst, a three-part roar, little explosions everywhere, things flying, and she was aware of Selvy’s hand leaving his hip with a gun in it. This had happened earlier, two seconds perhaps, and was just registering, and there was blood also registering, coming down on her from the top of the bar. She flattened herself against the angular surface where the bar and the floor joined, digging in, her whole body, glass registering, crashing everywhere, and the old woman’s voice.
Selvy took a head-on position, prone, to avoid presenting too wide a target. He noted muzzle flash. Gun bedded in his hand, he moved his fingertip to the trigger and applied pressure, straight back and unhurriedly, letting out his breath but not completely, just to a point, holding it now as the gun fired, only then exhaling fully.
He watched for motion out on the sidewalk. Single gunman, he was almost certain, auto-firing in short bursts. For a brief moment he lost a sense of where the man was, then realized he was standing in the doorway, trying to sort out the chaos inside. AR-18. Severe muzzle climb. Son of a bitch is wearing ear muffs and shooting glasses. Thinks he’s on a firing range.
Answering the burst, Selvy fired twice. The whole place was breaking apart with noise, bullets, flying glass. The man who’d been sitting on the step crawled moaning toward the door, trailing blood, one arm limp. The gunman was out of the doorway, moving, hit possibly. Selvy had the distinct impression he’d been hit.
He got to his feet and stepped over the crawling man. He heard a car move off. The old woman lunged at him and he gave her an elbow that drove her to the floor. There was still a roar in his head but the street was quiet and he didn’t bother checking for blood. It was academic really, whether he’d hit the man. No concern of his. A technicality.
He returned the .38 to the break-front holster on his belt. Moll came out on the sidewalk. Her expression was comical. She seemed more amazed by the fact that he’d been carrying a gun than by the rest of it, the man spraying the place with automatic fire, the dead and wounded.
“I saw him,” she said. “I looked up at the end. What was he wearing? He looked so strange. He stood there trying to see into the room. He was wearing something on his ears and face.”
“Tinted glasses. Shooting glasses, for ricocheting bullet fragments. And ear protectors, for noise.”
“Who was he? There are people dead in there. What the hell happened?”
“I don’t think he was familiar with the weapon. He was letting the muzzle climb when he fired. That weapon’s designed to prevent that.”
“But who the hell was
he? What happened?”
“He had his right elbow at the wrong angle. He had it pointed way down. Your elbow should be straight out, parallel to the ground, firing that particular weapon.”
“Jesus, will you stop?” she said. “Will you tell me what happened?”
Her sweater and shirt were covered with the bartender’s blood. She stood there trembling. He gave her a crooked little smile and shook his head, genuinely regretful that he wasn’t able to bring some light to the situation.
A couple of kids came out of a doorway to approach Selvy near the shattered front of Frankie’s Tropical Bar.
“We see the whole thing.”
“How much you give us to testify?”
“We make a deal, man.”
“It was Patty Hearst with a machine gun.”
“No, man, it was Stevie Wonder. You see his headset? He was shooting to the music.”
II
Radial Matrix
1
She parked at the very limit of a dead-end street overlooking Rock Creek. It was a warm evening, kids chasing each other in a playground just yards away. The house was red brick, fairly large, attached (how strange, she thought) to a common brown frame house that seemed totally out of place here. How strange and interesting. She approached the brick house, noting that the door-knocker was a bronze eagle.
Lloyd Percival made flattering remarks. He remembered what she’d been wearing on their previous encounter in the corridors of the Senate wing. And commented on the reduced frizz-content of her hair. They sat around a cherrywood cocktail table in a large room filled mostly with period furniture and decorated in spruce green Colonial wallpaper. The first hour was boring, at least for Moll.
“And Mrs. Percival?”
“Spends most of her time back home. Doesn’t like Washington. Never has. We’ve grown apart, I’m afraid. Divorce in progress.”
“What does she do?”
“She curls up with the Warren Report. She’s been reading the Warren Report for eight or nine years. Nine years, I make it. The full set. Twenty-six volumes. She wears a bed jacket.”
“You have two married daughters.”
It went on like this. Percival had a second drink. He sat stoop-shouldered in a wing sofa, his deep friendly voice droning on. Even with his beady eyes and his small and somewhat flat-top head, Moll found his presence genial and even serene. He was the kind of man people feel at ease with. Large, shaggy and quietly ironic. She curled up in her chair, enveloped by the room’s cozy mood.
