A Touch of Infinity (3 page)

And then it was over, very quickly, very suddenly—all of it so sudden that the Mayor never left his office at all, but sat staring through the window at the carpet of garbage that surrounded City Hall.

He picked up the telephone and found that it still worked. He dialed his personal line, and across the mountain of garbage the electrical impulses flickered and the telephone rang in Professor Hepplemeyer's study.

“Hepplemeyer here,” the professor said.

“The Mayor.”

“Oh, yes. I heard. I'm terribly sorry. Has it stopped?”

“It appears to have stopped,” the Mayor said.

“Ernest Silverman?”

“No sign of him,” the Mayor said.

“Well, it was thoughtful of you to call me.”

“There's all that garbage.”

“About two million tons?” the professor asked gently.

“Give or take some. Do you suppose you could move the hoop—”

The professor replaced the phone and went into the kitchen, where his wife was putting together a beef stew. She asked who had called.

“The Mayor.”

“Oh?”

“He wants the hoop moved.”

“I think it's thoughtful of him to consult you.”

“Oh, yes—yes, indeed,” Professor Hepplemeyer said. “But I'll have to think about it.”

“I suppose you will,” she said with resignation.

2

The Price

Frank Blunt himself told the story of how, at the age of seven, he bought off a larger, older boy who had threatened to beat him up. The larger boy, interviewed many years later, had some trouble recalling the incident, but he said that it seemed to him, if his memory was at all dependable, that Frank Blunt had beaten up his five-year-old sister and had appropriated a bar of candy in her possession. Frank Blunt's second cousin, Lucy, offered the acid comment that the dollar which bought off the larger boy had been appropriated from Frank's mother's purse; and three more men whose memories had been jogged offered the information that Frank had covered his investment by selling protection to the smallest kids at twenty-five cents a kid. Be that as it may; it was a long time ago. The important factor was that it illustrated those two qualities which contributed so much to Frank Blunt's subsequent success: his gift for appropriation and his ability to make a deal if the price was right.

The story that he got out of secondary school by purchasing the answers to the final exam is probably apocryphal and concocted out of spleen. No one ever accused Frank Blunt of being stupid. This account is probably vestigial from the fact that he bought his way out of an expulsion from college by paying off the dean with a cool two thousand dollars, no mean sum in those days. As with so many of the stories about Frank Blunt, the facts are hard to come by, and the nastiest of the many rumors pertaining to the incident is that Frank had established a profitable business as a pimp, taking his cut of the earnings of half a dozen unhappy young women whom he had skillfully directed into the oldest profession. Another rumor held that he had set up a mechanism for obtaining tests in advance of the testing date and peddling them very profitably. But this too could not be proved, and all that was actually known was his purchase of the dean. It is also a matter of record that when he finally left college in his junior year—a matter of choice—he had a nest egg of about fifty thousand dollars. This was in 1916. A year later he bought his way out of the draft for World War I in circumstances that still remain obscure.

Two years later he bought State Senator Hiram Gillard for an unspecified price, and was thereby able to place four contracts for public works with kickbacks that netted him the tidy sum of half a million dollars—very nice money indeed in 1919. In 1920, when Frank Blunt was twenty-four years old, he purchased four city councilmen and levied his service charge on fourteen million dollars' worth of sewer construction. His kickback amounted to a cool million dollars.

By 1930 he was said to be worth ten million dollars, but it was the beginning of a muckraking period and he was swept up in the big public utility scandals and indicted on four counts of bribery and seven of fraud. Frank Blunt was never one to count small change, and at least half of his ten-million-dollar fortune went into the purchase of two federal judges, three prosecutors, five assistant prosecutors, two congressmen, and one juryman—on the basis that if you are going to fix a jury, it's pointless to buy more than one good man.

One of the congressmen subsequently became a business associate, and Frank Blunt moved out of the scandal with clean hands and the receivership of three excellent utility companies, out of which he netted sufficient profit to more than replace his expenses for the cleansing.

He often said, afterward, that his Washington contacts made during that time were worth more than the expenses he incurred in, as he euphemistically put it, clearing his name; and unquestionably they were, for he got in at the rock bottom of the offshore oil development, operating with the boldness and verve that had already made him something of a legend in the financial world. This time he purchased the governor of a state, and it was now that he was said to have made his famous remark:

“You can buy the devil himself if the price is right.”

Frank Blunt never quibbled over the price. “You cast your bread upon the waters,” he was fond of saying, and if he wanted something, he never let the cost stand in his way. He had discovered that no matter what he paid for something he desired, his superb instinct for investment covered him and served him.

Politicians were not the only goods that Frank Blunt acquired. He was a tall, strong, good-looking man, with a fine head of hair and commanding blue eyes, and he never had difficulties with women. But while they were ready to line up and jump through his hoop free of cost, he preferred to purchase what he used. These purchases were temporary; not until he was forty-one years old and worth upward of fifty million dollars did he buy a permanent fixture. She was a current Miss America, and he bought her not only a great mansion on a hill in Dallas, Texas, but also four movies for her to star in. Along that path, he bought six of the most important film critics in America, for he was never one to take action without hedging his bets.

All of the above is of another era; for by the time Frank Blunt was fifty-six years old, in 1952, he was worth more money than anyone cared to compute; he had purchased a new image for himself via the most brilliant firm of public relations men in America; and he had purchased an ambassadorship to one of the leading western European countries. His cup was full, and it runneth over, so to speak, and then he had his first heart attack.

Four years later, at the age of sixty, he had his second heart attack; and lying in his bed, the first day out of the oygen tent, he fixed his cold blue eyes on the heart specialist he had imported from Switzerland—who was flanked on either side by several American colleagues—and asked:

“Well, Doc, what's the verdict?”

“You are going to recover, Mr. Blunt. You are on the road.”

“And just what the hell does that mean?”

“It is meaning that in a few weeks you will be out of the bed.”

“Why don't you come to the point? How long have I got to live after this one?” He had always had the reputation of being as good as his name.

The Swiss doctor hemmed and hawed until Blunt threw him out of the room. Then he faced the American doctors and specified that there was no one among the four of them who had collected less than twenty thousand in fees from him.

“And none of you will ever see a red cent of mine again unless I get the truth. How long?”

The consensus of opinion was a year, give or take a month or two.

“Surgery?”

“No, sir. Not in your case. In your case it is contraindicated.”

“Treatment?”

“None that is more than a sop.”

“Then there is no hope?”

“Only a miracle, Mr. Blunt.”

Frank Blunt's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and for a few minutes he lay in bed silent, staring at the four uncomfortable physicians. Then he said to them:

“Out! Get out, the whole lot of you.”

Five weeks later, Frank Blunt, disdaining a helping hand from wife or butler, walked out of his house and got into his custom-built twenty-two-thousand-dollar sports car, whipped together for him by General Motors—he was a deeply patriotic man and would not have a foreign car in his garage—told his chauffeur to go soak his head, and drove off without a word to anyone.

Blunt was not a churchgoer—except for weddings and funerals—but his flakmade image described him as a religious man whose religion was personal and fervent, and the wide spectrum of his charities included a number of church organizations. He had been baptized in the Baptist church, and now he drove directly to the nearest Baptist church and used the knocker of the adjacent parsonage. The Reverend Harris, an elderly white-haired and mild-mannered man, answered the door himself, surprised and rather flustered by this unexpected, famous, and very rich caller.

“I had heard you were sick,” he said lamely, not knowing what else to say.

“I'm better. Can I come in?”

“Please do. Please come in and sit down. I'll have Mrs. Harris make some tea.”

“I'll have some bourbon whiskey, neat.”

Pastor Harris explained unhappily that bourbon whiskey was not part of his household but that he had some sherry that was a gift from one of his parishioners.

“I'll have the tea,” said Frank Blunt.

The pastor led Blunt into his study, and a very nervous and excited Mrs. Harris brought tea and cookies. Blunt sat silently in the shabby little study, staring at the shelves of old books, until Mrs. Harris had withdrawn, and then he said bluntly, as befitting his name and nature:

“About God.”

“Yes, Mr. Blunt?”

“Understand me, I'm a businessman. I want facts, not fancies. Do you believe in God?”

“That's a strange question to ask me.”

“Yes or no, sir. I don't make small talk.”

“Yes,” the pastor replied weakly.

“Completely?”

“Yes.”

“No doubts?”

“No, Mr. Blunt. I have no doubts.”

“Have you ever seen Him?”

“Seen who?” the pastor asked with some bewilderment.

“God.”

“That's a very strange question, sir.”

“All my questions are strange questions. My being here is a damn strange thing. If you can't answer a question, say so.”

“Then let me ask you, sir,” said Pastor Harris, his indignation overcoming his awe, “do you believe in God?”

“I have no choice. I'll repeat my question. Have you ever seen Him?”

“As I see you?”

“Naturally. How else?”

“In my heart, Mr. Blunt,” Harris said quietly, with curious dignity. “Only in my heart, sir.”

“In your heart?”

“In my heart, sir.”

“Then, damn it, you don't see Him at all. You believe something exists—and where is it? In your heart. That's no answer. That's no answer at all. When I look into my heart, I see two damn coronaries, and that's all.”

“The more's the pity for that,” Pastor Harris thought, and waited for Frank Blunt to come to the point of his visit.

“Joe Jerico sees Him,” Blunt said, almost to himself.

Harris stared at him.

“Joe Jerico!” Blunt snapped.

“The revivalist?”

“Exactly. Is he a man of God or isn't he?”

“That's not for me to say,” Harris replied mildly. “He does his work, I do mine. He talks to thousands. I talk to a handful.”

“He talks to God, doesn't he?”

“Yes, he talks to God.”

Frank Blunt rose and thrust out his hand at the old man. “Thank you for your time, Parson. I'll send you a check in the morning.”

“That's not necessary.”

“By my lights it is. I consulted you in a field where you're knowledgeable. My doctor gets a thousand dollars for a half hour of his time. You're worth at least as much.”

The following afternoon, flying from Dallas, Texas, to Nashville, Tennessee, in his private twin-engine Cessna, Frank Blunt asked his pilot the same question he had asked Harris the day before.

“I'm a Methodist,” replied Alf Jones, the pilot.

“You could be a goddamn Muslim. I asked you something else.”

“The wife takes care of that,” said Alf Jones. “My goodness, Mr. Blunt, if that was on my mind, flying around from city to city the way I do, I'd sure as hell turn into a mother-loving monk, wouldn't I?”

A chauffeur-driven limousine was waiting at the airport—not a hired car; Blunt kept chauffeur-driven custom-built jobs at every major airport—and the chauffeur, after a warm but respectful greeting, sped the car around the city toward that great, open, two-hundred-acre pasture that had been named “Repentance City.”

“You're looking well, Mr. Blunt, if I may say so,” the chauffeur remarked.

“What do you know about Joe Jerico?” Blunt asked him.

“He's a fine man.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Take my old grandaddy. He was the dirtiest, sinfulest old lecher that ever tried to rape a nice little black girl. Truth is, we couldn't have a woman near him. That is, when he wasn't drunk. When he was drunk, he was just a mean and dangerous old devil and he'd just as soon break a bottle of corn over your head as say hello.”

“What the hell has that got to do with Joe Jerico?”

“He went to one gathering—just one—and he saw the light.”

“How is he now?”

“Saintly. Just so damn saintly you want to crack him across the head with a piece of cordwood.”

“One meeting?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Blunt. One meeting and he got the word.”

It was dark when they reached Repentance City, but batteries of giant floods turned the vast parking area into daylight. Thousands of cars were already there, like a sea of beetles around the vast, looming white tent. Blunt respected size and organization. “How many does the tent hold?” he asked his chauffeur.