Hollywood (72 page)

Finally, reluctantly, Jess agreed. He went inside the shack and climbed the dry-rotted stairs to Daugherty’s bedroom. He listened to the snoring a moment; then he called out, “General. There’s a friend come to see you.”

With an oath, Daugherty was on his feet. “Damn it!” he repeated, as he came out of the room and went downstairs. Jess, alarmed, stayed in his own room until the interview ended some five minutes later when there was a sound of a car moving off, followed by Daugherty’s heavy stride on the stairs, and then a tirade of the sort that Jess had never heard before from Daugherty or, indeed, from anyone.

The subject
seemed
to be the sacredness of the afternoon nap, but all sorts of other things were said until Jess decided that he was probably still asleep in the rocker and this was a typical diabetic nightmare. Presently, he would wake up. But he didn’t. Daugherty was now dressed and packed and he had called for his car and driver to take him to Washington Court House. “You can get back to town on your own,” he said, and slammed the front door behind him.

Jess went to the telephone, and rang Roxy. But she wasn’t home. He made two more calls: no one was answering. Then Daugherty opened the front door and said, “Come on, I’ll take you into town.”

They did not speak for most of the short drive. Daugherty stared out his window, and Jess out his. The driver was sealed off in the front, for privacy’s sake.

When they got to the main street, Daugherty told the driver to stop near Jess’s store. Daugherty avoided Jess’s gaze when he said, “I meant it about your staying on here, staying away from Washington. It’s getting too hot.”

“I haven’t done anything.” Jess was almost too wounded to defend himself. He had done nothing, except the sort of odds and ends that practically everyone else did in his situation. “I never had anything to do with Charlie or Fall.”

“There’s K Street, there’s Mannington.” Daugherty still did not look at him. “The President wants you out of Washington.”

“W.G.?” Jess was stunned.

“I’ve also got to tell you you’re not going to Alaska with him. He told me to take your name off the list.”

Other things were said. But Jess was confused. He hated firearms. Daugherty was like a madman. The car stopped.

Blindly, Jess got out of the car. Several cronies greeted him. He shook a half-dozen hands. Then, as the car bore the Attorney General away, Jess went into Carpenter’s hardware store and bought a pistol and a round of ammunition. The proprietor was amazed. “Why, Jess. I never knew you to touch one of these before.”

“It’s for the Attorney General. Nowadays you got to protect yourself.” Jess did not mind the cold hard feel of the gun as much as he had thought he would. What else had Daugherty said to him? Or had he dreamed it all? What he
thought
Daugherty had said in the car, he couldn’t have said. It was just a nightmare.

Roxy wanted to go to a dinner dance at the Scioto Country Club, and Jess indulged her. Now that everything was decided, he felt at ease with the world if not his own body, which was not responding as well as it should to insulin. He was more and more subject to fits which left him shaken and disoriented. But all would soon be well. Daugherty had telephoned him that afternoon at the emporium. They would go back to Washington together and Daugherty would then move into the White House while Jess would go back to Wardman Park to wind up his affairs. It was like old days, almost.

The orchestra was a good one, and the latest favorite, “Tea for Two,” tempted Jess to dance, but Roxy said, “No. It’s too much strain on you. Besides, I hate feeling that truss up against me.”

“Not for much longer,” said Jess. All around them there were signs of prosperity. Something was happening in the country. Everybody’s business was good. There was a powerful smell of roast beef and Havana cigars in the large dining room with the dance floor and orchestra at the far end. Jess knew everyone in the room and everyone knew and liked Jess. But as tonight he wanted to enjoy Roxy, he kept to a minimum his “whaddaya knows?”

“You’re all right now, aren’t you?” Roxy had been worried the day before when he was suffering from a kind of waking dream in which the words of Daugherty at Deer Creek were mingled with nightmare visions of crabs and galoshes and pistols, and the dark. He knew that he had talked wildly to Roxy.
But now he was in perfect control of himself. Events would take their course according to
his
plan and no other.

“What did you mean when you said, ‘They passed it to me’?”

“I was just having one of those spells I get every now and then.” From a coffeepot, Jess poured himself a gin martini. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone?”

“I always do. Some of the time, anyway. I’m pretty busy. You know.”

“I’m giving you my Cole sedan.”

The orchestra played “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” a title that irritated Jess no end. Why “yes” if there are none?

The train ride back to Washington was also just like old times, almost. Daugherty was agreeable, very much like his usual self. It was agreed that Jess do away with all his records in case the various investigations were to spread beyond the Veterans Bureau and the naval oil reserves. Daugherty did not think that the Senate would find out anything other than the well-known fact that Forbes was a thief, acting on his own, while Fall, a favorite of the Senate, was no more than an obliging friend to the oil magnates.

“We’ve been tapping Senator Walsh’s telephones.” Daugherty fixed his blue eye humorously on Jess; through the window the flat Ohio landscape was giving way to mountainous West Virginia. “He’s headed nowhere, I’d say. Fall’s too shrewd an old bird.” The blue eye suddenly winked, for no reason. “But Charlie Forbes will go to jail for thirty years if I have any say.”

“What about Charlie Cramer?” Jess had not believed the suicide story. You only killed yourself if you were really sick with something, like diabetes before the days of insulin.

“What about him?”

“Was he in on it, with Forbes?”

“Why else would he go shoot himself?” The brown eye had joined the left eye in staring at Jess.

“Well, somebody could’ve shot him to shut him up, couldn’t they?”

“Burns would’ve known.” Daugherty had a lot more faith in his director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation than Jess or anyone else had. William J. Burns was an old friend of Daugherty’s from Columbus, where he had established the Burns National Detective Agency. So close was Burns to Daugherty that Burns had eventually moved into Wardman Park, taking an apartment directly under the one that Daugherty shared with Jess. As a result, Jess had always been jealous of the intimacy between the two and he suspected that there were secrets Daugherty shared with Burns that he did not with Jess.

Jess had never played golf well; today he was at his worst. But the others were tolerant as they made their way around the golf course at Friendship, under a dark sky. Although the McLeans were in Virginia, at their Leesburg place, friends were encouraged to use the course any time.

Among the players was Warren F. Martin, Daugherty’s special assistant at the Justice Department, a man Jess had never got to know particularly well, and the President’s personal doctor, Lieutenant Commander Boone, an amiable fellow who, finally, aware that Jess was sweating too much even for a damp airless day, said, “Let’s go in. Jess here’s having a menopausal response.”

But Jess said no. He’d play to the ninth hole. Then they all went back to the clubhouse. Jess stayed a moment but refused a drink from the waiter. “Looking forward to the trip next month?” Boone was an amiable man and, reputedly, a good doctor.

“I’m not going.” Jess looked at Martin, who looked somewhat guiltily away. Martin knew of his disgrace. Daugherty had told him. How many others knew?

“Shame. Sounds like it’s going to be fun. Is the General coming?”

“No,” said Martin. “He’s staying put. He’s been away from his desk almost three months.” So Martin answered a question addressed to Jess Smith, Daugherty’s bumper and best friend. The curtain was coming down fast.

Jess drove his Cole sedan from Friendship to the Justice Department, where he was greeted as if nothing had happened. At least Daugherty hadn’t told the guards. Jess cleared out the files in his sixth-floor office; then he drove to the White House, where, again as if nothing had happened, the guards waved him through the gate to the executive offices. In the reception hall, he told the usher in charge that he had an appointment with the President, which was not exactly true. But he was not kept waiting long. As he walked down the corridor, past the coat closet, he shuddered, as he did at the thought of any closet, so like a coffin, except that in this particular closet W.G. and Nan had made love—standing up? Or was there room enough for the two of them to lie on the floor?

The President was standing at his desk, looking out the window at the south lawn, a radiant green in the late-afternoon light. Then he turned and Jess was struck by how putty-gray his face was, by how fat he’d become. But the smile was as beguiling as ever, and the hand-clasp firm. “Well, Mr. President, I’m doing like I was told. I’m clearing out of town.”

“Sit down, Jess.” Harding remained standing, an unlit cigar in his right
hand. “I’m really sorry it had to end like this. You’ve been a good friend to the Duchess and me, but we’re in for a lot of trouble come October when Congress gets back. I’ve been too trusting, the Duchess says. But I don’t think I am. I figure that people who’re doing well doing the right thing won’t be dumb enough to get themselves in trouble by doing the wrong thing.”

“Yes, sir.” Jess felt as if he was a disembodied pair of eyes resting high up in the chandelier, watching the two of them in the distance. “I don’t think any of us in the K Street house …”

“Jess, Jess.” The President motioned for him to stop; then he sat behind the desk and cradled his head in his hand. “I know all about K Street. Or I know as much as I want to know, and I wish to God I didn’t know what I do. I don’t blame you. I guess it’s my fault, thinking you’d know the difference between the capital here and Washington Court House, and what’s seemly here and what isn’t.”

“Well, I did my best. For everybody, or tried to.” Jess hoped that he would not start to cry.

“I know. I know. If it weren’t for … the Veterans Bureau mess …” The President did not go on; he also could not say the name Charlie Forbes.

“What shall I do with the Ungerleider accounts?”

The President shrugged. “You can publish mine in the
Post
for all I care. It just shows that I’ve been as unlucky in the stock market as everything else. I’m selling the
Star.
”

“I’m sorry, W.G.” Somehow the thought of the Marion
Star
and Harding transported, if only briefly, the two figures at the far end of the oval office back to a happier better time when W.G. was a newspaper editor and Jess the proprietor of a dry-goods emporium in the next town. They had come such a long way, to this evil house and uncommon end.

“I had to. We need the money.” The President stood up. Jess rejoined his ailing body at the desk and shook Harding’s hand for the last time.

It was evening when Jess parked his Cole sedan in the garage beneath Wardman Park. Then he took the elevator to his floor. As he unlocked the door to the living room of the suite, he was aware that something was not right. Then he saw Martin, in his shirt sleeves, seated at the desk, talking on the telephone.… “I won’t know till he gets here.” Then Martin must have heard the heavy sound of Jess’s breathing. He said into the receiver, “I’ll call you back.” Martin smiled at Jess; he always smiled. He was a dozen years younger than Jess.

“The General was worried about you. So he asked me to sleep over, knowing how you don’t like being alone at night.”

“Fine,” said Jess. There were two bedrooms in the suite with a living room between. Martin’s suitcase was on Daugherty’s bed.

Jess went into his own bedroom, and shut the door. Then he opened his briefcase and withdrew all the bank statements, receipts, letters. He had also collected everything that pertained to the President and Daugherty. Beside his desk, there was a large solid metal wastebasket. Methodically, one by one, he put the papers into the basket, and set them afire. A cool breeze blew the smoke out the open window. In the distance thunder sounded. Why, of all people, Martin?

Suddenly, Jess was inspired. He telephoned the McLeans in Leesburg. Evalyn came on the line. “It’s Jess,” he announced.

“Back from Ohio?”

“For a while. Listen. I wonder if I could come down there and spend maybe a couple, three days.”

“Of course you can. There’s plenty of room, Lord knows. Are you all right?”

“I’m a little upset. I guess you know, business, and things.”

“I know,” said Evalyn, who probably did know a great deal.

“I’ll start soon as I can.” Jess hung up. Thunder sounded even louder, rain started to fall in sheets.

Jess dozed off. The last of the papers was now ash. He woke up with rain in his face. He looked at his watch. It was after ten. He shut the window. Then he telephoned Evalyn again; told her it was raining too hard to drive. She told him to come in the morning. He would be there at seven, he said. On the dot. It would be light out then. He didn’t like to drive in the dark or, indeed, do anything without a light on somewhere.