Juice (22 page)

“That if I accept this finding, the widow will have one hell of a time getting anything in a civil action.”

Rhein raised his head slowly. He tightened his lips; his nostrils widened. He spoke very slowly. “Do you mean to imply that I've done this to save a few thousand—”

“Good Lord, no!” Joe said. He raised both hands, as though surrendering, and said, “Believe me. Please believe me.”

“Of course I believe you,” Rhein said mildly. “Don't know what got into me.”

Morris cleared the plates. He picked up the decanter and hesitated.

“Excellent, Morris,” Rhein said. “Thank you. I'll try it again next time.”

Morris indicated professional delight. He served the steak—steak? Davis thought. Steak? Steak and potatoes? By gosh, Mother, is that all it is? With a long name like that? The French they are a funny race. No, no, Davis corrected himself. Not a race; a religion. He laughed, silently and without expression, at his joke.

Morris set one open bottle on the table and poured from the other, half an inch, into Rhein's glass. “Morris,” Rhein said, “this is one of the silliest customs ever invented. If a good waiter can't tell from the cork, how is the poor befuddled customer going to know? Have you ever served a bad bottle? Ever had one sent back?”

“Twice,” Morris said calmly. “In 1946 I served a Vosne-Romanée of 1934 that was, ah,
fané.
I felt terrible about it, but it was only one bad bottle of a very respectable label, after all.”

“You couldn't have been more than thirty,” Rhein said.

“That was it,” Morris said. “That was it exactly; so early in my work. Then I—please. The Château will cool.”

Rhein tasted. He smiled. The smile broadened. His entire face smiled. “My God, what is it? The Rothschild?”

“Exactly,” Morris said. “Of 1945. We have only a hundred and twenty-two bottles left. I took the liberty.”

“You took the liberty,” Rhein repeated. “All right. You're forgiven. Pour it out.”

Morris poured. When he had left Rhein said, “Listen. I know I sound like an old fool. But I want you to smell this, and look at it, and roll it on the tongue, and swallow it slowly.”

They did all that.

“You're not a fool at all,” Davis said. “I've never had anything as good.”

“In a claret,” Rhein specified. “Burgundy's a different thing entirely. Like it, Joe?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “You amaze me a little. How do you find these things?”

“I look for them,” Rhein said. “It takes time and money, and wine is one of the reasons I'm glad I'm rich.”

Davis caught Joe's eye: what was to be thought of this man?

“Rich enough,” Rhein went on, “to be willing to pay the widow twice what she'd get in a civil action, just to keep you out of trouble.”

Joe set down his fork. He was momentarily confused. He looked at Davis, then at other diners, sitting like himself at laden tables, then at his place. “That's a bribe, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” Rhein said.

Davis waited for Harrison to look up. Harrison did not look up. Harrison was thinking of the widow; he was thinking that this was too much, that now if he persisted he would deprive himself of freedom (all right) and his wife of him (all right) and his children of their father (still all right) and P.A.N. of its managing director (very all right) and his victim's widow of possibly an extra hundred thousand dollars (not all right). And what had he to offer? What rebuttal was there?

His attention reverted to his food. He ate and tasted. He drank wine and looked at Arthur Rhein, who was not impatient. He looked at Davis, who was eating calmly.

And if I refuse now, he thought; if I refuse now, he'll fight me. He'll go all out for that finding and he'll get it, and the widow could finish with nothing at all. For what? To prove what? To wave the flag? To keep myself immaculate? Can't I afford just one little guilt to get a poor widow woman a hundred thousand more? Am I so weak? Is my integrity so fragile that at the first touch of compromise it will fall to dust?

And if I refuse now, he'll fight.

His steak had diminished; Rhein was filling his glass.

If I refuse now, she gets not a dime. Except from me, personally; but what kind of bargain is that?

He looked up. Davis met his look and went on chewing.

“Arthur,” Joe Harrison said, “you're in a jam.”

Rhein waited.

“You've pulled a couple of illegal wires. I can get you off the hook—you and your friends. How high did you go? The governor?”

“Careful,” Rhein said. “Be very careful.”

“It's all right,” Joe said. “My lawyer's here.” Davis had finished his steak. He filled his glass from the second bottle and passed it to Rhein. Davis was tightening up now; Joe sensed a gathering of power, a concentration almost palpable. Chess players, he thought. Chess players must have it. “So,” he said, “I can fix everything. I'm not assigning blame. I'm not condemning you. I'm just trying to see it clearly. If I plead guilty, and anyone asks questions—a newspaper, for example—about the witnesses' testimony, a few important people are in trouble. And it's worth about two hundred thousand dollars to you to see that it doesn't happen.”

“The widow,” Rhein said gently.

“I know,” Joe said. “Let me ask you something. Davis will leave for a while if you want him to. I can see why—now—you're a little desperate. But why did you go storming into this in the first place? Why did you get Davis? Why did you call your friends?” He turned to the lawyer. “Think of the power I have. I may be able to swing a couple of elections all by myself. Why?” he asked Rhein. “Were you so afraid that P.A.N. would go to hell without me? You told me three days ago that no man was indispensable. Why? Why?”

Rhein scratched at the tablecloth with his index finger; he stared down at the finger as though it were doing important work. He raised his hand, took his glass, and sipped at the wine with his eyes closed. Davis was motionless.

“I'm damned if I enjoy telling you this,” Rhein said, but there was a hint of pride in his voice; he was where he belonged, at table in the Century Club, in the company of Château Mouton-Rothschild 1945, and perhaps a vigor, a solidity, an assurance were apparent now that could not be appreciated elsewhere. Harrison fought down a senseless feeling of respect. “Not to make a long story out of it, I started work nearly fifty years ago. I'm what they call a success. I'm even what the preachers call a success, because I'm happy. I worked very hard. I bluffed, and I called bluffs. I made P.A.N. The insurance company was nothing; with capital you can organize practically anything. But P.A.N. is something. Our paper is about the best around. Our television is no cheaper or more sensational than anyone else's, and sometimes we put on something worth seeing. The radio station was the same way—good stuff and bad. I remember when Roosevelt died we did two full days on him, tributes, interviews, records of the old speeches, and you know what I thought of
him
.” Rhein smiled wryly. “I'm beginning to sympathize with him now—getting old.” Joe cursed himself. Rhein's smile had stripped away the money and the foibles and left Arthur Rhein, and Joe liked Arthur Rhein. I like him, he thought, amazed; I like him. “And the Press,” Rhein went on. “I know you make jokes about it, about all my wild ideas; I also know that you respect books, and you approve of the Press.” His eyes mocked Harrison. “I know a little bit about you. Hardly anybody can pass sixty-five without learning something.” He looked down at his wineglass. “Well, in all this time I found that there were two kinds of people. Somebody once said there were two kinds of people: those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don't. Well, I do. There are competent people and incompetent people, and the reason for my being rich and P.A.N. being all it is isn't my luck, or my nerve, or the slow accumulation of money. It's that I learned how to tell those two kinds of people apart, and I never judged a man by anything else, and I kept the good ones around me.”

Harrison looked up at Davis. The lawyer was still, bent slightly, attentive, almost brooding at Rhein.

“The rest of it is very simple and I'm afraid a bit sentimental. I'll probably retire someday, and I'll certainly die someday, and I want to leave my little empire in good hands. I said that you weren't indispensable, Joe. You aren't. Your work could be done by others. Maybe two or three others, as you modestly warned me. Anyway you could be replaced. But who would keep the peace, then? Who would keep the paper, the wire service, the television, the radio, the weeklies, the Press all together? Who'd prevent the squabbles, the bitterness among the heirs when the will was read? And who would be there to make fading beauties feel ten years younger? Whose nod would be as good as a signed contract? Who could be tough enough to make that little universe operate, and well enough liked to make it operate the way it should? It isn't a bad little empire, and I can't have just anybody in charge. I want you in charge, Joe. I like you; but that's beside the point. I like you because you're competent, and because we have something in common—yes, we do—and that something moves the world: in any line of work, in any country, in any century.”

They were silent. Davis, hunched forward, was tense. Joe could think of nothing to say; he wanted to touch Rhein's shoulder, and felt a fool.

“One other thing, Joe,” Rhein said. “If you think I've said all this to get at your emotions, to bribe you, to persuade you to—‘get my friends off the hook,' I think you said—you'd best say so.”

Now Joe touched his shoulder. “No, Arthur.”

Rhein smiled; Joe smiled. “Good,” Rhein said. “If you'd thought that, I'd have let you go to hell in your own way.”

Rhein stood up. “I've got to leave. It's nine-fifteen. Joe, you think hard about what I said.” He pushed his chair toward the table and hesitated. His hand went to his breast pocket. He dropped two cigars on the table and smiled shyly. “I wish you'd try these with coffee and brandy,” he said. “They're really quite good. Good night.”

They watched him walk away.

“The old son of a bitch,” Joe said, angry at the affection in his own voice. “I never would have believed it. Never!”

Davis spread both hands flat on the table; his eyes were glittering again. “Did you hear him? He said ‘claret.' Claret! He came out of a box. He was sealed in a box in 1790, and he—”

“Shut up,” Joe said coldly. “We're all in trouble, and jokes won't help.”

Davis shook his head and laughed aloud. “You'd best leave all that to old Jay,” he said. “Old Jay sees a way out.” He stretched complacently, huge and awkward. “That's what old Jay's for.”

Joe stared at him.

“Coffee?” Davis said. “Brandy?”

15

“Get away,” Dave said to the shaggy brown dog. “Shoo. You eat later.”

In the early twilight four cats were crouched at a long pan of raw kidney. The dog paced nervously, sniffing, twenty feet from them, near the first clump of larches.

“Do they ever fight?” Mrs. Newbery asked.

“No,” he said. “I don't know why not, but they never fight. The cats fight each other. Sometimes the dogs fight each other. But the dogs and the cats leave each other alone. The dogs eat in the morning, before I go to school.”

“And the horses?”

“Sally takes care of the horses,” he said. “And once a week a man comes in and looks at them and brushes them.” He plucked a blade of grass and chewed at it with professional gravity, observing the cats critically. “They don't really do anything, do they?” he said. “They just live and kill mice.”

“You have so many of them,” she said.

“Lots.” He grinned. “They just come. It's like a club. I guess they tell their friends.” The grin vanished. “What's going to happen to my father?”

“Nothing at all, I hope,” she said. “I hope Mr. Davis will fix everything.”

“I hope so. Is he your brother?”

“No. A good friend.”

“I knew he wasn't your husband. You don't have the same name. Do you have a husband?”

“I had a husband,” she said, and anticipated him: “He got very sick and died.”

“That's too bad,” Dave said. “Sometimes one of the cats dies. We bury them down there—” he waved—“in the trees. Is your husband buried?”

Mrs. Newbery hesitated. “No. He was cremated. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes,” he said. “I had a grandpa who was cremated. I never knew him. I was too young. Do you have a grandpa?”

“No. I don't have anybody. I'd like to have a little boy,” she said almost shyly.

He smiled again. “They're lots of trouble, my mother says. Sally's not so much trouble, but she's older than I am. Is Sally pretty?”

“Very.”

He nodded. “That's good. You're pretty.”

“Thank you.” She was affected—touched rather than amused—and turned away.

“Dave?” It was Helen at the back door. “Come on in, you two. It's getting dark.”

They walked toward the house and Mrs. Newbery wished that she could take the boy's hand.

“You go on upstairs, Dave,” Helen said, and to Mrs. Newbery: “We'll eat soon. What would you like?”

They filed into the kitchen; Dave left them. “Anything, really,” Mrs. Newbery said. “I'm tired and not too hungry.”

“Soup and sandwiches.”

“Yes, fine.”

“You go in and sit down. I'll get the children organized.”

“Can't I help?”

It was a plea. Helen said, “Yes. Come on,” and they followed Dave upstairs.

They supervised the donning of pajamas and the restoration of books, toys, large rocks, small magazines, scuffed shoes, limp playing cards to their proper niches. Sally was distrait, Dave nonchalant. Mrs. Newbery admired Sally's eyebrows, which were already full and perfectly arched. “She'll be pretty,” she murmured from the doorway. “Beautiful.”