Rich Man, Poor Man (93 page)

‘Of course it isn’t that,’ Gretchen said. ‘He’s being drafted, now that he’s not a student any more.’

‘Well, it might do him some good,’ Rudolph said, ‘A couple of years in the Army might make a man of him.’

‘You have a baby daughter,’ Gretchen said bitterly. ‘You can talk like that. I have one son. I don’t think a bullet through his head is going to make a man of my son.’

‘Now, Gretchen,’ Rudolph said, ‘don’t make it so automatic. Induct the boy. and two months later send the corpse home to mother There are an awful lot of boys who serve their time and come home without a scratch.’

That’s why I’m calling you,’ Gretchen said. ‘I want you to make sure that he comes home without a scratch.’ ‘What can I do?’

‘You. know a lot of people in Washington.’ ‘Nobody can keep a kid out of the draft if he’s goofed school and he’s in good health, Gretchen. Not even in Washington.’ ‘I’m not so sure about that, either,’ Gretchen said, ‘from some of the things I’ve heard and read. But I’m not asking you to try to keep Billy out of the Army.’ Then what are you trying to get me to do?’ ‘Use your connections to make sure that once Billy is in, he doesn’t ever get sent to Viet Nam.’

Rudolph sighed. The truth was that he did know some people in Washington who could most probably do it and who would most probably do it if he asked them. But it was just the sort of petty, privileged, inside politicking that he despised the most. It offended his sense of rectitude and cast a shadow on his entire reason for going into public life. In the world of business it was perfectly normal for a man tp come to you and ask you to place, a nephew or a cousin in some favoured position. Depending on how much you owed the man or how much you expected to get from him in the future, or even how much you liked him, you helped the nephew or cousin, if you could, without thinking twice about it. But to use the power you had gained by the votes of the people to whom you had promised impeccable representation and the sternest respect for the law to deliver your sister’s son from the threat of death while

actively or tacitly approving of sending thousands of other boys the same age to their destruction was another thing.

‘Gsetchen,’ he said over the slight buzz of wire between Dallas and Los Angeles, *I wish you could figure out some other way … ‘

The only other person I know who might be able to do something,’ Gretchen said, her voice rising, ‘is Colin Burke’s brother. He’s a general in the Air Force. He’s in Viet Nam right now. I bet he’d just fall all over himself with eagerness to keep Billy from hearing a shot fired.’

‘Not so loud, Gretchen,’ Rudolph said, holding the phone away from his ear. ‘I hear you perfectly well.’

‘I’m going to tell you something.’ She was shouting hysterically now. ‘If you don’t help me, I’m coining to New York and I’m taking Billy with me to Canada or Sweden. And I’m going to make one hell of a loud noise about why I’m doing it.’

‘Christ, Gretchen,’ Rudolph said, ‘What’s wrong with you - are you approaching the menopause or what?’

He heard the phone slam at the other end. He got up slowly and went over to the window and looked out at Dallas. It didn’t look any better from the bedroom than it had from the salon.

Family, he thought Without reasoning it out, he had always been the one to try to protect bis family. He was the one who helped his father at the ovens and made the deliveries for the bakery; he was the one who had kept his mother alive. He was the one who had had the shabby dealings with detectives and the painful scene with Willie Abbott and had helped Gretchen with her divorce and befriended her second husband. He was the one who had made the money for Tom, so that he could escape the savage life he had fallen into. He was the one who had gone to Colin Burke’s funeral on the other edge of the continent to comfort his sister at the worst moments of her sorrow. He was the one who had taken the responsibility of taking Billy, ungrateful and derisive as he was, out of his school when Billy was suffering there; he was the one who had got Billy into Whitby, when the boy’s marks were hardly good enough to get him into a trade school. He was the one who had hunted down Tom at the Aegean Hotel, for his mother’s sake, and had learned all about West Fifty-third Street and put up the money for Schultz and made the arrangement with the lawyer for Tom’s reunion with his son and his divorce from a prostitute …

He had not asked for gratitude and, he thought wryly, he had got damn little for it. Well, he hadn’t done it for gratitude. He was honest with himself. He was conscious of the duties owed to himself and others and wouldn’t have been able to live comfortably with himself if he hadn’t fulfilled them.

Duties never end. It is their essential characteristic.

He went over to the phone and asked for Gretchen’s number in California. When she answered, he said, ‘All right, Gretchen. I’ll stop over in Washington on the way north and see what I can do. I think you can stop worrying.’

Thank you, Rudy,’ Gretchen said in a small voice.’ I knew you’d come through.’

Brad arrived at the suite at five thirty. Texas sun and Texas liquor had made him ruddier than ever. Also heavier and more expansive.. He was wearing a dark summer-weight, striped suit and a ruffled blue shirt with huge, pearl cufflinks. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t meet you at the airport, but I hope my boy treated you all right.’ He poured himself a slug of bourbon over ice and beamed at his friends. ‘Well, it’s about time you fellas came down and paid me a visit and took a look for yourselves where your money’s coming from. We’re bringing in a new well and maybe tomorrow I’ll hire a plane and we’ll fly over and take a look at how its doing. And I’ve got tickets on the fifty-yard line for Saturday. The big game of the season. Texas against Oklahoma. This town’s got to be seen to be believed on that weekend. Thirty thousand happy drunks. I’m sorry Virginia’s not here to welcome you. She’ll be heartbroken when she hears you’ve been and gone. But she’s up North visiting her Pappy. I hear he’s not too well. I hope it’s nothing serious. I’m real fond of the old critter.’

It was too painful, the Western heartiness, the lush hospitality, the desperate rush of Southern blarney. ‘Cut it out, please, Brad,’ Rudolph said. ‘For one thing, we know why Virginia’s not here. And it isn’t to visit her Pappy, as you .describe him.’ Two weeks ago Calderwood had come to Rudolph’s office and had told him that Virginia had left Brad for good because Brad had taken up with some movie actress in Hollywood and was commuting between Dallas and Hollywood three times a week and was having money troubles.,It was after Calderwood’s visit that Rudolph had begun to suspect something and had called Johnny.

‘Pardner,’ Brad said, drinking. ‘I don’t know what all you’re talking about. I just talked to my wife and she said she expected to be coming home any day now and … ‘

‘You didn’t talk to your wife and she’s not coming home, Brad,’ Rudolph said. ‘And you know it.’

‘And you know a lot of other things, too,’ Johnny said. He was standing between Brad and the door, almost as if he expected Brad to make a sudden run for it. ‘And so do we.’

‘By God,’ Brad said, ‘if you fellas weren’t my lifelong buddies, I’d swear you sounded hostile.’ He was sweating, despite the air-conditioning and his blue shirt was darkly stained. He filled his glass again. His grubby, manicured fingers were shaking as he fumbled with the ice. ‘Come clean, Brad,’ Johnny said.

‘Well … ‘ Brad laughed, or tried to laugh. ‘Maybe I’ve been stepping out a little on my wife, here and there. You know how I am, Rudy, I don’t have the strength of character you have, I can’t resist a little bit of soft, cuddly poontang when it’s waved in my face. But Virginia’s taking it too big, she …’ ‘We’re not interested in you and Virginia,’ Johnny said. We’re interested in where our money’s gone to.’ ‘You get a statement every month,’ Brad said. ‘We sure do,’ Johnny said.

‘We’ve run into a little hard luck recently.’ Brad wiped his face with a large, monogrammed, linen handkerchief. ‘Like my Pappy, bless his soul, used to say about the oil business, if you don’t like the waves, don’t go in the water.’

‘We’ve been doing some checking,’ Jonny said, ‘and we figure that in the last year you’ve stolen roughly seventy thousand dollars apiece from me and Rudy.’

‘You fellas must be kidding,’ Brad said. His face was almost purple now and his smile was fixed, as though it were permanently ironed on the florid, stretched skin over the damp collar. ‘You are kidding, aren’t you? This is some kind of practical joke. Jesus, a hundred and forty thousand dollars?’ ‘Brad…’ Rudolph said warningly.

‘Okay,’ Brad said. ‘I guess you’re not kidding.’ He sank down heavily on the flowered couch, a thick, round-shouldered, weary man against the gay colours of the best piece of furniture in the best suite of the best hotel in Dallas, Texas. ‘I’ll tell you how it happened.’

The way it happened was that Brad had met a starlet by the name of Sandra Dilson a year before when he had gone out to Hollywood to scout around for more investors. ‘A sweet, innocent young thing,’ were Brad’s words for Miss Dilson. He’d gone ape for her, he saidv but it was a long time before she’d let him touch her. To impress her he’d started buying

her jewellery. ‘You have no idea what they charge for stones out there in that town,’ Brad said. ‘It’s as though they printed their own money.’ And to impress her further, he’d bet heavily when they went to the races. ‘If you want to know the truth,’ Brad said, ‘that girl is walking around with about four hundred thousand dollars worth of jewellery on her that I paid for. And there were times in bed with her,’ he said defiantly, ‘that I felt it was worth it, every cent of it. I love her and I lost my head over her and in a way I’m proud of it and I’m willing to take the consequences.’

To find the money, Brad had started to falsify the monthly statements. He had reported prospecting and drilling for oil in holes that had been abandoned as dry or worthless years before and had hiked up the cost of equipment ten or even fifteen times what the actual price would have been. There was a bookkeeper in his office who was in on it, but whom he paid to keep quiet and to work with him. There had been some ominous inquiries from other people who invested with him, but up to now he had been able to fend them off.

‘How many investors have you got backing you at this moment?’ Johnny asked. ‘Fifty-two.’

‘Fifty-two’ idiots,’ Johnny said bitterly. ‘I never did anything like this before,’ Brad said ingenuously. ‘My reputation in Oklahoma and Texas is as clean as a hound’s tooth. You ask anyone. People trusted me. And they had a right to.’ ‘You’re going to go to jail, Brad,’ Rudolph said. ‘You wouldn’t do that to me, to your old friend, Brad, who sat next to you the day you graduated from college, would you Rudy?’ ‘I certainly would,’ Rudolph said.

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ Johnny said, ‘before we start talking about jail. I’m more interested in seeing if we can get

our money back than in sending this moron to jail.’

‘That’s it,’ Brad said eagerly, ‘that’s the way to talk. Sensibly.’

‘What have you got in the way of assets?’ Johnny asked.

‘Right now?’

‘That’s it,’ repeated Brad. ‘Now we’re talking business. It’s not as though I’m wiped out. I still have credit.’

‘When you walk out of this room, Brad,’ Rudolph said ‘you won’t be able to borrow ten cents from any bank in the country. I’ll see to that.’ He found it hard not to show his disgust. ‘Johnny…’ Brad appealed to Heath. ‘He’s vindictive. Talk

to him. I can understand he’s a little sore, but to be vindictive

like that…’

‘tasked you about your assets,’ Johnny said.

‘Well,’ Brad said, ‘on the books, it’s not so … so optimistic’ He grinned, hopefully. ‘But from time to time, I’ve been able to accumulate a little cash. For a rainy day, you might say. I’ve got it in safety-deposit boxes here and there. It’s not enough to pay off everybody, of course, but I could go pretty far towards paying you fellas back.

‘Is it Virginia’s money?’ Rudolph asked.

‘Virginia’s money!’ Brad snorted. ‘Her old man tied up the money he gave her so tight, I couldn’t buy a hot dog with any of it if I was dying of hunger in a ballpark.’

‘He was a lot smarter than we were,’ Rudolph said.

‘Jesus, Rudolph,’ Brad complained, ‘you don’t have to keep rubbing it in. I feel bad enough as it is.’

‘How much is there in cash?’ Johnny asked.

‘You understand, Johnny,’ Brad said, ‘it’s not on the company’s books anywhere or anything like that’

‘I understand,’ Johnny said. ‘How much?’

‘Close to a hundred thousand. I could give each of you nearly fifty thousand dollars on account. And I’d personally guarantee to pay the rest back later.’

‘How?’ Rudolph asked brutaEy.

“Well, there’s still some wells being dug …’ Rudolph could tell he was lying. ‘And then I could go to Sandra and explain how I’m in a little hole for the time being and ask her to give me back the jewellery, and…’

Rudolph shook his head, wonderingly. ‘You really believe she’d do that?’

‘She’s a fine little girl, Rudy. I have to introduce her to you

sometime.’

‘Oh, grow up, for Christ’s sake,’ Rudolph said.

‘You wait here,’ Johnny said to Brad. ‘I want to talk to Rudy alone.’ He ostentatiously took the papers he had been working on with him as he went towards Rudolph’s bedroom door.

‘You fellas don’t mind if I mix myself a little drink while I’m waiting, do you?’ Brad said.

Johnny closed the door behind them when he and Rudolph were in the bedroom. ‘We have a decision to make,’ he said. ‘If as he says he’s got close to a hundred thousand cash, we can take it and cut our losses. That is, about twenty thousand give or take a few dollars in one way or another. If we don’t take it, we have to report it and ask for a creditor’s meeting and

probably put him through bankruptcy. If we don’t start criminal proceedings. All his creditors would have an equal shot at the money, or at least pro rata, according to the size of their investments and the amount he actually owes them.’

‘Does he have the right to pay us off like that, preferentially?’