HE HAD CALLED FENSTEMAKER’S country place, but he had not thought to talk personally with the Governor. Now he wondered if it had been a mistake. Barging in like this might only cause confusion, and further agitate George Giffen. And perhaps Rinemiller had been right — right for the wrong reasons, thinking only of himself, but a source of sound advice nonetheless. Why should he have presumed? It was really none of his business. Let George carry his burden round with him until he had told enough people so that the story was absorbed by the local folklore, became a part of the public domain. Let Fenstemaker find out on his own good time. He wondered how all this should concern Roy Sherwood.
The little roadster ground up the hills; Giffen kept his eyes on the road, looking unhappy. Roy wished he had thought to talk the matter over with Willie.
The Governor’s country mansion, a hideous Gothic-cum-Federalist affair, stuck out on the terraced hillside. Giffen stared in wonder; to his innocent gaze the gaucherie signified only wealth, vast power, a way of life unrevealed. For Roy it was merely an eyesore. The grotesque, the absurd, the bizarre — he’d grown up on it, new-rich vulgarity leavening his environment so completely that the conception itself had become a tired cliché, no more tormenting to his senses than the crude wink of an old streetwalker.
His vision of real wealth, affluence — the abundant Life — was conditioned on a level of experience entirely remote from his own. It had nothing to do with pigeon shoots, parachute jumps, twenty-five-year-old whiskey or replicas of rambling summer houses seen at Newport. Even the private railroad car — his grandfather’s — still parked alongside the cattle ramp on a spur near home — had no part in shaping his own touchstones of opulence. He thought about this as Giffen steered the roadster through the front gate of the Governor’s property. He thought back, attempting to lend a single identifying symbol to the idea, and finally he hit on it … laughed aloud … wondering what primrosed image of bearskin rugs and cerise Cadillacs clouded Rinemiller’s mind … For Roy it had been simply a radio program in his youth, a harmless interval of exotica falling between the Metropolitan Opera and the special overseas broadcasts from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. Tortured Saturday afternoons, he remembered, in Fort Stockton. Just off the El Paso highway and the bald slopes of the mountains. You’ll know you’re there by the sound of the spluttering radio … He had dreamed of creamy-complexioned women in short skirts and fur hats, stepping out of prewar Packard convertibles, enormously chic in the shade of monogrammed roadhouse canopies … He moved his lips, repeating the words aloud:
“… From Frank Daly’s Meadowbrook, just off the Pompton Turnpike (was it Merritt Parkway?) near Little Old New York we bring you the music of Charlie Barnett and his …”
Giffen stared at him in astonishment.
“What’d you say, Roy?”
They were parked in an open space near the main entrance to the house. There was music coming from inside and from loudspeakers nesting in the trees, the sounds blending to produce a notably unpleasant effect of mismated stereophonics.
“Let’s go see old Arthur,” Roy said.
They left the roadster and headed up the front steps. Roy peered through the blinds: two secretaries labored over electric typewriters, strangely empurpled in the fluorescent glare. He turned and walked round the side of the house, Giffen at his heels. They did not see Fenstemaker right off — not until they were nearly directly upon him. He lay floating on a brightly colored air mattress at the far end of the pool, the breeze stirring lambent blue eddies against his large arms. He lay face down, big nose nearly touching the water. He wore khaki swim shorts; a checkered golf cap was pulled down almost to where the ears joined the skull. There was even, Roy noted, a buckle on the back of the cap.
They stepped up on the blue marble surface and walked round to the other side, coming to a stop a few feet away from where the Governor lay. He still did not seem aware of their presence.
“Afternoon,” Roy said.
Fenstemaker opened one eye and squinted in the sun. “Goddam,” he said. He reached down at his side, fumbled with a pair of dark glasses, and set them on his nose. He paddled over to the bank and slid his big body across from mattress to marble. Then he looked up at them again, sitting with his feet dangling in the water.
“You should’ve let me know you were comin’ out,” he said. “Planned a barbecue or somethin’ …”
“You know George Giffen?”
“Sure … Sure I know George …” Fenstemaker extended a great freckled hand. Giffen grabbed it and said something incomprehensible.
“Get ya’ll a drink?”
They shook their heads. Roy lit a cigarette and looked over the grounds. Giffen maintained the semi-crouch position he had assumed when bending down to shake hands with the Governor. Roy dragged a canvas chair to the bank of the pool and sat down. Then, with as little prefatory comment as possible, he made George repeat his story. As George droned on, Fenstemaker lowered himself in and out of the water, gasping happily as if being immersed in steam. He did not seem really interested in the story, although he did appear vaguely pleased about something when Giffen was finished.
“Would you repeat all this in court?” he said suddenly.
Giffen stammered for a moment. “… If you think it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
“Got no choice,” the Governor said. “I’m gonna call the District Attorney in just a few minutes. Could you stay here and talk to him if he comes out tonight? Stay and have dinner with me?”
An ecstatic grin spread across Giffen’s face. “Yessir,” he said. “… Sure I will if you think it’s the right —”
“I’m about ready to see that son of a bitch is put away. With George’s testimony, I think it’ll be a cinch … You told him hell no — that right? You’re the key to this whole business, George, you got to realize that …”
“That right?” George said. He gazed at Fenstemaker with unquestioned devotion.
“Sure as hell is … People damn fortunate to have a man like you in the Legislature. Gonna look tremendous to the folks back in your district, too. Gonna work out perfect all the way. It’s a goddam bird’s nest on the ground …”
They talked some more. Roy insisted that he had to get back, and agreed to drive the roadster. Fenstemaker said he would bring Giffen into town next morning in the limousine. George would spend the night and they could have a good long talk. “You mind having to miss your party over there at the Fielding place?” he said. George shook his head …
“Whatever you say, Governor …”
“That so?” Fenstemaker said, vastly pleased. “Well then why don’t you walk right up that little rock path there and tap on those glass doors and tell one of my girls to bring us something to drink … Scotch all right? Roy? … Tell ’em Scotch and one of those fizz bottles and a pitcher of water … And tell ’em to put some different music on that phonograph …”
George stood in front of them, moving his head up and down; he turned and walked quickly toward the house. The Governor pulled off his dark glasses and began talking rapidly to Roy:
“How’d you get him out here? Have any trouble?”
“No … Willie got the story first. I just —”
“I was worried. Goddam I was worried. I been out here all afternoon wonderin’ what in hell I ought to do. Ain’t that somethin’? An honest man. I’d have thought Rinemiller would succeed in sellin’ him the wrong load of cotton. You must’ve got to him before —”
“You knew about all this. How —”
“I got my sources,” the Governor said.
“But how’d you know he talked with Rinemiller?”
“ ’Cause Rinemiller called that fella early this afternoon. From the Fielding place …”
“How’d you —”
“Well now I don’t tap lines, and I don’t tape-record conversations — but I’ll sure as hell listen in on one. Hell! I’ve had a suite in that hotel for years. Half the help there owe their jobs to me. Including the switchboard operator.”
Fenstemaker lay in a hammock and pulled the golf cap down over his eyes; he curled his lips slightly and sucked on a tooth.
“What’d he tell him?” Roy said. “What was the phone call about? You say Alfred called in to town?”
“He called to throw a scare into that lobbyist. Told him Giffen was goin’ around tellin’ people he’d been offered a bribe. But that he’d managed to shut him up … And now he was ready to shake him down for George’s share — and more. He chewed the fella good and proper, apparently. Scared hell out of him. I don’t think the lobbyist was just playin’ along, either. Didn’t sound like it.”
“But why,” said Roy, “… why would he come to you with that tape one day and then turn right around and try to buy off somebody else on the next?”
“Coonass,” the Governor said. “Coonass operator’s all he is. First he tries to sweat me into doin’ somethin’ for him — tries to bargain with me for Jesus sake. Gets the idea I’m just a coonass tradin’ politician. That I’d make a little deal just to keep the boat from bein’ rocked. He never once thought I’d try to haul Rinemiller in before a grand jury. He thought I’d rather have that tape to hold over Rinemiller’s head. He figured me for a cheap pol — that son of a bitch just doesn’t know cheap pols — figurin’ I’d want Rinemiller runnin’ around loose and ready to do what I told him to do more than Rinemiller stuck off in prison for a few years … Ah, goddam. All the time he was goin’ right on tryin’ to bribe himself some more votes … Ain’t he in for a kick-in-the-pants surprise now!”
Giffen was coming back down the path carrying a tray of bottled drinks and glasses.
“What about Rinemiller?” Roy said quickly. “What are you going to do about Rinemiller?”
“I’m not sure,” the Governor said, rolling off the hammock to greet George.
“Hey, you needn’t of done that,” he said. “One of the girls could do the servin’.”
Giffen set the tray down, smiling, silent. The Governor poured drinks for them. Roy sat back in the canvas chair; he watched the hills change color; he picked burrs and dartweed off his socks and from inside his trouser legs. There were no more heroes, he thought. There were only the fallen clergymen like Rinemiller, honest and simple people like Giffen, and the pretenders like himself. And the Fenstemakers, of course, who couldn’t care less. Heroic attitudes didn’t amount to much for the Fenstemakers. They were fakirs, medicine men, illusionists — making miracles with mirrors and sleight of hand and finding, suddenly, that their dross was somehow incredibly turned to gold. What an act! Who the hell needed a hero?
He finished off the drink and got to his feet. The Governor talked with Giffen, rattling on implausibly, without relevance, indulging himself: the witch doctor in repose.
“It’s damn good Scotch whiskey,” Fenstemaker was saying. “The best there is …”
“I’d like to try some in a snifter at room temperature,” Giffen said.
That was giving the old man what for … Now where in heaven had George ever heard an expression like that? His liquor salesman possibly. Room temperature? The whole goddam planet was cooling off to room temperature. Fenstemaker’s cosmic sleight of hand. No more heroes; not even any real sinners; sin was simply dullness and bad faith; heroism an empty gesture.
“It’s really the fusel oil in whiskey that gives you a hangover,” Giffen went on learnedly. “The alcohol insufficiently distilled …”
“It’s that goddam fusel oil all right,” the Governor said. “It must’ve been what ruined so many cedar choppers out here in these hills. Years ago. Jesus I remember that busthead stuff they distilled … Insufficiently as you say … It nearly crippled you … Poor boy’s gout was what it was …”