12

February 1976

The triple drawing room, each part having been a single vast drawing room in each of three houses before Teel bought them and knocked them together, was ablaze with jewels, military decorations, white shirt fronts, and the shine of silver wine coolers. Teel had beefed up her Thursday night list. She had brought the Vice-President up from Washington on a flying carpet of blandishments with the new Inspector-General of the CIA. There were Californian, Italian, and French movie queens—all three female. She had lured in the world’s most stultifyingly famous celebrity, the American Secretary of State. There was a prima assoluta and the chief executives of two oil companies. The Russian ambassador, the Spanish ambassador and a chief of state of a central African nation embellished the room. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decorated like a bulky Christmas tree, dominated the center of the room near the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Senators moved like pickpockets through a stadium crowd. One of them was Hobart Willmott Simms, “our next President,” accompanied by his lovely sister, newly arrived from Bimini, Rimini or Oz.

Jonas, Dawes, and Kranak came out of the silk-lined elevator that opened directly into the enormous, crowded third floor at a moment when the room seemed most dazzling. Twelve feet away they were faced by Teel’s spectacular beauty as she chatted with the Vice-President and the Joint Chiefs chairman. Teel was wearing a heavy silk dress of luminous amethyst and $237,000 worth of stolen but reset diamonds and sapphires, which created an unforgettable display of deeply burnt pink against satin-black, all of it set afire by the cold, shining aureoled gemstones.

Jonas got their rented topcoats into the arms of a Victorian tweeny, uniformed with a white, starched cap, who hovered at the elevator door. Dawes looked sinister in a batwing black tie. Kranak looked like a cruel banker behind a black butterfly. Jonas wore a figured black four-in-hand by Cardin. All the men wore their new post-China names: Jonas was Anthony Jones; occupation, cricketeer. Dawes was Patrick Kavanagh; occupation, decorator. Kranak was, of course, Chandler Shapiro, importer.

“Who is the colored girl with the giant brass?” Kranak whispered to Jonas.

“Colored girl? Oh. Her! That’s my sister.”

“Introduce us to her.”

“Later. Not while she’s with the Veep. There’s plenty of people here you have to meet.” Jonas began to move them around the room, passing them like fire buckets from face to face and group to group. No matter where Kranak stood in the room he always seemed to be gaping at Teel and all those rocks. Jonas left Kranak standing alone. Jonas went across the rooms to join Enid and Enid’s brother. Dawes got something going with the Italian movie queen.

Kranak saw Enid across the crowd. Three times their eyes locked, but he did not acknowledge seeing her. She stood this brutality as long as she could, then she took Bart by the wrist, excused them for just a moment, and led her brother through the crowd to where Kranak gaped at everything.

“Oh, hello,” Kranak said.

“Bart, this is Kranak. You know all about Kranak. Kranak? This is my brother, Senator Simms.”

Kranak was horrified that she could endanger them this way. “There is some mistake,” he said. “My name is Chandler Shapiro.”

She grinned like a malicious little bitch. This was the brother. Wait a minute! Was it possible? Had he just stumbled on discovering the leader of the whole fucking American guerrilla movement? A senator! A senator who was going to run for President! You know all about Kranak! She said it. She wouldn’t have had the balls to say a thing like that if he hadn’t given his okay. You know all about Kranak!!

Bart was not able to speak. He held his hands clenched in his jacket pockets as if they were grasping single-shot Liberators. He radiated loathing from fish-like, gelid eyes. Kranak held out his hand to be taken. Bart ignored it.

“I’m not feeling very well, Enid,” Bart said. “Will you stand out on the back terrace in the air with me?” He drew Enid away through the crowd. She looked back at Kranak in dismay, frightened that she would never see him again.

Teel watched them as she moved from group to group. She watched Dawes talking to a rather drab woman whom she had never seen before. Dawes was talking intently; the woman concentrating as if she were making mental notes to be repeated. Jonas was at the far end of the room talking easily with the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The Chairman looked uneasy, even worried.

Kranak was shaken. This man was the leader; there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt about that. He had no evidence but he didn’t need any more evidence. He knew. Out of the entire movement, he was the only one who knew and he was going to make that pay off, to get him some big edges. But the leader was a white man. Kranak couldn’t understand why there were so many niggers at this party. The hostess was blacker than anyone here but she seemed very, very different, which shows what a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels can do, he thought. She was no nigger. She was a gorgeous, rich, and famous woman and suddenly he wanted to fuck her. At that moment, she appeared at his elbow.

“Enjoying yourself, Shapiro?” she asked absent-mindedly.

“Oh. Yeah. Great.”

“There is something I have wanted to ask you all evening. But it is so personal.”

“That’s all right. Go ahead.”

“I don’t know why I—of all people—should flinch at asking such a question. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it. Episcopalians do ask Presbyterians if they are Methodists.”

“It’s all right. I assure you.”

“All right then. I will. Are you one of us?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you black, Mr. Shapiro?”

He didn’t think he had understood. But he could hear the question over again quite clearly. He stared at her, appalled.

“Oh, Mr. Shapiro! I am sorry!”

He held himself stiffly. “I am a full-blooded Lipan Apache.”

“You are? Well! There you are!”

“Pardon?”

“I am so relieved,” Teel said. “I thought I had made an awful gaffe. But even though you aren’t black you aren’t white either, are you? Shapiro is a wild name for an Amerind.” She pressed his upper arm lightly and moved away to a group near the door. Jonas and Dawes came up behind Kranak and said the time had come to be moving along.

When they got out on the street, the enormity of what she had said to him began to suffocate him. He shook Jonas off and hailed a cab. He leaped into it alone, slammed the door, and snarled at the driver to move it.

It had been a terrible night for Kranak. A woman for whom he had been willing to overlook certain things he had never tolerated in his life before, for whom he was beginning to get a terrific feeling, had asked him, very matter of fact, if he happened to be a nigger. Jesus! That was as bad as he would have thought anything could ever get. Then he had happened to discover who was the absolute leader of the entire FF/AFF movement—a United States Senator, a Presidential candidate! He couldn’t believe that what had been so absolutely fail-safe had opened right before his eyes, and then—just when he had the biggest edge of anybody in the entire Western Hemisphere, just when he had real information for once in his fucking life which could really move him to the very top—he suddenly remembered that this man—this leader—was the brother of the girl he had beaten up and thrown out on her ass. He had cut his own throat. He had cut his own throat, fahcrissake. The brother—the leader of the entire FF/AFF movement—wouldn’t even shake hands with him! He could have him thrown out some fucking window. If he wasn’t careful his life wouldn’t be worth a dime.