“I LIKE IT,” WENDELL Porter said. “But I hate it. The Porter Group has always stayed within the law.”
They were in his office on the second floor of the house on Whittier—Porter, Enid, and Rick. The consumer advocate was half reclining with an open folder in his lap on a backless Victorian couch that reminded Rick of the one in a psychiatrist’s office in a Jerry Lewis film someone had dragged him to see. It was a small room with one window, untidy bookshelves, and a cheap pine desk with a cracked top and warped drawers where Wendell claimed he’d written Hell On Wheels in longhand in a Nifty pad. Both the desk and the chair behind it were heaped with books and bound copies of the Congressional Record. The office had the contrived disarray of its occupant’s trick haircut and shabby Ivy League dress. In reality Rick knew Porter did most of his work in a neat anonymous room in the same building where Caroline kept her legal offices. The garret was for receiving visitors.
“Within the law, always,” Rick agreed. “Where’s it got you? Waiting for the telephone to ring from Washington like an ugly girl on prom night.”
“I think most ugly girls give up before the actual night.” Porter’s avuncular smile made it clear that homey comparisons were his territory. “I’d rather we held off on this kind of action until all legal resources have been exhausted.”
“It’s a misdemeanor at worst. There’ll be a fine and a citation for not having a permit. You couldn’t buy the same publicity for the amount of the fine.”
“Why not apply for a permit?” This was Enid’s contribution. Rick had declined to broach his idea until Porter was due in the office this Friday morning.
“We wouldn’t get it,” Rick said. “Cavanagh’s running for the Senate. He’s not about to allow an eyesore on Grand Boulevard. If he even gets wind of it he’ll slap us with an injunction, and if we defy that we’ll be in real trouble. If we don’t ask, the city can’t say no.”
Porter said, “I’d like to hear Caroline’s opinion.”
“She’ll say no.”
He looked at Rick. “What makes you think so?”
“She’s your lawyer. If she were my lawyer and she advised me to go ahead with a scheme like this, I’d fire her.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I went against her counsel. All the same I don’t like going behind her back.”
“That’s your decision, sir. But if she knows, her assistant will too, and that’s five people in on the secret. If it leaks to the press early the event will lose all its impact.”
“… Only if four of them are dead. I see you know your Franklin.” Porter studied the folder in his lap, in which he had plainly lost interest. “It’s medieval. No, it’s older than that, it’s Roman. The victorious emperor parading his prisoners and spoils down the Appian Way. Only we’re hardly victorious, are we? What do you think, Enid?”
“I think it’s harebrained. If it goes wrong it’ll follow us around for years. Porter’s Folly.”
“Okay, that’s one vote against and one for. Mine seems to be the deciding ballot.” He returned his attention to Rick. “Is it feasible? Can you get your people to go along?”
“Thanks to Enid I’ve spent the last couple of weeks establishing contact with services in the area. When you come down to it, it’s a simple tow job. It will run us a couple of thousand.”
“Enid keeps the books.”
“I’ll draw it out of discretionary.” She’d resigned herself to defeat.
Rick said, “It’d help if we could count on one favorable media source to cover the story, preferably television. Do we have anyone?”
“We’ve always gotten a fair shake from Ven Marshall at Channel Four. An impartial press is favorable when your cause is just.” He managed to say it without pomposity.
“We’ll call him an hour before we roll.”
Porter closed the folder and rose. “Set it up for next Saturday.”
“A weekday’s better,” Rick said. “We want to catch Fred Donner in his office.” Fred Donner was chairman of the board of General Motors.
“How much time do you need?”
“Wednesday morning’s good. That way we can make the news at noon, six, and eleven.”
“Wednesday morning, then.” He smiled. “Amazing what a little jolt in an automobile will do for your sensibilities, isn’t it?”
“I considered suing you for whiplash, but that was before I met Mrs. Porter.”
Mention of Caroline swung the mood back to business. “I always wanted to be in a parade. Should I participate?”
“No.” Enid was firm. “I’ll make an appointment for you in Washington that day. If I can’t get anyone else I’ll line up a Senate page. That way when it blows up in our face you can blame it on your overeager subordinates.”
Porter became grave. “Kennedy’s death changed everything. Doing good never meant being devious.”
Rick would have corrected him, but couldn’t think of a way to do it without blowing his cover.
After Porter left, Enid locked the office door. “Lee thinks knocking is Establishment,” she said. “I assume you want to keep this secret from the others as long as possible.”
“Okay, so you hate the idea. If anything goes wrong you can throw me to the wolves.”
“Maybe it’s not the idea I hate. Maybe I resent the new kid storming in and taking over like the rest of us have been standing around all this time with our thumbs up our noses.”
“You’re not that petty.”
“You don’t know how petty I am. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough to look forward to seeing you every day.”
It was like shooting craps in the dark. He couldn’t tell how he was doing. The sunlight coming through the window behind her haloed her dark hair in red. She was wearing a light cotton dress with a dusting of tiny blue polka-dots and a half-slip underneath, silhouetted against the light.
“Mister,” she said, “I’m not the least attracted to you. I like them dark and mature.”
“You just described Wendell.”
“I just described LBJ and Gregory Peck and half the male population. You’re in the other half. If I wanted cute and boyish I’d date Ricky Nelson.”
“Do you really think I’m cute?”
She pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about. Just because you look like you belong in an Archie comic book doesn’t mean you have to act like it. Got a sampler to cover that?”
“We’ll have dinner, talk about Wednesday.”
“I thought you were dating Pammie.”
“Pammie’s a buddy. What do you say? I’ll even wear long pants.”
“Wednesday’s your baby. I’ve got an office to run. I’ll start with a press release apologizing for Wednesday and saying it was arranged and carried out without Wendell’s knowledge or consent. No sense waiting until the last minute.” She unlocked the door. “Don’t you have calls to make?”
“I’d better make them in here. Pammie’s got ears she should leave to science.” He lifted the telephone, standard and all, off the desk and carried it to the couch, but he didn’t sit. “Is it the idea you don’t like, or just me?”
“I don’t like Soupy Sales either, but I don’t let it get in the way of my responsibilities. You’re just stopping in on your way to the White House. Some of us have to live here. Your cute prank could undo years of hard work.”
“There’s that word again. I’m wearing you down. I’ll make a bet with you: Dinner with me Wednesday night if the thing comes off.”
“Define ‘comes off.’”
“At least one favorable comment from someone in authority, in the form of a telegram or a telephone call, after we make the news. In politics that’s as good as an invitation to come in and talk turkey.”
“What do I get if that doesn’t happen?”
“It’s what Wendell gets. My resignation, along with a signed confession that I undertook the whole mess on my own, without consulting anyone.”
“Deal.” She spat in her palm and held it out.
He looked at the hand. “Where’d you pick that up?”
“Sister Mary Pacifica. She coached the girls’ softball team at Blessed Sacrament.”
They shook.
After she left, Rick spent an hour on the couch with the telephone standard in his lap. He wasn’t listening to himself during the last half-dozen calls; by then he had his spiel down like the Lord’s Prayer. Only one of the people he spoke with refused the transaction, and that was at the beginning when he was still feeling his way.
Pammie was waiting for him in the downstairs office. For an instant he thought he had a visitor. She had on a yellow dress with bows on the shoulder straps and a pair of red pumps whose three-inch heels had her swaying like a tug in a heavy sea. She’d brushed her hair down from its customary Alice the Goon topknot and tied it with red ribbons a shade off from the shoes. She was holding a sheaf of papers to her bosom.
“I typed them up,” she said. “My penmanship’s pretty hard to follow.”
“Typed what up?” He took his place at the card table.
“My poems, silly. I was up most of the night.” She laid the sheaf in front of him.
He riffled the edges. There were thirty pages easy. “I’ll have to take them home.”
“Of course. You’ll need to, like, evaluate them. Reading poetry takes almost as much concentration as writing it.”
He smiled and set the papers aside. She was still standing in front of the table.
“Well?” she said.
“Well.”
She stuck her arms out to the sides and twirled around. She caught herself before she fell off the heels. “How do you like it? I only wore it once, to my high school graduation party. Pop bought it for me.”
“It sure is yellow.”
“Saffron, the man called it. At HughesHatcherSufferin.” It came out as one word. “I don’t wear dresses much. They bunch up on me when I sit down.”
“It’s nice.” She looked like a school bus.
“Free for lunch?” she asked. “I mean, this is no place to waste a dress.”
“I’ve got a lot of calls to make; this survey thing. I’m going to have to work through lunch.”
“After work, then. You’ll be starving.”
“I’ve got an appointment.”
“Oh. Politics?”
“Sort of.” He was planning to wash and wax the Camaro.
“Dinner? Corky’s Sandwich Shop is open late Fridays.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he got up. “Let’s go to lunch.”
“What about your calls?”
“They can wait. We have to talk.”
“Oh.”
“Corky’s Sandwich Shop sounded like a good idea,” he said.
She looked down at her poems. “You don’t have to feed me, Rick. I’ve been dumped on an empty stomach and I’ve been dumped over a meal and dumped is dumped.”
“Nobody’s dumping anybody.” It sounded like an admission even to him.
“Stupid cow.”
“What?”
She said it again. “That’s what somebody called me once. He was right. One ballgame and a steak sandwich and Pammie’s ready to go steady. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
She snatched up the pages and ran out. The front door banged.
Enid was looking at him over her Smith-Corona when he came out into the entryway.
“Say it,” he said.
“‘Pammie’s a buddy.’” She returned to her typing.