The hotel was comfortable enough, but the staff was indifferent. When, twenty minutes after the couple checked in, Jacob called the front desk to report that the TV wasn’t working, the phone rang eleven times before a bored-sounding clerk answered. Maintenance came six hours later.
Ellen’s mother was too busy fighting a kitchen fire to babysit Millie back home. Mrs. Boyle, a neighbor, filled in. She was a retired midwife and a fan of the Screamer Fairfax books.
“Anyway,” Ellen said, “the view’s not bad.”
He joined her at the window, through which they could see part of the Capitol dome. “Let’s hope I don’t leave it in handcuffs like Phil.”
“Welcome to D.C. Is this your first visit?”
Ter Horst, outside the committee room, took his hand in a mighty grip, like a firefighter grasping the wrist of a man hanging off the ledge of a burning building. His shaved head reflected light from every bump and declivity.
Ellen, her tweed suit freshly cleaned and pressed, nodded. “We hope to do some sightseeing while we’re here.”
“If I make bail.” Jacob wore his good pinstripe under a light topcoat and a hat with a brim he thought narrow, but Ellen said that was the fashion. “You don’t want to look like one of those gangsters in the Kefauver hearings.”
The lawyer exuded confidence from every pore. “Don’t worry; they’ll start easy. Feel you out.”
“You mean lull me into a false sense of security.”
“We’ve been all through it. You know what to expect. If they throw you a curve, let me take a swing at it.”
The atmosphere in the vast building was like the first day of school: same ambient din of cross-conversations, same chill air, same smell of cheap floor wax.
Same fear of bullies.
He hung his coat in an open cloak room, found space for his hat in a line of them, like heads staked outside the Tower of London, and shambled on along the Last Mile.
The place was built to remind visitors of their own insignificance in the corridors of power: The ceilings even in the passages were a mile high, the stair treads so deep they made him feel like a small child tiptoeing to a floor from which he’d been banned, the size of the hearing room gargantuan despite the throngs of people who seemed crowded into it; whenever the door opened to let someone in or out, the glimpse inside made him sick at heart. Ellen snaked her arm inside his in what was no doubt an attempt to offer strength, but which felt as if she let go she’d be swept away by a riptide. He could feel her heart thud.
Or maybe it was his. He had butterflies in his stomach for the first time since combat.
Which was what this was; except he was armed only with an attorney, not a BAR he’d dismantled and put back together so often he could depend on it absolutely.
They sat in a waiting room that was possibly the smallest room in the building, but he felt naked in it. Ter Horst, seated next to him on a hard bench, smiled as Jacob fumbled out a cigarette, and offered him a light. His client had trouble keeping the cigarette in the flame.
The lawyer put away his pigskin lighter. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t. I didn’t. But it was the only thing left to be driven to. I’m already a drunk.”
“My fault,” Ellen said. “I thought it would distract him from the bottle. We have a little girl, you know.”
“Indubitably I do. I intend to draw her like a gun if it becomes necessary.”
She glared. “You won’t drag her into this.”
“She won’t be subpoenaed.” He turned to Jacob. “You’re not a defendant. They’re only after publicity. No one wants to put anyone in jail. Give them a good show and they’ll all be after you to ghost their memoirs.”
“Tell that to Phil Scarpetti. He’s locked up in Atlanta for the rest of the session. If this had happened while he was still on parole, he’d be back in Sing Sing.”
“He was stupid. He should have hired an attorney, who would have stopped him from walking out. There’s nothing to be gained from making these people mad.”
“I tried to contact him before he packed his toothbrush. We parted badly last time and I wanted to apologize and offer encouragement. His phone number was discontinued, my letters were returned, and when I went to see him, he’d moved. He must’ve checked into one of those crummy hotels he’s always painting.”
“Embarrassed, I imagine. That ‘confirmed bachelor’ crack was low. It’s no small thing to be exposed as a homosexual coast-to-coast.”
“It wasn’t that. He told me what he was. That’s why we fought. He thought I was judging him and I guess I was.”
“You weren’t, Jakey,” Ellen said. “Phil just got tired of hating himself and decided to hate you instead.”
“Hates himself? He has—had—a great sense of humor.”
She smiled. “You can be such a child. Don’t be offended; it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you.”
“I was hoping it was my rugged good looks.”
Ter Horst interrupted the domestic banter.
“If it means anything, Scarpetti’s the hero of the day. He did what a lot of blowhards swore they’d do, then chickened out in front of the microphone. The American Civil Liberties Union would elect him president tomorrow.”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to him.”
Ellen patted his hand. “Stop worrying about Phil. He’s a grown man, and he survived prison once. You need to concentrate on yourself.”
“Excellent advice,” Ter Horst said.
“This is the first time I’ve concentrated on anyone else since this thing started. I don’t know why I’m here. All I do is write books. I’m an entertainer—I can’t quite bring myself to say author—not a Fifth Column saboteur or a drug-pusher or even a guy who sells French postcards on a school playground. What do they want with me, anyway?”
Ter Horst got his lighter back out and lit a gold-tipped cigarette. “They don’t want you at all. As far as they’re concerned, you’re not even small potatoes. They want what you represent. And they only want that because they can show slides of half-naked women and steal the spotlight from Adlai Stevenson and Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
“I should’ve stayed in the army.”
“No refuge there. Joe McCarthy’s squawking about Communists in the armed services. Television’s got eighteen hours to fill and they’re running out of Charlie Chan movies. Sooner or later the viewers will get tired of looking at ugly politicians and demand more soap operas and quiz shows. We just have to wait this one out.”
“Like Scarpetti,” Jacob said.
The sergeant-at-arms, brush-cut and straight-backed, opened the door from the other side and called out a name. A man wearing a creased tie on a cheap cotton shirt got up from his bench and went inside. He looked like a patient going in for major surgery. The door drifted shut on the drone of voices within.
The occupants of the waiting room were a cross-section of America in Life magazine: Seamed-faced farmer types in Christmas ties and Sunday suits, Brilliantined used-car dealers in window-check sportcoats, librarians in buns and mannish suits, a nondescript party in blue serge with a briefcase on his lap who might have been a CPA or a hired killer for the Mob. Jacob couldn’t distinguish between the Friendly Witnesses and those who were on trial for their livelihoods; for their lives.
Ellen sensed his mounting panic. She patted his hand again. How quickly and thoroughly they all became mothers.
So far, Jacob and Phil were the only ones subpoenaed from Blue Devil; there were a dozen houses yet to be heard from, and summons-servers had only so much drive. Cliff Cutter was inaccessible, dragging his bones through desert sage aboard a tough little mustang in quest of source material. Hugh Brock, that strange little man, had committed himself to a private mental hospital to sweat out his demons, and Phoebe Sternwalter was probably too small and frail-looking to beat up on in public. The genteel whodunits of the Burt team could hardly be blamed for the salacious covers that had bought them comfortable homes in the country (in different postal zones, needless to say).
Robin Elk had returned to England; to administer his father’s affairs, he said, while the old gent was in hospital awaiting the Inevitable. There might have been some truth in the excuse, but it didn’t change Jacob’s opinion of him. He’d had the guts to survive a German POW camp, but not to face a housewife from the Midwest.
Damn the politicians. They made cowards out of people who under other circumstances might have been heroes.
No one seemed to know what had become of Hank Stratton. After his TV show was canceled, two low-budget movies adapted from his books were shelved pending results of the hearings. Rumors ranged from voluntary service in Korea to r-and-r in a whorehouse in Nevada. Jacob couldn’t fault him in either case. A blank page was frightening enough; when they took away your words, what was left?
He was putting out his third cigarette in a heavy stand when a man came in from the stairs and sat. He was slightly built in a brown suit cut for a heftier man—the knees bagged nearly to his shins—with smears of gray ash on each lapel and a burn hole in one sleeve. His clothes—weather-beaten hat, scuffed brown oxfords, a wide necktie with a hula girl painted on it—screamed pawnshop.
Pawnshop. It was like a blow from an open palm.
The man hadn’t aged. He saw him as remembered, behind a high old-fashioned counter in a room stuffed with old furniture, musty books, toasters in stacks, firearms—and a glossy black Remington Streamliner portable typewriter. A twentieth-century Bob Cratchit in sleeve-protectors and a green eyeshade, with a stumpy revolver in his fist.
He shuddered.
Ellen said, “What? Someone walk over your grave?”
“Close. I just saw an old acquaintance. Linus Pickering. You wouldn’t know him. I threatened him with a pistol once and threw a brick through his window.”