Jacob shook his head. “Who’d have thought being a fairy is worse than being a thief?”
“Cheer up.” Gilbert Ter Horst was a poster boy for chronic optimism. They sat with Ellen in a red vinyl-upholstered booth in a bar called the Veto Lounge in Chevy Chase. The waitresses wore net stockings and heels, and Tony Bennett sang from invisible speakers. The place was nearly full as dusk piled up outside and everyone seemed to be starting to have a good time. The attorney drank a vodka martini with a twist, Jacob Scotch on the rocks. A glass of Chablis stood virtually untouched in front of Ellen.
“They’re done with you,” the lawyer went on. “You didn’t rise to their bait. You said a simple ‘No’ to the question St. John had been sitting on like a hen, and she couldn’t get rid of you fast enough. She made a common mistake, thinking homosexuals only know other homosexuals.”
“How come she believed me?”
“She expected you to blow your top; it’s the oldest courtroom trick in the book. Indignation is a smoke screen for the guilty. But you couldn’t be shaken. In TV parlance, you skewed honest. Don’t think those camera hogs aren’t wise to that.”
“You thought she was going to ask if we smoked marijuana.”
“That was a miscalculation, I admit. After what that prig from Delaware said about profanity, I thought they’d steer clear of calling you a fag. Well, it all came out better than I expected, and after your little confession I wouldn’t be surprised if your sales figures double. Readers will think you write from experience.”
“Who gives a shit? I helped Uncle Sam heap dirt on Phil’s grave.”
Ellen said, “Stop beating yourself up, Jake. All you could do was tell the truth.”
“What’s going to happen to him in Atlanta?”
“He’s in isolation; standard procedure.” The lawyer sipped from his funnel glass. “He’ll do six months tops, and the feds take better care of inmates than anywhere else in the penal system. He’ll probably put on weight.”
“But how will he eat when he gets out?”
“He’ll find work. He isn’t the first queer to make his living with a brush.”
“Jakey! Don’t!” She grabbed his arm.
He let go of Ter Horst’s lapels. His Scotch had dumped over. Lozenges of half-melted ice wallowed in a puddle dripping off the edge of the table. Heads turned their way.
The lawyer straightened his jacket. “I’m glad you saved that for here.”
Jacob slid out of his seat, scooped money from his wallet, and laid it on a dry patch of table. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You know where I am if you want to sue.”
The House Select Committee on Pornography and Juvenile Delinquency adjourned at the end of its session in September 1953, with a recommendation that the paperback book industry police itself or face pressure from government. Gilbert Ter Horst called it a strategic withdrawal. Those committee members who were up for re-election returned to their home states to campaign, including Margery St. John, who beat her Republican challenger with fifty-three percent of the vote.
Jacob said, “She’s going to be the first woman president.”
“That or a lady wrestler,” said Ellen.
“So what’s the verdict?” he asked Robin Elk.
“Verdict?” The publisher, sporting a fresh London pallor, sat in the leather-upholstered conversation area in his office playing with a new cane with Queen Elizabeth II’s crowned head on top in silver, a Coronation souvenir.
“The Great Cleanup. Where do we stand?”
“Almost precisely where we stood at the beginning. Congress can’t tamper with the First Amendment, but just to mollify the country preachers and the PTA, the industry is toning down its covers: more clothes on the women, less blood on the floor. That’s all the blighters really cared about, sensational images they could show on the news. The books’ contents remain unchanged.”
“What’s Blue Devil doing?”
“No more paintings. We’re using a pen-and-ink drawing on The Lazy Profession. Splendid title, by the way.”
“Thanks. I was sure you’d shoot it down.” He was coldly professional with Elk. Had the hearings gone a different direction, the publisher would have dropped him as fast as he had his star artist.
Elk was unmoved by his demeanor. “Who but Jack Holly would suggest that most criminals choose their path simply because they’re indolent?”
“Phil Scarpetti, that’s who. He was my tutor.” He’d sent Scarpetti a letter in care of the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. It hadn’t been returned, but there had been no reply. He’d be released soon. “So the Philistines won after all.”
“It’s a concession, but hardly dishonorable. The comic-book publishers have agreed to censor themselves. Television will follow suit. Lash Logan, Private Eye wouldn’t get past the front door today, much less onto the air.”
“What’s Stratton up to?”
“Vanished without a trace. I’ve heard rumors about Korea and Tijuana. I regard Tijuana as more likely.”
“The worse his luck gets, the better I like him.” Jacob drank coffee. He hadn’t had a drop of liquor since that day in the Veto Lounge. “Won’t pen-and-ink look cheap?”
“Nothing like. We snatched this young man away from the Saturday Evening Post. Early sketches promise a dramatic effect, without a suggestion of sadism. Technically it’s perfect.” He sighed.
“What’s wrong with perfect?”
“One misses the exaggerated proportions, the bright colors, the suggestion of life in the raw; the crudity, I suppose. It spoke to the belly, not the brain. The cover for The Lazy Profession could hang in a gallery, where anyone with the price of admission can look at it.”
“Anyone always could. It cost two bits.”
“As a customer, I wouldn’t pay a dime a dozen for this lot. Instead I’m paying twice what I paid Scarpetti at his height. The artists have formed a union.”
“I heard they’re going to photographic covers at Belvedere, to get around it.”
“A mistake. It will confuse readers into thinking they’re buying a work of nonfiction.” He leaned the cane against his chair. “I forgot to congratulate you. Winderspear informs me Edvard Kaspar’s going ahead with The Fence.”
“Filming’s started. The Breen Office made him change the title, to separate it from all the controversy. He’s shooting it under Stolen Goods. But it may change again.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“It stinks, but I don’t care. I just put twenty thousand in the bank.”
Elk’s chipmunk eyes brightened. “Now that you’re in the black I don’t suppose I can interest you in a new contract.”
“I’m not touching the Hollywood money. It’s going into Millie’s college fund.”
“We can talk, then.”
“No dice, Robin. I’ve had an offer from Dunlap for two books, sight unseen. They saw my manly profile on TV and think it’ll look good on the jacket flap. There was never any room for it on the back of a Blue Devil book, among all those exclamation points.”
“Hardcover’s a step down, not up. You get a hundred percent of the royalties now. Dunlap will sell subsidiary rights to a paperback house—mine, possibly—and take half.”
The man was all greed; worse than Irish Mickey Shannon in his way. Mickey at least had the virtue of personal pride. His old push for a piece of the action was symbolic; a balm for his hard-won criminal wisdom suddenly offered cheap for the masses. It would continue to fester no matter how many years he spent in an eight-by-ten cell. There was nothing symbolic about Robin Elk’s avarice.
“It will be a nice change to see a customer laying my book faceup on the counter of a real bookstore.”
“That will happen regardless. Someday the world will catch up with you jaded fellows and realize you were the ones telling the truth all along. You’ll get the respect you deserve without compromising your principles.”
Jacob laughed. “Elk, you wouldn’t recognize a principle if it walked up and kicked that cane out from under you.”