Читать книгу The Late Matthew Brown - Paul Ketzle - Страница 13

four

Outside Hero’s room, a pile of mutilated stuffed animals was growing. To the stacks of billowy entrails and tattered appendages she’d added the comforters, the lamps, the floral picture frames—every item I’d selected especially for her. She’d been nice enough to ask for permission to change things around, which I’d granted. I was surprised, though, by the swiftness of her response. Her quick resolution to demolish everything I had done. I secretly admired her certainty of purpose.

I knocked on her door and waited through a prolonged pause before her cheerful voice told me to come in. I found her sitting on her floor, wading in a sea of fluff and balled up T-shirts and scattered magazines and books. Two comically tall pigtails were affixed to the top of her head.

“Up to no good, I see?”

“Always,” she grinned. These gestures were hard to read. I’d been taken in before, thinking that she was starting to warm to me, only to be blindsided a moment later. Clearly, she was still sizing me up, just as I was trying to understand her. She seemed to be making more progress.

“What would you do if you had to keep someone in jail you thought was innocent?”

“Another study, is it?”

“Would you try to work within the system to bring them justice or would you quit in protest, hoping to effect a change from the outside?” She picked up a notebook from somewhere under the foam of cotton and drew out a pencil from her hair.

“Or I could just go to work and do my job. Why do I have to be a crusader for justice?”

She frowned. “You aren’t serious.”

“See. This is why I try not to get involved with the inmates. Lots of second-guessing. Who needs that kind of stress?”

“Still,” she said, tapping the pencil on the notebook, “you could pretend to be a noble figure, for the sake of your daughter, at least.”

“Then not measure up and risk disappointment?”

“I’m not sure I’m capable of more. Indulge me.”

She tapped the page with the pencil, then pushed it aside to pick up another toy. She ran a seam ripper around the neck of a rainbow-colored rabbit and pulled off its head.

“Is that necessary?”

She shrugged, tossing the head to the floor. “You’re stalling.”

“My daughter is slaughtering defenseless toys. What parent wouldn’t be concerned? What would your psychiatrist say?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said.

“As much as I’d love to sit here and debate these complex moral questions, I have to go. I’m late.”

“Hot date?”

“Just a function.”

“A date is a function. Business or pleasure?”

“Now, what possible motivation would I have to tell you that?”

At this, she just grinned.

“I’ll only be a couple of hours,” I said. “Tops.”

“Don’t think this gets you off the hook,” she said as I closed the door behind me. “I’ll expect your answer by bedtime.”

Tonight, I was expected to attend the A&M’s fundraising campaign kickoff cocktail party for its new Criminology Building. Launched in partnership with the Westlind Corporation, the School of Criminology was hoping to find donors to help it pay for the other half of this state-of-the-art structure, which would come complete with high-tech crime labs, as well as endowing at least two new chairs and establishing three new criminology programs. I had drawn the short straw to see who’d have to be the requisite departmental public face.

By the time I arrived, small clusters in formal attire loitered around the buffet table, a smorgasbord stretching across the width of the lawn, open bars at each end. Servers in tall white cowboy hats assisted from behind the tables. The mosquitoes were out in force, swirling thick about in the air like clouds of dust. They followed close on the heels of a storm that had left the ground still soggy, water pooling upon the tables, the chairs, everything. The runoff flowed along the yard’s gradual slope, out to its edge, where it dropped off precipitously into a dense ravine, cluttered with brambles and vine.

I stood beside the edge, captivated by the falling water, nursing a mint julep. The light was slipping quickly from the landscaped yard, and the young black men in white tuxedos, mostly students from the college, were setting up torches to fend off the encroaching dark.

A short man with a shiny bald head greeted everyone with a smile as we came in. This was the president of the A&M, Walter “Wally” Alvarez, and it was his job, like mine, to be here, to schmooze with potential donors and alums. It was his primary responsibility and greatest qualification. You’d think he knew everyone, for his warmth and good cheer. He had approached me with a bubbling smile, a fierce handshake and a gentle lead toward the bar, all before I’d had the chance to introduce myself, having never met him before in my life.

Through the dusk and flickering torchlight, I saw a woman approaching. She was a washed out silhouette, but her familiar step, the confident swagger, the glass of wine carelessly tipping—I knew long before she come into the light who it was.

“Starting a second career as a philanthropist, Janice?” I said.

“Not counting it out,” she said, arriving with a grin. “I have fond memories of my own college days, as you well know. No amount is too great to give.”

“But you’re cheap. And poor.”

“True. But that’s not how I choose to live. One of the great perks of being both a writer and professor is schwag, and I take full advantage when I can. Especially when food is involved. Yesterday, someone offered me a week-long hunting package.”

“You don’t hunt, either.”

“You’re never too old to start a new hobby. I have an irresistible fondness for listening to dull banalities given as speeches.”

“Not as much as they like giving them.”

“Secretly, though, I’m conducting research on the political fundraiser.”

“You seem to be misinformed. They’re just raising money for the college. You know political rallies make me physically ill.”

Janice handed me her wine glass, then pawed through her purse until she found a cigarette and lighter.

“See that man over there?” she said, exhaling thick smoke and gesturing toward the milling crowd by the bar, faces losing distinction through the dark and distance. “That’s Hugh Gillespie, state senator from Woodrow County. A real firecracker, as they say. Second most powerful man in the State house, which is impressive, since he never seems to be in the majority. There’s not a function he attends that doesn’t involve political wheeling and dealing. There are more than a few ways to get around finance laws.”

“Is he one of ours?”

“Ours? You forget to whom you are speaking. I am an independent.”

“I think the word you’re searching for is ‘professional antagonist.’”

“Political affiliation is such a fluid concept. I do believe Hugh has been, in no particular order, a Republican, a Democrat, and a Dixiecrat, as well as briefly flirting with both the Natural Law Party and the Libertarians. Not that anyone up on the hill cares. The party is apparatus. What matters is your district, how much money you have, how many connections you have. Not a soul or ideal they wouldn’t sell if the price was right.”

“You’re ruining my faith in government.”

“You’re the most naive political appointee I’ve ever met, Matthew. It’s a wonder you’ve survived this long.”

“I just choose to believe that others have more integrity than I.”

“I suspect that may be your undoing.”

Scandal currently rattled the state’s halls of government. The previous governor had recently been driven from office for offenses that thirty years ago would barely have merited a headline. A long career of bribes and cronyism, which had served so well to put him in office, ultimately had come back to destroy him. And it was Janice who had been the architect of his destruction, as well as of most scandals political and massive in this town, though most people didn’t know it.

As a political stringer for the Capitol Times, Janice DeTreffant penned a weekly column under the pseudonym “Jefferson,” which kept her a relative unknown to the powerful figures in State government whom she routinely skewered. The pseudonymous “Jefferson” was a perpetual burr on their backside, as the House Speaker once labeled her, an honor she valued highly. Though the most powerful had long since ferreted out her identity, most casual observers in the capital—and even a significant number of operatives—had no idea she was even a woman, and even those who learned the truth were often too sexist to believe it. Just as many claimed that Janice herself was a front for some other, even deeper undercover investigative reporter. All of this gave her ease of movement, and the opportunity to pick up on pieces of information from relaxed legislators who might otherwise have been more careful about what they were saying.

Janice and I weren’t connected by politics, though. We had met when I was still a struggling undergrad and she was in the process of revising her dissertation into a book, Political Tribalism and Cultural Identity in the American South (1865-1965). After achieving tenure, though, her interests had turned more forcefully to politics and reporting. Her association with the college was fairly perfunctory and tangential these days. She was also the closest thing in the world I had to a real friend, though I saw her infrequently of late and never bothered reading the copy of the book she signed for me. We could do each other considerable harm with the things we knew about each other, which had only helped our friendship grow.

“How’s fatherhood treating you?”

“It’s not exactly what I expected.”

“What, exactly, has ever been what you expected?”

“I mean it’s hard.”

“I don’t think you fully grasp your situation.”

“I grasp it.”

“So where’s Junior?”

“At home.”

“I’m guessing without a sitter.”

“I’m not concerned. She’s pretty mature for a twelve-year-old.”

“That’s why you should be concerned,” she said, pushing her hair back away from her eyes. Her most prominent feature was that thick, brown mane of hair, arching and irreverent; she draped the length of it across her shoulders, so it lay thick and billowy, in the style of a ’40s movie starlet. No one would mistake her for a screen legend, however. A car saleswoman, perhaps. An evangelist. A sixth-grade teacher. She could easily be someone who makes children stand in front of a classroom and work long division on the chalkboard.

“I’m feeling generous with advice today,” she continued. “Get out of politics, Matty, before it kills you.”

“I’m not the one making enemies out of the most powerful people in the state. Remember, Governor Roberson sent a goon squad after you.”

“Ex-Governor Roberson.”

“Was it an ex-goon squad, too?”

“People always blow these things out of proportion,” she said with a sigh, taking a long drag. “It wasn’t a squad. Just two guys coming round the newsroom making trouble. They were kinda sweet, too.”

“Sweet goons, with guns.”

“Pea shooters,” she said, flicking the cigarette butt into a small shrub. “Pathetic, really. Even I’m better armed than that.”

“That’s why I feel safer just standing next to you.

She cocked an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t, you know.”

Back under the lights, Wally was rambling, thanking everyone for recognizing the important role that higher education served in our community, for opening up their hearts and wallets to such an important cause. It was the usual speech, and like the best of them, you knew the next word even before it left his lips. It made you feel smart and superior. You could recite along with him.

“By the way, I hear you’ve got a special assignment. I’ll have to buy you a black hood or something.”

“News travels fast. I only found out this afternoon.”

“You could see it coming. Governor Van Garen is a novice, paying for the sins of his predecessor and in the fight of his political life. Nothing like a little show to satisfy the masses.”

After dealing with the execution all day, I didn’t exactly have a strong desire to talk about it again. Instead, I asked Janice if she knew anything about the investigation at Environmental that Hal had mentioned

She leaned in close. “Nothing to be worried about, I hope.”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Sorry. Occupational habit.”

“I’m just anxious in a general sort of way. So you haven’t heard anything?”

Janice shook her head in disinterest, almost bored, then took a long sip from her refreshed drink. “Don’t you think it’s time for you to quit this whole politics thing?”

“This is my career. And I’m pretty good at it, if I say so myself.”

She said nothing for a moment, starting at me with a curious look on her face. Finally, she said: “You see that unassuming fellow over there, Matthew, the one in the bow tie talking with the two Supreme Court justices? That, my political friend, is Bertrand Walker.”

The man she pointed toward was a thin rail, his suit obviously too short for his body. He wore rounded wire frames low on his nose. He, too, could have been a school teacher.

“Name sounds familiar,” I said, which only made Janice produce an exaggerated sigh.

“Bertrand Walker. He is the proverbial ‘man behind the throne.’ The governor’s top political advisor. A more powerful person you will likely never meet in this state. They may have ousted Vern for his lawbreaking, but nothing seems to touch Walker, though his fingers are in everything. He was the power behind the last governor, this governor, probably the next one, too, whoever that ends up being. Anyone who expects to get anywhere politically in this state owes some kind of debt to him. You already do, whether you know it or not. And he’s not the kind of person you want to be indebted to.”

“I’m too young to owe anyone anything.”

“People like Walker are untouchable. They aren’t scared of the law. Like all cockroaches, they’re scared of the light.”

“That’s not a little bit paranoid, Janice. At all.”

“Trust me, Matthew. This kind of work isn’t for you, and it’s going to get you into trouble some day. You aren’t a politician. You aren’t really even a fixture of the party. If you were, you’d know everything there was to know about Bertrand Walker. Nothing will ever touch him. The best I will ever be able to do would be to foil his schemes. What you are—or are becoming—is a career bureaucrat. There a hundred people in this town who could do the job you are struggling through better than you.” Before I could answer, she cut me off: “Don’t bother protesting. You know I’m right. Sure, you’re smart, which is fine, but the truth is, this isn’t exactly your cup of tea.”

“I’m doing all right.”

“Don’t get defensive.” Janice took a long drink, draining her glass, then carelessly dropped it onto the grass. “I’m just saying you’re not good enough.”

“At least I’m not out there destroying careers. Brought down any more governors lately?”

“Sorry. One a year is my limit.”

“Come on. Not even a little bit of scandal?”

“Always,” she said. “The kind of thing that wrecks careers, marriages, country club memberships.”

“Not showing a bit of conscience, are we? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Believe me. I’d write about it if I thought anyone would buy it.”

“Sordid, I take it.”

“Graphic!” She beamed. “Amazing what a college student will do for a little money.”

“Perhaps that’s why our lonely legislators keep raising tuition.”

Janice raised an eyebrow. “You’d be shocked by what the desperate will say for a little bit of cash in hand.”

“To you, or to Johnny Senator?”

“Take your pick,” she said, gesturing toward the silhouetted crowd.

“Really?”

“Matty, Matty, Matty,” Janice tsked.

In the bright lights near the house, a brown haze had settled in, churning and blurred—gnats and mosquitoes and moths and other bugs drawn in by the lamps and the warm, alcoholic bodies in the evening air.

Then something suddenly dropped out of the sky into the midst of the gathered crowd. Soon another half-dozen, diving, spinning, tacking in a majestic display of aerial acrobatics. Bodies shuffled, gently laughing, the power brokers and politicians, the institutional philanthropists and their hangers on. We refilled our cocktails and reveled in a collective humor, gesturing wildly at the blur of wings streaking through the slaughter and cool night sky.