(1976) The R Document (17 page)

‘Who told you to come here?’ he demanded.

‘I’m a present from a friend of yours.’

‘What friend?’

‘He never gave his name. They never do. But he paid in cash. Two hundred dollars. I’m expensive.’ She smiled for

the first time. ‘He said this was to be a surprise, that you’d like it. I promise you that you will, Mr Collins. Now, come here like a good boy -‘

‘How - how did you get in?’

‘A few of the employees know me. I tip well.’ She studied him. ‘Aren’t you cute? I like tall men. But you talk too much. Now come on to bed with Kitty. I promise you a good time. I’m staying all night.’

‘The hell you are!’ he almost shouted, grabbing her wrist as she began to reach between his legs again. He wrenched her arm away from him. ‘Now get out, right now - get out. I don’t want you or anybody else. Someone was just trying a practical joke, a childish joke-‘

‘I was paid -‘

‘Get out!’ He had her by both arms and yanked her to a sitting position. ‘Get dressed and leave here immediately.’

‘Nobody’s ever treated me like this.’

‘Well, I am.’ He snatched up his pajamas. ‘By the time I’m out of the bathroom, I expect you to be dressed and gone.’

He went into the bathroom and angrily yanked on his pajama trousers and buttoned the pajama top.

When he emerged, she had just finished fastening her blouse, and now she stepped into her navy blue skirt.

‘Hurry up,’ he said.

She zipped the skirt. ‘Your friend said you might act like this at first, but not to take it seriously.’ She cocked her head at him, smiled again, and started toward him. ‘You are kidding, aren’t you?’

He took her arm roughly and spun her toward the door. ‘Get moving.’

‘Let go, you’re hurting me.’

He eased his hold on her, but pushed her into the living room and propelled her hastily to the front door.

At the door, breathing heavily, he relented slightly. ‘I’m sorry somebody used you this way,’ he said. ‘It was wrong, and I’m sorry. Good night’

She tried to pull herself together and leave with some

dignity. ‘No loss,’ she said. ‘You probably couldn’t get it up anyway.’

He yanked open the door, and as she passed in front of him to go, he saw a shadowy figure pop up from behind the hedge below the bungalow. It was a man lifting a camera.

Acting on instinct, Collins ducked behind the door just as the strobe flash went off. He fell against the door, slamming it shut; lay against it, panting, knowing the photographer had caught Kitty but missed him.

After a while, he turned the lock on the door. Shaken, he stumbled toward the console to mix a drink.

Uncertain as he was about everything that had happened this day, he was positive about what had happened this night. This had not been a stupid practical joke perpetrated by some old college or social friend. It had been far more diabolical. Somebody had tried to set him up, compromise him.

But who? And why? Proponents of the 35th Amendment? Unbelievable, since so far he had been publicly on their side. Unless they wanted to be sure he remained on their side. Enemies of the 35th? Equally unbelievable to think that men like Keef e or Pierce would go to this length to try to force him to switch.

Crazy, he thought. Then, still shaken, he made another drink, to bring daylight closer, when all things made more sense.

*

Daylight had, indeed, brought definition to the murky things that had filled his mind during his restless sleep.

The morning had brought some illumination.

The late and long breakfast with the two United States Attorneys had dispatched a variety of routine Justice Department matters. A meeting with a delegation of three lawyers from the American Bar Association had been mostly social. An interview with a young lady reporter from the Los Angeles Times had been largely an exercise in trying to avoid too strong a commitment to the 35th Amendment, speaking about long-range reforms that were necessary in

America’s justice system, and probing to learn a journalist’s views on the escalation of crime in Southern California.

Finally, Collins had been alone with the telephone.

He had intended to call the eight police chiefs who had complained to Assemblyman Keefe that the FBI had been doctoring crime statistics upward in California. He had spoken to only three, and then called no more. Once convinced they were talking to the Attorney General, all three had become guarded in answering his questions. While one admitted ‘a slight discrepancy’ between the figures he had reported to the FBI and those that had been released, he blamed it on ‘probable computer error’, and all three had refused to acknowledge that they had complained to Keefe about exaggerations in the FBI statistics. Each had said, in a different way, that Assemblyman Keefe had misunderstood him.

Either the police chiefs had protested to Keefe but had had second thoughts about going on record against the FBI with the Attorney General, or Keefe had misunderstood them. In any case, this telephone inquiry had been inconclusive.

Then Collins had been struck by another approach. Last night, with the legislators, he had jotted down the names of the FBI Special Agents who had interviewed Yurkovich and Tobias. He sought and found the slip with the agents’ names: Parkhill, Naughton, Lindenmeyer.

Collins had wondered if he should try to trace them through the Bureau’s field offices in California or by calling Adcock or Tynan directly. He decided to be more circumspect. After a while, he put in a direct call to Marion, his secretary.

‘Marion, I want a query made of the FBI. It’s not to come from me. Just a run-of-the-mill check from anyone in the Office of Legal Counsel. To someone on a lower level in the Bureau. Got your pencil? Okay. Have them ask if two of the FBI’s Special Agents in California, one named Parkhill, the other Naughton, interviewed State Assemblyman Yurkovich last week.’ He spelled out the last name for her. ‘Then have them ask if a Special Agent Lindenmeyer interviewed - ‘ He realized he did not have the name of Assemblyman Tobias’ lady friend. ‘- uh, interviewed anyone in Sacramento during an investigation of a State Assembly committee on which State Assemblyman Tobias sits. I’m in the hotel. Get right back to me.’

Waiting, he had puttered around the bungalow living room, then had taken out a copy of his speech and polished up a few phrases. In fifteen minutes, the phone had rung and it was Marion.

‘This is weird, Mr Collins,’ she said. ‘The FBI says it has no Special Agents named Parkhill or Naughton or Lindenmeyer in California. In fact, it has none by those names in the entire country.’

Like so much else, this had proved mind-boggling. No agents named Parkhill or Naughton or Lindenmeyer. Yet, Assemblyman Yurkovich had been interviewed by Parkhill and Naughton, and Tobias’ lady friend had been interviewed by Lindenmeyer. It could mean that both Yurkovich and Tobias had got the names wrong. Impossible. Or that they had both lied to Collins. Pointless.

Or it could mean one more thing - as improbable, but far more sinister.

It could mean that the FBI had a special corps of agents -a secret corps, names unlisted - deployed to intimidate the lawmakers of California.

Collins entertained that possibility. Normally, Collins was a factual and realistic person, rarely given to flights of fancy or contemplations of melodrama. Normally, he would have dismissed this possibility of a secret corps as too sinister to treat seriously - except for one fact.

His predecessor in office had saved his dying words to warn him of a terrible danger - a danger called The R Document. If one could accept as fact the existence of a piece of paper menacing the - the what? - the security of the country? - one could also accept the possibility of unknown FBI agents’ threatening California Assemblymen, as a known one had threatened Father Dubinski.

Collins didn’t like it. As he went into the bedroom to change into a suit, before leaving to tape the television show with Pierce and to deliver his speech to the ABA, he didn’t like the idea that he had been elevated to a position where

he was supposed to know everything about crime in this country. Yet activities were taking place around him, activities that resembled criminal acts and about which he knew next to nothing. All of this, one way or another, had been engendered by the atmosphere created by the 35th Amendment. God, he thought, what would it be like if the 35th actually became the law of the land?

He had just finished changing when the telephone in the living room began to ring. He hastened into the room and picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.

He heard the voice of Ed Schrader in Washington.

‘Chris, about the assignment you gave me last night.’

He had quite forgotten his call to Schrader last night. It had been about the facility at Tule Lake that his son had showed him, the construction of a new branch of the Navy’s Project Sanguine. He had wanted Schrader to confirm this Navy installation’s existence only to prove that his son, Josh, was wrong in his internment-camp paranoia and to bring the boy to his senses.

‘Yes, Ed. What did you find out?’

‘I have this from authoritative sources at the Pentagon. The Navy’s Sanguine Project - or ELF, as they call it - was completed three years ago. There are no new installations under construction or any even being repaired. None of their facilities is anywhere near Tule Lake.’

He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Are you telling me the Navy has no project based at Tule Lake?’

“None whatsoever.’

‘But the construction foreman there told me - No, never mind. But goddammit, something is being built up there. It’s a Government project. They’re building something.’

‘Well, it’s certainly not what you heard.’

‘No - no, I guess it’s not,’ he had said slowly. “Thanks, Ed.’

For the first time, he had admitted to himself the possibility that his son, Josh, might be right.

And that Keefe, Yurkovich, and Tobias might be right, too.

All during the twenty-minute drive to the network studios, he had reviewed the mounting evidence of the

sinister. The R Document, which was a danger to be exposed. Doctored crime statistics in California. A secret internment camp at Tule Lake.

But finally, it had been the smallest event of all that had unsetded him the most.

His mind went to the photographer planted outside his bungalow last night, trying to catch him with the hooker who had been planted inside. That had not been hearsay. That had been experienced firsthand.

He was filled with suspicion and distrust toward those around him, the advocates of the 35th Amendment, as well as toward the Amendment itself. Above all, he was in no mood to defend the Amendment on national television. He was sickened by the role he had to play. He wanted to turn around and run.

But it was too late. They had reached Beverly Boulevard, and he could see the network studios up ahead.

*

Collins sat in the chair of the dressing room, a bib protecting his shirt, watching the reflections in the mirror as the makeup man applied a light brown pancake powder to his haggard features.

He could also see, in the mirror, the producer of Search for Truth, a tailored young woman named Monica Evans, when she reappeared in the doorway behind him.

‘How’s it going, Mr Attorney General?’ she asked.

‘I guess I’m almost ready,’ Collins said.

A few more minutes, Monica, and he’s all yours,’ the makeup man promised.

‘I hope you’re running on schedule,’ Collins added. ‘Right after this, I’m due at the Century Plaza for a speech to the Bar Association. It’s going to be close.’

‘You’ll be out of here in plenty of time,’ Monica Evans assured him. ‘Tony Pierce is already on the stage with our moderator, Brant Vanbrugh. They’ve been made up. They’re prepared to go as soon as you are.’

For Collins, this was a small relief. He had dreaded the idea of being cooped up in this makeup room with Tony

Pierce before the show and being forced to talk to him. A formal discussion with Pierce on camera was bad enough. But a private conversation would have been unendurable.

‘I’ll be waiting in the hall to take you to the studio,’ Monica Evans said, and then she disappeared.

Collins continued to observe himself in the mirror, and he was not happy with what he saw. Despite the cosmetics, the creams and powders that filled in every crease and crevice of his features, he appeared in his own eyes like a cadaver the mortician was trying to make presentable.

Why, he wondered, was he here to defend a bomb that would blow the Bill of Rights out of the Constitution? What, he wondered, had brought him to side with anti-libertarians like President Wadsworth and Vernon T. Tynan? How, he wondered, had he become a champion of the horrendous 35th Amendment?

In the stark lighting of the theatrically arranged bulbs surrounding the mirror, there was sudden clarity. Until now, he. had rationalized his position glibly and persistently. As a good among the bads, he could modify their course. Yet he had failed to do so, had not even really tried. As a Cabinet member, he had chosen to stay on because he had unfinished business, meaning his own solution to crime, which was a more human and decent one. Yet he had not acted upon this business. As Attorney General, he could get other things done that were of more importance than the 35th Amendment. But he knew that his other work was meaningless compared with the overriding importance of the new amendment.

In short, all his rationalizing had been pure bullshit.

He knew why he was here. He knew what had brought him here. He knew how it had come about.

It was naked now, seen in the clarity of the mirror, and he could identify it.

It was ambition. Yes, ambition was the motor that drove him in the wrong lane.

Ambition to get someplace, to show his father. To get somewhere on his own. Grammar-school Freud, but as simple as that. To be what he wasn’t, in order to make it. To show his father. To be somebody at any price. But it was

ridiculous, this moment. There was nothing to show his father. His father was dead. There was only he himself. And now there was little of himself left.