Closing Time (22 page)

"Fifteen a month," Milo finally tabulated aloud, "for twelve months a year, will come to…"

"A hundred and eighty," Wintergreen told him curtly.

Milo nodded, with an expression that revealed nothing.

"Then we agree. You will work for us for one year for one hundred and eighty dollars."

"
Thousand
, Milo. A hundred and eighty
thousand
dollars a year, plus expenses. Tell him again, Eugene. And write out a check for three months in advance. That's the way I'm always paid, quarterly. I've already gotten you C. Porter Lovejoy."

Milo's look of pain was habit. But from that date on, Yossarian knew, but did not care to admit, he had not been in serious want of teady cash, except in those uncommon times of divorce and the successive collapse of his tax shelters a dozen years after each had been erected by infallible specialists.

"And by the way"-Wintergreen took him aside at the end- "about your son. Establish a legal residence in a black neighborhood where the draft boards don't have trouble meeting their quotas. Then, lower back pain and a letter from a doctor should do the rest. I have one son technically living in Harlem now, and a couple of nephews who officially reside in Newark."

Yossarian had the feeling about Michael, and himself, that they would sooner flee to Sweden.

C. Porter Lovejoy and G. Noodles Cook took to each other symbiotically from the day Yossarian brought them together, with a reciprocating warmth Yossarian had never felt toward Noodles or for Porter Lovejoy either the few times they had met.

"That's one I owe you," Noodles had said afterward.

"There's more than one," Yossarian took the precaution of reminding him.

C. Porter Lovejoy, silver-haired, bipartisan, and clearheaded, as the friendly press chose consistently to describe him, was a man still very much at ease with life. He had been a Washington insider and a made member of the Cosa Loro there for almost half a century and by now had earned the right, he liked to ruminate to listeners, to start slowing down.

Publicly, he served often on governmental commissions to exonerate and as coauthor of reports to vindicate.

Privately, he was the major partner and counsel-at-large to the Cosa Loro Washington law firm of Atwater, Fitzwater, Dishwater, Brown, Jordan, Quack, and Capone. In that capacity, because of his aristocratic prestige and reputation for probity, he could freely represent whatever clients he liked, even those with adversarial interests. From a border state, he professed legitimate home ties in all directions and could speak in the soothing accents of the well-bred southern gentleman when talking to Northerners and with the phonetics of the cultivated true Ivy Leaguer when talking to Southerners. His partner Capone was dark and balding and looked down-to-earth and rather tough.

"If you are coming to me for influence," Porter Lovejoy would stress to each hopeful prospect seeking him out, "you have come to the wrong man. However, if you wish to retain the services of experienced people who know their way blindfolded through the corridors of power here, who are on close terms with the people you will want to see and can tell you who they are and can arrange for them to see you, who can accompany you to meetings and do much of the talking for you, who can find out what is happening about you at meetings you don't attend, and who can go over heads directly to superiors if the decisions are not those you like, I may be able to help."

It was C. Porter Lovejoy who did most to foster the aspirations of G. Noodles Cook and to increase their range. He astutely calibrated the parameters of the younger man's initiative and moved with openhanded celerity to place him with other celebrities in the Cosa Loro family who could best utilise his ingenious insights into the mechanics of political public relations and image building: his knack for the rabble-rousing motto, the snide insinuation, the smooth and sophisticated insult, the tricky prestidigitation in logic that was quicker than the eye and could glide by invisibly, and the insidious lie. Once given the chance, Noodles had never disappointed anyone who, like C. Porter Lovejoy, expected the worst from him.

Between Yossarian and a Cosa Loro hit man like Noodles Cook a breach of peaceable distaste had taken shape which neither saw any necessity to repair. Yet Yossarian had no hesitation in calling now about the ridiculous possibility of inducing the new President to pretend to take seriously an invitation from Christopher Maxon to the wedding of a stepniece or something at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

"He raises millions for your party, Noodles."

"Why not?" said Noodles merrily. "It sounds like a lark. Tell them he says he'll think seriously about coming."

"You don't have to ask him?"

"No." Noodles sounded surprised. "John, the brain has not yet come into being that is large enough to deal with all of the matters any President has to pretend he understands. I'm still riding high since I helped him through the inauguration."

As the tenth and newest of the nine senior tutors with eleven doctoral degrees in the brain trust surrounding the man who had since become President, G. Noodles Cook was still unstained by that particular contempt which familiarity is often said to breed.

It was C. Porter Lovejoy, observing the dimming luster of the original nine tutors, who had proposed the appointment of G. Noodles Cook as a tenth to rekindle an illusion of brilliance in high office, a choice, he maintained with disinterested authority, that had to be beneficial to this Vice President, the administration, the country, to Noodles Cook himself, and, unsaid but understood, to C. Porter Lovejoy and his partnership interest in the Cosa Loro lawyer-lobbying firm of Atwater, Fitzwater, Dishwater, Brown, Jordan, Quack, and Capone. Capone, like Lovejoy a founding partner, played golf at good clubs with business leader and high government officials, and was rarely permitted to lose.

The impediments in the formalities of the inauguration arose from the natural preference of the Vice President to be inducted into the higher office with an oath administered by the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The honorable gentleman occupying the post, a steely, rather domineering personality with eyeglasses and a high-domed forehead, resigned abruptly rather than collaborate in an act he felt was outside the spirit of the law, if not the letter.

The unexpected action left the new chief executive little choice but to call on one of the other celebrities on the court with party affiliations akin to his own.

The woman then on the court resigned voluntarily fourteen minutes after she was sounded out. She put forth as her explanation an overwhelming yearning to return to the field she loved most: housework. All her life, she stated, she had aspired only to be a housewife.

And the other star of magnitude in that revered constellation of honorable justices to which people had formerly been prone to look up, an honorable gentleman commended frequently by friendly newspapermen for what they called his wit and his showman's preening flair for tendentious and self-amusing hair-splitting, went fishing.

The Afro-American was of course out of the question. White America would not tolerate a President whose legitimacy in office had been validated by a black man, and especially by a black man like that one, who was not much of a lawyer and not much of a judge and had seemed at his confirmation hearings to be composed entirely out of equal measures of bile and bullshit.

The other orthodox party members on the court were spurned as simply not colorful enough and insufficiently well known. Their rejection became all the more final when from their chambers the constitutional doubt filtered out through unnamed sources and unidentified background officials as to whether any honorable member of any court in the land truly possessed the right to swear a man like him into the office of the highest government official in the land. In rare unanimous decision, they hailed the chief justice for resigning, the woman for her housework, and the witty one for going fishing.

That left only the Democrat, who'd been appointed by the putative liberal John Kennedy long back, and had voted conservative ever since.

Could a President take office without taking the oath of office? There was not enough court left to decide. But then Noodles Cook, and Noodles alone of the senior tutors, came up with the enterprising suggestion he'd had in mind from the start but had kept to himself until the climactic time, which at length brought a satisfactory resolution to the embarrassing impasse.

"I still don't get it," said the Vice President once more, when the two of them were again conferring alone. By then the other nine of his senior tutors with eleven doctoral degrees had steadily lost face with him. "Please explain it again."

"I don't think I can," Noodles Cook said, grimly. He liked the position he held but was no longer sure about the work, or his employer.

"Try. Who appoints the new chief justice of the Supreme Court?"

"You do," said Noodles, gloomily.

"Right," said the Vice President, who, with the resignation of his predecessor, was technically already the President. "But I can't appoint him until I've been sworn in?"

"That's right too," said Noodles Cook, glumly.

"Who swears me in?"

"Whoever you want to."

"I want the chief justice."

"We have no chief justice," said Noodles, grouchily.

"And we will have no chief justice until I appoint one? And I can't appoint one until-"

"You've got it now, I think."

In silence, and with an expression of surly disappointment, Noodles was regretting once more that he and his third wife, Carmen, with whom he was in the throes of a bitter divorce, were no longer on speaking terms. He hankered for someone trustworthy with whom he could burlesque such conversations safely. He thought of Yossarian, who by this time, he feared, probably thought of him as a shit. Noodles was intelligent enough to understand that he himself probably would not think much of himself either if he were somebody other than himself. Noodles was honest enough to know he was dishonest and had just enough integrity left to know he had none.

"Yes, I think I have got it," said the Vice President, with a glimmer of hope. "I think I'm beginning to click again on all cylinders."

"That would not surprise me." Noodles sounded less affirmative than he meant to.

"Well, why can't we do them both together? Couldn't I be swearing him in as chief justice at the same time that he is swearing me in as President?"

"No," said Noodles.

"Why not?"

"He'll have to be confirmed by the Senate. You would have to appoint him first."

"Well, then," said the Vice President, sitting up straight with that very broad smile of nifty achievement he usually wore when at the controls of one of his video games, "couldn't the Senate be confirming him while I am appointing him at the same time tha he is swearing me in?"

"No," Noodles told him firmly. "And please don't ask me why. It's not possible. Please take my word for it, sir."

"Well, I really do think that's a crying shame! It seems to me the President should have the right to be sworn into office by the chief justice of the Supreme Court."

"No one I know of would disagree."

"But I can't be, can I? Oh, no! Because we have no chief justice: How did something like this ever come about?"

"I don't know, sir." Noodles warned himself reprovingly that he must not sound sarcastic. "It could be another oversight by our Founding Fathers."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Here the Vice President leaped to his feet, as though propelled into a choleric rage by some inconceivable blasphemy. "There were no oversights, were there? Our Constitution was always perfect. Wasn't it?"

"We have twenty-seven amendments, sir."

"We do? I didn't know that."

"It's not a secret."

"How was I supposed to know? Is that what an amendment is? A change?"

"Yeah."

"Well, how was I supposed to know?" His mood was again one of morose despair. "So that's where we still stand, right? I can't appoint a-"

"Yes." Noodles deemed it better to cut him off rather than to have them both subjected to the litany once more.

"Then it's just like Catch-22, isn't it?" the Vice President blurted out unexpectedly, and then brightened at this evidence of his own inspiration. "I can't appoint a chief justice until I'm the President, and he can't swear me in until I appoint him. Isn't that a Catch-22?"

Noodles Cook stared fiercely at the wall and made up his mind sooner to forfeit his position of prestige with the incoming administration than deal with a person like this one with a conjecture like that one.

He was staring, he saw, at a large, simplified chart, hanging as art, of the disposition of forces at the battle of Gettysburg. Noodles began brooding on the historical past. Possibly it had always been thus, he was thinking, between sovereign and adviser, that the subordinate was in all ways but rank the superior. It was then that Noodles, in exhausted desperation, snapped out in command the solution that in the end saved the day:

Use the Democrat!

What?

"Yes, use the fucking Democrat." He swept objections aside by anticipating them. "He was a Kennedy Democrat, so what does that mean? That guy is as bad as the rest of us. You'll get better press coverage for being bipartisan. And when you turn unpopular, you can blame him for swearing you in."

Porter Lovejoy's vision was vindicated again. In briefing Noodles he had stressed the good use the Vice President could make of him. The need was immediate, the opportunities unlimited. There would be an interview. "How much should I tell him?" Noodles had wanted to know. Porter Lovejoy beamed owlishly. "As much as he lets you. Actually, you will be interviewing him to see if you want the job, although he won't know it." And how, Noodles wondered, amused, would he manage that? Porter Lovejoy merely beamed again. The code name?

"Don't bring that up now," Porter Lovejoy cautioned. "He chose it himself, you know. You will have no trouble."