Evening of the Good Samaritan (8 page)

“It isn’t that, Mike.”

Shea ignored the protest. “As a matter of fact, to make the run more exciting, I might put my tag on the mayor still. It would not be the first time I bet against myself.”

Winthrop put his elbows on the table. “Mike … you want a winner, no matter where the bets are.”

Mike wagged his head in affirmation. “My mother, God rest her, knew me no better. And that, Alex, is why I’d like to see you run—to try your strength. You may not win at all, you know. The people are notoriously ungrateful.” Mike could reverse himself with the ease of an eel. “You couldn’t just run on your record, fine as it is. You would have to present yourself and make a few promises. You cut a beautiful figure on the speaker’s platform—you know that, Alex? There’s the look of the boy about you—the All-American who grew up to be mayor of Traders City and God knows what next in this grand country of ours. You’re a young man, Alex.”

“I’m not far from fifty.”

“Fifty! Holy Mother of God! I swear to you, if I was fifty again, I’d run myself.” Shea talked a bit of the man who had died in office; he spoke devoutly, for great things had indeed been expected of the deceased. But in any case, Mike always spoke highly of the dead.

Winthrop had surrendered entirely to thoughts of himself. There was no escaping the truth that he wanted elective office at this moment more than anything in life … more even, God forgive him, than the thing that might very well stand in his way: his relationship with Elizabeth Fitzgerald. He knew of no one who actually was aware of the relationship, but he was sure that a number of people suspected it.

“I’m not a family man, Mike, for one thing,” he said in tentative protest.

“You’re a bachelor! Sure, the men will envy you and the women covet you. That’s an asset in these times. Many’s the poor gob who’s wished himself without a family having to put them and himself on relief.”

“And I wouldn’t want the muckrakers poking around in my private affairs,” Winthrop said, coming as close to putting the fact before Mike as he intended to.

“Isn’t that the beauty of being a bachelor?” Mike cried. “The people make allowances. I tell you, whether or not allowances are needed, the people make them. The man you don’t have to allow anything to just isn’t human.” Mike gave himself a thump on the chest. “My own heart is a Pandora’s Box.”

Winthrop tilted his chair back and laughed heartily; it was a great, booming laugh that seemed to bounce off the ceiling. He put his hands in his pockets. “Let me think about it for a day or so, Mike. I’ll let you know.”

“You’ll have to file before the end of the week.”

“If I file at all.”

Mike studied the nub of cigar that had gone dead in his fingers. “You might find, Alex, that a good man to have in your corner—he might even run things for you, and I’d say he’s a comer himself, having got his start with the New Deal in Washington—young George Bergner. You know him, don’t you? Sure, you must, he lives in Lakewood. And you must know his father?”

Winthrop nodded. The elder Bergner was one of the top surgeons in Traders City and a friend. Young Bergner was a lawyer … which, Winthrop supposed,—but with no great bitterness—could happen when father was a gentleman.

“That’s up to you, of course,” Mike said. He put out his hand across the table. “I’m glad we had this little talk, Alex. I know you’re a busy man, but I’m glad you thought of old Mike at a time like this.”

Winthrop grinned and gave a good squeeze to the bag of bones which seemed to collapse in his grasp.

Mike massaged his knuckles. “You’ll get over that handshake after a few thousand rounds.” He looked up then and puckered his face. “If you don’t mind, Alex, I’m going to stay and talk a while with Patsy. I’m thinking of getting a storage locker, and I’d like to buy my steaks where he does—if I can get his price.”

Winthrop took his coat from the old-fashioned stand. He did not wear a hat if he could help it. His foot trod against a brass spittoon, tucked under the stand. Patsy’s was equipped for all comers. He glanced for an instant at the pictures around the walls—signed, in one case, up the dancer’s leg, the signature scratched among the mesh of the stocking—“Texas”—all the nightclub entertainers of the twenties had left their love with Patsy, who in those days called himself “The Dago Kid” and had managed to scratch his own name on the fat underbelly of Traders City.

“So long, Mike.” Winthrop saluted him from the door.

“Alex.” The old man beckoned him back, and waited until he had his full attention. “As we used to say at home … Mind, I said nothing.”

W
INTHROP, INSTEAD OF RETURNING
directly to his office, turned up his overcoat collar and began to walk; apple pie was not the best solace for a nervous stomach. But with the food before him, he ate as some men smoked, to ease the tensions. He belched, wind into the wind. Inhaling then, he got the taste of soot in his mouth. They were poisoning the city with their smokestacks and their steam engines. To burn hard coal, they said, would mean economic ruin. He wondered. The city was ringed with elevated steel rails on which ran electric trains—power generated, of course, by coal. But the plants could be moved out of the city … and with them a population of voters. And downstate the only industry was coal—soft coal. He stood a moment at the foot of Marquette, the Wall Street of Traders City. The skyscrapers were fewer—and newer—and there was room for a great many more. The feel of the prairie was still to be got at the heart of the city; there seemed a reluctance to build up. For mile after mile, the city clung to the ground and groped, when it moved, aimlessly into the flats, leaving the sky to the winds. It was a great shame that a city of such promise should wallow on the ground because its generation of pioneers had given way to their politician sons and businessmen, to corporate bigness, where little men were allowed authority and big men hamstrung in the chain of it.

He found himself outside the McCormick Building, on the thirty-first floor of which were the law offices of a firm that included George Allan Bergner. Bergner would be either there or in Washington, or in the state capital; but he was not wallowing in the flats of Traders City wherever he was. George had got religion: the New Deal, hallelujah: the great day a-coming. Government not just of the people, by the people, but government
for
the people: the NRA, the AAA, the CCC, the PWA and the WPA
ad nauseum
—or
ad glorium?
Alexander Winthrop was not prepared to say. He was not prepared, that was the trouble. For the first time in his life he was not prepared to take full advantage of an opportunity.

This was not entirely true, he realized, turning reluctantly back toward his office. What was true was that for the first time his course of action in a given opportunity was not his alone to determine.

He made it a practice not to look around the waiting room, going into his
office.
Too often a friendly glance to the wrong person at such a moment discovered him half-committed before he ever got into negotiation. Normally a man of high spirits, he rather enjoyed acting glum and preoccupied pushing by the oak railing and into his milk-glassed inner office.

When Winthrop got to his desk and his secretary reminded him that he had a date with a Doctor Marcus Hogan, he was for the moment puzzled. Then he remembered, and threw back his head in laughter. He laughed with the deep physical gratification to be got from the ironic. But when the laughter passed, all he could feel was the sharper edge of his own problem.

“Is he here?”

“He’s been waiting for almost an hour, doctor.”

Winthrop smiled and his voice was nastily silken. “Then why didn’t you call me, my dear? He’s a friend of Professor Fitzgerald’s.”

Marcus had not minded the wait. He envied men whose days were more crowded than his own. And Dr. Winthrop’s secretary had provided him with a fine collection of medical journals. She had got a faint scent of the dispensary from him and had hoped to tell him of her own pains—but at the last moment failed of courage.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, my boy,” Winthrop said, and gave him a lingering handshake that bore Marcus down into the leather chair at the side of the desk.

“I caught up on some homework,” Marcus said, “thanks to your library.”

“So. You’re a friend of Professor Fitzgerald’s. High recommendation, that, you know. How long have you known him?”

“He’s a friend of my father’s,” Marcus said.

“Oh, is he?” Winthrop said pleasantly. “Well, now, tell me about yourself.”

Winthrop, however, scarcely listened. From the moment he had laid eyes on the young, big-boned, long-limbed visitor, Winthrop wondered how he had got to Walter Fitzgerald, why, and what had prompted Fitzgerald to say a good word on his behalf. He was struck with the puzzle Walter Fitzgerald was to him still. He knew him as little now as when he had first met, misjudged, and all but hero-worshiped him, the very reverse of their present positions. Fitzgerald had been a handsome man fifteen years before, his features finely wrought in the way of a piece of high-style art: he had looked to Winthrop then like a Roman orator; he carried himself with grace, a man fond of walking, and his voice was finely modulated, his phrasing elegant; everything about him had proposed a man magnificently self-disciplined, cultured; and at that point in his own life, Winthrop had not yet seemed able to discipline the movements of his own body: his legs would sprawl, and as his father had often pointed out to him in his youth, he used hands the way a seal used its flippers. In time, of course, it was Elizabeth who had rubbed some of his edges smooth. She, more than any one person, was responsible for whatever polish, whatever depth there was to him. She had been patient with him in so many, many ways…

Marcus doubted very much that Winthrop wanted to hear any such recital as he had asked for, or indeed that he had the intention of listening, although he had lapsed into what might be called a benevolent silence, his eyes not quite focused on the speaker. Winthrop roused himself to say, “Go on, man, don’t be bashful. You must have a litany of recommendations that Walter put you through. He’s careful, my friend Walter is. I imagine you’ve come well rehearsed.”

“It wasn’t a matter for much rehearsal, doctor. I’ve a limited repertoire.” He accounted his training and experience. “I’m working now at the Brandon House Clinic on the West Side.”

“Where did you get the name Marcus?”

“It’s a family name. It’s Thaddeus Marcus, actually.”

“Thaddeus Stevens,” Winthrop mused. “Who was he now?”

“I’m not sure—a Civil War general? Or was he a senator. I think that.”

“No relation, I presume?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Marcus said.

Winthrop nodded as though there had been sense to the exchange. “Brandon House Clinic—mostly Irish out there, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Winthrop appraised him frankly even to the cut of his clothes. “Hogan—that’s Irish, too, isn’t it? Is your mother also Irish?”

“No, sir. She was a New Englander.”

“Wasn’t
Mayflower
stock, was she?” Winthrop grinned.

“The
Fortune
” Marcus said.

Winthrop cocked his head questioningly.

“The next ship after the
Mayflower,”
Marcus said.

Winthrop ran his hand through his hair. “Really? I wonder now what prompted me to ask.”

“My father and I find it amusing. My brother has made the most out of it.”

“Your brother has better sense than both of you, if you don’t mind my saying it. A family tradition, whether you like it or not, is an asset, especially in medicine. Doctors pretend they don’t have time for snobbery. But they make the most of what time they’ve got.” He gave a short laugh. “The wives work out the details, you see. You’re not married?”

“No.”

“How are your prospects?”

“Limited, I’m afraid, but perhaps that is also an asset just now.”

Winthrop gave a grunt with the sound of amusement in it. “What does your brother do?”

“He’s in the diplomatic service. He’s in India now.”

Winthrop nodded. “That’s the place for it.” He lapsed into silence again, having meant, Marcus supposed, the place for snobbery.

Marcus knew he was not waiting for him to say anything, for his eyes were blinking rapidly, in the way of someone thinking out an idea. Suddenly he asked, “Would you like to hear how I came to be Commissioner of Health?”

Marcus said, “It never occurred to me to wonder,” which was cutting the truth as close to the margin as he dared.

Winthrop was looking directly at him—or through him—his dark eyes absorbed, eager—onto something. The energy of the man was enormous. He said, “Do you think I’ve done a good job at it?”

Marcus opened his mouth for a second before speaking. He then took a deep breath and said, “I never thought my ignorance would stand me in good stead, doctor. But the actual truth is, I don’t know. I’ve heard things I wouldn’t say are complimentary. And there’s a situation of my own knowledge which I’d say is not good. But whether or not you could do anything about it—I don’t know. And I suppose if I did know, I’d try my damnedest right now to find a way of not saying it.”

“What is it you think is bad?” He waved his hand. “I’ll beg responsibility, so you’ll never know.” His voice was persuasive, a sound close to a purr in it.

Marcus reached for a cigaret. Saying something derogatory at this moment would guarantee a long ignorance, he thought. “I feel as though I’ve just had an invitation to a hanging, and I’m not sure it isn’t my own.”

Winthrop smiled broadly. He handed Marcus a packet of matches. “Tell me: what’s the situation?”

Marcus lit his cigaret. “Well, sir, it concerns a disease I know a little about—tuberculosis. In two years I’ve watched the infections multiply and the facilities to isolate the carriers stand still. There’s a crying need for a new sanatorium, and I can’t help thinking how much more important that is than the downtown airport for which our mayor has proposed to go to Washington for money. Is it your fault? I shouldn’t think so, sir. Not likely.” Marcus shook his head and took a long pull at his cigaret.