Franklin Affair (21 page)

“You have written a magnificent book, R,” Wally said.

“We did it together, Wally,” R replied.

“Thank you, but what you have given me is the ultimate gift. You have given me your talent, your intellect, your creative being. I can never thank you adequately, I know that. But I can do one thing—whatever financial rewards come from this book will be shared by us equally. I will instruct Harry to automatically divide all royalties half and half.”

Wally pulled something from his pocket and tossed it across the desk. “This is a check for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars—half the advance Harry paid me for
Ben Two.
”

R's family were small-town New Englanders; his father was a minister, his mother was a homemaker and volunteer. Checks for this much money were not part of his life, either growing up or as a historian and professor.
Franklin at Craven Street
had sold barely 7,000 copies on a $3,500 advance;
Ben and Billy,
only slightly more.

The check lay there between Wally and R, who made no effort to take it.

“You must, R. If you don't, then—well, I don't know what I'll do.”

R was hit by a consuming, shuddering sense of sadness and love for his friend. This wonderful human being was disintegrating as he lost both his mental faculties and his sense of himself.

“It's a deal,” R said, taking the check.

Wally got up from his chair and came around to the other side. The author and his collaborator embraced, one of only a few times they had ever done so in the years they had been friends and associates.

Harry kept his word. Green Tree published the book more than well. There were full-page ads in
The New York Times Book Review
and
The Washington Post Book World
and smaller ones in
The New Yorker, Newsweek,
and
Time.
They sent Wally out on a book tour and talk-show rounds in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Ben Two
went almost immediately to number 1 on both the Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble nonfiction lists and within three weeks began a long stint in the top five on the
New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly,
and most other best-seller lists. There were second, third, and fourth printings that put nearly 400,000 hardback copies of the book in print. Paperback rights sold at auction for $350,000. International sales flooded in, as did Hollywood movie and PBS-type documentary interest.

As expected,
Ben Two
was named a finalist in the Pulitzer biography category.

Wally and R were sitting on either side of the partners' desk on the April afternoon the winners were to be announced. Harry, having come down from New York with his confidence about victory raging way beyond perfunctory, was sitting at one end of the desk in a pulled-up chair. He had ordered a case of expensive champagne that was on ice in the kitchen and had a person in his office back in New York standing by at a computer to read the Associated Press wire. Nobody got an official telephone call telling them about winning a Pulitzer. It was announced by the people at Columbia University to the press first.

At three-fifteen the phone rang. The one thing they had not specifically worked out among the three of them was who would actually answer the telephone.

On the second ring, Harry picked it up. “Yes?” he said.

He listened for a few seconds, stood, raised his right arm high over his head, and said, “We did it!” Then to Wally, he said, “Congratulations, Dr. Pulitzer Prize Winner.”

Within minutes, the champagne was flowing and the house was filling with students—including Rebecca, R now remembered—professors, and other friends.

After a while somebody began yelling, “Speech! Speech!”

A library ladder was pulled out for Wally to stand on. The people crowded in the library—and spilling out into the hallways and parlor and dining room—went silent and gathered around as best they could.

Before Wally could say anything, a kid started everybody singing:

“For he's a Wally good fellow,
For he's a Wally good fellow,
For he's a Wally good fe-ello,
That nobody can deny.”

Then Jackson Hall, the BFU provost, raised his glass of champagne and yelled, “To Wally!”

“To Wally!” repeated the crowd.

Once things got more or less quiet, Wally spoke.

“Thank you, Jackson. Thank you, one and all. As all of you know, no book is ever really the work of one person, particularly a biography like
Ben Two.
I want to thank several of you in this room—these rooms, I guess I should say—tonight, who helped me, each in your own way, to bring this book into being. There are too many of you to call by name. But you know who you are—and I salute you all.”

He raised his glass, as did everyone else as they said, “Hear, hear,” and downed a sip of champagne.

Wally invited R to go with him to New York for the Pulitzer Awards lunch at Columbia in June. R declined.

Shortly afterward he submitted his notice to Wally and to the university. He told everyone he wanted to get more deeply into his research for his planned book on the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson presidencies—and Washington, D.C., was the place to do that.

Wally and R never spoke another word to each other about the writing of
Ben Two.

R never spoke to anyone else either—until now.

SIXTEEN

“Yes, it's true,” R said to John Gwinnett.

He looked at Rebecca, standing at the door as still as a statue.

“But it's also true that it was Wally's book. Wally's lifework went into it. I may have performed much of the physical labor at the very end, but the journey that led to its creation was taken by Wally, not by me.”

Rebecca's body seemed to vibrate slightly. It was the only movement in the room. “But you do admit to having committed a hoax?” she said, in a tone that was not as strong as the words.

“I admit to you now, and I will gladly—willingly, and with some relief, frankly—admit to the world that I helped the great Wallace Stephen Rush, my late friend and mentor, transform the product of his scholarship and wisdom into a book titled
Ben Two.
I was honored to do it. There was no element of hoax involved.”

Rebecca raised her hands in a halfhearted act of resignation, if not surrender. Then she said to Stockton, “Did you help
your
esteemed mentor transform
his
scholarship and wisdom about Patrick Henry into his forthcoming masterpiece? What about it,
Patrick
? Want to confess, too?”

“Leave us at once!” Gwinnett roared at Rebecca. “You are truly despicable!”

And she was gone.

In the silence tha followed, Gwinnett slowly sat back down. So did Joe, Sonya, and R. Stockton had remained seated all through the endgame.

“That woman is a vile, felonious liar and swine for whom the administration of a lethal injection would be more than appropriate,” said Gwinnett, pointedly avoiding R's revelation about
Ben Two
—at least for now.

Sonya, who had said little since this extradordinary meeting began, joined in. “As a longtime outspoken opponent of capital punishment, even I would gladly insert the needle.”

There were ten seconds of unspoken approval.

“So, what do we do about her?” asked Joe Hooper. “I hope nobody was seriously suggesting that we prefer criminal charges.”

R shook his head.

“Unfortunately not,” said Gwinnett. “I would love to do so, but I think such a move would draw bees of criticism that would undermine our purposes.”

“That leaves us with what?” Hooper asked. “Throwing our very small book at her?”

“We prepare a statement of findings that we forward to the ARHA with a recommendation that it take whatever actions it deems appropriate,” said Gwinnett, who had clearly come prepared for this. “I think it might be wise for us, in a break with custom, to release our findings to the public simultaneously. That would, of course, enlarge the size of the book being thrown almost immediately.”

When no one reacted, Gwinnett said, “I would suggest that going public would also be a fair precaution against the most likely possibility that Dr. Lee will mount vigorous campaigns of coercion against others among our ARHA colleagues to prevent final sanctions of any kind. We may very well have a serious war on our hands.”

There were three nods of agreement. Yes, that was a most likely possibility. “Count on it,” R said.

Once again, Gwinnett turned to Stockton. “Patrick, you spoke eloquently, more so than any other person in history, about taking a stand for what one believes.”

This time Stockton stood up and moved away from the table. Then, in the mode of Patrick Henry, he forcefully orated:

“ ‘Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

R couldn't recall ever hearing a more phony, inappropriate use of a historical quote. To compare the ARHA versus Rebecca Kendall Lee to the Colonial States of America versus the Crown—well, it was ridiculous.

But Gwinnett was aglow. He even applauded. “Thank you, Patrick,” he said, as if he were really talking to Patrick Henry.

R saw this as a whole new wrinkle to Wally's know-him, talk-to-him mantra for historians. Gwinnett didn't have to go to some faraway place such as 36 Craven Street to speak to
his
hero. He had him right there in the office.

R had a quick vision of Gwinnett doing his research. There was Stockton at Gwinnett's side dressed in his Patrick Henry outfit. Gwinnett simply turned and said, “Patrick, when were you born?” Or, “Patrick, what was it you said about liberty and death?” “Patrick, what is your favorite food and drink?” “Patrick, who does your hair?”

Thank you, Patrick.

R amused himself further by thinking of how grateful he was that Wally chose to morph into Ben himself rather than forcing R to do so. Poor Stockton.

Poor Stockton.
Could it be that Rebecca, evil as she was, might have guessed right about Stockton doing the same thing for Gwinnett that I did for Wally? No, no, no. . . .

“Before adjourning, I would like to make official what we have decided by taking a vote on this matter,” said Gwinnett, unknowingly interrupting R's evil thoughts. “All in favor of proceeding against Rebecca Kendall Lee in the manner just discussed, please say Aye.”

There were four Ayes.

“Thank you. I will have Patrick here—pardon me, Stockton—prepare the proper materials and statements for dispatch to all concerned at the ARHA,” said John Gwinnett.

Here ye, here ye, here ye. Our business has been done. The confrontation is concluded. This meeting is over.

Not quite. One matter, one elephant-sized issue, remained—in the air rather than on the table.

It was Sonya who finally spoke of it. “What
are
you going to do about your
Ben Two
story, R?” Her words came out slowly, quietly, sympathetically.

“I'm going to have to work that out,” said R. “I want to do it in a way that does not hurt Wally's reputation, his legacy. Whatever Rebecca might say, it really is his book, not mine.”

“Maybe you could do a new book of your own about how you came to help Wally,” said Sonya. “Tell, in some detail, the story behind the story—how you made the choices you did to assist your friend.”

Oh, yes. Choices. A book about choices. It could open with Ben's rules on choices. Then segue into an analysis of his Morals of Chess essay. . . .

R had yet to figure out where the choices bit had come from. Someday he might go back through Ben's writings and other papers to see what the great man really did say on the subject—if anything. Maybe, like the “difficult situation,” the words from Ben had been stored way, way back in R's mind for a while. It's also possible, of course, that only R himself was speaking about choices through Ben that day in the parlor. . . .

Joe Hooper said to R with a slight grin on his face, “The very-worst-case scenario, as I see it, is that you get some well-publicized credit for having written a best-selling book about Benjamin Franklin and maybe even a belated half of Dr. Rush's Pulitzer Prize. Write a new book well enough, and you might win another, too.”

“You could call it
Ben Three,
” added Sonya, also smiling.

R did not dare return the happy smiles.

He looked instead at John Gwinnett, who said in his most serious chairman's voice, “Whatever, you have put that awful Dr. Lee in a position to do no harm—either to you or to the work of this committee and to our purposes and profession. Good man, Taylor.”

Good man, Taylor.

R couldn't help but wonder what Ben might say about that.