The Ninth Wave (26 page)

Mike was suddenly irritated. He rapped his knuckle on the window. The
gull's eye snapped wide, it turned on its back and planed downward,
away from the building. The other gulls broke their static formation
and laced whitely through the sky in great swoops. Their wings, however,
did not move.
"Read it back, Libby."
"The letter is to Ashton in Calexico. The last sentence reads, 'You
should realize that the firm of Cromwell and Freesmith is not necessarily
interested in having you form the businessmen of Calexico into an active
group to bring the new highway through your town. Our client only desires
that the wishes of the business community of Calexico be communicated
to the Senate Interim Committee on Highways.'"
"All right. Add this: 'Attached you will find a draft statement which
your business community might wish to send to the Interim Committee. If
your people change the statement in any substantial way, we should like
to be informed before it is sent to the Interim Committee.' Put in the
'sincerely yours' and the rest, Libby."
"Yes, sir."
"Is Mr. Cromwell in yet?" Mike asked.
"No, but Clara said he would be in later this morning."
"Does he have a hangover?"
Libby looked pained. She ran her unpainted thumbnail over the coil of wire
that held the shorthand notebook together.
"Clara didn't say," she said.
"Well, ask her," Mike said. "Or if you don't want to ask her, send her
in here and I'll ask her."
Libby smiled with relief and left the room.
She's a good girl, Mike thought. Loyal and bright, but too timid.
Mike had picked her very carefully for the job as his personal
secretary. Her husband was an electrician and Mike had, at once,
gotten him a job with the City doing electrical inspections. It meant
that her husband had to be placed ahead of a number of civil service
candidates. Mike had also gotten her mother, who was blind in one eye,
a small pension from the state after persuading a few people in Sacramento
that the old woman had only twenty per cent vision. Mike had made it plain
to Libby that both of these favors were illegal. He also made it plain
to her that he did not want her to get pregnant and leave him without a
secretary. Libby had agreed and she was one of the most diligent workers
in the law firm of Cromwell and Freesmith.
The door opened and Clara came in. As usual she had a cigarette in
her fingers and she held it so that the smoke floated by her cheek and
obscured the lividness of the birthmark. She wore a simple black dress
that made her look older. But when she sat down, she turned her head
and Mike could see the exquisite line of her profile; the fine nose,
the deep pit of her eye, the molding of her cheek bone.
"Is John going to be in this morning?" Mike asked.
"Yes. Around eleven."
"Good. I want him to go to lunch with the gang from the Board of
Equalization."
"Look, Mike, he shouldn't go. That crowd always drinks too much and
it just means that Cromwell will get drunk again," Clara said. "He's
already got a hangover. He shouldn't go."
"John's a big boy now, Clara," Mike said. "He knows whether or not he
should drink. Anyway, it doesn't make any difference if he does. No one
can tell when he's drunk. It just makes him calmer."
"But he hates it. You know that. God, Mike, he suffers afterward. He can't
work. He feels guilty."
"He has to go to lunch with these people, Clara. They're important. Do
you know how many liquor licenses there are in this state? About forty
thousand. And the people who hold those licenses do pretty much what
the Board members want them to do. They control a lot of votes."
"I don't care how many votes they control. It's not worth getting
Cromwell drunk again. Being governor is not that important, Mike. Don't
kid yourself. If he has to go through all this to become governor it
just isn't worth it."
She turned her face straight toward him and her large brown eyes
glittered. Then she remembered and she turned her head slightly so that
the birthmark was out of sight, but she was still angry.
Does she really think other people get him drunk? Mike thought. Doesn't
she realize he's a drunk on his own? No one forces him to drink. He
forces himself.
Clara puzzled him. She did everything for Cromwell, wrote his speeches,
kept his appointments, made his phone calls, cured his hangovers,
brushed his clothes; everything. And then, two or three times a year,
she disappeared from the office. Once Mike had gone to her apartment
looking for her. She had opened the door, peered at Mike and then opened
the door further. She was naked and behind her on the sofa was a man
with a glass in his hand. His bellboy uniform was draped over a chair;
his eyes were drunken, startled and the least bit frightened. Clara was
sober; sober with an eeriness that made the hair rise on Mike's neck. Go
away, she said and closed the door. Before the door closed, the bellboy
raised his head, focused on Mike and grinned. It was the odd strained
look of an animal that is being experimented with; being studied; watched.
Mike looked at Clara's profile as she sat across from him in the
office. That beautiful, ivory-etched profile had been in bed with
almost every man in the office and a lot outside the office: office
boys, salesmen, messengers, Western Union boys and men she met casually
at parties.
"John wants to be governor, Clara," Mike said softly. "If he doesn't
I'd better know about it."
Clara opened her mouth to speak and then paused. She put her hand down
and looked at Mike full-face and he could see the soft purple blemish.
I'm the only person she does that with, Mike thought. As if it doesn't
matter whether or not I see it.
"All right, Mike," Clara said and she was smiling thinly. "Who's going
to be at the lunch?"
"Libby's got the list. She'll give it to you. Make sure he butters up
Kelly. Kelly is the most important man on the Board."
"I'll pick it up," Clara said. She walked to the door and turned
around. "Can Cromwell get the governorship, Mike? I mean really. Not
just cocktail talk, but can he really get it?"
"He can get it," Mike said.
"But his name isn't in the papers," she said. "And he doesn't have much
power in the party, When does he start to win friends and influence
people?"
"I've told you before," Mike said patiently. "It doesn't make a bit of
difference what the papers say. Not now. Later it will mean a lot."
The doorknob turned in Clara's hand and Cromwell came into the office. He
was wearing a gray gabardine suit and a new straw hat. The hat was neat
and crisp and contrasted with his suit. The suit was wrinkled and twisted;
it knotted around his shoulders and pulled the sleeves back so that his
wrists showed. The lapel had a black charred spot as if a match had gone
out on it.
Cromwell stood in the doorway, sucking on a cigar. His eyes were
bloodshot.
"Discussing the campaign strategy again?" he asked.
"Yes," Mike said.
"I've thought about it, Mike," Cromwell said. "We have to get more
publicity. After all, it's the people that elect you in this state. If
we don't get on the radio, TV, in the newspapers, they won't know who
we are."
"We've been over it before," Mike said. "You don't need publicity
now. That comes later. Right now you have to persuade the Democrats
at their pre-primary convention to endorse you. Get the pre-primary
endorsement and you'll be a cinch in the primary. In fact the Democrats
won't have anyone else to vote for; you'll be the only Democrat on the
ballot. When the general election comes up you'll need publicity. Not a
lot, just a little in the right places. Christ, John, I've told you all
this before. Right now if you get your head up too high, everyone will
be trying to chop it off."
"No, Mike. You have to get to the people," Cromwell said. He walked
over and sat on Mike's desk. Mike could smell the faint sweet odor
of gin. "If the people are for you, then the leaders have to take
you." He paused and his bloodshot eyes watered slightly. His voice became
pleading. "Mike, that's what I do best; talk to the people. That's what
I should be doing. Clara'll tell you that. Remember, Clara, that time
in Placerville? Those lumbermen were wild for me."
He looked out the window and his face softened with the recollection. Mike
looked at Clara. She did not evade his glance and for a moment they stared
directly into one another's eyes.
"I think Mike's right, Cromwell," she said.
Why does she always call him Cromwell? Mike thought. And why does she
hate me so much? He almost grinned.
The door opened and Libby walked in.
"Your appointment with Mr. Blenner is in ten minutes," she said. "Here's
his file. Mrs. Freesmith wants you to call her. Also there's a letter
from Dr. Moore."
She put the letter and a file on his desk.
Clara and Cromwell left the office. Libby went out after them. Mike
opened the letter from Hank. A check fell out on the desk.
The letter was written on the letterhead of the Los Angeles County
Hospital.
"I don't need the money, Mike," the letter said. "Thanks anyway. I keep
telling you that interning at County is luxury after medical school. I
get room and board and fifty bucks a month. When things get too bad I
swipe some absolute alcohol and distilled water from the storeroom and
mix myself a stiff drink. It was good of you to send the check, but I
just don't need it. In short, I'm set up. Again thanks.
"How about going for a swim some day soon? They say the waves are really
humping this year."
Mike laughed and threw the letter in the wastebasket. He tore the check
up. He picked up the file labeled "Aaron Blenner."
It was full of the usual stuff. Date of birth: 1895. Location: Minsk,
Russia. Schooling: no record. Family background: no record. Religion:
Jew. Clubs: none. Charities: Mount Sinai Hospital, National Jewish Fund,
numerous Jewish groups. In the file there were also a number of sheets
with just a single paragraph on them. The sheets were not signed and
they bore no identifying marks. Mike picked up one of them:
"Informant states that Aaron Blenner has been subjected extensive
investigation Bureau of Internal Revenue. All results negative. Evidence
that Blenner has used some of wholly owned companies to finance escape
of refugee Jews from Germany, but nothing definite. Indirectly Blenner
owns controlling interest in two French and one Portuguese import-export
firms."
Mike leafed through the sheets-and picked out one labeled "Political
Activity."
"No known political affiliation. No active political participation. Not
carried as registered voter on rolls. No political contributions on record."
The buzzer under his desk sounded. Mike put the file in a drawer. The
door opened and Blenner walked in. A woman walked in with him.
"Hello, Mr. Freesmith," Blenner said. "This is my daughter, Georgia."
He walked a few steps into the room and sat down quietly.
Blenner was a tiny pear-shaped man. He held a derby hat in his lap and
occasionally he brushed the nap of the hat lightly. He wore very small
black shoes that had a careful dull polish. His feet did not quite touch
the floor and he swung them back and forth. His hands were normal size
and against the black material of the derby they seemed large and out of
proportion. His face, except for the eyes, had an innocent quality. His
large jaw did not look as if he had ever been shaved. His eyes were
small and bright. They looked exactly like Italian olives: small, hard,
glistening.
His daughter was quite tall. She was wearing a cashmere coat. When she
sat down she looked out the window. She was about twenty years old.
"Mr. Freesmith, for some years I have been in the motion picture
business," Blenner said.
"Yes, I know that," Mike said.
"Recently I have felt that the motion picture business was getting in
a bad way. High costs, television, foreign films, and a number of other
things. A very complex situation. I won't bore you with the details." He
paused and closed his eyes. He went on talking. "For some time I have
been thinking of various forms of new enterprises. I have decided that
land is the best form of investment."
Mike waited for him to go on, but he said nothing. The office became
silent except for the kaaing of the gulls, the muted staccato of the
typewriters in the outer office and the faraway sound of traffic. Mike
waited.
"I don't know anything about land," Mike said at last.
Blenner opened one eye. The moist hard eye stared at the ceiling.
"I do," Blenner said. "Land, farm land, is the best thing."
"Why?" Mike asked.
Blenner closed his eye.
"I'm an old man. It takes me a little time to get to the point," Blenner
said and smiled. He had no accent and he spoke very slowly; very precisely.
"Let me tell you about old-time business, Mr. Freesmith. When I was a boy,
business was pure competition. The most efficient business drove the least
efficient out of business. Everyone thought this was good. Inefficiency
was always punished: it disappeared. Efficiency was rewarded: it made a
profit. It got more and more of the market. I like that idea and I did
pretty well under those rules."
"So I have heard," Mike said.
Blenner opened his eye again and smiled at Mike. Then he closed his eye.
"But businessmen didn't like competition, Mr. Freesmith," he said. "They
were frightened of going bankrupt or failing or being driven out of
business. Even the men who were successful became afraid they might
be ruined. Publicly they still sounded brave and courageous, but
privately they were frightened. So they asked to be protected by the
government. They asked to be socialized."
"The business community asked to be socialized?" Mike asked.
"That surprises you. But it is the truth. Oh, the businessmen did
not use the word 'socialism.' They asked for regulation, elimination
of unfair competition, for subsidies, for protective tariffs, for
government support of mortgages, for cheap money, for control of the
stock market and thousands of other little things. No one of these
things was socialism. But together, all added up, they meant the end of
competition. Without saying it, the businessmen killed competition and
got security. Do you know that if someone sells a bottle of whisky for
less than his competitor, in California he can be punished by law?"