The Ninth Wave (52 page)

"You knew?" Hank asked.
"Yes. I knew," and from the shadow of the cloth Cromwell's lips hardly
moved. "I knew when I read the story in the papers. When I read about
you and Georgia waiting on the beach and about the surfboards coming in
all broken up. And I knew when I read that you arried Mike up the cliff
path. I knew then."
Outside the sea and sky reshaped. The band of light retreated across
the ocean, flashed over the great sweep of water, caught an island for
a moment and then was gone. The sea was gray and flat.
"Was I right, John?" Hank asked.
"I don't know, Hank," Cromwell said. "I'm not the one to judge."
"I had to do it," Hank said. "No one else was doing anything. So I
had to."
"I can't judge it," Cromwell said again.
There was a moment of simple quiet No one breathed. And then they were
all aware of the same thing. It was among them; strange and foreign,
although they had made it. It was a curiously solid fragment; almost
palpable: Hank would never be judged.
Cromwell and Georgia and Clara were aware of an unwelcome smugness,
a relief from judgment. Hank looked at them and saw it. His eyes burned
and sunk deeper into his skull. He looked, finally, at Georgia.
"We have to go, Hank," Georgia said. "It's late."
They shook hands with Cromwell and Clara. They walked back down the
salt-smelling, moist, ancient hall. They climbed the steps to the roads.
They looked at the abandoned tract; at the richness of the street lamps.
They looked down the street as if the Ford were an impossible distance.
In the sites across the street old tattered flags began to flutter as
the wind rose.
Georgia took his hand. She looked at him. His eyes were narrowed, in
the middle were thin blue crystals of sparkling agony.
"I'll help, Hank." Georgia whispered. "I'll help you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

"big scope
. . . SCHOOL, COLLEGE,POLITICS, MEDICINE
WAR AND PEACE . . . AND ALWAYS THE HOT,
BRIGHT, HECTIC CALIFORNIA SCENE . . . "
-- Saturday Review
Fear + hate = power was Mike Freesmith's formula
for success. He first tested it in high school
when he seduced his English teacher and drove a
harmless drunk to suicide. He used it on the
woman who paid his way through college. He used
it to put his candidate in the governor's chair,
and to make himself the most ruthless, powerful
kingmaker in American politics.
"authority and distinction"
-- The New York Times