Wally said, “But I did not let the word of God fall silent. No, sir. I returned to that place the next day and the day after that, and I preached the gospel to those poor children again. And finally, praise be to God, one of them came forward.” He paused. He had the timing of a preacher already. “And that was Georgia,” he intoned. “She came to me, praise God, as I knelt out in back of the gas station asking the Lord to help me in my attempt to serve Him. And she said to me, I’ll never forget it, she said, ‘All right. I don’t know much about this God stuff. But maybe—maybe you can show me the way.’ “
He raised his head and stared into the middle distance. His blue eyes were alight with the memory and magic of it. I glanced at my watch. It was almost nine. I thought of lions’ dens. My head hurt. “Yeah?” I said.
“I wish I could tell you what her face looked like in that moment, Mr. Wells,” Wally said. “All fiery and blushing and full of the spirit. Her lips like cherries, and her eyes …”
“Right, like emeralds, yeah.”
“No, like lapis.”
“Wally, what happened next?”
His chin fell a little. But he pushed ahead. “For two days, Mr. Wells, I preached the gospel to her. We sat together side by side in my daddy’s church and I read her scripture, page after page. And on the third day, Mr. Wells … On the third day, she reached out and she touched me on the leg, and I knew, I knew it was time for her to be baptised.” His chin was inflating again. He was transported by the sweetness of the memory. “In the first light of that cool spring morning with the breezes blowing down from Apple Hill, she came to me at Fallon’s Creek. You shoulda seen her. What she’d been like before—what she was like now. That’s the glory of it, Mr. Wells, what it does for people, what it did for her. She was … all different. All … all tender and … and good again. Not dressed like some kinda hoodlum or something but, like, like a woman oughta dress with all … flowers on her dress and one of those … straw hats, you know, with ribbons on it. There’s a picture of my mama, God rest her soul, on my daddy’s bedtable, looks just like that … all good, Mr. Wells and … Good.” He lowered his eyes. Shook his head sadly at what he’d lost. It was another second before he drew in a sigh and continued. “We stood together in Fallon’s Pond and I took hold of her. And I delivered her to the Lord and then …” And now he looked up at me with eyes that were far, far away. “Then … we became engaged.”
I gave him a brief moment of silence. “So how’d she wind up in bed with Paul Abingdon?” I asked then.
His face turned scarlet. But this time, he did not seem angry at me. He glared bitterly at the cigarette burns in the floor. “The devil saw my prize,” he said, his country-boy face twisted into a sneer. “The devil saw my prize and came in the jealousy of his evil heart and claimed her for his own. Mr. Wells, after that day, I never saw her again. I would call her and her mother would say she wasn’t home. I would look for her in the mall and her friends would laugh at me and throw things. I went to her house, and her father chased me off like a dog. His own future son-in-law. Finally, I prayed and took counsel from my father, and I waited until school started and went and looked for her there at the high school. But her teachers told me she hadn’t shown up for class. And I knew that she had run away from God. And from me.”
He stood up again, his fists now clenched in front of him. His trunk-like thighs seemed to strain against his tan slacks. His striped shirt seemed about to tear at the shoulders. His head looked almost as if it would scrape the ceiling. “So I went to see her friends,” he said through clenched teeth. “And they didn’t laugh at me this time. No, sir. I braved them right in their lair, right in their place out by the train tracks where they sit together and smoke their unholy drugs and drink their liquor. Oh, they laughed at first. They laughed at first. But the Lord made me mighty, and I grabbed one of them—Jack Amberson, his name was—a grinning, yellow-eyed pawn of the legions—and I took him in my hands and I lifted him above my head.” He raised his hands to demonstrate. I sat watching him, my eyes wide. “I lifted him and I told him if he did not tell me where Georgia had gone, I would dash him down on the ground like Moses did to the ten commandments.” He lowered his hands. He seemed to come to himself. “And he told me, all right. You bet he did. He told me she’d gone away to become an actress in Los Angeles.”
“So you came to New York, heard my name on the radio, and punched my lights out. It’s all clear to me now.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Go ahead.”
“Well, he’d lied to me. Jack Amberson. Can you believe that? He lied just to save his miserable skin.” I said I could believe it. “I bid my daddy good-bye, and I set my schooling aside, and I spent every last penny I had to travel to Los Angeles, that Sodom, that sinful city.” Slowly, he sank back into his chair. “She wasn’t there, Mr. Wells. I searched for her for almost three months. After that time, I received a letter from my father in the mission where I was staying. He begged me to come back, Mr. Wells. He said my name had now become a laughingstock before the people. He said it was now talked around town as common knowledge that Georgia hadn’t gone to Los Angeles at all. She’d run away to become an actress. But it was New York she’d come to.”
The blood left under his nose had dried to a brown scab. But now a fresh stream started running from his nostril. He sniffled and dabbed at it with his wrist. “My daddy begged me to come home,” he repeated. “But he also said he’d managed to talk to Georgia’s mother and she was reluctant, she said I should leave her daughter alone. But Daddy convinced her to give him Georgia’s address and phone number to allow us young people to work things out by ourselves.” He gave one grave nod. “That’s the kind of man my daddy is, Mr. Wells. He knows a man can’t just abandon his fiancée to the devil. No, sir. So I took the number and I called Georgia in New York.” Now, the memory made his big head hang down. “Took me forever to reach her, then when I did …” His clear blue eyes misted over. “When I did, she told me it was over, Mr. Wells. Told me she’d found another man, this senator fellow, this Paul Abingdon, and that he was going to help her become famous and … and … He was married, Mr. Wells. She told me so right there on the phone.” His head came up, he balled his hand into a fist. “Well, I swore to myself right then and there, I swore, ‘Wally, you are going to rescue this poor sinner from the jaws of perdition if it’s the last thing you do.’ And I didn’t have a dime either, hardly a thin dime. But I started working around the town and taking any odd job I could get me, and then I started hitching and walking and traveling any way I could to get across this country.” He eyed me solemnly. “I’ve been in some hard-time places, Mr. Wells, and some good-time places. But now I’m here, and I’m fixing to find her.”
“I thought you said your father gave you her address.”
“She’s not there anymore. She’s moved away. I’ve been asking around all over town about her, everywhere I could think of to ask, I found some people—some of these actor people—who say they know her, but no one seems to know where she is.”
I thought this over, smoking silently. “And when you heard about me and the pictures on the radio, you just assumed they were pictures of her?”
He nodded. “I knew that Abingdon fellow would lead her to perdition. I knew it. And when I heard that story on the radio, well, I just knew he’d done it. And I thought you … I don’t know, I was so angry and confused … I guess I thought you were gonna put it in the newspaper. Tell everyone. God forgive me for turning to violence: I was just confused.”
I considered his stern, bewildered, innocent face. I believed him. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to figure out what to say. The pain in my head was subsiding to a dull throb. “Listen, pal … Wally,” I said. “Any chance you could just turn around, go on home to Ohio? Forget about this girl? You know: finish studying to be a preacher and everything?”
His eyes widened. “I couldn’t, Mr. Wells. I just couldn’t. That day, that day down at Fallo
n’s Creek … Why …” He looked for words to express the gravity of it. “Why, we got engaged.”
I noticed now he hadn’t touched his coffee. It reminded me of mine. I reached for it, sipped it. It was stone cold. I said: “Wally. You got laid, not engaged.”
His face went blank again. “Huh?”
“There’s a difference. I mean, just because you and a girl make love, have sex, whatever, doesn’t mean she’s gotta marry you.”
“Huh?”
“Wally, what I’m trying to say is …” My voice trailed off. Wally stared at me. He waited for me to continue. I sighed. “Have you got a place to stay?”
“Oh yeah,” he said eagerly. “St. Clement’s Mission of Mercy over on Tenth Avenue. I help out with the soup kitchen and they let me sleep on a cot in the cellar.”
“Great.”
“Yeah.” He grinned. He had dimples in both of his plump cheeks. “Yeah, I don’t mind if the rats don’t.”
I laughed. I nodded. I glanced at my watch. “Is the day over yet?” I asked him.
“Huh?” he said.
“Never mind.”
6
We walked out into the heat together. We labored through it to the local Xerox store. I had the kid run off a copy of Georgia Stuart’s photograph. I told him if I came across anything, I’d give him a call, let him know. Then I thanked him for the morning’s entertainment and sent him back to his mission of mercy.
I went to a phone booth. I held the receiver to my ear. My ear started sweating. I dialed, sweating. The sweat ran out of my sideburns, down my jaw. My collar grew damp with it. I called the Star and asked for Cambridge.
“Sorry,” I said. He was silent. I sweat. “A guy hit me,” I said. “You can see it. A purple bruise.”
He was silent another moment. I spent the moment sweating. Then Cambridge said quietly: “The People Upstairs waited for you a half hour.”
“Look, Bob, I’m sorry. I’ll be there by nine-thirty.”
“It’s nine-thirty now.”
“I’ll be there by ten.”
“Be in the upstairs conference room by ten-thirty.”
“Count on it.”
He was silent. I sweat. “Have you seen the Post?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“See the Post.”
He hung up. I hung up. I wiped my face. I flicked my hand. The water shot from it in a spray. The sun beat down on me through the gray mist that would not break, that would not give up its rain. I left the booth. I headed to the newsstand. I bought the Post. It was out early with an extra. ABINGDON IN LOVE NEST BLACKMAIL, read the headline. The sub read: A POST EXCLUSIVE: HOW STAR REPORTER GOT SCOOPED ON HIS OWN STORY.
I retrieved the Artful Dodge from its cave. I headed downtown. I sweat.
When I came into the city room, I noticed a certain pall had descended on the place. There was more than one dour face among the regulars and I saw a few of my colleagues cast doleful looks my way. When I passed Rafferty walking through the maze of white walls to my desk, he tightened his lips and slapped me on the shoulder. Alice Pucci, from fashion, called “Good luck, John,” as I went by her. Fran came running up to me with a cup of coffee. She thrust it soulfully into my hands, then she turned and hurried away.
By the time I reached my cubicle I was almost in mourning myself. I found McKay sitting in my chair. Lansing was sitting on my desk. They got to their feet when I came in.
“What the hell happened to your face?” Lansing asked.
“I got punched.”
“The meeting hasn’t even started yet.”
“I was practicing. Excuse me.”
I pushed past McKay. I sat down in my swivel chair. I leaned back and lifted my feet on the filing cabinet. I rested my coffee on my belt buckle, fumbled a cigarette between my teeth.
“Oh,” said McKay, covering his mouth, “I’ll always remember him that way.” He crinkled up his eyes like he was crying.
“Knock it off,” Lansing said.
“Here,” McKay said abruptly. He shoved a five-spot at me. “I owe you this. I never paid it back.”
I considered the five. “You don’t owe me that.”
“Take it. Take it. I want to pay it back anyway. And Mrs. Mac wants you to come to dinner on Friday. Saturday, too.”
I laughed. “Shut up,” I said. I lit my cigarette.
McKay shrugged, stuffed the bill into his shirt. “You know Gershon is giving odds on this meeting. At eight o’clock, it was three to one you wouldn’t come out employed. Now it’s five to one you won’t come out alive.”
“Can you get me a piece of that?”
“Which angle?”
Lansing leaned against the wall. One corner of her mouth lifted. “You know it’s not really all that goddamned funny.”
“Are you going to start this again?”
She thought about it. “No. I guess not. But what I don’t think I can forgive you for is making Cambridge this happy.” She sat on my desk again. “He’s been walking around here all morning.… He’s been trying to look stern and angry. But every now and again, you can just see it. That grin hiding underneath.” She looked at me. Her mouth was still smiling a little, but her eyes were dead serious. “He’s got you where he wants you, you know.”
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“You don’t understand. You think, oh, you’re the best, you’ve kept them ahead on every metro scandal story in the past eighteen months. You think that gives you some kind of leverage over a fluff king like Cambridge.” She shook her head. “It won’t buy you the time of day on this one, old friend. You blew this one, and this one’s different. This isn’t just some minor scandal you got scooped on. This isn’t just pols ripping off the public or stealing from the poor or squeezing a union till the members bleed. This is sex, Wells. They know how to spell this one. They know what it means. And they’ll never forgive you for letting it get away.”
I took a long drag on my cigarette. I said: “Maybe.”
But Lansing didn’t let up. She couldn’t. Anger pushed her on. I could feel it steaming. She was still mad at me and she wanted to make this hurt. “You know where I was this morning at nine o’clock?”
“I guess you’ll tell me.”
“I guess I will. I was at Christian Maldonado’s campaign headquarters.”
I blinked. “You’re joking.”
“He called a press conference.”
“On this?”
“He wanted to assure the good people of New York State that, as a family man, he has never compromised his integrity in a way that might leave him open to blackmail.”
I snorted. “A family man. Did he mention that it’s the Dellacroce family? That guy’s been mob since he was low-balling garbage contracts for Westchester County. He’s one of the guys who had my car blown up that time.” Lansing raised her eyes to heaven. “He did,” I said. “And I’d have had him indicted too except my source—this county clerk—what was his name? Clark Warner, poor guy. He’s driving home from work one summer evening and there’s this pickup in front of him with some rolled up carpet in back of it. Suddenly, the carpet bounces off the truck, crashes through the windshield of Clark’s car and smashes him right in the face. Crushed his head. Blew his brains out both ears. And put a real dent in my story. Christian Maldonado. Mr. Morality. I remember the next day I asked Maldonado if his carpet ever arrived. They had to pull him away from me.” I chuckled at the memory. Lansing did not chuckle at the memory. “I guess that was before your time,” I said.
“It was ten years ago. For the last five years, he’s been an assemblyman and no one’s had a bad word to say about him.”
“No one whose body has been found.”
“And now he’s got his opponent smeared all over the front page,” Lansing said. “Not our front page, mind you. But let’s just call it the figurative front page.”
“Wait a minute,” said McKay. “You
can’t blame Wells for smearing Abingdon and for getting scooped at the same time. I mean, if he’d gotten the story then Ab … then he … Abing …”
His argument collapsed under the weight of Lansing’s glare. He fell silent.
“That’s telling her, Mac,” I said.
“Hey, Lansing,” someone shouted. “Your mother on line eight.”
“What is this?” I said. “Mother’s Day all week?”
“Listen,” Lansing explained, “shut the hell up.” She strode off to her cubicle to take the call.
I looked at my watch.
“It’s time, son,” McKay said. “’Tis a far, far better thing you do than you have ever done. ’Tis a far, far better place you go to than you have ever known.”
I dug my ashtray out of the desk debris. I put out my cigarette. I stood up. I dusted off my jacket. “How do I look?”
“Like incipient dog meat.”
I glanced over toward Lansing’s cubicle. She was standing in the aisle, I could see her. She was talking into the phone. Gesturing with her hands. She put her fist to her hip. Her cheeks were red.
“You know,” I said. “I don’t think she’s all right.”
McKay watched her for a moment, too. “She’s ticked about something, all right. Maybe it’s a guy.”
“Nah,” I said. “She wouldn’t get that crazy over a guy.”
McKay shrugged.
“Nah,” I said again. I laid my hand on my stomach. “You think Cambridge will bring in Danish for this one?”
“Iranians,” McKay said. “The Danish aren’t that good with guns.”
I marched off to meet my fate.
7
It was not a far, far better place I went to than I had ever known. Hell, I had known plenty of far, far better places. This was just another conference room, though it was a little ritzier than the last one I’d been in. This one had a window, for instance. It looked out on the white heat misting over the Pan Am Building. It also had a shag carpet, tan, no cigarette holes. And the long table at the center of it was made out of real wood, oak I think, not the linoleum reserved for the staff. The swivel chairs around the table were plusher. So were the people in them.