“Sam’s fine.”
“I’ll be down at the stables, Dad.”
“Thanks, honey.”
“Nice to meet you, Sam,” she said and sounded as if she really meant it. Then she was gone.
I sat in one of the deep leather chairs. He sat, somewhat anxiously, on the edge of his enormous desk. He raised himself up on one side and dug something out of his front pocket. He flipped it in the air toward me. I caught it. A silver dollar.
“That’s when money was money,” he said.
“My early birthday present?”
“The Judge told me you were a smart-ass. Usually, I don’t mind smart-asses but unfortunately now’s not the time. As you’ll see.” He took a very deep breath and then a very deep drink from the bourbon-filled glass he had on his desk. “The silver dollar’s to hire you. Lawyer-client. I’ve got a check for a thousand dollars for you in my desk with your name on it. I want you to look at something for me.”
First I get two hundred and fifty dollars for delivering a letter and now I was being offered $1000 to look at something. I was going to be small-town rich. Or at least small-town comfortable. I started mentally listing all the bills I could pay off.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“You’re going to earn it.”
“Doing what exactly?”
He got up and started walking around, sometimes facing me, sometimes not. Sometimes he seemed to be talking to me, at others he seemed to be talking to himself.
“Sam, I’m going to withdraw from the governor’s race.”
“Are you serious?”
“Afraid I am.” He pressed slender fingers to his forehead as if he had a headache. “I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t like it but I don’t have any choice.”
“Have you talked it over with anybody yet?”
“Not yet. The Judge puts a lot of faith in your skill and integrity.”
News to me, I thought.
“What I need now is legal advice.”
“I don’t mean to be immodest but there are sure more experienced lawyers than me around.”
“Yes. But I don’t trust them. I need somebody I can have absolute trust in. Maybe later on I’ll hire some additional lawyers. But for right now I want a sensible, homegrown young man with the kind of credentials Esme says you have.”
“Well, I’m flattered. But—”
He held his hand up to stop me from speaking. “We have something in common. Cliffie Sykes. He hates me because Judge Whitney is one of my best friends. He’s tried to arrest me on four different occasions for minor infractions of the law—and I’ve beaten him very publicly at his own game. He always said he’d get even and now—well, now he may have a chance.” Then: “Sure you wouldn’t want a drink?”
“I’m fine.”
He walked over to a dry bar and took care of his glass again. He added a spritz of water. He turned back to me and said, “This time I may have handed myself over to him.”
“You’ve lost me.”
He started pacing again. “Have you heard about my bomb shelter?”
“I think everybody in town has.”
“Well, it’s all true. A big room that’s half living room with the other half being bunk beds enough for twelve. Comfortable beds.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“You will. In just a few minutes. But right now I need your word that everything I say is between us.”
“Lawyer-client privilege.”
“Sam, I’m not going to elaborate on what I want you to do for me. I need you to check things out for yourself. I need you to go down to the bomb shelter and look it over and then come back upstairs. Then we’ll talk and I’ll tell you what I know.”
The right side of his mouth had developed a tiny tic. His long slender left hand twitched twice.
“You like things mysterious, Ross.”
“I’ll explain everything—afterward.”
“That’s what you hired me for? To look in your bomb shelter?”
“That’s one of the reasons, Sam. The other reason—well, you’ll find out for yourself.”
“I can’t ask any questions?”
“Not right now. Just please do what I ask, Sam. Please.”
I wondered if Deirdre was at the door. Listening. Probably. I would be, if he was my father. I didn’t yet know what was wrong but I could sense that despite his apparent self-control, he was coming apart in little ways. Little ways that would lead to a complete loss of self-control very soon now.
Deirdre, as I’d suspected, was walking away very quickly—too quickly—when I opened the door. She disappeared into shadows near the front door.
At this point, he was sighing every thirty seconds or so. Quick, ragged sighs that just might portend a heart-attack. Maybe his body would turn on itself and kill him.
He walked to a door, opened it. “Down the stairs. The various rooms are marked. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”
“You’re not going down there with me?”
Another sigh. “I’d prefer not to.” Even his hand was glazed with sweat now. It shone like the brass doorknob it held.
Deirdre came up. “Want me to go with him, Dad?”
“No!” He said it with such anger that he sounded like a different person entirely. “I need you to stay out of this, Deirdre. I’ve told you that already.”
“Want me to go to my room and play with dolls or something, Dad?” She was now as angry as he’d been. She obviously didn’t like being treated so coldly, especially in front of a guest. But she was quick to relent. “I was just trying to help, Dad.”
Now it was his turn to sound apologetic. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s just—things.” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. “All this’ll be over soon. I’m sure Sam here can help me.”
Deirdre and I looked at each other. Her expression was much like mine. I wasn’t quite sure what would “all be over soon.” The answer was apparently in the bomb shelter. As to what I’d be “helping” him with, I had no idea.
“I guess I will go upstairs, actually,” Deirdre said, the brown eyes melancholy. Easy to picture her as a little girl confused and disappointed by the secret world of adults. “Well, good luck, Sam.”
“Thanks.”
“Hope I see you again, Sam.”
“I’ll make a point of it.”
When she’d gone, he said, “You made a friend. Her fiancé broke off their engagement a little over a year ago. This is the first time I’ve seen her show any interest in a male since then.”
“Well, I know one other male she sure seems to care about.”
“Oh?”
“You. That’s pretty easy to see.”
“Yes,” he said, being mysterious again. “And that sure doesn’t make any of this any easier, either.” Then: “Here, Sam. Down these stairs and to the right you’ll find the bomb shelter.”
Three
The basement steps were spiral-style. And steep. I was about halfway down them, when the whole thing started to feel unreal. He was scared to the point of dysfunction. He wanted to pay me a thousand dollars but wouldn’t say why. And now he wanted me to check out his bomb shelter.
The basement was divided into rooms with doors. I was in a basement unlike any I’d ever seen before. Usually there’s a sink and washer where Mom does the laundry. And a coal bin left over from Grandpa’s day. And a furnace that sounds like a bomb blast every time it comes on. And in the various corners are stacks of magazines running from Colliers to The Saturday Evening Post and wooden cases of empty Pepsi bottles. And then you’ve got your galvanized buckets and your mops that look like gray seaweed and your collection of ancient dusty cleaning fluids. And all sorts of other stuff that should’ve been thrown out long ago but somehow never was. The smells would be laundry soap, dust, dampness, and mildew from the stacks of newspapers. You would see an occasional bug, an occasional crack in the floor, an occasional cobweb on the unfinished ceiling.