He stopped. His grip on her arm turned her and he felt heat in his cheeks; he said in an odd voice, “It could have been a lot worse, after all, couldn’t it?”
“We’ve had twenty-three years together and we didn’t end up hating each other. That’s a great deal.”
“We’re both talking as if it’s over.”
A car came into the street preceded by its lights. They turned and began to walk home. Winslow said, “What are they going to want us to do? What are we going to have to do?”
She gripped his hand; it was the only answer she gave.
Chapter Six
Early Wednesday morning Alan Forrester drove down from the ranch and racked the 200SL in a FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY parking slot beside the courthouse. He walked by the open door of a Superior Court room where people were lined up in rows of chairs waiting to be heard—prostitutes with cheap wigs and rickety legs and the absurdly fur-dressed pimps who had come to ransom them.
The Pima County Courthouse had been built in the Moorish style, hollowed out with a square central courtyard and a veranda-covered balcony in lieu of a hallway. The balcony teemed with civil servants in shirtsleeves and cotton dresses, complacent as eunuchs. Forrester, towering and striking, made a center of attention as he progressed. He shook hands and spoke greetings by name and signed a few autographs, and took note of the number of passersby who made a point of pretending not to see him. The battle lines of public opinion were being drawn up.
He went into his private office by the side door and found Jaime Spode asprawl on the couch. A babble of voices came through the closed door of the outer office and a newspaper lay on the desk, TORNADOES KILL 17 IN TEXAS PANHANDLE. There was a small two-column head halfway down the page:
SOVIET DENIES AIM TO SURPASS U.S. IN MIRVS.
Washington, April 2 (UPI)—The Soviet press agency Tass issued the first official statement on the growing tempest over the alleged U.S. plan to deploy the Phaeton MIRV system of missile warheads. The Soviet Union asserted it was not seeking to add a further spiral to the arms race by seeking nuclear MIRV superiority over the United States.
The Soviet report seemed clearly a reaction to the disclosures last week by Senator Alan Forrester (R-Ariz) that combined Pentagon-House forces planned to rush official authorization of Phaeton Three through both houses of Congress before the issue could be debated in public. The Phaeton Three multiple-warhead system is (Cont. on p. 7)
Forrester opened the paper to read the continuation and when he glanced up he caught Spode watching him. “With friends like the Reds, who needs enemies in Congress?”
Forrester grunted.
“Old man Shattuck still avoiding you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t wonder. I checked around and it seems Shattuck Industries gave a hundred-thousand-dollar check to Congressman Webb Breckenyear’s campaign fund two years ago.”
“I might have expected that.” Forrester reached for the intercom switch. “Ronnie?”
The speaker crackled. “Yes, Mr. Spode?”
It was a clear enough signaclass="underline" there was someone in the outer office who wasn’t to know Forrester was in.
“Come in when you’re free, will you?”
On the speaker behind Ronnie’s “Yes, sir,” he heard a woman’s harsh acrimony: “Every seven puking seconds another puking mouth to feed with six tons of meat and five tons of wheat and twenty-six million tons of water and God knows what-all—I am going to camp in this puking chair until hell freezes over or I get in to see the puking Senator, whichever comes first. If I don’t get his signature we’ll all get crowded off the God damn puking planet.”
Ronnie had left the intercom turned up long enough for them to hear what she was up against and it made Spode laugh with a hard bray. “Out to save the puking world all by herself—what’ll you bet if I go out there and tell her to fuck off she’ll be horrified?”
“I don’t mean to seem rude but what are you doing here, Top?”
“Resting my feet.”
“Is that your gentle way of telling me you can’t crack Ross Trumble’s nut?”
“No, it’s my gentle way of telling you my feet are sore because I’ve been standing in doorways for forty-eight hours keeping a tail on him. Every place he goes he takes that fucking briefcase with him. I think he sleeps with it under his pillow. But I’ve got a girl down here today from Orozco’s agency and maybe she’ll be able to pry him loose of it.”
“I need those figures, Top. I postponed the inspection tour of the base as long as I could but we’ve got to go through with it Friday morning and I’ve got to have those figures before that. You’ve got less than forty-eight hours.”
“Yeah, I know.” Spode stretched. “Listen, it’s all right this time because I just spent an hour checking this room out, but you really ought to be more careful what you say to me. Breckenyear and Trumble have got FBI buddies and you want to look out for bugs.”
Forrester was impatient with it but it was true enough. The ones who saw Communists under every rock were capable of doing almost anything in the name of national security and that included spying on a United States Senator.
He said, “I haven’t time to fool with that woman now, but I need Ronnie in here. You’d better do it—be as gentle as you can.”
“I’ll just wave my tommyhawk.” Spode squeezed through the door and disappeared.
Forrester finished reading the newspaper item. There was a quote attributed to Senator Woodrow Guest: “Our liberal brethren seem to be looking for a scapegoat. First it was the draft, then Dow Chemical, then white racists. Now it’s the defense industry.” It was easy to hear the tone of biting scorn in Guest’s silver voice.
Ronnie came in miming exhaustion. “I thought that woman was going to shout my ears off.”
Spode trailed in and ambled back to the couch. “On her way out she was still talking to herself—heading for the Mayor’s puking office.” He sat down and clasped his hands on top of his head, spread-eagling his elbows.
Ronnie had her notebook. “Senator Guest’s office phoned. He’s flying into Phoenix tonight and he asked if you’ll be available for a conference Thursday morning—tomorrow—at ten. Congressman Trumble will be there. And Ramsey Douglass of Matthewson-Ward.”
“Where?”
“Senator Guest’s house. Scottsdale.”
Spode said, “If Woody Guest’s willing to fly all the way out here to meet you maybe it means he’s ready to knuckle under and hold hearings.”
“I think he is,” Forrester said. “He’s got quite a few enemies panting around for a crack at his throne and some of them are up for reelection this year. If he refused to hold public hearings it would be an unpopular move and some of the moderate conservatives in the Senate would feel forced to dissociate themselves from him—especially in an election year. No, he’ll come out foursquare in favor of open hearings, but when they’re held he’ll do his best to cloud the issues. So we’ve still got to whip up public concern and work on the swing voters in the Senate. For openers, that Shattuck Industries contribution to Breckenyear’s campaign will do—Shattuck doesn’t even have a plant in Breckenyear’s state. I want to make that contribution public. Can you document it?”
“That’s what you pay me for.”
“Fine. It’ll cast a shadow over Breckenyear and maybe even his redneck supporters will be embarrassed by it. But if I’m going to put pressure on the Senate we’re going to need more ammunition like that. I want to know every campaign contribution that came out of the defense industry’s checkbook, because when my friends get up to make speeches supporting their good American buddies in the hardware industry I want to show facts and figures that will discredit their motives.”