"You might do worse than think about publishing your memoirs in timely fashion," Abell said. "A lot of high-ranking officers will be doing that. If you get yours out there before most of the others, it can only work to your advantage."
If I do that, Dowling thought, I will have to talk about lying to the War Department. A good many people would read a memoir of his precisely because he'd worked with Custer for so long. But work with Custer wasn't all he'd done-not even close. Didn't the world deserve to know as much?
"I'll think about it," he said.
"All right." Abell nodded briskly. He'd solved a problem. Dowling wouldn't be difficult, not the way Custer had. The General Staff officer went on, "Do you want to head over to the press office to help them draft a release about your retirement?"
"Do I want to?" Dowling shrugged. "Not especially. I will, though." What did Proverbs say? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. He hadn't passed away yet, but he was passing. The United States, like the earth, would abide, and he'd helped make that so.
XIX
"Hi, hon," Sally Dover said when Jerry came back to the house. "You got a telephone call maybe half an hour ago."
"Oh, yeah?" Dover gave his wife the kind of absentminded kiss people who've been married a long time often share. "Good thing we didn't take it out yet, then." That was coming soon, he feared. You could pretend to stay middle-class for a while when you were out of work, but only for a while. After that, you started saving every cent you could, every way you could. The Dovers weren't eating meat very often these days, and most of the meat they did eat was sowbelly.
"Here's the number." She gave him a scrap of paper.
He'd hoped it would be the Huntsman's Lodge. It wasn't. He knew that number by heart, of course. He knew the numbers for just about all the restaurants in Augusta by heart. This wasn't any of them. If it was anything that had to do with work, whether in a restaurant or not, he would leap at it now.
He dialed the operator and gave her the number. She put the call through. It rang twice before someone on the other end picked it up. "This is Mr. Broxton's residence." The voice was unfamiliar. The accent wasn't-if the man hadn't been born in Mexico, Jerry Dover was an Eskimo.
Hope was also unfamiliar. Charlemagne Broxton-and wasn't that a name to remember? — was the principal owner of the Huntsman's Lodge. Heart thuttering, Dover gave his name. "I'm returning Mr. Broxton's call," he said.
"Oh, yes, sir. One moment, please," the-butler? — said. Back before the war, Charlemagne Broxton had had colored servants. Who among the wealthy in Augusta hadn't? Where were they now? Nobody who'd lived through the war wanted to think about things like that. Nobody on the Confederate side, anyway-the damnyankees were much too fond of asking such inconvenient and embarrassing questions.
"Broxton here." This voice was deep and gruff and familiar. "That you, Dover?"
No. My name's Reilly, and I sell lampshades. The mad, idiot quip flickered through Dover's mind and, fortunately, went out. "Yeah, it's me, Mr. Broxton. What can I do for you, sir?"
"Well, I hear you're looking for work," Broxton said. "How would you like your old job back?"
"I'd like that fine, Mr. Broxton. But what happened to Willard Sloan?" Jerry Dover asked.
Shut up! Are you out of your mind? Sally mouthed at him. He ignored her. No matter how tight things were, he didn't want to put a cripple on the street. That could have happened to him if a bullet or a shell fragment changed course by a few inches.
"Well, we had to let him go," Broxton answered.
"How come?" Dover persisted. "Not for my sake, I hope. He could do the job." Sally looked daggers at him. He went right on pretending not to see.
"Didn't have anything to do with that," Broxton said. Jerry Dover waited. The restaurant owner coughed. "Can you keep this quiet? I don't want to hurt his chances somewhere else."
"C'mon, Mr. Broxton. How many years have you known me? Do I blab?" Dover said.
"Well, no." Charlemagne Broxton coughed again. "We caught him taking rakeoffs from suppliers. Big rakeoffs. And so…"
If some food disappeared from the restaurant, well, that was part of the overhead. The manager and the cooks and the waiters and the busboys all stole a little. Skimming cash was something else again. If you got caught, you got canned. The one might not cost more than the other, but it went over the line. Dover wondered why Sloan needed to do it. Was he a gambler? Was he paying somebody else off? (Dover knew too much about that.) Or did he just get greedy? If he did, he was pretty dumb. And so? People were dumb, all the goddamn time.
"If you need me back, you know I'll be there," Dover said.
"Good. I hoped you'd say that." Charlemagne Broxton coughed one more time. "Ah…There is the question of your pay." He named a figure just over half of what Dover had been making before he went into uniform.
"You can do better than that, Mr. Broxton," Dover said. "I happen to know you were paying Willard Sloan more than that." Sally gave him a Freedom Party salute. He scowled at her; that was dangerous even in private. And if you did it in private you might slip and do it in public. His wife stuck out her tongue at him.
Broxton sighed. "Business isn't what it used to be. But all right. I'll give you what I was giving Sloan." He named another figure, which did indeed just about match what Jerry Dover had heard. Then he said, "Don't try fooling around to bump it up, the way Sloan did."
"If you think I will, you better not hire me," Dover replied.
"If I thought you would, I wouldn't have called," Broxton said. "But I didn't think Sloan would, either, dammit."
"When do you want me to start?" Dover asked.
"Fast as you can get over to the restaurant," the owner answered. "I've got Luis tending to it now, and I want him to go back to boss cook fast as he can. A greaser in that spot'd steal me blind faster'n Sloan did."
From what Jerry Dover had seen, honesty and its flip side had little to do with color. He didn't argue with Charlemagne Broxton, though. "Be there in half an hour," he promised, and hung up.
Sally flew into his arms and kissed him. "They want you back!" she said. He nodded. Her smile was bright as the sun. She'd worked in a munitions plant during the war, but times had been lean since. Money coming in was a good thing.
After Dover detached himself from her, he put on a tie and a jacket and hustled off to the Huntsman's Lodge. He didn't want to be late, even by a minute. As he hurried along Augusta's battered streets, he contemplated ways and means. He didn't want the head cook pissed off at him. That was trouble with a capital T. He'd have to find a way to keep Luis sweet, or else get him out of the restaurant.
To his relief, the Mexican didn't seem angry. "I'd rather cook," he said. "The suppliers, all they do is try to screw you. You want to take it, Seсor Dover, you welcome to it."
Dover's grin was pure predator. "I don't take it, man. I give it." Luis blinked. Then he grinned, too.
Before Dover could give it, he had to find out what was there. He checked the refrigerators and the produce bins. The menu had changed a little since he went into the Army. Part of that was because some things were unavailable. Part of it was because the damnyankees who made up such a big part of the clientele these days had different tastes from the regulars who'd filled the place before the war.