The opposition to Vietnam that arose at home had bewildered him; still did. He had never been able to understand why the draft dodgers and the flag burners and the protesters couldn’t comprehend the reality. America’s mistake had not been fighting in Vietnam. It had been not fighting enough, making it a limited war that stopped at a dividing line instead of going right on up into Hanoi. If Johnson or Nixon had done that, hundreds, thousands, of lives would have been saved, just as thousands of lives were saved by what he did. Vietnam would now be unified and free. And the war would have ended years earlier than it had, and without that humiliating claptrap about peace with honor, which had been nothing of the sort, but rather America being ass-whipped by a bunch of peasants in lampshade hats and black pyjamas.
The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign came on at the same time as the announcement and O’Farrell obeyed, gazing through the window at the flatness of Florida. Why the doubts then? Why the doubts and the need for a quick drink to steady himself and the constant self-examination? Intellectually—although he never conceded it emotionally—he had difficulty with the Hitler and Stalin and Amin analogy. But he sincerely believed, he told himself, that a lot of lives, and suffering and hardship and misery, had been saved by what he’d done. After all, he’d carried out his own investigation every time and studied every piece of information. And a lot of lives would be saved if he were satisfied with this and took out a diplomat abusing his privileges by trafficking in drugs and guns. It would be difficult, for Christ’s sake, to come up with any combination that caused more deaths and suffering and hardship and misery than drugs and guns.
You know what drugs are? he’d asked Billy.
And the answer: Stuff that makes you feel funny. Boom, boom and the Coke container was breached by the space invader. Easy, he told himself; don’t make it personal. He shouldn’t have reacted so vehemently in front of Petty and Erickson. Got away with it, though; still, not a mistake he should make again. Shouldn’t make any mistakes; couldn’t make any mistakes.
O’Farrell became conscious of the stewardess in the aisle and looked toward her. She was a milk-fed, apple-cheeked blonde and professionally pretty, like a doll; there had to be a factory somewhere producing five hundred such girls every week, already clad in the uniforms of the world’s airlines.
“I need your tray table up in the seat in front of you, and I need to take your glass,” she said. The teeth were capped and perfect, like everything else about her. He wondered if she were still a virgin and was surprised at the turn of thought.
O’Farrell restored the tiny table and handed her the glass; three but it had been a boring trip, although there had been time to think. And the gin hadn’t touched him at all. Sober as a judge. Wasn’t that what he was, a judge appointed to carry out a full and complete inquiry and to reach a verdict properly befitting the crime? No, he thought, in immediate contradiction. His responsibility was the sentence, not the verdict. The verdict had already been reached. Another contradiction. Returned. But still to be carried out.
O’Farrell was working professionally, which imposed many patterns. An important one was untraceable invisibility. So he disdained any thought of a hotel, cruising around the town until he located a motel on Apalachee Parkway and limiting his association with any staff to the single act of checking in.
He was at the detention building fifteen minutes ahead of the Washington-arranged interview. There was a bar opposite, and he knew he had time, but he entered the government building, pleased with his self-control. O’Farrell endured the expected affability of the local officer, agreeing that drugs were a bitch and the shortages of enforcement resources were a bitch and changing policies were a bitch and that the constant infighting between the various federal agencies was a bitch, but that this was a good bust and there was going to be a lot of promotional mileage out of it.
O’Farrell insisted on entering the interview room first so that Rodgers had to be the person coming to him. He didn’t stand when the man entered. When the escort asked if he should stay, O’Farrell barely shook his head so that the prisoner would see the contemptuous dismissal of the idea that Rodgers might be any sort of physical risk.
Because he was still on remand, Rodgers had been allowed to retain his own clothes, a cut-to-the-skin black shirt, open at the neck, and designer jeans that O’Farrell guessed had been additionally tailored, so perfectly did they fit. The loafers were Gucci. All the jewelry had been impounded, but there was a thin white ring marking the skin around the man’s sun-bronzed neck. There was also a wider band of white on his tanned wrist and the pinky finger of his left hand. Everything would have been gold, O’Farrell guessed; heavy gold. Rodgers was exercise lean, tightly curled hair close to his scalp.
“You my man?” Rodgers said, still at the door. The teeth were white and even, like the stewardess’s on the plane.
“Sit down!” O’Farrell ordered, gesturing to the seat on the other side of the table.
Rodgers did but reversed the chair to straddle it like he was astride a horse, arms crossed over the round of its back. Christ! thought O’Farrell. Then: Don’t get upset, personally involved. Then: Stuff that makes you feel funny. Just feet away—six or seven feet away—was one of the bastards providing shit to make kids feel funny.
“So, you my man?” Rodgers’s nails were perfectly manicured.
“Can you count?”
“What sort of question is that? ’Course I can count!”
O’Farrell splayed his right hand in front of the other man’s face and said, “So count,” opening and closing his fingers seven times. If the asshole wanted it played macho-man rules, it was all right by him.
“Thirty-five,” Rodgers said.
“Years,” O’Farrell added. “That’s the max: thirty-five years. I checked with the District Attorney. And that’s what they’re going for, the maximum, no parole, because you haven’t got a defense that Perry Mason would even consider. You’re thirty-three. I checked that, too. So you’re sixty-eight when you get out. You any idea how difficult it is to get any pussy when you’re sixty-eight?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Facts,” O’Farrell said. “I’m talking facts.”
“Haven’t they told you, for Christ’s sake?”
“Told me what?”
“I want to cooperate! Do a deal!”