Victoria Kim, in a gray sheath dress and white clogs, brought in tea and breakfast rolls and gave Selby his airlines ticket to Philadelphia. “I’ve run Clem to bring the car around,” she told him. “If you leave in half an hour, you should have plenty of time. There won’t be any traffic.”
Victoria Kim poured tea into cups patterned with copper-colored flowers. Senator Lester relaxed in his chair, stretched his arms and said, “The fact is, Selby, the attitudes of the men and women at Summitt don’t differ significantly from the national average. Our social experts, of course, hedged their conclusions with the usual on-the-other-hand disclaimers and cop-outs. But their consensus is there’s no reliable way to establish what’s normal in these areas. Or even to say that selfish concern for one’s own immediate welfare is wrong.
“People don’t want to be their brothers’ keepers these days. They flat out don’t want to. That’s a fact you can’t argue with.”
“You feel I wasted my time trying?” Selby asked him.
Lester picked up a file from his desk, scanned it briefly, then dropped it in front of Selby. “It’s spelled out clearly enough. Emotional isolation, the psychiatrists insist, is not only a typical attitude but a sane and reasonable one today in most American communities. Any compulsion to get involved is suspect. It could reflect some mental imbalance, a dangerous or antisocial refusal to accept or come to terms with the status quo. Given our personal information and what inductive reasoning we can apply to the problem, it’s still a matter of conjecture whether the population of Summitt is programmed, permanently or not. The effects of the mimic chemicals may wear off. Or the people may go on indefinitely exactly as they are. It would be difficult to tell in either case, because our experts tell me they’d probably find the same rate of indifference they found at Summitt if they’d taken their samples in St. Louis or Boston or Atlanta or anywhere else for that matter.”
“From personal experience,” Victoria Kim said, “loving one’s neighbor is fine with dead-bolts on your doors and a big Doberman trotting at your side when you’re jogging. It won’t keep you warm nights, but it can keep you alive.”
The senator’s phone rang. It was his chauffeur, Clem, on the limo phone from the congressional parking lot. “We’ll be right down,” Lester told him.
Standing, he said to Selby, “I’ll get your father’s diaries before I forget. By the way, Bittermank wanted to Xerox them for his files. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind so I didn’t bother checking.”
When he went into the conference room, Victoria Kim said to Selby, “You mentioned that your daughter was in summer school. Is she enjoying herself?”
“I believe so, thanks. She got behind in several classes and is working hard to catch up. We’re planning a vacation in Switzerland over the Christmas holidays. Shana’s determined to get a grip on the language.”
“No, thanks.”
“I’d better tidy things up. If you’re in Washington and need anything, you’ll call us, won’t you? You have our numbers and extensions, I believe.”
“Yes, thank you.”
She collected the tea things and left the office.
Selby had been tempted to ask her to use her sources, as she had with the Cadles, to help him locate the photographer, J. D. Parks, who had closed his office and left East Chester six weeks earlier. Parks had never billed Selby for the enlargements he’d made of Thomson’s license plates. The German janitor was no help. One morning the office was cleaned out, that was all he could tell Selby. But the old man seemed relieved that the ’Nam vet was gone. The breadcrumbs he’d left on the windowsill attracted more ants than birds. Respect for living creatures was fine, the old German grumbled, but not when it violated sanitary codes.
But it was already part of a past Selby didn’t want to examine... Dade Road, Vinegar Hill, the helicopter over Brandywine Lakes... and so he’d decided to forget it.
He looked at the morning sunshine on the Lincoln and Washington monuments. Emotional isolation...
Dorcas Brett had taken an official leave of absence after the interruption of Thomson’s trial. She had wanted to resign, but Lamb had asked her to put off any final decision until he had completed his indictments against Slocum and the others.
The last night Selby had spent with her, she had confessed she felt fragmented, as if pieces of herself were scattered everywhere. “I’m more part of your life and Shana’s than I am of my own. I can’t define myself with any accuracy, and I’d like time to try. I want to talk to my father. That’s strange, because I haven’t needed him for years. As much as I loathed Earl Thomson, I felt he belonged in a hospital instead of prison. Even my anger couldn’t convince me otherwise.”
She pulled herself gently away from him and sat on the edge of the bed. The dim moonlight glinted on her black hair falling in a mass around her neat, white shoulders.
“I’ve got a need to please. I’ve said that before, and it’s in conflict usually with a basic need for privacy, or of wanting to be alone. I don’t know...” She had turned and smiled at him. “The thing is, I don’t know if I need to be needed, Harry. Or even wanted to be. Maybe I’m afraid of that for some reason...”
Senator Lester came out of the conference room now with Jonas Selby’s diaries and notebooks wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with knotted cord. They walked together to the elevators and took a car down to the lobby. Selby carried his father’s diaries under his arm, which seemed, in a sense, to complete the circle... they were, after all, what had taken him down to Summitt City in the first place, such a long time ago.
Clem stood beside Lester’s limousine in the congressional parking area. He said, “Morning, Mr. Selby,” and stowed the diaries and Selby’s overnight bag in the trunk.
The sun was higher now, streaming brilliantly across the Lincoln and Washington monuments. Senator Lester looked beyond Selby to these symbols of the American experience and said with a smile, “I don’t intend to pull a Fourth of July speech from my pocket, but we stopped Simon Correll and their conglomerate in their tracks in this country and I’m proud of it. The Congress of the United States is not totally composed of ninnies and frauds and opportunists. Of course it won’t put to shame the memory of the Platos and Justice Marshalls and Holmeses of the world either. Congressmen, most of us, despite our rhetoric, aren’t passionately concerned about saving whales and condors and exotic spiders, although we do get spastic and apoplectic about gun control and abortions and prayers in schools. But with all our pious speechmaking and expensive junkets we’re the best representative assembly of free men in the world and I’m proud of the job we do and the country we serve.”
“With all due respect,” Selby said, “if that’s not a Fourth of July speech, it’s a fairly reasonable facsimile. Would you please spell out just what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Simply that there are things you and I have got to take on faith, Selby. In certain areas — and Summitt City is one of them — no one, I repeat, no one, is ever sure of more than about eighty percent of the truth. It’s guessing at the remaining twenty percent that creates conspiracy theories, which can be as dangerous and addictive as heroin, I can tell you.”
“Faith is fine,” Selby said, “it moves mountains, but so can doubt, as I think some Frenchman said.”
“Selby, speculation feeds on itself. I’ll grant you it takes faith, a lot of it, to buy the fact that the most sophisticated film labs in the world, I mean the CIA’s, managed to screw up the film you and Wilger turned over to them. But what’s the alternative? Reckless, subjective evaluation, that’s all I can see.” The senator patted Selby’s arm, a sympathetic gesture. “All this guesswork and anxiety simply reflects a compulsion to make some sense and order out of situations that are naturally painful and inconclusive. Selby, I personally know intelligent people who’ve gone to their graves convinced there was not just a second gunman, but a half dozen at Dallas the day Jack Kennedy was assassinated. They just wouldn’t be convinced otherwise. They wanted some comforting illusion of conspiracy rather than the truth.”