He held up a hand. “I like to be thanked, but it was due to you, not me. I’ve heard a little about it. Richard Garrett called me, and so did Hortense. You impressed him no end — and her even more, I suspect. Lloyd, I wasn’t surprised. You impressed me, too, in court that day. More important, you impressed the judge. I would even go so far as to say that you set him back on his heels somewhat.”
This left me slightly crossed up, that this reaction to me, Mr. Garrett’s reaction, I mean, which he had passed on to her by phone, had now become official. So it was being passed on to everyone. But I began to realize that it was the only reaction that could be maintained. If I was a guy whose wife would shortly be paired more or less publicly with the head of an institute he was underwriting, the only way he could play it would be straight, make noises that this friend of his wife’s was really some kind of genius, that Dr. Palmer had the job for that reason and not for reasons that might be inferred. But, of course, I said nothing about this to the senator. I merely listened while he talked on.
When we arrived at Harvey’s, which is a basement restaurant with underground parking for cars, I gave the driver ten dollars to go have his lunch. Then I led the way to my table which I had reserved by phone and which the girl, a rather good-looking maîtresse d’, had waiting when we got there. We ordered, and when Senator Hood asked for a martini, so did I. He resumed discussing the Institute and the future I could look forward to, “now that the Garretts have fallen for you.” But I must not have been paying attention, because he stopped in midsentence and asked: “What is it, Lloyd? What did I say?”
“It’s not you. Senator; it’s him. Mr. Garrett.”
“Lloyd, he’s big.”
“He’s been stuck with me, once I got her on my side, but he keeps blowing me up, making me bigger than I am. It makes me damned uneasy. A person knows his limitations.”
“Maybe he’s not blowing you up. You impressed me just as much as you apparently did him. That ghastly day in court, when you calmly took charge up there on the witness stand and got it into the record that the pot they found in Jack’s car must have been planted by the police, which, you thought, was most unlikely, or else stashed by someone else because it was hot and had to be gotten rid of, as to your certain knowledge that it was not in the glove compartment when you and the boys left the car to go to the basketball game. It was a cool, nervy performance, your making that judge listen, and once he listened, believe. It was a day I’ll never forget. So I’m not so sure that Richard Garrett overrates you. Perhaps, as they say, you don’t know your own strength.”
Though I certainly didn’t mean to, I had sounded cranky, so I started kidding along with the waitress as a way to save face. When she left again, the senator asked: “Lloyd, something’s bugging you more than you’ve been letting on. Come on, what is it? If you want to talk, that is.”
I didn’t want to, but I could hardly help it. I blurted out the whole thing — about the building, the law against renting yourself office space, which, it turned out, he had voted for, being ordered to find a building and soon. Senator Hood began to laugh.
“It’s like being given a scuba outfit and told to find the lost Atlantis,” he said. “And it also sounds like Richard Garrett, who is in the habit of commanding things to be done forthwith, and then, presto whango, they are... sometimes.” Suddenly the grin left his face, as though Marcel Marceau had waved his hand across it, and he started snapping his finger at the girl. “Miss,” he said when she sashayed over, “I’m Senator Hood of Nebraska, and something has come up. We have to leave. We’ll be gone about a half-hour. When we come back, we will want our lunch ready exactly as we ordered it. Keep our table for us, please.”
“Yes, sir,” she said as he pressed a bill in her hand.
“What is it, Senator?” I asked, wondering if he were ill.
“You’ll see. Come on, Lloyd.”
We went upstairs and out on the street. A taxi stopped for us as soon as he had raised his hand. He gave an address on K Street, and when we got there he told the driver to park, “here by the curb — we want to sit for a minute and then go back where we came from.” Through the window he pointed at the building across the street. It was still under construction. Scaffolding was all around it and out over the sidewalk. It was a beautiful modern thing of sandstone. But it wasn’t one of those buildings that look like a refrigerator with windows cut in the sides. It had windows, of course, but they were spaced in a graceful way, with stone in between. I counted ten floors. The top two were set back in a kind of mansard style, a little like the Lincoln Memorial. The entrance was beautiful — no columns, no fancy stuff, just two large bronze doors. He stared and then said quietly: “How would that do for your institute?”
“Perfect! Wonderful!”
“Let’s go back to Harvey’s, driver.”
While we rode, he talked. “You’ve heard of Bagastex?”
“I’ve heard of bagasse.”
“That’s right — Bagastex is made of bagasse — that stuff they get when they grind the juice out of sugarcane. It’s a floor covering that was developed by the Tombigvannah Corporation in Georgia. They tooled up, spent millions on it, and put up that building there, the one you just looked at. They had it made, they thought. By the end of the year they were due to line up with the big ones. And then the boom got lowered. Bagastex didn’t sell. Meanwhile, in Georgia they had had the bad judgment to fudge on their taxes. They knew they could be heading for trouble but figured that with the money they’d be making, they could square up and get on with the show without being caught. But they couldn’t. And they can’t meet their installment here, their last one on the building, with the contractor. So tomorrow in court the contractor will sue to have them declared bankrupt so their assets can be impounded and their creditors paid — perhaps. How do I know this? A certain senator came to me for help in getting a postponement tomorrow. But I can’t do a thing. There are reasons why I simply don’t dare to. But you can do something. You can phone Richard Garrett and have him get on it quick. It’s the chance of a lifetime, to pick up a building dirt cheap and perhaps do more than that. So, get on it. But remember: keep me out of it!?”
“I hear you, Senator. O.K.”
Back at Harvey’s, he paid for the cab. When we returned to our table, the maîtress d’ was there, looking at her watch.
“You were gone twenty-five minutes,” she said to the senator. “I’ll tell teacher to give you an apple.”
“Honey, I love you,” he told her.
He had her bring a phone and phone box, and we looked the numbers up, especially Tombigvannah’s lawyer, a man named Downing, who had offices in the Pell Building on Fourteenth Street. I wrote everything down on the four-by-six cards a researcher invariably carries and finally put in a call to Wilmington. Miss Immelman transferred my call to Mr. Garrett’s office. He was friendly and interested in what I was calling about. “It’s a beautiful thing,” I assured him and described the building. “It’s really something. How much of it I’ll need, I don’t know right now — two floors at least, perhaps three. But the other floors, you can rent out.” But when I tried to explain the deal and mentioned Tombigvannah, he cut in quickly and hard.
“I know all about that. They’ve been propositioning me about Bagastex for a couple of years at least, and, of course, I’ve had it looked into. But the next question concerns you. What’s your connection with it?”