“Hey, he’s the one suggested there should be something personal, that something’s missing from your average evil.”
“You argue like a child! I suppose if he told you to jump off the roof you’d go out and do it.”
“Of course not. I’m only pointing out.”
“Well, just be careful where you point,” Ham said.
“I am,” Dan said. “I am careful. Hey, if he thinks this is about devil worship or anything like that, he’s got another think coming. Profits, incentive. It’s still America, what do you think?”
“That’s what I say.”
“Right on.”
“Don’t he know that blood’s been spilled, don’t he understand there’s a girl dead out of this? Ain’t that good enough for him?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I say.”
“Gents,” offered Druff, who knew when he was being triple-teamed, “I’m elsewhere expected.” And, rising, came out from behind the desk.
“He’s warm.
“He’s very warm.”
“Very warm? He’s very hot!”
“You’ve got to give him credit,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs.
“Credit, hell,” Jerry Rector said, “you’ve got to bribe him outright.”
“See,” said Dan, “what did he tell you? Downtown isn’t just fixing tickets, moving the dates around on your court calendar like three-card monte, or getting the man from the Health Department to look in the sink but not under the stove. It ain’t only always money changing hands.”
“Of course not.”
“No way,” said Rector.
Druff walked over the Oriental rugs scattered through the rabbi’s study, moving across one and onto the next as though they were beautiful stepping stones in a gorgeous river.
“The U pays the costs on its own property. What the hell, it picks up the tab at the city’s end, too.”
“To get the unpleasantness over with.”
“To put the nastiness behind.”
“To sweep,” said Dan in a low, meaningful, carefully inflected voice which stopped Druff cold, “it under the rug.”
“Come on, boys,” Jerry Rector said, “let’s leave the commissioner alone a few minutes. Let’s give him a little time to consider the bank’s latest proposition.”
They filed past him and were heading out the door before Druff knew what was happening. Hamilton Edgar paused and turned in the doorway. “I’ll shut this for you,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t lock it. We’ll be just down the hall if you need us.”
“Ham?” Druff said.
“Yes, Commissioner?”
“Is there a washroom? I have to pee.”
“Just in there,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said. “Behind that door. It’s the rabbi’s. Help yourself,” he said, and walked out with the others.
Druff sat on the toilet (because peeing was the least of it) and thought: Now isn’t this just what I’ve been telling myself? And wondered he hadn’t, at the time hadn’t, understood the implications of what was now so apparent. All this pursuant (grunt, squeeze, release) to his observation the evening previous that life goes on even in the chase scenes. Even character did, its old autonomics. Wasn’t his lie to Hamilton Edgar about needing to pee a testament to his system’s urgent modesty? The body had its own agenda and would not be caught up in the desiderata of even an engaged will. Hell, it couldn’t even be bothered. Brushing and flossing and following — he recalled, among his other meds, the stool softener he’d taken between the time he’d committed adultery and the time he’d gone to bed — doctor’s orders. Even as you, even as me. Your Juicy Fruit in one pocket, your stamps for your letters in the other. He recalled thinking that no matter how hot the pursuit, people with MacGuffins would still need batteries for their transistor radios, and suddenly remembered the zinc batteries for Rose Helen’s hearing aid, making a mental note to pop into a store, if he got the chance, to see if he could pick some up. Life goes on. Speaking of which, hadn’t he told Margaret he’d call? He’d do so now, as soon as he finished his business. While he still had the chance. Amazing, thought Druff, his notions borne out. And the upshot (what he hadn’t realized) was this: that if something as fragile as one’s life could go on, if one, even under duress, could continue to count calories, why then how much more procedural were the general comings-and-goings and business-as- usuals of the universe, all its tidals and opportunities, all its knockabout upheavals and the explosive, piecemeal degradation of the earth and subordinate stars?
Thinking, as he washed up and examined himself in the mirror: This rabbi has some terrific deal going. Not only a swell study in which to do the holy contemplatives of his trade, but a private, humdinger john any fellow could really be proud of. The latest fixtures and even a nifty, beautiful Oriental rug.
Now why, wondered the City Commissioner of Streets, would that be?
This particular question catching him off guard. Quite rocking him. So much so, in fact, that although he’d heard no one reenter the rabbi’s study he was a bit chary about going back in there quite yet, lest they return before he was ready for them. He pulled the lid down over the toilet seat and sat. Dizzily, he contemplated the figure in the carpet. Contemplated having (and in something under thirty-some-odd hours) rediscovered his old, idling intelligence. (Idling no longer. His bright ideas sudden and received, as ready-to-wear and off-the-rack as Commandments. “Call Margaret,” he’s commanding himself.) In the rabbi’s toilet of the rabbi’s study contemplated, fearfully, his brand-spanking- new braveries. Not least, he contemplated Coincidence.
Those guys, he thought, Ham ‘n’ Eggs, Jerry Rector, the Dan guy, couldn’t have known I was coming. I couldn’t have known I was coming! I overslept. So much had happened. I woke up confused. I didn’t even know what day it was. I dressed for the office. Downstairs we had words. I stormed out of the house. I don’t go for walks, I don’t have routes. No one, no one ever, really set their watch by me. What’s the deal? I happened by. I just happened by. No one could know. How could anyone know? So life goes on, so character does, so we brush, floss and tune in to catch the news on the hour. So time marches on, tra la. So what’s the deal? So I didn’t know I even had a MacGuffin until yesterday. So I didn’t have spies or a girlfriend, either. There’s always the random. There’s always absentee ballots, late returns, and another county heard from. Things happen at sea while stars fall on Alabama. Who’s to say that isn’t a cooperation, a conspiracy of engaged, invisible gears? There’s chance, back channels and fucking farce. There’s this and there’s that — stuff going on all over the place, at all hours of the day and night, rough-hew them as we may. Why shouldn’t those boys have been waiting for me? She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes, n’ est-ce pas? So don’t tell me hold your horses, old fella. Yes, yes, I know. I appreciate the powers of paranoia. They are surely considerable. But before you go rushing off to find a shrink, consider, I’m a politician. Trained in the random, in the chance remark and glancing blows of everybody’s mouth news, in on all the late returns and other counties heard from, in absentee ballots and the planetary swing vote, in the graciousness of concession speeches lived through twice, once on the phone from my hotel, then in the ballroom. Trained, when it comes down, in the thick skin of the professional politician, his water-off-a-duck’s-back bathing habits and almost Christian bygones-be- bygones vision. So, sure, I’d have spies. Of course I’ll have enemies. An odds-on favorite, for God’s sake, a hell of a bunch more likely to have a MacGuffin of my own than that there’d ever be, now I see its tight weave and, to judge by the Chinese water torture it’d probably have to put up with in here, the colorfast qualities of its terrific, mysterious dyes, its rich fringe and intricate design and peculiar shape, what is almost surely a Muslim prayer rug right in the rabbi’s crapper!