“I’m not interested in organizations. I was in one for fifteen years.”
“The Police Department.”
“That’s right.”
“Perhaps I stated it poorly. You wouldn’t be part of an organization per se. You’d be working for me.”
“I don’t like to work for people.”
“You’re contented with your life as it is.”
“Not particularly.”
“But you don’t want to change it.”
“No.”
“It’s your life,” he said. “I’m surprised, though. You have a great deal of depth to you. I should think you would want to accomplish more in the world. I would think you would be more ambitious, if not for your own personal advancement then in terms of your potential for doing some good in the world.”
“I told you I was a rotten citizen.”
“Because you don’t exercise your right to vote, yes. But I would think — Well, if you should change your mind, Mr. Scudder, the offer will hold.”
I got to my feet. He stood and extended his hand. I didn’t really want to shake hands with him, but I couldn’t see how to avoid it. His grip was firm and sure, which boded well for him. He was going to have to shake a lot of hands if he wanted to win elections.
I wondered if he’d really lost his passion for young boys. It didn’t matter much to me one way or the other. The photos I’d seen had turned my stomach, but I don’t know that I had all that much moral objection to them. The boy who’d posed for them had been paid, and undoubtedly knew what he was doing. I didn’t like shaking hands with him, and he would never be my choice for a drinking buddy, but I figured he wouldn’t be too much worse in Albany than any other son of a bitch who would want the job.
Chapter 18
It was around three when I left Huysendahl’s office. I thought of calling Guzik and finding out how they were doing with Beverly Ethridge, but I decided to save a dime. I didn’t want to talk to him, and I didn’t much care how they were doing anyway. I walked around for a while and stopped at a lunch counter on Warren Street. I didn’t have an appetite, but it had been a while since I’d had anything to eat, and my stomach was starting to tell me I was mistreating it. I had a couple of sandwiches and some coffee.
I walked around some more. I’d wanted to go to the bank where the data on Henry Prager was tucked away, but it was too late now, they were closed. I decided I’d do that in the morning so that I could destroy all that material. Prager couldn’t be hurt any more, but there was still the daughter, and I would feel better when the stuff Spinner had willed to me had ceased to exist.
After a while I got on the subway, and got off at Columbus Circle. There was a message for me at the hotel desk. Anita had called and wanted me to call her back.
I went upstairs and addressed a plain white envelope to Boys Town. I enclosed Huysendahl’s check, put a stamp on the envelope, and, in a monumental expression of faith, dropped the letter in the hotel’s mail chute. Back in my room, I counted the money I’d taken from the Marlboro man. It came to two hundred and eighty dollars. Some church or other had twenty-eight dollars coming, but at the moment I didn’t feel like going to a church. I didn’t really feel like much of anything.
It was over now. There was really nothing more to do, and all I felt was empty. If Beverly Ethridge ever stood trial, I would probably have to testify, but that wouldn’t be for months, if ever, and the prospect of testifying didn’t bother me. I’d given testimony on enough occasions in the past. There was nothing more to do. Huysendahl was free to become governor or not, depending upon the whims of political bosses and the public at large, and Beverly Ethridge was up against the wall, and Henry Prager was going to be buried in a day or so. The moving finger had written and he had written himself off, and my role in his life was as finished as his life itself. He was another person to light meaningless candles for, that was all.
I called Anita.
“Thanks for the money order,” she said. “I appreciated it.”
“I’d say there’s more where that came from,” I said. “Except there isn’t.”
“Are you all right?”
“Sure. Why?”
“You sound different. I don’t know how exactly, but you sound different.”
“It’s been a long week.”
There was a pause. Our conversations are usually marked by pauses. Then she said, “The boys were wondering if you wanted to take them to a basketball game.”
“In Boston?”
“Pardon me?”
“The Knicks are out of it. The Celtics destroyed them a couple of nights ago. It was the highlight of my week.”
“The Nets,” she said.
“Oh.”
“I think they’re in the finals. Against Utah or something.”
“Oh.” I can never remember that New York has a second basketball team. I don’t know why. I’ve taken my sons to the Nassau Coliseum to watch the Nets and I still tend to forget they exist. “When are they playing?”
“There’s a home game Saturday night.”
“What’s today?”
“Are you serious?”
“Look, I’ll get a calendar watch next time I think of it. What’s today?”
“Thursday.”
“Tickets will probably be hard to get.”
“Oh, they’re all sold out. They thought you might know somebody.”
I thought of Huysendahl. He could probably swing tickets without much trouble. He would also probably have enjoyed meeting my sons. Of course, there were enough other people who could manage to obtain last-minute tickets, and who wouldn’t mind doing me a favor.
I said, “I don’t know. It’s cutting it kind of close.” But what I was thinking was that I didn’t want to see my sons, not in just two days’ time, and I didn’t know why. And I was also wondering if they really wanted me to take them to the game or if they simply wanted to go to it and knew that I would be able to root out a source of tickets.
I asked if there were any other home games.
“Thursday. But that’s a school night.”
“It’s also a lot more possible than Saturday.”
“Well, I hate to see them stay out late on a school night.”
“I could probably get tickets for the Thursday game.”
“Well—”
“I couldn’t get tickets for Saturday, but I could probably get something for Thursday. It’ll be later in the series, a more important game.”
“Oh, so that’s the way you want to do it. If I say no because it’s a school night, then I’m the heavy.”
“I think I’ll hang up.”
“No, don’t do that. All right, Thursday is fine. You’ll call if you can get tickets?”
I said I would.
It was odd — I wanted to be drunk but didn’t much want a drink. I sat around the room for a while, then walked over to the park and sat on a bench. A couple of kids ambled rather purposefully to a bench nearby. They sat down and lit cigarettes, and then one of them noticed me and nudged his companion, who looked carefully toward me. They got up and walked off, glancing back periodically to make sure I was not following them. I stayed where I was. I guessed that one of them had been about to sell drugs to the other, and that they had looked at me and decided not to conduct the transaction under the eyes of someone who looked like a policeman.
I don’t know how long I sat there. A couple of hours, I suppose. Periodically a panhandler would brace me. Sometimes I’d contribute toward the next bottle of sweet wine. Sometimes I’d tell the bum to fuck off.