Motown, page 20
They ate their meals. Pammie sipped her Coke through a straw and wrinkled her nose. “Too much syrup. How’d you guess Wendell and Enid had—something going?”
“Do they?”
“I didn’t say that. I was just wondering what made you think so.”
He backed off again. “Just something I overheard her say to him on the phone once. Also I get the impression neither of them thinks too much of Caroline, except as a lawyer. Probably I’ve just got a dirty mind.”
“I read a letter he wrote Enid.” She took another sip.
“A letter?” He hadn’t counted on letters. His inner antennae were tingling.
“It was an accident. She had to go out and asked me to file a bunch of letters on her desk. I guess it got mixed up in the stack. By the time I knew it didn’t belong it was too late; I’d read it.” She flushed. “No, that’s not true. I went on reading after I figured out what it was. I guess that’s pretty terrible.”
“What did it say?”
But she’d sealed off. “I put it back on her desk, under some other papers. I never said anything. I don’t think she knows I saw it.”
“Must’ve been pretty hot.”
“It wasn’t your usual office memo.” She ate her last fry. “Do you think they have a dessert tray?”
He drove her home. He didn’t bring up the letter again. “We’ll get ’em Saturday,” he said, referring to the game. “McLain’s pitching.”
“I like Lolich. I just wish he’d lay off the beers. He’s starting to look like Jackie Gleason.” She watched the scenery roll past, lighted shop windows and pools of light under the street lamps like the ones Jimmy Durante used to walk through at the end of his TV show. She turned her head suddenly. “What’s this big idea you had that you wouldn’t tell Enid about?”
“I’d better not say anything yet. It might not come off.”
“Is it legal?”
“Not entirely.”
“Wendell says we should be careful and not break the law. That’s just what GM wants us to do so the government will shut us down.”
“Right, like we could be any less effective if it did.”
“Are you going to discuss it with him?”
“Sure. It wouldn’t work without Wendell.”
“Come on, give me a hint.”
He chewed on it. “You like parades?”
“Not much. I’m too short. All I ever see of the J. L. Hudson parade on Thanksgiving is the back of people’s heads.” She paused. “That’s your idea? A parade?”
“I just asked if you liked them.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
The house was in Melvindale, one of a row of narrow high-peaked residences, all painted white. Rick recognized the style. They had been built by the Ford Motor Company under the original Henry for the employees at the Dearborn plant. Blue light from a television screen flickered in one of the downstairs windows, the only illumination in the house. He walked her to the porch.
“Pop’s watching Dean Martin. We better say good-bye here,” she said. “I had a good time.”
“Me too. I learned more about baseball than Al Kaline knows.”
She smiled; then she frowned. “Don’t tell anybody about the letter, okay? I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Who’d I tell, Lee? He’d just shake his hair and say”—he imitated Lee Schenck’s sleepy tones— “‘Everybody’s got his own bag.’ “
“You do good impressions.” She giggled. “You should cut an album, like Vaughn Meader.”
“Yeah, but who’s heard of him lately?”
“Good night.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. The bill of her cap grazed his forehead. Then she went inside.
Back in the car he sat for a long time before turning the key. A light went on in one of the windows upstairs. He started the car then and backed out of the driveway. On Greenfield he reached up and flipped the mirror to the night side. That way he didn’t have to look at his reflection.
Chapter 28
“I LIKE IT,” WENDELL Porter said. “But I hate it. The Porter Group has always stayed within the law.”
They were in his office on the second floor of the house on Whittier—Porter, Enid, and Rick. The consumer advocate was half reclining with an open folder in his lap on a backless Victorian couch that reminded Rick of the one in a psychiatrist’s office in a Jerry Lewis film someone had dragged him to see. It was a small room with one window, untidy bookshelves, and a cheap pine desk with a cracked top and warped drawers where Wendell claimed he’d written Hell On Wheels in longhand in a Nifty pad. Both the desk and the chair behind it were heaped with books and bound copies of the Congressional Record. The office had the contrived disarray of its occupant’s trick haircut and shabby Ivy League dress. In reality Rick knew Porter did most of his work in a neat anonymous room in the same building where Caroline kept her legal offices. The garret was for receiving visitors.
“Within the law, always,” Rick agreed. “Where’s it got you? Waiting for the telephone to ring from Washington like an ugly girl on prom night.”
“I think most ugly girls give up before the actual night.” Porter’s avuncular smile made it clear that homey comparisons were his territory. “I’d rather we held off on this kind of action until all legal resources have been exhausted.”
“It’s a misdemeanor at worst. There’ll be a fine and a citation for not having a permit. You couldn’t buy the same publicity for the amount of the fine.”
“Why not apply for a permit?” This was Enid’s contribution. Rick had declined to broach his idea until Porter was due in the office this Friday morning.
“We wouldn’t get it,” Rick said. “Cavanagh’s running for the Senate. He’s not about to allow an eyesore on Grand Boulevard. If he even gets wind of it he’ll slap us with an injunction, and if we defy that we’ll be in real trouble. If we don’t ask, the city can’t say no.”
Porter said, “I’d like to hear Caroline’s opinion.”
“She’ll say no.”
He looked at Rick. “What makes you think so?”
“She’s your lawyer. If she were my lawyer and she advised me to go ahead with a scheme like this, I’d fire her.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I went against her counsel. All the same I don’t like going behind her back.”
“That’s your decision, sir. But if she knows, her assistant will too, and that’s five people in on the secret. If it leaks to the press early the event will lose all its impact.”
“… Only if four of them are dead. I see you know your Franklin.” Porter studied the folder in his lap, in which he had plainly lost interest. “It’s medieval. No, it’s older than that, it’s Roman. The victorious emperor parading his prisoners and spoils down the Appian Way. Only we’re hardly victorious, are we? What do you think, Enid?”
“I think it’s harebrained. If it goes wrong it’ll follow us around for years. Porter’s Folly.”
“Okay, that’s one vote against and one for. Mine seems to be the deciding ballot.” He returned his attention to Rick. “Is it feasible? Can you get your people to go along?”
“Thanks to Enid I’ve spent the last couple of weeks establishing contact with services in the area. When you come down to it, it’s a simple tow job. It will run us a couple of thousand.”
“Enid keeps the books.”
“I’ll draw it out of discretionary.” She’d resigned herself to defeat.
Rick said, “It’d help if we could count on one favorable media source to cover the story, preferably television. Do we have anyone?”
“We’ve always gotten a fair shake from Ven Marshall at Channel Four. An impartial press is favorable when your cause is just.” He managed to say it without pomposity.
“We’ll call him an hour before we roll.”
Porter closed the folder and rose. “Set it up for next Saturday.”
“A weekday’s better,” Rick said. “We want to catch Fred Donner in his office.” Fred Donner was chairman of the board of General Motors.
“How much time do you need?”
“Wednesday morning’s good. That way we can make the news at noon, six, and eleven.”
“Wednesday morning, then.” He smiled. “Amazing what a little jolt in an automobile will do for your sensibilities, isn’t it?”
“I considered suing you for whiplash, but that was before I met Mrs. Porter.”
Mention of Caroline swung the mood back to business. “I always wanted to be in a parade. Should I participate?”
“No.” Enid was firm. “I’ll make an appointment for you in Washington that day. If I can’t get anyone else I’ll line up a Senate page. That way when it blows up in our face you can blame it on your overeager subordinates.”
Porter became grave. “Kennedy’s death changed everything. Doing good never meant being devious.”
Rick would have corrected him, but couldn’t think of a way to do it without blowing his cover.
After Porter left, Enid locked the office door. “Lee thinks knocking is Establishment,” she said. “I assume you want to keep this secret from the others as long as possible.”
“Okay, so you hate the idea. If anything goes wrong you can throw me to the wolves.”
“Maybe it’s not the idea I hate. Maybe I resent the new kid storming in and taking over like the rest of us have been standing around all this time with our thumbs up our noses.”
“You’re not that petty.”
“You don’t know how petty I am. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough to look forward to seeing you every day.”
It was like shooting craps in the dark. He couldn’t tell how he was doing. The sunlight coming through the window behind her haloed her dark hair in red. She was wearing a light cotton dress with a dusting of tiny blue polka-dots and a half-slip underneath, silhouetted against the light.
“Mister,” she said, “I’m not the least attracted to you. I like them dark and mature.”
“You just described Wendell.”
“I just described LBJ and Gregory Peck and half the male population. You’re in the other half. If I wanted cute and boyish I’d date Ricky Nelson.”
“Do you really think I’m cute?”
She pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about. Just because you look like you belong in an Archie comic book doesn’t mean you have to act like it. Got a sampler to cover that?”
“We’ll have dinner, talk about Wednesday.”
“I thought you were dating Pammie.”
“Pammie’s a buddy. What do you say? I’ll even wear long pants.”
“Wednesday’s your baby. I’ve got an office to run. I’ll start with a press release apologizing for Wednesday and saying it was arranged and carried out without Wendell’s knowledge or consent. No sense waiting until the last minute.” She unlocked the door. “Don’t you have calls to make?”
“I’d better make them in here. Pammie’s got ears she should leave to science.” He lifted the telephone, standard and all, off the desk and carried it to the couch, but he didn’t sit. “Is it the idea you don’t like, or just me?”
“I don’t like Soupy Sales either, but I don’t let it get in the way of my responsibilities. You’re just stopping in on your way to the White House. Some of us have to live here. Your cute prank could undo years of hard work.”
“There’s that word again. I’m wearing you down. I’ll make a bet with you: Dinner with me Wednesday night if the thing comes off.”
“Define ‘comes off.’”
“At least one favorable comment from someone in authority, in the form of a telegram or a telephone call, after we make the news. In politics that’s as good as an invitation to come in and talk turkey.”
“What do I get if that doesn’t happen?”
“It’s what Wendell gets. My resignation, along with a signed confession that I undertook the whole mess on my own, without consulting anyone.”
“Deal.” She spat in her palm and held it out.
He looked at the hand. “Where’d you pick that up?”
“Sister Mary Pacifica. She coached the girls’ softball team at Blessed Sacrament.”
They shook.
After she left, Rick spent an hour on the couch with the telephone standard in his lap. He wasn’t listening to himself during the last half-dozen calls; by then he had his spiel down like the Lord’s Prayer. Only one of the people he spoke with refused the transaction, and that was at the beginning when he was still feeling his way.
Pammie was waiting for him in the downstairs office. For an instant he thought he had a visitor. She had on a yellow dress with bows on the shoulder straps and a pair of red pumps whose three-inch heels had her swaying like a tug in a heavy sea. She’d brushed her hair down from its customary Alice the Goon topknot and tied it with red ribbons a shade off from the shoes. She was holding a sheaf of papers to her bosom.
“I typed them up,” she said. “My penmanship’s pretty hard to follow.”
“Typed what up?” He took his place at the card table.
“My poems, silly. I was up most of the night.” She laid the sheaf in front of him.
He riffled the edges. There were thirty pages easy. “I’ll have to take them home.”
“Of course. You’ll need to, like, evaluate them. Reading poetry takes almost as much concentration as writing it.”
He smiled and set the papers aside. She was still standing in front of the table.
“Well?” she said.
“Well.”
She stuck her arms out to the sides and twirled around. She caught herself before she fell off the heels. “How do you like it? I only wore it once, to my high school graduation party. Pop bought it for me.”
“It sure is yellow.”
“Saffron, the man called it. At HughesHatcherSufferin.” It came out as one word. “I don’t wear dresses much. They bunch up on me when I sit down.”
“It’s nice.” She looked like a school bus.
“Free for lunch?” she asked. “I mean, this is no place to waste a dress.”
“I’ve got a lot of calls to make; this survey thing. I’m going to have to work through lunch.”
“After work, then. You’ll be starving.”
“I’ve got an appointment.”
“Oh. Politics?”
“Sort of.” He was planning to wash and wax the Camaro.
“Dinner? Corky’s Sandwich Shop is open late Fridays.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he got up. “Let’s go to lunch.”
“What about your calls?”
“They can wait. We have to talk.”
“Oh.”
“Corky’s Sandwich Shop sounded like a good idea,” he said.
She looked down at her poems. “You don’t have to feed me, Rick. I’ve been dumped on an empty stomach and I’ve been dumped over a meal and dumped is dumped.”
“Nobody’s dumping anybody.” It sounded like an admission even to him.
“Stupid cow.”
“What?”
She said it again. “That’s what somebody called me once. He was right. One ballgame and a steak sandwich and Pammie’s ready to go steady. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
She snatched up the pages and ran out. The front door banged.
Enid was looking at him over her Smith-Corona when he came out into the entryway.
“Say it,” he said.
“‘Pammie’s a buddy.’” She returned to her typing.
Chapter 29
MIKE GALLANTE SAID HE’D rented the house in Highland Park for its kitchen.
It was the largest room in the house, a big, sunny, old-fashioned place of the kind where families used to gather before television turned the living room into a shrine: black-and-white checkered linoleum and sturdy wallpaper with blue cups and saucers printed on it and a big oak table in a bay window with chairs all around. Patsy Orr sat on one of them, feeling exposed despite the reassuring view from the rear of Sweets’s massive conical body and pointed head hovering outside the window. Patsy’s canes leaned against the table where he could get to them in a hurry, the way he preferred them when not in the security of his home or his office in the Penobscot Building.
Gallante, in his shirtsleeves and sheathed in a white apron from neck to knees, waited until the sweep hand on his wristwatch reached the six, then flipped off the burner on the gas stove, lifted the pot bubbling there, and dumped its tangled contents into a colander standing in the sink to drain. “The secret to al dente is in the timing,” he said, turning to stir a smaller pot simmering on a low flame. “You can pay more for linguini marked al dente in a supermarket, but if you cook it ten seconds too long you might as well have bought Prince’s spaghetti to begin with.”
“I don’t cook,” said Patsy.
“It’s a valuable skill, particularly when there are no women around. I picked it up in fifty-seven when Genovese and Costello were at war. It was self-defense; you can only eat so many sardine-and-mustard sandwiches. Your boy’s invited too.” He began setting the table.
“Sweets stays at his post. You know how many capos have been shot over dinner?”
“That only happens in restaurants. Governor Romney should have the security system I put in here.”
“I don’t know why we couldn’t meet at the office.”
“My father worked two jobs, seven days a week. My sister and I never got to see him. When I bring my wife and kids here from New York, that’s one mistake I’m not going to make. I’m establishing the habit of staying away from offices on Saturdays.” He filled two stemmed glasses from a bottle of burgundy and lifted one. “Salute.”
Patsy didn’t touch his. “Wine screws up my digestion.”
Gallante shrugged, drank, set down the glass, and used serving tongs to heap both plates from the colander. He turned off the burner under the smaller pot and ladled clam sauce from it over the linguini. Removing the apron, he took his place at the table and scooped pasta into his mouth. “Perfect,” he said. “Directions say eight to ten minutes, but that’s at least two minutes too long. What are you doing about DiJesus?”
