Benjamin Black - The Lemur

“That so?” Mulholland said, without interest. “Guess I don’t blame you, these days. We didn’t know we were building so many standing affronts to the world.” He looked into his glass again. “We didn’t know a lot of things. After ’89 we thought we were in for a spell of peace, unaware of what was slouching toward us out of the festering deserts of Arabia. Now we know.”

Glass always marveled at the complacency with which his father-in-law delivered these solemn addresses; he wondered if it was all a tease, a toying with the tolerance of those around him, a test to see if there was a limit to what he would be let get away with. Perhaps this was how all the rich and powerful amused themselves, talking banalities in the sure knowledge of being listened to.

“It’s fine,” Glass said. “There isn’t much I need, just space, and quiet.”

Mulholland gave him a quick glance, and seemed to suppress a grin. “Good, good,” he said. He held out his empty glass to his daughter. “Lou, my dear, you think I could get maybe another tincture of this very special old pale?” She took the goblet from him and walked away soundlessly down the shadowed room, and opened a door and closed it softly behind her; she would be gone for some time, Glass knew; she was adept at reading her father’s signals. The old man sat forward in the armchair and set his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in front of his chin. He wore a dark gray Savile Row suit and a handmade silk shirt and John Lobb brogues. Glass fancied he could smell his cologne, a rich, woody fragrance. “This fellow Cleaver,” Big Bill said, “you know who I mean? One of life’s mosquitoes. He’s been buzzing around me for years now. I don’t like him. I don’t like his tactics. Guy like him, he thinks I’m the enemy because I’m rich. He forgets, this country is founded on money. I’ve done more for his people, the Mulholland Trust has done more, than all the Mellons and the Bill Gateses put together.” He chafed his clasped hands, making the knuckles creak. He did not look at Glass when he asked: “And who is this Riley fellow?”

Glass made no movement. “A researcher,” he said.

The old man glanced sidelong from under his eyebrows. “You hired him?”

“I spoke to him,” Glass said.

“And?”

“And then he got shot.”

“I hope you’re not going to tell me that the one thing followed from the other?” Mulholland suddenly grinned, showing a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of clean, white, even teeth. “Say you’re not going to tell me that, son.”

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

The lamplight formed still pools around their feet, while above them the dimness hung in billows like the roof of a tent.

“See, I’ve got to know,” Mulholland said. “I’ve got to know if you’re in trouble, because, frankly, if you’re in trouble then most likely so am I, and so is my family, and I don’t like that. I don’t like trouble. You understand?” He rose from the chair, without, Glass noted, the slightest effort, and walked to the fireplace and stood there with his hands in his pockets. “Let me tell you a story,” he said, “a tale from the bad old days, when I was in the Company.” He laughed shortly, and had to cough a little. He had an eerie aspect, standing there with the top half of him in gloom above the lamplight, a truncated man. “There was a friend of mine-personal friend, as well as professional-who managed to get himself on the wrong side of J. Edgar Hoover. Now that, as I’m sure you know, was not a good place to be, J. Edgar being-well, J. Edgar. I’m talking about the sixties, after Kennedy’s time. Doesn’t matter what it was that my friend-let’s call him Mac-doesn’t matter what Mac had done to displease that fat old fag. Matter of fact, I thought it was pretty stupid of him, in the circumstances. Hoover was the kingpin then, and the FBI was unassailable.” The lamplight was picking out high points in the shadows, the shine on a clock face, a gleam of polished wood, a spark from Big Bill’s ruby ring. “Anyway,” he said, “Hoover was real mad at my friend Mac, and decided to bring him down. Now, Mac was pretty high up, you know, at Langley, but that wasn’t going to stop J. Edgar. What he did was he organized a sting operation, though that wasn’t what we called it in those days.” He paused, musing. “Matter of fact, I can’t remember what we called it. Memory’s going. Anyway. The trap was that Mac was to be at a certain place at a certain time to take delivery of papers, documents, you know, that were supposed to have come from the Russian embassy in Washington. In fact, what was in the package, though Mac didn’t know it, was not papers at all but a big stash of money-serious, serious money-and when it was in Mac’s hands J. Edgar’s people were supposed to jump out of the bushes and nab him for a corrupt agent taking money from a foreign power, the foreign power, and our number one enemy. Anyway, someone in Hoover’s office, who liked Mac and didn’t like his boss, tipped him off, and Mac just didn’t show up at the appointed rendezvous. Okay? So next day Mac, who was pretty sore, as you can imagine, he went down to the Mayflower Hotel where Hoover ate his lunch every day with his constant companion Clyde Tolson. The maitre d’ stopped Mac at the desk, worried, I guess, by the wild look in his eye, and when Mac told him he wanted to see Hoover-“J. Edna,” as he called him-the maitre d’ said he had a standing instruction that Mr. Hoover was never to be interrupted while he was eating his cottage cheese and drinking his glass of milk. You tell that bastard, Mac said, that unless he gets his fat ass out here this minute I’m going to announce to this restaurant that the boss of the FBI is a skirt-wearing fag. So Hoover comes bustling out, and Mac accuses him of trying to entrap him. Hoover of course denies all knowledge of the sting, and promises he’ll set up an investigation right away to find out who was responsible, says he won’t rest until he has identified the miscreant, et cetera, et cetera. So. Week later, Mac and his wife are flying down to Mexico in Mac’s private Cessna, just the two of them, with Mac piloting. Half an hour out from Houston, out over the Gulf, kaboom. Bomb under the pilot’s seat. Wreckage strewn over half a square mile of water. Mac’s body was found, the wife’s never. At the funeral, Hoover was seen to wipe away a tear.” He gave another quick laugh. “No half measures for our John Edgar.”

Glass was fingering the pack of Marlboros in his coat pocket. He heard the door at the end of the room opening softly, and a moment later Louise appeared, carrying a tray with three glasses. Glass wondered if she had been listening outside the door. At times it seemed to him he did not know his wife at all, that she was a stranger who had entered his life sidewise somehow and stayed on. “Sorry it took so long,” she said. “John, I brought you a Jameson.” She leaned down to each of the men in turn and they took their glasses, then she put the tray on a low table and brought her own drink-Canada Dry with a sliver of lime-and sat beside her husband on the sofa, crossing her legs and smoothing the hem of her dress on her knee.

“We’ve been talking about J. Edgar Hoover and his wicked ways,” her father told her.

“Oh, yes?” she said. Glass could feel her not looking at him. He sipped his whiskey.

“Your father was telling me,” he said, “how Hoover arranged the assassination of a CIA man and his wife.”

“Who says it was Hoover?” Big Bill said, with a show of innocent surprise. “I told you, he wept at the funeral.” He swirled the brandy in its goblet, smiling again with his teeth.

Louise was still smoothing the stuff of her dress with her fingertips. “Billuns is wondering,” she said, not looking up, “what it was exactly you said to that man Riley.”