Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Wister smiled. “Make it ten. Then find a nice girl and take her out for a few drinks. We need you back in here tomorrow in a mood to work.”

On an impulse, Pace tried to call Eddie Conklin at his apartment on the Hill. There was no answer. He made a mental note to try again in an hour or so.

For the most part, his day’s work was done after a mere fourteen hours. Wister’s comment about finding a nice girl reminded him he’d meant all day to call Kathy McGovern. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He hoped it wasn’t too late, but he ached to talk to her. He looked up her number in his directory—there was a time when he’d had it memorized—and dialed her Georgetown house. She answered on the second ring.

“It’s Steve Pace,” he said. “I hope I didn’t wake you. I just finished work.”

“No, I’m up,” she said. Her voice was heavy with sadness.

“I feel godawful about letting them run me off yesterday,” he said.

“I appreciated you trying to help,” she said. “They didn’t really give you any choice. It wasn’t the time or the place to make a scene.”

“I guess not. Thanks for understanding.”

“They couldn’t tell me much. If I accomplished anything, it was letting them know Jonny was the son of Joseph McGovern. Maybe they worked a little harder to recover his body. The airline had a record of where he was sitting, on the left side of the first-class section.” She began to cry softly.

“Do you want me to come over?” Pace asked. “I could be there in about ten minutes.”

“You’ve already had a long day.”

“Oh, I think I’ve got a few good hours left in me. Isn’t that what friends are for?”

“We had more than that once.”

“I know,” he said. “I find myself wondering how I ever let it get away.”

“I would like to see you, Steve. But I’m not sure you want to be here just now.”

“Why?”

“Daddy’s here,” she said. “He’s irritated with me because I used his name as leverage to get them to look for Jonny right away.”

“I remember you telling me how he never uses his name or his money as leverage,” he said, a smile in his voice.

“But this is different,” she insisted. “Isn’t it?”

“It is,” he agreed. “Why don’t I come over and try to calm him down?”

“Thanks.”

When Pace arrived at the O Street house, Joseph McGovern answered the door. The reporter had seen pictures of the patriarch of the McGovern household, but they hadn’t prepared him for the reality. The man standing before him, well into his seventies, was robust, erect, and brimming with health. His thick white hair was combed straight back, his handshake firm.

“Mr. McGovern, I’m Steven Pace,” the reporter said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your son.”

“Come in, Steve,” McGovern said. “Kathy has told me a great deal about you. I appreciate all you did for her at the airport yesterday.”

“It wasn’t all that much, sir. I was happy to do it.”

“And it’s nice of you to come out at this hour after the day you must have put in.”

Disarming and personable. I should be comforting him, and he’s sympathizing with me. That’s smooth.

“I wanted to make sure Kathy is all right,” Pace said.

“Seems to me I recall she mentioned you a year or so ago,” McGovern said as he steered Pace toward the living room. “The two of you were an item, as they say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened?”

Pace was stunned by the question and felt himself smile in appreciation of the directness of the man. “I’m not certain,” he replied. “We drifted apart. I’m sorry it ended that way.”

“It’s not like it has to stay ended,” McGovern observed as they entered the living room. Kathy overheard the exchange.

“Dad, stop it!” she insisted. “This is hardly the time.”

“It’s as good a time as any,” McGovern replied. “Life is for the living. Jonathan would not be offended by the topic of conversation.”

She got up and hugged Pace. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“No reason to be,” he replied, stroking her hair.

She went back to her place on the sofa. Pace took a chair opposite her.

“How are you getting along?” he asked.

“We’re trying to decide whether he should be buried in the family plot in Boston or in Chicago,” Kathy said haltingly. “Daddy wants to leave it up to Betsy.”

“Have you talked with her?”

“Yes, of course,” Joseph McGovern said. “I thought she was coming to Washington, but she was too upset to travel. She stayed home under a doctor’s care. Her first instinct was to bury Jonny in Boston with Joey and his mother. But I don’t want to press her. She shouldn’t make that decision while she’s still in shock.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Pace said.

“Nonsense.” McGovern snorted. “Just makes common sense.”

Pace glanced at Kathy. He thought she seemed very uncomfortable with her father’s matter-of-fact handling of the situation. Obviously, she wasn’t faring nearly as well.

“I’m going home tomorrow to make arrangements with a mortuary to fly Jonny to Boston as soon as his body’s released,” he said. “They’ll keep him until Betsy makes a decision. “If she decides she wants interment in Chicago, I’ll have the body flown there, and that’s where the funeral will be. We’ll have a memorial service at home later.”

“Are you going back to Boston with your father?” Pace asked Kathy.

“Not right away,” she said. “I’ll go to the funeral wherever it is. If Jonny’s buried in Chicago, I’ll go there and then to Boston for the memorial service. For the moment, I’m going back to work. I’ve already taken two days off. Hugh needs me at the office.”

“I’m certain Hugh wouldn’t want you back in under these circumstances,” Pace said.

“I think she should go back,” McGovern demurred. “Keep her mind occupied.”

“Whatever you decide to do, you shouldn’t be alone,” Pace told her.

“My roommates are here.”

“You’re being pretty hard on yourself.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’d better be going, then,” Pace said. He shook hands with Joseph McGovern.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Kathy said.

On the long walk down the front hallway to the foyer, Kathy clung tightly to Pace. When they reached the door, she buried her head in his chest and began to sob.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I try, but I can’t do it like Daddy. I miss Jonny so much.”

He held her. “I wish there were something I could do,” he said, lamely, he thought.

“You can,” Kathy said, looking up at him. “You can find out why this happened. There must be a reason. Tragedies like this don’t happen for no reason.”

“That’s what the federal investigators are doing,” he replied.

“But what if they don’t find out? What if they miss something?”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“But it can happen?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then you find out,” she insisted. “You find out for me why Jonny died.”

The request wasn’t entirely rational or reasonable. But Pace took it seriously.

“I’ll be in touch,” he promised.

“I’d like that,” she replied.

At his apartment on New Hampshire Avenue, Pace chucked his sport coat over the back of the sofa, loosened his tie, and poured a stiff Jack Daniel’s. He sat down in his favorite chair and tried to remember everything about the year he and Kathy had dated. It had been hot for a few months. They’d even talked about her moving in with him, but Kathy’s strict Irish Catholic upbringing wouldn’t quite let her do it. Pace argued that they often spent entire weekends together and she didn’t get hives of guilt, so why not weeks or months? Her reply was always the same: Having a place of her own somehow assuaged the spirit of Sister Mary Margaret, the sternest teacher at St. Martin’s Academy for Girls, who had warned her charges daily that if they ever dared have sex out of wedlock or for any purpose other than procreation, she would come back to haunt them. Sister Mary Margaret didn’t haunt Kathy in bed, only in her choice of a place to live.