Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Assuming he would do that, it could be viewed as protesting too much.”

“He doesn’t have to beat it to death. One briefing to throw cold water on this.” He pounded the folded newspaper. “They never come right out and say conspiracy, but that’s the implication.”

Davis shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Pace’s story is about a coincidence, not necessarily a conspiracy. It doesn’t follow—”

“Newspapers don’t write about coincidences on page one!”

“Sure they do. Even if you’re right, going to Lund might be a bad idea. He didn’t take too well to George’s visit. Why should he respond better to mine?”

“Because you know what George Ridley doesn’t: how to use finesse, how to be discreet and diplomatic. Ridley’s a fat-ass blundering idiot. He’s got no subtlety in him, no sense of… of rhythm.” Davis started at the phrase. He looked closely at Marshall’s face, trying to determine whether it had been a deliberate racial slur, and decided the senator wasn’t sensitive enough to know the difference. Marshall continued his tirade. “He doesn’t know how to chat somebody up, how to gain somebody’s confidence, how to make a proposal so that when hands are shaken later, the other guy thinks the agreement was his idea. You know.” Marshall looked pointedly at his aide. “It’s the sort of stuff you picked up learning your way around the mean streets.”

Davis chose to ignore the reference. “And if Lund throws me out of his office?”

“He won’t if you handle him right.” Marshall leaned over the desk again. His voice was menacing. “There can’t be any turning back, Chappy. Our course is set. We’re either going to sail home scot-free, or we’re going to be dashed to death on the rocks in trying. All of us. Each and every one. Do I make myself clear?”

Springtime in Washington spread below Kathy McGovern’s window at the front of the second floor of the Russell Building. The early lunch crowd already was choosing the best seats in the sun on the lawns of the Capitol. The sky was a brilliant blue, the grass a new, moist green, and there was flowering color wherever one chose to look.

She was sitting in her chair at the window, her back turned on a desk full of work, her eyes focused on the outside but not seeing it. A barrier of grief, now reinforced by fear, had sprung up in her mind, blocking the beauty of the day from her brain, blocking everything but the memories of her brother’s death the previous week and the newspaper headline branded in her mind three hours earlier. The headline played over and over, like a closed loop of tape:

And the drop-head:

Kathy had awakened at 8:15, an hour later than normal, because she hadn’t set the alarm and overslept. She rose reluctantly, feeling unrested. She put on coffee and showered, moving through the morning more by rote than by motivation to get to work. It wasn’t until she picked up the Chronicle that she was able to focus on anything. Then the focus was sudden and sharp.

The headlines leaped at her. The first paragraphs, under Steve’s byline, chilled her.

She scanned quickly, trying to grasp the salient points. When she finished, she gulped air, realizing she’d been holding her breath. In numb disbelief, she put the paper on the sofa and poured a cup of coffee, skipping the usual doctoring of cream and Equal. She returned to the living room to read the story again.

She wanted to run to the phone and call Steve, to go to him and hold him and cry with joy that he was alive and share what must have been his overwhelming sorrow for Mike. She picked up the receiver beside her chair—and dropped it back in its cradle. Her gut said a call from her would add to his burden. He had his own heartache now; he didn’t need to be reminded of hers.

When Kathy arrived at her office in Hugh Green’s suite, there was no message from Steve, and he hadn’t called since. She tried to work, but it was wasted effort. So she stared out the window at nothing in particular while her imagination directed something like an old Movietone newsreel showing Mike McGill dying in a drugstore shoot-out while Lowell Thomas’s voice gravely intoned the Chronicle headlines. Over and over.

She heard a soft knock and whirled in her chair, hoping to see Steve. Instead, she locked eyes with the elegant junior United States senator from Massachusetts.

“Oh, Hugh,” she said, sagging back. “I… I’m sorry. You’re here for those reports on the summer interns, aren’t you? I’ll have them ready by three, I promise.”

Green was shaking his head, his razor-cut brown hair staying perfectly in place, a little long over the ears, graying ever so slightly at the temples. It was a casual, boyish style at odds with his Senate uniform: a medium-weight charcoal-gray wool suit with subtle chalk striping.

“No reports,” he said. “I came to talk. If you want to.” He pushed himself away from the doorjamb and took a step into the office. He was carrying a double-folded copy of the Chronicle’s front section and held it up to leave no doubt about the topic he had in mind.

Without warning, Kathy began to cry, something she was doing often lately, although it was out of character for her under normal circumstances. She could be brought to her emotional knees by tragic movies, sentimental songs, and warm, fuzzy television commercials; real life was something she generally faced with endless stoic reserve. It was a trait inherited from her father, who had an amazing capacity to roll with life’s blind-siders. She’d asked him once about that ability, and he’d told her he learned it in law school when he realized that, unlike his well-connected classmates, he would not be invited to join any of Boston’s prestigious law firms.

Instead, Joseph McGovern had opened his own office and done well enough as a trial attorney to make a home for his family in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Wellesley. But he wanted more and saw his opportunity when his brother John asked for legal and financial help to open a restaurant called Milano, near Quincy Market. Joseph backed it himself in return for a one-third share. He never thought he was risking his $250,000; he said he knew the restaurant would succeed. In fact, with John hovering over the operation day and night, Milano thrived, and within five years, Joseph’s initial investment was worth more than a million.

Using the gambler’s rule about riding a winning streak, Joseph McGovern borrowed against his equity in Milano to back other enterprises, which he chose well. His law practice evolved into a highly successful venture-capital operation, and he became a billionaire at the age of forty-one after realizing a tenfold profit on an investment in an old downtown office building. But instead of celebrating by popping Champagne corks in a cushy Boston nightspot, Joseph had a quiet dinner with his wife Anne and their four children, Joseph Jr., fourteen, Kelly Anne, eleven, Jonathan, eight, and Kathleen, three. Later that night, Joseph and Anne made love, and he whispered to her, “We made a lot of money today.” “Did we make it honestly?” she asked. “Always,” he replied.

Three weeks later they bought one of the magnificent old brownstone homes on River Street in the Back Bay area, half a block from Beacon Street and the Boston Common. It was the only home Kathy remembered, and the only public acknowledgment Joseph McGovern ever made of his wealth. If his money made him happy, Kathy never could tell. If occasional setbacks cracked his self-confidence, she could not tell that, either. Not even during the two worst setbacks of his life.