Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

It was for that loss and her inability to deal with it that Kathy cried.

Green closed the door and sat in one of the two chairs facing Kathy’s desk, after first clearing away a stack of Armed Services Committee hearing transcripts. He did not offer words of comfort or his handkerchief. He had the correct instinct that words would have done little good and a handkerchief, while chivalrous, was rendered unnecessary by the box of Kleenex on her desk. He’d learned in almost twenty-five years of marriage to his wife Gretchen, who also did not cry easily, the best thing to do was to wait out the storm and be there when the clouds cleared. It proved a short wait.

Kathy plucked a tissue from its box and blew her nose and laughed in the self-conscious way people do when they’re embarrassed.

“All I’m doing is apologizing to you this morning, Hugh, but I’m sorry again,” she said. “This isn’t like me.”

“No apologies necessary,” Green said sincerely. “You’ve been on a rocky ride. It wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t feel overwhelmed. Did the newspaper trigger this?”

She nodded. “I don’t think I could exaggerate how much Mike McGill meant to Steve. I feel miserable about it, and coming on top of Jonathan—”

“You and Steve together again, huh?” Green guessed.

“That’s an overstatement. But he’s been there for me through all this, and a lot of old emotions are coming to the surface.”

“When did you find out about this?” he asked, holding up the newspaper again.

“This morning, when I read it.”

“Steve didn’t call you last night when it happened?”

Kathy shook her head. “The last I heard from him was sometime after seven when he called to say he was going to dinner with Mike and Avery Schaeffer. He said he wanted to see me, but it would have to wait until tonight, if that was okay…” Her voice trailed off.

“His story is intriguing as hell,” Green said. “It’s like he’s trying to say something without actually saying it. Do you know any more about it, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

Because she trusted Green implicitly, she told him of her conversations with Pace about the accident. They had been brief, but Steve had mentioned once that he was troubled by Harold Marshall’s actions—had Steve called it interference?—relating to the NTSB investigation. Steve hadn’t gone into any details, and she had been too emotionally distracted to ask for any.

Green listened intently, his expression disclosing nothing about his thoughts. As Kathy had seen him do many times during intense Armed Services Committee testimony, he sat with his elbows on the arms of the chair, his fingers steepled in front of his chin. When something struck him as especially important or interesting, six of the steepled fingers went down, leaving only raised forefingers that he ran up and down in the gutter of flesh between his nose and his upper lip.

When Kathy finished, Green pushed himself more erect in the chair.

“I’m happy you and Steve are seeing each other again,” he said. “Gretchen and I both like him. Fact is, when you broke it off, I had to stop Gretchen from coming down here and acting like a yenta.” He cleared his throat. “On another level, the comment about Harold Marshall fascinates me. On the basest of all possible levels, I’d like to know what Cobra’s role is in this.” He used the nickname Democrats favored for the senior Ohio Republican but never dared use to his face.

“Nothing if not partisan, are we?” Kathy asked, smiling for the first time that day.

“We are partisan, indeed, but it isn’t politics that turns me off Marshall. He’s such a disagreeable sort.”

“Well, I don’t know anything else, and to be honest, I think it would be an unfair imposition for me to ask Steve any more about it.”

“And I wouldn’t ask you to,” Green added hastily. “But I think you should get out of here and go find him.”

“What for? He’s probably at work.”

“Then be there when he comes home. He’s been there for you. He’s probably going through his own kind of hell. Losing a friend is never easy. Losing one this way is crushing.”

“If Steve has a place in my life, Hugh, it’s not during working hours,” Kathy protested. “Those hours belong to you. Besides, I’m already taking Monday off.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “The philosophy of life according to dear old Dad.”

He saw the glint of anger in her eyes before she opened her mouth, and he held up his hand to fend off the attack.

“I love old Joe, Kathy, you know that,” he said. “And you’re his daughter. A large part of what made him successful and what’s making you successful is your ability to set your sights, plot your course, and never deviate. Distractions be damned, full speed ahead. Never waste perfectly good energy on emotions. Right? But unless you have some flexibility, you go through life with blinders on. Then you miss all the beauty on either side of you. And you miss a lot of the pain that makes the beauty look so good by contrast.”

“So you want me to look for pain?” Kathy was incredulous.

“No,” Green said softly. “I want you to look for Steve. Then take it an hour at a time.”

She looked dubious, but she nodded.

“And if he shares any dirt with you about the Cobra, I goddamn well better be the first to hear it.” He grinned. “If I can be of any help on it, give Steve my private number.”

The tears welled again in Kathy’s eyes.

Green walked around the desk, pulled Kathy up into his arms and let her cry.

Steve Pace tried to ignore the telephone, tried to will away the intrusion into his uneasy sleep. On the seventh ring he relented and fumbled above his head for the instrument screaming at him from the top of his bookcase headboard. “Yeah?”

“This is Schaeffer. Where the hell were you? In Pittsburgh?” Pace realized there was a sharp, sickening sort of pain embedded in his right temple. He rolled onto his back, and the pain bubbled into his forehead.

“What time is it?”

“It’s nearly noon. Get out of bed and get your ass in here. You’re in a shitload of trouble.” The last sentence was pronounced deliberately, leaving no room for doubt.

Pace let the receiver fall on the pillow beside his head. He knew he should be concerned, but his mind was so flooded with shards of memories from the night before there wasn’t room for another emotional thought. He couldn’t immediately recall why he was in trouble, and he chose not to think about it hard. He decided he didn’t care.

With some discomfort, he sat up. He’d pretty much ripped up the bed during the night, but that didn’t concern him, either. He was drained. Blasted. Empty. He rubbed his hands over his heavily-bearded face and through his hair, tempted to fall back and drift off to sleep again. Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, unsure why he made the effort.

He threw on a terrycloth robe and stumbled into the living room. He opened the front door and picked up the newspaper. Without looking at it, he tossed it on the sofa and went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. His eyes fell on the Jack Daniel’s bottle near the sink. The glass beside it, smudged with fingerprints, was empty but for a half-inch of light amber water in the bottom, the remnants of leftover ice and a few drops of unconsumed sour mash. He picked up the bottle and stared at it. It was nearly empty. He recalled buying it on his way home the night before. He remembered why he wanted to get drunk. Obviously, he’d been successful.

It was Pace’s intention to shower while the coffee dripped, but the copy of the Chronicle caught his eye as he padded past the sofa. It was folded with the top of page one faceup. All Pace could see of his story was the headline. He sat beside the paper and picked it up as though it would burn his fingers. He let the inner sections slide away to the floor as he unfolded the front page. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and read what he had written. His hands began shaking. He could feel bile rising in his throat and anger pounding in his head. The inked words blurred, and he clapped his hands together, crumpling the newspaper lengthwise between them.