Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Pace let his chair fall forward with a thunk. The implications were incredible. “Where do you go from here?” he asked.

“Every investigation is like a child learning to walk,” the police captain said. “We take it one step at a time and hope we get someplace useful before we fall on our asses. Keep in touch, Steve. And be careful.”

Chapman Davis paused for a moment before the closed door of the office in the main Dulles terminal. The hand-lettered paper sign taped at its four corners to the door read, “NTSB. No admittance.” He wondered who the lousy speller was.

He knocked softly and let himself in. Vernon Lund had agreed to see him, but Davis wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Lund’s previous session with an emissary from Harold Marshall had gone badly—Davis learned how badly a few hours earlier—and he suspected another meeting was the last thing Lund wanted.

Davis had sought out George Ridley at noon, inviting him to lunch in the cramped little dining room on the Senate side of the Capitol. With Congress out for the Easter recess and the tourists at a minimum, there were plenty of tables where the two could sit, eat some of the Senate kitchen’s famous bean soup, and talk. Davis had gone right to the point.

“Marshall asked me to see Lund this afternoon. You told me it didn’t go well when you were out there. How bad is bad?”

“How do you work for the bastard?” Ridley asked, sidestepping the question. “He’s the biggest asshole on the Hill.”

“How do you put up with Helmutsen?” Davis asked. “We got our choice of an asshole or a dumb shit. The voters sent ’em to us. Our jobs, for better or worse, are to put up with ’em. You don’t like it, bro, but that’s the way it’s always been and will forever be.”

“I know. I’m fine with most of the minority members. Marshall’s pond scum.”

“You feel that strongly, why don’t you tell him? The chairman would protect you.”

Ridley responded with a contemptuous noise deep in his throat and shook his head. “The chairman can’t protect himself,” he said. He put his finger in the bowl of his spoon and rocked the utensil, watching the end of the handle hit the padded white tablecloth. “When you’ve been up here as long as me, you get set in the system. And it’s a caste system, Chappy, you believe that. As much as we try to resist, we begin to believe they are somehow superior. I’m too old to try to change the system, or myself.”

“You should have told Marshall you’d see Lund if he got approval from Helmutsen.”

“Helmutsen’s scared to death of Marshall. He wouldn’t have said no if Marshall wanted permission to feed me to piranhas in the Amazon River.”

A waiter arrived with two steaming bowls of pinkish bean soup, thick enough to hold up a spoon and swimming with navy beans and pieces of diced ham. He placed one in front of each man and put a ham-and-cheese-on-rye to the right of Ridley’s cutlery. He poured fresh coffee for both.

Davis looked at the meal in front of his companion and shook his head. “There’s enough cholesterol there to plug every artery in your body, George,” he said. “You ever think about diet and exercise?”

“I think about ’em,” Ridley replied.

Davis smiled. He tasted his soup, reached for the pepper shaker and asked again about the meeting with Lund.

“There’s not much to tell,” Ridley said. “I told Lund that Marshall was concerned about the findings of the investigation because Converse is an important constituent. I asked how the investigation was going. He told me what everybody already knew: The engines were the center of attention. I told him Marshall wanted to be kept informed of the progress of the investigation, and the senator was very concerned the engines be given the benefit of the doubt.” He paused. “No, I said it stronger. I told him Marshall wanted Converse protected to the maximum extent possible.”

Davis was using his spoon to fold the pepper into the soup but was paying no attention to the process. His eyes were fixed on Ridley. “So how’d he react?”

Ridley had his arms on the table, encircling his food as though to protect it from theft. He snagged half of his sandwich in his left hand, spooning soup into his mouth with his right, eating at the two alternately, barely taking time to chew and swallow. His mouth was half full when he began to speak, and Davis had to look away.

“He said no conclusion had been reached, and Senator Marshall should be satisfied that the investigation would be thorough and fair,” Ridley replied around the food. “I told him the senator wanted total access, and he said he was aware of the senator’s position and would be as cooperative as he could be.” Ridley took another spoonful of soup, pushing the remnants of the half-sandwich into his mouth after it. “I asked him if he thought it would be possible to blame the accident on something other than a failure of the engine”—the expression on Davis’s face changed suddenly from one of intense interest to one of abject horror, and Ridley shrugged—”Hey, I was only carrying the message Marshall gave me.”

“Christ, how’d he take that? ”

“He asked what I meant. I told him Senator Marshall was concerned about the future of Converse, and it could be detrimental to the company to be blamed for the accident.”

“Jesus, of all the goddamned stupid things to say, George.” Davis let his spoon fall with a cushioned thud to the table. “It sounds like you were asking him to put in a fix.”

“I carried the fucking message the way I got it, Chappy. If your goddamned senator didn’t want to sound like he was askin’ special favors, he shudda rephrased the message. Besides, what did I say that wasn’t true? Marshall is concerned about Converse, and a finding against the engine could be detrimental to the company.”

“You could have been a little more diplomatic.”

“Diplomacy’s for the fuckin’ State Department,” Ridley snapped, grabbing the other half-sandwich and leaping to his feet. “I ain’t his damned goodwill ambassador. That pilgrimage to Lund wasn’t my idea, and if you don’t like the way I handled things, you and Harold Marshall can damned well go to hell!” He stomped off with the rest of his lunch in his hand, leaving Davis to wonder how he was going to set things right with Lund.

He was still chewing on the problem three hours later when he walked into Lund’s temporary headquarters at Dulles.

Pace finished writing and sent his story to Paul Wister. As a courtesy, he filled in Suzy O’Connor and Metro Editor Winston Henry. It kept turf-conscious noses from bending out of shape at the odor of a national-desk reporter farting around in somebody else’s territory. Suze winked and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Henry was solicitous. “We figured this was your story,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything we can do to help.” It was obvious to Pace that both of them knew of his trouble with Schaeffer and were glad to see him working his way out of it.

Pace was exhausted, though he’d been up fewer than six hours. It was a combination of tension and sleep the night before that more resembled a drunken coma than useful rest. He hung around until Wister had a chance to see his copy.

The national editor scanned the story and sent it to Schaeffer. It was second-guessing time, Pace figured. But ten minutes later Schaeffer came out and nodded. He made no effort to make eye contact with Pace, but he didn’t hassle him again, either. Wister walked up to Pace’s desk.

“Every comeback starts with one step,” he said. “Your first wasn’t bad.”