Timothy Culver - Power Play

Evelyn looked at him in surprise. “You’re writing a biography of Bradford?”

“Naturally,” Howard said impatiently. “Doesn’t the Boswell in me stick out all over? Tell me what happened.”

“Does Bradford know you’re doing it?”

“Yes. We don’t talk about it, but he knows. Enough of that, tell me about it.”

So she told him about it, the suddenness of the attack, the conversation that had preceded it, the symptoms that followed it, and he sat chewing his sandwiches and drinking his coffee and nodding until she was finished. Then he said, “This land deal of Harrison’s. Has Brad talked to him about it since?”

“I don’t think so. He mentioned it the other day, that he wanted to talk to him, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t.”

Howard frowned at the one sandwich he had left, then looked at Evelyn and said, “Has he seemed forgetful since it happened? Distracted?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her expression troubled. “I suppose so, some. Uncle Joe said he might be for a while, but it would pass away.”

“I can hardly wait,” Howard said, his expression sour.

“Is there trouble with the book?”

“I get the damnedest feeling,” Howard said, “that Brad can’t remember what the hell he’s writing it for. I don’t mean amnesia, I don’t mean anything I can put my finger on at all. He just doesn’t seem to be — there, if you know what I mean.”

“That could be because of being in the hospital,” Evelyn said. “I know I’d be distracted, under the circumstances.”

“I hope you’re right,” Howard said. “In the meantime, The Temporary Peace is becoming a permanent pain in the ass.” He looked at his watch and said, “I’m not doing anything useful here except ruining my stomach. Tell Brad I’ll see him this afternoon.”

“All right.”

“You want this sandwich?” He held it up. “Still in its little shroud and everything.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “No, thanks.”

He grunted and said, “I’ll give it to my secretary, she loves little treats.” He tucked the sandwich away like a puffy square envelope in his inside jacket pocket, and got to his feet. “Expect me out to Eustace this weekend,” he said. “For an indefinite stay.” His expression was sour.

“With Grace?”

“No, as a solitary sinner. I’ve got to drag that book out of Brad’s head. I suppose you’ll be here when I come back this afternoon?”

“Probably.”

“See you then,” he said, and nodded, his forehead and glasses gleaming in the overhead lights. He made a little wave motion with his right hand and went away.

Evelyn watched him till he passed through the doorway and out of sight, and then she looked at her watch. Five past eleven. Bradford wouldn’t be back in his room until twelve.

Evelyn shifted position on the plastic chair, rested her elbows on the plastic table, sipped at her lukewarm coffee. Nothing happened.

Marie said, “I’m afraid you didn’t have a very good time in the big city, poor dear.”

They were standing in the foyer, Evelyn’s suitcase on the floor between them as they waited for the elevator to come up. Marie had propped the door of the apartment open and Spanish guitar music wafted out, pale shadows on white walls, mysterious eyes in the semi-darkness, lust in the afternoon. Marie was wearing large hoop earrings and tight green slacks, and it occurred to Evelyn for the first time to wonder if Marie had ever been unfaithful to George.

She answered Marie’s remark without reference to its condescension, saying, “Well, with Bradford in the hospital and all, I didn’t expect to have much of a good time.” She’d begged off, pleading tiredness, when Marie had tried to repeat Tuesday night’s fiasco on both Wednesday and Thursday nights, and had spent both evenings in front of the television set instead.

“Well, you’ll have to come in again,” Marie said, “under happier circumstances, and we’ll see if we can find a nice man to squire you around. That fellow George came up with Tuesday was incredible, wasn’t he? If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was a mortician.”

Evelyn smiled despite herself, as she frequently did with Marie, and said, “He wasn’t that bad. He’s just very unhappy, that’s all.”

“You’re too good, Evelyn, that’s your problem,” Marie said dismissingly, and the elevator arrived. Marie looked at the operator — not the elderly Puerto Rican but a young man in his twenties, with a ferocious moustache — who simply stood at his controls and looked back at her, until Marie said, “There’s a suitcase here.”

Evelyn had been just about to pick it up herself, but now, embarrassed, she stood to one side while the elevator operator came out in sullen haste to pick up the pale blue bag and carry it into the elevator.

Marie was a proponent of overkill. “If this were Christmas week,” she said loudly, “ he’d carry you on. Smiling all the way.”

“It’s all right,” Evelyn mumbled. She hated to go to restaurants with Marie for the same reason; sooner or later the woman got into an argument with one of the help. The fact that she was usually right didn’t make things any easier for Evelyn, who preferred public appearances to be smooth and quiet and unobtrusive.

“It is not all right,” Marie announced, glaring at the elevator operator, who was once again at his controls, facing neutrally front. But then she abruptly switched tone, laughing and saying, “Never mind, he’s my problem, not yours. Our love to Brad, and we’re sorry we couldn’t get over to see him, but you know what our schedule was like this week.”

“Yes, I already explained to him. He said it was all right.” In fact, Bradford had said, Thank God for small favors.

“But we’d love to come out to Eustace,” Marie went on. “What is it, four hundred miles? We’d love to drive it, when the weather gets a little nicer. Perhaps in May.”

“That would be nice,” Evelyn said, knowing Marie would never come. She could be induced by George to leave New York only when the destination was some equally cosmopolitan city: London or Paris, San Francisco or Tokyo.

“And write us about Brad’s health,” Marie said, her expression momentarily serious.

“I will.” Evelyn felt that she was delaying the elevator operator. She stepped aboard and said, “Thanks for everything. I did appreciate it.”

“The least we could do,” Marie said, smiling cheerfully as the door slid shut. Evelyn’s last view was of her smiling and waving, calling something Evelyn didn’t catch, with the word love in it.

The limousine was out front, a black Cadillac with a separate chauffeur’s compartment and bearing New York license plate BL-1. Evelyn had carried her suitcase through the lobby, but as soon as she emerged onto the rain-wet sidewalk — it was a lazy, windless, steady March downpour — the chauffeur leaped out and came trotting around to take it from her and open the rear passenger door. Evelyn got in, the chauffeur shut the door and stowed the suitcase in the trunk, and then he got behind the wheel and drove them down Fifth Avenue and east to the hospital, on York Avenue.

Bradford was not quite ready when Evelyn arrived, so she waited in the office the hospital had given Uncle Joe during his temporary stay here, sitting alone at first because Uncle Joe was in another room talking with reporters.

There were two kinds of men who formed a kind of invisible background wherever Bradford went, and since Evelyn almost invariably traveled in Bradford’s company they formed her invisible background, too. They were security men, it being normal government policy for Secret Service agents to guard all living ex-Presidents as well as the man currently in office, and reporters. The security men tended to be neater though more conservative dressers, but other than that Evelyn had never found any way to distinguish at once which breed a man might be. If he hovered around in the corner of one’s eye, he was either a guard or a reporter, that was all she knew for sure.