Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

And even more disturbingly, if he had succumbed to Virginia Calderwood’s proposals and slept with her, would she have married Brad, and in marrying him, carried her husband out of the area of bis friend’s protection? For there was no doubt about it - he had protected Brad through the years, first in calling him East for a job that dozens of other men could initially have done better, then in training him carefully (and overpaying him in the process) so that in Brad’s mind at least the idea of being awarded the top post in the firm was a reasonable one. At what point was it moral to stop protecting a friend? Never?

It would have been easier to allow Johnny Heath to go down to Dallas and handle the matter alone. Johnny had been Brad’s friend, too, and the best man at his wedding, but it had never been the same thing as between Rudolph and Brad. Somehow, it had been more hurtful to Brad to have to answer to Rudolph, face to face. God knows, it would have been easy for Rudolph to have pleaded pressure of work in Whitby and sent Johnny off on his own. He had considered it, but rejected it as cowardly. He had made the trip to maintain his own self-esteem. Self-esteem might be another way of saying vanity. Had his continued success dulled his sensibilities, led him into complacency and self-righteousness?

When the bankruptcy was finally settled, he decided, he would somehow pension Brad off. Five thousand dollars a year, paid secretly, so that neither Brad’s creditors nor the government could touch it? Would the money, which Brad would so desperately need and have to accept, pay for the sting of having to accept it from a man who had turned his back on him.

The seat-belt sign went on. They were making the approach, for the landing. Rudolph put the papers back into bis briefcase, sighed, and hooked up his belt.

When he got to the Mayflower there was a message waiting for him from his secretary. It was urgent, the message read, for him to call his office as soon as possible.

He went up to his room, where nobody had bothered to supply any liquor, and called his office. Twice, the line was busy, and he nearly decided to abandon the attempt to reach his office and get in touch with the Senator who was most likely to help him in keeping Billy Abbott out of harm’s way in the United States army. It was not something that could be arranged over the phone and he hoped to make an appointment

for lunch the next day and then take an afternoon plane for New York.

On the third try, he got his secretary. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Mayor,’ Walter said, sounding exhausted, ‘but I’m afraid you’d better get up here right away. After the office closed last night and I’d gone home, all hell broke loose, I just found out about it this morning or I’d have tried to get through to you sooner.’

‘What is it? What is it?’ Rudolph asked impatiently.

‘It’s all terribly confused and I’m not sure that I have the sequence of events all straight,’ Walter said. ‘But when Ottman tried to go into the dormitory last night, they had it barricaded, the students, I mean, and they wouldn’t let the police in. President Dorlacker tried to get Ottman to call the police off, but Ottman refused. Then when they tried to get in again, the students began to throw things. Ottman got hit in the eye with a stone, nothing serious, they say, but he’s in the hospital, and the police gave up, at least for last night. Then other students organised a mass march and I’m afraid they demonstrated in front of your house. I went out to your house just a while ago and the lawn is in frightful condition. Mrs Jordache is under sedation and …’

‘You can tell me the rest of the story when I get there,’ Rudolph said. Tm getting the first plane but of Washington.’

‘I thought that’s what you would do,’ Walter said, ‘and I took the liberty of sending Scanlon down with your car. He’ll be waiting at La Guardia.’

Rudolph picked up his bags and hurried down to the lobby and checked out. Billy Abbott’s military career would have to hang in abeyance for a while.

Scanlon was a fat man who wheezed when he talked. He was on the police force, but was nearly sixty years old and was scheduled for retirement. He suffered from rheumatism and it was almost an act of mercy that he had been assigned as chauffeur to Rudolph. As an object lesson in civic economy Rudolph had sold the former mayor’s car, which bad been owned by the town, and used his own car.

‘If I had it to do all over again,’ Scanlon said breathily, ‘I swear to God I’d never sign on any police force in a town where there was college students or niggers.’

‘Scanlon, please,’ Rudolph said. He had been trying to correct Scanlon’s vocabulary since the first day, with little success. He was sitting up front with the old patrolman, who drove at a

maddeningly slow pace. But he would have been offended if Rudolph took the wheel.

‘I mean it, sir,’ Scanlon said. They’re just wild animals. With no more respect for the law than a pack of hyenas. As for the police - they just laugh at us. I don’t like to tell you your business, Mr Mayor, but if I was you, I’d go right to the Governor and ask for the Guard.’

‘There’s time enough for that,’ Rudolph said.

‘Mark my words,’ said Scanlon. ‘It’ll come to it. Look what they’ve done down in New York and out in California.’

‘We’re not New York or California,’ Rudolph said.

‘We got students and niggers,’ Scanlon said stubbornly. He drove silently for a while. Then he said, ‘You shoulda been at your house last night, Mr Mayor, then maybe you’d know what I was talking about.’

‘I heard about it,’ Rudolph said. They trampled the garden.’

They did a lot more than that,’ Scanlon said. T wasn’t there myself, but Ruberti was there, and he told me.’ Ruberti was another policeman. ‘It was sinful what they did, Ruberti told me, sinful. They kept calling for you and singing dirty-minded songs, young girls, using the dirtiest language anybody ever heard, and they pulled up every plant in your garden, and then when Mrs Jordache opened the door …’

‘She opened the door?’ Rudolph was aghast. ‘What did she do that for?’

‘Well, they started throwing things at the house. Clods of dirt, beer cans, and yelling, “Tell that motherfucker to come out.” They mean’t you, Mr Mayor, I’m ashamed to say. There was only Ruberti and Zimmermann there, the whole rest^of the force was up at the college, and what could just two of them do against those howling wild Indians, maybe three hundred of them. So like I said, Mrs Jordache opened the door and yelled at them.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Rudolph said.

‘You might as well hear it from me as later from somebody else,’ Scanlon said. ‘When Mrs Jordache opened the door, she was drunk. And she was stark naked.’

Rudolph made himself stare straight ahead at the tail lights of the cars ahead of him and into the blinding beams of light of the cars going the other way.

There was a kid photographer there, from the school paper,’ Scanlon went on, ‘and he took some flashlight pictures. Ruberti went for him, but the other kids made a kind of pocket and he

got away. I don’t know what use they think they’re going to make of the pictures, but they got them.’

Rudolph ordered Scanlon to drive directly to the university. The main administration building was brilliantly floodlit and there were students at every window, throwing out thousands of pieces of paper from the files and shouting at the line of policemen, alarmingly few, but armed with their clubs now, who cordoned off the building. As he drove up to where Ott-man’s car was parked under a tree, Rudolph saw what use had been made of the photograph of his wife taken naked the night before. It had been enormously blown up and it was hanging from a first-storey window. In the glare of the floodlights, the image of Jean’s body, slender and perfect, her breasts full, her fists clenched and threatening, her face demented, hung, a’ mocking banner, over the entrance of the building, just above the words carved in the stone, ‘Know the truth and the truth shall make ye free,’