Mario Puzo - Fools die

Hemsi leaned back in his chair. “You say everything will come out right if my son does what you ask?”

“I guarantee it,” Cully said.

“He won’t have to go back into the Army?” Hemsi asked again.

“I guarantee that too,” Cully said. “I have friends in Washington, as you have. But my friends can do things your friends can’t do, even if only because they can’t be connected to you.”

Eli Hemsi was ushering Cully to the door. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much. I have to think over everything you said. I’ll be in touch with you.”

They shook hands again as he walked Cully to the door of his suite. “I’m at the Plaza,” Cully said. “And I’m leaving for Vegas tomorrow morning. So if you could call me tonight, I’d be grateful.”

But it was Charlie Hemsi who called him. Charlie was drunk and gleeful. “Cully, you smart little bastard. I don’t know how you did it, but my brother told me to tell you that everything is OK. He agrees with you completely.”

Cully relaxed. Eli Hemsi had made his phone calls to check him out. And Gronevelt must have backed the play. He felt an enormous affection and gratitude for Gronevelt. He said to Charlie, “That’s great. See you in Vegas at the end of the month. You’ll have the time of your life.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Charlie Hemsi said. “And don’t forget that dancer.”

“I won’t,” Cully said.

After that he dressed and went out for dinner. In the restaurant lobby he used the pay phone to call Merlyn. “Everything is OK, it was all a misunderstanding. You’re going to be all right.”

Merlyn’s voice seemed faraway, almost abstracted and not as grateful as Cully would have liked it to be. “Thanks,” Merlyn said. “See you in Vegas soon.” And he hung up.

Cully Cross squared everything for me, but poor patriotic Frank Alcore was indicted, released from active duty to civilian status, tried and convicted. A year in prison. A week later the major called me into his office. He wasn’t mad at me or indignant; in fact, he had an amused smile on his face.

“I don’t know how you did it, Merlyn,” he told me. “But you beat the rap. Congratulations. And I don’t give a shit, the whole business is a fucking joke. They should have put those kids in jail. I’m glad for you, but I’ve got my orders to handle this business and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now I’m talking to you as a friend. I’m not pressing. My advice is, resign from the government service. Right away.”

I was shocked and a little sick. I thought I was home free and here I was out of a job. How the hell would I meet all my bills? How would I support my wife and kids? How would I pay the mortgage on the new house on Long Island I would be moving into in just a few months?

I tried to keep a poker face when I said, “The grand jury cleared me. Why do I have to quit?”

The major must have read me. I remember Jordan and Cully in Las Vegas kidding me about how anybody could tell what I was thinking. Because the major had a look of pity when he said, “I’m telling you for your own good. The brass will have their CID people all over this armory. The FBI may keep snooping around. All the kids in the Reserve will still try to use you, try to get you into deals. They’ll keep the pot stirring. But if you quit, everything should blow over pretty quick. The investigators will cool off and go away with nothing to focus on.”

I wanted to ask about all the other civilians who had been taking bribes, but the major anticipated me. “I know of at least ten other advisers like you, unit administrators, who are going to resign. Some have already. Believe me, I’m on your side. And you’ll be OK. You’re wasting your time on this job. You should have done better for yourself at your age.”

I nodded. I was thinking that too. That I hadn’t done much with my life so far. Sure, I’d had a novel published, but I was making a hundred bucks a week take-home pay from Civil Service. True, I earned another three or four hundred a month with free-lance articles for the magazines, but with the illegal gold mine closed down, I had to make a move.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll write a letter giving two weeks’ notice.”

The major nodded and shook his head. “You have some paid sick leave coming.” he said. “Use it up in those two weeks and look for a new job. I’ll stand still for it. Just come in a couple of times a week to keep the paperwork going.”

I went back to my desk and wrote out my letter of resignation. Things weren’t as bad as they looked. I had about twenty days of vacation pay coming to me, which was about four hundred dollars. I had, I figured, about fifteen hundred dollars in my government pension fund, which I could draw out, though I’d forfeit my rights to a pension when I was sixty-five. But that was more than thirty years away. I could be dead by then. A total of two grand. And then there was the bribe money I had stashed with Cully in Vegas. Over thirty grand there. For a moment I had an overwhelming sense of panic. What if Cully reneged on me and didn’t give me my money? There would be nothing I could do about that. We were good friends, he had bailed me out of my troubles, but I had no illusions about Cully. He was a Vegas hustler. What if he said he had my money coming to him for the favor he had done me? I couldn’t dispute it. I would have paid the money to keep out of jail. Christ, would I have paid it!

But the thing I dreaded most was having to tell Valerie I was out of a job. And having to explain to her father. The old man would ask around and get the truth anyway.

I didn’t tell Valerie that night. The next day I took off from work and went to see Eddie Lancer at his magazines. I told him everything and he sat there, shaking his head and laughing. When I finished, he said, almost wonderingly, “You know, I’m always getting surprised. I thought you were the straightest guy in the world next to your brother, Artie.”

I told Eddie Lancer about how taking the bribes, becoming a half-assed criminal had made me feel better psychologically. That in some way I had discharged a lot of the bitterness I felt. The rejection of my novel by the public, the drabness of my life, its basic failure, how I’d always really been unhappy.

Lancer was looking at me with that little smile on his face. “And I thought you were the least neurotic guy I ever met,” he said. “You’re happily married, you have kids, you live a secure life, you earn a living. You’re working on another novel. What the hell more do you want?’

“I need a job,” I told him.

Eddie Lancer thought that one over for a moment. Oddly enough I didn’t feel embarrassed appealing to him.

“Just between you and me I’m leaving this place in about six months,” he said. “They’ll move another editor up to my place. I’ll be recommending my successor and he’ll owe me a favor. I’ll ask him to give you enough free-lance to live on.”

“That would be great,” I said.

Eddie said briskly, “I can load you up with work until then. Adventure stories, some of the love fiction crap and some book reviews I usually do. OK?”

“Sure,” I said. “When do you figure you’ll finish your book?”

“In a couple of months,” Lancer said. “How about you?”

It was a question I always hated. The truth was that I had only an outline of a novel I wanted to write about a famous criminal case in Arizona. But I hadn’t written anything. I had submitted the outline to my publisher, but he had refused to give me an advance. He said it was the kind of novel that wouldn’t make money because it involved the kidnapping of a child who was murdered. There wouldn’t be any sympathy for the kidnapper, the hero of the book. I was aiming at another Crime and Punishment , and that had scared the publisher off.