Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

"Not that it's any of my business," I said, "but what's all the shouting about?"

"Didn't you read the paper?"

"No, I was on vacation."

"And Sadie didn't tell you?"

"Just got here," I said.

"Well, Byram rigged him up a nice little scheme to get rich. Got himself a tie-in with a realty outfit and fixed things up with Hamill in the Tax Lands Bureau. Pretty, only they wanted it all to themselves and somebody got sore at not being cut in, and squawked to the MacMurfee boys in the Legislature. And if I get my hands on who it was–"

"Was what?"

"Squawked to the MacMurfee outfit. Ought to taken it up with Duffy. Everybody knows he's supposed to handle complaints. And now we got this impeachment business."

"Of who?"

"Byram."

"What's happened to Hamill?"

"He's moved to Cuba. You know, better climate. And, from reports, he moved fast. Duffy went around this morning, and Hamill caught a train. But we got to handle this impeachment."

"I don't think they could put it through."

"They ain't even going to try. You let a thing like that get started and no telling what'll happen. The time to stomp 'em is now. I've got boys out picking up soreheads and wobblies and getting 'em to town. Sadie's been on the phone all day taking the news. Some of the birds are hiding out, for the word must have got round by this time, but the boys are running 'em down. Brought in three this afternoon, and we gave 'em what it took. But we had something ready on them all. You ought to've seen Jeff Hopkins's face when he found out I knew about his pappy selling likker out of that little one-horse drugstore he's got over in Talmadge and then forging prescriptions for the record. Or Martten's when he found out I knew how the bank over in Okaloosa holds a mortgage on his place falling due in about five weeks. Well–" and he wriggled his toes comfortably inside of the socks–"I quieted their nerves. It's the old tonic, but still soothes."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Get over to Harmonville tomorrow and see if you can beat some sense into Sim Harmon's head."

"That all?"

Before we could answer Sadie popped her head in the door, and said the boys had brought in Witherspoon, who was a representative from the north tip of the state.

"Put him in the other room," the Boss said, "and let him stew." Then, as Sadie popped out again, he turned to me and answered my question. "All, except get me together all you have on Al Coyle before you leave town. The boys are trying to run him down and I want to be heeled when they book him."

"O. K.," I said, and stood up.

He looked at me as tough he were about to say something up to it, and I stood in front of my chair, waiting. But Sadie stuck her head in. "Mr. Miller would like to see you," she said to the Boss, and didn't give the impression of glad tidings.

"Send him in," the Boss ordered, and I could tell that, no matter what he had had on his mind to say to me a second before, he had something else on it now. He had Hugh Miller, Harvard Law School, Lafayette Escadrille, Croix de Guerre, clean hands, pure heart, Attorney General, on his mind.

"He won't like it," I said.

"No," he said, "he won't."

And then in the doorway stood the tall, lean, somewhat stooped man, with swarthy face and unkempt dark hair and sad eyes under black brows, and with a Phi Beta Kappa key slung across his untidy blue serge. He stood there for a second, blinking the sad eyes, as though he had come out of darkness into a sudden light, or had stumbled into the wrong room. He looked like the wrong thing to be coming through that door, all right.

The Boss had stood up and padded across in his sock-feet, holding out his hand, saying, "Hello, Hugh."

Hugh Miller shook hands, and stepped into the room, and I started to edge out the door. Then I caught the Boss's eye, and he nodded, quick, toward my chair. So I shook hands with Hugh Miller, too, and sat back down.

"Have a seat," the Boss said to Hugh Miller.

"No, thanks, Willie," Hugh Miller replied in his slow solemn way. "But you sit down, Willie."

The Boss dropped back into his chair, cocked his feet up again, and demanded, "What's on your mind?"

"I reckon you know," Hugh Miller said.

"I reckon I do," the Boss said.

"You are saving White's hide, aren't you?"

"I don't give a damn about White's hide," the Boss said. "I'm saving something else."

"He's guilty."

"As hell," the Boss agreed cheerfully. "If the category of guilt and innocence can be said to have any relevance to something like Byram B. White."

"He's guilty," Hugh Miller said.

"My God, you talk like Byram was human! He's a thing! You don't prosecute an adding machine if a spring goes bust and makes a mistake. You fix it. Well, I fixed Byram. I fixed him so his unborn great-grandchildren will wet their pants on this anniversary and not know why. Boy, it will be the shock in the genes. Hell, Byram is just something you use, and he'll sure be useful from now on."

"That sounds fine, Willie, but it just boils down to the fact you're saving White's hide."

"White's hide be damned," the Boss said, "I', saving something else. You let that gang of MacMurfee's boys in the Legislature get the notion they can pull something like this and there's no telling where they'd stop. Do you think they like anything that's been done? The extraction tax? Raising the royalty rate on state land? The income tax? The highway program? The Public Health Bill?"

"No, they don't," Hugh Miller admitted. "Or rather, the people behind MacMurfee don't like it."

"Do you like it?"

"Yes," Hugh Miller said, "I like _it__. But I can't say I like some of the stuff around it."

"Hugh," the Boss said, and grinned, "the trouble with you is you are a lawyer. You are a damned fine lawyer."

"You're a lawyer," Hugh Miller said.

"No," the Boss corrected, "I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. In fact, I know a lot of law. And I made me some money out of law. But I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbones to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different. Do you think half the things I've done were clear, distinct, and simple in the constitution of this state?"

"The Supreme Court has ruled–" Hugh Miller began.

"Yeah, and they ruled because I put 'em there to rule it, and they saw what had to be done. Half the things _weren't__ in the constitution but they are now, by God. And how did they get there? Simply because somebody did 'em."

The blood began to climb up in Hugh Miller's face, and he shook his head just a little, just barely, the way a slow animal does when a fly skims by. Then he said, "There's nothing in the constitution says that Byram B. White can commit a felony with impunity."

"Hugh," the Boss began, soft, "don't you see that Byram doesn't mean a thing? Not in this situation. What they're after is to break the administration. They don't care about Byram, except so far as it's human nature to hate to think somebody else is getting something when you aren't. What they care about is undoing what this administration has done. And now is the time to stomp 'em. And when you start out to do something–" he sat up straight in the chair now, with his hands on the overstuffed sides, and thrust his head forward at Hugh Miller–"you got to use what you've got. You got to use fellows like Byram, and Tiny Duffy, and that scum down in the Legislature. You can't make bricks without straw, and most of the time all the straw you got is secondhand straw from the cowpen. And if you think you can make it any different, you're crazy as a hoot owl."