Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

“From personal experience,” Victoria Kim said, “loving one’s neighbor is fine with dead-bolts on your doors and a big Doberman trotting at your side when you’re jogging. It won’t keep you warm nights, but it can keep you alive.”

The senator’s phone rang. It was his chauffeur, Clem, on the limo phone from the congressional parking lot. “We’ll be right down,” Lester told him.

Standing, he said to Selby, “I’ll get your father’s diaries before I forget. By the way, Bittermank wanted to Xerox them for his files. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind so I didn’t bother checking.”

When he went into the conference room, Victoria Kim said to Selby, “You mentioned that your daughter was in summer school. Is she enjoying herself?”

“I believe so, thanks. She got behind in several classes and is working hard to catch up. We’re planning a vacation in Switzerland over the Christmas holidays. Shana’s determined to get a grip on the language.”

“No, thanks.”

“I’d better tidy things up. If you’re in Washington and need anything, you’ll call us, won’t you? You have our numbers and extensions, I believe.”

“Yes, thank you.”

She collected the tea things and left the office.

Selby had been tempted to ask her to use her sources, as she had with the Cadles, to help him locate the photographer, J. D. Parks, who had closed his office and left East Chester six weeks earlier. Parks had never billed Selby for the enlargements he’d made of Thomson’s license plates. The German janitor was no help. One morning the office was cleaned out, that was all he could tell Selby. But the old man seemed relieved that the ’Nam vet was gone. The breadcrumbs he’d left on the windowsill attracted more ants than birds. Respect for living creatures was fine, the old German grumbled, but not when it violated sanitary codes.

But it was already part of a past Selby didn’t want to examine... Dade Road, Vinegar Hill, the helicopter over Brandywine Lakes... and so he’d decided to forget it.

He looked at the morning sunshine on the Lincoln and Washington monuments. Emotional isolation...

Dorcas Brett had taken an official leave of absence after the interruption of Thomson’s trial. She had wanted to resign, but Lamb had asked her to put off any final decision until he had completed his indictments against Slocum and the others.

The last night Selby had spent with her, she had confessed she felt fragmented, as if pieces of herself were scattered everywhere. “I’m more part of your life and Shana’s than I am of my own. I can’t define myself with any accuracy, and I’d like time to try. I want to talk to my father. That’s strange, because I haven’t needed him for years. As much as I loathed Earl Thomson, I felt he belonged in a hospital instead of prison. Even my anger couldn’t convince me otherwise.”

She pulled herself gently away from him and sat on the edge of the bed. The dim moonlight glinted on her black hair falling in a mass around her neat, white shoulders.

“I’ve got a need to please. I’ve said that before, and it’s in conflict usually with a basic need for privacy, or of wanting to be alone. I don’t know...” She had turned and smiled at him. “The thing is, I don’t know if I need to be needed, Harry. Or even wanted to be. Maybe I’m afraid of that for some reason...”

Senator Lester came out of the conference room now with Jonas Selby’s diaries and notebooks wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with knotted cord. They walked together to the elevators and took a car down to the lobby. Selby carried his father’s diaries under his arm, which seemed, in a sense, to complete the circle... they were, after all, what had taken him down to Summitt City in the first place, such a long time ago.

Clem stood beside Lester’s limousine in the congressional parking area. He said, “Morning, Mr. Selby,” and stowed the diaries and Selby’s overnight bag in the trunk.

The sun was higher now, streaming brilliantly across the Lincoln and Washington monuments. Senator Lester looked beyond Selby to these symbols of the American experience and said with a smile, “I don’t intend to pull a Fourth of July speech from my pocket, but we stopped Simon Correll and their conglomerate in their tracks in this country and I’m proud of it. The Congress of the United States is not totally composed of ninnies and frauds and opportunists. Of course it won’t put to shame the memory of the Platos and Justice Marshalls and Holmeses of the world either. Congressmen, most of us, despite our rhetoric, aren’t passionately concerned about saving whales and condors and exotic spiders, although we do get spastic and apoplectic about gun control and abortions and prayers in schools. But with all our pious speechmaking and expensive junkets we’re the best representative assembly of free men in the world and I’m proud of the job we do and the country we serve.”

“With all due respect,” Selby said, “if that’s not a Fourth of July speech, it’s a fairly reasonable facsimile. Would you please spell out just what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Simply that there are things you and I have got to take on faith, Selby. In certain areas — and Summitt City is one of them — no one, I repeat, no one, is ever sure of more than about eighty percent of the truth. It’s guessing at the remaining twenty percent that creates conspiracy theories, which can be as dangerous and addictive as heroin, I can tell you.”

“Faith is fine,” Selby said, “it moves mountains, but so can doubt, as I think some Frenchman said.”

“Selby, speculation feeds on itself. I’ll grant you it takes faith, a lot of it, to buy the fact that the most sophisticated film labs in the world, I mean the CIA’s, managed to screw up the film you and Wilger turned over to them. But what’s the alternative? Reckless, subjective evaluation, that’s all I can see.” The senator patted Selby’s arm, a sympathetic gesture. “All this guesswork and anxiety simply reflects a compulsion to make some sense and order out of situations that are naturally painful and inconclusive. Selby, I personally know intelligent people who’ve gone to their graves convinced there was not just a second gunman, but a half dozen at Dallas the day Jack Kennedy was assassinated. They just wouldn’t be convinced otherwise. They wanted some comforting illusion of conspiracy rather than the truth.”

“Or they wanted that other twenty percent,” Selby said. “Maybe that’s the reason they went to their graves.”

Senator Lester shook his head firmly. “I’m not going to leave you on that morbid note. You did what you set out to do on your level, you broke that lying conspiracy of Thomson s, and you probably saved that lovely child of yours a future of heartache. Dammit, Selby, accept that. I’m proud I was able to help. As a matter of fact,” he went on, removing his wallet and taking a card from it, “we could make a good team. Here s a number where you can always reach me. I know Vickie gave you the office number and extensions, but this is a priority line. Connects directly to any meeting I’m in, regardless of circumstances.”

He closed the car door and smiled at Selby through the open rear window. “Have a good flight, Selby. When you’re in Switzerland with a glass of something warm after a day on the slopes, think of me. Take care of yourself, Harry, and God bless.”

They shook hands and the senator stepped back and Clem raised the rear window from his front control panel.

Selby turned and glanced around as the car swung out of the congressional parking lot. The senator stood with the warm sun on his face, his head thrown back and staring, Selby decided, with an expectant and defiant challenge at the monuments along the mall, the great and sternly righteous figures of his nation’s founders.