Bread Upon the Waters (48 page)

“You mean you think he wouldn’t believe me,” Rollins said.

“The possibility exists. And he may be under pressure to leave Romero where he is. I think you’d better do this on your own. The lawyer’s name is Hollingsbee. He’s in the Hartford book. I’ll call him first thing in the morning to be ready for you. If you have any trouble, call me.”

“I don’t expect any trouble.” Rollins finished his drink quickly. “I’d better be getting to bed.” He started to leave.

“One more thing, please,” Strand said. His throat felt constricted and he coughed. “About those letters that Romero said were stolen. Do you know anything about them?”

“He didn’t read them to me, Mr. Strand,” Rollins said, “and I didn’t ask. He kept them locked up. Every once in a while he would take them out and read them to himself with a sort of sappy expression on his face. Then he’d put them away and lock them up again.”

“You don’t know whom they were from?”

“From the way he looked I would guess they were from a girl.” Rollins laughed. “It’s a cinch they weren’t from bill collectors. Anyway, I could tell he prized them. Do you want me to ask him who they were from?”

“No. It’s of no importance. Well, good luck. And thank your family for me.”

“That might help. They ain’t all that crazy about my getting them to fork over all that dough. And my mother and father were against my coming here on football scholarship in the first place. But they’re on Romero’s side, and that’s the main thing.” He patted the bulge in his hip pocket. “Got to make sure it’s still there,” he said, a little embarrassedly. “I’m sorry I made such a dent in your booze. See you in the morning, sir.”

He was weaving a little as he went out of the apartment.

It had been a long day. He had started out tired. He had dozed a little during the night, but had awakened at six to call Air France. Air France had told him that Paris was fogged in and no planes were landing there as yet and that the New York flight had had to put down in Geneva and was waiting there for conditions to improve. He had called after that at twenty-minute intervals, but the message was always the same. Then, just before breakfast they had told him that Leslie’s plane had been diverted to Nice. Her trip was not beginning on a fortunate note.

At breakfast, he had told Babcock that he would have to skip his first classes. He didn’t give any reason and Babcock had looked at him oddly and had been markedly cool when he said “I do hope that we can settle back into a sensible routine soon again,” and had turned away abruptly.

The long walk into town with Rollins to the bank in a biting wind had left him gasping and twice he had had to ask Rollins to stop while he regained his breath. Rollins had watched him anxiously, as though he was afraid that he would drop where he stood. “My father has heart trouble, too,” Rollins said. “My mother’s after him all the time to slow down.”

“How do you know I have heart trouble?” Strand asked.

“Romero told me. He said they were afraid you were going to die.” Rollins looked at him with childlike curiosity. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was it like—I mean, when you felt yourself…” He stopped, embarrassed. “I’ve been knocked out a few times myself and the funny thing was it didn’t hurt while it was happening—I just felt as though somehow I was floating through the air, altogether peaceful. I just wondered if maybe it’s like that. I’d feel better about my father if it was like that for him…”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Strand said, trying to remember what he had felt as he collapsed on the beach. “Now that I look back on it, that
is
how I felt. It’s a comforting thought. To tell you the truth I didn’t want to come back.”

“Well,” Rollins said emphatically. “I’m real glad you did.”

Strand smiled at him. “So am I.”

At the bank, he had cashed the check and given the two thousand dollars in new hundred dollar notes to Rollins. Rollins didn’t put them in his wallet immediately, but stood there, looking uncertainly down at them in his hand. “You sure you want to do this, Mr. Strand?”

“I’m sure. Put them away.”

Rollins folded the notes carefully into his wallet. “I better be getting along,” he said. “The bus for Hartford leaves in ten minutes. Maybe you better take a taxi back to the school.”

Strand had taken a taxi from the town to the school once. It had cost five dollars. “I’ll walk. The exercise will wake me up. Good luck with Mr. Hollingsbee. I called him and he’s expecting you.”

“Be careful, please, Mr. Strand,” Rollins said. He strode quickly down the windy street as Strand pushed his wool muffler higher around his neck. At the corner Rollins stopped, turned and looked back. He waved once, then turned the corner and disappeared.

Shivering and with his ungloved hands feeling like two lumps of ice in his overcoat pockets, Strand walked in the opposite direction along the main street going out of town. There was a drugstore on the corner that sold newspapers. He went in and bought the
Times.
The story was on page three and was short. “Justice Department Investigates Charges of Influence Peddling in Washington” was the one-column headline. The story itself was tentative. It had been revealed to the
Times
through reliable sources, it ran, that a prominent New York lawyer, Russell Hazen, had had conversations with a registered lobbyist for the oil industry about the possibility of rewarding an unnamed congressman for a favorable vote in committee on an offshore drilling bill. The conversation had been taped off a tapped telephone wire in Mr. Hitz’s office. The tap had been legally obtained on a warrant from a federal judge. The Justice Department declined to say if an indictment would be sought. The investigation would continue.

Poor Russell, Strand thought. He felt guilty at having given up after one call trying to reach Hazen to warn him of the FBI’s visit. It was not the kind of story a man would want to come on unsuspectingly as he opened the paper at the breakfast table.

Strand closed the paper and dropped it back on the pile. He had paid for it, but he didn’t want to read about the murders, the executions, the invasions, the bankruptcies that seemed to make up most of each morning’s news these days.

He went out of the store into the cold, gray street, where other pedestrians were hurrying, bent over, against the wind. He had foolishly not worn a hat. He pulled the muffler away from his neck and, using it as a shawl, wound it around his head and tied it in a knot under his chin. As he started off again, his eyes tearing from the cold, he thought of all the photographs he had seen in newspapers of refugee women, their heads wrapped in shawls, shuffling along on dusty roads.

By the time he got back to the school, dragging himself along, cursing the wind, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to last through his classes till five o’clock. Somehow, though, he managed it, sitting at his desk while he lectured, instead of striding up and down as he usually did, and speaking slowly and laboriously. Then, during his last class, the headmaster’s secretary came into the room and told him that he should come over to the office as soon as possible. He cut the class short and went down to the headmaster’s office. Romero was there and Rollins and Mr. Hollingsbee.

Romero’s mouth was still split and swollen and a bruise on his forehead was lumpy and discolored. But he stood erect and defiant as he glanced once at Strand, then lowered his eyes and stared at the floor.

“Allen,” Babcock said, “we’ve all been trying to persuade Romero to cooperate with Mr. Hollingsbee. Without success. I’ve told Romero that under the circumstances I have no choice but to expel him from the school as of today. If he is willing to cooperate, I might be able to suspend him provisionally to await the outcome of the trial. Mr. Hollingsbee thinks that with luck he might have Romero put on probation. In that case, I believe I might be able to allow him to come back to the school on probation here, too, to finish his year. Perhaps you can do something with him.”

“Romero,” Strand said, “you’re playing with the rest of your life. Give yourself a chance, at least. I don’t like reminding you of what you owe to Mr. Hazen and myself, but I have to do it. Between us we have a large investment in you. And I’m not talking about money. A moral investment. It’s callous of you not to feel that you should try to protect it.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Strand,” Romero said, still staring at the floor. “Everyone knows what I did and why. I’ll take the consequences. I’m not going to weasel out. Everyone’s wasting their time arguing with me.”

Strand shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s it,” he said to Babcock.

Babcock sighed. “All right, Romero,” he said. “Pack your things and get out. Right now. You can’t stay here even one more night.”

“I’ll drive the boys back to Waterbury,” Mr. Hollingsbee said. “Rollins, maybe your parents will be able to do something with him.”

“They sure will try,” Rollins said. He took Romero’s elbow. “Come on, hero.”

Mr. Hollingsbee and Strand followed the boys out of the room and out onto the campus. They made a little cortege as they walked across to the Malson Residence. “Before you came,” Hollingsbee said to Strand, “Babcock read the riot act to Rollins, too. About not reporting the crap games in the room. He put Rollins on probation for the rest of the year. That means he can’t play on any of the teams. The track coach isn’t going to be happy when he hears about it. Rollins is the number one shot-putter of the school. It won’t help him any getting a scholarship for college, either.”

“Do you have any children?” Strand asked.

“One daughter. Thank God she’s married.” Hollingsbee laughed.

Strand couldn’t help wondering if the man had ever read any of his daughter’s letters to her husband or to any other man she knew.

“How about you?” Hollingsbee asked. “How many children do you have?”

“Three. So far they’ve managed to stay out of jail.”

“You’re ahead of the game.” The lawyer shook his head. “Kids these days.”

When they got to the house Strand was relieved to see that the common room was empty. Romero started for the stairs, but Strand stopped him. “Jesus,” he said, “one last time…”

Romero shook his head.

“All right, then,” Strand said. “Good-bye. And good luck.” He put out his hand. Romero shook it. “Don’t take it too hard,” he said. “Just one more stick on the fire.” He started toward the door, then stopped and turned. “Can I say something, Mr. Strand?”

“If you think there’s anything more to say.”

“There is. I’m leaving here, but I don’t think you’ll be here much longer, either.” He was speaking earnestly, his voice low and clear. “This place is staffed by time-servers, Mr. Strand. And I don’t think you’re a time-server.”

“Thank you,” Strand said ironically.

“The other teachers are grazing animals, Mr. Strand. They graze in peace on grass…”

Strand wondered where in his reading Romero had picked up that phrase. Unwillingly, now that he had heard it, he recognized the justice.

“You hunt on cement, Mr. Strand,” Romero went on. “That’s why you understood me. Or at least half-understood me. Everybody else here looks at me as though I belong in a zoo.”

“That’s not fair,” Strand said. “At least about the others.”

“I’m just telling you my opinion.” Romero shrugged.

“Are you finished?”

“I’m finished.”

“Go get your things,” Strand said. He was disturbed and did not want to hear any more. At least not today.

“Come on, Baby,” Romero said harshly to Rollins, “let’s clear out the ole plantation. Massa’s selling us South.”

Strand watched Hollingsbee and the two boys go up the stairs, then went down the hall to his apartment. The phone was ringing in the living room. He had almost decided not to answer it but then, thinking that it might be Leslie calling from France to reassure him that she was all right, he picked it up.

It was Hazen. “Did you read that goddamn story in the
Times
this morning?” He sounded drunk.

“I did.”

“Reliable sources.” Hazen’s voice was thick. “Any two bit shyster lawyer in the Justice Department leaking to a crappy newspaperman and suddenly it’s a reliable source. My God, if you tapped a conversation between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist they could make it sound like a federal offense.”

“I tried to call you last night and warn you about the
Times.
There was no answer.”

“I was at the fucking opera. And when I’m not home my goddamn valet is too lazy to move away from the bar where he’s drinking my liquor to pick up the phone. I’m going to fire the sonofabitch tonight. How did you know about the
Times
?”

“There were two FBI men here yesterday, questioning me about you. They told me to look at the
Times
this morning.”

“What did they want to know?”

“If I’d heard you talking to Hitz about a deal.”

“What did you tell them?”

“What could I tell them? I said I didn’t hear anything.”

“You could have sworn, for Christ’s sake, that you were with me every minute and you knew damn well I didn’t say a word about any kind of business with Hitz.”

“We went through this before, Russell,” Strand said wearily. “I told them what I knew. No more and no less.”

“Go to the head of the honor roll, Sir Galahad,” Hazen said. “When are you going to come down out of the clouds and hang your halo on the door and learn to play with the big boys on the street?”

“You’re drunk, Russell. When you’re sober, I’ll talk to you.” Strand quietly put down the receiver. He was shivering. The cold of the day seemed to be embedded in his bones. He went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the tub. He inhaled the steam gratefully as he started to undress. There was a ring on the doorbell. He turned the water off, put on a bathrobe and went barefooted to the door. Dr. Philips was standing there, with his little black bag in his hand.

“Do you mind if I come in, Mr. Strand?” Strand had the impression that the doctor was on the verge of putting his foot in the door for fear that it would be slammed in his face. “Please.”

Philips came in. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said. “But Mr. Babcock called me a few minutes ago and said he thought I ought to take a look at you.”