Greenwich (6 page)

Then Harold wrote his first draft and Ruth read it. He asked her whether she had enjoyed it.

“Not very much.”

“Do you see why I base it on Greenwich?”

“No,” Ruth admitted.

“Look at it this way: There is the gun and there is the shooter. They add up to a weapon. Each is part and parcel of the world we live in. Each is nothing without the other. Both together add up to you and me, and every one of us. The guilt is collective.”

“Oh, Hal, come on! If you want to lay all this Jewish guilt on yourself, fine—but don't include me. Thank God I'm a housewife, a mother, and a photographer. I take pictures of what is. I don't approve of killing anyone—not even mice.”

And now, Ruth Sellig sat in a waiting room in Greenwich Hospital reading the story of the assassin. She was reading without being aware of what any word meant or intended, which didn't matter much because this would be her third reading of a manuscript she did not like. She had mastered the delicacy and intricacy of being married to someone she loved who was a writer. Fortunately, she enjoyed most of what he had written. When he wrote something that, to her mind, was either bad writing or bad thinking, she enjoined herself from an immediate response. “I must think about it,” she would say, which meant either an exploration of various ways of indicating that it was lousy or simply letting time pass. That was the best way; a time would usually come when he would reread it and put it to rest with, “This stinks.”

But his book about assassination was something else. Sellig had linked the process of assassination to a sort of national Jungian guilt, which Ruth simply rejected; and reading the manuscript again to assess his changes was the last thing that interested her now, and with her father in the operating room, it was an untimely wifely obligation. Thus she read without reading.

Ruth Sellig adored her father. He was an internist, a family physician in this era of specialization. His wife had died many years ago of cancer, when Ruth was twelve years old, and he had never remarried, raising his child alone, treasuring her, yet using her as the reason he was unable to make a connection with another woman. When, as a student at Smith College, she fell in love with an English professor very much her senior, who had once given up his job teaching to become a naval historian in Vietnam—and become a fierce pacifist—her father was first amused and then concerned. But when they both decided to settle in Greenwich, he as a writer and she as a photographer, Seth Ferguson and Harold Sellig became fast friends. That was so many years ago, and now Dr. Seth Ferguson was in the operating room for a bypass operation that he had dismissed with a wave of his hand as, “Nothing, nothing at all.”

N
ellie Kadinsky, David Greene's date for the evening, was an operating-room nurse at the hospital. At age twenty-three, she was young for an OR nurse, an only child, fathered and mothered by two Polish immigrants, her father a janitor in a Stamford apartment house. At school at Tufts, she met David at an intercollegiate dance, and they had been going together for two years now, mostly weekends and summertime. Her story of her struggle for an education and a profession put David Greene in utter awe of her. She was a tall, rawboned young woman, with blue eyes and straw-colored hair and almost graven features, sometimes beautiful when she smiled, sometimes very plain. When she was off duty, they biked together.

His competition was Dr. Harvey Loring, a very handsome divorced surgeon, whom Nellie dismissed as “no competition at all” but nevertheless confessed a certain indebtedness to him for bringing her along as part of his team.

On this night, when David picked her up at the entryway of the hospital, her face was drawn and tired, her hair pulled back and tied in the knot she used in the operating room. “I've had my own day of hell,” she said, “so forgive me the way I look.”

“You look good to me.”

“You're a dear boy,” she said, kissing him, “a very dear boy.”

“I'm a grown man of twenty-one years, ready to complete my last year of college. I don't enjoy being called a dear boy.”

“OK, you're a dear man.”

“And why did you have a day of hell?” he asked as they got into his car—and then added, “It's none of my business, is it?” He was examining his words as he spoke, having never seen her quite like this, so drawn and intense. He had not started the car yet, a 1988 Ford Mustang.

“Where should we go?” he asked gently. “Are you hungry?”

“No.” Then she added, “Forgive me, Davey. I feel rotten and I'm being rotten.”

“Oh, no. Absolutely not—I mean not rotten—I mean maybe you feel rotten but you're not being rotten.”

She turned to smile at him and kissed his cheek. “I do love you, Davey. I spent the last hour with Dr. Ferguson's daughter. He had a three-way bypass today, more than five hours, and I was one of the scrubs. Do you know Dr. Ferguson?”

“Seth Ferguson? Sure. He's been our family doctor since I was born, I guess. One of an old dying breed. I hope he's all right.”

“Start the car, Davey. I want to get away from here.”

He nodded and turned the key. “I wanted to take you to dinner tonight, but I'm down to seven dollars and forty cents. I get paid tomorrow, but that doesn't help me tonight. We have a houseful of food at home. You want to come and pick and choose?”

“I have a pot of soup in my fridge, good soup. Soup and bread—would that satisfy you?”

“Bread and water—a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou, of course—I love you, Nell, why won't you marry me?”

“Because you're dirt poor, and you don't even have a rich father. That's a mortal sin here in Greenwich.”

“I have enough for a bottle of wine. And if I go to your place, can I stay over?”

“We'll see,” Nellie said.

Eight

H
ugh Drummond was not a sentimental man, and there were those who said he was incapable of any sentiment whatsoever, but they had never seen him with his dogs. He loved dogs passionately, British bulldogs, one of which now slept comfortably in a big leather armchair in his office. The dog's name was Churchill, and a large inscribed portrait of Mr. Churchill—the man, not the dog—hung on one of the walls of his office. On his desk were two other inscribed portraits, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Drummond had once been Colonel Drummond, but that was in the past.

He now stood facing the big window, through which he could see the Capitol Building, gleaming in the June sunshine, his back to the two other men in the room. He always felt a quiver of personal pride when he looked through the window at the Capitol. If someone had the temerity to ask him what was his line of work, he might well have nodded at the big building, which would pose a conundrum he had no desire to explain.

One of the two other men in the room, Curtis by name, said, breaking a rather long silence, “That's a magnificent rug. Where did you buy it?”

“Lisbon.”

“I would have thought Marrakech.”

“No, Lisbon.”

The third man in the room held his silence, wondering why in hell they were talking about a rug; there were more important things to discuss. Nevertheless, the talk about the rug turned his attention to other things in the big office, the glass case of flintlock muskets, the huge leather-covered couch—well, Drummond was a big man, at least two hundred and fifty pounds—and seeing the bulldog, he said to himself, Of course, Bulldog Drummond, and then searched his memory as to who Bulldog Drummond was. Well, someone, he decided, and returned to the problem at hand.

“Colonel?”

Drummond turned slowly. “You got an itch, Larry?”

“Call it that.”

“What itches you?”

“Castle.”

Drummond looked inquiringly at Curtis, who shrugged. Curtis was a fat old man with white hair. He had once been a handsome young man with blond hair, but that was all long ago.

“Congress,” Curtis said, as if that single word explained everything.

“I am aware of that,” Drummond said.

Larry spoke quietly, trying to contain his anger. You couldn't really argue with Drummond, much less actually get angry at him. “I'm on a very hot seat. Did you see the
Post
today? Or the
New York Times
?”

“You're worried about the press conference that little pisspot from Massachusetts held today? It's bullshit, and no one's going to think it's anything else than bullshit. Ramoz assassinated? He walked into a speeding car, plain as day.”

“The little pisspot from Massachusetts says he was pushed.”

“Oh? Who pushed him?”

Larry shrugged.

“This room is not wired,” Drummond said. “I made sure of that.”

“Shit,” said Larry, “The whole fuckin' world is wired.”

“That's no way to look at things,” Drummond said gently.

The fat old man, Curtis, spread his hands. “Of course it's not wired, Hugh. But Larry's not trusting. He wouldn't trust his own father.” And turning to Larry, “That's a compliment, Larry,” he said. “Turn on the radio, Hugh.”

Larry nodded. Drummond turned on the radio. He preferred classical music and kept it tuned to WETA. The three men moved closer together and spoke softly.

“Larry, who did Ramoz?”

“Finnegan.”

“Well, no one identified him. Where is he now?”

“Poor chap, he drowned.”

“A sort of blessing,” Curtis said. “You don't rat on the IRA and live happily ever after. But Larry, it was so long ago. The only thing anyone cares about today is Clinton and Monica. Maybe it will even satisfy some public opinion, at least those who knew about Ramoz living like a pasha down in Miami.”

“This, thank God,” Drummond said, “is a land with a twenty-four-hour memory. A year from now, they won't even remember Monica. I was against the killing of the nuns and the lay workers, but the goddamned Jesuits, they had to be taught a lesson, and that goes for the bishop as well. But as Curtis says, nobody remembers and nobody gives a damn. And nobody's left but the three of us.”

“And Castle,” Larry said. “He was with State. He put it down on paper—and those papers are still somewhere in the archives.”

“Fuck Castle!” Curtis exclaimed. “He's a little shithead and he'll never open his mouth. He's an investment banker in Greenwich, Connecticut. I had dinner with him once. Lives in a big house with a new wife and he brings in two million a year. He's a happy man. Why should he do himself in?”

“I don't know why. But he knows. His signature is on soon-to-be-public documents—and to save his ass, he'll talk.”

“Who was driving the car?” Drummond asked suddenly.

“I told you, Finnegan.”

“Where did you get it?” Curtis demanded.

“It was Finnegan's car. That's how Finnegan drowned. He's in the car at the bottom of the bay in Florida.”

“You were a congressman—and you're valuable. Don't you ever think of that, Larry?”

“All the time. That's why I'm clean.”

For a minute or so, the three men were silent, while Beethoven's Third Symphony filled the room with its magnificent sound. Drummond regarded Larry thoughtfully, and finally he said, “Someday I may want you to run again, Larry, and I want to keep it with the three of us. I agree with Curtis. Castle will keep his mouth shut. If we do Castle, we have the contract man, and it begins to spread.”

“I'll do it,” Larry said.

“No. It's too damn dangerous—you're no mechanic!”

“Let me worry about that.”

Drummond continued to stare at Larry as if he had never seen him before. Neither Larry nor Curtis spoke. Then Drummond nodded slightly, walked across the room, and clicked off the thunderous sound. “Meeting's over.”

Larry excused himself for a prior engagement. He had to leave immediately. Curtis and Drummond sat in silence for a few minutes, both of them staring through the big window at the Capitol. Finally, Drummond opened a humidor on his desk and took out a cigar.

“Do you want one?” he asked Curtis.

“I'd like a shot of scotch.”

Drummond went to the bar at one side of the room. It had been built as an eighteenth-century highboy, a fine reproduction and a handsome piece. He poured bourbon for himself and scotch for Curtis.

“Straight or with ice?”

“Straight.”

Curtis swallowed it like water. Drummond sipped the bourbon while he cut the end of the cigar. “Curt,” he said, “we're both of us older than we ever expected to be. There are just a few things in life that remain viable, and a Cuban Cohiba and good bourbon are two of them.”

The British bulldog stirred.

Curtis sighed and said, “How did you ever come to pick Larry?”

“He looked like a congressman,” Drummond said.

“He's a psychopath.”

“Maybe. But that can be an advantage in his line of work. He started out as a sheriff in a small southern town. Killed a couple of bank robbers, and it gave him a charge. Then he shot a nigger. The man was unarmed, but snotty. Larry enjoyed it. I needed a congressman, and I picked Larry and gave him a short course in civil rights. I think he has a law degree. He's a thug, but he's obedient. Like that bulldog.”

He snapped his fingers, and the bulldog waddled over to him.

Nine

D
avid Greene bought a bottle of Italian Chianti for six dollars and seventy-five cents. Nellie warmed the soup and broke up a loaf of hot French bread, which David used to wipe up the last bit of soup in his plate. It was good soup, a mixture of beans and lentils and carrots and celery. When they had finished, with just an inch or so of wine left in the bottle, David leaned back and grinned. Nellie smiled at him.

“When you smile,” David said, “you're very beautiful.”