Joe Steele (5 page)

He took a notebook out of his pocket and scribbled notes that only he and the God Who probably wasn't presiding over this ceremony had any hope of reading. That told the people around him he was a reporter, not one of their prosperous selves. Some moved away from him, as if he carried a nasty, possibly catching disease. Others seemed intrigued.

They were more intrigued when they found out he'd witnessed the fire. “What did you think it was?” asked a middle-aged man whose horsey features put Mike in mind of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mike could only spread his hands. “It was a heck of a big fire, that's what,” he said. “I have no idea what touched it off. I didn't see it start, and I didn't see anybody running away from the Executive Mansion if there was anybody.”

“They stole the nomination from Franklin,” the horse-faced man said bitterly. “They stole it, and they murdered him. That stinking Rooshan from California, he's the one behind it. He learned from the Reds, I bet.”

“Sir, that's the kind of charge it's better not to make unless you can prove it,” Mike said.

“How am I supposed to prove it? You do something like that, you'd
better be able to cover your tracks,” the mourner said. “But I'd sooner see Hoover win again than that Joe Steele so-and-so. Hoover's an idiot, sure, but I never heard he wasn't an honest idiot.”

“Don't put Cousin Lou in the paper, please,” a svelte blond woman said. “He's terribly upset. We all are, of course, but he's taking it very hard.”

“I understand.” Mike didn't intend to put those wild charges in his story. He'd meant what he said—unless you could prove them, you were throwing grenades without aiming. Things were bad enough already. He didn't want to make them any worse.

As far as Mike Sullivan was concerned, dinner at Hop Sing Chop Suey was like meeting on neutral ground. Stella Morandini laughed when he said so. “You're right,” she said. “No spaghetti, no ravioli—but no corned beef and cabbage and potatoes, either.”

“There you go, babe.” Mike nodded. “They've still got some kind of noodles here, though, so your side's probably ahead on points.”

“Noodles doused in this waddayacallit? Soy sauce? Forget it, Mike—that's not Italian.” Stella was a little tiny gal, only an inch or two over five feet. She wasn't shy about coming out with what she thought, though. That was one of the things that drew Mike to her. He'd never had any use for shrinking violets.

Her folks were from the Old Country. They wanted her to tie the knot with a
paisan
, preferably with one from the village south of Naples they'd come from. Like Mike, Stella was no damn good at doing what other people wanted.

His folks were almost as disgusted that he was going with a dago as hers were that she was dating a mick. They weren't just as disgusted because they'd been in the States a couple of generations longer—and because Charlie's fiancée was Jewish. That really gave them something to grouse about.

Stella sipped tea from one of the small, funny handleless cups the
chop-suey joint used. It wasn't as if she might not have gone out with a sheeny or two herself. She was a secretary at a theatrical booking agency, and almost all the guys she worked for were Jews. She didn't speak much Yiddish, but she'd learned to understand it in self-defense.

Mike waved to the waiter. “Can we have another couple of fried shrimp, please?” he said.

“Sure thing.” The waiter wasn't Chinese. He was tall and blond and skinny as a soda straw, and he swished. Fruit or not, he was a good waiter. He hustled back to the kitchen and brought them in nothing flat.

Just as he set them down, Charlie and Esther Polgar walked into Hop Sing's. Mike and Stella both waved; his brother and almost-sister-in-law sat down at the table with them. Esther had wavy red hair and a pointed chin. Her mother and father had brought her to America from Budapest when she was a little girl, bare months before the Great War started.

She grabbed one of the fried shrimp. Charlie snagged the other one. “Of all the nerve!” Mike said in mock indignation.

“Yeah.” Stella wagged a finger at Esther. “Those things aren't even kosher.”

“They're delicious, is what they are,” Esther answered.

“We're gonna need a couple of more fried shrimp,” Mike told the waiter. “And another pot of tea, and more chop suey, too.” He glanced at his brother. “Unless you can make supper out of our scraps. That's what you get for showing up late.”

“We get to have you watch us while we eat, too,” Charlie said. “Not that we care.”

The waiter hurried back to the kitchen again. He put a lot of hip action into his walk. If he wasn't careful, the vice squad would land on him like a ton of bricks one of these days. He wasn't a bad guy—not the sort of queer who annoyed normal people in the hope that they shared his vice. As long as he didn't, Mike was willing to live and let live.

“Not much been going on since we saw each other last,” Charlie said. His smile lifted only one side of his mouth. “Hardly anything, matter of fact.”

“Joe Steele getting nominated? Roosevelt going up in smoke? Uh-huh—hardly anything,” Mike said.

“You forgot Garner getting the nod for VP,” Charlie said.

“Mm, I guess I did,” Mike said after a little thought. “Wouldn't you?”

“You guys are terrible,” Esther said. “You're worse when you're together, too, 'cause you play off each other.”

“Now that you're both here, I've got a question for the two of you,” Stella said. “The Executive Mansion burning down like it did—do you think that was an accident?”

“I was there, and I still can't tell you one way or the other. Neither can the arson inspector, and he knows all kinds of things I don't,” Mike answered. “As long as nobody can prove anything, I think we've got to give Joe Steele the benefit of the doubt. Herbert Hoover, too, as long as we're talking about people who might want to see Roosevelt dead.”

He looked across the table at his brother. Stella and Esther eyed Charlie, too. Charlie kept quiet. He looked down at the crumbs and little grease spots on the plate that had held the fried shrimp. Silence till it got uncomfortable. At last, Esther remarked, “You're not saying anything, Charlie.”

“I know,” Charlie said.

“How come?”

He started not to say anything again—or some more, depending on how you looked at the language. Then he seemed to change his mind, and made a small production out of lighting a cigarette. After that, he did answer: “Because a bunch of people here may hear me. They're people I don't know, people I can't trust. Maybe after dinner we can find a cozy place, a quiet place. Then . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Do you really think it matters if someone you don't know overhears you?” Stella asked.

“Yes.” Charlie bit off the single grudged word.

There didn't seem to be much to say to that. Mike didn't try to say anything. He watched his brother shovel food into his chowlock . . . much the same way he had himself not long before. Esther ate more sedately. When they got done, Mike threw a dollar bill, a half, and a couple of dimes on the table. The two couples walked out of Hop Sing's together.

“Where now?” Stella said.

“Back to my place,” Mike replied in tones that brooked no argument. “It's closest. And I don't have any spies in there.”

“You hope you don't,” Charlie said. Mike let that go. It was either let it go or get dragged into an argument that had nothing to do with what he really wanted to hear.

The Village was . . . the Village. A Red stood on a soapbox and harangued a ten-at-night crowd that consisted of three drunks, a hooker, and a yawning cop who seemed much too lazy to oppress the proletariat. Posters touting Joe Steele and Norman Thomas sprouted like toadstools on walls and fences. Herbert Hoover's backers had posted no bills in this part of town. They saved them for districts where somebody might look at them before he tore them down.

Under a streetlamp, a sad-looking woman in frayed clothes hawked a crate of her worldly goods in lieu of selling herself. Mike thought that was a good idea. She'd get more for the novels and knickknacks and bits of cheap silver plate than she would for her tired, skinny body, and she wouldn't want to slit her wrists come morning.

Mike's apartment was crowded for one. Four made it claustrophobic, especially when three of them started smoking. He didn't care. He had a bottle of moonshine that claimed it was bourbon. It wasn't, but it would light you up. He poured good shots into four glasses that didn't match, added ice cubes, and handed them around.

“Give,” he barked at Charlie.

Give his brother did. “I can't prove a damn thing,” Charlie finished. “I don't know who Vince Scriabin was talking to, or where the guy was, or what Vince told him to do, or even if he did it. I don't
know
a thing—but I sure do wonder.” He finished the rotgut at a gulp, then stared at the glass in astonishment. “Suffering Jesus! That's awful! Gimme another one, will ya?”

Mike handed him the second drink. His own head was whirling, too, more from what he'd heard than from the bad whiskey. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “Scriabin calls . . . somebody . . . somewhere. He says to take care of it that night, because waiting would foul it up. And that night the Executive Mansion goes up in smoke.”

“That's about the size of it,” Charlie agreed. Mike built himself a fresh drink, too. He needed it, no matter how lousy the hooch was.

Stella and Esther were both staring at Charlie. Mike got the idea that Charlie hadn't said anything to Esther about this till now. “You guys are sitting on the biggest story since Booth shot Lincoln,” she said. “Maybe since Aaron Burr shot Hamilton. You're just sitting on it.”

“Don't blame me,” Mike said. “I'm just hearing it now, too.”

“I don't know what we're sitting on,” Charlie said. “Maybe it's an egg. Maybe it's a china doorknob, and nothing'll ever hatch out of it. For all I can prove, Scriabin has a bookie in California who's giving him grief.” He took another healthy swig from the glass. “I ever say they call Vince the Hammer?”

“Tough guy, huh?” Stella said.

Charlie shook his head. “He looks like a pencil-necked bookkeeper. A bruiser with that kind of handle, he's gonna be bad news, sure. But a scrawny little guy like Scriabin? You call
him
the Hammer, you can bet he'll be ten times worse than the heavyweight.”

“You're scared,” Mike said in wonder.

“You bet I am!” his brother said. “If you ever had anything to do with Scriabin, you would be, too. If I write a story that says he did this and that, 'cause Joe Steele told him to, it's bad enough if he comes after me 'cause I'm wrong. If he comes after me 'cause I'm right . . . Way I've got things set up now, you and Esther split my life insurance.”

“I don't want your life insurance!” Esther said.

“Me, neither,” Mike added.

“I wouldn't want it, either. It comes to about fifteen bucks apiece for you guys,” Charlie said. “But that's where we are. Joe Steele's gonna be the next President unless he gets hit by lightning or something. But there's at least a chance that's because he fried Franklin and Eleanor like a couple of pork chops.”

Stella thrust her glass at Mike. “Make me another drink, too.” Esther held hers out as well.

They killed that bottle, and another one that claimed it was scotch. Mike felt awful in the morning, and the hangover was the least of it.

*   *   *

T
he first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Charlie wondered how and why the Founding Fathers had chosen that particular day to hold a Presidential election. For most of the time since the Civil War, America had been a reliably Republican country. It had been. By all the signs, it wasn't any more. The polls back East had closed. Joe Steele and the Democrats held commanding leads almost everywhere. They were taking states they hadn't won in living memory. And it wasn't just Joe Steele trouncing Herbert Hoover. Steele had coattails.

The Congress that came in with Hoover four years earlier had 270 Republicans and only 165 Democrats and Farmer-Labor men in the House, fifty-six Republicans and forty Democrats and Farmer-Labor men in the Senate. The one that came in two years later, after the Depression crashed down, was perfectly split in the Senate, while the Democrats and their Minnesota allies owned a minuscule one-vote edge in the House.

This one . . . Not all the votes were counted, of course. But it looked as if the Democrats and the Farmer-Labor Party would dominate the House by better than two to one, maybe close to three to one. Their majority in the Senate wouldn't be so enormous: only one Senator in three was running this year. They'd have a majority, though, and a big one.

And so the victory party at the Fresno Memorial Auditorium was going full blast. The auditorium, built to commemorate the dead from the Great War, was hardly out of its box—it had opened earlier in the year. It was concrete and modern, all sharp angles, with nods to the classical style in the square columns that made up the main entranceway. For a town of just over 50,000, it was huge: it took up a whole city block.

Up on the balcony of the auditorium was the Fresno County Historical Museum. Charlie didn't see a lot of people going up there. The ones who did were mostly couples of courting age. He wasn't sure, but he would have bet they were more interested in finding privacy than in looking over gold-mining equipment from seventy-five years before.

Down on the main floor, a band that looked to be full of Armenians played jazz. Straight off of Bourbon Street, it wasn't. Charlie wondered what a colored fellow from New Orleans would have thought of it. Not
much, he figured. But the musicians did the best they could, and the campaign workers cutting a rug weren't complaining.

That might have been because of the punch filling half a dozen big cut-glass bowls. Joe Steele had said he favored repealing the Eighteenth Amendment. Prohibition was on the way out, but remained officially in effect. That punch had fruit juice in it for cosmetic purposes. Fruit juice or not, though, it was damn near strong enough to run an auto engine.

A Democratic State Senator came to the microphone to announce a Democratic Congressional victory in Colorado. The people who'd come for politics and not just a good time let out a cheer. The others went on dancing and drinking.

A few minutes later, another California politico stepped up to the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted. “Ladies and gentlemen!” He sounded as if he were announcing the Friday night fights. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege and distinct honor to introduce to you the Vice President–elect of the United States, John Nance Garner of the great state of Texas!”

More people cheered as Garner shambled up to the microphone. Controlling the Texas delegation had won him the second spot on the ticket, even if he couldn't parlay it all the way to the top. His bulbous red nose said that not all the stories about his drinking habits were lies from his enemies.

He had big, knobby hands, the hands of a man who'd worked hard all his life. He held them up in triumph now. “Friends, we went and did it!” he shouted, his drawl thick as barbecue sauce. “Herbert Hoover can go and do whatever he pleases from here on out, 'cause he won't be doing it to America any more!”

He got a real hand then, and basked in it like an old soft-shelled turtle basking on a rock in the sun. “Now we're gonna do it to America!” shouted someone else who'd taken a good deal of antifreeze on board.