The Child Buyer (29 page)

rection away from the approaching police car. I was running blindly, as fast as I could. Another siren was coming. I was dimly aware of the first police car stopping and its doors flying open. Another searchlight was sweeping the street, and I could hear a third siren in the distance. I felt as if I couldn't run any further. I stumbled and fell face down; dust got in my lungs; I lay coughing and panting, and I shivered in the dreadful cold. Then a big hand was on my shoulder, and a flashlight was in my face, and a deep voice was saying, 'Well, well, well, here's the littlest rat of all. Why, this one's practically a mouse/ I could still hear Momma bellowing, 'I'll sell him, I'll sell him, I'll sell him,' back at the house.

Senator MANSFIELD. There, now, sonny, there's no need to cry.

Senator SKYPACK. He better stand down. Get him off there, Aaron.

Senator MANSFIELD. All right, sonny. That's right, Mr. Broad-bent. That's better.

Senator SKYPACK. I can't stand to see a kid blubber like that.

Senator MANSFIELD. What next, Mr. Broadbent?

Mr. BROADBENT. The child buyer. Call Mr. Wissey Jones, please.

Senator MANSFIELD. Take the witness chair, please, Mr. Jones.

TESTIMONY OF MR. WISSEY JONES, OF UNITED LYMPHOMILLOID CORPORATION

Mr. BROADBENT. You have been accused, sir, by a witness before this committee, of having planned and organized the gang attack on the Rudd home of Tuesday evening last. Do you admit to having done so?

Mr. JONES. 'Accuse'? 'Admit'? My dear Mr. Broadbent, you use words that suggest something reprehensible. I feel no guilt

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about this little job of work. In fact, I'm rather proud of it.

Mr. BROADBENT. You did, then, devise this attack and set it up?

Mr. JONES. Even the word 'attack' seems to me an overstatement of the case. Trank' sounds better to me. It was a business prank, by which I mean, it was not an idle joke.

Mr. BROADBENT. Would you give us an account of your part in the incident, please, sir?

Mr. JONES. I turned over to you yesterday, and you read out loud to the committee, Mr. Broadbent, a telegram from the prex of U. Lympho expressing extreme urgency about getting my purchases of specimens completed. I will tell you that even before that wire arrived I had felt sharply the pressure of time. I was a man in a hurry. You will say fifty years—the expected duration of U. Lympho's Mystery—is a long time, two thirds of a man's life span, more or less. But, as you know, we live in a cutthroat world. What appears as sweetness and light in your common television commercial of a consumer product often masks a background of ruthless competitive infighting. The gift-wrapped brickbat. Polite legal belly-slitting. Banditry dressed in a tux. The more so with projects like ours. A prospect of perfectly enormous profits is involved here. We don't intend to lose out. That is why these extended hearings-Mr. BROADBENT. How was the attack, or prank, connected with what you're saying?

Mr. JONES. In this way. By Monday a week ago, the day before the prank, I had already spent four full days of work in Pequot, and I didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Usually it takes me only two or at most three days to conclude these deals, because, you see, your upper-middle-class families, where the high-I.Q. children mostly show up, need money much more desperately than poor families, such as the Rudds, do.

Senator MANSFIELD. How's that again?

Mr. JONES. Money is commonly thought of as a medium of

exchange, as a means of storing value, but in my work I think of it as a habit-forming drug. The more you've had, the more you need. For the addicted a large dose produces an ecstasy that is short-lived. Withdrawal, or even the threat of it, causes intense physical pain. Among those who are hooked I have no trouble at all extracting children in return for a jolt of the stuff. But people like the Rudds are often deeply afraid of heroin, morphine, cash, and other forms of dope, without really knowing how afraid of them they are.

Senator MANSFIELD. But I thought you told us that Mr. Rudd was eager to sell.

Mr. JONES. He didn't care about the money. He wanted the so-called luxury items. He knew deep down that it would be fatal to be rich, but to appear to be rich for a short time would be no more dangerous than having a sweet dream.

Mr. BROADBENT. So what did you do?

Mr. JONES. As you know, I had Cleary under my thumb, and I put him to work. My hunch—and I think it's proving to have been correct—was that my most important impediment was Mrs. Rudd, that if I could bring her around, the boy would follow, sooner or later. He might rationalize his decision, but when you came right down to it, you'd find it was a case of his being cleated to an apron string as strong as a tugboat's hawser. Cleary provided the clue. He told me about his first interview with Mrs. Rudd, when he was in fact arguing against the sale of Barry; he told me about Mrs. Rudd's confession of having spent her whole life trying to escape what she considered coarseness in herself, and how Barry had become the main prop in her charade. The first victim of fear is affectation; scared people can't hide their true natures, even from themselves. So the problem was: how to frighten Mrs. Rudd, but good; show her she hadn't escaped her basic self, and never would, Barry or no Barry. Cleary found out for me that Mr. Rudd goes bowling on Tuesday

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nights, and that would give us an opportunity to work on her without his support. I then devised the idea of an orgy of de-structiveness on the part of some teen-agers—fun for the kids and hay for me. I asked Cleary who was Pequot's Mr. Fix-It. Every town has at least one: the guy who knows all the angles, the Republican who's thick as sin with the Democratic Town Committee, the man who can get it for you, who can squash tickets, knows the Chief. Paul Ellithorp, Cleary said. So I sent Cleary to him, to make the first approach, to put me in touch with the headquarters of the junior defacing element.

Mr. BROADBENT. You mean some high-school hoods?

Mr. JONES. I don't know exactly what you mean by that term. As a matter of fact, I asked for two or three boys, to be ringleaders, from good families, boys who'd had a sound record of breakage, ill manners, and rebelliousness. Sons of men who believe in firm discipline for the younger generation but not necessarily for themselves. Cleary set up an appointment for me with some boys who were just the thing, delightfully surly, in Ellithorp's office, and we had a grand time. It was like planning games for a party, all that capering with noise-makers and baseball bats and buckets of slops—like Blind Man's Buff, Bop the Boodle, Sardines. Joys of innocent childhood, discussed by my blackguard boys, of course, with terrifying frowns and disenchanted grunts.

Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, sir, we've heard about that conversation.

Mr. JONES. You have? From whom?

Mr. BROADBENT. From a boy who overheard you in the back of the store. A chum of Barry's, Charles Perkonian.

Mr. JONES. So that accounts for it!

Mr. BROADBENT. Accounts for what?

Mr. JONES. Did this child warn the Rudds?

Mr. BROADBENT. He did.

Mr. JONES. That explains Mrs. Rudd's recovery. At the end of

Tuesday, October 2$

the attack she gave in—shouted over and over that she'd sell. But by the next morning she'd hardened up again. It must have been the lack of surprise that gave her a chance to become resistant to a certain extent. As to flu from a vaccine. Did she know I was behind it?

Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, she did.

Mr. JONES. Ah, well, there you are. That's how mischief climbs on mischief's back—the human tongue and ear come into play. I think the most merciful phase of our experiment with the specimens at United Lymphomilloid is the tying off of the senses. What serenity! What undisturbed virtue!

Mr. BROADBENT. Please go on with your story. Did you pay the high-school boys?

Mr. JONES. Heavens, no. The chance to destroy for a purpose was more than enough reward for them. After I finished making plans with them in the drugstore, Ellithorp came through with a brilliant suggestion. Why not call on Mrs. Rudd in the morning and give her a deadline—say seven o'clock in the evening, one hour before the gang was scheduled to arrive—for surrendering? This would lend added force to her alarm and shock at eight. I've always been astonished at how eager people have been to help me in my procurement work; I'm sure there's some secret here for the future of collective human effort, but I haven't quite figured out what it is. Anyway, we went; Ellithorp, who's a creditor of the Rudds', went along with me.

Senator SKYPACK. Jones, I have to call a halt here and congratulate you. I sure do admire a practical man.

Mr. JONES. Well, I thank you. I try not to be a fool.

Mr. BROADBENT. Sir, on the occasion of your first appearance before us, one of our committee, I believe it was Senator Sky-pack, asked about your collapsible motorcycle, and whether you personally took part in this attack, or prank> as you call it. At that time you denied any—

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Senator SKYPACK. I wouldn't want to resurrect an old question like that, Broadbent.

Mr. JONES. The Senator succeeds in not being a fool, where I only try! . . . Don't take offense, Mr. Broadbent, I didn't mean to suggest that you re a fool. That was intended as humor.

Mr. BROADBENT. I understand perfectly. Did you take part in the attack, sir?

Mr. JONES. No, I did not. I leave specialized work to specialists. An office boy would have a right to be offended if I sharpened my own pencils—it's something he can do better than I.

Senator MANSFIELD. Have you ever staged an assault like this before, to help parents to make up their minds?

Mr. JONES. I rather pride myself on varying my approach to meet the unique requirements of each situation.

Senator MANSFIELD. But you have no compunction about what your mob did—about the cost to the Rudds of those windows, for instance?

Mr. JONES. I've offered the Rudds enough money for a lifetime of broken windows.

Senator MANSFIELD. You'd do it again if you had to?

Mr. JONES. Certainly. All's fair in love, war, and free enterprise. Only I'll tell you one thing: Another time I'd make sure a sneaky boy wasn't eavesdropping.

Senator SKYPACK. What I want to know, Jones, is: How are you coming along with Mrs. Rudd and that sneaky boy of hers? Are you going to get this deal closed?

Mr. JONES. Of course I am.

Senator SKYPACK. You sound cocksure. You making some headway?

Mr. JONES. I am. I'm glad to say that the mother has already come around, permanently, and I've got Dr. Gozar working on the boy right this minute, out there in the anteroom.

Senator MANSFIELD. You've got Dr. Gozar on your side?

Mr. JONES. I don't give up easily, Senator.

Senator SKYPACK. By George, he's a whiz!

Senator MANSFIELD. But how did you win them over?

Mr. JONES. I imagine they can tell you better than I can, sir. I'm not sure I really know myself—I've tried so many approaches on them.

Senator MANSFIELD. We'll certainly ask them. Mr. Broadbent, let's have in Mrs. Rudd and then Dr. Gozar. Thank you, Mr. Jones, you may step down.

Mr. BROADBENT. Bring Mrs. Paul Rudd in.

Senator MANSFIELD. The same chair, Mrs. Rudd. Yes, please.

TESTIMONY OF MRS. PAUL RUDD, HOUSEWIFE, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Mr. BROADBENT. Mrs. Rudd, how do you feel at the present time about Mr. Jones's proposal to buy your son?

Mrs. RUDD. I said at the beginning that the decision was really up to Barry, and I still feel that way.

Mr. BROADBENT. But personally? Yourself?

Mrs. RUDD. Speaking for myself, I wouldn't object.

Mr. BROADBENT. But you wouldn't actually give your approval to the deal unless Barry gave you the go-ahead?

Mrs. RUDD. That's correct. Providing Barry doesn't take too long making up his mind.

Mr. BROADBENT. Why do you say that?

Mrs. RUDD. There isn't all the time in the world. If we delay much longer, we're liable to lose out on the whole deal. The child buyer says he can't stay on one job forever.

Mr. BROADBENT. What has changed your mind, Mrs. Rudd? What has made you willing to sell your son?

Mrs. RUDD. My husband feels it would be the right thing to do.

Mr. BROADBENT. Is that the real reason? Mr. Rudd was for the

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sale from the beginning, yet for several days you opposed him.

Mrs. RUDD. Well, I think it's a fine opportunity for Barry.

Mr. BROADBENT. Do you truly feel that? All those operations and everything?

Mrs. RUDD. It'll give Barry a chance to be alone and think. He's always complaining to us that we never leave him alone.

Mr. BROADBENT. But is that enough reason to sell your only son?

Senator MANSFIELD. Excuse me, madam, but I feel with Mr. Broadbent that your answers somehow don't carry complete conviction. May I hazard a guess at what swayed you?

Mrs. RUDD. I've told you, my husband, Mr. Rudd, thinks it would be best.

Senator MANSFIELD. Could it be, madam, that during the attack on your home last Tuesday evening you were thrown back into the state of crudeness—I think the word you used yourself to Mr. Cleary was coarseness—from which you had been trying to escape since your girlhood, and that—

Mrs. RUDD. I don't know what you mean. I came from a very good home. We never had much money, but my parents were refined—

Senator MANSFIELD. —and that your son Barry looked into your eyes, and it was as if he saw right through the gray tissue within to the back of your skull—an emptiness there—roughness—

Mrs. RUDD. I was brought up to read good books—gentle books. Cranford. Northanger Abbey.

Senator MANSFIELD. —and that you were ashamed to have your son see you as you felt you really are, and always have been, and always will be?

Mrs. RUDD. Barry respects my education. I don't know what you're talking about.