Evening of the Good Samaritan (15 page)

Winthrop shrugged impatiently. “It was mine, too, for that matter.”

“How did you happen to pick me—out of all the politicians in the state—for your campaign manager?”

Winthrop hedged, getting then his first intimation that Mike, instead of merely testing Winthrop’s strength, had been probing his enemy’s weakness. “I knew your history. Your father’s a friend of mine. …”

“My father never put in a good word for me in his life. It wasn’t by any chance Mike Shea’s idea, was it?”

“And if it was?”

Bergner laughed unpleasantly. “I’d like to know, that’s all. I think you owe it to me, Alex, to play square now, at least. You’ve got a fortune to fall back on. All I’ve got is my wits, and after this debacle, I don’t think much of them myself. What are you going to do now, Alex?”

“Wait a minute,” Winthrop said. “Are you quitting? Is that what you’re saying?”

Bergner got up from the squeaking chair. “No, I’m not quitting. It’s too late for that.”

“Then what are you getting at? You know what I’m going to do—fight all the way to Tuesday. After that, I don’t know yet.”

“Let me try a little prophecy: you’ll shake hands with Mike Shea and go back to the bargain basement, the Health Department, the
pissoir
of City Hall.”

Winthrop, sitting at the end of the table, pushed away from it and looked to see who was present. “I must seem like a dead duck, George, if you’re willing to take out my innards.” He called out to two campaign workers folding handbills at the front of the room: “Ladies, take the afternoon off! Right now!” He did not smoke often, but a package of cigarets lay on the table. He got up and lit one, waiting for the workers’ departure. When they were gone, he said, “Now, then, George, spit it out.”

Bergner, faced up to, struck another tone. He had had his moment of pleasurable venom. “For Christ’s sake, Alex, do you know what we’ve done between us? We’ve brought the governor of this state down to the size of Mike Shea. If you don’t win, the governor’s through. He gave you full endorsement. Let’s face facts, political facts: if Mike’s man wins the primary, when fall comes Mike Shea will be doing business directly with the President of the United States, not the governor. F.D.R. is going to be running for reelection himself, and if Mike’s the boy who’s got the votes, let me tell you, Alex, the President is the greatest politician of them all.”

“I know, I know,” Winthrop said. “That’s why I’ve never altogether trusted him.”

“I never altogether trust any man, including myself,” Bergner said, thumping down in the chair again. “Why the hell couldn’t we have had some decent chairs in this place? You could afford them … I can’t say I didn’t suspect something, the half-assed way some of the wardheelers sashayed in and out of here.”

Winthrop went over in his mind that first luncheon conversation with Mike Shea. The place—Patsy’s Steakhouse—the very timing of it, should have forewarned him: it came on the heels of the governor’s veto on the Traders City airport.

“It’s a wonder I didn’t see it myself,” he said at last. “I’m so used to people coming at me with the damnedest ideas, the most outrageous, damn fool schemes …”

“That’s because you’re a rich man,” Bergner said.

Winthrop said, “I had a fellow come in with an idea for a water purifier; for twenty-two million dollars he could put one in every home in America.”

“Cheap at twice the price.”

“I expect frankness, don’t you see?” Winthrop went on, convincing himself. It was Shea’s duplicity that hurt.

“That’s what made you a perfect setup.”

“A pawn,” Winthrop said, “a god-damned pawn, that’s what he used me for.” He was always slow to anger.

“That’s about it,” George fed the anger. “We’re to be off the board before the real game starts.”

Winthrop crushed out the cigaret. “A filthy habit, smoking. Bad for the heart, too. Did you see my column last Thursday?” He had continued throughout the campaign to contribute his regular piece on health to
ALEXANDER WINTHROP, M.D.
in the
Dispatch.

“I must have missed that one,” Bergner murmured. He had never read one in his life.

Winthrop began to pace the room, the length of the table and sometimes around it, the energy fairly oozing out of him. He looked healthy, fit. He was like a breath of fresh air on the political scene: that was what people said at the grass root level. Not that there had been any grass roots for many a year in the part of the city where the vote was heavy. They had long ago been stamped out by the wardheelers. The people might cheer for Winthrop, but they would vote for Mike Shea’s man. It was a great shame, Bergner calculated, that the Republicans hadn’t run Winthrop: the man they had was no dynamo, the mayor would beat him handily.

It was curious, how closely parallel the two men’s thinking ran. When Winthrop turned and asked his question, Bergner would have sworn he was about to say the same thing.

Winthrop said, “Is there any reason I can’t file as an independent candidate if I lose in the primary?”

Bergner moistened his lips. “None. Look at La Guardia in New York.”

“This is Traders City, not New York, thank God.”

“Hear! Hear!” Bergner said, his mockery concealed. “Ten thousand signatures on a petition—very simple.”

Winthrop sat down and pulled the telephone over to him. He called the
Traders City Dispatch,
and getting the switchboard, said to the operator, “Put me through to the tower, Jean. Winthrop speaking.”

Judge Phipps had been very decent, arch-Republican that he was. As soon as Winthrop had told him he was running in the primary, the
Dispatch
had struck a sort of plague-on-all-your-houses tune. It was just possible Phipps would back him all-out as an independent.

Bergner watched and listened, his response a mixture of admiration and doubt. While he admired a man who could go directly to the top dog for what he wanted, he regarded such procedure a handicap in some instances, dangerous in others, particularly to a politician. In a democracy, the wider the span of influence, the better. There was a place for every man—so long as every man knew his place.

On the thirteenth of April, the day after primary elections, Mike Shea ambled into the office of Health Commissioner at City Hall. He went the round of the clerks, shaking hands, and then tapped on Winthrop’s door and stuck his head in.

“Can you give me a minute, Commissioner?”

“Come in, Mike.”

Shea gave him the hand that was neither live nor dead fish. “Ah, Alex, you did a fine job, a fine job.”

“Thanks,” Winthrop said. Knowing himself to be no actor, he resolved to say as little as possible.

“The mayor will be calling you, Alex, but I wanted to be the first to say it—he wants you to stay on as Health Commissioner.”

Even as Bergner had prophesied.

“That’s very generous of him,” Winthrop said, as hollow a sentence as he had ever got off.

But Mike wasn’t listening for echoes. “I’ll say this for you, Alex, you played it for keeps. There was a while there, I thought you had it.”

“I thought so myself.”

“Close, close,” Mike said, and he sat back and chuckled. “It was a good fight, a real good one. It’s good for the people, you know, once in a while, to put on a fight like that.”

Winthrop said, “Mike, did you ever really think I had a chance?”

“I don’t mind telling you now, Alex, if I hadn’t thought so, I’d never have come out for the mayor when I did.”

“And you don’t consider that to have been a breach of faith, Mike?”

“Alex, let me put it this way to you: There are times a politician has to make a choice between faith and survival.”

Winthrop said, “God and Mammon.”

Shea chuckled, his tie clasp catching the light as it quivered on his belly. “Very good, Alex, very good. I’m glad you didn’t use that one on us. Oh, it was a grand fight. You had no idea now, did you, how popular you were with the people of Traders City?”

Winthrop shrugged. He had not been popular enough by some six thousand votes.

Mike, his eyes half-closed, broached a new subject, for it was a way of Mike’s, this lidded watchfulness, as though he could better see through a man, his own eyes half-concealed. “This fella, Bergner, of yours—how would you like to pay him off with a good party job?”

Winthrop could not bring himself to say the word “generous” again. “I’ll have to put it up to him, Mike.”

“We’ll be needing a liaison man ’twixt here and Washington—and I understand he knows his way around down there.”

The wily bastard, Winthrop thought, and deliberately put down his own gorge which was slowly rising at the way Mike had, and was now continuing to play him for an absolute fool. Bergner had had him dead to right. Winthrop looked at his watch. “I’ll talk it over with him, Mike.”

“Do, do. You know, Alex, that sanatorium you were harping about in the campaign? I wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor would go along with you on that now. If Washington does their bit, that is. I was thinking, that might be a good project for Bergner to start on.”

Winthrop was genuinely uncomfortable. Judge Phipps and Bergner would soon be waiting for him. Within the afternoon Mike would know he had made a mortal enemy. Or within the afternoon, he was going to make one of Mike, and the truth was, neither man liked enemies, whatever their opinion of one another.

“I’m sorry, Mike, but I have an appointment.”

“Well, when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.” Mike got up. “No hard feelings, Alex?”

“No hard feelings.” He took the hand that fell away having met his own.

“And you’ll stay on as Health Commissioner?”

“It’s a while yet to November anyway,” Winthrop said. He put on his overcoat.

Mike walked out with him. On the sidewalk, he said, “And maybe along toward summer, you’ll do a little campaigning for the mayor, a speech here and there?” Winthrop looked at him. “Sure, it’s only your pride that’s hurt, man, and you’ll be over that soon. And I know in my heart of hearts, Alex, that whatever else you are, you’re a good sport. And a wonderful campaigner. Sure, you blow over this old town like a breath of spring.”

Winthrop walked the scant mile between City Hall and his town flat. No conveyance would have borne him as satisfactorily as his own legs, for the rhythm and the power he felt in them suited the headlong drive he was bound on. Only once before in his life had he felt anything like this exuberance: when he was a boy and astride a runaway horse from which he would not—and could not—be thrown.

George Bergner and Judge Phipps were waiting for him, Phipps with a dummy layout of the extra edition of the
Dispatch.
It bore the headline:

WINTHROP TO RUN AS INDEPENDENT

Phipps pointed to his front page editorial, an appeal to the voters of both parties. “Over a million readers, Alexander.”

“I wish you were running it on the sports page,” Bergner said bluntly.

Winthrop looked from one to the other of the men, arch-Republican and New Dealer. The strangeness of their fellowship added to his gratification. “Let it roll, Judge,” he said huskily. He was surprised to discover that he was hard put to get the words out for the sudden pounding of his heart.

Phipps picked up the telephone. Listening to him talk to the make-up man, Winthrop went to the window and looked down upon a hundred or so rooftops, then up to the Prudential Building, the Traders Mart, the
Dispatch
Building, on the top floor of which was a radio station where he would be spending a lot of time from now on. Traders City: she had been called many things. The most elegant hogpen in the world, Queen of the Lakes … A man got to know a woman, making love to her, he thought, and he got to know himself, showing off for her, and in the end he had to be as good as she made him think he was. Far down on the Lake Front Drive, he could see a blue-green strip of roof: the International Building where, he supposed, this being Wednesday, Elizabeth Fitzgerald would be teaching music until four. By four o’clock the special edition of the
Dispatch
would be on the street, and at four o’clock, he would be speaking to a group of men and women who soon would be known as “Responsible Citizens for Winthrop.”

F
OR ALL THAT MARCUS
had chastised himself for seeking place, it was remarkable, having it, how quickly he came to take it for granted. He saw with awe, that spring, his name go up on the callboards of three hospitals as a result of his association with Albert Bergner. But it was no time at all before, looking at the board to see who was in, he did not even glance at his own name.

It was true, Bergner had him under contract, a signed agreement that for five years Marcus was, exclusively, to assist him. Whether the document would stand legal testing soon became a no more than academic issue with the younger man. Nor did Bergner advertise the contract. He brought Marcus in simply as “my associate.” And if Bergner had died the next day, Marcus fully realized, he would himself have been even further “out” than before if that were possible. Too many men a good deal his senior knew themselves to be better qualified and, some felt, in actual line for the association. Would any of them have been willing to sign a contract at the wage of a PWA laborer, he wondered. All the same, he came to feel himself incalculably lucky—when he could feel anything. He worked night and day. Bergner appeared at each of the hospitals only on his one morning in surgery. Marcus was charged with the pre and post-operative care of all his patients, as well as attendance on Bergner on surgery. There were times when he suspected, having to hasten from one place to the next, that his apprenticeship to Bergner was going to qualify him better as a taxi-driver than a surgeon. But the day came before spring was over when, during an abdominal, Bergner suddenly lifted his head, scowled at Marcus, nodded and stood back. Marcus took over and closed the wound. The old man never again finished an operation by his own hand.

There was little occasion in their relationship for the amenities although Marcus spent a good deal of time with Bergner. Once a week he was expected to dinner at Lakewood. It was the one night in the week he arrived anywhere on time for dinner. And afterwards he was expected to read abstracts he had made of articles from the scientific journals: anything relating to anesthesia, to blood clotting, to respiration during surgery. Most of it the old man proclaimed nonsense, but now and then he would say, “Ah-ha. Watch that, watch that, Hogan. It may be something. Now, read me the pedigree of the man who wrote it.”