The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (25 page)

“There isn't any.”

“I see.”

“The Section is going to lose some of its best people as replacements for those who McCarthy will get through his witch-hunt. We can't do anything about the witch-hunt. It's got to run its course. All we can do is fill in the gaps that it creates at State and CIA with our own talent. In the meantime, we have to recruit new blood that four, five, or even ten years from now will start recruiting its own replacements. Do you follow me?”

“It's perfectly clear,” I said. “The scholarship has strings.”

“No,” he said. “It doesn't.”

“You mean I can collect the four hundred dollars a month, pick up a degree, and then wave goodbye?”

“Or two degrees. Even three.”

“And no strings?”

“None,” he said.

“How much can you tell me about it?”

“Section Two?”

“Yes.”

“Not much. It doesn't exist on paper.”

“And it's not CIA?”

“Definitely not. It's what you might call an intelligence bank. When the others run short, they borrow from us.”

“Borrow what?”

“Whatever they need.”

“When was it set up?”

“In 1945 when we knew China was going.”

“You didn't anticipate McCarthy eight years ago.”

“No,” he said. “We anticipated the reaction, not the person. Some would be blamed and that we could predict fairly well. The individuals, I mean. Somebody, of course, would have to do the blaming and it turned out to be Joe McCarthy. If it hadn't been him, it would have been another. We knew that valuable men would be lost and that they'd have to have replacements. Pure ones, if you follow me.”

“I do.”

“So we started recruiting them.”

“And now that you're lending them out, you need some more.”

“We always need more,” he said.

“Just for China?”

He shook his head. “For everywhere.”

“You're more than a central bank then?”

“Let's just say that we have branch offices in a lot of places.”

“And what do they do?”

“Whatever's necessary.”

“Who runs it?”

“Section Two?”

“Yes.”

“I do.”

“Then you're not in the army?”

“I'm on detached service.”

“Those two generals we played poker with last week seemed to know what you do.”

“No,” the colonel said. “They think I'm CIA. I don't discourage it.”

“You're telling me a lot.”

“Not really.”

“All right,” I said. “What do I have to do?”

“Nothing. You'll get a letter of acceptance from the university next week.”

“And that's all there is to it?”

“That's all. Your check will come every month from a foundation. When you've decided that you've had enough school, somebody'll be around to see you.”

“But not until then?” I said.

“No. Anything else?”

“I'd be a fool to say no.”

The colonel looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “You would be, wouldn't you? But if you were a fool, you'd never have been asked.”

 

 

Beverly Gay and I were married that September in the living room of Major and
Mrs. Albert Schiller. Colonel Gay reluctantly gave the bride away and Gorman Smalldane flew in from New York to be best man and to give his legal consent as my guardian. I was still under twenty-one and in Texas the man then had to be of age before he could marry without consent. The woman had to be eighteen. If they had consent, the man could be sixteen, the girl fourteen. They may have changed the law by now, but I doubt it.

I got married because of the usual reason: I was in love with a girl who loved me. The colonel had been a stickler for form. “Goddamn it, Dye, you're going to have to ask for her hand. You're going to have to convince me. She's the only daughter I've got and by Jesus Christ you're going to play by the book.”

“My prospects are excellent,” I said.

“I know what your prospects are.”

“My income is assured for the next several years.”

“I know what your income will be down to a dime.”

“What about dowry?” I said.

The colonel rose and began to pace the living room that was furnished with the junk of all the world. “I had it all figured out,” he said, as if to himself. “Three months with Beverly in San Antonio while
I got rid of the bug and then back to work, and you turned up.” He spun around. “I'm not sure I want you as a son-in-law.”

“I'm not sure that I give a damn what you want.”

“It could hurt your career.”

“Marrying the boss's daughter? It's the well-known path to success.”

“You're both too young,” he said, paused, and then smoothed his gray hair back with a thin, hard hand. “No. That's not right either.
You re
not too young. You're too old for her. It's like marrying her off to the town rake.” He turned toward me quickly. “How many girls have you laid?”

“How should I know?” I said. “I never kept score. Did you?”

He ignored the question and paced some more. It was the only time I ever saw him even slightly agitated. He whirled once more and aimed his right forefinger at me like a district attorney who's long on style and short on evidence. “Goddamn it, do you love her?”

“Do you expect me to say no?”

Gay resumed his pacing for a while and then stopped and faced me again. He stood quite still and looked at me carefully, as if he hoped that what he saw wasn't as unsavory as it seemed. When he spoke, his tone was low, soft, and controlled. It sounded almost dangerous. It may have been. “Something might happen to me,” he said. “If it does, take care of her. I mean good care. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“If something happens to me and you're in Section Two by then, get out. If you're not yet in, don't go. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

He raised his voice slightly and nodded toward the dining room. “She's in there, you know. Ear to the keyhole.”

“There's no door,” I said.

“It didn't go right,” he said. “I was lousy as the forbidding father.”

Beverly came in from the dining room. “I thought you were fine.”

The colonel shook his head. “No, you didn't,” he said. “It should have been a Sunday afternoon. All bad domestic scenes should take place on Sunday afternoon, the worst time of the week. Agreements for divorce. Accusations of infidelity. If a husband's going to beat his
wife, he should do it on Sunday afternoon.” He turned toward me. “You weren't right either. You should have been more nervous.”

“What the hell for?” I said.

“Because, goddamn it, I deserve my slice of American banality. I've never had my share.”

“It doesn't happen that way,” Beverly said.

“I know it doesn't happen that way,” the colonel said. “I know that as well as I know that you're not a virgin and probably haven't been one since two weeks after you met the cocksman here.”

“Three weeks,” she said. “I held out.”

“Three weeks. I'd just like something tried and trite, something banal in my own borrowed living room. Something that looks like it stepped out of an ad or MGM. I'm thirsty for the insipid.”

“How about a martini?” Beverly said.

“If he wants something insipid, champagne would be better,” I said.

The colonel sighed. “We don't have any champagne, we've run out of vermouth, and it's not even Sunday afternoon.” He grinned at Beverly. “What the hell,” he said. “Just make it a hooker of gin.”

It was a small, if not quiet wedding. Ruby cried throughout and Major Schiller pinched Beverly three times, once during the ceremony, which caused her to jump and say “ouch” when she should have been saying, “I, Beverly.” The major got a little drunk and played the piano and sang. The colonel looked morose throughout while his daughter looked as if she were about to succumb to a fit of giggles. The groom was hungover and testy. Smalldane, twenty or thirty pounds heavier than when I'd seen him last, performed as best man with more gusto than was really necessary, but he seemed to enjoy his role. A fat army chaplain, a major who claimed to be a Baptist, mumbled the ceremony so that I had to ask him “What?” twice. Afterwards, he drank eleven glasses of champagne and wept a little, perhaps for his own sins as well as for ours.

When it was over the colonel dragged me into the kitchen and
produced two items. The first was a set of keys to a new Chevrolet. He did it brusquely, as if embarrassed by his own generosity, or perhaps because he thought he was playing it a shade close to the hearty father. He made up for that with the second item, a .38 Colt automatic. “Keep it handy,” he said.

“You mean carry it?”

A pained look spread across his face. It was the look of a man who has just discovered that he has a lout for a son-in-law. “Just handy. Around the house.”

I nodded and because I didn't know what to do with it, I shoved it into a hip pocket and later transferred it to a suitcase.

Gorman Smalldane was equally furtive. He also chose the kitchen, which seemed to be the favorite clandestine meeting place for wedding guests. He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. “Your wedding present,” he said.

I thanked him and started to put it into a pocket.

“Go ahead, open it,” he said.

I opened it and found a bundle of what seemed to be shares of common stock.

“Two thousand shares,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Smalldane Communications, Incorporated. We just went public. First PR outfit in the country to do it. Maybe in the world.”

“How's it look?” I said.

“Well, it's not on the big board, of course; it's still over-the-counter, but it started at two and it's only slid to one and a quarter.”

“Encouraging, huh?” I said.

“It's the big league, kid. By this time next year, I'll be rich and so will you if you hang on to it. We've got offices opening next month in Paris, London and Rome. They're just desks with telephones now, but they'll look real fine on the letterhead.”

“Business is good?” I said.

“Terrific. Everyone who's made more than a million needs a public relations man to get rid of the guilt that the psychiatrists can't root
out. If they see something nice about themselves printed in a newspaper or magazine, they really believe it must be true and their consciences are eased. The potential is unlimited.”

“Thanks for the shares, Gorm.”

“Just hang on to them. They'll hit fifty before you know it.”

He paused then and looked over my shoulder at something that seemed to be far away. “When's the last time you heard from Kate?”

“Couple of weeks ago,” I said. “She wrote from Hong Kong, giving me some advice about marriage.”

“She's dead.”

Tante Katerine was too alive to be dead, of course, and it didn't register because Smalldane's words had tripped the switch that brought the automatic denier into operation. It worked for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds before it sputtered to a stop. There must be something else to say besides “no” when you learn of death. I supposed I could have asked “how” or “when,” but instead I denied it, as if the denial would prevent me from having to feel anything, at least for a few more seconds.

“I got a cable yesterday. It was a heart attack. I wasn't sure that I should tell you. It's not a very good day for it.”

“No,” I said. “It isn't, but it's all right—I mean that you told me.”

“I knew you'd want to know.”

“Yes.”

“She wasn't really all that old,” he said, as if to himself.

“No, not that way, she wasn't. I suppose I should ask if there's anything I can do.”

“Nothing,” he said. “What the hell could you do? It's just over. She's dead.”

“Okay, Gorman,” I said. “She's dead. There's nothing either of us can do.”

“Well, hell—there should be something.”

“But there isn't.”

Smalldane shook his head. “You know,” he said, “she was something different—really different. Or the times were.”

“Both probably,” I said.

“I paid her back that eleven thousand dollars, you know?”

“I know.”

“Kate'd tell you to hang on to that stock, kid,” he said.

“I'll take her advice.” But I didn't. I sold it two years later when it hit twelve and a quarter. It went to sixty-one and a half before it split two for one. The last time I looked, Smalldane Communications, Inc., was hovering somewhere around eighty-three or eighty-four on the American Stock Exchange.

Beverly and I enjoyed each other for the next four years. She turned out to be the one totally unselfish person that I've ever known and I suppose that I took what she had to offer greedily, unable to get enough, fearful that the supply would run out before I was full. It was her love that I took, of course, and in the taking finally discovered that it was unrationed and inexhaustible and that I could spare some myself. It required a year or so before I learned what others had known for years and when I did we became impossibly close.

We lived in a small, frame house that I kept threatening to paint a flat black. It was on the edge of the campus, where a portion of what has been described as the silent generation was enrolled. I majored in Oriental languages and history; Beverly studied anthropology which, she once said, was the polite way of expressing one's concern for humanity.

Sometimes we would go into Baltimore on weekends, or down to Washington, or up to New York where we could stay free with Smalldane who was becoming impossibly rich as the public relations dodge acquired new tones of respectability. He spent his money, as always, on women, some of whom he even married for as long as a year or so.