The MacGuffin (36 page)

Turnover she meant. A third complement of condolers. (Even now a few people were making the collective sighs and coughs and peremptories, all their collected-bundle sounds and shifts preparatory to leave- taking.)

Druff, still thinking cabal, hated this. It offended him, he meant. His notions of economy. Well, he was old school, was, to all intents and purposes, practically out of it. Which didn’t mean it didn’t register, that he couldn’t object. So many.
Too
many. (Never mind there were only Doug and the mayor. Mrs. Macklin herself had told him as much. His was the third shift. He’d just missed the others.) It was enough to choke a guy. Signaled a sort of gridlock. Something foul was going down in his streets. Was he their commissioner or not? All right, he was a little paranoid, but that only put a spin on his vision, it didn’t obscure it. Conspiracies, compacts, plots and plans required decorum. At least a
little
decorum. Druff, who was no snob, had always felt there ought to be standards, that any scam worth its salt should be run rather along the lines of a good country club. The power of the blackball had to be reserved or you’d end with this huge balance of probity deficit. That was bad for business, bad for traffic, bad for crime. Even if they weren’t here—Ham, he meant, Margaret, Jerry, Dick and Dan, his goofy son—they’d been by, or would be. And City Commissioner of Streets Druff suddenly remembered certain things said in the synagogue earlier that day—Dan’s and Ham’s and Jerry Rector’s articles of faith—
their
Fourteen Points. “Throw caution to the winds,” Dan said, and suggested there ought to be something personal, something malevolent. And Ham said he knew psychiatrists who wrote prescriptions for dinette sets, expensive cars. Awful, he thought now, awful, awful, but it was the idea of throwing caution to the winds which had most chilled him. It was as if the world had gone a-wilding.

“Paula,” the mayor said, “it’s late and I’m tired. God knows you must be too. I think I’ll go back to the Mansion. Perhaps I can stop by tomorrow. I’ll try to bring Frances.”

“Thanks, Frank, for everything.”

“Nonsense. But listen, if there’s anything I
can
do, anything, just let me know.”

“You’re kind, Frank.”

“Paula, I mean it. Keys to the city, kid. Keys to the city.”

“That’s no campaign promise, kid. He means it,” put in the City Commissioner of Streets, who’d been sucking down the rye.

“She knows I do, Bob,” said Hizzoner.

Which earned Monsieur le Mayor the City Commissioner of Streets’ studied glance for trace irony. None to empty-stomached drunken Druff there seemed to be. Which oddly reassured him, oddly. For hypocrisy’s simply-saked decency of the thing. But, hey, cautioned the remnants of Druff’s sobriety, you’re throwing caution to the winds yourself here. Is there a full-court cabal on or not? It’s your call. If there is, look to your moorings, chuck the footwork. Don’t say chuck. Check, it amended.

Druff wanted his MacGuffin.

How did he know that name? Where was he?

Reassured. Hypocrisy of the thing. Check.

Because it was so. The mayor’s bland response
was
reassuring. He’d not taken Druff’s bait, he’d honored Marv’s death. He’d humored the room. He’d shown self-control when all about him were losing theirs. Druff thought that all mankind needed to make a better world was a little deniability, enough energy to establish a decent alibi. It showed respect.

The mayor was standing. He’d taken Paula’s hand. He’d leaned down to peck at her cheek, to tell her something.

“Time, gentlemen,” Doug said gaily. “Do you again, sir, before I leave?” He offered more rye. Druff, straining to hear, waved him away.

“Good night all,” the mayor addressed the room. “May we meet again on a happier occasion,” he solemnly said. “Did I have a coat with me, Doug?”

“I don’t think so, Your Honor.”

The son of a bitch, thought sobering Druff. That limo we passed in the driveway.
He
drove him here! And that other son of a bitch. “Did I have a coat with me, Doug?” That was for Druff’s benefit. Grandstanding bastard. He took back his banquets and bouquets, everything he’d thought that evening about Hizzoner’s circumspection. “Did I have a coat with me, Doug?” Thinks he can play rub-my-nose with me, does he? Druff could hardly believe it. Whatever happened to discretion? Didn’t they know what a dangerous world it was, coming and going, outdoors and in? Did they give no thought at all to appearances? Druff sized up the room, took a deep breath, and only prayed the MacGuffin was within hearshot and sightshot.

He’d considered turning in his resignation Monday morning. He would probably have to spend Sunday not only drafting the letter but typing it up as well. (He was, what he was. He had, he congratulated himself, too much class to drag Mrs. Norman into it.) But why bother? he thought. Why not strike while the iron was hot? Why should he show any more consideration for them than they did for him? Why not run with the flouters and flaunters?

The City Commissioner of Streets stood up.
“Saay,”
he said, “it
is
late. I wonder could you fellas give me a ride home?”

Well, he
was
what he was.
Why
drag others into it? If he was so considerate of Mrs. Norman, a woman he didn’t particularly like, why should he be less so to Mrs. Macklin’s visitors, people he didn’t even know?

He watched Doug, who looked to the mayor for guidance.

“You’re one of his drivers, aren’t you, Doug?” asked their mayor.

“Oh, on occasion, sir. Yes sir, Your Honor.”

“You’d be in the best position to know then. Tell me, Doug, is it well out of our way?”

“Well, Your Honor, you’ve put your finger on it, sir. The city commissioner lives in the Homan district. Off Overodey, two or three blocks down Page.”

“Why, that’s all the way across town, isn’t it?”

“Near enough, Your Honor.”

“Not only in the opposite direction of the Mansion but close to all that new construction?”

“Well, sir, from where the overflow on Edson feeds into the detour on Valor and Hoe.”

Druff observed the two comedians. Someone should have gone over to the piano and hammered out rim shots for them. If he’d known any more about the piano than he did of the districts, streets and phantom construction sites in the imaginary city they pummeled him with, he might have done so himself. And now he turned his gaze away from the two municipal clowns working Mrs. Macklin’s big room to the audience itself. There were still a number of people in the house, people frozen along the fault lines of their imminent departures—the scufflers and seat shifters he’d detected earlier but who’d been caught by “Hizzoner and Doug” and their surprise, unexpected floor show like a pop quiz.

Although she maintained perfect control, Mrs. Macklin seemed more amused than anyone in the room. She might almost have been a royal dowager witnessing some slightly irreverent Command Performance. Well, it was a distraction, Druff supposed. Marv shoveled into the ground just that afternoon, all the holy, highfalutin goings-on at the funeral chapel, her dark clothes and strained graciousness and this not yet even the first full day of her official mourning. So it was a distraction. Druff could hardly blame her.

Well, he was already standing anyway. Looking back in Doug’s direction, whose shtick about detours and overflow and made-up streets had closed out the routine. He nodded at his erstwhile chauffeur and turned to the city’s chief executive.

“I quit,” he said.

“You quit?”

“That’s right. I’m resigning. I quit.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s your trouble, Druff. And you call yourself a politician. You quit? You don’t know dust about smoke-filled rooms, do you? You’d just go and give up a plummy job like yours? Snap? Just like that? No quid pro quo? No dealing? No nothing? Well, I never,” said his mayor.

He was right, Druff thought. Everyone did.

Sure, prompted the MacGuffin. You didn’t even get how you know that name out of it.

A lot you’ve got to criticize, scolded wounded Druff. Where were you when I needed you?

Within hearshot, sightshot and soulshot, little buddy. Don’t worry about me.

So what do I do now?

Did
I
bring you here on an empty stomach? Did
I
pour rye in your eye? Did I feed you coca leaves all day like there was no tomorrow? The
hell,
scorned the MacGuffin. You got yourself into this. You just go and get yourself out.

Beat a strategic withdrawal, is that what you’re advising me?

Jesus! contempted old Mac.

Druff tossed a grateful mental wink at his friend.

Jesus Christ Jesus, kibitzed MacGuffin.

While Druff stared down the mayor.

“Gotcha!” he told him. “No, Frank,” Druff said, “I’m not quitting. Don’t you recognize more floor show when you see some?”

“Well, come along then,” the mayor said.

“You’ll take me?”

“Does he need your arm, do you think, Doug?”

“Maybe that and some stretcher-bearers, Mr. Mayor.”

And made a face as he came within breath range of the still-incumbent City Commissioner of Streets. Who, startled, suddenly recalled his performance that afternoon in Doug’s apartment. And willed his imperfectly steady legs into a locked position, conscious of his hip flexion, deliberately straightening his lumbar curve, minding all his orthopedics. In this manner he carefully made his way toward his bereaved hostess. I must look, he thought, like whatsisname, Frankenstein’s monster. Yeah, he thought hopefully, but sober.

“What can I say?” he said.

“You’re kind,” Mrs. Macklin said.

“Me?” he offered. “Nah. Marvin was kind.”

“Kind? Marvin was a hardened banker.”

Eureka! he exclaimed mentally. And didn’t forget to propitiate his MacGuffin.

Oh boy. His MacGuffin was disgusted.

Thinking as they led him off, It’s the company I keep, the circles I do and don’t travel in.
Of course! Marvin Macklin was a hardened banker!
What’s a hardened banker?

It was the first question he asked when he got into the limo. (Asking it through a speaking tube which he took off a hook where it lay on the dash. Because the mayor had instructed Druff to sit up front with the driver. “You’re not out of the woods yet,” Hizzoner explained through the tube. “You could be carsick. I’m only human, Druff. Well, I’m queasy. It’s nothing personal. I just can’t stand the sight of blood or the smell of puke.” Druff not too drunk to register that Motor Pool One was not as high-tech as his own electronically bristled limo, that its upholstery was not even leather but some gray cloth stuff he could not name but which wore an odor, not unpleasant, of some at once sweet and sour, luxurious mildew. It was a “machine” he associated with the days of lap rugs and tasseled hand pulls, some golden age of “motoring,” of hampers and running boards, of spares securely buckled inside round metal forms mounted near graceful, elegant fenders. He doubted that the limousine had a radio, let alone a cellular telephone. Or if it did it would be on the AM band, or shortwave perhaps. It would have vacuum tubes. Static would crackle in its felt-lined speakers. Now he was conscious of it, he noticed that this boat was stick-shift, a banker’s car from the days when streets were streets, and that’s what reminded him.) He looked at Doug as he lifted the speaking tube from its hook. “How do I work this thing, do I blow into it first or what?”

“The captain blows into it first. You just talk into it.”

“It’s funny,” Druff managed to fish when they’d traveled a few blocks, “I wouldn’t have called Marv ‘a
hardened
banker.’ What do you suppose Mrs. Macklin meant by that, Mr. Mayor?”

“Mind your business,” said Mr. Mayor.

“Are you sore at me?” Druff asked. “Don’t be sore at me. I’ve had a rough day. I was only kidding when I spoke of resigning. Those were my nerves resigning, not me. Hey, loyalty is my middle name. You really think I’d quit on you with the streets how they are? I was out in them last night. You wouldn’t believe the traffic. The traffic was terrific. The bankers, the bakers, the candlestick makers. Boy oh boy.”

“Quit, don’t quit,” the mayor boomed at him through the tube while Druff was still speaking. “No one’s indispensable. FDR’s brains blew up on him when he was out on a date with his girlfriend during the War. You think that affected anything? The
hell!
A few weeks later the Germans surrendered.” (Hmn, Druff thought, not only the same phrase MacGuffin had used, the same inflection, the same tone of voice!) “And what do you mean, ‘the bankers, the bakers?’ Why do you keep carping on that?”

“And what do
you
mean, ‘FDR’s brains blew up on him when he was out on a date with his girlfriend’?” the City Commissioner of Streets shot back.

“This is a ridiculous conversation,” the mayor said in a normal voice unaided by the speaking tube.

“It is,” Druff replied, too exhausted to trust his voice to an unabetted acoustics, and still speaking into the tube.

“Drop this one off first, Doug,” the mayor commanded.

What did he mean “this one?”

He was so tired. Beyond tired, weary really. He’d been on the go all day. It was amazing to him it was still only Saturday night. As that afternoon it had been amazing to him that it was still only that afternoon, as twilight had astonished him, as even now he was surprised not to be able to perceive just a hint in the darkness of even false dawn, time running in place on him, stuttering, skipping, caught like a phonograph needle in a faulty groove, the day’s long melody making no progress. It was Saturday, the weekend. On any normal Saturday he would have found some occasion to go off by himself in his house, to lie down, at least to put his feet up, to snooze in an easy chair, perchance to dream. It was the failure of privacy which so tired one, thought Druff, pressed and pooped. If he could just lean back in the old-fashioned, comfortable and roomy automobile, big as a bedroom even up front with Doug, sit back, maybe catch forty winks. Druff gazed sleepily out the window. He didn’t quite recognize where they were. There was probably still a ways to go. The mayor had finished speaking. Doug, always a more focused driver than Dick, was concentrating on the road. Druff, lulled by the ride, allowed himself to shut his eyes.