Adler, Warren - Banquet Before Dawn Read online

  "That takes money," Fitz said.

  "Yomarian has money," Fountain said, "His mother-in-law's. Also, he's got a great organization."

  "Who is his mother-in-law?"

  "Rich. Property. Jewish."

  "Jewish?"

  Sully stuck out his hand for Fitz to reach. Fitz grabbed it, and Sully, like some monster suddenly emerging from the sea, stood up in the tub. Partly because of the height of the tub itself, the huge, white, wet naked body seemed to fill the room, with the head almost reaching the ceiling. The full expanse of Sully's paunch seemed exaggerated by what appeared to be immense hanging balls, the penis barely reaching halfway down the wrinkled sacs. Fitz handed him a towel, which he

  proceeded to use to jangle his organs dry. Then he placed the towel against his lower back, and holding it tight by its ends, he pulled it back and forth, the fat around his middle rippling like gelatin, his balls rocking from side to side as if moved by some great wind.

  Fountain turned away, perhaps irritated by the embarrassing display of ablution, normally such a personal matter. "Congressman Sullivan," he said, looking at Perlmutter. "I would say that you are in deep political trouble. My research tells me that you are starting from so far behind your opponent — and I realize how severe this will sound — so far behind as to indicate a smashing defeat."

  Fitz looked at his shoes and shook his head. He held back for a moment, then let it out. "I'm not going to get mad, Sully," Fitz said, trying to feign a casual air as he unlodged his spit-soaked cigar and made a half-hearted attempt to light it. "I was against this research from the start," he said. "I don't believe a word of it. I say we ignore it."

  "You can't ignore it, Fitz," Perlmutter said.

  "You believe the Congressman is in trouble?"

  "According to the research."

  "Research, shit!"

  Sully finished drying himself and crawled over the side of the high tub. Down on the ground again, he seemed less monstrous, more on a human scale. He unhitched a robe from a hook against the door and pulled it around him, then walked into the shabby parlor of the suite, where April had laid out some coffee. Without waiting for the others to follow him out of the bathroom, he sat down and began to sip the coffee.

  "I know my comments sound brutal," Fountain said, following him from the bathroom. "But you asked for my interpretation."

  "I think," Perlmutter said, "that you've gone beyond your role. You've done the research. The interpretation must be ours." As always, Perlmutter reacted diplomatically.

  "Yeah," Fitz said.

  But Fountain would not be put aside. "I think I must leave you with this knowledge. You won't find it in the readouts. This is the kind of knowledge that gets into the brain cells through the pores. The Eighth Congressional District is dead. It's in a state of irreversible entropy. The vital signs are all failing. There is no hope here. Only a vacuum. Civilization is finish here. You should quit while you can."

  "You better get the fuck out of here before I punch your nose in," Fitz screeched.

  Fountain put the readouts on the coffee table, snapped his attache case shut, and put out his hand for a final farewell. Sully grabbed it, pumped it strongly, and looked up and smiled.

  "Appreciate it," he said, looking into his coffee cup, feeling a great gloom engulf him, as if he were a jet plane suddenly poking from the bright sunshine into a black cloud.

  ———— *5* THE Brooklyn Trust's main office was built to look like a Greek temple, a fashion of the 1920's that somehow equated money and most other things with the Hellenes. Though hemmed in on either side by a shabby discount store and a pizza carry-out, the bank had survived the whims of fortune with its reassurance intact. Inside, the carefully scrubbed, shiny marble floors and the huge swirling staircase with polished-stone banisters still intimidated the customers who came to put their rumpled bills in their Christmas Club accounts.

  Fitz parked the big limo in front of the bank and began to thumb lazily through the _New York Daily News_, his soggy cigar comfortable in a corner of his mouth.

  Sully, his face shaved and pink, looked fresh in a neat pinstriped suit, shoes shined by April to brilliance. He had a thing about freshly shined shoes and always traveled with at least six pairs, a fraction of his collection. As he entered, he saw Deegan rise from his huge carved

  desk and come toward him.

  "Sully, you old Irish bastard," Deegan said, embracing hand and upper arm simultaneously.

  "Good old greedy Deegan. How many widows and orphans have you cast into the poorhouse this morning?"

  "Lost count."

  Deegan curled his arm through Sully's and led him through a side door to the bank's conference room with its glistening polished table and upholstered chairs. He carefully locked the doors behind him, went to a side cabinet, and brought out a bottle of Bells 12 and two glasses. Sully watched him pour three fingers into each glass. It was a ritual Sully knew — somehow necessary to sustain the ambience of the peculiarly Irish friendship.

  "To the survivors," Deegan said, smiling, and then sipped deeply.

  Sully tipped his glass and drank it half empty.

  "I'll drink to that, Eddie, while the world is still operative."

  Deegan had been a bank teller back when Sully ran the first time. He was a precinct leader then, ambitious, quick, humorous, single-minded. For nearly fifteen years he served as campaign treasurer, begging off for business reasons only when he became president of the bank. But Sully knew that Deegan had milked the relationship for all it was worth. There was currency in moving in high political circles. Once Sully even got him and Dottie into a Presidential state dinner, complete with published guest list in the _New York Times_.

  "Hey, Sully. That doesn't sound like the old superconfident Sully."

  "It's not."

  "Something wrong?"

  Almost as a reflex, Sully looked around the room. Even in the very act of doing it, he knew it was furtive, conspiratorial, suspicious. Were the doors open? Were there ears listening?

  "What the fuck is going on in this district, Ed?"

  Now it was Deegan's turn to case the room. He bent closer to Sully's ear. Sully could smell the sour stench of his breath.

  "The sewer has closed in on us, and we're all swimming around in piss and turds. Hell, Sully, you don't know the half of it. Junkies, prostitutes, gangs. It's an armed jungle. There's a nigger mafia out there that'll curdle your guts if you cross them."

  "Then why the hell do you stay?"

  "One more year to retirement. We've tried to move the main office out of here for two years. No dice. All the bank examiners that handle us are black now. We can't make a damned move anywhere." He finished his drink and poured another. "But you didn't come round here to hear my troubles. Now filme in."

  Sully finished his drink, and Deegan poured him another.

  "I've got the shorts, Eddie. It looks to me like I'm going to need about seventy-five to eighty thousand to handle this campaign. I'm sure you know about the primary fight with Yomarian. We won't spend money on media. Too inefficient and expensive. The big thing is, as always, we've got to pay the troops, the cars, the posters, the handouts, the storefronts. You know. We've gone through this before."

  "That much?"

  "Everything's gone up."

  "I remember when we did it for under twenty thousand."

  "Besides, I got another problem. The fucking Dutchman wants ten thousand by tonight or they'll throw me out."

  "I know."

  Sully caught the tone, and with it the sense that it was an observation out of sync, a stray note.

  "You do?"

  Deegan looked embarrassed. He overfingered his glass.

  "Hey, Sully. I'm a banker. They've been after me for years to put the

  arm on you."

  "Who's they?"

  "Them. The enemy."

  "The enemy?"

  "How did you let them get into you for so much, Sully?"

  Sully
knew that the subject had been changed.

  "You know me, Eddie. I'm lousy about money. I'm a politician, not a fucking bookkeeper."

  Deegan put his glass down soundlessly on the polished table. He looked at Sully, coolly observant. Sully felt Deegan's eyes survey him, shrewd eyes, searching. He remembered the eyes in a much younger face, dry, blue, deepset, guarded, even when the mouth smiled. Deegan had fawned over him at the beginning, when he was getting a foothold. They were, indeed, survivors. They had learned the strategy of survival from the old Brooklyn streets, the feints, the bobbing and weaving. Who knew what deals Deegan had had to make along the line to hold onto what he had, the sacred status that had been so rapaciously pursued, that was so coveted in shanty Irish, replete with the big penthouse apartment in Manhattan, the golf club, the social gewgaws that somehow put psychic distance between them and the old ignorant potato farmers who spawned them?

  "I really wish I could help you, Sully. Honest to Christ."

  "What do you mean, wish?"

  "Hell, Sully, we got twenty-five thousand dollars on the books still open. You haven't paid a nickel's worth of interest."

  "Hell, Deegan, I'm the second-ranking Democrat on the House Banking and Currency Committee."

  "Tell that to a black bank examiner."

  "Hey, Eddie. It's me, Sully." Sully could feel Deegan slipping away now, an apparition disengaging from his imagination.

  "I'm sick to Christ about it."

  "You black Irish bastard."

  "Come on, Sully, calm down." He poured another drink.

  Sully's initial reaction was to throw it in his face. _Why waste good booze?_ he thought. Hell, he had known the answer before he came through the door to the bank.

  "Well, then the least you could do is get those bums at the Dutchman off my back until after the campaign. Call it a favor. Lord knows you owe me a few."

  "It won't do any good. They're big people. They carry a multimillion- dollar rent-roll through our bank. At the moment I need them more than they need me."

  "Then just give me a note for thirty-five thou and I'll pay them with the extra."

  "I just can't do it."

  "Hell, Eddie," Sully said, summoning the words again, putting on the mask. "We've been friends for more than a quarter of a century. We come from dirt-poor potato farmers, lower on the social scale than a snake's asshole. It's like — like you're counting me out, Eddie. I could be Speaker of the House of Representatives. That's got to count for something. I've still got friends, at least I think so … talking to you, I'm not so sure."

  "Come on, Sully. Don't play too hard on the old school tie. I know a lot more about you than you give me credit for. I know you're in hock over your ass. Don't you ever pay a bill or a note? Hell, getting elected to Congss isn't a license to steal. Christ, now you're getting me to say things I don't really mean. Really, Sully, it's time to get out. Let some of the young bucks get their lumps. Besides, we've seen the best of it, Sully … the best is over."

  "You've become a smug little bastard, Eddie."

  "And you've become a cheap crummy politician, trading on your fucking

  prestige like a goddamned whore."

  "The pot calls the kettle."

  "At least I know what I am. Sully, I've got one more year to retirement; then I'm going to get as far away from here as possible. I've got a place in Spain, and off I go away from this country with its problems. I don't ever want to see a black face or a spic face again. I wish I could help. It's not personal. I'm in a box, that's all."

  "Okay," Sully said. What was the point continuing? "I guess I understand about the note. You're not going to call the twenty-five thousand?"

  "I think I can hold for a couple of months."

  "I suppose I should say thanks for that."

  "Sully, Sully. You just don't know what's happening. You've been away from it too long. Washington is out of it. There's no hiding certain things anymore. Those days are over. I'm taking big chances on the note. I've lent you money without interest in violation of all the banking laws of both the feds and the state. Besides, you're a terrible risk. Your credit report is a disaster. And to top it off, Yomarian's got his guys crawling all over the place looking for dirt about you."

  "Can they find out … about the note?"

  "Not now."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Deegan's mouth opened, poised to talk, then closed. He reached for the Bells 12 and poured two more fingers into each of their glasses. A red flush had begun to glow on his high cheekbones.

  "We're both gonna need this drink," he said. He lifted the glass, fingers shaking, drank it off in a single gulp, and slapped it down on the polished table, where it made a moist smudge on the surface.

  "I'm the treasurer for the Yomarian for Congress campaign."

  Sully picked up his glass and held it to the light, watching the amber fluid move like gelatin. The response called for careful words, ringing phrases about the mendacity of the human spirit, frailty, fear, cowardice. He knew he could summon up many quotations, anecdotes that would illustrate man's lack of courage. He would not waste them here, he thought. Deegan had become the enemy.

  "You were a great treasurer for Sullivan."

  "I had to, Sully. There was no other way."

  "I guess not."

  "But, Sully," Deegan said tentatively. "There's more."

  "I'm sure of that."

  "Yomarian's group is putting up to one hundred fifty thousand dollars into the primary alone. He's got thirty storefronts and a whole cadre of black and Puerto Rican gang kids on the payroll. They're gonna get out the votes. They're hiring buses to bring the old people to the polls. He's hired a hotshot New York PR firm to grind out the speeches and press releases. He's got brilliant, ruthless people behind him, and he's going to give you one hell of a fight. You're gonna lose, Sully."

  "You're the second person that's told me that today."

  "From where I sit, Sully, you can't win. There's a whole new group out there. They talk different languages than the kind we've grown up with. Sully, I've been here all along. I know. Why not resign? Walk away now."

  "To where?"

  "Hell, a man with your ability, your gifts would get along anywhere. I'm sure you'd get a terrific job somewhere. Christ, Sully, I'll help you."

  "What do you know, Deegan?" He drank the last of the scotch and put his glass down. Then he stood up. How could Deegan know — Deegan with his dollars-and-cents view of the world? Another bottom-liner. An artist must pursue his art.

  "Resign, Sully. Please. Walk away."

  "Hey, Eddie. They asked you to put the bead on me? Come on, Mrs. Deegan's snot-nose son. They asked you. Right?"

  "We discussed it."

  "You shit!"

  "Resign, Sully. Resign."

  Sully turned, pressed down his pin-striped jacket, and looked into Deegan's now-frenetic face. "Thanks for the scotch, Eddie." He turned, consciously straightening himself to his full height, and walked slowly out of the room. He knew he had departed with dignity, and that gave him courage.

  ———— *6* SOFT and limber as a cat, Aram Yomarian moved among the guests at his wife's mother's Central Park South penthouse. The human mixture could be described as eclectic: blacks in dashikis and turbans, others tall, thin, and mustached, with belligerent "naturals" and thick- rimmed glasses and defiant open collars. Effete-looking whites held cigarettes in affected poses as they talked passionately, elegantly, illustrating their points with long ringed fingers. Expensively clad women with well-tailored Spanish-looking men. The familiar and vaguely familiar faces: a bemused actor who could come for only a few minutes before the show; an actress fighting age, loud with attention-getting laughter; yesterday's politicians-turned-lawyers; darkly intense pin- striped business types plucked from Mrs. Margolies', Aram's mother-in law's, stable of Our Crowd elite. A hodgepodge of the liberal chic, an exotic menagerie typical of Sandra's mother's human collections, now all appropriated fo
r Aram's campaign.

  "So good of you to come," Sandra said in studied but exaggerated sincerity to a Spanish-looking couple.

  "My great pleasure," the man said, grabbing Sandra's hand and kissing it.

  Aram moved by and whispered into Sandra's ear, "Now you work the blacks and I'll take the intellectuals for a while."