Echo House (21 page)

"Bribe money," Alec said.

Axel looked at his son as an appraiser would look at a portrait of dubious provenance, something not quite genuine in the shape of the eyes and the suggestion of a sneer around the mouth. He was not drawn by a single hand. Alec was the product of an atelier, careless artisans working on deadline. He had so much to learn and his appearance was against him. "Don't be a moron," Axel said.

Alec smiled then. "And in return you get—"

"Loyalty," his father said.

The governor drove downtown to make his concession speech. The room was silent, everyone watching him speak; and then they turned away. The television set remained on, but no one watched it except Axel and the men who had been working the telephones; they had discovered that the television was quicker and more reliable than their informants in the precincts. Axel moved closer until he was only a few feet away, the electric glow of the screen reflected on his forehead. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Alec stood in the doorway watching his father bend forward toward the soft shadows. An announcer was reading from a piece of flimsy paper, nothing but bad news everywhere. Axel did not seem to be listening, intent only on the watery surface of the screen, rippling now as if a breeze had disturbed it. Axel muttered something to himself. They did not own a television set, yet his father was staring at this one with the most open fascination. He turned to one of the men beside him and said, "It's like watching the invention of gunpowder."

The exodus had begun. The room was nearly quiet except for four men in coats talking earnestly in whispers near the door, the coats loose on their shoulders like capes. Lloyd Fisher was in a corner of the room with Leila Berggren. The room had the forlorn look of a hotel lobby at midnight. A servant was collecting empty glasses and dirty ashtrays. The governor was nowhere to be seen. Axel sighed, fumbling in his coat pocket. He took out a vial, shook a pill into his palm, and swallowed it dry.

"Isn't it time to go now?" Alec said.

"In a minute."

Axel caught bits and pieces of the conversation near the door. They were making book on the new faces of 1953, Cabinet officers, White House staff, agency heads, ambassadors, assistants beyond count. Axel listened carefully, amused at their neglect of the obvious, the appointments that were never announced formally though word got around quickly enough—the friends, who was coming to drinks or dinner and who was in the foursome at Burning Tree or spending the weekend in the private quarters of the White House or on the fantail of the
Sequoia
at dusk, and not all the friends were men. Friends of Franklin, friends of Harry, and, as of tonight, friends of Ike. And with a few conspicuous and obvious exceptions they were different friends; and, of course,
they
had friends who'd enjoy meeting the chief executive, have a cocktail, maybe play some bridge and talk business on the side, suggesting perhaps the ideal choice for chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission or Secretary of the Treasury. When the White House changed hands a whole new set of keys were handed out. The old ones were useless because the locks had been changed.

The servant opened one of the windows, causing a blast of cold night air to fill the room. With the cold air, inside it and surrounding it, came the sound of traffic and faraway laughter. Axel glanced at the window, shivering, and his son quickly took off his own coat and pat it around his father's shoulders.

"Will you close that god damned window?"

Alec did as he was told and the sounds of the outside world vanished.

"What are you two doing, sitting over here alone? The party's over." Leila Berggren reached down to touch Axel on the arm. She carried two bottles of beer and handed one to Alec. Axel smiled up at her. He said, "Surprised?"

She said, "No."

"Memphis?"

"Maybe Memphis," she said.

"Leila does her homework, keeps an open mind," Axel said. "Knows the numbers. Knows the people who make the numbers. Leila's a professional in a basket full of amateurs, gave up a fine career on Wall Street to work in government. Leila's a mathematician."

"Statistics," Leila said.

"What she doesn't know about capitalism isn't worth knowing."

"Don't listen to him, Alec. You have no idea how much isn't known."

Alec laughed. "All I do is listen to him."

"Axel," Leila said. "You were not lecturing this man?"

"He's still in school, Leila."

"He used to lecture me, too," Leila said to Alec. She smiled and brushed a stray curl from her forehead. "But he doesn't anymore."

"Leila's interested in bias theory," Axel said.

"Voters' biases?" Alec asked.

"In the statistics," she said. When he looked at her blankly, she added, "The numbers lie."

"Leila's not your ordinary statistician," Axel said.

"That's what they thought on Wall Street," Leila said.

"Republicans," Axel said. "What can you expect?"

"More than I got," she said. "And the Democrats aren't any better. They talk better. They're great with talking. Not so great when it comes to doing, and even worse when it comes to paying."

"You have to be patient," Axel said.

"Bull," she said. "You've always been square, though."

"Leila did some work for me," Axel said.

"I love my numbers," she said to Alec. "The uglier the better. But sometimes they're unfaithful. They tell you they love you but they don't, really. They're alley cats, following their own instincts, in and out of every bed in the neighborhood. They're promiscuous."

She was drinking beer while she talked, raising the neck of the bottle with two fingers, sipping and swallowing. Alec watched her neck muscles work. She and Axel seemed to occupy the same rung on the ladder; she was almost playful with him. Alec said, "I never thought of them as having personalities. I never thought of loyalty as a characteristic of numbers."

"Believe it," she said

"If you say so."

"Numbers were invented by human beings. Error inherent. Error predictable. Error fundamental."

"And unfaithful," Alec said.

"That most of all."

"Yet you love them.'

"More than anything. I love their instability."

"Their distance," he said.

"Not that, no. I want my fingers on the plow," she said, backing away. She winked at Alec and waved at Axel, then disappeared down the stairs, swinging the beer bottle by its neck. Alec watched her go, watched her hips move, watched her hand smooth her dark hair, and listened to the commotion when she arrived on the first floor, and then the door opening and closing. And then silence. They seemed to be alone now. The telephone began to ring again but no one answered it.

Alec said, "What did she mean about the plow?"

"She's given to mystification," Axel said. "But I believe the expression is Lenin's. Maybe Lenin's wife. At any event, a Russian."

"How do you know her?"

"She did some work for me."

"That's what she said. What kind of work?"

"This and that," Axel said. "The markets. Customer confidence in a product as it relates to price, packaging, and so forth. She thought there was a way to compare that to a political campaign. But there isn't. Or if there is, she didn't find it."

"She was doing this for you?"

"I put up the money. If she'd been right, her results would've been worth knowing. It didn't cost so much. She's a bright girl."

Alec sneaked a look at his wristwatch. It was after midnight.

"We can go now," Axel said. His voice had acquired a familiar edge and he was working again at his scar. Two men emerged from a side room, talking quietly, pausing under the Lincoln portrait. One of them made a brusque motion with his hand and stepped to the door, the other following, apparently explaining something. When one of the men raised his voice Alec heard Leila's name; nothing complimentary, from the look on their faces.

Axel sighed and said, "She made a mistake in her numbers. Leila did. One important mistake but that's all you get, one. The Helpfuls didn't like it and now they're on her back. Women are unreliable, too emotional to work with numbers, et cetera. Phases of the moon and so forth and so on. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that Leila doesn't like certainty, doesn't believe in it. She believes the numbers are always unfaithful and her task is to discover the nature of the faithlessness. In any set of figures one number is having an illicit relationship with another; she calls it the F Factor. A complicated concept, too complicated for the derby hats." Axel smiled blandly. "Of course they've got her all wrong. They think she's a bubblehead. They think she's not serious, ruled as she is by the phases of the moon. But it's the opposite. She's a theoretical mathematician in a business that calls for simple arithmetic." Axel grunted, not unkindly. "Stay away from her, Alec. She plays around."

Alec stared out the window. Leila and an older man were leaning against a car, talking. Suddenly the man put his arm around her, holding her close. They stood like that a moment, Leila's head bent in an attitude of defeat. He was talking to her and she began to nod her head.

"What's your connection to her?"

"None of your damned business," Axel said. Then, "She's finished in New York. She made a mistake there, too, and then took up with the wrong man. Two mistakes. She's undisciplined."

"Something you know about," Alec said.

"A damn sight more than you," Axel said. "They don't forgive in New York. New York's tribal, it never changes. As long as you belong to the tribe you're at the top of the tree. You're there today and there tomorrow unless you go broke or go to jail. And your parents are there and your cousins and someone new comes to town and it takes a generation before their foot fits the slipper. The New York squires don't like Southerners, Westerners, or Jews. They particularly don't like Washingtonians, because we're the competition and anyone can play. Win an election, get nominated to a Cabinet post—and there you are; you're in the game. We don't care who you are or where you come from because we're a city in motion." He paused then and drew Alec's jacket more tightly around his shoulders. New York was a spoiled, conceited city run by gangsters and the plutocracy; and its offspring, Chicago and Los Angeles, were no better. Chicago was much worse. He said, "An outsider makes a mistake in New York and they cut his nuts off. That's what they did to Leila, because she threatened them and the cozy world they've made for themselves. So she doesn't belong there. She belongs in Washington. We don't practice nepotism, the bank vice presidency or the seat on the Stock Exchange or the partnership in the law firm. You can't hand down political power. If you're a senator or a Secretary of the Treasury you can't leave that to your son in your will. He has to make it on his own. And he will, if he's careful in his choice of friends."

Alec remained silent, still watching Leila and the older man.

"Now she's in Chicago, worst god damned place in the world. She's not patient. The derby hats are on their way out. There'll be a whole new generation of Helpfuls and they'll be comfortable with uncertainty. Instability, even. Leila can be one of them, but she won't be patient." Axel said softly, "You, too. It's important you make up your mind; you're graduating next year—"

Leila and the older man had vanished and the street was empty. An empty beer bottle glittered in the light of a streetlamp.

"—so you should think carefully about what you want. Washington's a meritocracy, but there's a paradox, for those of us who've lived in the village for a generation or more and whose families have achieved a certain standing. You begin as your father's son. That's your identity and you live with it. But in time, if you're successful, the world shifts its opinion and he becomes your father. And then, if things work out, in the eyes of the world you become your son's father."

Alec waited for the payoff, the homily that would end the sermon. The men near the door walked through it, still discussing Leila. She would have to pay a penalty and he wondered what it would be and if she had the patience to wait them out in Chicago. Now the room was silent except for Axel's breathing. He took Alec's hand, rubbing his thumb along the boyish knuckles, pressing hard.

"That's what worries me, you see. Do you think things will work out for me, son?"

Downstairs Lloyd Fisher was nose to nose with the girl with the Renoir complexion. She was obviously tight, squinting as she listened to Lloyd, her bow lips parted in an itchy half-smile. She barked a laugh, tossing her head, moving in closer. Alec wondered what it was about politicians that attracted footloose women, first Leila, now this one. They seemed powerfully drawn to the disheveled old men who smelled of tobacco and whiskey; and perhaps it was not them but the milieu, the atmosphere of authority and brutality, the emotions that went with high drama. Lloyd introduced her as Flo, everyone's favorite, a girl with a noble ambition. One day she intended to occupy the White House and transform it utterly.

"A jazz band every Friday night," Flo said. "Lester Lanin on Saturdays. Open house every Sunday with a beautiful buffet and bloody marys. Throw open the old mausoleum, let the air in, hear some laughter. Don't you love the idea? 'Course, first I have to marry the man who'll be President. But Dolley Madison did it. So can I."

Alec began to laugh at her vision of the weekend White House.

"Politics is sexy, don't you agree? All that fear and trembling. All that pressure and frustration and not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. The entire world crowded into that one small district, Washington. But of course you know that. You live there."

Alec said, "It's boring, Flo. Boring beyond words."

"It won't be when I get there. Trouble is, I need a candidate and I haven't found him. It's only a matter of time and some chemistry. And luck. The boys I know hate government. They think it's an old man's sport, like golf. But golf's got a lot to recommend it when you know how to play." With that, she gave a little military salute and walked off.