Hillerman, Tony (25 page)

Cotton pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not waiting for anything. I’m walking out of here.”

“Not yet. Not alive.”

“Governor. Don’t be silly. You wouldn’t shoot me. I never thought for a moment you would. You wouldn’t shoot anyone.”

Cotton turned, took one step, and the blast of the shotgun was deafening thunder in the room. By the door to the living room the wallpaper blossomed into an explosion of dust where the pattern of pellets smashed through paste, lathe and plaster. And then there was the clack-clack sound of the pump action putting a second shell into the chamber.

“Sit down, John. Please. Do me that favor. If you try to leave, I’ll kill you. And maybe it will be for nothing. If the story’s in the
Tribune
it would be for nothing at all. You’ll have destroyed Roark, and destroyed everything I’ve worked for. But you can spare me having blood on my hands for nothing.”

Cotton sat down. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said.

“Yes, it does,” Korolenko said. “It does if you understand.” The shotgun still pointed at Cotton, blue smoke trickling thinly from its muzzle now, the room filled with the acrid blueness of burned gunpowder. “It does when you know the kind of man Eugene Clark is.”

“What don’t I know?”

“You weren’t here when I made my run for the United States Senate. I was fifty-four then. In Congress. Too old to wait. And the time was right. Old Senator Johnson died and the central committee gave me the nomination for the special election to finish the two years left in his term. The Republicans put up old Judge Ainsley and there was no doubt how it would come out. And then about three weeks before the election the word started going around that I had cousins who were officials of the Communist party in Yugoslavia. It was during the Joe McCarthy days, the red-scare days with the right-wingers in full cry and the liberals on the run and the public frightened.”

“I heard about that campaign,” Cotton said. “That it was dirty.”

“You heard about part of it. Ainsley was too good a man to use that stuff, but it was used. Used everywhere, by something called Save America . . . Mostly direct mail and handout pamphlets . . . It was all documented, names, party titles, the whole thing. And it was killing us.” Korolenko smiled—a painful thing. “I remember talking to Eugene Clark about it. He was on the ticket too, running for his second term from the Sixth Congressional District against a nobody. I remember apologizing to him because it was hurting the party.” Korolenko was in the past now, talking not to Cotton but to the room—reliving it.

The voice droned on, slow words without expression, as if the old man were listening to them himself.

“. . . we got the last poll the Saturday before the election and it showed I was marginal, trailing the slate. And then election night it was obvious early, almost from the first precincts. The people were afraid of Communism and they were afraid of me. We were watching the returns right here. Gavin was here, and some of the younger people who had been working with me, and Catherine was in and out serving coffee and seeing about things and being the hostess. Catherine always stayed away from politics. She didn’t understand it. She just understood being a wife, and my ambitions. And she was here that night because she knew that this was really all I had wanted all of my life. She didn’t know why I wanted it, but she wanted it for me. So she was here that night—mixing with the politicians—because she sensed it might be going wrong and she wanted to be close in case she could help.”

Korolenko drew a long, shaking breath and sat for a moment looking past Cotton through the doorway into the cold, dark living room. “So she heard the talk about the Communist cousins in Yugoslavia, and my people wondering where the radical right had found out about it, and, after a while, I noticed she was gone. And I found her up in our bedroom.” He stopped again, looking at Cotton. “Crying. I’d never seen her cry before,” he said, hoping this stranger before him could understand. “She asked me if I was losing, and I said I was, and she asked me why, and I told her. God help me. I told her it was because somehow they had found out about my family in the old country. And, and . . .” The old man’s voice shook. “God help me, Catherine got down on her knees there, and begged me to forgive her, and told me that she had been the one who had ruined me. That she had talked about it to Eugene Clark’s wife, chatted about the family coming from Pula, down the coast from Trieste, and how our grandfathers had known each other, and how my own family was split between Royalists and Social Democrats, and how some of my uncles had sided with Mikhailovitch Royalists and some with Tito’s partisans, and how I now had a cousin who was the Mayor of Pula and another who was an official in the Bosnian People’s party, and another was in Tito’s Foreign Office.”

Korolenko’s voice stopped again. The electric clock behind him clicked. The pale light from the window reflected from a film of moisture in Korolenko’s eyes, on his cheek. And then the voice began again, still flat and emotionless, the voice of a man reciting to himself a story he has repeated a thousand times. “And she begged me to forgive her, and I told her there was nothing to forgive. But she never forgave herself. She had always been a happy woman, a joyful woman, but it was never the same after that. She did
penance
for years and then she got pneumonia. That was her chance. She died of it because she didn’t want to live.”

The room was silent now. The sound of sleet on the windows. The sound of time ticking by.

“Have you ever loved a woman, John? Most men haven’t. But, if you have, I think you know I’m willing to kill you if it would help retire Eugene Clark from the Senate.”

“But Clark was a Democrat,” Cotton said. “Part of your slate. Do you think . . .”

“I know. I took the trouble to find out, and to find exactly how he got the word out, and who he got it to. It’s easy to see why he did it. Ainsley beat me and two years later, when he ran for the full six-year term, Clark got the nomination and beat him in the general election. If I had won, Clark could never have beaten me. Not in the Democratic primary. He did it to keep the job open for himself.”

Korolenko made another call then, long distance. Asking someone to go down to the Tribune office, pick up a street edition as soon as it was out, and call him back.

And then they waited. The old man sat slumped in his chair, the shotgun on the desk in front of him, his eyes looking past Cotton at nothing. Cotton tried to think. His problem now had been reduced to a single dimension. If Janey had given Rickner the story he need only wait. In less than an hour the telephone would bring that news to Korolenko and it would be over. But, if she hadn’t, he should be doing something. He should be trying to get out of here, to get the shotgun away from Korolenko before the call to Jason Flowers bore its fruit, before whoever had hunted him arrived here and found him helpless. Right now, at this moment, a car must be moving through the sleet toward this house—its driver knowing the quarry had been finally cornered. A sudden sense of desperate urgency overcame the buzzing fatigue in Cotton’s brain. Korolenko’s face was still, blank, intent on some remembered landscape of the mind. The ashtray on the table beside his chair was thick, heavy glass. Cotton reached his right hand toward it, hoping the motion would seem casual.

“No,” Korolenko said. “Don’t do that.”

Cotton left his hand where it lay, feeling the polished varnish of the table under his palm, looking into Korolenko’s eyes. He saw the dark brown pupils behind the film of old age. Opaque eyes which looked back at him now as upon an object. Cotton was aware of the lingering smell of burned powder, aware that the shot Korolenko had fired past him had not really convinced him that the old man would, indeed, be willing to kill him. Now the blankness in Korolenko’s eyes convinced him. He withdrew the hand, dropped it in his lap, looking at Korolenko and considering this new insight into the human species. The thought led him to Leroy Hall. It explained what had baffled him for two days. Hall had suppressed the story—done the unthinkable—for the same reason old Governor Joe Korolenko was prepared to kill. Like Korolenko, Hall saw himself as part of it all. Involved. Hall hadn’t been bribed. He had known more than Cotton. Known a lot more and felt a lot more.

Cotton stopped thinking of the peculiar nature of Hall’s betrayal. He thought of Janey Janoski. Then he noticed the change in Korolenko’s face. The tension had left it.

The old man sat behind the shotgun looking somehow content—as if some inner doubt had been resolved. The question shaped itself in Cotton’s mind—normally not a question that he could ask, but the shotgun between Korolenko and him formed a sort of link, creating an odd intimacy.

“Governor,” Cotton said, “I want to ask you something about Mrs. Korolenko. Were there times when she thought what you were doing was wrong? And if that happened, how was it then? How was it between you?”

Korolenko looked surprised. “Weren’t you married once?”

“No,” Cotton said.

Korolenko was thinking about it. “Yes,” he said, “there were times. But it was all right with us. Because she knew I did what I did because I had to do it.” He stopped, trying to frame the words to explain—giving up. “Catherine understood me.”

“If you were the reporter,” Cotton persisted, “would she have understood why you had to write it? Even if she thought it was a terrible, damaging thing?”

“Yes. She would have.” There was no hesitation in the answer. “And now I have a question for you. Entirely aside from the personal situation we have here now, would you publish that story knowing what I’ve told you?”

“I don’t know,” Cotton said. “Not for sure. I’d have to think about it. But I guess I would. Who am I to be judge and jury? I don’t think I’d have the right not to print it.”

“But you have to judge. You’re a human being. You’re in this, too. We’re all in it together. You and I and all of us. We have to judge where the good lies, and where the evil. No man can hold himself . . .”

A car turned into the driveway. Korolenko moved to the window, cradling the shotgun, looking out. “Come to the door with me,” he said.

The doorbell rang as they got there, a loud descending scale on the chimes in the entry hall.

“Who is it?”

Whoever was outside didn’t answer for a moment.

“I’m supposed to pick up a man here,” the voice said. “Pick up a man named Cotton.”

Korolenko opened the door.

It was Adams. Or Harge. He glanced at Korolenko’s shotgun and then at Cotton, smiling slightly. His right hand, Cotton noticed, was gripped on something in the coat pocket. Undoubtedly a pistol. The sleet whipped in the opened door, around the man.

“Come in,” Korolenko said.

“No. We’ll go now. Come on, Mr. Cotton.”

“No,” Korolenko said. “We’re waiting a few minutes. We’ll know then whether this has to be done. Maybe this is past the point where Cotton can cause any harm. Come on in and we’ll wait a little.”

The man stood, indecisive, gradually aware that Korolenko’s shotgun now pointed approximately at his lower abdomen.

“Take your hand out of your pocket,” Korolenko said. The man stared at Korolenko, then slowly removed the hand. “Now, come in, and hand me your coat. I’ll keep your gun until you’re ready to leave.” Adams came in, muttering something which Cotton couldn’t quite hear. In the study, he stood beside the bookcase, watching them both.

“I don’t know about this,” Adams said. “The deal was I pick up this guy and be done with him. They didn’t say anything about waiting around.”

“The orders have changed,” Korolenko said. “In a few minutes I’ll get a call and that will tell us if this is necessary. If it’s not, you can go away and collect your money without any more trouble or risk. If it’s still necessary . . .” Korolenko paused, “then you’ll leave with Mr. Cotton.”

Adams was a tall man, taller than Cotton remembered, with heavy shoulders and an intelligent face. Maybe thirty-five, Cotton thought. And he looks like what? A young college professor? Maybe a minister? A lawyer? Certainly just like an office-machine salesman.

“I don’t like the way this is working out,” Adams said. “He can identify me.”

“That won’t trouble you,” Korolenko said. “Will it, John? What could he accuse you of? Of coming here and frightening him? What could he tell the police?”

“Yeah? Well, maybe. O.K.,” Adams said. “If we have to wait, we wait.”

They waited. Korolenko behind the desk. Adams almost motionless against the wall. Cotton tense in the chair, his head buzzing with fatigue and aching alternatives. Either Janey went along with him or she didn’t. She probably—almost certainly—hadn’t given the story to Rickner. But maybe she had. The maybe, he knew, was mostly the product of his overpowering, urgent need for her to believe in him. Not in the story, or in the abstractions of philosophy, but in him as a man. If she hadn’t believed in him, the story wouldn’t be in the
Tribune.
And then he would have to decide something. He tried to think about it, but the thought receded. How many hours had it been since he had slept?

“Matter of curiosity,” Adams said. “But what was that you poured on those steps? And where’d you get it?”

“Liquid soap,” Cotton said. “Out of the janitor’s closet.”

“My friend damn near killed himself,” Adams said. There was no rancor in the voice, only a slight ironic amusement. “And you were rough with me too.” He held up his right wrist encased in plaster. “Pulled all the tendons.”

And then the telephone rang and Korolenko picked it up. Cotton took a deep, involuntary breath.

“This is Korolenko. Yes. O.K. What’s the top headline?”

He listened, his face bleak. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that sounds bad. But read me the first few paragraphs.”

Elation flooded through Cotton. Delight. Joy. He wanted to shout. To sing.

“O.K., O.K. No. I’ll get a copy here,” Korolenko said. “And thank you. Thank you for the trouble.” He hung up, looking at Cotton. “It’s done.” No emotion. Almost as if he no longer cared.

“So what happens now?” Adams said. “Do I take him, or do I go?”