Hollywood (63 page)

Borah looked startled; then he almost smiled. “Twenty years, if we don’t disarm now.”

“If we do?”

Borah grunted, and Burden said, “In twenty years, if we do disarm. Let’s hope we’re as lucky next time as we were this time.”

Now the pall-bearers appeared. They lifted up the coffin. Led by the Hardings, a procession descended to a marble crypt just beneath the amphitheater. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever find our car,” said Kitty. She was quite unmoved. Somehow, women were never much affected by the grief of warriors or, to be precise, the grief of the tribal elders, dreaming of future wars through a haze of present tears.

The Duchess was in a state. “The third letter this week, and what does the Secret Service do? Nothing.” Then she rounded on Daugherty. “And that Bureau of Investigation of yours, what do they do?”

“Stolen cars and Bolsheviks are their specialty,” Daugherty began, but the Duchess was in full torrent. “The President’s life is threatened daily.” She held up the letter. “Christmas Day will be his last day on earth, this one says, and you still can’t find who sends them, who writes them.”

Jess felt sorry for Daugherty, who was now staring glumly out the window at the snow falling on the south lawn. A moment before, the Washington Monument had disappeared in a swirl of snow. The world outside was contracting, while the oval sitting room was too warm for Jess; but then he could not endure too much heat. Along with his other disabilities, he was now officially a diabetic, according to a lugubrious doctor, who told him that he could eat nothing, drink nothing, do nothing. The last joy of his life was to serve Daugherty as “bumper,” to use a good Ohio word, to worship the Hardings and to make sure that the money kept rolling in. Life was unfair, he decided. He should have been on top of the world. Now its weight was on top of him. Lately, Lucie Daugherty’s health had grown worse and Jess was obliged to look after her in the night so that Daugherty could get some sleep. All three now lived in the Wardman Park Hotel and the door between Daugherty’s room and Jess’s was always open at night so that Jess could call for help in case he had a bad dream or the insomniac Daugherty could summon Jess for a talk during the late dark watches. There was more fun to be had in Washington Court House, and Jess tried to spend at least a week every month back home, gossiping with Roxy about his grand life which wasn’t all that grand, what with diabetes and Lucie Daugherty failing.

Laddie Boy announced the President’s approach. “Don’t tell Warren!” The Duchess stuck the letters inside her blouse; and bared her teeth in a terrifying smile of welcome.

Harding looked weary despite his recent triumphs. He had astonished the world on November 12 when he had proposed to the Disarmament Conference that the United States was willing to scrap thirty capital ships. The Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, had read off the particulars of Harding’s secret plan, to the consternation of the war-lords present. Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy were invited to rid themselves of close to two million tons of war-ships.

Harding had figured that if any word of his plan were to leak to the press, military expansionists everywhere would have time to rally public opinion against disarmament. Hence the thunderbolt, hurled by Hughes in the presence of the benign presidential author. It was Harding’s theory that once world opinion was appealed to, there would be no way for the various governments to back down.

Harding’s gamble paid off. The world was enthralled, and in the course of a single morning Harding became the central figure on the world’s stage, and the most beloved.

But W.G. was the historical Harding only part-time. Most of the time, he was a harassed politician married to the Duchess. Now, in the oval sitting room, he sat down heavily in a chair beside the fire and cupped his right cheek in his right hand. “I’m going to propose to Congress that a single term for the president is quite enough. I can’t take much more of this place. Nobody can nowadays. If I can get Congress to limit the presidency to one term, will it apply to me?” W.G. looked at the Attorney General.

“No,” said Daugherty. “Besides, Congress can’t change the Constitution. They can pass a bill asking for a change, but then it’s up to the states to ratify, and that takes years. If you don’t like the job, don’t run again.”

“Warren, have you been eating sauerkraut again?” the Duchess was stern. “It gives him gas so then he thinks he’s having a heart attack and that gets him all moody.”

“In March 1929, after two terms of this hell, I’ll be sixty-five, which is pretty old, and then what?”

“It’s sauerkraut.” The Duchess rubbed the back of W.G.’s neck. “You’re all knotted up.”

“If you’re going to feel like this when you’re the most popular man in the world,” said Daugherty, “what are you going to feel like when something goes wrong?”

W.G. groaned, more contentedly than not, as the Duchess’s powerful fingers worked over the taut muscles of his neck. “I’m serious about this. I mean the principle, not me. One six-year term would make it possible for us to have some really good presidents for a change …”

“Warren! You’re morbid.”

W.G. sighed and shut his eyes. “Because I have to think all the time about being re-elected, just like everybody else who’s lived in this house, I spend most of my time doing favors for this one and that one, so he’ll help me out. Well, that is no way to run a government, bribing people. It’s a wonder any
of our appointments are ever any good, considering why we go and make them!”

“Except for me,” said Daugherty, “you’ve got the most admired Cabinet this century.”

“Well, you make up for a lot,” said the Duchess with one of her unexpected flashes of black humor. “Now, Warren, about Christmas …”

But as the First Lady was about to bring up the subject of the assassination threats, Harding sat up straight and announced: “Harry, I’m pardoning Debs. In time for Christmas.”

“Warren!” The Duchess looked more than ever grim. She hated equally communism, labor agitators and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. “We’ve been through all this.”

Indeed they had, and Jess had been part of W.G.’s secret plot to release Debs and all the other political prisoners that Wilson had locked up. Shortly before the inauguration, W.G. had told Daugherty that he should have a talk with Debs and if he seemed to pose no particular threat to the United States, he would be pardoned. Currently, Debs was serving a ten-year sentence in an Atlanta prison. Daugherty had managed the whole thing in his customary unorthodox way. Debs had been put on a train to Washington, without guards. Jess had met him at Union Station, and found him an amiable quick-witted old man. Together they had gone to the Justice Department, where Daugherty had a long talk with the country’s leading Socialist, and found no harm in him other than a perverse and potentially dangerous affection for the people at large. W.G. had planned to release Debs on the Fourth of July, 1921, but the New York
Times
had got wind of all this and announced, severely, that Debs “is where he belongs. He should stay there.” W.G. had made a number of private unpublishable remarks to the effect that the pro-German sympathies of the
Times
had done far more damage to the Allied cause than the Socialist Party; then he had backed down for the time being. Now the peace treaty with Germany had been signed and the war was officially over.

“We’re back to normal,” said W.G., as he started a staring contest with Laddie, who, invariably, broke down, with wild cries and a race around the room in order to avoid his master’s eyes. “So now it’s most becoming that we make peace with all our own folks.”

“They will overthrow the government, Warren. You mark my words.”

“I don’t think Mr. Debs wants to do that.” Daugherty was soothing.

“The only thing he wanted when I took him down to the depot, to take
him back to jail, was a pound of quill toothpicks.” Jess made his contribution to history.

Daugherty shook his head no, which often meant yes. “I’ll draw up a commutation, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want, Harry.” Laddie Boy gave a howl of ecstatic fear, and raced from the room.

“But they should all sign pledges, saying they’ll lead an upright life and obey the laws …”

“No.” W.G. stood up and, idly, picked dog hairs off his coat. “That sort of a pledge is demeaning. It sounds like he’s bargaining with us to go free, and he isn’t. I am.”

“Why?” asked the Duchess.

“Because this is what I was elected to do. Restore the country. The war’s over …”

“Mr. Wilson’s war.” Thus, the Duchess brought herself round. Then one of the Secret Service men appeared at the door; apologetically, he signalled Jess to come with him. The others, preoccupied with pardons, did not notice his departure.

Nan Britton was in the President’s office, seated demurely on a sofa beside the open-grate burning fire. Jess wondered what the going price was for the murder of a presidential mistress. Surely, the Italian Black Hand could be persuaded to encase her in cement and file her away in some commodious river. “Oh, Jess! I couldn’t stay away after that lovely ceremony in Arlington which we could hear just as clear as could be all the way up in Madison Square Garden.”

“Whaddaya know?” Jess was cordial. But he felt slightly nauseated all the time now, and he had pains in his right side which the doctor said were nothing; but his urine smelled of apples and that was a sign of diabetes. He took pills; tried to diet; drank quantities of water.

“Well, Elizabeth Ann is just thriving, with my sister. I’m still going to the Columbia School of Journalism and they all say that I have great talent as a writer, particularly about the emotions.”

Was this blackmail? Jess wondered. So far she had not been particularly demanding. W.G. had always helped her out financially, and she had made several visits to the White House, like this, in secret. One of the agents, Jim Sloan, was in constant touch with her, and whenever she wanted to see W.G. she would alert Sloan. The previous summer, W.G. had sent for Nan, or so she had told Jess. They had met in the office on a Sunday like today. But there
was no place for them to make love. The guards that marched regularly past the windows of the oval office had an unobstructed view of what went on inside. Finally, W.G. had found a nearby closet and there the star-crossed—Duchess-crossed was more like it—lovers became as one amongst the frock coats and umbrellas, a place only marginally less frightening to Jess than his own sinister downstairs closet in Washington Court House.

“But I’ve been thinking very seriously about the future.” Nan gazed into Jess’s eyes. What, he wondered, did W.G. see in her? She was just pretty; nothing more. On the other hand, there was no doubt that she was in love with a man more than old enough to be her father, and she had been in love with him long before the presidency; in fact, most of her life. Jess wondered what it would be like to be so loved.

“I’ve made one or two visits to the photo-play studios, the ones in New York, and they think that I show considerable potential, that was what they said, for acting because—this was Mr. Hirshan who works for Cosmopolitan Pictures—I have these suppressed emotions that you can
always
see on the screen, like Pola Negri.”

“Nan,” Jess was careful not to sound too alarmed, “Cosmopolitan is owned by Mr. Hearst, whose newspapers would do anything to find out about you and the President.”

“Don’t be silly, Jess. How could they ever find out?
We
aren’t going to tell them. So who can? Anyway, it looks awfully easy, acting, if you have these emotions for the camera to show, like a radiogram, in a way. Well, I have suppressed emotions all right.” Softly, Nan began to cry. Jess noted that she was careful not to make her eyes red or smear her make-up.

“There. There.” Jess was avuncular. Then, when she had paused in the course of her audition, he asked, “Why did that new agent come to me just now?”

“Because Jim had to go home at the last minute. So he got his friend to bring me in here. I pretended I was here to see you about Ohio business. Jim’s leaving the Secret Service, you know.”

“I know.” It was Jess who had got Sloan a job as Washington manager of Samuel Ungerleider. They were all family, Jess had reported to Daugherty, who had grunted. Certainly, it would never do to have Jim Sloan at large in the world with all that he knew about the President’s private life.

“Anyway, from now on I’m to write in care of Arthur Brooks, the colored valet, so Jim tells me, which I don’t in the least mind. Anyway,” now recovered and eyes shining, “will you go tell him I’m here?”

As Jess got to his feet, Nan crossed to the President’s desk, where she picked up a miniature of W.G.’s mother. “He was so devoted to her, everyone says. Doesn’t she look precious here? Like Elizabeth Ann, her granddaughter.”

Jess returned to the upstairs sitting room. Others had joined the President. General Sawyer, small and shrewd, was laying down the law to the Duchess, who listened to him with perfect docility, for he alone understood her last kidney and its vagaries. Charlie Forbes was delighting the President and Daugherty with excited stories while the Secretary of the Interior sat beside the fire, drinking tea with a disgusted expression. After much debate, the President had decided that in the private apartments—specifically the bedrooms of the White House—the law prohibiting alcohol could be broken but in those parts of the White House that plainly belonged to the nation, the law must be upheld. It was not much of a compromise, but then Prohibition was not much of a law. Nevertheless, W.G. took very seriously the dignity of his place and he would not do anything unseemly if he could help it. Now, of course, he could not help it. Presently, he would be joining Nan in the anteroom closet.

Jess simply stared at the President until W.G. became aware of him. Easily, smilingly, W.G. left the group that was laughing with Charlie Forbes, and came toward Jess, who whispered, “She’s in your office.”

Harding’s smile did not fade; but the eyes were suddenly alert. He glanced at the Duchess and General Sawyer; neither was aware of anything on earth save her kidney. Then the President and Laddie Boy left the room. Only Daugherty had noticed. The blue eye stared at Jess, who nodded. The brown eye blinked, as Daugherty nodded, meaning, no.