Page 44 of Safe Enough

“How long?”

“We spread a little grease around. Hotels, mostly. We got a call from a clerk that old Sherman had booked a room for Friday night. A double. The names given were him and his wife. Which no one believed. Why book a hotel? They have a house. So Mr. Hopper made a plan.”

“Which was?”

“First we went to look at the hotel. Mr. Hopper wanted to do it in the lobby. He felt the bedroom was wrong, for that type of guy. So we measured it up. There were gray velvet armchairs, three on one side and two on the other. There was a reception hutch, all heavy carved oak. There was a curtained doorway to the breakfast room. Mr. Hopper figured out how he wanted to do it. There was a window. To the right of the door. A person on tiptoe could see in from the street. Which was good, except it wasn’t really. He couldn’t spend hours peering in at the window. Not out there on the sidewalk. Passersby would tell a cop. He would have to time it just right. He couldn’t see a way around it.”

“How did he solve the problem?”

“He didn’t. I suggested I take over from the reception clerk for a couple of days. Like an undercover role. I figured I wouldn’t have much to do. I figured I could hide behind the lampshade most of the time. No one would be looking at me. So I figured I could flash the outside neon when the time came for Mr. Hopper to take a peek. The switch is right there.”

“Your idea was you would alert him as they were checking in together?”

“We figured it would work two separate ways. He would get the visual he wanted, and I would see the girlfriend signing in as the wife, up close and personal. Mr. Hopper wasn’t happy, because he liked the guy, as I said, but he had to draw the line somewhere. This project is a big deal.”

“Did the plan work?”

“No.” I said. “It really was his wife. She showed me her driver’s license. Kind of automatically. I guess she travels with him a lot. To all those secure conferences about concrete boats. So she does it without thinking. The name was right and the photograph was right.”

“So what did you do?”

“Nothing. I played at being a hotel clerk. Then the phone rang and it was Mr. Hopper in a booth across the street. Urgent. We had a tip the other woman was on her way to the same hotel. Right then. Mr. Hopper told me to stand by. I was to get old Sherman to come downstairs. Which I figured wouldn’t be a problem. He wouldn’t want me to send her up. Not with his wife in the room.”

“Did the woman arrive?”

“It was like something in a motion picture. One of those screwball comedies. I heard the elevator moving. It was between me and the breakfast room. The gate opens and out steps old Sherman. He’s carrying his wife’s fur wrap. She steps out right behind him. In a blue dress, carrying a magazine. Half of me is thinking like an agent, and half of me is thinking, Come on, pal, get the hell out of here before it’s too late. But the wife sits down in a chair, right in front of me. She starts reading her magazine. Old Sherman just stands there, two steps from the elevator. By this point I’m hiding behind the lampshade. Then the other woman walks in. Fur coat, fur hat, a red dress. An older woman. Sherman’s age. She bends down and kisses the wife on the cheek and then walks over and does the same thing to Sherman. I’m thinking, What have we got here? Three in a bed? That would be worse.”

“What happened next?”

“The other woman sat down, and the wife kept on reading. The other woman looked up and said something to Sherman. Polite conversation ensued. I flashed the neon and I saw Mr. Hopper look in the window. He saw it all. He remembers all the details. The painting on the wall, of a mountain lake. But he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He didn’t know what the scene was about.”

“What did he do?”

“He stood down and waited on the sidewalk. Old Sherman left with his wife. The other woman stayed behind and asked me to call her a taxi. I took the initiative and showed her my badge, and I gave her the same spiel I gave his friends. National security, and all that. I asked her some questions.”

“And?”

“She’s old Sherman’s mother-in-law. Younger than him by two years, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. Old Sherman is very happy with his child bride. She’s very happy with him. The mother-in-law is happy with them both. She’s visiting for a month and he’s showing her around. She thinks he’s sweet to take the time. We think he’s doing it to please his wife. And she’s worth pleasing. Especially for an old guy. They were in the hotel not their house because they had an early train. So panic over. Plenty of men marry younger women. No law against it. Mr. Hopper passed him fit for the job, and he’s out there in Tennessee already, making a start.”

Slaughter paused a bear, and then he said, “OK, I think we have what we need. Thanks, Jackson.”

So for the second time that clay I came out of a deposition feeling pretty good about it. I had said nothing I didn’t want to say. Some of the truth was recorded. Everyone was happy. We won it for them in the end. Then they turned on us. But old Sherman Bryon was dead by then, so it didn’t matter.

PIERRE, LUCIEN, AND ME

I survived my first heart attack. But as soon as I was well enough to sit up in bed, the doctor came back and told me I was sure to have a second. Only a matter of time, he said. The first episode had been indicative of a serious underlying weakness. Which it had just made worse. Could be days. Or weeks. Months at most. He said from now on I should consider myself an invalid.

I said, “This is 1928, for fuck’s sake. They got people talking on the radio from far away. Don’t you have a pill for it?”

No pill, he said. Nothing to be done. Maybe see a show. And maybe write some letters. He told me what people regretted most were the things they didn’t say. Then he left. Then I left. Now I have been home four days. Doing nothing. Just waiting for the second episode. Days away, or weeks, or months. I have no way of knowing.

I haven’t been to see a show. Not yet. I have to admit it’s tempting. Sometimes I wonder if the doctor had more in mind than entertainment. I can imagine choosing a brand new musical, full of color and spectacle and riotous excitement, with a huge finale, whereupon all of us in the audience would jump to our feet for a standing ovation, and I would feel the clamp in my chest, and fall to the floor like an empty raincoat slipping off an upturned seat. I would die there while the oblivious crowd stamped and cheered all around me. My last hours would be full of singing and dancing. Not a bad way to go. But knowing my luck it would happen too soon. Some earlier stimulus would trigger it. Maybe coming up out of the subway. On the steep iron-bound stairs to the 42nd Street sidewalk. I would fall and slip back a yard, in the wet and the dirt and the grit, and people would look away and step around me, like I was a regular bum. Or I might make it to the theater and die on the stairs to the balcony. I no longer have the money for an orchestra seat. Or I might make it to the gods, clinging to the stair rail, out of breath, my heart thumping, and then keel over while the band was still tuning up. The last thing I would hear would be the keening of violin strings all aiming for concert pitch. Not good. And it might spoil things for everyone else. The performance might be canceled.

So in words I have always used, but which are now increasingly meaningless, a show is something I might do later.

I haven’t written any letters, either. I know what the doctor was getting at. Maybe the last word you had with someone was a hard word. Maybe you never took the time to say, hey, you’re a real good friend, you know that? But I would plead innocent to those charges. I’m a straightforward guy. Usually I talk a lot. People know what I think. We all had good times together. I don’t want to spoil them by sending out some kind of a morbid goodbye message.

So why would anyone write letters?

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