The Lacuna
Page 100

The bar was Leo’s, a little joint in the odd flatiron building that’s wedged into the acute corner of Battery and Wall. “This okay with you? Is it adequate to the purposes of impressing a new client?”
“It’s fine. I’m sorry, that was a joke.”
“Okay. Not very fancy, Leo’s. But a club I am allowed to join.” Carefully he folded and stacked his wardrobe on the stool beside him: camel coat, shirt, shoes. The girl at the bar had reached for the bottle of Grant’s when he came in the door, and came over with two little glasses hooked on her fingertips like thimbles. Artie seemed distracted, watching her fill the glasses, finishing his cigarette. “That club out at Bent Creek, you know it? I recently had a very high-profile client who moved here from Hollywood, prospective client I should say, I’m not naming names, he wanted to take me to his golf club for dinner, Bent Creek. To celebrate, get acquainted. Mr. Heston, I say to him, have you seen their promotional materials? ‘We cater to the better class of gentile clientele. We reserve the right to decline service to anyone we deem to be incompatible.’ Incompatible!”
“Charlton Heston is your client?”
“As it happens, he is not.”
The waitress retreated to the other end of the bar, wiping out glasses with a red chamois cloth, but kept glancing at us. Dark lashes, cheekbones, a red ribbon around her black hair, tied on top. A tall, long-waisted girl, but still there was something of Frida about her. The way she carried those glasses on her fingers. Probably a violation of some hygiene rule, but she gets away with it. Men want their lips on her fingertips.
“Hey, how about that Jackie Robinson?” Artie asked out of nowhere. His mind moves like a train, and he pitches things out its window at an astonishing clip. “Are you a baseball fan, Shepherd?”
“I should apologize now for all the things I don’t know about. You might find me as thick-skulled as Mr. Heston. Baseball is a yen one learns from a father, I gather.”
He tilted his head, nodded. Though quite a talker, Artie was also a listener.
“I wasn’t raised in this country. Wasn’t raised, really at all.”
Artie exhaled a short laugh, not unsympathetic, and tossed back the shot of Grant’s. “If a person is not raised, then what? He grows from a seed?”
The whisky was both stringent and soothing, like cigar smoke. Twelve years waiting for a moment, this gullet. “No. In the scullery kitchens and probably the salt mines of this world, many a child is not so much raised as hammered into shape, Artie. To be of use. Surviving by the grace of utility alone.”
“This I know to be true, you are correct. Very well said. In this case, the absence of a father notwithstanding, have you heard of Jackie Robinson?”
“I do read the news. The Negro player they’ve let in the white leagues.”
“I saw the man play at McCormick Field this summer. I was there.”
“How was that?”
“Sensational. His second or third game with the Dodgers, and they play him down here in Dixie. The Colored section was packed like the last bus out of Arnhem, and the rest of the stands, empty. Like someone had yelled they were passing out free polio germs to the white people that day. I had a good seat, let me tell you.”
“I’ll bet.”
He unfolded the letter and flattened it on the counter. The earlier one from J. Edgar Hoover he’d barely glanced at, but this one he studied with inordinate care. Nevertheless, his verdict: No soap.
“My secretary wanted to burn it with the trash.”
“Good girl. You should give her a raise.”
“Well. I’m taking her to Mexico.”
“Really.” A wise-guy smirk.
“As my assistant, Artie. She’s forty-seven, for one thing. And for another, not my type.”
“Ah, yes. I recall.”
“You’re only about the third or fourth person to know that about me, by the way. The Selective Service, God, and you. A few others. But certainly my mother never worked it out.”
“Please. Discretion is my business, and I mean that sincerely.”
“Mrs. Brown is my right hand. This is a research trip, and I’ll need to stay a couple of months. She called you about helping with the passport.”
“Right, I recall. Well, her opinion of this letter from quote-unquote Aware Incorporated was absolutely correct.”
“It’s not a form,” I pointed out. “These things are very specific. Charles Chaplin. My books being read by Communists in China. I have to say, I’m flabbergasted.”
“That is their intention, to flabbergast. Is this a verb, can I say that?”
“I suppose.”
“Their mode is the surprise attack: they flabbergast. You hand over five hundred clams.”
“And then the game ends?”
“Not exactly. These publications he mentions are real. They accumulate names of alleged Reds and publish them in directories.”
“Who reads them?”
“Executives. Radio producers, Hollywood studios, even grocery chains. It’s handy, no muss no fuss. They can assure their advertisers they are taking every available precaution against hiring a Red.”
“But before he puts me on the list, he’s offering the chance to clear my name, for a fee.”
Artie spread his hands wide. “God bless America.”
“That’s straight blackmail. The employers must know the lists are meaningless.”
“So you would think. But this guy Matus has acquired for himself a certain cachet. He used to be a member of the Communist Party. Twenty years ago, when everybody including your Aunt Frances was a member of the Communist Party. Now he comes to the FBI, offers to come clean. Before you know it they’ve got him in front of the HUAC, the whole works. So far he’s remembered hundreds of former associates who now work in government and the media, and for an additional fee he will remember more. Amazing, his memory. The New York Times is a major employer of Communists, he says. Time and Life also. This guy is a star.”
“And runs his own business on the side.”
“An entrepreneur.”
“Nobody could take this seriously.”
The girl was still watching us. Down at the opposite end, leaning backward against the bar, fiddling with the cameo on a ribbon around her neck.
Artie sighed. “I have a client. A former president of a prestigious southern college. Served on the War Labor Board. Currently president of the Southern Human Welfare Conference. A very celebrated guy, consulting fees and public speaking provide most of his income. Suddenly, he has no income. He has protestors. This antisegregation outfit over which he presides has turned up on the attorney general’s list, one of these ninety so-called Communist front organizations.”