Summitt

Chapter Eleven

That same night George Thomson paced his office in Harlequin Chemicals headquarters, a glass-and-steel structure which rose in tiers from a ten-acre concrete slab softened by fountains and graveled walks.

Through his windows he could make out the bridges above the shining curve of Delaware Bay and the flaming grids of oil-cracking towers.

A buzzer sounded on his desk and a moment later his door clicked open and Dom Lorso came in. Lighting a cigarette from the stub he was smoking, Lorso said, “George, we better talk straight now. Like this was any other business problem. Let me explain something first. I’m worried about Earl’s car—”

“Dom, I’ve just been talking to Mr. Correll. He’s in New York. You know that Senator Rowan died?”

“I heard something about it on the news. But I want to finish this other thing, Giorgio.”

Thomson frowned but nodded and turned from the windows. “All right, let’s have it, Dom.”

“The car,” Dom Lorso said, “a forty-thousand-dollar set of wheels don’t disappear like some goddamn magician clapped his hands. A professional thief wouldn’t touch it. A chrome-and-red Porsche comes off an APB like a Roman candle. Every traffic cop in a dozen states is hoping to eyeball it. Only a punk stoned out of his skull would rip it off in the first place, and he’d dump it the minute he got his head straight.” Lorso inhaled deeply, began coughing. “Number two, Earl’s whole story hangs on Santos and—”

Thomson stopped him. “Dom, you’ve got your priorities screwed up. You’re talking about details Slocum is taking care of. And everything you’re saying is based on some half-assed assumption that Earl might be lying. Why are you assuming that? I want Earl to use his brains and balls without any hangups. I’ve got more than my share, and so have you, Dom. You still make the sign of the cross when you’re in a bind, so let Earl alone, don’t worry about him. There are two secrets — not being afraid of other people and not being afraid of yourself. I learned that much from Correll. You need worries, you can share mine. I taped the talk with Mr. Correll. He told me to.

“Listen to this, Dom, and you’ll see what we should be worrying about.”

Pressing the conference tab on his telephone console, Thomson looked expectantly at the webbed speakers. After a hum of static Simon Correll’s amplified voice sounded through the office.

“—his death may be a serious inconvenience, Thomson. From private sources I know that Harlequin is close to the top of Senator Lester’s hit list. Senator Rowan belongs to the ages now, as they say. The halls of Congress have been resounding all day with resolutions honoring his memory, his dedication and so forth. What that means, George, is that Rowan’s no longer any use to us. Even while they’re holding Air Force Two to fly him home, Lester was striking, before the old boy’s flesh was hardly cold.”

Dom Lorso coughed and pulled a face at the speakers, but Thomson held up a hand. “Get this...”

“... immediately impounded Rowan’s files and correspondence, which implemented a court order Miss Kim filed not more than minutes after Rowan’s death. A district court judge has granted Lester broad subpoena powers to investigate — well, you heard him at his news conference, George.”

Thomson’s recorded voice sounded then. “That’s the main thing he’s after, Mr. Correll, if you ask me, prime-time news shows. If you want to make a reputation today, you’ve got to invent something raunchy or sensational to grab those TV dummies.”

Lorso nodded, and lit another cigarette.

“... could well be, George,” Correll’s voice continued, “but the practical and immediate results of this investigation will be these: government accountants and lawyers will be swarming over your office by next week. Cooperate with them. Tell your senior echelons to give Senator Lester’s people whatever they want. Minutes of staff meetings, appointment books, schedules of company plane trips, communications between Dupree and Summitt and your other plants.

“Another thing. The types you’ll be dealing with are all on expense accounts. Provide them with office space for coffee breaks, plenty of snacks. And plenty of sandwiches and be sure they’re wrapped so they can tuck them into their briefcases. Provide limos between your offices and their hotels. You’ll find that these civil service types have no moral or intellectual perspective. They’re fashioned by greed and equate superiority with unhampered elbowroom at the public trough. I want you to understand—”

Thomson’s amplified voice interrupted him. “Mr. Correll, all I understand is that you’re asking me to put my neck on the block and sharpen the axe for them.”

“No, George, but I want you to understand the mentalities you’re dealing with. Even if they knew that a child in Karachi is lucky to find edible insects to stretch its rice, it wouldn’t concern them. But we’ll survive them, George. Our work is too important to allow anything to deflect us. Everything is ready at Saliaris, thanks in good measure to you and to General Taggart.”

The speakers hummed for an instant, then a click sounded and they were silent. Thomson said, “You see, Dom, what’s on the top of the list to worry about?”

“I don’t buy that, Giorgio. We’ve been together too long to be careful about what we say to each other.” Lorso joined Thomson at the tinted windows and their reflected figures dominated even the glittering skyline.

Lorso said, “I don’t give a damn about Correll and Senator Lester and those people starving in Karachi, wherever the hell that is. If they got maggots in their rice, fuck it. My world is here, with you, and Adele and Earl. That’s family, and that’s what I won’t let anybody hurt.”

It was impossible to ignore Lorso when he was in this mood, Thomson knew; he was at his most authentic and most valuable now. An early warning system and a first line of defense. “All right, Dom, let’s have all of it.”

“Okay. Go back to the car. Where is it? Who stole it? Why don’t it show up somewhere? That’s one thing. The second is, we’ve only got Santos and Adele to back Earl’s story. It would be nice, of course, if those witnesses just didn’t happen to be the boy’s mother and a stuttering Puerto Rican refugee from a Miami massage parlor who happens to work for her.”

Thomson said angrily, “Why are you talking about witnesses?”

Lorso drew a deep breath. “Last week Earl got a call from a girl, wouldn’t give her name but accused him of hitting her with his car and then raping her, and she claims this all happened the same night that Selby kid got—”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“You had your plate full with Correll. Earl was shaken up, naturally. He called, asked to see me. He’d already told Adele, which was a mistake but it was done by then. We all figured the same thing, some crackpot getting her kicks with a stiff phone.

“But then she called again today, Giorgio, the same one, bugging Earl about wanting to meet with him, to talk things over. Just the two of them, somewhere private—”

“Dom, why didn’t you give this to Slocum? We’ve got nothing to cover up—”

“Easy, Giorgio.”

“I don’t want any damn weirdo hassling Earl.”

“Relax a minute, will you? Slocum’s people have stirred things up, questioned all kinds of crazies, kid-fuckers, whip-dicks, that kind. And the investigation’s like a fever or something. Everybody gets heated up. So maybe some crazy broad gets a notion to lean on Earl. Maybe she’s pressuring him for kicks or a payday, who knows? But if there’s a frame in the works, I decided to damn well find who’s behind it.”

“You already set something up?”

“I didn’t want to waste time trying to convince you I was right. I called Allan Davic in New York.”

This news obviously disturbed Thomson. “We’re not planning to sue anybody. You think that much firepower is necessary?”

“We need more than just a lawyer, Giorgio. If we wanted some klutz with a briefcase, we got twenty or thirty of them down on the eighth floor. But we need professional surveillance now and professional muscle, too.”

Lorso put his hand on the desk, leaned toward Thomson, his small red features bunching in a frown. “I got hang-ups, you just said so. I smelled that garlic again, so I called Davic and told him we needed him.”

“Hiring Allan Davic is like committing an army division to knock off a squad of toy soldiers,” Thomson said. “I like Allan, Dom, don’t misunderstand me. He can be smooth and pleasant, and very brutal.” Lifting the lid of a humidor, Thomson removed a cigar and regarded it. “But I’m still not sure—”

“It’s insurance, Giorgio. Slocum can take care of what’s official, Davic will handle everything else. His people are here now, Davic will be down in a day or so. I don’t give a damn about his reputation. He also gets the job done. At the end of every trial, he’s smiling at the cameras on the courthouse steps and his client rides off free in a limousine. I only had one thing in mind hiring him. To protect all of us.”

Lorso smiled suddenly, but there was a nervous tension in his narrow eyes. “Give me a break. It was the garlic... tell me I did right, Giorgio.”

“Dom, you did fine. If I hadn’t been so involved with—” He gestured irritably at the phone speakers.

“I understand, Giorgio. So I did it for you. Look, you want a drink or anything? If not, I think I’ll drive into Philadelphia. Couple of Davic’s men are staying at the Franklin and they asked me for club passes and where to find a good shore dinner.”

After Lorso left Thomson sat in his dark office and looked at the distant bridges. A ship was moving and he could see the shifting reflections of its running lights in the water. Like Adele and Earl, he thought, who reflected one another in that way at times, except that it seemed that there was always a canny selectivity at work in whatever they chose to see of themselves. An uncritical, almost mindless love or fascination flowed between them, and with it the willing and sustaining dependence...

Yet before her accident... Thomson stood to make himself a drink, putting those thoughts of his wife aside.

Fortunately, he had other things to think about. Why hadn’t Lorso talked to him first about bringing Davic in? Why had he moved so fast? Pure Sicilian reflex, a guard dog’s automatic growl? Or was there something in that damned garlic after all? Lorso was acting like he knew they had something to worry about...

He sipped his whiskey. Lorso had been upset by the problems at Rockland, those undergraduate eruptions that Thomson knew were normal enough, and what you had to expect from high-spirited young studs. But for all his street-smart veneer and cynicism, the Sicilian was almost a Puritan in many ways. A girl had been hurt, true enough, but Thomson’s thoughts were confused by a blur of images, and he realized he wasn’t sure which girl he was thinking of, the one at Jefferson that Earl had gotten involved with, or the one with a bicycle flecked with red paint, or someone else, the girl at the club last week...

He decided he needed another drink. He also decided he might as well put Adele on that list too, don’t forget her, put her right up at the top...

His phone rang. The lobby security guard told him his chauffeur was waiting for him at the plaza exit.

He might as well go home, he thought, why the hell not, but riding down in the express elevator Thomson felt a flick of envy for Lorso, over in Philadelphia somewhere, doing the clubs with Davic’s people. Not so much, but face it, better than what he had to go home to...