I worked the next three days on the appeal with an energy and freshness that I hadn’t felt in years. In fact, I even felt like a criminal lawyer again rather than an expensive manipulator for the R. C. Richardson account. My bottle of Jack Daniel’s stayed in the desk drawer, and I came to the office at seven in the morning and stayed until dusk. As I said before, the appeal should have been a foregone conclusion, but I began to wonder if any judge in the Austin court would believe that so many absurdities could have actually taken place in one trial. Moreover, each time I went through the transcript I didn’t believe it myself. Thursday afternoon, after I’d had the secretary in my office for five hours of dictation and typing, Bailey’s patience cracked apart again and he came suddenly through the door, his face stretched tight with anger. (The air conditioner was broken, and we had the windows over the street open. The hot air was like warm water in the room.)
“All right, you can let two hundred thousand dollars go to hell, but I’m still paying half the overhead around here,” he said.
“Bailey, look at this goddamn thing, then tell me that I ought to let this guy sit it out in the pen while some kid lawyer from the A.C.L.U. plays pocket pool with himself.”
“I don’t want to look at it. I have a desk covered with twice my ordinary load of work.”
“Then have a drink of water. You look hot.”
“Goddamn it, Hack, you’re putting me over the edge.”
“I just want you to glance at what can happen in a legal court without one voice being raised in protest.”
“What did you expect to find down there? Those union people knew the terms when they came in here.”
“I think I heard a deputy sheriff say about the same thing while he was pouring his mouth full of chewing tobacco.”
And once more Bailey slammed out the door, a furious man who would never understand the real reasons for his anger.
I spent Friday night in an Austin motel, and Saturday morning I met the Senator’s private plane at the airport. I stood on the hot concrete by the terminal in my white suit, and watched the plane tilt across the sky and approach the runway, its wings and propellers awash with sunlight. One wing lifted upward momentarily in the wind, then balanced again, and the wheels touched on the asphalt as smoothly as a sof
t slipper. The heat waves bounced off the fuselage, and the sun turned the front windows into mirrors exploding with light. At the end of the runway the pilot feathered one engine and taxied at an angle toward me, and I saw the Senator open the back door and wave one arm, his face smiling.
I walked to the plane, and the backdraft from the propeller blew the tail of my coat over my shoulders. The Senator was grinning in the roar, and he extended his hand and helped me into the compartment. I pulled the door shut after me, locked the handle down, and the plane began to taxi out on the main runway again. The Senator was dressed in slacks, a Hawaiian sports shirt, and calfskin loafers. There was fresh tan on his face and a few freckles along the hairline of his white, crew-cropped head. In the opposite seat, with a drink resting on his crossed knee, was a man I didn’t know, although I sensed at the time that I probably would never forget him. He wore a charcoal business suit, a silk shirt with cuff links, and a gray tie, and his face was pale and expressionless behind his sunglasses. The mouth was small and compressed, as though he never spoke except with a type of quiet finality, and his manicured, half-moon fingernails and confident reserve reminded me of a very successful corporate executive, but there was something about the hue of his skin and the trace of talcum powder on his neck that darkened the image.
“Hack, this is John Williams, an old friend from Los Angeles,” the Senator said.
We shook hands, and I felt the coldness in his palm from the highball glass.
“How do you do,” he said. Only the mouth moved when he spoke. The face remained as immobile as plastic. He pushed his smoky, metallic hair back on one temple with his fingertips.
The plane gained speed, the engines roaring faster, then it lifted off the runway, and I felt the weightless, empty feeling of dropping unexpectedly in an elevator as the countryside spread out below us and the blocks of neat houses and rows of trees seemed to shrink away into the earth.
John Williams, I thought. The name. Where?
“What happened to your head?” the Senator said. “I hope you haven’t run into another tennis player with bad aim.”
“A minor car accident.” You shithead, I thought.
“Well, John, this man is going to be the youngest congressman from the state in November.”
Williams nodded and took a sip from his drink. I tried to see his eyes through his sunglasses. John Williams, where did I see the name?
“John’s not from Texas, but he’s a good friend to the party.”
“I see,” I said.
“I’ve had him at the ranch for a few days of shooting. I’m trying to convince him that the only place to build industry today is in the Southwest.”
“A beautiful state,” Williams said. His face was turned to me, but it was impossible to read his meaning or intention.
“Do you mind if I have a drink?” I said.
“I’m sorry, Hack. I usually don’t drink this early myself, and I forget that other people don’t have my same Baptist instincts.” The Senator opened the cabinet door to the bar and folded out a small table from the wall. He picked up three cubes from the ice bucket with the tongs and dropped them into a tall glass and poured in a shot of bourbon.
“I was glad to see you at the airport,” he said. “I thought maybe we were too forceful last Sunday in getting you to come along.”
“Oh, I keep my promises, Senator.”