I lit my cigar and stared into the Senator’s face.
“What did Airman First Class Dixon have to say?” I said.
“I don’t believe we have to talk about all of it here,” he said.
“I think you should, Senator. I imagine that Lester’s deposition was very expensive.”
“Two men from your shack were executed after they were informed upon.” He raised his eyes into my face and tried to hold them there, but I stared back hard at him and he took a drink from his glass.
“Did he tell you how it was done?” I said.
“I never met him.”
“He’s an interesting person. I helped send him to prison for five years.”
“The statement is twenty pages long, and it’s witnessed by two attorneys,” he said. “It’s been compared for accuracy with the transcript from his court-martial, and I don’t think you’ll be able to contest what he says about your complicity in the deaths of two defenseless men.”
“The telephone is in the hall, Senator. Next to it is a list of numbers, one of which is The Austin American. No, instead finish your drink and let Verisa get the city desk for you.”
“It will be done more subtly than that. Possibly a leak from someone on the state committee, a small rumor at first, and then a reporter will be given the whole thing.”
“You probably have ways I’ve never dreamed about.”
“That’s true, but the outcome will be the same in this case.”
“Then I guess we can all say good day to each other.”
“No, there’s one more thing,” he said, and his eyes took on the same expression they had before he drove the tennis ball into my nose. “Right now you’re enjoying your virtue. With an impetuous decision you’ve become a Spartan lying on his shield, and I’m sure you’ll need this image for yourself during the next few weeks. But I want to correct a couple of your ideas about integrity in political office. Negotiation and compromise are part of any politician’s career, and your father learned that lesson his first term in Congress.”
“What do you mean?”
“He accepted a fifteen-thousand-dollar contribution to sponsor the sale of public land to a wildcat company in Dallas. The land sold for fifty dollars an acre.”
“Bailey, do you want to tell these men to get out, or you want to wait on me?”
He looked down at the bar, his forehead white.
“Bailey,” I said.
The balding spot on his head was perspiring, and I could see the raised veins in the back of his hands.
“Just look at me,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Hack. I didn’t know they were going to do this.”
“Then you tell them to get out.”
He leaned on his arms, his face still turned downward, and I felt my head begin to grow light, as though there were no oxygen in my blood.
“Goddamn it, you’re not going to bring these men into my home to do this, and then stare at the bar,” I said.
“He was going to lose the ranch, Hack. He knew heart disease was killing him, and he was afraid he’d die and leave us nothing.”
The rain blew against the windows, and I could hear the oak branches sweeping heavily back and forth on the roof. Outside, the light was gray in the trees, and the stripped leaves stuck wetly against the trunks. My dead cigar felt like a stick between my fingers.
“You and this man will leave now, Senator,” I said.
“Thank you for the drink, Mr. Holland,” Williams said, and set his glass on the bar. “You have a nice home here.”