Tenderness, page 23
Today, as he walked to Hoover’s house in the spring sunshine, it was as if the whole world had been rinsed clean. If he was no longer a part of it, he could at least look on and lift his face to the day.
He’d had the taxi drop him off two streets away so he could stretch his legs and shake off his nerves. His eczema had flared up again, and the sores on his hands oozed and bled. Sensitive, his mother used to say to him as he took his pictures or stared at the images in her magazines. She’d look at him as if he were a species of male she’d never come across before. You’re sensitive.
His shoe stuck to the sidewalk. Bubble-gum. Of all days. He seated himself on the curb and scraped with a rock at the pink goo on his sole, with his holster digging into his thigh. He was sweaty already – the only man in a twice-buttoned suit jacket on a hot Friday in early June.
He felt conspicuous, even with his fedora and the prop of the businessman’s briefcase. He wasn’t anyone’s father on his way to work or anyone’s husband kissing his wife goodbye at the door. Children passed him on their way to school: the girls in skirts and white knee-socks; the boys with cow-licks, pin-on ties, and teeth they hadn’t grown into.
Hoover, legend had it, had had his own teeth removed as a young man and replaced with ‘perfect’ dentures. Even so, he never smiled for Bureau photos or press photos, not even the time he arranged to have his picture taken with Shirley Temple at the height of her Heidi fame. It was said he kept that shot in a gilt frame on his desk, in the place where other men displayed photos of their children and wives.
The more weight Hoover put on, the jowlier his face grew, and the harder he worked to impersonate the no-nonsense demeanor of a Bureau G-man. On rare occasions, his features seemed to soften into what Hoover must have imagined was a ‘benign’ or paternal expression, but it never convinced. You only had to look at the eyes. The brain behind them was always whirring, calculating and grinding, and the eyes photographed as flat as the caps on a strip – black pops of gunpowder ready to go off.
A year ago, on the day everything went wrong, Harding had only just been promoted to the Washington Field Office from the New York F.O. His new rank was Supervisory Special Agent. He’d worked hard for twelve years to get there. He wasn’t a ‘natural’, not the way many agents were, but he was good with the gismos at least. New ones were always being rolled out by the Lab, and they required a knack.
He hadn’t been in Washington even a month when he was sent to the Mayflower Hotel by the local F.O.’s Special Agent in Charge, Howard Johnson. Harding was to deliver an analysis. That was the assignment. Hoover had been urgently waiting for it from the Lab. Easy. That’s what they told him. The hotel was on Connecticut Street.
Everyone in the W.F.O. knew that Hoover and Tolson, the Director and Associate Director, lunched together every day at noon at the Mayflower. They took a quiet table in a corner. The entire squad seemed to know their favorites on the menu. They each ordered the same, and it rarely changed. Cream of mushroom soup, with plenty of Saltines. Toasted turkey, bacon and cheese sandwiches stabbed with a pickle. Piping-hot coffee. Canned fruit cocktail for dessert. Hoover would send his back if he didn’t get a maraschino cherry in his bowl.
The first thing which struck Harding that lunchtime was that Tolson wasn’t sitting in the chair across from Hoover, as you’d expect, but next to him on the red banquette. That’s when Harding should have turned around and got the hell out of there. That’s when he should have realized the joke was on him. But he was stupid – eager to please, eager to make an impression, like some kid-trainee. When he saw Hoover smile at Tolson, he was foolish enough to take that as a sign that they were relaxed; that it was an acceptable time to interrupt.
He arrived at their table and reached for the analysis it was his honor to deliver. He might have been a waiter topping up their mugs of coffee. Neither felt the need to register his presence. Whoever he was, he was not significant. The hotel staff knew to keep members of the public away; they knew the drill. They had long enjoyed Hoover’s custom as well as his trust.
The two men continued their conversation in low tones, their heads close. Harding fiddled with his briefcase, flipping the central buckle and inserting the small key into each punch-latch before popping them. But nothing happened, dammit. Nothing. The latches didn’t pop. He hoisted the case, got the strap out of his way, and hit everything he could.
Only when he moved a little closer – close enough to smell the sickly steam coming off the mushroom soup – did he see it: the Director’s small, meaty hand clasping Tolson’s. Hoover was stroking the Associate Director’s hand lightly with his thumb.
Then he remembered – oh God, the relief – the case had false latches, and the key was a dummy. There was no standard compartment in the case, only the false bottom where he’d stowed the analysis, and the false bottom was opened by a release-button on the bottom of the case.
It was the latest in the Lab’s customized line of manufacture. There were umbrellas with gutted handles for cameras – not that he’d trialed one of those yet – plus pens with tiny bugs, shoes with hollow heels for message storage, and microphones stitched into ties. The new briefcase had the false bottom, plus a miniature camera in a side compartment, with a lens covered by a satchel-strap you had to lift free. They had a similar arrangement in purses for female agents, the few employed by the Bureau – for honey-traps, not standard work, not with Hoover in charge.
Harding had initially hoped to trial-run a wristwatch device that connected to a wire, which in turn ran up a man’s sleeve to a neat little reel-to-reel recorder. But when the Washington S.A.C., Howard Johnson, asked him to deliver the analysis, the briefcase he’d been trialing was ideal – beautiful leather, professional quality. Except, on the spot in the Mayflower, in front of the Director, Harding’s nerves had scrambled his brain.
Hoover had looked up, staring at him vaguely, almost dreamily. Then, as if a hypnotist somewhere had snapped his fingers, he blinked. His eyes were dark, with the dull luster of old coins, but he had thick black lashes that, in his boyhood, must have endeared him to mothers and childless women alike.
Harding felt hot rings of sweat breaking out under his arms. He hadn’t wanted to see those two clasped hands on the table. He’d only wanted to do his job, get noticed and get out of there. As he struggled to find the release, his brain was in free-fall. Then at last, the hidden compartment of the case opened. Thank Christ. He passed the Director the sealed report. ‘Sir,’ he said.
What he wanted to say was that he didn’t care. Didn’t give a damn. Live and let live. He was nobody, and their business was no business of his. To each his own. He believed that. Who was he to judge? He’d never judge anyone – not least because he never fit in anywhere himself.
But there was nothing that could be said.
Hoover leaned forward slowly, as if only the most minimal effort could be spared for the likes of Agent Mel Harding. With the same hand that had, an instant before, been stroking Tolson’s, he received the Manila envelope. He hardly glanced at Harding’s face. Instead, he looked past him, even through him. Then he picked up a thick wedge of Saltines.
Tolson reached for his glass of water. The ice cubes clinked. Hoover didn’t ask for Harding’s name, rank or Field Office. He scarcely paused in what he’d been saying to the Associate Director.
‘Dismissed,’ he said, as he broke the wedge of Saltines into his soup.
And Harding was, by the end of the day.
To Butte.
He’d been in Washington for a grand total of eighteen days. Now, he was to be the only agent in Butte, running a deadbeat office on his own – so small an operation, the Bureau had decided that it didn’t even require a Special Agent in Charge. With the transfer to Butte, he was simultaneously demoted to the rank of Senior Special Agent.
At the age of forty, after a dozen years with the Bureau – he’d started his training just after being de-mobbed from the army – after twelve years, it was a humiliation. The rank of Senior Special Agent might have been labeled ‘Senior Junior’. It existed to send that message out, stuck to your back like a high-school joke. It said to everyone in the Bureau that you were middle-aged and you hadn’t cut it.
* * *
—
Annie, the maid, opened the door and showed Harding through to the dining-room, where Hoover sat alone at a long dining table, spooning out the last of his hard-boiled egg from a porcelain egg-cup. Bits of shell were scattered over the place mat, and he had crumbs of yolk on his shirt. A pressed blue suit jacket hung on the chair behind him.
As Annie picked up his plate, she clicked her tongue maternally at the shell and abandoned toast crusts on the table. When she returned from the kitchen, she took the bib of Hoover’s linen napkin and brushed gently at his shirt while he smiled up to her, compliant as a small boy. Then she placed an orange, a blood orange, on a dessert plate in front of him, and his smile hardened with pleasure. For the first time, Harding saw the white-plastic gleam of the dentures.
Annie asked Harding if he’d like a coffee, but Hoover thanked her, ‘nothing more was required’, and could she slide the door closed on her way out?
The ritual dressing-down was about to begin. That’s what the breakfast slot in Hoover’s home was known for: ‘disciplinary action’ – in cases where witnesses weren’t wanted.
‘What’s wrong with your hands?’
‘A mild skin condition, sir.’ Harding stared straight ahead, at the wall above Hoover’s head, military-style.
‘It doesn’t look mild. It looks unclean. It looks like you’ve caught something off some whore’s—’ He paused, heard Annie departing the kitchen, and brushed toast crumbs from the tablecloth.
‘Does it hurt?’
Harding hadn’t expected a show of concern. ‘I have to watch it.’
‘Do you like the picture?’
He blinked. He hadn’t noticed any picture. The taxidermied creatures on the walls and their glass eyes had been enough to take in as Annie showed him through the living-room and into the dining-room.
The picture on the wall above Hoover’s head was, he now saw, a simple oil painting of what looked like a Swiss mountain village. Competent but amateur, he would have guessed. ‘Yes, sir. I do. It’s very nice.’
Hoover put down his egg-spoon. His smile was like lock-jaw. ‘It’s a Paint-by-Numbers. Eisenhower got a group of us doing them a few years ago. He paints, you know. He’s got a thing for it. He passed out some box-sets to select members of staff. He even put the results in a special exhibition in the White House.’ Hoover swiveled in his chair to take in his handiwork. ‘You know, I didn’t realize I was so good. I bet you didn’t guess I was the artist.’
‘No, sir, I didn’t.’
Hoover tipped his head, almost whimsically. ‘I like how pure everything looks, as if Heidi herself could just walk out of that church. See what I mean? There’s not even a goat or a cow to shit anywhere. No people. And it’s all so still. Almost frozen. I think I’d like Switzerland. Not the rest of Europe. It’s still a goddamn mess over there from the war. But Switzerland. That’s a good place, from what I hear. Tidy. Organized. Lots of nice scenery. Clean. Do you know what I have in here?’ He waved an arm to indicate his entire home. ‘Air-filtration. It electrocutes poisonous particles invisible to the eye.’
He reached into a drawer in the desk behind him and dropped Harding’s prize photo on the table.
‘Caught red-handed,’ Hoover said. His face was inscrutable; his voice toneless.
Only speak if asked a question.
Hoover leaned forward and tapped the picture – Mrs. Kennedy’s face, the book she carried – with his stubby finger. ‘Is that a fair summation?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is, sir.’ He felt sorry for her now. But what the hell had she been doing? She’d been at a hearing for a banned book – and now, he had to get out of Butte.
‘Yes, you say?’
‘Yes, sir. It was a big surprise to see her there that day. I suppose,’ he tried, ‘that she must really like that bo—’
Hoover picked up the orange on his plate and flung it at him. Harding caught it, just before it hit a lamp. ‘You,’ Hoover snarled. ‘Not her. We caught you red-handed. You informed on yourself, you dumb bastard.’
His neck went cold. ‘Sir?’
Hoover nodded to the blood orange in Harding’s hand. ‘Peel it.’
His fingers were clumsy. He couldn’t get the skin to peel. His newly clipped nails were too short. Then the skin of the orange broke at last, and juice started running like acid into his hand where the skin was raw and broken.
‘Eat.’ He watched Harding put a segment in his mouth. ‘It’s a nice and juicy one. Am I right?’
Harding broke off another segment. Red juice squirted over his starched white shirt. His hands dripped and the juice ran under his cuffs onto the broken skin of his inner wrists.
‘You were asked to photograph and tape the G.P.O. hearing in New York. You were asked to keep tabs on Barney Rosset and his filthy Commie bastard publishing pals. You weren’t asked to photograph the pretty, young wife of a senator of this country’s Congress.’
‘No, sir.’
The photo of Mrs. Kennedy’s startled, lovely face lay between them. He felt ashamed now, not that he’d failed to stick to specific orders, but that he’d shot her like prey. You could steal a soul with a camera, and he’d given hers to Hoover.
‘With this assignment, we gave you a chance to better yourself. We gave you a chance to watch Rosset. But you couldn’t simply follow orders. Did anyone ask you to think for yourself?’
‘No, sir.’ He’d fucked up. He’d be in Butte for another year at least. Maybe he’d never get out. Not only that, he was, more than ever before, in Hoover’s sights, and that was never a place anyone wanted to be.
Hoover tapped her face again.
‘Enjoy jerking off to her, did you?’
Harding swallowed a segment of orange, whole.
‘I asked you a question.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Why not?’ He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, with the air of a man who was about to enjoy a show. ‘What’s wrong with you, Harding? A pretty lady. A private photo…’ He let the word hang in the air.
The corners of Hoover’s mouth lifted. ‘I ask because it’s my job to know these things. It’s thanks to my unilateral efforts that faggots have been almost totally eliminated from government service. Whatever else they are – and don’t get me started on that – they’re “black-mailable”, and that’s nothing but a risk for our national security. I authorized the checks personally. The “Sex Deviates Program”. Ring a bell? Miss Gandy sent out memos to every department and F.O. Now, every day, we’re sent anonymous allegations, from colleagues, employees and neighbors, concerning the past and present of more people than we can keep up with. It’s been such a success, I’ve even rolled it out to places of so-called “higher” education and the law enforcement agencies. We’re having a good clean sweep of this country’s institutions. You wouldn’t want an allegation to turn up about you, would you, Harding? Not with that peeping-Tom camera of yours.’
Harding stared ahead at the dead Swiss village.
‘It’s better, for your sake, if I know what there is to know. So I’ll ask you again: what’s wrong with you?’
‘I’m fine, sir.’ He gripped the orange.
The Director pushed back his chair, put on his suit jacket, and walked over to Harding’s end of the table. ‘What do you do out there in Butte for kicks?’
He kept his voice neutral. ‘There’s nothing to do, sir.’
‘I suppose you have to make your own fun.’
Hoover moved to within inches of Harding, unbuttoned his employee’s jacket and removed the .38-caliber revolver from its holster. ‘So you jerk off over the Senator’s pretty wife, and you develop another nice clean print for us at HQ. Barney Rosset – as in Barney Rosset, the Person of Interest you were asked to watch – just too damn ugly, or what?’
‘I misunderstood, sir. I’m sorry. I thought she was a Person of Interest. I’d understood there was a Bureau-wide memorandum procedure for the compilation of background information on members of Congress and their families.’
Hoover pressed the mouth of the revolver against the fly of Harding’s trousers. Harding flinched.
Hoover glanced at the photo. His black eyes protruded. ‘What do you think Senator Kennedy would say if he knew we were tailing his wife?’
‘As I say, sir, she just appeared at the hearing. I wasn’t following her. I didn’t expect—’
‘He’d tell me to fire you. That’s what he’d say. Forget Butte. He’d want you sent to Timbuktu. Do you know who his father is? Joseph Kennedy Sr. A former ambassador to England, no less, and one who has bought himself more friends than even women in his time, which is saying something, believe me.’
‘I understand, Mr. Hoover.’
The Director looked past him – as if there were a mathematical puzzle hovering over Harding’s right shoulder – and, with his gun-free hand, he began to work a crumb out of his teeth. ‘What if young Mrs. Kennedy figured it out that day in New York? You watching her, the Bureau…’
‘I give you my word, sir. There was no way she could have. She didn’t notice me.’ A lie, or half-lie. She’d never remember him and that’s what mattered. ‘I—’
