Joe Steele

VII

When Lazar Kagan called Charlie to the White House, it might be anything. When Stas Mikoian wanted to meet with him, what came from that was more likely than not to be interesting. And when Vince Scriabin told him to get his tail down to the President’s residence, chances were Joe Steele was steamed at him.

Charlie knew why Joe Steele was steamed, too, though he figured he would do better to seem taken by surprise. So when the man they called the Hammer slammed his fist down on a copy of the New York Post from three days earlier and growled, “Have you seen this crap from your brother?”, Charlie just shook his head. Scriabin shoved the paper across his desk. “Well, look at it, then.”

It didn’t come right out and accuse Joe Steele of roasting marshmallows in the flames while Franklin Roosevelt sizzled. Then again, you didn’t need to be Lord Peter Wimsey to see what Mike was driving at.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Charlie said when he got done. “Mike is Mike, and I’m me. I didn’t have anything to do with this.” That was true, and then again it wasn’t. If Charlie hadn’t overheard Scriabin in that diner, and if he hadn’t told Mike about it, his brother wouldn’t have been able to invite the people who read his story to connect the dots.

Scriabin remained coldly furious. Like the man he worked for, he was scarier for not making a show of losing his temper. “I know you didn’t,” he said now. “You’d be sorry if you did.” Charlie gulped, and hoped it didn’t show. Scriabin went on, “Your brother had better think twice before he libels the President of the United States.”

“There’s no libel in this,” Charlie said.

“Saying things you know to be untrue, saying them with malice, is libel even when you say them about a public figure,” Scriabin insisted.

“There’s no libel,” Charlie said once more. “He quotes the arson inspector’s report. That says the fire might have been set or it might not. He says that Joe Steele was just about sure of the nomination after Roosevelt died. Both those things are true. But he doesn’t say anywhere that Joe Steele had anything to do with starting the fire.”

Vince Scriabin stared at him, pudgy face hard as a stone. “I know he is your brother. I make allowances for that. I know your own stories have been more fair and balanced toward this administration. I also make allowances for that. But if your brother writes another piece that is so monumentally prejudiced against the President and everything he’s working to accomplish, there will be no allowances left to make. Do you understand me?”

“I hear you,” Charlie answered.

“All right,” Scriabin said. “Make sure your brother understands me, too. Have you got that?”

“Oh, yes.” Charlie nodded. “You’re coming in loud and clear.”

“Good.” Vince Scriabin spat the word out. “I do not want anyone to have any doubts whatsoever about how we view this. . trash. Now get the hell out of here.”

Charlie made his exit. As if he were walking out of a police station, he was glad he could make his exit. The back of his shirt was wet with sweat, and it hadn’t sprung from Washington humidity. He’d never had that narrow-escape feeling walking out of the White House before. He hoped to heaven he never did again.

The sun wasn’t over the yardarm yet. Charlie didn’t give a damn. He ducked into the nearest bar and ordered himself a double bourbon. If anything would smooth him out of his jitters, that ought to do it.

“There you go, sonny,” said the white-haired man two stools down from him. “Two or three more of those and you’ll be a man before your mother.”

By the way he talked and by the empty glasses on the bar in front of him, he’d already had at least two or three more. What the hell business is it of yours? Charlie started to ask. But then he recognized the other barfly. “Mr. Vice President!” he exclaimed.

John Nance Garner nodded. “You got me, sonny,” he said, the bourbon only thickening his Texas drawl. “And a hell of a git you got. I was Speaker of the House before Joe Steele tapped me. Remember? Speaker! That was a real job, by Jesus! Not like this one.” He nodded to the bartender. “Fill me up again, Roy.”

“Comin’ up, Cactus Jack.” The colored man made him another tall bourbon. John L. Lewis had called Garner a poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man. Charlie didn’t know about the other attributes, but drink whiskey Garner could.

“What’s wrong with being Vice President?” Charlie asked. “You’re a heartbeat away from the White House. That’s what everybody says-a heartbeat away.”

“A heartbeat away, and further’n the moon,” Garner said. “Thing with being Vice President is, you don’t do anything. You sit there an’ grow moss, like I’m doin’ here. Sure got nothin’ better to do. I tell you, bein’ Vice President ain’t worth a bucket of warm piss.”

“What would you do if you were President? How do you like the job Joe Steele is doing?” Charlie hadn’t expected to run into Garner, but he’d take advantage of it now that he had.

The Vice President’s eyes were narrow to begin with. They gimleted more now. “You won’t get me to say anything bad about him, kiddo,” he replied. “I may be drunk, but I ain’t that drunk-or that stupid. He’s a man you don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”

“Really? I never would have guessed,” Charlie said, deadpan.

For a second, Garner took that literally. Then he chuckled and coughed, shifting all the smoker’s phlegm in his chest. “That’s right. You’re one of those reporter bastards. You know all about Joe Steele, or you reckon you do.” He chuckled and coughed some more. The horrible sound made Charlie want to swear off cigarettes for life. “Yeah, you reckon you do-but you’ll find out.”

* * *

The proceedings against the Supreme Court Four opened that autumn. They opened suddenly, in fact, before a military tribunal, only a few days after J. Edgar Hoover-that man again! — announced an arrest in the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby more than two years earlier. Charlie wondered if the timing of the two events was a coincidence. A cynical newspaperman? Him? Even he laughed at himself.

He wondered about the fellow J. Edgar Hoover arrested, too. Bruno Hauptmann was a German in the USA illegally. He had a criminal record back in the Vaterland. Considering how Joe Steele felt about Adolf Hitler, couldn’t he be a sucker who got caught in a net way bigger than he was?

And, considering that the four justices were accused of plotting with the Nazis, couldn’t arresting a German for the Lindbergh kidnapping be set up to show that you couldn’t trust a kraut no matter what-and that you couldn’t trust any Americans who had much to do with krauts? Again, Charlie didn’t know about that. He couldn’t prove it. But he did some more wondering.

He did that wondering very quietly, either by himself or with Esther. None of it got into the bull sessions that political reporters had among themselves or with the big wheels they covered. Not even liberal doses of bourbon made his tongue slip. He noticed he might not be the only one who wasn’t saying everything he might have had on his mind. It was a careful time. Everybody seemed to do his best to walk on eggshells without breaking them.

Charlie also didn’t do any wondering that Mike could hear or read. Mike, of course, could get ideas on his own, but Charlie didn’t want to give him any. A small but noisy segment of the press hated Joe Steele and everything he did. To those folks, Mike was a hero, a man who’d uncovered secrets and pulled the blankets away from dark plots.

Joe Steele’s backers tagged Mike for a hateful, lying skunk. Anyone would think they’d listened to Vince Scriabin, or something. And the vast majority of Americans paid no attention to the name of Mike Sullivan. Times were still tough. They tried to get by from one day to the next, and didn’t worry about anything much past Tuesday’s supper or the month’s rent.

The Attorney General was a tough-talking Polack prosecutor from Chicago named Andy Wyszynski. He wasn’t leery of taking on spectacular cases. He’d been part of the legal team that tried to convict Belva Gaertner when she shot her lover. Belva not only walked, but one of the reporters wrote a hit play about her. Wyszynski’s comment after the verdict was, “Juries are full of jerks.”

From everything Charlie had seen, Wyszynski wasn’t wrong, even if the crack didn’t endear him to the sob sisters. He wasn’t the endearing sort. A big, fleshy man, he had a face like a clenched fist. Like Vince Scriabin and like Joe Steele himself, he wasn’t a man you wanted mad at you.

He’d learned a thing or three from that Roaring Twenties trial. Then, the prosecution let the defense set the agenda. They thought they had an open-and-shut case. As a matter of fact, they did, but Belva’s lawyer wouldn’t let them shut it.

This time, Wyszynski rolled out the heavy artillery before the military judges were chosen. He showed off for the newspapers. He had all kinds of things to show off, too. Wires back and forth between Berlin and Washington. Letters in German on swastika stationery with generals’ illegible signatures. Stacks of swastika-bedizened Reichsmarks, some still in bank wrappers with German writing in Gothic letters on them. Bank transactions showing Reichsmarks converted into dollars. All kinds of good stuff.

Like the rest of the Washington press corps, Charlie wrote stories about the goodies Wyszynski showed off. Among themselves, the reporters were more skeptical. “In a real trial, a lot of that shit wouldn’t even get admitted,” said one who’d done a lot of crime stories. “In this military tribunal thing, though, who the hell knows?”

“How come it isn’t a real trial?” another man asked. “On account of they’re scared they’d lose it if it was one?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Charlie said. “They tried treason cases with military tribunals during the Civil War, so they’ve got some precedent.”

The other reporter looked at him. “You’d know that stuff. You’re the teacher’s pet, right? It’s your bad, bad brother who keeps getting paddled.”

“Hey, fuck you, Bill,” Charlie said. “You think I’m the teacher’s pet, we can step outside and talk about it.”

Bill started to get up from his barstool. Another reporter put a hand on his arm. “Take it easy. Charlie’s okay.”

“Nobody who has anything good to say about that lying so-and-so in the White House is okay, you ask me,” Bill said.

“Well, who asked you? Sit back down and have another drink. You sound like you could use one.”

Having another drink struck Charlie as a good idea, too. It often did. After he got half of it down, he said, “Even if it is a military tribunal, I think it’ll be interesting. They’ll have to let the press in. If they let the press in, they’ll have to give the justices lawyers and let ’em speak their piece. And when they do that, all bets are off. Those guys were all lawyers themselves before they were judges. Probably fifty-fifty they can talk their way out of everything.”

“You say that?” Bill sounded as if he didn’t trust his ears.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Charlie returned.

“’Cause. . Ah, shit. Maybe I had you wrong.”

“This round’s on me, boys!” Charlie sang out. People whooped and pounded him on the back. He went on, “I’ll do the same thing next time Bill admits he’s wrong, too. That oughta be-oh, I dunno, about 1947. Or 1948.”

“Up yours, Sullivan,” Bill said. But he let Charlie buy him a drink.

* * *

You could hold a military tribunal anywhere. Military courts, by the nature of things, had to be portable. Andy Wyszynski-or perhaps Joe Steele-chose to hold this one in the lobby of the District Court Building on Indiana Avenue. The lobby gave reporters and photographers and newsreel cameramen plenty of room to work. Sure enough, this proceeding would get as much publicity as the government could give it.

In front of the District Court Building’s somewhat beat-up classical façade stood a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Charlie pointed to it on the way in. “Betcha that statue’s another reason they’re trying the justices here. Remember how Joe Steele went on and on about Lincoln and treason and habeas corpus-I mean, no habeas corpus-during the Civil War?”

“Sure do.” Louie Pappas nodded. “Betcha you’re right.” The dead cigar in the photographer’s mouth twitched every time he talked.

Up the broad flight of stairs they went. The walls of the lobby were of tan plaster. The floor was marble. The officers of the tribunal had already taken their places behind a table on a dais. The chairman was a Navy officer. A neat sign announced his name: CAPTAIN SPRUANCE. The other three military judges belonged to the Army: Colonel Marshall, Major Bradley, and Major Eisenhower. Each man had a microphone in front of his place, no doubt for the benefit of the newsreels.

Attorney General Wyszynski sat at the prosecutors’ table, drinking coffee and talking in a low voice with an aide. Two lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union muttered to each other at the defense table. One looked quite snappy; the other wore the loudest checked suit Charlie’d ever seen. Of the Supreme Court Four there was as yet no sign.

More reporters and photographers filed in to fill their assigned sections. “We will begin at ten o’clock sharp,” Captain Spruance said, his voice soft even with a mike. He looked more like a minister or a professor than a military man. Colonel Marshall had that professorial look, too. Spruance went on, “No one from the press will be admitted after that. And we must have silence from the observers. Anyone creating a disturbance will be ejected and will not be allowed to return for the duration of the proceeding.”

Military policemen, shore patrolmen, and U.S. marshals from the Justice Department stood ready to do whatever he told them to do. Charlie intended to keep his trap shut. He wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody raised a ruckus, though.

At ten o’clock on the dot, Captain Spruance said, “Let the tribunal be sealed.” The doors were closed and locked. A late-arriving reporter banged on them in vain. Through the banging, Spruance continued, “Let the accused be brought before the tribunal.”

He looked to the left. Charlie’s gaze, and everyone else’s, followed his. A door opened. The newsreel cameras swung towards it. This would be the first time anyone but their jailers had set eyes on the Supreme Court Four since their spectacular arrest.

Out they came, Justices McReynolds, Butler, Sutherland, and Van Deventer. They all wore suits of good cut and somber gray or blue or black wool. Charlie thought they looked thinner than they had when they were taken away, but he wasn’t sure. They’d worn robes then, which might have expanded their outline. He was pretty sure they were paler than they had been. Wherever Joe Steele had stowed them, they hadn’t got to sunbathe there. He saw no lumps or bruises that might have shown rough treatment, though.

MPs with Tommy guns shepherded the accused men to their table. As they sat, the ACLU lawyer in the horrible clothes whispered something to Justice McReynolds. Whatever answer he got, it made him do a double take Harpo Marx would have been proud of. He whispered again.

After a moment, Captain Spruance said, “The accused will rise.” The men obeyed. “State your names for the record,” he told them.

“James McReynolds.”

“Pierce Butler.”

“Associate Justice George Sutherland.”

“Willis Van Deventer.”

To the chief petty officer transcribing the testimony, Spruance said, “Yeoman, you will disregard the title claimed by the accused, Sutherland.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the yeoman replied.

“Be seated,” Spruance told the Supreme Court Four. They sat once more. He went on, “You are all accused of treason against the United States, of collusion with a foreign power, and of perverting your high office to the detriment of the American people. Mr. McReynolds, how say you to these charges?”

“May it please your Honor-” Justice McReynolds began.

Captain Spruance held up a hand. “This is a military proceeding, not a court of law in the strict sense of the words. You will address me as sir.”

“Yes, sir.” McReynolds licked his lips, then went on with no expression in his voice: “May it please you, sir, I wish to plead guilty and to throw myself on the mercy of the court-uh, the tribunal.”

Both ACLU lawyers sprang into the air as if they’d just sat on long, sharp tacks. Several reporters and cameramen exclaimed as well. Charlie wouldn’t have sworn that he wasn’t one of them. Of all the things he and everybody else had looked for, a guilty plea was the last one. Or maybe somebody had looked for it-at the prosecutors’ table, Attorney General Wyszynski leaned back in his chair and looked like a cat blowing a couple of feathers off its nose.

Spruance might not have presided over a court of law per se, but they’d issued him a gavel anyhow. He used it vigorously. “We will have order here,” he said. “Remember my earlier warning. Disruptive persons will be ejected.” Still, he made no move to signal to his enforcers.

“Sir,” said the ACLU man in the dreadful suit, “I object to this so-called confession. It’s obviously coerced, and-”

“It’s no such thing.” Andy Wyszynski spoke for the first time. He sounded amused, and didn’t bother leaning forward.

Bang! Spruance used the gavel again. “That will be enough of that from both of you. We can get to the bottom of this. Mr. McReynolds, are you admitting your guilt of your own free will?”

McReynolds licked his lips again. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

“Has anyone coerced you into doing so?”

“No, sir,” McReynolds said.

“After your arrest, have you received adequate treatment, given the understanding that incarceration is not and cannot be a rest cure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well.” Spruance turned to the yeoman. “You will record that Mr. McReynolds has admitted his guilt to the charges raised against him, has done so freely and without coercion, has been treated acceptably while imprisoned, and has asked mercy of the tribunal.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The yeoman’s pencil flashed across the page.

“All right, then.” Captain Spruance sounded satisfied with the way things were going, if not exactly pleased. Charlie got the feeling Spruance seldom sounded pleased about anything. The Navy four-striper looked back to the table where the Supreme Court Four sat. “Mr. Butler, how say you to these charges?”

Pierce Butler took a deep breath. “Sir, I plead guilty and throw myself on the tribunal’s mercy.”

Again, the defense lawyers tried to object. Again, Captain Spruance overrode them. Again, he asked the justice whether his confession was voluntary and whether he’d been treated all right while behind bars. Like McReynolds, Butler affirmed that it was and that he had been. Attorney General Wyszynski looked even more smug than he had before.

Spruance asked Justice Sutherland and Justice Van Deventer how they answered the charges leveled against them. Each in turn confessed his guilt and begged the tribunal for mercy. Each said he confessed of his own free will and that he hadn’t been mistreated since his arrest. The yeoman recorded the guilty pleas one by one.

The ACLU lawyer with the bad taste in clothes said, “Sir, I find these confessions utterly unbelievable.”

“Do you?” Spruance said. “The men deny coercion. By their appearance, they have not been abused. I find myself compelled to credit them.” He pointed to the reporters and to the newsreel cameras. “The American people will see them soon enough. I think their view of the matter will accord with mine, Mr. Levine.”

“It’s Le-veen, sir, not Le-vine,” the lawyer said.

“Pardon me.” Spruance tossed him the tiny victory, then went on to more important things: “Mr. McReynolds, would you care to explain to the tribunal why you chose to betray your country and your oath? You are not obliged to do so, but you may if you desire to. Perhaps you will offer mitigating circumstances.”

“Thank you, sir,” McReynolds said. “Yes, I would like to speak. We did what we did because we felt we had to stop Joe Steele at any cost and wreck everything he was doing. We thought-we think-Joe Steele is the American Trotsky.”

Butler, Sutherland, and Van Deventer nodded almost in unison. McReynolds’ words caused a fresh stir and buzz among the onlookers. Captain Spruance gaveled it down. Charlie had all he could do to keep from giggling. If the Supreme Court Four really believed that, they were a lot dumber than he’d given them credit for. Joe Steele hated Trotsky even more than he hated Hitler. His beef with Hitler was political. With Trotsky, it was personal. If Joe Steele could have bashed out the boss Red’s brains with an ice axe, Charlie was convinced he would have done it.

Spruance might have been talking about the weather when he asked, “So you felt you had to stop him by any means necessary, whether legitimate or illegitimate?”

“Yes, sir,” McReynolds repeated. “We could see that his programs were going to build up the country. He would get reelected, and reelected, and reelected again. He would be able to set up a tyranny over the United States.”

“And so you conspired with a foreign tyrant against him?”

“Yes, sir. We wanted to keep the United States a democracy no matter what.” If James McReynolds tried to sound proud of himself, he could have done better.

Justice Sutherland did do pride better. “We weren’t the only ones, either,” he put in, as smoothly as if responding to a cue.

“I beg your pardon?” Captain Spruance said.

“We weren’t the only ones,” Sutherland said once more. “Plenty of good, loyal Americans helped us try to put Joe Steele’s head on the wall.”

“Good, loyal Americans, you say?” Spruance rubbed his impeccably shaved chin. “Will you name those good, loyal Americans for me?” He didn’t sound like someone putting quotation marks around the phrase. He said it the same way Sutherland had.

“Yes, sir,” said the justice-ex-justice now, Charlie supposed-and confessed traitor. Levine and the other ACLU lawyer tried to stop him. He waved them away. Charlie heard him say, “What difference does it make now?” He wasn’t sure the newsreel recordings would pick that up.

“Will you name them?” Spruance asked once more when Sutherland didn’t go on right away.

“Yes, sir. One was Senator Long, from Louisiana. Another was Father Coughlin.”

That loosed a hawk, or a whole flock of hawks, among the pigeons. Captain Spruance had to rap loudly for order. It didn’t help much. Huey Long had been sniping at Joe Steele ever since Steele got the nomination the Kingfish wanted. Father Coughlin was a radio preacher from Michigan. Politically, he stood a little to the right of Attila the Hun, but millions of people listened to him. You could see how he might like der Führer better than the President.

“You’ve taken that down?” Spruance asked the yeoman.

“Yes, sir, I have.” The CPO looked and sounded a little flabbergasted himself.

“I’m sure that will be the subject of further investigation,” Spruance said. “I now declare a recess until two o’clock this afternoon so that the gentlemen of the press can file their stories and eat and so the members of this tribunal can consider the fate of the four men sitting at the defendants’ table.” Down came the gavel one more time.

Charlie sprinted for a telephone booth. As soon as someone picked up the other end of the line, he started dictating. Half a dozen other men in cheap suits and fedoras were doing the same thing along the bank of phones. The doors for most of the booths were open. That let Charlie hear how the rest of the reporters, like him, sounded more coherent and better organized than they did in ordinary conversation. They’d all had to do this before, a great many times. Like writing, it was a skill that improved with practice.

When Charlie stopped shoving in nickels and hung up, two guys behind him got into a wrestling match over who’d use the phone next. He grabbed Louie and headed for the cafeteria in the basement. He’d eaten there only once before. As soon as he bit into his turkey sandwich, he remembered why.

Louie’d got roast beef, and didn’t look any happier with it. “Holy Jesus, Charlie!” he said with his mouth full. “I mean, holy jumping Jesus!” He swallowed heroically.

“That’s about the size of it,” Charlie agreed.

“They confessed,” the photographer said. “I mean, they confessed. I knew they’d tell Joe Steele to piss up a rope. I knew it. Only they didn’t.”

“They sure didn’t. They fingered some other big shots who can’t stand him, either.” Charlie kept eating the sandwich even if it was lousy. “And they didn’t look like J. Edgar Hoover was giving ’em the third degree. They just decided to sing.”

“Like canaries.” Louie lowered his voice: “You believe ’em? You believe all that treason malarkey’s legit?”

“I believe anybody who sets out to prove it isn’t will have a tough time doing it unless the justices take back their confessions,” Charlie said.

Louie chewed on that, literally and metaphorically. Then he nodded. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it. I bet Father Coughlin’s spitting rivets right now.” Well, he might have said spitting.

Charlie didn’t get such a good seat when the tribunal reconvened. Other reporters had either eaten faster or skipped lunch. He’d made it to a phone in a hurry. He wouldn’t complain about this.

At two o’clock straight up, Captain Spruance gaveled the proceedings back into session. “We have reached a decision in this case,” he said. “Are the defendants ready to hear it?”

If any of the four Associate Justices wasn’t ready, he didn’t say so.

“Very well,” Spruance continued. “Because of their confessions earlier today and because of the evidence against them, evidence they did not seek to contest, we find them guilty of the crime of treason against the United States of America.” He turned to the Army officers sitting at his left hand. “Is that not our unanimous decision, gentlemen?”

“It is,” chorused Colonel Marshall, Major Bradley, and Major Eisenhower.

“Furthermore,” Spruance said, “we sentence the defendants to death, the sentence to be carried out by firing squad.” Willis Van Deventer slumped in his seat. The other three sat unmoving. Captain Spruance looked at the other officers again. “Is that not our unanimous decision, gentlemen?”

“It is,” they said together.

Levine bounced to his feet. “This is a kangaroo court, nothing else but! We’ll appeal this outrageous verdict!”

“Who to? The Supreme Court?” Over at the prosecutors’ table, Andy Wyszynski went into gales of laughter. The ACLU lawyer stared at him, popeyed. Wyszynski rubbed it in some more: “Or maybe you’ll appeal to the President?” Oh, how he laughed!

He laughed until Captain Spruance brought down the gavel. “Mr. Attorney General, your display is unseemly.”

“Sorry, sir.” Wyszynski didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t look sorry, either. But he did stop openly gloating.

Soldiers, sailors, and U.S. marshals took the convicted traitors away. The reporters scrambled to file their new stories. Charlie wondered how many late editions would sport a one-word headline: DEATH!

He wondered some other things, too. But that didn’t matter, or not very much. If the accused men admitted that they’d done what they were accused of, and if you couldn’t prove they’d been forced to admit it, what could anybody do? Not much, not that Charlie could see. And questions without good answers seemed all too much like questions better left unasked.

* * *

“Take it easy, Mike.” Stella sounded scared. “You’ll blow a gasket if you don’t relax.”

“Somebody needs to blow a gasket, by God,” Mike said savagely. “They were railroaded. They must’ve been railroaded-nobody in his right mind would confess to anything like that. I bet they got plenty of rubber hoses and castor oil and water up the nose. You don’t need to leave marks to hurt somebody so bad he’ll say anything you want. Ask Mussolini. . uh, no offense.”

Stella Morandini said something incandescent about il Duce in the language she’d learned at her mother’s knee. Then she went back to English: “But you know, even here in the Village a lot of people think the Supreme Court Four are guilty as sin.”

Mike did know that. It left him depressed, if not neurotic. “You know what it proves?” he said.

“What?” Stella asked, as she knew she should.

“It proves a lot of people are goddamn imbeciles, that’s what.” Mike made as if to tear out his hair. “Ahh. .! What I really need to do is go on a six-day bender, stay so pickled I can’t even remember all the different ways this country’s going to the dogs.” He started for the kitchen to see what he had in the way of booze. In his apartment, nothing was more than a few steps from anything else.

“Wait,” Stella said.

“How come? What could be better than getting smashed?”

He didn’t think she’d have an answer for that, but she started taking off her clothes. He paused to reconsider. Making love wouldn’t give him six days of forgetfulness, but it also wouldn’t leave him wishing he were dead afterwards. In his haste to join her, he popped a button off his shirt.

His bed was of the Murphy persuasion. Instead of shoving a chair and an end table out of the way to use it, they made do with the sofa. Still straddling him in the afterglow, her face on his shoulder, she asked, “Happier now?”

“Some ways, sure.” He patted her behind. “Others, not so much. The country’s still a mess.”

“What can you do about it?”

“I’ve been doing what I can-and look how far it’s got me,” he answered. “What happened today, that makes me want to go out in the streets and start throwing bombs at police stations. Then they’ll hang a treason rap on me, too.”

“I don’t think I’ll let you have your pants back,” Stella said seriously. “You can’t go out and throw bombs without pants.”

“You’re right. Somebody would arrest me.” Mike laughed. It was either laugh or push Stella off him and go pound his head against the wall. The noise from that would make the neighbors complain. Besides, Stella was far and away the best thing he had going for him, and she had been for a while. Wasn’t it about time he figured out what he needed to do about that? “Hon,” he said, “you want to marry me?”

Her eyes widened. “What brought that on?”

“A rush of brains to the head, I hope. Do you?”

“Sure,” she said. “My mother’s gonna fall over, you know. She was sure you wouldn’t ever ask me. She figured you were just using me to have fun. ‘He’s a man,’ she says, ‘and you know the only thing men want.’”

“I’ve never just used you to have fun, and that isn’t the only thing I want you for,” Mike said. Then he spoiled his foursquare stand for virtue by patting her again. “It’s pretty darn nice, though, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t be in this compromising position if I didn’t think so.”

“You didn’t compromise, sweetie. You cooperated. There’s a difference.”

“So what do we do once we tie the knot? Do we live happily ever after, like in the fairy tales?”

“We live as happily ever after as Joe Steele will let us,” Mike said. Stella poked him in the ribs. He supposed he deserved it, but he hadn’t been kidding even so.