Advise and Consent (9 page)

“They’ll be here,” Dolly said, “including K.K.”

“Hal Fry saw him this morning at the UN,” Senator Munson reported. “He called to tell me K.K. is also playing hard to get.”

“Well, darling, Tashikov will be here and maybe he’ll say what he thinks.”

“Yeah,” Bob Munson said dryly. “I’m sure of it.”

“Bob,” Dolly said seriously, “are you entirely happy about this?”

“It’s my job to be happy about it,” Senator Munson said. “How else can I feel?”

“I knew it. If Claude and Raoul are against him and K.K. quibbles and Tashikov smiles, I’m going to be scared.”

“So am I,” Bob Munson said, “assuming Tashikov would be so indiscreet as to smile, which I doubt. Anyway, we’ll just have to see.”

“Well, you let me know what I can do to help,” Dolly said; then her tone changed. “How’s your sense of the ridiculous?”

Bob Munson grinned. “I won’t know till midnight, I suspect, and then if I’ve mislaid it somewhere I’ll have to come through the back door in blackface, I suppose, to avoid comment.”

“Why don’t you make an honest woman of me and then you can forget comment?” Dolly asked.

“Oh, comment’s all part of the game in my business,” Senator Munson said.

“Now, darling,” Dolly told him, “don’t be like that. Just don’t be like that. It isn’t fair.”

“I’m trying to be fair,” Bob Munson said. “I said I’d wear blackface.”

“Damn you anyway, darling,” Dolly said lightly. “I’ll see you tonight, and I don’t care about your sense of the ridiculous after all. I’m sorry I asked.”

“
I’m
not,” Bob Munson said. “I would have been devastated if you hadn’t.”

“Oh, damn, damn, damn,
damn
,” Dolly said. “I refuse to talk to you any longer.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” Bob Munson said with a chuckle. “Somewhere among the three hundred.”

“Well, don’t try the back door,” she told him. “It will be locked, blackface or no blackface.”

“I love you too,” Senator Munson said. “Don’t slip on a French pastry.”

“Go to hell,” one of Washington’s most prominent hostesses advised him. “Just go on and go.”

And that, the Senator thought with amusement, was why life in Washington had become considerably more interesting recently. A couple of months ago when he had stayed overnight for the first time at Vagaries he had made some teasing comment about it all being rather ridiculous anyway, fifty-seven and forty-three, and Dolly had promptly given them their catchword.

“Darling,” she had said firmly, “You know as well as I do that the first thing people have to forget is their sense of the ridiculous. Otherwise nobody could ever do
anything
.”

Since then, Bob Munson reflected, the sense of the ridiculous had not intruded overmuch, even if its absence had not automatically produced an early rush for the altar and that “most fashionable Washington wedding of the year” that Dolly made no bones about wanting. He suspected it would come in due time, but he wasn’t in any great hurry at the moment.

The two people connected with official Washington who had absolutely no thoughts whatsoever about the Leffingwell nomination this morning were walking down Connecticut Avenue window-shopping arm in arm.

“You know,” Crystal Danta said, “I believe we can do the dining room in blue.”

“Suppose I like black?” Hal Knox suggested. She laughed.

“That’s what my father tells me about your father,” she said. “Stubborn and contrary.”

“That’s just contrary,” Orrin Knox’s son said. “I haven’t begun to be stubborn yet. You’ll find out.”

“I will, will I?” Crystal said speculatively. “I might tell you the Dantas have a long family tradition, too. I wouldn’t push my luck, if I were you.”

“I have so much,” Hal said.

“You do?” Crystal asked.

“I have you, haven’t I?” he said with a grin.

“You,” she said placidly, “are so sweet. Let’s go into Sloan’s and spend a million dollars.”

“Good,” Hal said. “I just happen to have it on me.”

“Bob,” Lafe Smith said earnestly, “I don’t think the Midwest is going to go for this. I had breakfast with one of my county chairmen and the old boy was fierce. I’ve never seen him so upset.”

“How do you feel about it?” Senator Munson asked. His visitor fidgeted a little in his chair.

“I want to stand by the President if I can, Bob,” he said.

“Can you?” Bob Munson asked.

“Ask me in a week,” Lafe said with his quick, appealing grin.

“I want to know sooner than that,” Senator Munson said. “I’m counting on your help.”

“I want to give it to you,” Senator Smith assured him earnestly. “You can count on it, Bob. I’ll be happy to run all the errands you want, you know that. Just give me a little time to make up my own mind, is all.”

“I’m afraid that’s the theme song I’m going to hear this afternoon all over the Senate,” Bob Munson said.

“It’s too important to jump at,” Lafe Smith said thoughtfully. “Too much hangs on this, our whole world position and all. We can’t have somebody in there who would sell all those little countries down the river just to appease the Russians, you know.”

“You surprise me, Lafe,” Bob Munson said with a tinge of irony that he promptly regretted, “I didn’t know you cared.”

“People misunderstand me,” Lafe said, rather wistfully. “I do care. We live in a hell of an age, and I do care. You have to care, these days: there’s always somebody screaming off stage.”

Bob Munson shivered.

“God help us all,” he said.

“I hope so,” Lafe said, rising. “I’ll see you later, Bob. I’ll keep my ears open and let you know anything I hear.”

“I appreciate that, Lafe,” Bob Munson said. “I really do.”

“Do you see what I see?” AP asked UPI as they cruised the corridors of the Old Senate Office Building in a rather aimless pre-session search for news.

“I wonder what that means?” UPI said.

“It means,” said AP, “war.”

“Seab and Orrin Knox?” UPI said skeptically. “Well, maybe. Shall we hang around and see?”

“Let’s,” AP said.

Halfway down the corridor, Orrin Knox was half-in-half-out of the doorway to his private office, looking impatient as he always did when anyone stopped him, no matter who or what the occasion. Despite the look, however, he was deep in obviously congenial conversation with the senior Senator from South Carolina, who had overtaken him on the third floor on his way back from a meeting of the Finance Committee. It had been a meeting in which Senator Knox had, as usual, lost his temper with the Secretary of the Treasury and had wound up twisting his body indignantly from side to side as he hit the table with the flat of his hand and made blunt remarks about the Secretary’s general grasp of economic theory. The Secretary, as usual, had remained amiable, forthright, and unimpressed, and Orrin only now was beginning to regain his normal quick-triggered composure.

“I told him that three and one half per cent rate wouldn’t work when he first announced it three months ago,” he said indignantly. “I knew it wouldn’t, it isn’t logical, it isn’t sensible, it’s just a lot of economic hogwash. And it
isn’t
working, either.”

“He’s a mighty stubborn man,” Senator Cooley observed soothingly. “A mighty stubborn man, Orrin. I’m glad you told him what you thought.”

“He knows what I think,” Orrin Knox said impatiently. “He’s always known what I think. He just laughs at me and goes his own way. I don’t know what land of economic shape we’re going to be in when he gets through with us.”

“Maybe he’ll listen in time, Orrin. You just keep after him and don’t give up. You’re the best safeguard we have against all this economic tomfoolery, that’s what I always believe. I don’t know where we’d be without you, Orrin. I truly don’t.”

“Well,” Orrin Knox said with a grin and the sudden skeptical honesty that was one of his saving graces, “I dare say we’d survive. But, by gollies, he does make me mad sometimes.”

“I’m a little mad myself this morning, Orrin,” Seab Cooley said carefully. “It does seem as though the Administration just won’t leave either of us alone. It’s vindictive, that’s what it is. Yes, sir. Plain vindictive.”

“What, Bob Leffingwell?” Orrin Knox said with a smile. “Somehow I guessed you wouldn’t be feeling good about it, Seab.”

“No, sir,” Seab Cooley said firmly. “No, sir, I don’t.”

“Want to come in for a minute and talk it over privately?” Orrin said. “I don’t want to take your time, but our friends in the press are watching down the hall and big pitchers have big ears.”

“Gladly,” Seab Cooley said with alacrity. “Gladly, thank you, Orrin.”

“Well,” said UPI, “I guess that shows
us
.”

“I guess it does,” AP agreed with a chuckle. “Well, we’ll just have to catch them over on the floor during the session.”

“Let’s stick,” UPI said. “Nothing better to do for the next half hour.”

“Right,” AP said.

Inside the comfortable, brown-paneled office with its standard big senatorial desk and deep leather armchairs, the customary collection of framed certificates of election, honorary degrees, pictures of the President, Vice President, and fellow Senators cluttering the walls, and its view down the Mall to the Virginia hills beyond, Senator Knox gestured to a chair and settled back behind his desk.

“Now,” he said, thoughtfully paring his fingernails as he talked, “how much help do you think you’re going to get?”

“I haven’t rightly begun counting yet,” Senator Cooley said slowly, “but I expect a good deal, Orrin. Yes, I expect a good deal.”

“I may support him, you know,” Senator Knox remarked casually. Senator Cooley remained impassive.

“That’s your privilege, Orrin,” he said calmly. “That’s surely your privilege.”

“Or again, I may not,” Senator Knox observed.

“That’s your privilege too, Orrin,” Seab Cooley said. “It surely is.”

“I’ve got a lot of things to make up my mind about before I’ll know. I don’t think it’s going to be enough to be against him just as a matter of personal spite.”

Senator Cooley moved indignantly in his chair.

“I don’t know anybody who’s going to act on that basis, Senator,” he said stiffly. “I truly don’t. Who do you think would do a thing like that?”

“You would,” Orrin Knox said bluntly, “and you know it perfectly well. But it isn’t going to be good enough this time.”

“Any man who calls me a liar—” Senator Cooley began angrily. Senator Knox held up a hand.

“It isn’t good enough, Seab,” he repeated. “We’ve all heard about that so often we can recite it by heart. It’s got to be better than that.”

“Where I come from,” Senator Cooley said softly, “that’s all you need to know about a man to decide what to do about him. He called me a liar, Orrin. Right smack dab to my face he called me—”

“I was there,” Orrin Knox said calmly. “It isn’t good enough. You can’t decide a Cabinet nomination, particularly State, on the basis of a personal feud. At least, the Senate can’t. Maybe you can, but the rest of us can’t There’ve got to be better grounds.”

The crafty look his colleagues knew so well came over Senator Cooley’s face, and with it his slow, sleepy smile.

“Maybe there are, Orrin,” he said gently. “Maybe there are.”

“Such as?” asked Orrin Knox.

“All in good time, Orrin,” Seab said softly. “All in good time.”

“You’re bluffing, Seab,” Senator Knox told him. “I’ve known you for twenty years, you old reprobate, and I know when you’re bluffing.”

Senator Cooley grinned.

“Be mighty hard to prove at this point, Orrin,” he said amiably. “Be mighty hard, I think.”

“Will it be hard later?” Senator Knox inquired.

“Maybe by that time,” Senator Cooley said quietly, “it won’t be a bluff, Orrin.”

“Well,” Orrin Knox said practically, “if you want anybody to go along with you, Seab, you’re going to have to do better than that. We’ll—they’ll—want proof of things. Your word for it won’t be good enough.”

“You’ll—they’ll—have it, Orrin,” Seab said dryly. “Of that you can be ab-so-lute-ly sure, Orrin.”

“Well,” said Orrin Knox, “I—they—we—will have to wait and see, Seab. In the meantime, you know I have doubts. Lots of doubts. Keep in touch with me on it, and we’ll see how things go.”

“I will, Orrin,” Seab promised. “I surely will. And thank you.”

“Thank you, Seab,” Orrin Knox said. “See you on the floor.”

“On the floor,” Seab Cooley said, opening the door suddenly to disclose AP and UPI, who were standing by as close as they dared.

“Howdy, boys,” he said amicably as he started down the hall, “how you all?”

“Senator,” said AP, “did you and Senator Knox agree to oppose—”

“No comment, boys,” Seab said bluffly, “no comment, no comment, no comment at all. No, sir, no comment a-tall.” And he went padding away down the hall with his sloping, shuffling walk, still muttering absently to himself, “No, sir, no comment at all.”

In the oval parking apron in front of the West Wing of the White House, Senator August, facing the ring of reporters and television cameras which greets all major visitors to the President, was insisting gently that he couldn’t possibly tell his questioners about his talk with the Chief Executive.

“Did it concern the Leffingwell nomination?” CBS asked. Tom August gave his shy, modest, diffident smile, and replied in his almost inaudible voice.

“I think it would be a safe assumption that the subject came up.”

“Senator,” NBC said, “is it true that the President wants you to hold a committee meeting tomorrow morning and dispose of the whole thing by Monday?”

“My goodness, where do you boys pick up such rumors?” Senator August asked wonderingly.

“Is it true, Senator?” insisted UPI, unimpressed.

“I think it is quite obvious that the President wants the matter expedited as much as possible,” Senator August said gently, “but I hardly think it would be possible to move that fast.”

“Will you try?” AP demanded.

“Oh,” Tom August smiled, “we always try.”

“Senator,” the
Times
said, “do you expect Senator Cooley to make a strong fight against the nomination?”

“Senator Cooley,” Tom August said softly, “always makes a strong fight on everything he undertakes.”