The Last Supper (44 page)

The dog was reluctant to leave. Christopher twitched at the leash and spoke to him, but he wasn’t trained to respond to ordinary commands. Patchen was speaking now. Christopher could not
make out the words, only the flat, calm tone.

In the ghastly sodium light, Wolkowicz was gesticulating. His deeper, louder voice was easy to hear.

“Horseshit, Patchen,” he bellowed. “That’s horseshit. Who the fuck repealed the law of self-preservation?”

Patchen murmured and looked up the path toward Christopher.

“You’re worried about
Christopher?”
Wolkowicz shouted. “He’s been locked up in China for over ten years and he’s got more sense than you. Let him hear
the story. Let him judge. Come on, God damn it. We’ll tell him.”

He seized Patchen by the lapels, using both hands this time, and jerked. Patchen’s long, thin body leaped into the air, black cloth and pallid face.

The Doberman attacked. Christopher had been holding the leash in his left hand. The force of the dog’s charge pulled him off balance and dragged him, staggering, ten feet down the path.
Regaining his balance, he seized the leash, a length of steel chain with a leather loop at the end, and set his feet. The dog, gagging and snarling, leaped against its choke collar. The chain sawed
at Christopher’s tough palms and waves of shock ran up his arms.

Patchen stepped away from Wolkowicz and gave a command. The Doberman subsided but continued to watch Wolkowicz, its ruff raised. The three men stood quiet, listening to the wheezing of the dog
as it tried to breathe through its bruised windpipe.

Wolkowicz tightened his lips and shook his head. He lifted a hand. The dog growled.

“Relax,” Wolkowicz said to the animal, “I’m not going to touch the crazy bastard.”

Wolkowicz covered the ground between the Doberman and himself in two rapid strides. He pushed the dog aside with his knee and seized Christopher’s shoulders. It did not occur to him that
the dog, which seconds before had tried to kill him, might misunderstand his gesture and attack again. He had never believed in caution.

Wolkowicz pointed a thumb at Patchen. “Keep an eye on your roomie,” he said. “He doesn’t know which side he’s on.”

Breathing hard, he glowered at the Doberman.

“Graham’s protected by the Constitution,” he said. “He’s trying to kill us, but we haven’t got the right to bug his phone or follow him. We’ve lost the
right of self-defense. That’s what you’ve come back to, kid. Patchen will fill you in. He’s our guru, where civil liberties are concerned.”

He said nothing more to Patchen, but strode away into the darkness.

— 5 —

For his homecoming supper, Christopher went to the Websters’. His friends had changed very little. They were a little fatter and a little ignore drunken. Christopher,
standing in the Websters’ living room, drank Perrier.

“It costs a dollar a bottle,” Sybille said. “Who but the French would ship it across an ocean, who but us would buy it? Do they have mineral water in China?”

“Not Perrier, as far as I know,” Christopher replied.

Sybille saw Wolkowicz approaching and glided across the room to sit beside David Patchen on a sofa. Telling Patchen a story, Sybille was all animation. Patchen was as impassive as a
mannequin.

Wolkowicz smiled, his old sardonic grin that narrowed his slanted eyes and lit up his shrewd muzhik face.

“Patchen is in a class by himself,” he said. “Look at the son of a bitch in his black suit, he’s a fucking undertaker. That’s appropriate. Hear that hammering
outside? They’re building a coffin for the Outfit.”

Christopher was amused; Wolkowicz had always amused him. His disgust, his impatience, his profanity were like the single-minded vitality of a child, except that Wolkowicz never wore himself out
and went to sleep.

“Who’s building the coffin?” Christopher asked.

“You’ll meet ’em, thanks to Patchen.”

At the drinks table, Wolkowicz mixed himself a Rob Roy in a water tumbler.

“That’s a nice house you’re living in,” he said. “Are you okay? Got everything you need?”

“Yes, everything’s fine.”

“Glad to hear it. Let me ask you something. Why did the Chinks let you out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t they tell you?”

“No. They just did it.”

“Patchen must have made a deal with them.”

“He says he didn’t.”

“That means he did,” Wolkowicz said. “Patchen and the Chinks are asshole buddies these days. He thinks they love him because they hate the Russians. I tell him a Communist is a
fucking Communist—Russian, Chinese, Fool Factory, they’re all the same. He doesn’t want to hear that.”

Wolkowicz shook his head, as if to clear it, and studied Christopher. “You haven’t missed a hell of a lot, being away,” he said. “You’ll see. I’m too drunk to
talk to you tonight. Have you got a phone?”

“No. It’s disconnected.”

“I’ll be around,” Wolkowicz said. “We’ll talk over old times. Does Patchen let you talk about China?”

“There’s not much to tell, Barney.”

“I want to hear it anyway. What
did
you do to pass the time?”

“Remembered you.”

“Remembered me?”

“You and all the others.”

“For ten years? It must have been pretty goddamned boring.”

“No. It was very interesting.”

Wolkowicz gave a contemptuous laugh. “There were a few interesting moments,” he said. “A lot of it I never could figure out. But, shit, you’re back from the dead, kid.
You must know everything.”

“No,” Christopher said, “not everything. Not yet.”

Something moved in Wolkowicz’s eyes. Sybille called them to the table.

“Have you met up with Stephanie?” Sybille asked.

“Not yet.”

“I hope you will. We’re so proud of her. She’s a psychotherapist. She treats disappointed radicals; Stephanie’s practice is ideologically correct, nothing but members of
the New Left.
Our
cultural revolution turned out badly, too, and all the hooligans are terribly sad. They have all these dunce caps and nobody wants to wear them anymore. Stephanie was
living in your house on O Street, you know. Maybe she forgot something and will have to come back for it. No, not Stephanie. She has no middle-class wiles. But she does want to see you; you were
always her favorite uncle when she was little.”

Sybille was the only woman at the table. She sat next to Christopher and held his hand.

“I mustn’t talk about my child,” she said. “It isn’t easy to find an interesting subject, though. Nothing has changed in your absence, nothing. Talking to David
Patchen is the same delightful experience it always was. It’s like bouncing a tennis ball off the wall of the barn—you throw an idea at him, you hear the thud, you catch it, you throw
it back, aiming for a slightly different spot. It’s absolutely hypnotic. I know! Stephanie can invite you to go running with her.”

“Running? Why running?”

“Don’t ask. Only a bourgeois fool doesn’t know
instinctively
the deep spiritual meaning of running. Stephanie’s very reverent about her running. It’s
tremendously ritualistic. You put on a sweat suit and tennis shoes with funny soles that cost a hundred dollars and are all wound around with dingy adhesive tape, and you run through the public
streets, dripping with sweat. It gives you shin splints and snapped Achilles tendons and wobbly knees but in compensation you build up your state of grace and these marvelous muscles.
Stephanie’s whole body is like a drumskin. I know I shouldn’t talk about my daughter in this way, but I really don’t think she’ll ever get married unless I list her good
points to the bachelors she meets.”

Christopher put back his head and laughed. He had not made this sound in years. His own voice escaping from his throat sounded delicious to him. Every face at the table turned toward him. They
all smiled; even Patchen smiled. It seemed that they were not able to stop smiling.

Sybille lifted Christopher’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “Oh, cookie,” she said, “we’ve missed you so.”

It was after midnight when they rose from the table. The others lingered for a moment, chatting. Wolkowicz had never believed in ceremonious good-byes; at the end of an
evening, he simply got up and left. Now, crumpling his napkin and draining his wineglass, he nodded brusquely to the Websters and strode out of the dining room. He beckoned Christopher to follow
him.

In the hall, he seized Christopher’s arm. With all his old suspiciousness, he kept watch on the others over Christopher’s shoulder while he spoke, and finally drew him outside onto
the steps.

“You don’t know everything yet?”
he said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I’m still thinking,” Christopher replied.

“Some guys never learn,” Wolkowicz said. “We’d better get together. Soon.”

He gave Christopher’s arm a final squeeze and hurried along the brick sidewalk—trotting almost—on his round short legs.

Car doors slammed, five or six of them one after the other. Then Christopher heard the sound of running feet scuffling on the pavement. Wolkowicz stopped where he was, beside a large tree. A
blinding white light flooded his squat figure. He took a step or two backward, then turned as if to run. A second brilliant light came on. Wolkowicz leaped behind the tree. His P-38 fell out of its
holster and clattered on the sidewalk. He went down on all fours to recover it. The men holding the lights began to stalk Wolkowicz, moving around the tree as he tried to escape them, trapping him
in the glare.

Wolkowicz uttered a howl of rage and rushed one of the lights. He delivered a kick. The light fell to the ground with a clatter but kept on burning. Arms pumping, Wolkowicz ran back toward the
Websters’ door, pursued by the other light, his P-38 in his right hand. Someone was shouting at him, calling him by name.

Pursued by the panting television crew, Wolkowicz stumbled up the steps and turned, at bay.

Christopher stayed where he was, squinting into the blue-white strobe. Patrick Graham ran his hands over his thick hair and leaped onto the step beside Wolkowicz.

“Are you going to use that gun on me, Barney Wolkowicz?” he asked.

Wolkowicz stared at the P-38 in his hand, then shoved it into its holster. He turned his back to the camera. Wolkowicz’s shirttail was out of his trousers. This made him look fat and
defeated, but there was no expression at all on his face as he lunged up the steps.

Patrick Graham, excited and alert, thrust a microphone into Wolkowicz’s face. “Why are you running away?” he said. “Don’t you want to answer our
questions?”

Graham spoke to the camera. “We want to ask Barney Wolkowicz, the most decorated secret agent in the history of the Outfit, why he’s been following me, why he’s been tapping my
phones, what he’s afraid of. Can you shed any light on this for us, Barney Wolkowicz?”

Wolkowicz, with a sudden twitch of his stout body, threw a hip into Graham. In a windmill of arms and legs, the newsman fell down the steps. Sprawled on the sidewalk, he rocked back and forth,
gripping a bleeding knee with one hand and his microphone with the other.

Wolkowicz put a sweaty palm on Christopher’s chest and pushed him into the hall. The camera and the lights followed them over the threshold.

Wolkowicz slammed the door. Seizing Christopher’s arm, he hurried him down the hall. Christopher resisted.

“Come on, God damn it!” Wolkowicz said. “They saw you.”

Christopher shook his head. Wolkowicz gave him a long scowling look. He plunged out the back door and disappeared into the darkness.

“Patchen?” Christopher said.

“He left long ago,” Webster replied.

The doorbell rang insistently. Webster led Christopher up a back stairway and into a bedroom. They found Sybille there, standing in the dark, looking out the window.

Below them, on the front walk, Patrick Graham was on his feet again, gripping his microphone. A crowd of the Websters’ neighbors had gathered and they stood in a circle with drinks in
their hands, watching the filming.

Graham spoke in a strong voice that seemed to bite on words as if to crack them open and reveal the lies they concealed. Christopher could not make out what he was saying. The crowd applauded.
As the camera lights went out, Graham lifted his microphone above his head in a gesture of triumph.

“Do you think they got pictures of you?” Webster asked Christopher.

“It’s possible. Won’t they chase Barney home?”

“Follow Barney? Besides, he doesn’t have a home. He doesn’t believe in it.”

“He still disappears at night?”

“Vanishes. It drives Security crazy. If the Russians ever kidnap him, we won’t know until morning.”

“The Scarlet Pimpernel,” said Sybille. “Where do you think Wolkowicz sleeps, in the bus station? In parked cars? What a figure of romance he is.”

— 6 —

Tom Webster walked home with Christopher. It was now after midnight and most of the houses in this neighborhood were dark. The traffic had ceased. Christopher was astonished by
the peacefulness of America. In prison, he had remembered only the noise of the world of free men. He stopped for a moment and listened as the wind rustled the leaves of the young trees that grew
along the curb.

When they reached Christopher’s house, Webster lingered.

“Want to come in?” Christopher asked.

“Yes, if that’s all right.”

Inside, Webster took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes again, a new mannerism.

“There’s something I’d like to get over with,” he said.

Christopher knew what this must be. “All right,” he said.

Christopher invited Webster to sit down, but Webster, whose eyes were fixed on the carpet, did not seem to see his gesture.

“Did Patchen tell you about Molly?” Webster asked.

Christopher nodded.

“Did he give you any details?”

“He said that you saw it happen.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Webster said. “I want to explain.”

“There’s no need to explain.”

Webster shook his head impatiently and put his glasses back on. “Don’t tell me that,” he said. “It was my fault. I owe you an explanation.”