Read Online Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by William Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B

“Why in
the sacred name of Jesus is it not possible?”
    “Because I don’t think you’re interested in being the editor who put the bullet in Charlie McCall’s brain. Or are you?”
    Martin’s explanation of the sequence of events forced Emory to recapitulate the future as he had known it all morning. Martin let him stew and then told him: “Emory, you’re the
man in charge of this silence, whether you like it or not. You’re the man with the reputation, the journalistic clout. You’re the only one in town who can convince the wire services and
whoever’s left among the boys up in the Capitol press room to keep their wires closed on this one for a little while. They’ll do it if you set the ground rules, make yourself chairman
of the big secret. Maybe set a time limit. Two days? Four? A week?”
    “A week? Are you serious?”
    “All right, two days. They’ll do it as a gentleman’s agreement if you explain the dread behind it. You’ll be a genuine hero to the McCalls if you do, and that’s
worth money to this newspaper, if I’m not mistaken.”
    “Keep your venal sarcasm under your dirty vest.”
    “It’s not sarcasm. It’s cynical humanism.”
    “Well, hell, I don’t want to murder anybody. At least not Charlie.”
    “I knew you’d get the picture.”
    “But what will I tell them?”
    “Emory, I have faith that you’ll think of something. We both know you’ve got more bullshit than the cattle states.”
    “Maybe Dunsbach’s already put it out.”
    “Maybe. Then your problem is solved, even if his isn’t. But I doubt it. I was persuasive.”
    “Then you do it.”
    “I can’t do it, Emory. I’m just a piss-ant columnist, not an omnipotent editor.”
    “Willard Maney will go along. He’s an Albanian.”
    “And a McCall fancier.”
    “And Foley at the News .”
    “Another kinsman.”
    “But those bastards up at the Capitol. I don’t know them. You know them. You play cards with them when you’re supposed to be out getting under the news.”
    “Use my name up there if you like.”
    “The wire services can pass the word up there.”
    “Exactly. And the boys will very likely follow suit. Despite what you think, they’re a decent bunch. And Emory, it’s really not your responsibility anyway what out-of-town
writers do. Then it’s on them, and on their children. And what the hell, even an editor’s advisory like Dunsbach’s talking about wouldn’t be all that bad if they made it
clear to their clients that Charlie’s life was at stake. Which is now a rotten fact.”
    “That poor bastard. What he must be going through.”
    “He may already be gone.”
    Martin looked at the clippings on his desk, Charlie’s face staring up from one as he attends a Knights of Columbus party. On almost any given evening when Charlie walked into the K. of C,
somebody would make a fool of himself over this gentle young man who might carry a word of good will back to his father and uncles. Life preservation. Money in the bank for those who make their
allegiance known. Shake the hand of the boy who shakes the hand of the men who shake the tree from which falls the fruit of our days. Poor sucker, tied to a bed someplace. Will I live through the
night? Will they shoot me in the morning? Where is my powerful father? Where are my powerful uncles? Who will save the son when the father is gone? Pray to Jesus, but where is Jesus? Jesus,
Charlie, sits at my desk in the person of an equivocating Welsh rarebit who doesn’t understand sons because he never had any. But he understands money and news and power and decency and
perhaps such things as these will help save the boy we remember. We are now scheming in our own way, Charlie, to keep you in our life.
    “I was putting together a backgrounder on Charlie,” Martin said, breaking the silence. “Is there anything else you want me to do? There’s also that A.L.P business
today.”
    “The hell with that stuff now.”
    “It’s pretty big,