The Fourth K

  When Christian got out of the car to greet him, Kennedy gave him a quick embrace and a shout of joyous welcome. He seemed to have been rejuvenated by his stay in the monastery. He smiled at Christian, and it was one of his rare brilliant smiles that had enchanted multitudes. The smile that reassured the world that happiness could be won, that man was good, that the world would go on forever to better and better things. It was a smile that made you love him because of its delight in his seeing you. Christian had felt such relief at seeing that smile. Francis would be OK. He would be as strong as he had always been. He would be the hope of the world, the strong guardian of his country and fellowman. Now they would do great deeds together.

  And then with that same brilliant smile Kennedy took Christian by the arm, looked into his eyes, and said, simply and yet with amusement, as if it didn’t really mean anything, as if he were reporting some minor detail of information, “God didn’t help.”

  And in the cold scrubbed world of a winter morning, Christian saw that finally something had been broken in Kennedy. That he would never be the same man again. That part of his mind had been chopped away. He would be almost the same, but now there was a tiny lump of falseness that had never before existed. He saw that Kennedy himself did not know this and that nobody else would know. And that he, Christian, only knew because he was the one who was here at this point in time, to see the brilliant smile and hear the joking words “God didn’t help.”

  Christian said, “What the hell, you only gave him seven days.”

  Kennedy laughed. “And he’s a busy man,” he said.

  So they had gotten into the car. They had a wonderful day. Kennedy had never been more witty, had never been in such high spirits. He was full of plans, anxious to get his administration together and make wonderful things happen in the four years to come. He seemed to be a man who had reconciled himself to his misfortune, renewed his energies. And it almost convinced Christian.…

  • • •

  Christian Klee started making arrangements to leave government service. One of the most important things was to erase any traces of his circumventing the law in his protection of the President. He had to remove all the illegal computer surveillances of the members of the Socrates Club.

  Sitting at his massive desk in the Attorney General’s office, Klee used his personal computer to erase incriminating files. Finally, he called up the file on David Jatney. He had been right on this guy, Klee thought, this guy was the joker in the deck. That darkly handsome face had the lopsided look of a mind unbalanced. Jatney’s eyes were bright with the scattered electricity of a neural system at war with itself. And the latest information showed that he was on his way to Washington.

  This guy could be trouble. Then he remembered the Oracle’s prediction. When a man rises to absolute power, he usually gets rid of those closest to him, those who know his secrets. He had loved Francis for his virtues. Long before the terrible secrets. He thought about it a long time. And then he thought, let fate decide. Whatever happened, he, Christian Klee, could not be blamed.

  He pressed the delete key of the computer and David Jatney disappeared without a trace from all government files.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Just two weeks before President Francis Kennedy’s inauguration, David Jatney had become restless. He wanted to escape the eternal sunshine of California, the richly friendly voices everywhere, the moonlit, balmy beaches. He felt himself drowning in the brown syrupy air of its society, and yet he did not want to go back home to Utah and be the daily witness to his father’s and mother’s happiness.

  Irene had moved in with him. She wanted to save on rent money, to go on a trip to India and study with a guru there. A group of her friends were pooling their resources to charter a plane and she wanted to join them with her little son, Campbell.

  David was astonished when she told him her plans. She did not ask him if she could move in with him, she merely asserted her right to do so. That right was based on the fact that they now saw each other three times a week for a movie and to have sex. She had put it to him as one buddy to another, as if he were one of her California friends who routinely moved in with each other for periods of a week or more. It was done not as a cunning preliminary to marriage but as a casual act of comradeship. She had no sense of imposing, that his life would be disrupted by a woman and a child made part of his daily living.

  What horrified David most of all was that Irene planned to bring her little boy with her to India. Irene was a woman who had absolute confidence that she could make her way in any world; she was certain that the fates would be good to her. David had visions of the little boy sleeping in the streets of Calcutta with the thousands of the diseased poor of that city. In a moment of anger he once told her he could not understand anyone’s believing in a religion that spawned the hundreds of millions who were the most desperately poverty-stricken in the world. She had answered that what happened in this world was unimportant, since what happened in the next life would be so much more rewarding.

  Jatney was fascinated by Irene and how she treated her son. She often took little Campbell to her political meetings because she could not always get her mother to baby-sit and was too proud to ask too often. She took him with her sometimes even to work, when the special kindergarten he attended was closed for some reason.

  There was no question that she was a devoted mother. But to David her attitude toward motherhood was bewildering. She did not have the usual concern to protect her child or worry about the psychological influences that could harm him. She treated him as one would treat a beloved pet, a dog or a cat. She seemed to care nothing for what the child thought or felt. She was determined that being the mother of a child would not limit her life in any way, that she would not make motherhood a bondage, that she would maintain her freedom. David thought she was a little crazy.

  But she was a pretty woman, and when she concentrated on sex, she could be ardent. David enjoyed being with her. She was competent in the everyday details of life and was really no trouble. And so he let her move in.

  Two consequences were completely unforeseen by him. He became impotent. And he became fond of Campbell.

  He prepared for their moving in by buying a huge trunk to lock up his guns, the cleaning materials and the ammo. He didn’t want a five-year-old kid accidentally getting his hands on weapons. And by now, somehow, David Jatney had enough guns to deck out a superhero bandit: two rifles, a machine pistol and a collection of handguns. One was a very small .22-caliber handgun he carried in his jacket pocket in a little leather case that was more like a glove. At night he usually put it beneath his bed. When Irene and Campbell moved in, he locked the .22 in the trunk with the other guns. He put a good padlock on the trunk. Even if the little kid found it open, there was no way he could figure out how to load it. Irene was another story. Not that he didn’t trust her, but she was a little weird, and weirdness and guns didn’t mix.

  On the day they moved in, Jatney bought a few toys for Campbell so he wouldn’t be too disoriented. That first night, when Irene was ready to go to bed, she arranged pillows and a blanket on the sofa for the little boy, undressed him in the bathroom and put him into pajamas. Jatney saw the little boy looking at him. There was in that look an old wariness, a glint of fear and very faintly what seemed to be a habitual bewilderment. In a flash Jatney translated that look to himself. As a little boy he knew his father and mother would desert him to make love in their room.

  He said to Irene, “Listen, I’ll sleep on the sofa and the kid can sleep with you.”

  “That’s silly,” Irene said. “He doesn’t mind, do you, Campbell?”

  The boy shook his head. He rarely spoke.

  Irene said proudly, “He’s a brave boy, aren’t you, Campbell?”

  At that moment, David Jatney felt a moment of pure hatred for her. He repressed it and said, “I have to do some writing and I’ll be up late. I think he should sleep with you the first few nights.”
br />   “If you have to work, OK,” Irene said cheerfully.

  She held out her hand to Campbell and the little boy jumped off the sofa and ran into her arms. He hid his head in her breasts. She said to him, “Aren’t you going to say good night to your uncle Jat?” And she smiled brilliantly at David, a smile that made her beautiful. And he understood it was her own little joke, an honest joke, a way of telling him that this had been the mode of her address and introduction for her child when she lived with other lovers, delicate, fearful moments in her life, and that she was grateful to him for his thoughtfulness, that her faith in the universe was sustained.

  The boy kept his head buried in her breasts and David patted him gently and said, “Good night, Campbell.” The boy looked up and stared into Jatney’s eyes. It was the peculiar questioning look of small children, the regard of an object that is absolutely unknown to their universe.

  David was stricken by that look. As if he could be a source of danger. He saw that the boy had an unusually elegant face for one so young. A broad forehead, luminous gray eyes, a firm, almost stern mouth.

  Campbell smiled at Jatney and the effect was miraculous. His whole face beamed with trust. He reached out a hand and touched David’s face. And then Irene took him with her into the bedroom.

  A few minutes later she came out again and gave him a kiss. “Thanks for being so thoughtful,” she said. “We can have a quick screw before I go back in.” She made no seductive movement when she said this. It was simply a friendly offer.

  David thought of the little boy behind the bedroom door waiting for his mother. “No,” he said.

  “OK,” she said cheerfully and went back into the bedroom.

  For the next few weeks Irene was furiously busy. She had taken an additional job for very little pay and long hours at night, to help in the reelection campaign—she was an ardent partisan of Francis Kennedy. She would talk about the social programs he favored, his fight against the rich in America, his struggle to reform the legal system. David thought she was in love with Kennedy’s physical appearance, the magic of his voice. He believed that she worked at campaign headquarters because of infatuation rather than political belief.

  Three days after she moved in, he dropped by campaign headquarters in Santa Monica and found her working on a computer with little Campbell at her feet. The boy was in a sleeping bag but was wide awake. David could see his open eyes.

  “I’ll take him home and put him to bed,” David said.

  “He’s OK,” Irene said. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

  David pulled Campbell out of the sleeping bag; the boy was fully clothed except for his shoes. He took the boy by the hand and he felt warm, soft skin, and for a moment he was happy.

  “I’ll take him for a pizza and ice cream first, is that OK?” David said to Irene.

  She was busy with her computer. “Don’t spoil him,” she said. “When you’re gone, he gets health yogurt out of the fridge.” She took a moment to smile at him and then gave Campbell a kiss.

  “Should I wait up for you?” he asked.

  “What for?” she said quickly, then added, “I’ll be late.” He went out, leading the little boy by the hand. He drove to Montana Avenue and stopped at a little Italian restaurant that made pizza on the side. He watched Campbell eat. One slice and he mangled that more than he ate it. But he was interested in eating and that made David happy.

  In the apartment he put Campbell to bed, letting him wash and change into his pajamas by himself. He made his bed on the sofa, put on the TV very low and watched.

  There was a lot of political talk on the air and interviews on the news programs. Francis Kennedy seemed to descend out of all the galaxies of cable. And David had to admit the man was overpowering on TV. He dreamed of being a victorious hero like Kennedy. You could see the Secret Service men with their stone faces hovering in the background. How safe he was, how rich he was, how loved he was. Often David dreamed of being Francis Kennedy. How Rosemary would be in love with him. And he thought about Hock and Gibson Grange. And they would all be eating in the White House and they would all talk to him and Rosemary would talk to him in her excited way, touching his knee, telling him her innermost feelings.

  He thought about Irene and what he felt about her. And he realized he was more bewildered than entranced. It seemed to him that with all her openness she was really completely closed to him. He could never really love her. He thought of Campbell, who had been named after the writer Joseph Campbell, famous for his books about myths, the boy so open and guileless with such an elegant innocence of countenance.

  Campbell now called him Uncle Jat and always put a little hand in his. Jatney accepted. He loved the innocent touches of affection the boy gave him that Irene never did. And it was during these two weeks that this extension of feeling to another human being sustained him.

  When he lost his job at the studio, he would have been in a jam if it had not been for Hock, his “uncle” Hock. When he was fired, there was a message for him to come by Hock’s office, and because he thought that Campbell would enjoy visiting a movie studio, he brought the child.

  When Hock greeted him, David Jatney felt his overwhelming love for the man, Hock was so warm. Hock sent one of his secretaries immediately to the commissary to get ice cream for the little boy and then showed Campbell some props on his desk that would be used in the movie he was currently producing.

  Campbell was enchanted by all this, and Jatney felt a twinge of jealousy. But then he could see it was Hock’s way of clearing away an obstacle in their meeting. With Campbell busy playing with the props, Hock shook Jatney’s hand and said, “I’m sorry you got fired. They are cutting down the story-reading department and the others had seniority. But stay in touch, I’ll get something for you.”

  “I’ll be OK,” David Jatney said.

  Hock was studying him closely. “You look awfully thin, David. Maybe you should go back home and visit a while. That good Utah air, that relaxing Mormon life. Is this kid your girlfriend’s?”

  “Yeah,” Jatney said. “She’s not exactly my girl, she’s my friend. We live together, but she’s trying to save money on rent so she can make a trip to India.”

  Hock frowned for a moment and said, “If you financed every California girl who wanted to go to India, you’d be broke. And they all seem to have kids.”

  He sat down at his desk, took a huge checkbook out of its drawer and wrote in it. He ripped a piece out of the book, and handed it to Jatney. “This is for all the birthday presents and graduation presents I never had the time to send you.” He smiled at Jatney. Jatney looked at the check. He was astonished to see it was for five thousand dollars.

  “Ah, c’mon, Hock, I can’t take this,” he said. He felt tears coming into his eyes, tears of gratitude, humiliation and hatred.

  “Sure, you can,” Hock said. “Listen, I want you to get some rest and have a good time. Maybe give this girl her airfare to India so she can get what she wants and you’ll be free to do what you want.” He smiled and then said very emphatically, “The trouble with being friends with a girl is that you get all the troubles of a lover and none of the advantages of a friend. But that’s quite a little boy she has. I might have something for him sometime if I ever have the balls to make a kid picture.”

  Jatney pocketed the check. He understood everything that Hock had said. “Yeah, he’s a nice-looking kid.”

  “It’s more than that,” Hock said. “Look, he has that elegant face, just made for tragedy. You look at him and you feel like crying.”

  And Jatney thought how smart his friend Hock was. “Elegant” was just right and yet so odd to describe Campbell’s face. Irene was an elemental force—like God, she had constructed a future tragedy.

  Hock hugged him and said, “David, stay in touch. I mean it. Keep yourself together, times always get better when you’re young.” He gave Campbell one of the props, a beautiful miniature futuristic airplane, and Campbell hugged it to h
imself and said, “Uncle Jat, can I keep it?” And Jatney saw a smile on Hock’s face.

  “Say hello to Rosemary for me,” David Jatney said. He had been trying to say this all through the meeting.

  Hock gave him a startled look. “I will,” he said. “We’ve been invited to Kennedy’s inauguration in January, me and Gibson and Rosemary. I’ll tell her then.”

  And suddenly David Jatney felt he had been flung off a spinning world.

  Now, lying on the sofa, waiting for Irene to come home, dawn showing its smoky light through the living room window, Jatney thought of Rosemary Belair. How she had turned to him in bed and lost herself in his body. He remembered the smell of her perfume, the curious heaviness, perhaps caused by the sleeping pills traumatizing the muscles in her flesh. He thought of her in the morning in her jogging clothes, her assurance and her assumption of power, how she had dismissed him. He lived over that moment when she had offered to give him cash to tip the limo driver and how he had refused to take the money. But why had he insulted her, why had he said she knew better than he how much was needed, implying that she too had been sent home in such a fashion and in such a circumstance?

  He found himself falling asleep in little short gaps of time, listening for Campbell, listening for Irene. He thought of his parents back in Utah; he knew they had forgotten about him, secure in their own happiness, their hypocritical angel pants fluttering outside as they joyfully and unceasingly fornicated in their bare skins. If he called them they would have to part.

  David Jatney dreamed of how he would meet Rosemary Belair. How he would tell her he loved her. Listen, he would say, imagine you had cancer. I would take your cancer from you into my own body. Listen, he would say, if some great star fell from the sky I would cover your body. Listen, he would say, if someone tried to kill you I would stop the blade with my heart, the bullet with my body. Listen, he would say, if I had one drop from the fountain of youth that would keep me young forever and you were growing old, I would give you that drop so that you would never grow old.