“She didn’t?”

  “Not at first. It was one of the girls’ mothers, Tanya Baehr’s mother, who called Ellen and Inman and got them so crazed. Tanya Baehr had told her mother about it. So now Elizabeth was stuck with her story—but she didn’t want her parents to tell anybody, not the police, not the university, not anybody. And why? She said she was too traumatized to talk to anybody about it. If you want my opinion, she knew that she had concocted on the spur of the moment something that was turning into a gigantic lie. She was afraid to even try filling in the details for a rape charge and actually bring it before the police or a court or somebody. What she was really telling her parents and everybody else was ‘Let’s forget about it. Please let’s forget about it.’ But she has the wrong father, if that’s what she thought was going to happen. So Inman’s going around furiously trying to pull his troops together—but he can’t bring any charges because his daughter’s so ‘traumatized.’ Some ‘traumatized.’ She wasn’t acting traumatized that night at the Driving Club.”

  “I thought you said you liked Elizabeth.”

  “I do,” said Serena. “She’s fun. We get along well. She confides in me. But do I think she’s an angel? No, I don’t. You don’t understand women, Charlie, you really don’t. Man at his most conniving is no match for Woman at hers. From the very beginning Elizabeth has tried to put a lid on this whole affair without ever admitting to Inman and Ellen that she was anything other than Little Miss Innocent. And now it’s gotten totally out of hand. Fanon’s name is all over television and the newspapers. You don’t see Elizabeth’s name, you just see ‘daughter of one of Atlanta’s most powerful businessmen,’ but her name’s all over the Internet, thanks to this Web site, ‘Chasing the Dragon,’ and I don’t know anybody who can’t tell you right off the bat that it’s Elizabeth Armholster.”

  Serena’s eyes were boring into Charlie’s.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s assume all this is true. Where does it leave me?”

  “It’s more ‘where does it leave Fanon,’” said Serena. “He’s the one who stands to lose everything over some trumped-up accusations.”

  “So I should—”

  “You should give him a break, Charlie! You don’t have to attack Elizabeth. You don’t even have to mention her, not even as the daughter of a prominent whatever. You just tell everybody to give Fanon the benefit of the doubt, because you know the hazards of sports celebrity, which you do.”

  Charlie turned his head and stared up at the old pine paneling of the den and sighed.

  “Charlie!” said Serena in order to get him looking at her once more. “It’s not a question of making Fanon and his side happy. It’s a question of coming down on the side of the truth! I’m telling you, I know Elizabeth, and she’s perfectly capable of hooking up with any boy as famous as Fareek Fanon, black or not, and scoring him. You can’t say that, of course, you just give Fanon a little bit of a shield. It would be true, and it would be the right thing to do.”

  Charlie leaned back in the chair and put his head down and began breathing audibly through his mouth. The dilemma now roared in his head more furiously than ever. He wanted to believe what Serena had just told him. He wanted to be on the side of righteousness as well as the side of Charlie Croker’s bankrupt empire. He wanted to believe that Serena was devoted to truth and fair play and only incidentally to the preservation of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Croker’s assets.

  As if sensing she almost had him, Serena leaned toward him and said, “Right now this is a hot piece of gossip. But six months, a year from now, who’s going to remember the details? Who’s going to remember that Charlie Croker made a generic statement about athletes and the pressure put upon them? Nobody.”

  Charlie could think of somebody. He could see that swarthy fat face and that black hair combed straight back from low on his forehead and plastered down like a swath of asphalt. He could hear that low, angry, Camels-cured voice. He could see those small, unforgiving eyes.

  “I know they’ve got their own agenda,” said Serena, “but this Roger White is absolutely right when he says you will be doing something for the city of Atlanta—doing a lot for it—if you stand up and say, ‘Let’s hold on a second. Let’s take a breath. Let’s not have a rush to judgment.’ That’s all you’ll really be saying: ‘Let’s not have a rush to judgment.’ And given what I know about Elizabeth—and what a lot of other people know about her—Elizabeth’s not exactly tight-lipped-somebody needs to say that, somebody like you. The Mayor can’t do it all by himself. But the two of you together, you’d be making an appeal across racial lines. In the long run, people will praise you. Most people, no matter what they knew about Elizabeth, would take the easy way out and say nothing. It takes courage to do what you’re going to do. You won’t be taking sides, you’ll just be leveling out the playing field a little bit.”

  Yes, thought Charlie, black people will praise me, the Herb Richmans of Atlanta will praise me. At the Piedmont Driving Club—he could see the porte cochere and the front entrance and the doorman, Gates, helping some tall, teetering white man out of his Mercedes 600—maybe Lomprey: just as if he were right in front of him, he could see Arthur Lomprey’s great height and bent-over dog’s neck—and Lomprey would know that something smelled high in this situation, since he had been pressured—by whom?—by someone—into calling the dogs off Charlie and his holdings. But what would Lomprey say? What could he say? Just how much did he know?

  Suddenly Charlie had an inspiration. He’d call Inman or go see him. He’d tell him the dangers presented by this whole business. Elizabeth herself might be at risk. He was going to make an appearance with the Mayor at a press conference to defuse the situation until a real investigation could be made. What he would be doing would be as much for Elizabeth, Ellen, and him, Inman, as anybody else. The high road … the Business Interests’ way in a town like Atlanta … the Atlanta Way …

  The only trouble was—as he made this little speech inside his head, he tried to picture Inman right in front of him … He tried to picture Inman judiciously taking this all into account and finally nodding yes … The only trouble was, he couldn’t picture Inman doing anything judicious in this situation … He might get as far as “defuse the situation”—and then he’d learn something about fuses and explosions, all right.

  So the tornado spun and spun and spun inside his skull.

  “Charlie,” asked Serena in a sweet, reasonable voice, “how bad can it be to tell the truth?”

  Even with Durwood as his guide—Durwood was so taciturn, it came across as a bitterness toward life—Conrad immediately sensed the staggering scale upon which life was lived at Turpmtine. The stable, which was grander than any building in the entire city of Pittsburg, California, housed fifty-nine horses. What could anybody do with fifty-nine horses? There was a snake house for snakes and a breeding barn just for mating horses. There were kennels for forty dogs. There were employees all over the place; and if the subject of Charlie Croker came up, they invariably referred to him as “Cap’m Charlie.”

  Once he returned to the Big House, he helped the old man upstairs to a bedroom, another guest room by the looks of it. The old man was already getting around much better on his aluminum crutches, so much so that Conrad suggested that he try just an aluminum cane, but he wasn’t having any of that. He was determined to stick with the crutches … clackclack … clackclack … clackclack … clackclack …

  With Conrad’s help, Mr. Croker deposited himself in an easy chair near the bed. He was breathing too rapidly, and sweat had broken out on his forehead. He looked up at Conrad the way a disobedient student might look up at a teacher.

  “I think I did too much,” he said.

  “Well, remember what we were talking about, Mr. Croker,” said Conrad. “Much as you’ve been in bed, you’re gonna be weak when you try to walk.”

  “Pour me a glass of water there, if you don’t mind,” said the old man.

  He downed almost half the tumbler at one gulp and went “Whewwwww” Then he looked up at Conrad again. “I’ll tell you something I need worse than water.” He paused. “I’m talking about the Book.”

  “All right,” said Conrad, “where is it?” He looked about and then spotted it. It was on a bureau. Conrad picked up The Stoics and then stood facing Mr. Croker, who had by now sunk so deeply into the easy chair, he was all but supine.

  “What would you like to know, Mr. Croker?”

  “All right,” said Mr. Croker, “suppose you’ve been asked to say something publicly that isn’t literally true but is more nearly true than if you said the opposite.” He hesitated and looked at Conrad and said, “Do you follow me so far?”

  “Not completely,” said Conrad. “But go ahead.”

  “But if you say this, you’re going to lose a lot of friends. Maybe all your friends. But if you don’t say it, you’re going to lose all your money—and you’ll still lose your friends, because there’s no way you can separate their friendship toward you from the fact that you have a certain place in society, which you wouldn’t have in the first place without your money.”

  “I can tell you what Epictetus says,” said Conrad. “He says, ‘No one can make progress facing both ways.’”

  “Where does he say that?” The old man began to sit up straighter.

  “I can’t remember exactly, Mr. Croker. I think it’s in Book IV. But anyway, he says you can’t be both a Stoic and a man who’s liked by all his old friends. Half the time they like you because you share their bad habits. Now, if you exercise self-control and self-respect, they’ll shake their heads and say, ‘He’s just not himself anymore.’”

  The old man was nodding his head in vigorous assent. “That’s exactly it,” he said in a low voice, “that’s exactly it.”

  “But, Mr. Croker, do you mind if I ask you something?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “This is the second time you’ve mentioned making a public statement about somebody. Could you be a little more specific? I’m sort of confused, Mr. Croker. You were talking about ‘something that isn’t literally true but is more nearly true than if you said the opposite.’ Can you give me an example?”

  The old man hung his head forward and then looked up again at Conrad. “All right,” he said, “I’m gonna tell you exactly what’s going on. You’re not gonna believe it, but I swear to God it’s true. Incidentally, or not so incidentally, this is just between us. Okay, Connie?”

  “Yes, sir. You have my word.”

  “I don’t even know you,” said the old man. “All the same, I trust you. Maybe it’s because you don’t know my friends. Anyway, I trust you. Do you remember the first time we talked about Epictetus and the Stoics and I said something to you about dilemmas?”

  Conrad nodded yes.

  “And you told me a story about Agrippinus and what was his name, the historian?”

  “Florus,” said Conrad.

  “Florus. Well, now I’m gonna tell you about a dilemma. My own. You’re gonna be surprised. I’m gonna tell you everything.”

  The boy cocked his head and looked at Charlie in such a curious way, for so long, Charlie snapped his fingers in front of his face, as if to say “Snap out of it.”

  “Well—Mr. Croker,” said the boy, “in that case I’m gonna tell you everything, and you’re gonna be even more surprised. I don’t know any more about you than you know about me, but I trust you, too. If I can’t, I’m in a lot of trouble.”

  They started talking, both of them, and they held nothing back, nothing at all. It turned dark outside, and still they talked. Twice Mason came up and knocked on the door and told them dinner was ready, and then Serena came up to tell them, but they kept on talking.

  It was about quarter of ten when Charlie said, “Connie—by the way, I’m gonna have to keep on calling you Connie. ‘Conrad’ just don’t fit. I couldna had nobody named Conrad working in one of those damn freezer units. I’m sorry. Anyway, I’ve made a decision. I’m going to the press conference. That’s my test.”

  “I’m glad,” said Conrad. “Remember Agrippinus, the Stoic who refused to act in Nero’s play?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think I ever mentioned what happened to him. Several friends came by his house and they told him, ‘Your trial’s going on right now in the Senate.’ Agrippinus says, ‘Oh? That’s their business. It’s time for me to take my exercise.’ Then he singles out one of his friends and says, ‘Come on, let’s go exercise and then take a cold bath.’ So that’s what he does. When he gets back to the house, more people are there, and they’re saying, ‘They’ve reached a verdict!’ And Agrippinus says, ‘Which is?’ ‘Guilty.’ Agrippinus says, ‘What’s the sentence, death or exile?’ They answer, ‘Exile.’ Agrippinus says, ‘My property—confiscated or not?’ They answer, ‘Confiscated.’ ‘Thank you,’ says Agrippinus. Then he turns to his friend. ‘It’s time for dinner. Let’s go dine at Acicia.’ Which they did.

  “Charlie—there was a man.”

  chapter XXXII

  The Manager

  THE CAMERA PULLED WAY, WAY, WAY BACK—HOW DO THEY DO these things? Peepgass wondered—until on the television screen in Martha’s library appeared a long shot of the City Hall rotunda from above … all the gray-and-white marble … the marble walls … the marble balcony with its gleaming brass railing … the lower part of the rotunda’s great Pantheon-like marble dome … the marble floor … in the middle of the floor, a marble fountain … off to the left, the window where you could pay your utility bills, if you had to … and Peepgass had had to do exactly that more than once, scramble to that damned window with cash, at the eleventh hour, to avoid having his electricity cut off … Beyond the fountain was an enormous crescent, almost a semicircle, of television cameras, looked like two or three dozen of them … and beyond the cameras, a mass of chairs filled with journalists … and beyond the journalists, a short flight of stairs leading up to a marble landing from whence the rotunda’s two grand marble staircases led up to the second level … More masses of humanity were sitting on the stairs, as if they were tiers at a stadium … The landing itself was like a stage or a dais … On it were a modernistic blond wood podium … looked like maple or ash … and behind the podium, one on each side, a pair of stout banker’s chairs, apparently made of the same wood … The podium was no doubt where the Mayor would be holding forth.

  Peepgass looked at his watch. “It’s already 11:05,” he said to Martha. And then to Wallace: “Have you seen one of these before, one of these press conferences?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Wallace said dully.

  When he moved in here, Peepgass had never considered the fact that now that it was June, the boy, Wallace, would be home from school. It was damned awkward. Peepgass never knew what to say to the boy, and the boy never seemed to want to say anything to him. For a flickering instant he thought of his own two boys, whom he hardly ever saw anymore. But quickly enough he returned to Martha, young Wallace, and Valley Road, in the real Buckhead. Only Martha seemed comfortable about it all.

  Without taking her eyes off the screen, she said, “Oh, these things never start on time,” but she was thinking of something else. To watch television Ray always gravitated to the same easy chair that had been Charlie’s favorite. That was the only way she could think of in which the two men were alike.

  Now no more rotunda on the TV screen; instead, a man and a woman seated side by side behind some sort of futuristic TV news desk. An inch or so of coiled translucent wire was unfortunately visible behind the left ear of the man, whose name was Roland Barris. He also had a hair problem. His hair had receded badly on either side, leaving a forelock at the front of his pate separated like an island from the mainland. The forelock had been artfully teased and brushed back and then sprayed so that it reconnected with the mainland, if only for the duration of a broadcast.

  You poor bastard, thought Peepgass with a satisfying Schadenfreude, you’ll never make it to the network nightly news anchor desk, not with that scarce-haired skull of yours. He decided not to mention it to Martha, however, for fear of underscoring the fact that his own career in banking had nowhere to go, either.

  The poor man, thought Martha, studying Roland Barris, he’s had a complete dye job, every hair on his head. That always looks awful on a man, because it’s so obvious. She decided not to mention it to Ray, however, since it was not in her interest, as an eternal blonde, to bring up the matter of who did or didn’t have a complete dye job.

  The woman on the screen, the anchorette or whatever, Lynn Hinkle, was a good fifteen years younger than Roland Barris. Her main journalistic assets, thought Martha, were her pretty face and her head of straight blond hair, naturally blond no doubt—and how fast it goes, my dear, you just wait.

  “ … waiting for Mayor Jordan,” Roland Barris was saying, “who has never held a press conference that has aroused more intense speculation. But then this is an unusual situation all the way round, wouldn’t you say so, Lynn?”

  “I certainly would,” said Blondie, smiling instinctively and utterly inappropriately. “No one we’ve talked to at City Hall can remember a mayor of Atlanta ever holding a press conference to address an alleged sexual assault, particularly in a case where no charges have been filed, Roland.”

  “That’s a good point, Lynn,” said Roland, without so much as a glance toward Lynn, as if his eyes had been magnetized by the camera. “Sources close to the Mayor have told us that what the Mayor has been concerned about has been a mini-riot that erupted in Fareek Fanon’s old neighborhood, English Avenue, last week. Over on English Avenue and much of South Atlanta many people look upon Fareek Fanon as one of their own who has risen to national prominence as an all-American running back, and now they feel he’s been set up and framed, or that’s what many people believe, Lynn.”

  “That’s about the size of it, Roland,” said Lynn, without looking at Roland. “And of course the entire case has taken on racial overtones, and that’s what must be paramount—” She broke off the sentence and cocked her head slightly, and for a moment appeared to be gazing toward someplace far, far away. “I think the Mayor has appeared, and so we now rejoin Joe Mundy at City Hall.”