Acts of Mercy by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg Read Free Book Online Page A

remembering what Maxwell had said to him this morning and what Justice had told him at noon. But he did not say anything, watching Julius, waiting for him to get on with it.
    “Nicholas,” Wexford said finally, and then stopped and cleared his throat again. “Nicholas, I’ve been taking soundings on this Israeli thing and I just received advance word on the new Harris poll from Austin. It looks like a twenty-two percent approval rating. Now I don’t have to tell you how serious that is—”
    “Get to the point, Julius,” Augustine said. “You didn’t come to tell me about the Harris poll.”
    Wexford seemed to draw himself up. “No, you’re right,” he said, “I didn’t. I might as well be direct; the situation is painful enough without beating around the bush. The fact of the matter is, there was a rump meeting of the National Committee in Saint Louis last night, and I’m flying out there again this evening for the formal procedural discussions on the convention, and ... well, there’s been a considerable amount of sentiment that it might be best for everyone—the nation, the party, even yourself—If you would decide not to seek renomination.”
    “I see.” Carefully, Augustine laid his pipe on the desk, put his hands flat on the litter of papers before him. There was anger in him, but it was cold, controlled. He had known for weeks that something like this might happen, although he had deluded himself into believing that it would not. “And am I to believe this sentiment is based on a twenty-two percent preliminary Harris? Or is there more to it than that?”
    Wexford still refused to meet his eyes. “There is no single causative factor; it’s a whole pattern of feeling which has developed over recent months. And you know what’s been happening in the primaries, Nicholas.”
    Nothing much had been happening in the primaries. Kineen had won all but one of them—the favorite-son candidate had beaten him in Pennsylvania—but he had done so over a widely split field of test-case candidates. The primaries meant little against an incumbent president anyway; even LBJ, who had lost in New Hampshire and Wisconsin in 1968, could not have been denied renomination on their basis. What primaries were, in truth, was shadow plays: clever little exercises exactly as important as the National Committee cared to make them. You could build a nomination on a series of victories, yes, as Jimmy Carter had done, as he himself had done to a lesser degree four years ago; but there were subtle ways to make sure that no victories came to a candidate the committee did not really want, and subtle ways of making even victories seem inconsequential.
    Augustine said, “Either you share this sentiment, Julius, or you’re the one who got the ball rolling in the first place. Which is it?”
    “I share it, that’s all.”
    “Then who did get the ball rolling? Briggs, maybe?”
    “No,” Wexford said, but his eyes flicked even further aside as he said it: Briggs had been a major factor, all right. “No one got the ball rolling, Nicholas. It was simply a consensus feeling on the part of the National Committee.”
    “Who else in the administration goes along with it?”
    “Quite a few people,” Wexford said. “I’m sorry, I dislike having to do this, but—”
    “But you’re still doing it, aren’t you? Did you volunteer to be the hatchet man, or did they give you the job because no one else wanted it?”
    “It was felt that because of our long-standing friendship—”
    “Friendship? You’re a goddamn Judas.”
    Wexford looked pained. “Please, Nicholas. It’s not that we feel you haven’t done a good job. It’s just that the time has come for a change if the party is going to remain strong and unified. You must understand that.”
    “I understand nothing of the sort.”
    “It would be an unselfish and magnanimous act—”
    “You’re presupposing that I might be pressured into going along with the idea,”