The Triumph of Evil by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

anarchist hippie niggerlovers tried that sort of thing in Louisiana, it would be the last time any of those hands had the life to pick up rocks.”
    “He actually said that.” It wasn’t a question. “The son of a bitch.”
    “And he added something about machine guns.”
    “Oh, I hope somebody gets him,” she said. “I’m not that nonviolent. I think it would be worth dying, to get someone like Guthrie first.”
    “Of course, there were other voices, too. Several senators called for an investigation of the guard’s role. And there was one senator, I think from New Hampshire or Vermont, I can’t remember his name.”
    “You mean Drury? The White Hope?”
    “Is that what they call him?”
    “I don’t know. Some people do.”
    “I thought he put things very well. He said that dissent could not be repressed, but then he took it a step further. He said neither could dissent be ignored. That dissenting elements in our society had to be accommodated not only for their sake but for the sake of society itself. What’s the matter? You look enormously unimpressed.”
    “I don’t know. Oh, shit, what good does it do? He’s been saying that for years. Each time something happens he says it and each time it’s true and each time everybody claps and each time nothing happens, and now J. Lowell Drury is up there again saying get out of Vietnam and stop the pollution and stop killing the Panthers and the students, and the only difference is that last time Jon Yerkes had two hands and this time he has one.”
    “I wonder, then. Doesn’t a man like Drury do any good at all?”
    “I don’t know if he does or not.” She nibbled at a fingernail. “What a lot of people say, what they’ve been saying all along, is that someone like that does more harm than good. Because he’s on your side, you know, he really is, it’s not bullshit, he means it. And he’s part of the system. And what he says and does makes people think maybe there’s hope working through the system.”
    “And there isn’t?”
    “Well, is there? The Democrats wouldn’t nominate Drury, and if they did, he wouldn’t win, but suppose he did. So he takes office, J. Lowell Drury of New Hampshire, and the first day the generals take him aside and whisper in his ear, and the next day the businessmen take him aside and whisper in his ear, and if he’s lucky the CIA takes him aside and whispers in his ear, and like he’s part of the Establishment and he can’t turn his ear off when these people whisper in it, and so the third night he goes to bed in the White House and when he wakes up in the morning he’s not J. Lowell Drury anymore, he’s Hubert Humphrey.”
    And, a few moments later. “I don’t know. I like Drury. I see him on television and I like him.”
    “But you wonder if the country would be any worse off than it already is without him.”
    “Right.” Eyes wide, empty. “And I can’t see how it would.”
    “It really helped to talk to you, Miles. You’re the only older person I know that I can rap with. And I can get a better set on things from talking with you. The other kids. We always say the same things to each other.”
    “It does me good to talk to you.”
    “How could it?”
    “In precisely the same way. And because I would find your company enjoyable in and of itself if we talked of nothing more profound than baby birds.”
    “Baby birds can be profound.”
    “I know.”
    “There was a book in our high school library called A Mouse Is Miracle Enough. I never read it, but I flashed on the title.” In German she repeated the title. And in English again, “I like just talking with you, too. In any language, and about anything.”
    “Forget about the lessons,” he said. “I’ve felt uncomfortable taking money from you for weeks now. And my schedule is going to be chaotic for the next few months. Come over whenever you feel like it. If I’m home, we’ll talk. In German, in English.”
    She looked intently at him. He