suggest something, Mr. Gross?'
Jack Gross smiled warmly. 'My people are, Mr. Gaines.'
'And who, exactly, are your people?'
Jack Gross looked almost embarrassed. 'Well, Mr. Gaines, let's say that my people are political realists. They come mainly from the staunch right wing of the Republican party, and also from industry and finance. They're not, though, what you'd call the old guard. I guess the easiest way of describing us would be to say that we are the young, committed right.'
Herbert Gaines raised an eyebrow. 'How right?' he asked. 'Right of Ford?'
'Certainly.'
'In other words,' Herbert said, 'you're the Green Berets of the Grand Old Party?'
Jack Gross grinned. 'You could say that, Mr. Gaines. That's a nice turn of phrase.'
Herbert Gaines left his blender and moved closer to Jack Gross.
'Mr. Gross,' he said steadily, 'I've been a Republican all my voting life. I used to go around with pals of Duke Wayne, and I've come out now and again and said my piece about pinko thinking and moral standards. I have letters of admiration from the Daughters of the American Revolution, and I contribute to veterans' charities and several other conservative causes.'
Jack Gross didn't flinch. 'We know all that, Mr. Gaines. We have a dossier.'
Herbert Gaines stood straight, and nodded. 'I'm sure you do, Mr. Gross. But there is one thing that your dossier obviously omits to mention.'
'What's that, Mr. Gaines?'
'I am not a politician, Mr. Gross, and I never want to be. I have a patriotic duty to my country, but I also have a private and personal duty to my art.'
'Your art?'
Herbert Gaines lifted his gaunt, withered head.
'Yes, Mr. Gross, my art. I am — I was — one of the finest movie actors that ever crossed the screen. I made two pictures and both pictures are classics. Even today, after three decades, people still applaud out loud when they see them. Mr. Gross, I have an abiding duty to those people. It is my task in life to make sure that those magical images I created in my youth stay fresh. If I come out now, like a skeleton out of a closet, and try to whip up political support on the strength of those images, my whole life's achievement would be destroyed. Who could ever look at Captain Dashfoot again, after seeing me, as I am today, talking about busing and housing and economic tariffs?'
Jack Gross still smiled. 'Mr. Gaines,' he said gently, 'we don't want you to talk about anything like that. We want you to talk about plague.'
Herbert Gaines frowned. 'I beg your pardon?'
'Plague, Mr. Gaines. The ancient scourge of nations. The Black Death.'
'I don't understand.'
'Have you heard the news?'
'I haven't had breakfast yet, for God's sake.'
'Well,' Jack Gross explained, 'there's a serious epidemic down in Florida. The government and the press have been keeping it tightly under wraps, saying it's an isolated outbreak of swine flu, but we know better. It's a highly dangerous, highly virulent strain of plague. The whole of Miami is afflicted, and there's talk of razing the whole city to the ground. It's also broken out in Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Brunswick and Charleston.'
'Is this some sort of joke?'
Jack Gross shook his head. 'It's not a joke, Mr. Gaines. It's the most disastrous result of this administration's mismanagement we've ever experienced. The US Disease Control Center have failed to contain the outbreak, and the government is so terrified that they don't know what to do next. They're too frightened even to tell the nation what's really going on.'
'But — '
Jack Gross raised his hand. 'It's the chance my people have been waiting for, Mr. Gaines. It's the chance to show up these weak-kneed liberals for what they really are. It's the chance to make the GOP a pure and concerted and effective machine again.'
Herbert Gaines ran his hand through his white hair. 'And you want me to help you? Is that it?'
'We want you as our figurehead. Captain Dashfoot to the rescue.'
Herbert Gaines found himself a kitchen stool and sat down. He was thoughtful and grim-faced.
'Mr. Gross,' he asked, after a few moments, 'is this epidemic really serious?'
Jack Gross nodded. 'As far as we can tell, between six and seven thousand people are dead, and many more are dying.'
Herbert Gaines looked up. 'So there must be great fear and panic in those places? In Florida and Georgia?'
'There is. The police and the National Guard have cordoned off the Florida state line, as far as they can. And no one, but no one, is allowed out.'
Herbert Gaines got up from his stool and walked across to the kitchen window. He stared out at Gabriels Park for a while, then he said, 'Mr. Gross, you're asking me to do something that conflicts with my sensitivities.'
'I'm sorry, Mr. Gaines. I don't get you.'
The old movie actor turned around. 'If there's an epidemic in the south, and people are dying, then the last thing I want to do is make political capital out of it. It's against my nature to advance myself through the fear and suffering of others. I have made terrible personal mistakes in my life, Mr. Gross, and I have been fortunate or unfortunate enough not to have been punished for them. I don't intend to add callousness and exploitation to my list of sins.'
Jack Gross smiled. 'Well, I understand your objections. But there's no reason why they should stand in your way. You have to see this thing in its historical context. A chance like this may never happen again.'
'A chance like what? A chance to put the squeeze on the public's uncertainty and fear? A chance to sweep into power on a tide of dead bodies? I'm not interested, Mr. Gross.'
Jack Gross sighed. 'I really think you're being oversensitive, Mr. Gaines.'
Herbert returned to his blender, and mixed his vegetables into a reddish-green froth. He poured the juice into a tall glass of crushed ice, and sipped it. He didn't look at Jack Gross, and was obviously waiting for him to go.
Jack Gross stared at the floor. 'I didn't want to do this, Mr. Games,' he said softly.
Herbert Gaines patted his lips with a Kleenex. 'Do what?' he said impatiently.
'Exert pressure.'
'Don't make me laugh,' said Herbert Gaines. 'What possible pressure could you exert on me?'
Jack Gross shrugged, still staring at the floor. 'There's always Nicky,' he said.
'What do you mean by that?'
Jack Gross was silent. He just smiled.
'What do you mean by that?' Herbert snapped.
Jack Gross looked up. 'I mean that our patriotic duty sometimes has to come before our personal opinions and that it always has to come before our personal pleasures.'
'Is that a threat? By God, you'd better not threaten me, Mr. Jack Gross.'
Jack Gross took his hat off his knee and parked it neatly on his head.
'I'll make myself plain, Mr. Gaines. We need you, and we need you now. If you don't oblige us with your assistance, then some friends of ours will have to pay you a visit. Those friends of ours come from Chicago, Mr. Gaines, where the stockyards are, and they've had a lifetime of experience with stud bulls like Nicky. When those stud bulls won't behave, they take their stockman's knives, the sharp ones with the hooked blades, and they castrate them.'
Jack Gross said all this with the same radiant smile on his face with which he had first walked in. At the kitchen door, he turned and said, 'Think about it, Mr. Gaines. I'll be in touch.'
Then he let himself out of the apartment, and closed the door behind him.
Herbert Gaines, pale-faced, went slowly into the bedroom, and stared for a long while at Nicky, sleeping peacefully on the satin sheets. 'Oh, God… ' he murmured, with a shiver and went back into the living-room to find
