Courting Rituals of a Monk

Courting Rituals of a Monk
Jefferson City, Missouri
February 1997



His heels clacked on the hardwood floor. The sound reverberated off the walls, the high ceiling, the curtainless cathedral windows. When he reached the fireplace around which the others were gathered, he opened his appointment book.

Before he could speak, one of his guests snapped a cellular phone shut. "That fireman died," he announced.

"And which fireman would that be?" he drawled back, continuing to page through a blizzard of old memos and Post-It notes.

Was there an indrawn breath of impatience from someone? If so, tough. Peter Booth never hesitated to confess his ignorance when he was unsure what was going on -- and often when he knew exactly what the score was.

Some called him The Monk in reference to the austerity of his lifestyle and his lack of noticeable vices. To others, he was known as Shockley's Shadow or Shockley's Bastard as tribute to his absolute loyalty to his master. His personal history had become the stuff of legend. The Marines had been his ticket out of Ozark squalor. A brush with heroism had attracted the attention of Shockley, then an entrepreneur with political aspirations. Under Shockley's tutelage he had leached the last of the hillbilly from his voice and his manner.

The boy from the unheated backwoods shack had already occupied an office in the governor's mansion; now man and master eyed the White House as an attainable goal.

Better educated, more sophisticated staffers learned quickly to respect him or stay the hell out his way. Frequently, a combination of the two seemed the wisest course.

"The Memphis arson," Dave Martinez prompted. The youngest and newest of Argos Shockley's political advisers, he cultivated a mustache to offset his lack of seniority.

“That doesn't help me, son."

A muscle in Martinez's jaw twitched at the thinly veiled paternalism, but he hastened to explain himself. Early December, he said. Christian bookstore just a few days prior to its grand opening. Looked like electrical problem but turned out to be arson. One fireman dead at the scene, another lingering until an hour ago. High passions and rhetoric, finger-pointing at pro-choicers, the Reverend Buzzy Brainard all over it like stink on shit.

The assembled staffers swarmed over the issue like cats to a can opener. Booth closed his appointment book, folded his arms across his chest, and watched the fray heat up. A lean, elegantly graying blond in a Ralph Lauren suit, he survived by keeping his distance from the actual decision-making process. The experts tweaked the issues: that was their job. They shaped the policy path and Argos Shockley trod it, with Peter Booth up in front walking point for him.

The question under discussion was whether Shockley should attend the fireman's funeral. There were promises and pitfalls in every angle, and staffers' personal priorities were exposed as well. At one point, Booth's own aide, Lisa, who should have known better, tried to engage him in the battle.

"You talk to him," she pleaded, referring to Shockley himself, who was not present..

"I don't do policy."

"But he listens to you."

"Yeah, well, he shouldn't."

Two voices other than Booth's remained silent in the debate. For both of them, it was their first visit to his apartment. First time visitors were often rattled by the fishbowl effect of towering naked windows and unadorned cherry wood paneling, by the bare windows even in his bedroom, through which they had to pass to access the bathroom. Those not spooked by the lack of privacy were often spooked by Booth himself. There was nothing quite like a man with no apparent secrets to make one uneasily aware of one's own.

Christine Youngblood sat on the far end of the longer couch. The wife of a seasoned congressman and mother of two teenagers, she had an accounting degree and political connections of her own. Rosy-cheeked and gently rounded, she always appeared rumpled, but the overall effect suggested an afternoon's romp in the boudoir rather than slovenly habits. Peter Booth's presence muted her natural exuberance, and he felt that he knew the reason why.

There were women to whom his odd blend of power, inaccessibility, and mysterious lack of obvious mystery acted as an aphrodisiac. Although his monastic lifestyle was a choice rather than a pose, Booth was prepared to make an exception for Mrs. Youngblood if she was so inclined. It would be tricky and fraught with risks, but one of the Monk's best kept secrets was that he savored living his life on the edge. That was the most important lesson Vietnam had taught him.

The other silent guest was more of a puzzle. Roman McClure was a dabbler, an East Coast Ivy League import-export man with close ties to the diplomatic and intelligence communities. He appeared approximately Booth's age, early fifties, but might be older. He sat on the near end of the smaller couch, right in the thick of debate, and said nothing, watching each speaker with lizard-lidded eyes and the merest breath of contempt. Had Abraham Lincoln descended from aristocracy and worn Armani, he could have passed for McClure's brother. He had sat in Booth's living room for an hour now, and Booth still knew only two things for sure about him. He knew that he didn't know what McClure's purpose was in attending what was after all a strategy meeting, and he knew clear to the base of his spine that he wouldn't care for the answer when he found out.

"Moving right along," Magda the publicist intoned dryly. She had financed her college education by working summers as a camp counselor, and it still colored her voice at the oddest moments. All she lacked was a whistle on a woven plastic lanyard, and rumor had it that she had a drawer full of them at home. "Worldview Weekly is doing a cover on crime, on the upswing in random crime."

"Let me guess -- they're featuring that first draft of the poverty speech, the one--"

"Hush, Dave! The attack on Emerson and Shockley and what's-his-name and the rest of them will be mentioned only in passing -- I couldn't get it shifted to a better spot -- but there will be a 'Where Are They Now' sidebar that will feature you prominently, Peter."

"Oh, not again," Booth sighed. “Come on. That was a million years ago.”

Magda ignored him. “So expect a call from them within a week."

"What's that all about?" Christine Youngblood piped up. "What do you have to do with random crime, Peter?"

"Back in 'seventy-one, some nut started shooting into a crowd of people. Peter was the one passing by who grabbed the gun, the one who wrestled the gunman to the ground," Magda replied. "That's how he met Shockley; Shockley was one of the targets."

"Now, I don't know that that's true," Peter admonished her. "Trowbridge died. Rolland Emerson was the most seriously wounded. He seemed to be firing randomly to me." He felt Roman McClure's eyes boring into him and it jarred him. He scrambled to take control, to shape and pitch the story in his own way. "I was the first one to the gunman, but I can't take much credit for it. I should have realized he was going to shoot himself next. I was so out of it, so taken by surprise, that I thought he had decided to hand over the gun."

"Haven't you seen the picture?" Magda demanded of Mrs. Youngblood. "It won awards. I'll pull a copy and send it over to you."

Booth cringed inwardly. He hated that photo of himself, gaunt and scruffy in fatigue jacket and post-military beard, kneeling on the sidewalk with grief on his face and Gordon Early's brain matter on his sleeve. He hated, in fact, any reference to that frosty February afternoon in Dayton, Ohio, even though without that afternoon, without that photograph, God only knew where he would be today.

Managing a KFC franchise or ticketing speeders in and out of Branson, probably, like his brothers, he figured. Maybe selling sporting goods, like his ex-brother-in-law.

Nevertheless, he contented himself by growling, "Fool -- if he'd jumped instead of fumbling with his light meter, there might have been a few less injured. If he'd tried to administer first aid instead of snapping that damn picture, maybe Trowbridge wouldn't have bled to death. Hell, I should have kept it together and tried to render assistance. It wasn't as though I was a stranger to combat, after all."

Roman McClure spoke at last. In a deep voice with overtones of sarcasm, he murmured, "A most becoming modesty, Mr. Booth."

Booth allowed a little heat to creep into his own tones. "No modesty to it. I was only two months home from a third tour of 'Nam. I walked point there; it was my specialty, what I was best at. In the jungles I was able to spot men in camouflage hundreds of yards away -- men concentrating all their skill on not being seen by me. I saw them all, Mr. McClure. But on a city street, in broad daylight, smack-dab in the middle of civilization, I missed some lunatic waving around a couple revolvers as big as Christmas fruitcakes. This is not a show of modesty, sir. That was head-up-your-ass stupidity, and until the day I die I'll be ashamed of it."

Bingo.

He could feel the temperature in the room changing as the regular staffers, even those with no great love for Shockley's hatchet man, united against the outsider who attacked one of their own. He had done that speech better in the past, but he felt that he had given it just the right notes tonight. Something else he had learned from Shockley was the art of making the same song sound custom designed for a series of audiences.

A curtain of icy urbanity fell over McClure's features as he reassessed his position. "I meant no disrespect," he rumbled with a thin smile of conciliation.

"Of course not," Booth replied with equal sincerity.

In Christine Youngblood's bright eyes he saw the glow of hero worship. Beneath her designer peasant blouse her breasts shifted with her quickened breathing.

Bingo, indeed.

Minor as it was, the Booth-McClure confrontation nevertheless seemed to goose the strategists into action, and the rest of the agenda was dealt with quickly and efficiently. Everyone agreed that Argos Shockley should remain active with the Ethical Labor-Management Options Board, but only if offered one of the co-chairs. He would probably insist on staying anyway -- he was absurdly fond of the fangless advisory group -- but a chairmanship would position him for favorable international attention at the worldwide conference in Orlando in October.

Al Cassidy volunteered to descend on the guy tasked with coordinating support among Suncoast Latinos. Martinez seemed a little miffed that he had been passed over, but he would have been equally nettled had he been chosen for the assignment. There were always some battles which couldn't be won, regardless.

The impasse regarding the funeral for the dead fireman in Memphis was broken by a phone call to Cassidy from one of the money men out of Chattanooga. The guy wanted reassurance that Argos Shockley would make an appearance because it was a law and order issue blah-de-blah-de-blah, talking all around the fact that the Reverend Buzzy's ever-growing empire needed a lot of construction done, and construction was this guy's chief source of income. Shockley's organization was not in a financial position to thumb its corporate nose at its backers, so Shockley would go. Schedules would be shuffled, a statement would be drafted coming down hard on the theme of public servants laying their lives on the line, and Shockley could continue to duck and weave on the can't-please-anyone abortion issue for a little while longer.

Throughout the discussion, Roman McClure reverted to his expectant silence. Mrs. Youngblood made voluminous notes in a spiral notebook and volunteered to assist with the new batch of focus groups when Irv got off the dime and set them up. Booth broke out the wine and grudgingly produced a single ashtray for Al and Magda, although he banished them to his minuscule kitchen to use it. Lisa served a banana-squash bread she had baked herself, sweet and thick with date and cashew pieces.

The Monk basked in the comfortable blend of worldliness and down-home hospitality. He lounged against the marble mantel and nursed a single glass of wine, covertly watching Roman McClure covertly watching Lisa in her ethnic African patterned dress.

The gathering broke up when a gust of wind sent a spattering of ice droplets crashing against the western windows. The storm that the weather service had forecast for the early morning hours was upon them ahead of schedule.

As Booth presided at the coat closet, he experienced both relief that McClure would be out of his apartment, and regret that he had not yet devised an excuse to get Christine to stay. It was probably just as well -- the roads would be murderous within the hour. He herded the group down the stairs and found himself walking shoulder to shoulder with Roman McClure.

"A striking place you have here," McClure commented as their footsteps echoed in the stairwell.

"Thank you. This was the Beecher place back in railroad baron days."

"How many units did they break into?"

"Seven."

"I should think there would be more."

"The others are much bigger, two and three bedrooms. I don't need that kind of space."

"Quite an improvement over your origins, I would say."

"True."

And on nights like this one when the wind whistled audibly, he often thought about his first few years, before his father got his act together and started supporting the family -- when six of them huddled in two rooms thick with bacon grease and wood smoke and hung blankets on the walls and layered old clothing on the floor to keep out the cold that crept through the cracks.

"You owe a lot to Argos Shockley."

"Yes." But not everything, his pride insisted. He had graduated from high school, the first ever in his family, and first in his class. Maybe there had only been seventeen in the class, but first was first. He had a drawer full of combat citations, and he still placed respectably in pistol matches. He had been prepared when his moment of opportunity arrived.

He had earned the subliminal assurances of wealth and permanence he derived from the sound of echoing footsteps.

Booth did not recall dawdling on the stairs, but when he and McClure reached the front door the others were already on the porch and one auto engine was roaring to life.

For an instant he was disoriented, wondering where everyone had gone. Particularly, he wondered how Christine Youngblood had slipped past him without so much as a special farewell.

Maybe he was losing his edge.

He nodded at the night security man in his cubbyhole by the door and thrust his hand out at McClure. "It's been interesting meeting you."

"Same here."

Coatless, he stepped out on the broad porch with McClure. Cold as a son of a bitch it was, and ice already clung to the branches of the trees and glistened on the pavement. "It's going to be nasty driving. Where are you staying?"

"With friends. Al Cassidy brought me tonight."

Interesting.

He jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the storm, determined to see McClure enter Al Cassidy's Town Car. McClure removed his Russian-style hat and chuckled self-deprecatingly as he lowered the ear flaps. "My girls would be howling about now," he confided once it was snugly returned to his head. "Saying, 'Oh, Daddy, you look like a such a dweeb!'"

Booth turned away. He barely knew his kids. The nuts and bolts of marriage and of fatherhood had taken a back seat to his duties in the service of Argos Shockley. It was a necessary loss in his view. That sacrifice had enabled them to go to the best schools, to grow up without want. Their step dad was a great guy, ran the pro shop at the Hecate Glen Country Club. Peter saw him from time to time when Shockley connected with that crowd. He was good for Prissy and civil to Booth. Who could ask for more?

He leaned over the rail and peered up the drive toward the old carriage house. "I think Al's having trouble getting the car -- no, he's got it now."

"Do you think the truth will ever come out about the shooting?" McClure said to his back.

He didn't think he jumped. He was shivering too much against the cold to show any outward sign, he figured. His face wasn't a problem, either, contorted into a grimace as it was. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said."

"I've heard that Early's widow says there are some unanswered questions," Booth offered carefully. "Is that what you're talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"The one fellow -- Prettyman, wasn't it? -- he was shot again a few years ago. Is that what you're referring to?"

McClure uttered a sound of impatience in a visible cloud of moisture around his lips. "A petty squabble," he said dismissively. "Prettyman died in a power struggle over who would command a dying fringe group."

"Then you've lost me."

McClure gave an abrupt and uninformative nod, and turned toward Al Cassidy's car purring in the driveway.

Booth sketched a wave at them and escaped back to the warmth of the foyer. He stood for a minute or so by the ancient wheezing radiators, rubbing his hands together. Then he climbed the stairs again.

There certainly was more to the Gordon Early shooting incident than was generally known, but Booth was privy only to tiny pieces of it. Since little of it impacted on his own role, he had never felt moved to pursue it. He had in fact determined many years back that to examine the affair too closely could be hazardous to his health.

But did McClure know something, or was that a only fishing expedition?

He paused on the landing a few steps down from his apartment door. He had left it ajar, yes, but he thought he heard running water. If a pipe had burst again...

"Shit," he murmured aloud, and mounted the last few stairs by twos.

Christine Youngblood, a tea towel tucked into the waistband of her skirt, turned away from his kitchen sink with a sudsy wine glass in her hand. "Hi," she said with a sheepish grin. "I hope you don't mind. All these dishes lying around, and you're so aggressively neat, I thought--"

"I thought you had gone."

She peeked on tiptoe past his shoulder. "Is Mr. McClure still here?"

"No." He closed the door quietly.

God, she was beautiful -- she had her shoes off, too. Pretty little country girl feet, even. It thrilled him to see her making herself at home in his space. Possibly that meant she would not be averse to his making himself at home inside her blouse.

"Since this is Smokers' Hell, do you mind?" she gestured toward her purse on the table.

"Of course not."

She dried her hands and disposed of the towel before pulling a leather cigarette case and matching lighter from her bag. He expected her to sit down at the tiny table, but she remained on her feet, leaning against the counter, so he settled his rump against it, too. "How much do you know about Roman McClure?" she asked.

"Very little. Only what was said tonight. Why?" It disappointed him that she hadn't dallied back out of amorous intent, but her intensity pleased and interested him.

"What was your take on him?"

He shrugged. "I wasn't impressed. He isn't much at picking his pissing contests."

"Mmm," she purred, and once again a hint of kitten appeared in her eyes. "Very macho assessment."

"Thank you." He wished she would make up her mind which message she wanted to send him. "Once again, why?"

"He's really roiling the waters back in DC, looking for anything he can get on Argos Shockley."

"That doesn't surprise me, but who's your source?"

She tapped ash into the ashtray. "My husband, for one. A Post writer I know. For that matter, I'm surprised Magda didn't clue you in -- McClure's hanging around her husband quite a bit, although given their business interests, that may be perfectly aboveboard."

"Look, obviously you know more about McClure than I do. What can you tell me?"

She shook her head slightly. "Not much. I don't like him, I guess that's obvious, too. He creeps me out, that's the bottom line. It's pure gut -- if he came out in favor of milk, I'd switch to prune juice. I don't--" She hesitated for a moment, staring into space. "I don't know anybody who actually likes or trusts him, but I also don't know of anybody who wants to cross him."

"Up until tonight, he was never more than a name on a list of contributors," Booth confessed.

"He's like that, a background-y kind of person -- until you have something he wants."

"And what does he want?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. You'd better get people on finding out."

The Monk studied Christine with more fondness than before. Did Hal Youngblood appreciate the treasure he had married? Did he realize what a rare combination of savvy and sensuality she possessed?

"Can I buy you a drink, Mrs. Youngblood?"

Startlement in her eyes and color in her cheeks. "I would enjoy that, Mr. Booth."

His was a bare-bones kitchen, suited only for preparing a morning cup of tea or a sandwich to eat while watching the television he had mounted on the wall. That was all he used it for. He took few meals at home. He had no bar as such, either, keeping a small assortment of bottles in a lower cabinet where another might have stored pots and pans.

He selected two, located the proper glasses, and mixed a pair of drinks.

No expectations, he warned himself as he turned back to her with two glasses of amber liquid.

"Lovely crystal," she said. "What's this?"

"A Rusty Comfort -- Southern Comfort instead of Drambuie. Puts hair on your chest."

"I hope not."

He gave her a dog-dumb grin. "So do I, actually. God knows it's never worked for me."

Her own smile was dangerous, a walking-on-the-edge smile. "Prove it."

"Prove what?"

She looked around carefully at her surroundings. The kitchen was in an alcove constructed in the center of the apartment, and it was not visible from any of the dozen windows. She reached over and tugged on the end of his tie. "Prove that it won't put hair on my chest."

Reality flipped and spun again, and it was several seconds before he remembered to breathe. He placed his glass on the counter. "Prove that you don't have a hairy chest already."

Her eyes locked on his, she loosened the top button of her blouse.

Bingo.