A kind of superstitious fright filled him. Those two—how could they doctor an item made last February? He had presumed they would go to the police or the newspapers, or even the pinoc government at Sac, and of course he had all those taken care of. Eerie. He did not know what to tell Calvin; he mumbled on for what seemed an endless time and at last managed to wind up the conversation and get off the phone.
When he hung up he realized, with a start, that Rita had come out of the bedroom and had listened to the whole conversation; she had been pacing irritably back and forth, wearing only a black silk slip, her blond hair falling loosely over her bare, slightly freckled shoulders.
“Tell the police,” she said.
Well, he thought, it probably would be cheaper to offer them two thousand or so. They’d accept it; that was probably all they wanted. Little fellows like that thought small; to them it would seem like a lot. They’d put in their new business, lose it, be broke again inside a month.
“No,” he said.
“Why not? Blackmail’s a crime.”
It was hard to explain to her. He was accustomed to paying people; it was part of the overhead, like the utilities. If the sum was small enough. . . but she did have a point. He mulled it over.
I’ll give them two thousand, but I’ll also get in touch with that guy at the Civic Center I know, that police inspector. I’ll have them look into both Frink and McCarthy and see if there’s anything of use. So if they come back and try again—I’ll be able to handle them.
For instance, he thought, somebody told me Frink’s a kike. Changed his nose and name. All I have to do is notify the German consul here. Routine business. He’ll request the Jap authorities for extradition. They’ll gas the bugger soon as they get him across the Demarcation Line. I think they’ve got one of those camps in New York, he thought. Those oven camps.
“I’m surprised,” the girl said, “that anyone could blackmail a man of your stature.” She eyed him.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “This whole damn historicity business is nonsense. Those Japs are bats. I’ll prove it.” Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. “Look at these. Look the same, don’t they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.” He grinned at her. “Pick them up. Go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors’ market.”
The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
“Don’t you feel it?” he kidded her. “The historicity?”
She said, “What is ‘historicity’?”
“When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t-. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?” He nudged her. “You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There’s no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.”
“Gee,” the girl said, awed. “Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?”
“Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It’s all a big racket; they’re playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun. I used to be a collector. In fact, that’s how I got into this business. I collected stamps. Early British colonies.”
The girl now stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. “My mother and dad used to say we wouldn’t have lost the war if he had lived,” she said.
“Okay,” Wyndam-Matson went on. “Now suppose say last year the Canadian Government or somebody, anybody, finds the plates from which some old stamp was printed. And the ink. And a supply of—“
“I don’t believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt,” the girl said.
Wyndam-Matson giggled. “That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!”
“Show me the paper.”
“Sure.” Hopping up, he made his way back into the study. From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it—because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word “fake” meant nothing really, since the word “authentic” meant nothing really.
“A Colt .44 is a Colt .44,” he called to the girl as he hurried back into the living room. “It has to do with bore and design, not when it was made. It has to do with—“
She held out her hand. He gave her the document.
“So it is genuine,” she said finally.
“Yes. This one.” He picked up the lighter with the long scratch across its side.
“I think I’d like to go now,” the girl said. “I’ll see you again some other evening.” She set down the document and lighter and moved toward the bedroom, where her clothes were.
“Why?” he shouted in agitation, following after her.
“You know it’s perfectly safe; my wife won’t be back for weeks—I explained the whole situation to you. A detached retina.”
“It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
Rita said, “Please call a pedecab for me. While I dress.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he said grumpily.
She dressed, and then, while he got her coat from the closet, she wandered silently about the apartment. She seemed pensive, withdrawn, even a little depressed. The past makes people sad, he realized. Damn it; why did I have to bring it up? But hell, she’s so young—I thought she’d hardly know the name.
At the bookcase she knelt. “Did you read this?” she asked, taking a book out.
Nearsightedly he peered. Lurid cover. Novel. “No,” he said. “My wife got that. She reads a lot.”
“You should read it.”
Still feeling disappointed, he grabbed the book, glanced at it. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. “Isn’t this one of those banned-in-Boston books?” he said.
“Banned through the United States. And in Europe, of course.” She had gone to the hall door and stood there now, waiting.
“I’ve heard of this Hawthorne Abendsen.” But actually he had not. All he could recall about the book was—what? That it was very popular right now. Another fad. Another mass craze. He bent down and stuck it back in the shelf. “I don’t have time to read popular fiction. I’m too busy with work.” Secretaries, he thought acidly, read that junk, at home alone in bed at night. It stimulates them. Instead of the real thing. Which they’re afraid of. But of course really crave.
“One of those love stories,” he said as he sullenly opened the hall door.
“No,” she said. “A story about war.” As they walked down the hail to the elevator she said, “He says the same thing. As my mother and dad.”
“Who? That Abbotson?”
“That’s his theory. If Joe Zangara had missed him, he would have pulled America out of the Depression and armed it so that—“ She broke off. They had arrived at the elevator, and other people were waiting.
Later, as they drove through the nocturnal traffic in Wyndam-Matson’s Mercedes-Benz, she resumed.
“Abendsen’s theory is that Roosevelt would have been a terribly strong President. As strong as Lincoln. He showed it in the year he was President, all those measures he introduced. The book is fiction. I mean, it’s in novel form. Roosevelt isn’t assassinated in Miami; he goes on and is reelected in 1936, so he’s President until 1940, until during the war. Don’t you see? He’s still President when Germany attacks England and France and Poland. And he sees all that. He makes America strong. Garner was a really awful President. A lot of what happened was his fault. And then in 1940, instead of Bricker, a Democrat would have been elected—“
“According to this Abelson,” Wyndam-Matson broke in. He glanced at the girl beside him. God, they read a book, he thought, and they spout on forever. –
“His theory is that instead of an Isolationist like Bricker, in 1940 after Roosevelt, Rexford Tugweii would have been President.” Her smooth face, reflecting the traffic lights, glowed with animation; her eyes had become large and she gestured as she talked. “And he would have been very active in continuing the Roosevelt anti-Nazi policies. So Germany would have been afraid to come to Japan’s help in 1941. They would not have honored their treaty. Do you see?” Turning toward him on the seat, grabbing his shoulder with intensity, she said, “And so Germany and Japan would have lost the war!”