We Could Do Worse by Gregory Benford

Everybody in the bar noticed us when we came in. You could see their faces tighten up. The bartender reached over and put the cover on the free-lunch jar. I caught that even though I was watching the people in the booths.

They knew who we were. You could see the caution come into their eyes. I’m big enough that nobody just glances at me once. You get used to that after a while and then you start to liking it.

“Beer,” I said when we got to the mahogany bar. The bartender drew it, looking at me. He let some suds slop over and wiped the glass and stood holding it until I put down a quarter.

“Two,” I said. The bartender put the glass in front of me and I pushed it toward Phillips. He let some of the second beer slop out too because he was busy watching my hands. I took the glass with my right and with my left I lifted the cover off the free-lunch jar.

“No,” he said.

I took a sandwich out.

“I’m gonna make like I didn’t hear that,” I said and bit into the sandwich. It was cheese with some mayonnaise and hadn’t been made today.

I tossed the sandwich aside. “Got anything better?”

“Not for you,” the bartender said.

“You got your license out where I can read it?”

“You guys is federal. Got no call to want my liquor license.”

“Lawyer, huh?” Phillips asked slow and steady. He doesn’t say much but people always listen.

The bartender was in pretty good shape, a middle-sized guy with big arm muscles, but he made a mistake then. His hand slid under the bar, watching us both, and I reached over and grabbed his wrist. I yanked his hand up and there was a pistol in it. The hammer was already cocked. Phillips got his fingers between the revolver’s hammer and the firing pin. We pulled it out of the bartender’s hand easy and I tapped him a light one in the snoot, hardly getting off my stool. He staggered back and Phillips put away the revolver in a coat pocket.

“Guys like you shouldn’t have guns,” Phillips said. “Get hurt that

way.”

“You just stand there and look pretty,” I said.

“It’s Garrett, isn’t it?”

“Now don’t never you mind,” Phillips said.

The rest of the bar was quiet and I turned and gave them a look. “What

you expect?” I said loud enough so they could all hear. “Man pulls a gun on you, you take care of him.”

A peroxide blonde in a back booth called out, “You bastards!”

“There a back alley here?” I asked the whole room.

Their faces were tight and they didn’t know whether to tell me the truth or not.

“Hey, yeah,” Phillips said. “Sure there’s a back door. You ‘member, the briefing said so.”

He’s not too bright. So I used a different way to open them up. “Blondie, you want we ask you some questions? Maybe out in that alley?”

Peroxide looked steady at me for a moment and then looked away. She knew what we’d do to her out there if she made any more noise. Women know those things without your saying.

I turned my back to them and said, “My nickel.”

The bartender had stopped his nose from bleeding but he wasn’t thinking very well. He just blinked at me.

“Change for the beers,” I said. “You can turn on that TV, too.”

He fumbled getting the nickel. When the last of The Milton Berle Hour came on the bar filled with enough sound so anybody coming in from the street wouldn’t notice that nobody was talking. They were just watching Phillips and me.

I sipped my beer. Part of our job is to let folks know we’re not fooling around anymore. Show the flag, kind of.

The Berle show went off and you could smell the tense sweat in the bar. I acted casual, like I didn’t care. The government news bulletins were coming on and the bartender started to change the channel and I waved him off.

“Time for Lucy ,” he said. He had gotten some backbone into his voice

again.

I smiled at him. “I guess I know what time it is. Let’s inform these citizens a li’l.”

There was a Schlitz ad with dancing and singing bottles, the king of beers, and then more news. They mentioned the new directives about the state of emergency, but nothing I didn’t already know two days ago. Good. No surprises.

“Let’s have Lucy !” somebody yelled behind me.

I turned around but nobody said anything more. “You’d maybe like watchin’ the convention?” I said.

Nobody spoke. So I grinned and said, “Maybe you patriots could learn somethin’ that way.”

I laughed a little and gestured to the bartender. He spun the dial and there was the Republican convention, warming up. Cronkite talking over the background noise.

“Somethin’, huh?” I said to Phillips. “Not like four years ago.”

“Don’t matter that much,” Phillips said. He watched the door while I kept an eye on the crowd.

“You kiddin’? Why, that goddamn Eisenhower almost took the nomination away from Taft last time. Hadn’t been for Nixon deliverin’ the California delegation to old man Taft, that pinko general coulda won.”

“So?” Phillips sipped his beer. A station break came and I could hear tires hissing by outside in the light rain. My jacket smelled damp. I never wear a raincoat on a job like this. They get in your way. The streetlights threw stretched shapes against the bar windows. Phillips watched the passing shadows, waiting calm as anything for one of them to turn and come in the door.

I said, “You think Eisenhower, with that Kraut name, woulda picked our guy for the second spot?”

“Mighta.”

“Hell no. Even if he had, Eisenhower didn’t drop dead a year later.”

“You’re right there,” Phillips said to humor me. He’s not a man for

theory.

“I tell you, Taft winnin’ and then dyin’, it was a godsend. Gave us the man we shoulda had. Never coulda elected him. The Commies, they’d never have let him get in power.”

Phillips stiffened. I thought it was what I’d said, but then a guy came through the doors in a slick black raincoat. He was pale and I saw it was our man. Cheering at the convention came up then and he didn’t notice anything funny, not until he got a few steps in and saw the faces.

Garrett’s eyes widened as I came to him. He pulled his hands up like he was reaching for something under his coat, or maybe just to protect himself.

I didn’t care which. I hit him once in the stomach to take the wind out of him and then gave him two quick overhand punches in the jaw. He went down nice and solid and wasn’t going to get back up in a hurry.

Phillips searched him. There was no gun after all. The bar was dead

quiet.

A guy in a porkpie hat came up to me all hot and bothered, like he hadn’t been paying attention before, and said, “You can’t just attack a member of the Congress! That’s Congressman Garrett there! I don’t care — “

The big talk went right out of him when I slammed a fist into his gut. Porkpie was another lawyer, no real fight in him.

I walked back to the bar and drained my beer. The ‘56 convention was rolling on, nominations just starting, but you knew that was all bull. Only one man was possible, and when the election came there’d be plenty of guys like me to fix it so he won.

Just then they put on some footage of the president and I stood there a second, just watching him. There was a knot in my throat when I looked at him, a real American. There were damn few of us, even now. We’d gotten in by accident, maybe, but now we were going to make every day count. Clean up the country. And hell, if the work wasn’t done by the time his second term ended in 1961, we might have to diddle the Constitution a little, keep him in power until things worked okay.

Cronkite came on then, babbling about letting Adlai Stevenson out of house arrest, and I went to help Phillips get Garrett to his feet. I sure didn’t want to have to haul the guy out to our car.

We got him up with his raincoat all twisted around him. Then the porkpie hat guy was there again, but this time with about a dozen of them behind him. They looked mad and jittery. A bunch like that can be trouble. I wondered if this was such a good idea, taking Garrett in his neighborhood bar. But the chief said we had to show these types we’d go anywhere, anytime.

Porkpie said, “You got no warrant.”

“Sure I do.” I showed them the paper. These types always think paper is

God.

“Sit down,” Phillips said, being civil. “You people all sit down.”

“That’s a congressman you got there. We — “

“Traitor, is what you mean,” I said.

Peroxide came up then, screeching. “You think you can just take anybody, you lousy sonsabitches — “

Porkpie took a poke at me then. I caught it and gave him a right cross, pretty as you please. He staggered back. Still, I saw we could really get in a fix here if they all came at us.

Peroxide called out, “Come on, we can — “

She stopped when I pulled out the gun. It’s a big steel automatic, just about the right size for a guy like me. Some guys use silencers with them, but me, I like the noise.

They all looked at it awhile and their faces changed, closing up, each one of them alone with their thoughts, and then I knew they wouldn’t do anything.

“Come on,” I said. We carried the traitor out into the night. I was so pumped up he felt light.

Even a year before, we’d have had big trouble bringing in a Commie network type like Garrett. He was a big deal on the House Internal Security

Committee and had been giving us a lot of grief. Now nailing him was easy. And all because of one man at the top with real courage.

We don’t bother with the formalities anymore. Phillips opened the trunk of the Pontiac and I dumped Garrett in. Easier and faster than cramming him into the front, and I wanted to get out of there.

Garrett was barely conscious and just blinked at me as I slammed down the trunk. They’d wake him up plenty later.

As I came around to get in the driver’s side I looked through the window of the bar. Cronkite was interviewing the president now. Ol’ Joe looked like he was in good shape, real statesmanlike, but tough, you could see that.

Cronkite was probably asking him why he’d chosen Nixon for the VP spot, like there was no other choice. Like I’d tried to tell Phillips, Nixon’s delivering California on the delegate issue in ‘52 had paved the way for the Taft ticket. And old Bob Taft, rest his soul, knew what the country needed when the vice presidency nomination came up.

Just like now. Joe, he doesn’t forget a debt. So Dick Nixon was a shoo-in. McCarthy and Nixon — good ticket, regional balance, solid anti-Commie values. We could do worse. A lot worse.

I got in and gunned the motor a little, feeling good. The rain had stopped. The meat in the trunk was as good as dead, but we’d deliver it fresh anyway. We took off with a roar into the darkness.

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