Overload

The signature of Roderick Pritchett, the Sequoia Club’s manager secretary, was already on the check, one line below where the chairman’s was required. With a squiggle of Laura Bo’s pen-her signature was usually unreadable-she could make the check official. Yet still she hesitated.

The decision to ally the Sequoia Club with p & lfp had plagued her with doubts, immediately after it was made and ever since.

These doubts were reinforced at the Tunipah hearings where Davey Birdsong, she thought-,- ha& behaved -abominably. All of Laura Bo’s intellect rebelled against what she saw as his cheap, shoddy tactics, his clownish playing to the gallery, his cynical appeal to the lowest levels of intelligence.

Now she asked herself again: Had she been wrong in casting the deciding vote which approved the alliance and made the money available? Had the respected Sequoia Club debased and dishonored itself by an association, for which-if the truth became public, as it might-Laura Bo, as chairman, would be held responsible?

Shouldn’t she have sided, after all, with Priscilla Quinn, who had laid her opinion about Birdsong on the line? Laura Bo could remember clearly and uncomfortably-Priscilla’s words: "All my instincts are against trusting him . . . I have principles, something that disgusting man appears to lack." And afterward: "I think you will all regret that vote. I wish my dissent to be recorded."

Laura Bo Carmichael regretted her vote already. She put her pen down, the check still unsigned, and reached for an intercom handset. When the manager-secretary answered, she asked,

"Roderick, could you come in, please?"

"It occurs to me," she told him a few minutes later, "that we might reconsider making this second payment. If the first was a mistake, then at least we need not compound it."

Pritchett, dapper and well groomed as usual, seemed surprised. He took off his rimless glasses and polished them with a handkerchief, a time-honored, time-consuming tactic.

"Has it occurred to you, Madam Chairman," he said, replacing the glasses, "that if we withheld those funds we would be violating an agreement, honorably entered into, and fulfilled-so far-by the other side?"

"But has it been fulfilled? What did we get for the first twenty-five thousand-Birdsong’s histrionics at the Tunipah bearings?"

"I’d say," Pritchett said, picking his way carefully among the words, "that Birdsong has achieved a good deal more than histrionics. His tactics, while rough-certainly rougher than we could resort to ourselves have been shrewd. So far he has caused most of the media’s attention to be focused on opposition to Tunipah while the arguments of Golden State Power have received only trifling attention. He also succeeded in demolishing their key witness, Goldman-first by provoking him, then standing back while Goldman antagonized everyone in sight, including his own company."

"I felt sorry for him," Laura Bo said. "I’ve known Nim Goldman for a long time and, while he may be misguided, he’s honest and sincere. He did not deserve what happened."

Pritchett said primly, "In these kind of contests some of those intervened-and their reputations-are apt to get bruised. The important thing, from the point of view of the Sequoia Club, is to win. Where Tunipah is concerned I believe we will."

"And I’ve never believed," Laura Bo responded, "in winning at all costs. I listened to that argument many years ago. To my dying day I will regret not contesting it."

The manager-secretary felt like sighing but restrained himself. He had encountered Mrs. Carmichael’s recurring guilt about Hiroshima/Nagasaki many times before and had learned to cope with it. Nimbly backtracking, he assured her, "My choice of words was unfortunate. What I should have said is that the agreement with Birdsong will help attain our objectives, which are admirable, as we both know."

"But where is all that money going?"

"Some of it to Birdsong himself, of course. After all, be’s putting in many hours personally-still attending those hearings every day, cross-examining new witnesses, at the same time keeping himself and opposition to Tunipah in the news. Then there are his supporters. He’s managed to pack the hearing room with them continuously; that alone gives an impression of strong, spontaneous opposition to Tunipah from the public."

"Are you suggesting it is not spontaneous? That Birdsong pays those people to be there?"

"Not all." Again Pritchett chose his words warily; he knew bow it was being done because he had talked to Birdsong, but was reluctant to be specific. "Let’s say some of those people have expenses, they have to absent themselves from work, and so on. Also those same supporters, or others Birdsong recruited, staged demonstrations at the Golden State Power & Light annual meeting. He told us about his plans there, if you remember, when we met."

Laura Bo Carmichael appeared shocked. "Paid demonstrators! A paid disruption of an annual meeting! All of it with our money. I do not like it."

"May I remind you of something, Madam Chairman," Pritchett remonstrated.

"We entered into this arrangement with p & lfp with our eyes open. When our committee met-Mr. Irwin Saunders, Mrs. Quinn, you, me-we were aware that Birdsong’s methods might be, well . . . unorthodox compared with our own. A few days ago I went over my notes of that August meeting and we agreed there could be certain things ‘we’d be better off not knowing! Those, incidentally, were Mr. Saunders’ exact words."

"But did Irwin, at that time, understand Birdsong’s methods?"

"I think," Pritchett said drily, "as an experienced lawyer be had a pretty good idea."

The point was valid. As his friends and enemies knew, Irwin Saunders was a rough-and-tumble fighter in the courts and was not noted for ethical niceties. Perhaps more accurately than anyone, be had judged in advance how Birdsong would work.

The manager-secretary, though not mentioning it to Laura Bo, was also concerned about another matter involving lawyer Saunders.

Roderick Pritchett was due to retire soon. Saunders was the influential chairman of the Sequoia Club’s finance committee, which would decide how large a pension-or how small-Pritchett would receive.

The club’s pensions for retired staff were neither automatic nor fixed, but based on years of service and the committee’s opinion of an individual’s performance. Roderick Pritchett, who knew he had had his critics across the years, particularly wanted to look good to Saunders in these final months, and the Tunipah hearings and Davey Birdsong could be critical factors.

He told Laura Bo, "Mr. Saunders is delighted with Birdsong’s efforts in opposing Tunipah. He telephoned to say so and reminded me that Birdsong promised ‘continual harassment of Golden State Power & Light on a broad front! The p & lfp has delivered on that. Another thing agreed to was no violence-you may recall I raised that point specifically. Birdsong has also kept his promise there."

Laura Bo asked, "And have you heard from Priscilla Quinn?"

"No." Roderick Pritchett smiled. "But, of course, Mrs. Quinn would be elated, even triumphant, if you backed down now and refused to make that second payment. I imagine she would go around telling everyone she was right and you were wrong."

It was a shrewd thrust. Both of them knew it.

If the original decision were reversed at this late stage, it would be remembered that Laura Bo Carmichael had cast the pivotal vote; therefore her embarrassment would be acute, not least because of the accompanying admission that twenty-five thousand dollars of the club’s money had been spent unwisely. And Priscilla Quinn’s sharp tongue would make the most of that.

Woman versus woman. For all her disdain of femininity, her determination not to let her sex influence her decisions, in the end it was Laura Bo’s womanly pride which proved persuasive.

Picking up her pen, she scribbled a signature on the p & 4 check and banded it to a smiling Roderick Pritchett.

The check was mailed to Birdsong later that same day.

10

"We need more violence! More, more, more!" Davey Birdsong thumped a clenched fist angrily, his voice raised to a shout. "A pisspot ful more, to shake people up! And some bloody, messy deaths; a lot of them. It’s the only way, the absolute only way, to stir the goddam dumb public off their complacent asses and get action. You don’t seem to realize it."

Across the rough wooden table which divided them, Georgos Winslow Archambault’s thin, ascetic face flushed at the final accusation. He leaned forward and insisted, "I do realize that. But what you are talking about requires organization and time. I’m doing my best, but we can’t take on a target every night."