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embarrassment
of it, of knowing that people were
talking and that people who had for years wanted to see her take a fall were
now satisfied. It was Vicky, maybe it bad always been Vicky, and Regina
decided that if there was to be a Christmas at all for them this miserable year,
it would be at Vicky and Steve's ordinary suburban ranchhouse in the
amusingly middle-class suburb of Ligonier, where most people still owned
American cars and called a trip to McDonald's "eating out".
Mike, of course, simply went along with her decision; she would have
expected no more and brooked no less.
For Regina Cunningham the three days following the news that Arnie was "in
trouble" had been are exercise in pure cold control, a hard lunge for survival.
Her survival, the family's survival, Arnie's survival—he might not believe
that, but Regina found she hadn't the time to care. Mike's pain had never
entered her equations; the thought that they could comfort each other had
never even crossed her mind as a speculation. She had calmly put the cover
on her sewing machine after Mike came downstairs and gave her the news.
She did that, and then she had gone to the phone and had gotten to work. The
tears she would later shed while talking to her sister had then been a
thousand years away. She had brushed past Michael as if he were a piece of
furniture, and he had trailed uncertainly after her as he had done all of their
married life.
She called Tom Sprague, their lawyer, who, hearing that their problem was
criminal, hastily referred her to a colleague, Jim Warberg. She called
Warberg and got an answering service that would not reveal Warberg's home
number. She sat by the phone for a moment, drumming her fingers lightly
against her lips, and then called Sprague again. He hadn't wanted to give her
Warberg's home telephone number, but in the end he gave in. When Regina
finally let him go, Sprague sounded dazed, almost shell-shocked. Regina in
full spate often caused such a reaction.
She called Warberg, who said he absolutely couldn't take! the case. Regina
had lowered her bulldozer blade again. Warberg ended up not only taking the
case but agreeing to go immediately to Albany, where Arnie was being held,
to see what could be done. Warberg, speaking in the weak, amazed voice of a
man who has been filled full of Novocain and then run over by a tractor,
protested that he knew a perfectly good man in Albany who could get the lay
of the land. Regina was adamant. Warberg went by private plane and
reported back four hours later.
Arnie, he said, was being held on an open charge. He would be extradited to
Pennsylvania the following day. Pennsylvania and New York had
coordinated the bust along with three Federal agencies: the Federal Drug
Control Task Force, the IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms. The main target was not Arnie, who was small beans, but Will
Darnell—Darnell, and whomever Darnell was doing business with. Those
guys, Warberg said, with their suspected ties to organized crime and
disorganized drug smuggling in the new South, were the big beans.
"Holding someone on an open charge is illegal," Regina had snapped
immediately, drawing on a deep backlog of TV crime-show fare.
Warberg, not exactly overjoyed to be where he was when he had planned on
spending a quiet evening at home reading a book, rejoined crisply, "I'd be
down on my knees thanking God that's what they're doing, They caught him
with a trunkload of unstamped cigarettes, and if I push them on it, they'll be
more than happy to charge him, Mrs Cunningham. I advise you and your
husband to get over here to Albany. Quickly."
"I thought you said he was going to be extradited tomorrow—"
"Oh, yes, that's all been arranged. If we've got to play hardball with these
guys, we ought to be glad the game's going to be played on our home court.
Extradition isn't the problem here."
"What is?"
"These people want to play knock-over-the-dominoes. They want to knock
your son over onto Will Darnell. Arnold is not talking. I want you two to get
over here and persuade him that it's in his best interest to talk."
"Is it?" she had asked hesitantly.
"Hell, yes!" Warberg's voice crackled back. "These guys don't want to put
your son in jail. He's a minor from a good family with no previous criminal
record, not even a school record of disciplinary problems. He can get out of
this without even facing a judge. But he's got to talk."
So they had gone to Albany, and Regina had been taken down a short, narrow
hallway faced in white tile, lit with high-intensity bulbs sunken into small
wells in the ceiling and covered with wire mesh. The place had smelled
vaguely of Lysol and urine, and she kept trying to convince herself that her
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