Blindside

FIVE

Emergency lights of red and blue played across the night sky like tracers in a war. Traffic was down to one lane east and west. The crowd was already formidable. TV people lugging cameras and camera packs surged against the cops who pushed them back into the crowd.

I got as close as I could — three-quarters of a long block away — and tried to figure out which would be the fastest way to get to a cop. The night air was chill and fresh, that autumn briskness that can revive the dead. All too soon I was working my way with elbows and nudges through knots of people who’d gathered to be terrified and spellbound by death. Aromas of perfume, aftershave, cigarettes, sweat, booze.

I was pretty sure the last guy I squeezed by wanted to punch me but then he looked at my face. I was at least five inches taller than he was so he decided against it. I was never especially tough but I’d learned how to look and act tough without getting all John Wayne about it. (I read a piece of movie criticism lately that set forth the notion that John Wayne and Clint Eastwood were a boy’s notion of what tough guys were whereas Lee Marvin was the real thing. I agreed.)

Even before I opened my mouth the uniformed woman standing sentry said, ‘Get back in line there!’

I shoved my wallet at her.

‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’

‘I’m a consultant working with the Ward campaign. They called me at my hotel and told me to get over here right away.’

She flipped the wallet open. ‘Dev Conrad.’

‘That’s right. You can check me out.’

She waved me back then went to work on her communicator. She turned away as she spoke. She was probably saying that there was this loser here who was trying to crash the crime scene. Then she was in my face again. ‘They’re checking you out. Just stay where you are.’

She started walking her side of the line. A male uniform worked the rest of it.

From the conversations around me nobody but the cops had any idea what had happened here. The word ‘terrorist’ sliced the air though I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. If a terrorist of some kind had killed Waters he must have been one of Burkhart’s crazier followers.

Several feet away the female officer started talking to her shoulder again. She studied me as she listened. As she walked up to me she said, ‘I guess you’re all right. You can walk up to the front door and the sergeant there will tell you what to do then.’ Her tone said she still didn’t like me or trust me.

A half-dozen voices started whining behind me. They didn’t know who I was but they sure as hell didn’t like me anyway. I could have been a priest, rabbi, or even doctor. It didn’t matter. I was some jerk-off who got to go inside.

The sergeant was a burly middle-aged black man with gray hair and gray mustache. He was at least as skeptical about me as the female cop had been. ‘You belong in here, huh?’

‘I’m working here for a few days.’

‘This is a crime scene.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘That means you don’t touch anything and I mean anything. You walk along that wall to the back where you’ll ask for Lieutenant Neame. She’s a lady. She’ll take it from there.’

We stood just outside the entrance. He pointed to the wall I was to follow. ‘I’m going to be standing here watching you. You go straight back and you make it fast. I got other problems I need to attend to.’

I shrugged and started my walk. I wasn’t alone. Four cops with flashlights were scanning the ground looking for anything worth bagging.

Lieutenant Neame was big and dark-haired. I imagined she was something of an athlete. With her gray pantsuit and snappy voice she had the intimidation thing down just right. She dispatched her troops with blunt force trauma. God help you if you disobeyed. Part of this, I assumed, was for show. She needed to hold her own with all the macho guys who didn’t like taking orders from a woman.

‘And you would be Dev Conrad, I guess, huh?’

‘That’s what they tell me.’

‘Cute.’ Then: ‘Did you know James Francis Waters?’

The back of the headquarters was filled with an ambulance and three squad cars. A dusty, dull, ten-year-old Volvo sat in the center of the parking lot. The hood and the trunk were up. All the doors were open. Three different officers in suits worked over the interior.

‘I met him this afternoon. We were supposed to have dinner tonight.’

‘What time?’

‘We left that open. I went back to my hotel to have a nap. He had my cell phone number. He was supposed to call me. Then we were supposed to eat in the hotel restaurant.’

‘That’s the Royale?’

‘Right.’

‘Any special reason you were having dinner with him?’

Before I could answer, two of the cops working on the car came up to her. The three of them had one of those football-like huddles meant to exclude the ears of outlanders. Namely me.

When they were done she was all mine again. ‘So why were you having dinner with him?’

‘I’m just here for forty-eight hours. He was under the impression — the wrong impression — that I was here to suggest shaking up the staff.’

‘Meaning firing people?’

‘Right.’

‘Just why are you here?’

‘Every campaign needs to be assessed from time to time. Congressman Ward’s father was a close friend of my father’s. Tom Ward thought I might have a few ideas about improving things here. Streamlining them.’

‘He’s not going to win. Burkhart is.’

‘Is that a paid political announcement?’

She was very good at hiding how much she cared for me.

‘Ward and three of his staffers are inside being interviewed by two of my officers. I want them to interview you, too.’

‘I don’t know much. I didn’t meet the staff until a few hours ago.’

‘The back door is standing open. Don’t touch anything or speak to any of the officers. They’re busy. Just go straight inside. One of the officers in uniform will take you to where the interviews are being conducted. This place is going to be hell within another twenty minutes or so. We need you all to cooperate because we’re going to get state press here right away. And maybe even national press, too. And that’s going to make our job one hell of a lot harder.’

‘I understand.’

The downturn of her lips said she doubted it.

She was right about the uniformed officer waiting for me just inside the opened back door. He was young, tall, scrawny, and had an Adam’s apple the size of a baseball.

‘Follow me, please.’

The police were using the conference room for the interviews. Two offices down sat Lucy Cummings and Kathy Tomlin.

The officer escorted me inside the office and then pointed to the sole empty chair on the visitor’s side of the desk. Nobody said anything. I sat down next to Lucy.

‘He’s dead,’ Kathy said. Big tears loomed on the lower edges of her blue eyes. ‘At least he died in that Captain America jacket he loved so much. It sounds crazy, but it meant a lot to him.’ Then: ‘I wish I would have been more of a help to him.’

Enough of remorse. There would be time for that later. The big problem now was managing the press. ‘What the hell happened, anyway?’ All I knew was that he’d been found murdered in his car. This would be the most predictable kind of story — a mystery inside a political campaign. Was some sleazy secret being kept from the public? Was this poor young man killed because he knew too much? Burkhart would hire extra PR flacks to push this story twenty-four/seven.

Lucy hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. I slid my arm around her.

Kathy said, ‘I’d be the same way Lucy is if I’d found him, Dev. She told me she heard two noises that she thought might be gunshots. She ran to the back door to look through the window. She saw Jim’s car back there. The door was open and she could see a foot dangling beneath it.’

Lucy took her hands from her face and with a great deal of sniffling and snuffling said, ‘I ran out there. It was stupid because whoever’d fired the gun might still be out there. But I knew something had happened to Jim. And that’s how I found him. He’d been shot in the side of the head. Poor Jimmy.’ The face went into the hands again. The shoulders shook once more.

Kathy finished the story. ‘She told me she saw the blood on the side of his head. Where the bullet had gone in. And then somehow she managed to call 911 on her cell phone. When I came in I heard her throwing up in the bathroom. I went in and she managed to tell me about Jim. By then the police were here.’

‘What about enemies?’ I said. ‘Did he ever mention somebody being after him or something?’

‘No,’ Kathy said. ‘Though we got a lot of threats on the phone and in the mail. Not so much here. But in Jeff’s congressional office across town — you know, where people can come to get help. They’ve had to close down twice because they found things that looked like they might be bombs. And one night somebody spray-painted ‘Nigger Lover’ on their front window. And ‘Death to Tyrants.’ You know, because of Obama. Things like that got to all of us. I got to the point where I’d park as close to the back door here as I could so at night I didn’t have to walk far to get in my car and go home. All these guns floating around and all these threats scared everybody. Campaigns always get rough but we’ve never seen anything like this. It affected everybody.’

‘The police will have to look into the possibility that he was robbed.’

‘Jim didn’t have any money to speak of,’ Kathy said.

‘These days you can get killed for fifty cents,’ I said. ‘Right now that’s a possibility we have to consider.’

‘So it could be just a coincidence?’ Lucy sniffled.

‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘It’s not out of the question. But what I’m worried about is how the press is going to handle this.’

Kathy nodded. ‘Burkhart’s already put out a lot of brochures playing up Jeff’s reputation as an ass bandit. He managed to dig up all these old photos of when Jeff was still single and dressing up in dinner jackets and going out with great-looking young women on his arm. Before he was married, Jeff used to date this beautiful black woman. Naturally that’s the biggest photo in all the brochures and handouts.’

‘Where did Jim live?’ I asked.

Kathy scribbled the address on a piece of paper and handed it to me. She also gave me directions.

‘But won’t the police be there now?’ Kathy said.

‘Not if I get there first.’

‘The police will want to talk to you.’

And they did. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, a slender man with red hair and a red mustache held up a hand to stop me. ‘I’m Detective Fincher. Did any of our people interview you upstairs?’

‘No. I was in kind of a hurry. There were two officers and they were busy interviewing other people so I just left.’

‘You could be in some trouble leaving like that. What’s your name?’

‘Dev Conrad.’

From the pocket of his gray tweed sport coat he took a small notebook. He flipped open the cover and then clicked the ballpoint pen so that it was ready for action. ‘And you work for Congressman Ward?’

‘I’m a consultant Congressman Ward hired. I just got here last night. My first full day with the campaign. I met Jim Waters briefly. We were supposed to get together later tonight for dinner.’

‘Any particular reason?’

We had to keep shifting positions to let law enforcement people in and out of the back door.

‘We’d gotten off to a bad start. Whenever campaigns bring in a new consultant the staff get nervous. Start thinking they might get fired. I’d be the same way. He said a few things and then apologized for them a little later. No big deal. I just thought it’d be a good thing to agree to meet him. Smooth things over. He seemed to want to talk.’

‘About what?’

‘I never found out.’

The alley was filling up with press-fighting uniformed officers bent on keeping them away from the car where Waters had been killed. Fincher glanced at the struggle and frowned. The press was not necessarily beloved where he worked.

‘So you wouldn’t have any idea why he was killed tonight?’

‘None. I really didn’t know him.’

He glanced at the surging reporters again. ‘They’d destroy the crime scene if you gave them half a chance.’ Then: ‘Where’re you headed now?’

I could’ve told him that he had no right to ask me that question but I was in a hurry. I wanted to check out Waters’ apartment before the police did. I wanted to take away anything that might embarrass the campaign. Drugs, S amp;M gear, unexplained stacks of money. You just never knew what you’d find. And cops talk. Anything salacious they found would be on TV within hours of the police searching Waters’ place.

‘Believe it or not, I’m going back to my hotel room to get some sleep.’

‘We’ll want to ask you more questions, I’m sure. You got a card?’

I extracted one from my billfold and gave it to him. ‘I’m staying at the Royale.’

He didn’t even look at it, just tucked it between the pages of his notebook. ‘Somebody from the station will be contacting you.’

I nodded and started off in the direction of my rental. I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run. I needed to go through Waters’ apartment and I didn’t have much time.

The Carlton Arms had been new probably sometime in the early sixties. The tan color and texture of the brick facing dated back to that era. But neither time nor its residents had been kind to it. The asphalt parking lot had ridges where heat and cold had split it. A number of the windows on the west side had been smashed and were covered with cardboard and tape. Music ranging from rap to country-western boomed and screeched from various apartments.

I didn’t see any police vehicles, marked or not, so I pulled in and walked up to the glass door with SECTION B neatly painted above it. It wouldn’t be long before the officials arrived.

I knocked on the door marked Manager. Pierce Rollins. Except for Pierce Brosnan I’d never heard of a man with that first name.

The guy who opened the door was not my idea of a ‘Pierce.’ He was probably in his mid-twenties. He had a wicked devil-style beard and arms that had been covered with a tattoo artist’s fiercest supernatural creatures.

‘It’s a little late, buddy.’ Behind him was a somewhat overweight but attractive woman in a black chemise smoking a cigarette. I guess she hadn’t read the No Smoking sign that greeted folks when they came through the front door.

‘Jim Waters called me — he wants me to pick up something for him.’

He was suddenly interested enough to look at me seriously. The TV set went crazy with laughter. The woman laughed, too. ‘You’re missing this, babe.’

‘You’d be who?’

I showed him my identification. ‘I work with the campaign. I’m just here for a couple of days. We’re out at a rally on the edge of town. Jim wanted to call you but we’re in a valley out there and his cell won’t work.’

The woman laughed again and said, ‘C’mon, babe. You’d love this.’

‘Why bother me with this shit? He must’ve given you a key. He’s on the second floor in Apartment D. Handle it yourself.’

‘Just thought I’d touch base.’

‘Yeah. Touch base. Shit.’

The way he slammed the door, he must have awakened more than half his tenants.

The smells of various dinners collided just the way the disparate music had. Spaghetti, some kind of fish, burgers. The hall carpeting had cuts and holes in it. On the tan walls you could see where dirty words had almost been scrubbed out. I’d checked in with the manager in case he got a complaint that I was seen unlocking Jim Waters’ door. I didn’t have a key; I had the three burglar picks I’d kept from my days as an army investigator.

Captain America was going to kick my ass. That was the sense I had anyway as soon as I flipped on the living-room light of this one-bedroom apartment. The poster covered half the wall facing me. He looked very, very pissed and as you well know, nobody fucks with the Captain.

There were other posters, too. Two quite comely and mostly naked starlets whose names I didn’t know. Then a small gallery, on another wall, of terrifying comic book figures. Creatures that resembled humans but were in fact ghouls of some kind carrying axes, enormous knives, bludgeons, and severed heads. All of them dripped blood and all of them walked over bloody arms and legs and faces.

Real life hadn’t been kind to Jim and so he’d retreated into fantasy life here where he was not only safe but accepted. I heard echoes of Lucy Cummings crying and felt some of her sadness. He’d been aggrieved by so many things.

No idea what I was looking for, I tried to log on to his computer but it was password protected, and the small table he used for a desk in the corner held nothing more than a Brother printer and blank paper.

In his bedroom I found more posters plus five long cardboard boxes jammed tight with comic books. They’d been sorted and catalogued. The drawers of his dresser were sparsely filled with socks with holes and underwear that had outlived its shelf life. Under one small pile of undershirts I found three bullets for a. 38. I wondered where the gun was. I went through the three-shelf bookcase next to his mussed bed. Robert Jordan and R.A. Salvatore and Star Wars tie-ins outnumbered all the other authors represented.

The closet was filled with clothes that must have dated back to his college days; maybe high school, some of them. He’d never been stylish.

Coats often held interesting items so I started on them. A cheap blue trench coat didn’t produce anything, nor did a Fighting Illini jacket or any of the other clothing.

‘I’ll bring the key back when I’m done, Pierce.’

Voice. Young. Female. Shouting down the steps.

A key rasped in the lock.

I was standing in the center of the room when the door opened and she appeared.

The style is called Goth. This young woman was in a fitted black dress with black tights, dyed black hair, and black lipstick. She was no more than twenty years old and hard as she tried she couldn’t disguise the fact that she was quite pretty in a somewhat waifish way.

‘Who the hell are you, mister?’

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘I’m Jimmy’s collaborator.’

‘On what?’

‘On none of your fucking business.’

I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

‘What’s so funny, smart ass?’

‘Nothing’s funny, believe me. You’re just so damn belligerent and for no reason. You’d better come in. We need to talk.’

‘You still haven’t told me who you are.’

‘My name’s Dev Conrad.’

She walked past me with great disdain. She pitched her purse on the couch then opened it up to rescue her cigarettes and lighter. After she sat down she said, ‘Where’s Jimmy?’

‘Jimmy’s dead. Somebody murdered him a couple of hours ago.’

She took at least half a minute to respond. There was no gasping, no sobbing, no clasping her hand to her breast. The only evidence that she’d been stunned by what I said was the tremor in the fingers that held the cigarette.

‘Oh, my God. So Rachel was right.’

‘What?’

Her grave blue eyes met mine. ‘Rachel McClure. She’s a friend of mine. She can see the future.’

‘I see.’

‘Don’t give me any of your ‘I see’ bullshit. If I tell you she can see the future, she can see the future, all right?’ Her voice had risen to just below a scream.

‘All right.’

‘And she was getting these vibes about Jimmy. She didn’t want to tell him because that would just freak him out. Jimmy is very sensitive.’

‘When’s the last time you saw Jimmy?’

‘Two nights ago. If it’s any of your business.’ She crossed her legs. Then uncrossed them. Then crossed them again. ‘What the hell are you staring at?’

‘You. I just want to make sure you’re all right.’

‘Oh, I see. Maybe you want to come over here and sit next to me. Maybe slide your arm around me. Maybe grab a cheap feel. Something like that?’

‘I like women a little older.’

‘What, eighty or ninety?’

‘That’s a nice range.’

She sort of flounced in place. Then threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. She had a classic neck. ‘He’s dead; Jimmy’s dead. Jimmy’s fucking dead. No way I can believe this.’ Her head snapped back into its normal position and she glared at me. ‘You’re not making this up, are you?’

‘Why would I make it up?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I walk in here and find you doing God-knows-what to his apartment. How do I know you’re not some robber?’

‘Exactly what would I take from this place? His Captain America poster?’

‘You making fun of Jimmy, you bastard?’

‘No. I’m just pointing out that there isn’t anything in here that would have much resale value.’ Then: ‘How old are you?’

‘Not old enough to interest you. Thank God.’

‘C’mon. How old?’

‘Nineteen. Wanna see my license?’

‘Yeah.’

She flung her purse at me. I opened it and lifted her wallet free. The license read Jennifer Kelly Conners. Her Goth photo was ominous. She had to have worked hard to get it that way. Her age was listed as nineteen. I dropped wallet back into purse and sent purse sailing through the air to couch.

‘Jimmy keep any liquor here?’

‘You gonna drink his booze?’

‘I’m not. You are. So where is it?’

‘There’s beer in the fridge and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s black in the cupboard. I gave it to him for his birthday but he hasn’t ever opened it. He likes beer.’

I found the Jack and poured a shot into a Transformers glass that was a promotional item when the second film came out. I brought the glass to her then took the tattered armchair across from her.

‘You think this is going to make me tell you all his secrets?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, you’d have to do a hell of a lot better than this.’ To prove it she knocked it off in a single gulp.

‘I’m impressed.’

‘Screw you.’

‘So what were Jimmy’s secrets?’

She had a wild, somewhat deranged laugh. ‘God, you’re too much of a dork to be a robber.’

‘Thank you. By the way, why did you borrow Pierce’s key and come in here?’

‘Because I used to have a key of my own but I lost it in some club. Jimmy loved to come home and find me waiting for him. And anyway, who the hell are you?’

I explained why I was in town and that I was supposed to have met Jimmy tonight for dinner. Then I gussied up the reason for the dinner. ‘He said there was something he needed to tell me. Something he was worried about. My impression was that he was afraid about something.’

She dropped her cigarette into the glass I’d given her. The fiery end of it sizzled. ‘If you’re asking me what he was afraid of I couldn’t tell you.’

‘But you knew he was afraid.’

‘I suppose I did.’

‘Did he ever give you a clue about anything?’

She rolled the glass back and forth in her black-nailed fingers. ‘He said he was going to have enough money to take off to Europe and maybe get lost over there. Which pissed me off.’

‘Why would that piss you off?’

‘Hello — have you been listening to me? We were supposed to be collaborators. How could we be collaborators if he was in Europe?’

‘I see.’

‘I also pointed out to him that every time he talked about the money he’d get real nervous. His voice would go up an octave. And sometimes he’d stutter a few words. It was kind of pathetic. I said, what’s the point of getting all this money if you’re so scared of it?’

‘Was your relationship strictly platonic?’

‘Wow. A voyeur. I’ve got some dirty pictures if you want to see them.’

I sat there, silent.

‘Yes, we slept together. He got drunk one night and told me that he’d only had sex three times in his life before me. At his age. Wow. But I brought him along. I taught him a lot of things. And he taught me things, too. He was real smart, unlike the dweebs I usually sleep with. And he was real sweet. Until lately. He was really bummed about something. Maybe about the money or something. He didn’t even cheer up when I bought him that Captain America jacket two weeks ago.’ She wasn’t the type to sob but tears silvered her eyes now and her voice shook. ‘And I come up here and you tell me he’s dead.’

‘I’m sorry I had to tell you.’

‘Yeah, I know, everybody’s always sorry about everything.’ She wiped her tears with her knuckles. ‘But sorry isn’t gonna bring him back.’

‘So he never mentioned any enemies or anything like that?’

That wild laugh again. Unnerving in this situation. Maybe any situation. It hinted at the same kind of estrangement I was sure Jim Waters had lived with. There was nothing merry about the laugh. It was pure pain.

‘Jimmy have enemies? Twenty-seven-year-olds with Captain America posters on their walls don’t have enemies unless they’re into video games.’

‘Good point.’

She must have appreciated my smile because she smiled right back. ‘Actually, I’m the video gamer. Jimmy didn’t like them. He said they stressed him out. He was always talking about finding a place where he could be real peaceful. That’s part of what our book was going to be about. This warrior roaming this planet looking for a place where he could lay down his arms. And just be kind of gentle the rest of his life.’

I stood up and punched in the number of headquarters. Kathy answered. ‘Is the man there yet?’ She said no. ‘Tell him I’d like to see him tonight. Tell him where my room is.’ She told me this sounded like an order. ‘It probably is.’

Jenny smiled; a kid smile. ‘That was pretty cool. It was like code. I don’t have any idea who you were talking to. Or what you were talking about. You must be a superspy.’

‘Something like that. C’mon, we need to get out of here. Unless you want to talk to the police.’

She was up from her seat and slinging her purse over her shoulder.

‘Have you told me everything?’

She was bold, even brazen, but she wasn’t particularly good at making her eyes say what her voice said. ‘Sure.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Tough.’

‘I need your cell phone number.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I may need to get hold of you.’

Her sigh would have made Hamlet envious. But she went over to the table with the printer and scratched out a number on a sheet of paper. She tore it in half and folded it over and then brought it back to me. ‘I know I’m going to regret this.’

I took her arm and led her out of the apartment. ‘Maybe you’ll change your mind about telling me everything you know.’

‘Haven’t you ever given your solemn word to somebody? That’s what Jimmy made me give him. My solemn word that I’d never tell anybody under any circumstances.’

We were walking toward the rear of the hall where there was presumably a back way out. We kept our voices low. The blare of different types of music covered us.

‘We’ll never find out who killed him unless we know everything.’

‘I’ll just have to think about it.’

When we reached the door I held it open for her. She led the descent. We didn’t talk as we worked our way to the ground floor.

The night, all brace and filled with the promise of noisy neon life, was waiting for us and all of a sudden I wanted to be with a woman and a few drinks and having some laughs. This one was not only way too young, she was like working a Rubik’s Cube.

‘I need to go get stoned and listen to some of the CDs he liked.’

‘Just keep thinking about helping me find out who killed him.’

‘Man, you never give up, do you?’

‘Not when it’s important.’

‘You and my dad would get along. He just harangues you until you give in. Only I don’t give in.’

I had no trouble believing that.

Then she was walking away.

‘I’ll talk to you soon,’ I called.

She gave me one of her typical replies over her shoulder. ‘Maybe and maybe not.’

The only cash I had was a twenty so the bellhop who brought me my very late dinner got lucky. As I ate I went through the thirty-seven e-mails I’d received since the last time I’d checked. I was getting updates on all four of our races. Good news on two, fair news on another. Right now I had to put Jeff Ward in an ‘Unknown’ column. The murder could sink us. Even if we proved that Jim Waters’ death had absolutely nothing to do with the campaign, we’d be smudged by it. Burkhart, like most of his fellow haters, made sanctimony one of his weapons. He’d wonder aloud if homicide wasn’t something a ladies’ man like Ward had brought on himself.

I caught the ten o’clock local news. On camera the scene at headquarters resembled one of those factory explosion shots. Real turmoil; mass tragedy. Since the reporters had little to go on as yet they took turns speculating on how this ‘bloody death that police are hinting is a murder’ would affect the Ward campaign. The footage they showed was of the dashing young congressman in his nightclub duds, of course. His trophy wife was the latest model.

When the news finished I switched to the radio. There were six local stations, only two with news staffs. They covered the story at much greater length than their TV counterparts but they made it even more suggestive and lurid. One even claimed that an officer who didn’t wish to be named said that ‘maybe a drug deal was involved.’ The easy blame would fall on Burkhart; he’d somehow mind-manipulated all these reporters to trash Ward.

But no, this was just the American press we have today. And the blame isn’t all theirs. We’ve been tabloidized as a culture. Left and right, both. We want news that sizzles and if it’s not news, who cares as long as it sizzles anyway.

I was just about to open a few of the new e-mails when the knock came. The Glock I carried lay on the bed where I’d parked it earlier. Opening a hotel room door this late at night can be dangerous. You never get a fetching, willing woman; you almost always get a rumpled surly male with bad news.

Well, nobody would ever accuse Jeff Ward of being rumpled, but standing there in his bomber jacket and looking like a print ad for some macho aftershave, he said: ‘I don’t appreciate being summoned, Conrad.’

Off to a good start.

I opened the door wide and he came in as if he was in a hurry. He walked straight to the refrigerator where he helped himself to a beer. ‘You know I didn’t want you here in the first place. And now you’re giving me orders?’

He had to take his anxiety about Waters’ murder out on someone. I’m sure he’d unloaded at least some of it on his minions earlier but I was to get whatever was left of it. That is, if I’d allow it.

‘That makes us even. I didn’t want to come here, either, because everybody told me what an asshole you are. I only did it because your father asked me to. He called in the old times with my own father. That didn’t leave me much choice.’

I thought maybe he’d see the humor or at least the irony in our positions but that had been expecting too much. ‘Don’t do me any favors, Conrad. You’re just one more consultant and the same people who told you I’m an asshole probably told you that I go through consultants two or three a campaign.’

I sat at the table and watched him pace. I’d never realized it before but he had the looks of one of those old B-movie stars in the Saturday afternoon serials. The sleek, dark hair, the jutting jaw, the patrician nose. Hell, he already had the bomber jacket for it.

‘This is all I fucking needed,’ he said. He was talking to himself. ‘Burkhart’s going to be all over this. We were just catching up with him, too. I can’t believe this.’

‘I take it the police interviewed you?’

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

This guy was in pure paranoid mode.

‘I meant what I asked. Did the police interview you?’

‘Of course they interviewed me. So what?’

‘So did they tell you anything about his death?’

‘Do the cops ever tell anybody anything?’

‘This is a waste of time. Get the hell out of here. I’ll be leaving in the morning.’

‘Yeah. And let me be the first to thank you for all the fucking help.’

‘One of us is about to get his face punched in and I’m betting it’s going to be you.’

‘Oh, great, now you’re threatening me. Dad can sure pick ’em.’

He was thirty-six going on fifteen.

‘Why don’t you sit down at the table here and shut up for a few minutes.’ I’m not sure if he was afraid of me. I think it had all caught up with him. The anger in the dark eyes gave way to weariness. A great sigh as he tossed himself into a chair.

‘You have a lot of faith in Nolan. You’re going to have to sit down and figure out how you’re going to handle a press conference.’

‘Are you crazy? A press conference? They’d eat me alive.’

I wanted to say be sure you don’t whine like this at your press conference but I’d probably ragged him enough already.

‘It’s too late to get ahead of the story. All you can do is try to stop the bleeding. Find the closest of Waters’ relatives you can. Fly them here first class if you need to. Have them standing next to you at the press conference. Limit your opening statement to your feelings about Jim. Tell a few stories about how close you were. Make them up if you have to. Make everything about Jim. Then offer a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of his killer.’

‘Ten grand? Ten grand’s not shit these days.’

‘All right. Twenty-five grand.’

He shrugged.

‘Then let the relative speak. Tell him or her what to say beforehand. Hopefully this’ll be a woman and hopefully she’ll cry a little bit. If it’s a woman, put your arm around her when she starts to choke up. What we’re trying to do here is set the tone for the questions. They’ll still come at you but they’ll look like insensitive assholes for doing it. A good share of the public hates the press. They’ll be on your side to some degree. Especially if we get a woman and especially if she looks maternal in any way. You know that she really cared for Waters and just can’t get over what happened to him.’

‘And this’ll work magic, I suppose?’

‘No. But it’ll make Burkhart’s smear job more difficult to pull off. We’ve made the whole thing about Waters. The press’ll be wanting to find some connection between Waters and his killer. Drugs or something. Or that he was gay or an addict of some kind.’ I thought about his Captain America poster. I suppose that was a kind of addiction but one he well deserved. He’d been a lonely man. ‘If you can find any kind of charity or cause that Waters worked for be sure to mention that, too. Soup kitchen, walks for cancer, that kind of thing. Start putting out press releases on anything good you can come up with. And be sure to mention a few of them at your press conference.’

‘He worked at this soup kitchen, I guess. He liked this old nun. He brought her around one day to meet everybody.’

‘That nun should be at your press conference. One side of you the relative, the other side the nun.’

‘I’m glad you’re not cynical, Conrad.’

‘That’s what I’m paid for. Being cynical. Burkhart’s a bad guy with a lot of dangerous ideas. He has millions of dollars behind him already from the far right and lobbyists ready to give him a lot more if he wins. I want to stop him. You do what you need to. And you’ve run some pretty rough campaigns yourself.’

He helped himself to another beer. Walked over to the TV set and turned up the volume. ‘I guess it’s too late for any more news tonight.’

‘Shouldn’t your man Nolan be up here helping us figure this thing out?’

For the first time the natural arrogance of the B-movie face fell into uncertainty. I wondered if something had happened between Nolan and him. They were a famous duo in certain political circles. Where the hell was he?

‘You know, I almost started laughing when you came up with that nun thing,’ he said. ‘This sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit. The grieving relative and the nun.’

‘Desperate times. Now why isn’t Nolan up here?’

‘Family matters. He needed to be home.’

I doubted that. Nolan was a political junkie. A murder in the parking lot of campaign headquarters and he goes home after the police interview him? ‘What’s so important at home?’

‘How the hell do I know? And what’s so important about Nolan? You believe all that bullshit about him being the “brains” of my campaign? I don’t need Nolan. He could quit tomorrow and I’d be fine.’

‘Yeah? That’s all you’d need. Your number one man quitting after a murder.’

‘I didn’t say he’d quit. I just meant that nobody’s irreplaceable. What the hell’re you trying to do to me anyway? You don’t think I’ve got a million fucking things on my mind?’

There was something he wasn’t telling me. Even the mention of Nolan had agitated him more than Waters’ death seemed to.

‘So what’s going on with you and Nolan?’ I said quietly.

He started to get angry, then thought better of it. He walked back to the table and sat down. ‘Nobody knows anything about this. And I mean my old man. You tell him and you’ll be sorry. I promise you.’

‘Cut the threats. Just tell me what’s going on.’

‘Well, his wife and I-’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘You didn’t even let me finish, God damn it.’

‘You don’t have to finish. Let me open my laptop here. I can write it out for you. Save you some time. I may not get all the addresses where you two shacked up but I bet I can get everything else right. I’ll bet she’s got a nice ass, right?’

‘Very funny.’

‘He’s your best friend since grade school and you’re schtupping his wife? Very nice.’

‘Things happen to people.’

‘Things like this don’t happen unless the two people involved want them to happen.’

‘She’s always had her eye on me. Even back in college.’

‘Oh, I forgot. You’re irresistible. Also you can’t help yourself when women throw themselves at you. Even your best friend’s wife.’

‘Don’t get sanctimonious on me, Conrad.’

‘I’m not. I’m being cynical again. I like your father. When I think of my dad I think of your dad. I want to make your dad happy by seeing that you win. So I’m thinking what happens if Nolan decides to go to the press? You’re toast. Not only do we have a murder to deal with, now we have an affair. You know how many people will hate you for betraying your best friend and the guy who helped you win two terms in Congress? You’ll be finished, asshole. Burkhart won’t have to say a word. Nobody will. Because you’ll have done it to yourself.’

I went over and got my own beer from the fridge. The cold air felt good on my face. Cleansing. I was in no position to judge him morally. I was in a perfect position to judge him professionally.

When I was seated again, I said, ‘So where do you stand with Nolan?’

‘He isn’t speaking to me.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since two days ago. He won’t answer my calls and when I see him he just walks away. He knows I won’t start a scene in front of the others. I can’t afford to. He might say something.’

‘I’ll talk to him.’

‘He doesn’t give a shit about you. Nobody here does. They resent my old man for forcing you on us.’

‘You want to talk to him, then?’

The frown was petulant. ‘I’ve already told you he won’t talk to me.’

‘Then I’ll talk to him. By the way, when did he first figure this out?’

‘Five days ago. Bryn was typing a letter to me on her laptop upstairs when one of their daughters hurt herself on the driveway. Bryn ran down to help her and forgot all about the laptop. David came home and saw it and read it. I’d written her this really sexy e-mail about us making love and she was responding. I was stupid even to send it.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘Well, fuck you.’

‘You want me to tell you congratulations?’

‘People make mistakes.’

He was hopeless.

‘Have you talked to Nolan about it?’

‘The one time I was able to talk to him I tried to tell him that I don’t really give a shit about her. That it was just a little fling. Hell, he’s had little flings. But he wants to make this big deal out of it. You know, make himself a martyr.’

‘I doubt any of his flings were with his friends’ wives. There’s a difference.’

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

He was a peach all right. A real fucking peach.

‘So we’ve got the murder and now we’ve got Nolan.’

He stared at his bottle of beer and then started peeling the label off with his thumbnail. ‘Well, since we’re playing Come to Jesus, Conrad, I guess I should tell you about one other thing.’

The headache cut down like a sword through the exact middle of my skull. What the hell was he going to tell me now?

‘I,’ he said, ‘am being blackmailed.’