Flashpoint

Seventeen

There is always that millisecond between the sound of the shots and your brain responding. Most people would take cover any way they could. Throwing yourself to the ground was always an option. But for a millisecond Ruskin froze. And that was why, when he was hit, he threw his arms up and danced like a puppet until he slammed into the asphalt about ten feet from my Jeep.

By now I had my Glock out and was working my way around the edge of the Jeep. Charged with adrenaline, crazed with both fear and anger, I hoped to be able to locate the shooter. Sarah Potter had mentioned somebody was after Howard ‘Howie’ Ruskin. I was now a believer. Capturing the shooter could lead to a lot of places few people knew about.

But then another millisecond decision came to me. Ruskin started calling out for help. Shit, I thought. I had to at least see him before I went after the person who’d tried to kill him. I had to move around the back of the Jeep now and put myself in a position to be shot at whatever I did. I might as well check on Ruskin first.

From what I could judge the shots had come directly from the area behind Ruskin’s car. I had to worry about myself first. All I could do now was wait to see if there would be any more shooting before I pushed out into the open. I used my cell to call emergency and was told that somebody had reported the gunfire. I said we also needed an ambulance right away.

The shooter was gone. That was the bet I made with myself. No shooter would stay in place now that sirens could be heard.

Keeping my eyes and my Glock fixed on the point in the hardwoods where the shooter had stood, I moved carefully to Ruskin. He was impossible to miss and not only because he was rolling around on the ground. He made loud mewling sounds: fear. I couldn’t blame him.

It’s always disappointing to find that a major villain resembles a stereotypical Star Trek nerd, but that was Ruskin’s curse. Writhing on the asphalt now, clutching the arm of his tan sport coat, his three-hundred-dollar jeans properly stressed, his glasses crooked on his pudgy face, his balding head shiny with sweat, the thick two-inch heels on his black boots jutting out, he might have been suffering the shame of having been shunned by other Trekkies. At least that was the noise he made — a sort of yelping. Not the sound of someone mortally wounded.

‘You just gonna stand there, Conrad? I’m fucking dying here!’

I doubted he was fucking dying here, though there was blood on the pavement and his fingers were splotched with red from where they’d touched his arm. I hunched down and examined the wound as best I could. ‘Were you hit anywhere else?’

‘Isn’t this enough? I could die here.’

‘Not if this is your only wound.’

‘Oh, is that right, Mr Macho? What the hell do you know about it?’

I stood up. ‘They’ll take you to the ER and fix you up.’

‘I knew they were after me.’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, no. I don’t tell you anything until we make a pact.’ He grimaced and rolled some more. I didn’t mean to minimize his wound. Most people would have been in shock. He was certainly in pain and he certainly had a right to be afraid. Somebody was after him and somebody was trying to kill him. ‘I’m in agony here, man.’

‘You saved your own life when you stumbled.’

‘What the hell’re you talking about?’

‘You stumbled just when the shots started.’

Apparently he wasn’t listening. ‘Where is the goddamned ambulance?’ I was sure they could hear him in the distant dorms.

A police car with siren ripping the night jerked to a stop ten feet from my Jeep and two uniformed officers, a man and woman, lurched from the car and ran toward us.

‘What happened here?’ the female officer said.

‘I’ve been shot!’ Ruskin cried. ‘What does it look like?’

The look she gave me said that they were inclined to give him another shot or two. The male officer walked over to Ruskin and said, with epic contempt, ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘If you read a goddamned newspaper once in a while you’d know who I was. Now get me the hell to a hospital before I die.’

Howie Ruskin made friends wherever he went.

To me, the officer said, ‘Are you famous, too?’

I smiled at him. ‘No. But believe it or not, in certain circles he’s very famous.’

I don’t know what Ruskin had said to the female officer who was hunched down next to him but she said with great scorn, ‘What are you, five years old? You need to calm down. You’re going to be all right.’

‘You got some ID?’ the male cop asked me. ‘And while you’re at it, tell me what the hell happened here.’

Now it was the white ambulance that arrived, blazing lights and blaring siren. We had already started to accumulate an audience. You could hear their feet slap-slap-slapping up the drive here toward all the fun. Students. In my college days an event like this would be as good as a movie; even better because it was real. There were already twenty or so of them, boys and girls mixed. None of them knew yet what had happened and from their vantage point they couldn’t see past my Jeep so they couldn’t know that Ruskin lay on the asphalt. But some of them had heard the gunshots. Who could resist gunshots? The ones who’d stayed away would be those who remembered all the campus killings that had shocked the country over the past decade.

The three men from the ambulance worked so hard and so fast I wondered if they were trying to set a Guinness record. These were the guys I’d want if I was the one needing emergency help.

‘How about being careful, all right?’ Ruskin shouted at one of the ER crew as they prepared to put him on the gurney.

I had no idea what he was talking about and was sure they didn’t either. He was so used to bellering at people he probably couldn’t control himself any longer. He was Howard ‘Howie’ Ruskin the Great, the Magnificent, the Most Wonderful of All. Neither the ER people nor the police found him wonderful tonight.

The first few drops of rain tamped my forehead.

‘Just who the hell is this asshole?’ the male cop asked me.

‘He’s in politics.’

‘Big deal. Are you with him?’

‘I know him. He was walking toward my Jeep when somebody started shooting from the trees right behind him.’

‘You wait right here. There’ll be a detective along any minute.’

Meanwhile, they were guiding Ruskin into the ambulance. He was still yelling at them but not as loudly. Somewhere in the muddle of accusations he was hurling at them I heard my name. After they had him inside and closed the door, one of the ambulance men came over to me and said, ‘Are you Conrad?’

‘Yes.’

‘He wants you to come to the ER.’

‘I’ll need directions and I can’t leave until a detective talks to me.’

‘He’s quite a little fella.’

‘You noticed that, huh?’

He snorted then grinned. ‘Yeah, I noticed that.’

It was ten minutes before Detective Farnsworth arrived but only five minutes before the downpour began. I sat in my Jeep during my wait, listening to the rain on the roof.

Farnsworth opened the door of the Jeep and made himself comfortable. He wore a well-cut light brown overcoat that made him look even more like a stockbroker instead of a cop. Relentless, handsome young black man — TV series maybe? ‘Too bad Hammell needed to pull me off following you. Something finally happens and I’m not there for it.’

‘Why’d he pull you off?’

‘Convenience store robbery. The robber beat the store clerk pretty badly. Sixty-three-year-old woman. Unarmed, of course.’

‘They seem to get worse.’

‘Meth, probably. Anyway, Hammell wants the bastard and so do I. But then I got pulled away out here. So who shot this Ruskin character?’

‘I have no idea. And since you called him a character I take it you’ve met him?’

‘Only what I could find about him online. So what happened?’

I told him everything I thought he should know. He was enough of a pro to understand that what I said I’d edited heavily. And I was enough of a pro to know he wanted to take a hammer and put a few dents in my skull.

When I walked into the ER reception area I saw a woman at the check-in desk sobbing so hard the woman behind the desk rushed around and took her in her arms. A nurse came rushing from somewhere in the back and took over, leading the woman to a seat then sitting down next to her. The nurse put an arm around the woman and started talking to her in a voice so low I couldn’t pick up on what they were saying.

The ER reception area contained two couches and maybe twenty straight-backed chairs with cushioned backs and seats. End tables between some of the chairs held magazines and small toys for kids. We’d arrived during a lull. This time of night ERs are often crowded. This was when the victims of car accidents, domestic abuse, brawls and gunshots started showing up. But now, except for the sobbing woman, I was the only other visitor.

‘I’m waiting to see Howie Ruskin.’

She typed in the name. ‘Yes. Doctor Olsen is with him now.’

‘Mr Ruskin asked me to be here.’

‘I’ll be sure to let you know when you can see him.’

‘Thanks. Is there any coffee available anywhere?’

‘Of course. There’s a vending machine down the hall but I just got a pot going. Let me get you a fresh cup.’ She was middle-aged and competent-looking. My demographic mind was fitting her into a pattern. She probably had kids and this was probably the only job she could get — the graveyard shift. She might have a husband but then she might not. This sketch would seem to make her a potential voter for us but I couldn’t be sure. Though our side doesn’t like to admit it, welfare has inspired some people who tend to rush to the ER for ills as minor as sore throats. They could wait and see their docs in the morning for eighty percent less but they don’t. And when you talk to the workers who serve them you sometimes hear a great deal of resentment.

In the next twenty minutes I looked at three recent copies of news magazines, had a second cup of not-bad coffee and waited to be called to visit Ruskin. I also had time to think through everything that had happened. I’d assumed it was Ruskin who’d been followed, but if that was the case how had the shooter been able to get into position to shoot him so quickly? Ruskin had parked, cut his engine, stepped out of his car and started walking toward me. Then came the shots. That made no sense.

But what if someone had been following me, believing I would lead them to Ruskin? That made more sense, and was why I got up and walked down the hall where I was alone. I punched in the number for the hotel and asked for Earl the bellman. It took a few minutes to locate him.

‘This is Earl.’

‘Earl, it’s Dev Conrad.’

‘Hey, there, Mr Conrad.’

‘Have you seen Michael Hawkins around tonight?’

‘Hawkins?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I saw him come out of the restaurant about nine thirty and then go into the bar.’

‘How long was he in the bar?’

‘He’s still in there. Something going on?’

‘No. I was just curious, is all. There’s a twenty in this for you if you don’t mention this call to him.’

‘No need to pay me, Mr Conrad. I keep secrets pretty good. It’s part of my job.’

‘Thanks, Earl.’

I hadn’t given Hawkins any of the details about my meeting with Ruskin, but given his alleged competitiveness maybe that had been enough for him to follow me. Hard to imagine him being the shooter, but since Ruskin was certain ‘they’ were after him, ‘they’ could be anybody, including an investigator for a US Attorney’s office. But maybe if Hawkins had been following me he’d gotten a look at the actual shooter.

At this time of night all the doctor/nurse calls over the hospital system were muted. As I walked back to my seat in the ER area the noise my phone made was ominous in its loud pitch.

‘I told my friend in the police department about Howie Ruskin,’ Jane said, ‘and she recognized the name so she called me. Somebody shot him?’

‘Yeah. In the arm. I’m at the ER. I’ll get in to see him pretty soon here.’

‘This is getting scary.’

‘I just wish there was some angle in it that would help Robert.’

‘Yes. But it must have something to do with Tracy Cabot, don’t you think?’

‘Absolutely. But right now that’s all I know.’

‘I’m still at the office working on a case. I’ve got an important court date tomorrow morning. I’m going to stop in about an hour. If you’re up for a drink let me know.’

‘I’d like that. I’ll just have to see how it goes here.’

‘Sure. Well, good luck.’

By the time I got back to my seat Detective Farnsworth was talking to the woman at the desk. When he saw me he excused himself and walked over. He took the chair next to me. ‘When I was a kid I always liked horror films that were set in hospitals. You like horror films, Mr Conrad?’

‘A few of them. But not the gory ones.’

‘I’m the same way. The gory ones turn me off. My fourteen-year-old son talked me into going to see one recently and I barely got through it.’

‘You don’t look old enough to have a fourteen-year-old son.’

‘I also have a sixteen-year-old daughter. I run a check on all her dates.’

I laughed. ‘You tell her you do it?’

‘Hell, no. She’d never speak to me again.’

Easy to know what we were doing. He was trying to make us momentary friends so I’d tell him more than I already had. Since I knew how these things worked — had worked a few of them myself — I wondered if he had a son and daughter at all.

He stretched long legs out in front of him. He still wore his overcoat.

‘You working with Howie Ruskin now, Mr Conrad?’

‘I thought we were talking about horror movies.’

‘From what the ambulance crew told me, Ruskin is a horror movie.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with that.’

‘When we were sitting in your Jeep you said he called you.’

‘His girlfriend set it up. Just as I said.’

‘Any particular reason he wanted to talk to you?’

‘My favorite horror movie is still Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The one with Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.’

He smiled with great tolerance. ‘Too bad you’re not a priest or a lawyer or even a private investigator, Mr Conrad. That way you could proclaim client privilege. This way you’re shit out of luck. If I take you to the station and Hammell starts asking you questions, he won’t be happy if you bring up a movie called Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He won’t be happy if you bring up any movie at all, in fact. You’ll actually have to answer his questions.’

But it was then that an angel in the form of a nurse appeared before us, backlit by the soft bluish light of the ER desk, and said, ‘Detective Farnsworth, the doctor said you could talk to Mr Ruskin now. If you’d follow me, please.’

As he was pushing up from the chair, he said, ‘I shouldn’t be too long, Mr Conrad. I mean, if that’s all right with you.’

The nurse, a middle-aged woman, caught his sarcasm and then glanced at me to see how I was reacting to it.

But I didn’t give either of them the satisfaction they wanted. I just sat there expressionless and silent. Finally, seeming confused, she said, ‘This way, Detective Farnsworth.’

Farnsworth was in a hurry when he reappeared. The brisk walk, the curt nod to me, the intense expression — there might have been a break in the beating of the convenience-store woman. He half-jogged the rest of the way until he disappeared through the doors down the hall.

It was another fifteen minutes before a red-haired woman in doctor whites came down the hall from the right and walked straight to me. About thirty, I guessed, trim, glasses with dark frames, not unattractive. ‘Are you Mr Conrad?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Doctor Olsen. Mr Ruskin has asked to see you.’

‘How’s he doing?’

‘We took the bullet out. He’ll need rest but he should be fine.’ A smile. ‘He’s quite the character.’

‘You noticed that, huh?’

‘He says you’re a good friend of his.’

By now I was on my feet. After she said that I thought about sitting down again. I was afraid I’d pass out. ‘That’s strange.’

‘Oh?’

‘Actually, I hate him.’

She studied my face to see if I was joking. I think she gave up. ‘Let’s go see him.’

We didn’t talk until we were in a large room where there were four other beds, all empty now. Curtains could be pulled for privacy.

He was propped up on pillows, studying a smart phone with the intensity of a bookie surveying the latest results from the track. He was doing this one-handed. His left arm was in a blue sling. He was in a light-green hospital gown. His hair was wilder than usual, the operatic tentacles of a madman. When he saw me, he said, ‘Hey, dude. I bet you were scared. I wasn’t.’

‘Right. I noticed that being shot didn’t bother you at all. You were screaming because you were so happy.’

‘Can you believe this guy, Doc? His sarcasm?’

She was eager to leave. ‘I’ll leave you two alone for ten minutes. Then I’ll be back.’

The metal sides on the bed were up. On the rolling table next to the bed was a 7UP and a glass full of ice. Then there was the rosary. Howie Ruskin had a rosary? But somehow that fit his reality. He was this thirty-eight-year-old near-genius who wanted to pay the world back for a lot of different reasons. The rosary surprised me because he always denied being associated with the right-wing religious nuts, claiming he was a non-believer. I didn’t know many non-believers who carried rosaries.

I expected to hear more of his patter but instead he said, ‘You have to hide me, Conrad. That’s the first thing. You have to figure out where I’ll be safe while we’re setting everything up.’

‘You’re way ahead of me. First of all, why do I have to hide you? You’re the one who knows all the bad guys.’

‘Great. Somebody’s trying to kill me and you’re getting sanctimonious.’

‘Back up a minute. Who’s trying to kill you?’

‘The people who hired me.’

‘Why would they try to kill you?’

He winced — the first indication that he was in pain. ‘Because there’s already some jerk from the US Attorney’s office on my case. He left a message on my phone. That’s why I had to get the hell out of the hotel. They’re afraid with him involved I might get indicted. And that if I get indicted I might talk. It’d be safer to get rid of me.’

So he knew Hawkins was on his case; that, at least, was true. ‘This isn’t just paranoid bullshit?’

The childlike eyes. ‘Does it sound like paranoid bullshit?’

‘Yeah, it does.’

‘I can deliver names and dates of a lot of things. And you’re making shit out of me.’

The hell of it was the hurt feelings were sincere. A real grown-up would try to hide them, but then nobody had ever said that Howie was a real grown-up, had they?

He closed his eyes. Rested. I didn’t blame him. I’d been surprised at how active he was.

‘Howie.’

‘What?’

‘Why did you kill her?’

He lay still, but smiled. ‘I knew you were trying to nail me for killing her. You’re so fucking stupid maybe I shouldn’t get involved with you after all.’

‘That’s not exactly a denial.’

His eyes opened and he bellered: ‘Of course I didn’t kill her, Conrad. Howie Ruskin doesn’t kill people.’

Overlooking the fact that he was referring to himself in the third person, I found his resentment at my question believable. At least for now.

‘How about this? I’m going to put you in my hotel room. There are two beds. Then I’m going to hire somebody with a gun to stand guard just inside the door.’

He was fading. ‘They gave me... a... pill.’

I let him doze off and walked to the door. When I leaned out to look up and down the hall I saw Dr Olsen talking to a nurse who held a clipboard. Clipboards don’t cost that much but in a hospital setting they can look imposing and important. Maybe the nurse was showing her some of the doodles she’d come up with tonight.

The doctor saw me, said goodbye to the nurse and walked up to me. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘He nodded off.’

‘It’s about time. He never quit talking. I was impressed.’

‘What happens now?’

‘Somebody needs to take him home with some pain meds and some instructions I have for his caregiver. He keeps talking about a woman. Sarah.’

‘His girlfriend. She’ll take care of him.’

‘How does she put up with him?’

‘One of the mysteries of life.’

‘Can I give you his meds and the instructions? I’ll have to get his permission.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘He doesn’t have a shirt, either.’

I remembered his sport coat. ‘I’ll warm up the car.’

‘You’ll have to sign some papers taking legal responsibility for seeing that he is taken care of.’

‘I’ll be happy to do that.’

She paused and gazes met. ‘I still don’t understand your relationship. I’m bothered by the fact that you said you hated him and you didn’t seem to be kidding.’

‘I wasn’t kidding. But don’t you work with patients you hate but you take good care of them anyway?’

‘I wouldn’t say “hate,” but there are people who certainly piss me off.’ I like it when docs swear. A human touch.

‘Well, that’s what I’m doing here. Howie is an old political enemy of mine. But now — for a reason I won’t go into — I have given my word to Howie that I’m going to make sure that he’s safe.’

‘Safe from what?’

‘Maybe you’ve forgotten, Doctor. Somebody shot him tonight.’

‘I hardly forgot, Mr Conrad. I was the one who worked on him, remember? I’m simply asking why the police won’t be keeping him safe.’

Speaking of people being pissed off, that was what she was doing to me. She was going to gnaw on this forever. ‘Howie and I are now what you’d call circumstantial buddies. He’ll be fine with me. If the police want to talk to him just tell them he’s staying with me in my room at the Regency.’ I put just enough irritation in my voice so she’d finally let it all go.

She nodded but her expression said she not only didn’t like me, she didn’t trust me either. ‘I need to go see him now. Get his permission so you can take over.’

She left abruptly with no other words.

Jane was at the registration desk when I arrived there, looking smart and fresh in her blue Burberry coat, her hair slightly mussed by the winds. Her smile was the first thing I’d had to be happy about for a long, long time. When I walked over to her she touched my arm and it was like receiving a blessing from on high. ‘You look exhausted, Dev. Are you all right?’

She said this quietly as we moved over to the chairs. She smelled of wind, rain, chill, perfume and woman. I wanted to dive into her.

I spent a few whispered moments bringing her up to date on the evening. She kept shaking her head as I described the shooting and the immediate aftermath.

But Jane was fixed on Ruskin. ‘I don’t understand. Who exactly is he afraid of?’

‘From what I can tell, the people he’s working for.’

‘But why?’

‘He knows the police’ll keep on questioning him. And so will Hawkins from the US Attorney’s office. Ruskin knows enough to put a pretty fair number of people in prison and to launch a lot of scandals. He’s dangerous. He’s under the impression that I can get him to the right people in the Administration and they can protect him in exchange for immunity if he tells them everything.’

‘I doubt he’d ever get blanket immunity, and that’s what he’d be after.’

‘You know that and I know that but we’re dealing with Ruskin here. He thinks he’s got enough leverage to pull it off. By the way, he hasn’t said much of this to me. But I’m pretty sure this is the general drift of what he’s got in mind.’

‘What are the chances he killed the Cabot woman?’

‘I don’t think so. He’s not the type. And he’d know enough that his masters would have to have him killed if he did it. That’s what he’s fighting against now. They’ll blame him for it going wrong anyway, even though he had nothing to do with it. But now I’m going out to get the car started. And I want to check on something.’

She nodded. ‘So I’m going to meet the notorious Howie Ruskin.’

‘If he’s awake he’ll undoubtedly put the moves on you.’

‘Somehow I think I’ll be able to resist him.’

I needed the cold air and the wind. I needed to be revived. I needed to think clearly. I passed a blue-suited security woman on my way out.

‘I’m going to pull my Jeep up here. Warm it up for somebody I have to take home. Would you watch it for me?’

I took her hand and put a crisp twenty in it.

‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’

The wind slapped me in the face and the rain soaked my head. I opened the Jeep remotely then climbed in and fired it up. Once I had it going for a couple of minutes, the heater going full tilt, I got out and locked it up again.

And then I went to the back of it and felt under the bumper.

As I’d suspected, a nice little tracking device had been planted there. Somebody had been following me all right.

Eighteen

Ruskin didn’t put the moves on Jane. He didn’t do much of anything except slump down in the wheelchair that I stashed him in to get him to the Jeep. I used another wheelchair at the hotel to get him into an elevator, then the back door and a freight elevator in case a stray reporter who was staying there happened to notice who I was wheeling around. If we were spotted, we’d be the lead story on most of the morning cable news shows. Probably the network news shows, too, actually. Who shot Howie Ruskin last night? What did the shooting have to do with Senator Logan? Why was Logan’s consultant Dev Conrad pushing Ruskin around in a wheelchair and trying to sneak him into a hotel? Political junkies would have tears of joy and gratitude streaming down their cheeks.

I’d given Jane the room card. She’d gone ahead to get the bed set up and to request an electric blanket. I’d called before we arrived to make sure that somebody would be at the back door with a wheelchair and that they would lead me to the proper elevator.

So now here I was, pushing the slumbering Ruskin into my room.

‘He’s really out,’ Jane said as we struggled to lift him out of the chair and sit him on the edge of the bed.

‘Can you hold him there for just a minute?’

‘Sure.’

My suitcase was on the other bed. I threw it open and grabbed a T-shirt, brought it up and slipped it over his head.

As she appraised my work as if it were a painting she was thinking of buying, her smile got wider and wider. ‘It fits like Spanx.’

‘We’ll get his girlfriend to bring him some clothes.’

‘Have you heard from her?’

‘No. I have her cell number but she didn’t answer.’

‘That doesn’t sound good.’

‘It sure doesn’t. But for right now let’s get him comfortable.’

Jane grabbed the pillows from the other bed so we could prop him up. I tugged his black boots with the tall heels on them. They also had lifts. He didn’t screw around when it came to making himself taller. Then came his jeans. He was in red boxer shorts and white socks. Those stayed on. We covered him up right away so he wouldn’t get cold. There was a knock on the door.

‘I’ll get it.’

I was accompanied by my Glock. The shooting and the tracking device had changed everything. I eased open the door by inches. A young woman in a red blazer, white blouse and black skirt — the hotel’s uniform — stood there with a blanket in her hands. The electric one. I had to take it with one hand. I kept my other one, the one with the Glock, behind my back. ‘Thank you very much.’

When I got back to the bed Jane was talking to him. ‘Are you comfortable?’

He sounded drunk. ‘I told her but she wouldn’t listen.’

Jane put her hand to his forehead. ‘He feels a little cold. Are you cold?’

‘Am I... cold?’

His eyes were open but I didn’t think his eyes and mind were forming a coherent picture of Jane. ‘Sleep...’

‘All right. That’s a good idea. Can you hear me?’

‘Hear... you?’ The round face with the small, perfect nose was blanched white from the physical shock. The eyes tried to focus on Jane but I don’t think they succeeded. ‘I warned her...’

‘You sleep now. If you want anything we’re right here. You’ll feel better in the morning and we’ll get you a very nice breakfast.’

He said something I didn’t understand and then his chunky body rolled over on its side. He yawned, and then he farted, and then rested like some machine that had abruptly run out of power. His breathing was ragged but steady.

She touched a finger to her lips and then led me over to the window where a small couch awaited. The midnight city was painted on the glass. Lights of red and green and yellow and white; the part of the main drag that passed through the downtown area still busy; the college toward the east lit from below; several large housing developments divided by a mall and other shopping areas; and the pulsing lights of the distant airport.

‘I love this old town,’ she said.

‘You’d never move?’

‘Probably not. I’m sort of a hometown girl and I know that probably sounds ridiculous. This isn’t exactly a cultural center.’

‘Neither are big cities except in certain places. They’re just a lot of small towns sharing the same turf.’

She slid her arm through mine. Then kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’ve never thought of big cities that way before. Or if I have I’ve forgotten it. Or maybe I’m such a hayseed I’m easily impressed by obvious ideas.’

‘Well, if it’s obvious ideas you want, baby, you’ve come to the right place.’

An easy-going laugh. ‘Oh, God — I didn’t mean it that way. I’m so sorry.’

‘I know. I was just kidding you.’

‘I hate to interrupt this fascinating conversation, but can I have some water here? You may not have noticed, but I’m dehydrated.’

Less than two minutes ago he’d looked unconscious. Now he was not only awake, he was his usual spoiled-brat insulting self, and being ridiculous on top of it.

I walked back to him and pointed to the pitcher on the nightstand. ‘Jane thought of everything. Believe it or not, we’re trying to keep you comfortable.’

‘Only because you think I’m going to rat some people out for you.’

I lifted the pitcher and picked up an empty glass. ‘True enough, Howie. Otherwise I’d throw this in your face.’

‘Huh-uh,’ Ruskin said.

‘Huh-uh what?’

‘Huh-uh, I don’t want you to handle the water. I want her to.’

She stood next to me now. ‘I told her you’d try and put the moves on her.’

‘Normally I’d try but in case you haven’t noticed I came close to dying a couple of hours ago and I’m kind of laid up as a result.’

‘“Close to dying,”’ I mumbled as I handed Jane the empty glass.

‘I heard that,’ Howie said. ‘You ever think that maybe I have a heart condition and that the trauma of being shot might kill me?’

‘You have a heart condition like I have this big eye on the back of my head.’

‘I saw that episode of The Twilight Zone, too,’ Ruskin said. ‘That big eye was pretty cool.’

‘Now you just lie back and I’ll pour you some water,’ Jane said. The maternal softness of her voice would have struck me as endearingly sweet if it hadn’t been wasted on a slug like ‘Howie’ Howard Ruskin.

Around dawn — my travel alarm clock said 5:30 a.m. — I was awakened by a strange voice intruding on a dream that vanished instantly.

‘You bastard. Wake up and help me, Conrad.’

My brain slipped from Park into Drive. Ruskin. Summoning me. I sat up, nudging against the Glock I’d kept next to me.

‘You’re supposed to be watching over me, remember, asshole?’

Good to know he was still as obnoxious as ever. I swung around and sat on the edge of my bed in my boxers. ‘Oh. Right. What’s going on?’

‘I need to piss but every time I try to sit up I get dizzy. So I need some help to get to the john.’

‘All right. Just a second.’

As I came around the far side of his bed to help him he said, ‘You didn’t plank her. I sure as hell would’ve.’

‘What the hell’re you talking about?’

‘The chick. That lady lawyer. I woulda banged her.’

‘You were supposed to be unconscious.’

‘Oh, right. It was in my contract. I was supposed to be unconscious while you and the lady lawyer got to second base. A guy as old as you are, second base is pretty pathetic.’

‘Good to know you’re back to normal.’

‘Some of the dialogue was pretty corny, let me tell you.’

‘We’ll work on it for the next time.’

By now I was easing him out of the bed. Well, not exactly easing. In fact, I pretty much tore him out of the bed and he yelped when I did it.

‘Hey, asshole, take it easy. I’m wounded, remember? Just because you couldn’t close the deal with the chick, don’t take it out on me.’

Funny, I was under the impression I’d more than closed the deal. When everything was wrapped up here she was going to visit me for a three-day weekend in Chicago. I wasn’t about to sully my anticipation of that by sharing it with him.

‘Somebody’s trying to kill you, Ruskin. I’d be more concerned with that than with my love life.’

His hyena laugh. ‘Man, you don’t got no love life. Not from what I heard last night. You don’t know jack about chicks.’

I shoved him into the john and pulled the door shut.

‘Hey, easy, man!’

I walked over to the nightstand between the beds, picked up the remote and clicked on the tube.

The supposedly liberal channel had a talking head who said — the newsreader said this was a sound bite from yesterday — ‘Right now, we have to face the facts. A senator on our side is not only fighting for his political life. He’s fighting the suspicion that he may have murdered his mistress.’ The man speaking was a rough-hewn fifty with gray hair and a pockmarked face. He was a reporter for a large Midwestern daily and was usually able to use facts to argue our case. But now he was calling Tracy Cabot Robert’s ‘mistress’ and in so doing sounded as if he was auditioning for a slot on Empire News.

I clicked it off immediately. And in the silence that followed I heard faint sounds coming from the bathroom. Voice sounds. I walked over there and listened. I couldn’t catch the exact words but Ruskin was definitely talking to somebody. I tried the knob but the door was locked.

‘You wanna see me naked you’ll have to wait in line!’

No point in standing here. I went over and made myself some coffee in the microwave. While it was becoming radioactive I grabbed my trousers and stepped into them. I was just retrieving my cup from the microwave when Ruskin came out of the john.

‘Hey, dude, you gotta help me.’

He did look bad. Pale and weak and sweaty. And wobbly. I reached him in time to keep him from slumping to the floor. I got my arm underneath him and walked him carefully to his bed. I sat him down and then turned him around and helped him settle into his sleeping position.

‘You need to take it easy, Ruskin.’

‘I’m not some pussy. I can handle it.’

I wasn’t rude enough to remind him that two minutes ago he’d called out for my help. ‘Just lie there and relax and tell me who you were talking to.’

He was too wasted to call me a name. He just said, ‘Sarah.’

‘I’ve been trying her phone but she never answers.’

‘Two phones.’ Out of breath now.

‘She has two cell phones?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Clever.’

He didn’t speak for two or three minutes. Eyes closed, breathing starting to settle down. Sleeping already?

‘She has a place for us.’

‘Where?’

‘Oh, no. That’ll be our secret.’ He waved me off. ‘Sleep,’ he said. Then he muttered: ‘Sleep.’ A few seconds later he had gone off. Or did a good imitation of going off anyway.

Now it was my turn in the john. A quick shave and shower and when I came back out he was snoring. I put on a gray button-down shirt, my charcoal sport coat and black pants, black ribbed socks and black loafers.

I spent twenty minutes on my laptop checking up on all the internals of our campaigns, plus I looked at all the messages. All my employees hoped that the Robert matter would turn out well and soon.

It was then I looked at my travel alarm again and realized that it was six forty-three a.m. What the hell could I do at six forty-three a.m.?

But an answer came soon after in the form of a knock and in the person of the little waif Sarah. Her face froze when she saw the Glock I held in my hand. It was pointed down and pressed flat against my leg. ‘Howard has one of those and it terrifies me.’

A blue knit bag large enough to contain a small refrigerator was slung over her left shoulder. Whatever was inside bulged against the sides of the bag.

I stepped back to let her in. Without another word she went to him. He still seemed pretty groggy but that didn’t deter her careful hugs and kisses and declarations of worry and love. I wondered if, even if she encouraged it, he would be strong enough to get to second base.

Then he started declaring his own worry and love.

It went on until I said, ‘I hate to mention it to you people, but somebody’s trying to kill him. And, Sarah, you’re trying to take him away from here.’

She whipped around and that wan little face was just this side of nasty. ‘We don’t know anything about you!’

‘He called me, remember?’

‘So? We’re desperate. We don’t know who to trust. But that doesn’t mean you won’t turn us over to—’ She caught herself.

‘Turn you over to who? Or whom, if you prefer?’

‘We’re not sure. That’s the big problem.’

I tried to play the reassuring father role. Acting 101. The voice a little deeper, the tone a little softer, the pace a little slower, the plea for understanding the most important part of it all. ‘I have a vested interest in keeping him safe, Sarah.’

‘I know, but I don’t see what this has to do with me taking him now. I’ve picked out a good hiding place for us. And I’ve got a plan for sneaking us out of town.’

‘What if they’ve been watching you?’

All the time we’d been talking, Howie had lain in place with his eyes closed. The way his mouth moved, his head jerked left and right sometimes and his lips made motions as if he was trying to speak, let me know that he was not only listening but also forming opinions about all this.

‘Oh, God. I hadn’t thought of any of this stuff.’ She took his hand in hers and brought it to her face. Touched it to her cheek. Her eyes were bright with tears. ‘I’m just trying to protect him, is all.’

‘I know you are, Sarah. But he’s better off here. I’m going to hire somebody to sit in here and watch the door.’

‘Like a bodyguard?’

‘Basically, yes.’

‘Do we know we can trust him?’

‘Or her.’

‘I don’t know about a “her.” Howard has too many “hers” around him.’ Her possessiveness made me wonder about her relationship with Tracy Cabot. She would have had the opportunity to pay a visit to the cabin.

‘All right. I’ll make sure it’s a man.’

‘But I already told this guy we’d rent his little house.’

‘Tell him something came up.’

She still had her hand in his. ‘What do you think, Howard?’

‘I like the idea of a bodyguard.’

Before she could say anything else, I said, ‘Let me make a call.’ For this I went over to the window. The streets of the small city were crowded now. The workday was beginning. Suddenly, being in my Jeep and soaring along the Dan Ryan to my offices sounded comfortable. I was almost sentimental about the idea. It was a much more enjoyable notion than spending the day trying to clear a senator of a possible murder charge and hiring bodyguards and trying to keep a guy I despised alive.

‘This is a great way to start the day. Hearing from you. Let me shut off my hairdryer. There.’

‘Nice to hear your voice, too. But I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you a favor before you even have your breakfast.’

‘Sure. Is everything all right?’

As Jane and I talked Sarah emptied the contents of her knit bag onto the bed. Two sweaters, two shirts, two pairs of pants, as well as socks and underwear. I wondered if Howie had any idea how lucky he was that she loved him.

‘I think so. But to make sure I need to hire somebody like a bodyguard. Do you know anybody like that?’

‘In fact, I do. I mean, we do at the office. His name is Leo Guild. He’s a former detective who took early retirement to start doing investigations for law offices and individuals who can afford him. He does so much work for us we have him on a monthly retainer. We’re by far his biggest client.’

‘Has he ever done anything like being a bodyguard?’

‘A few times, yes. And he also has a brother who was in a security detail in the Marines. We used both of them as bodyguards last year. We had a client who’d gotten crosswise with the mob downstate. He was terrified they were going to kill him before we could get him to the FBI. He wanted us to evaluate his connection and see how much he could be liable for. We all felt that the FBI would make a deal if he told them what he knew. So Leo put him in a hotel room and traded shifts with his brother for two days. There wasn’t any problem.’

‘Think we could get him over here right away?’

‘We can try. I’ll see what he says.’

‘Thanks.’

Sarah was sitting him up now. Carefully. Lovingly. ‘He’s starving. Would you call room service, Mr Conrad?’

‘I will if you’ll call me Dev.’

‘Dev, then.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Now that I think about it.’

‘Like bacon and eggs and hash browns and coffee?’

Ruskin said, ‘Yeah, God, get it up here right away.’

I went to the room phone and punched in the room service number. The clatter in the background signified that numerous guests were firing in their orders. Bacon, eggs, hash browns — I was making myself hungry just saying the words. Plus two pots of coffee.

In the meantime I used the remote. Rage would wake me up for sure so I turned on Empire News and there were the Three Witches, as they’d come to be called by people on our side. Between plastic surgery and Botox they were as close to being cyborgs as science had yet gotten.

My day had officially started. Within thirty seconds I was muy pissed.

Nineteen

The redhead, a recent ‘honors’ graduate from Holy Shit University, was saying, ‘I hope this makes people look at Senator Logan’s party and what it really stands for. If you don’t have respect for capitalism and if you’re not willing to use force to demonstrate that the United States is still the dominant force in this world — except for God, of course — you see the slippery slope this puts you on. You have a mistress, which is sinful enough, but then you go even further and take her life.’

‘Allegedly, Candy. You have to say “allegedly.”’

‘Well, all right, then, I’ll say “allegedly” but I think everybody listening has made up his or her mind because the facts are already in.’

‘I hate to keep saying this, Candy, but to be honest the facts aren’t all in. We need to be careful here.’

Candy did not look happy. ‘I take your point, Brooke, but I’m speaking to a greater truth than just the justice system.’

Brooke glanced at Gabrielle. Concern in their eyes. To their credit they were being reasonably honest brokers this morning. The single word that was taped inside their heads was LAWSUIT.

Gabrielle, a former runway model, said, ‘The best point you’re making, Candy, is that senators are role models whether they want to be or not.’

Enough.

The other channels I checked were more subdued but two of them had adapted the same theme. Robert, it was said, was ‘in hiding.’ People ‘close to him’ were saying that both he and his family were ‘coming apart.’ Someone in his Washington office ‘would not rule out’ resignation. This was likely all bullshit. There are always go-to people in Washington who pretend to know everything. The press always goes to them because they can be counted on to give inflammatory statements. By tonight these same people would be talking about Robert’s forthcoming sex-change operation and also his forthcoming admission that he’d been selling some of America’s most secret information to Venusian agents.

Ben Zuckerman was busy with his electric shaver when I called. I knew this because it was humming away when he clicked on. ‘Lemme turn this damned thing off.’

‘The news gets juicier every couple of hours.’

‘They’re killing us. I’ve got to get him in front of some cameras, Dev, and you’ve got to help me. When was the last time you talked to him?’

‘Last night.’

‘Well, he called me in the middle of the night. He’s back to resigning.’

‘When I heard that on the news this morning I thought it was bullshit.’

‘Just a lucky guess. But if we ever have to go to court a resignation will look like hell. Juries will wonder why somebody as powerful as a United States senator wouldn’t stand tall and defend himself. And keep his job.’

‘How did you end the conversation?’

‘I said I wanted him to talk to you about it.’

‘He can be stubborn.’

‘I believe he’s innocent, Dev. And I think you do, too. Are you learning anything that might interest Hammell?’

He’d heard about last night and Ruskin being shot at. But he was shocked to hear that Ruskin was in my hotel room with his lover and a bodyguard on the way.

At the mention of his name, Ruskin tried to shout but didn’t have the energy so he just said, ‘Who you talking to?’

‘Ben Zuckerman.’

‘He’s a jerk-off. What’d he say about me?’

‘That you’re a jerk-off.’

‘Tell that putz he’s a candy-ass punk.’

‘He says you’re a candy-ass punk, Ruskin.’

Sarah had no trouble shouting. ‘Are you all little boys? I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, Dev.’

‘Having a little fun. We need it.’ But she was right. How easy and mindless it is sometimes to slip back to fourth grade and the playground. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll get out to Robert’s as soon as I can, Ben.’

‘I’d really appreciate it. I’ve got another press conference scheduled at nine. I’m dying out there. I have absolutely nothing to say. All I can do is try and knock down the worst of the rumors. They’re all over the place. I’m told one of the radio boys hinted that Robert is planning to flee the country. That’ll be on Empire News very soon. They’ll be demanding that he turn in his passport.’

‘Where’s my food?’ Ruskin wanted to know as soon as I’d clicked off.

‘It’ll be here very soon.’

‘I don’t know why I decided to hook up with you, Conrad.’

I walked over to his bedside. ‘We have a little bit of time to talk. I can’t be any help at all unless I know what’s going on.’

‘I’ve been shot and now I’m starving to death. Why should I talk?’

‘Howard, you promised me you’d be cooperative with Dev.’

‘What’s he done for me so far?’

‘What I need to know from you, Howard, is who hired you for the job on the senator.’

‘No way, Conrad. Not until I get guaranteed protection and immunity. Then I tell everything.’

He couldn’t come right out and help me.

‘If I talk now I have nothing to barter with.’

‘Please tell him, Howard. I’ll leave the room if you want me to.’

For once there was no bravado. ‘I can’t tell him, Sarah. If I do, I got nothing.’

‘I keep forgetting you’re actually a grown man. You keep sounding like a twelve-year-old.’

‘I don’t care if I sound like a twelve-year-old. I’m scared.’

His candor startled me; I think it startled Sarah, too.

‘You’ll notice there are no tears in my eyes. You destroyed at least four political careers that I know of and probably broke the law a couple dozen times, Howard. But I’m willing to help you get protection if you help the feds — feds we can trust — get the bad guys.’

I couldn’t tell if the moan was from physical pain or from knowing that his career was coming to an end. ‘How long before it’ll be safe again?’

‘It could be a long time.’

‘How will they protect him?’ Sarah asked.

‘I’m not sure. They could relocate him deep cover in Europe. Or they could put him in some witness protection program here. New name, new address, maybe even a little plastic surgery.’

‘Plastic surgery? Are you nuts?’

I couldn’t resist. ‘You don’t want to look like Justin Bieber?’

Sarah laughed. He sulked and said, ‘Where’s my goddamned food?’ Interesting that only when he was angry did his voice work full volume.

‘He’ll tell you everything, Dev. We both will. I promise you.’

At the knock on the door, I slid over to the table where my Glock lay next to the laptop. Hiding it behind my back, I went to the door.

The cart was piled high with goodies. ‘Morning,’ said the smiling, uniformed young woman pushing the feast into the room.

I followed her in. The aromas were seductive. Who wanted sex when actual food was here?

As she went about plucking various shiny food covers off the dishes and setting them on the table, Howie said, ‘I’m glad they sent a pretty one.’

When Sarah realized I was watching her, she just shrugged. Combat fatigue, most likely. She’d heard Howie’s moronic man-of-the-world routine so many times it no longer mattered.

After she was gone, Howie shouted, ‘Can I have some food over here? I’m dying of malnutrition!’

She had a winsome smile for me. ‘I really do love him. At least, most of the time.’

‘I heard that!’

She turned and looked at him. ‘I wanted you to.’

She then picked up a plate and started piling goodies on it. I’d been under the impression that she was going to spoon-feed him while he lay in bed. But now he was on his feet and headed with surprising speed and confidence toward the plate she was making for him. He grabbed it from her with his good hand and then dropped into a chair at the table. ‘I need some jelly for the toast. And a fork would come in real handy.’

‘Yessir, Lord and Master.’

‘Aw, shit, I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m being an asshole.’

I was closer. I handed him the fork. He ripped it from my fingers and mumbled something. I preferred to think he was expressing his undying gratitude.

We dined.

He was a noisy bastard but she was apparently used to it. She sat at the table next to him and didn’t seem to notice the lip-smacking, mouth-full yakking and belching that went on constantly.

I just kept thinking... This is the guy who’s tormented my party for a decade?

Fifteen minutes after there was no more food — though the front of Ruskin’s shirt bore traces of the slaughter — jelly-coffee-egg — there was another knock on the door.

The Glock in my hand, I went there to find Jane standing next to a tall man in a black leather jacket, a blue dress shirt and dark trousers. He was maybe sixty with white hair and cunning blue eyes. The nose suggested he was not unacquainted with trouble.

‘May we come in?’ Jane said.

‘Be my guest.’

Jane wore her blue Burberry, beneath which was a navy pencil skirt with a ruffled white blouse. When we got the door closed she made introductions.

From the table, Ruskin said, ‘No offense, sir, but how old are you?’

‘Old enough to do the job.’

‘I have a right to ask that question. It’s my ass on the line.’

‘I’m sixty-one.’

Ruskin made a face in Sarah’s direction. To Jane he said, ‘No offense, but is this the youngest guy you could get?’

Leo Guild waved him off and stalked back to the door. I wondered if Howie noticed how quickly and deftly Guild moved.

Sarah jumped up and said, ‘No, please wait.’ Then, turning on Ruskin: ‘You don’t know anything about him, Howard. At least, let’s talk to him.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Thank you for asking me, Jane. But I’m going to pass on this one.’

‘Hey, Gramps, you’re not passing, I’m passing!’

I wasn’t sure Guild heard that one because it came just as he was closing the door behind him. He’d moved damned fast and I didn’t blame him.

Jane moved just as fast and it was right to the table and Ruskin. Her face only inches from his, she said, ‘You’re a jerk, you know that? A stupid little-boy jerk. Leo Guild is an experienced security man in every respect. Last month the governor’s security men hired him to help guard the governor; and whenever anybody important comes to town they always check him out on Google and then hire him. And you treated him like dirt!’

I enjoyed seeing him intimidated. When a man shouts in your face you have the option of shoving him away or even punching him. But when a woman shouts in your face you have to sit there and take it. And it’s especially bad when you know you’ve got it coming.

The problem with Ruskin — no surprise — was that he didn’t seem to understand he had it coming. ‘Didn’t you see him, Sarah? Did you see how old he was?’

‘Did you see how tough he looked, Howard? Did you see how alert he looked? He would have protected us just fine. And you owe him an apology.’

‘Apology? What the hell are you—?’

‘I’m going to see if he’s still in the hall,’ Jane said.

‘Apology,’ Howie said as we waited for Jane to search for Guild. I picked up a piece of toast and jammed it into my mouth. I would have preferred jamming my fist into Howie’s face.

A few minutes later Jane reappeared. Behind her came Leo Guild. Tensed up the way he was, he looked ready for payback.

‘I want you to apologize to Leo,’ Jane snapped at Ruskin.

‘For what? I had the right to—’

Sarah’s words stung with real nastiness. ‘I’m sick of this clown show, Howard. Now apologize.’

‘Forget it,’ Guild said, his body angling once again toward the door.

‘Please, Mr Guild,’ Sarah said. ‘Please do it for me. I need protection, too. I apologize for both of us. Please stay, for my sake.’

The waif face, the wounded voice — what’s a man going to say?

‘Please, Leo,’ Jane said quietly.

Guild looked at Jane, then me, then back to Sarah. He did not look at Ruskin.

‘Please,’ Sarah said again.

‘All right.’ Now he stared right at Ruskin. ‘But if he starts in on me again, I walk. Right out the door. No warning.’ He addressed Jane now. ‘That’s my condition. He mouths off one more time and that’s it.’

‘Can you handle him?’ Jane asked Sarah.

‘He’s going to handle himself,’ Sarah said. ‘Aren’t you, Howard?’

‘I’m wounded.’ He pointed to his sling as if none of us had any idea of what it was. ‘Somebody shot me last night. And now I’m the bad guy?’

‘Yeah, you’re the bad guy. Guild here could crush you with one hand and you’re calling him out? Now you apologize to him and start treating him like the professional he is. You told me how afraid you were and how you wanted my help. Well, here’s your help and you’d damned well better appreciate it,’ I said.

The unthinkable happened. Howie Ruskin blushed. Blushed. Mr Jerk-Off himself knew enough to be embarrassed. And it wasn’t just because of me. It was because of what Sarah and Jane and Guild had said, too. His eyes scanned the table as if a supernatural message only he could see had been scribbled across its surface.

‘Shit,’ he said, still not looking at us. ‘I’m sorry. I guess I can be sort of an ass sometimes.’

You, Howard? An ass? Aw, c’mon old buddy, that’s impossible.

I clapped Guild on the arm and said, ‘I can’t say I envy you.’

He laughed. ‘Yeah? Why’s that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘I’ve dealt with worse. I was a cop, remember. Try getting a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound drunk guy who’s also strung out on meth into a car sometime.’

‘I think I’ll save that for when I’m reincarnated the next time. Something to look forward to.’

‘I need to get to the office.’ Jane drew her Burberry coat tight around her. ‘It’s really cold this morning. Brrr.’

‘I’m headed to Robert’s. Now’s a good time. Most of the press’ll be downtown. Ben’s got another news conference.’

‘Poor Ben. I don’t know how he gets through those things.’

‘I think he secretly likes them. He likes confrontation. Thrives on it.’

‘I do, too. But I’ve never had to face a mob like the one Ben’s dealing with.’

As she buttoned her coat, I said, ‘I’ll walk out with you.’

We said our goodbyes. Sarah thanked us just under thirty-two times, Leo Guild dragged a straight-backed chair over next to the door and sat down and Ruskin said to him, ‘I’m giving you permission right now to kill anybody who comes through that door.’

Guild took this in good humor. ‘I’ll be sure to have my lawyer mention that to the jury when I’m on trial for first-degree murder. That you gave me that permission thing.’

Sarah’s laughter was high and girly and delighted and delightful.

Ruskin sulked.

Twenty

A sparse crowd of reporters. And only one security man at the gate. I drove on up to the house, parked and got out just in time to see Robert coming from somewhere in the back of the house on a racing bicycle. His way of relaxing. He’d gotten me to join him a few times, but two hours of ball-jarring monotony was more than enough for me. Pedaling didn’t resolve my anger issues the way handball did. It’s hard to pretend you’re killing somebody with a Schwinn.

But his was no Schwinn. He’d told me once that it had cost eight thousand dollars and was aerodynamically designed. It was so lightweight he’d picked it up and turned it back and forth with one hand. Then he’d thrown it at me and when I grabbed it I saw what he was talking about. A few pounds was all. He went into how the materials were lighter than aluminum and then into this ratio and that ratio, but by then my eyes had glazed over.

He pulled up next to my Jeep just as I was getting out of it. He wore a blue track suit with white piping. He looked ten years older. A soul-sapping, suicide-inspiring ten years.

The temperature was twenty-seven according to the radio. I could see his tire tracks on the frosted ground. We spoke in smoke signals.

‘C’mon in and have some breakfast with me. We can watch Ben try to defend me. The poor bastard. Nobody should have that job.’

A light sheen of sweat covered his face as he walked along next to me, pushing his bike as he moved. I wondered if he looked at the looming house as I did now. In happier times for both of us there’d been long and lively parties here. My wife had loved Elise and had always said that the only parties she enjoyed were the ones here because she got to spend time with her. As much as I enjoyed the company, too, I liked even more the number of important guests Robert always invited. My firm was able to pick up five or six elite clients because of my contacts here. But now not even the sunshine could make the house seem bright and welcoming; it was as if the turmoil within had sucked some of the color from the exterior.

‘I’ve prepared my resignation address,’ he said when we were within ten feet of the front steps. ‘I’d like you to schedule time for me this afternoon with the local radio station of your choice. No TV. I’ll read it from my den.’

I went through all the points against resigning. He listened, his eyes never leaving me, but when I finished he said, ‘I know Ben sent you out here to talk me out of it. And I know that you both think you’re helping me by trying to stop me. But you’re not. I need to do this for the sake of my family. They didn’t do anything wrong but they’re prisoners now. I want to resign and I want to find a home in the mountains somewhere. Maybe Colorado or Wyoming. I’ll get involved in a few of the family businesses again. I’m rich. I can do that, and I need to do that. I owe it to Elise and Maddy for all that I’ve put them through. For my being so arrogant and stupid. You were right, Dev, about me. How could I not see that I was being set up? The Cabot woman knew how to make me feel young again. I wanted to be a teenager, I guess. And look where it led me.’

He leaned the eight-thousand-dollar bike against the stone front wall of the house and then faced me. ‘This has been hard enough on them, Dev. I’m especially worried about Elise. How she’ll get through this. I was so selfish. The least I can do is save her from any more turmoil.’

The house was quiet. While he went to take a shower I sat in the living room where someone had left the large plasma screen on. The face of the man who’d just told me to get some coffee in the kitchen as we’d entered the house was right there on the screen. A photo from ten years ago playing tennis in his whites. Full screen one moment and replaced the next by the smarmiest of TV shrinks, a Southern gentleman who always struck me as being a secret serial killer. A reptilian smile and predatory eyes played off against his marble-mouthed Southern charm — alleged Southern charm. I was glad the sound was off. I had no intention of turning it on.

It was fifteen minutes before Maddy walked in.

‘Hi, Dev. It’s good to see you.’

‘Good to see you.’

‘Mom finally got some sleep last night and she didn’t even take that killer pill the doctor gave her.’

Yellow sweater, short black skirt, black tights and black flats. A very pretty suburban grade-school teacher sort of look. All the little boys would have these almost painful crushes on her. They’d daydream that she was — in some bizzaro world, in some bizzaro way — their girlfriend.

She gave me a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen so we can sit in the nook and watch the birds.’ Then she paused and leaned her head back as if she were considering me the way a doctor would. ‘Are you all right, Dev?’

‘A lot of things on my mind, I guess.’

‘If you mean my father, absolutely. He can dig his heels in sometimes and it infuriates my mom. And me, too.’

‘He’s holding something back from both Ben and me. Not telling us something.’

Now it was my turn to lean back and study her the way a doctor would. The lovely cheeks were faintly red now and the glistening brown gaze averted mine for a moment.

But she was good at recovering. She slid her arm through mine and steered me toward the kitchen. ‘We can sit in the nook and look out the window. It’s my favorite spot in the world. And I know I sound like a seven-year-old when I say that, but I mean it. I love how the backyard sweeps up into the woods and all the birds and the other animals that I can see back there.’

Mrs Weiderman fussed over us as if we were the children she hadn’t seen for thirty years. There was an antique and heavily scrolled breakfast nook that overlooked the backyard. It was apparently Salute to Bunnies day because there were a lot of them, in all sizes, hopping around the browning grass in industrious innocence. Mrs Weiderman brought us mugs of steaming coffee and pastries I was pretty sure she’d made herself.

While I had the pleasure of disappearing my cherry tart and agreeing to a second cup of coffee, Mrs Weiderman went through a list of well-wishers who’d called to support Robert. She went all swoony when she mentioned the name of a Hollywood hunk. She likely would have cut some of her breaking news short or at least shorter but Maddy, ever the clever one, kept asking questions and making comments. Her blushing was still on my mind. Did she know what her father was hiding? She apparently didn’t want me to pursue her for the answer.

By then Robert strode into the kitchen, blue V-neck, white T-shirt, Levi’s and Reeboks with no socks. He slid in next to his daughter. He was favored with coffee and a cinnamon roll within forty-five seconds of joining us.

Partly because I needed her help and partly because I was irritated with both of them, I decided to make them unhappy. ‘I take it you know your father is going to resign.’

‘What’re you talking about, Dev? Resign? Who told you that?’

‘He did. The man you’re sitting next to.’

‘Damn you, Dev.’

Maybe we’d reached our end; maybe he would fire me now.

‘Well, you won’t listen to Ben and you won’t listen to me, so I thought maybe you’d listen to your daughter.’

‘You can’t resign, Dad. Do you know how that would look to everybody?’

‘That’s what we’ve been telling him, Maddy. But he won’t listen.’

‘You and Ben are so damned clever, aren’t you?’ Glowering. ‘Dragging my poor daughter into it.’

‘There you go again. “My poor daughter.” Dad, I’m a grown woman. And there’s no way you can resign now.’

‘What about your mother? How much more can she take, Maddy? She’s my wife and I owe her—’

But Maddy was shaking her head and interrupted him. ‘You were stupid about the Cabot woman. Very stupid and very selfish. Don’t be the same way all over again about this. You know damned well that Mother and I will support you. What we want is for you to be proved innocent and to finish the race. Even if you lose. Do it the right way, Dad. For all our sakes, including your own.’

I was glad I’d brought her into it. Her words had a visible effect on Robert. The anger at me faded from his eyes, the tension in his jaw line relaxed and the voice was softer now. He even smiled. ‘You always could talk me into anything.’

‘Not “anything.” You wouldn’t buy me a car until I was eighteen.’

‘Oh, that’s right. You had to ride a burro back and forth to school. I forgot.’

She joined in the fun. ‘Other kids had cars at sixteen. But then. .’ And she struck a dramatic pose. ‘That was when I learned all about suffering.’ That smile had doubtless broken several young hearts.

I eased out of the booth. ‘I need to get back to town. I appreciate your help, Maddy. And Robert, Ben’ll be calling you after talking to the press this morning.’

‘I still should be mad at you, Dev.’ He wasn’t making a joke. ‘Sometimes your cynicism really gets me down. I’ve talked to a few of your other clients. We all think that deep down you hate politicians.’

‘Sometimes I do. But I hate consultants — myself included — just as much, Robert. We’re all guilty.’

Genuine surprise in his eyes and voice. ‘You really believe that?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Oh, Dev, that’s so sad,’ Maddy said.

‘Not as much as you might think.’ I laughed. ‘Because I love playing the game.’

I was about halfway back to town again when my old friend Detective Farnsworth appeared behind me and honked me over to the side of the two-lane blacktop.

He came up to the Jeep with a smile on his face and I wondered why. Through the open window he said, ‘Have you seen the news in the past ten minutes?’

‘Haven’t had the chance.’

‘Detective Hammell turned up a witness who claims that the Cabot woman told him she was afraid Senator Logan was going to kill her.’

‘Oh? I notice you used the word “claims.” If you had something for sure you wouldn’t use a word like that.’

‘She rushed into her hotel one night and asked if she could get a different room. The clerk there helped her. She swore him to secrecy about where she was hiding. That was when she told him about being afraid of Logan.’

All I could do was counterpunch. ‘Did you put a tracking device on my Jeep?’

He managed to look curious. ‘Somebody do that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It wasn’t me. Or anybody in the department.’

‘You speak for the whole department, do you?’

‘In this case, yes. Two years ago we did it to a guy we suspected had murdered his wife. He figured it out and his lawyer got a judge to issue an injunction against us using one. The guy is suing us for two million dollars now. The mayor is pissed because we have to spend so much of the taxpayers’ money on the case. So he gave the order. No more tracking devices till this is resolved. Does that answer your question?’

‘Guess it’ll have to do.’

He put a hand on the edge of the roof and leaned forward. This early in the morning and he was already tired. But then so was I.

‘You managed to change the subject, Conrad. But now we’re going back to it. I was headed out to Logan’s with a search warrant to take a look around his house.’

‘He didn’t do it. He’s not the killing kind.’

‘Most people are the killing kind in the right circumstances.’

‘Maybe. But he still didn’t kill her.’

‘So just as I’m about to pull up to where the security guards are on his property I see you about half a block away headed back to town. I followed you to give you the courtesy of being there when I hand him the search warrant. I’m told his wife is very highly strung.’

Maybe he was right. Maybe I’d have a minor calming effect on the family by being there. This hotel witness was one more reason Detective Hammell had to put a formal charge of murder on Robert.

‘How about following me back?’ His tone had changed considerably.

‘Sure. But I’ve got a question.’

‘What?’ Guarded again now.

‘Has the press gotten the news about the hotel desk clerk?’

‘Probably by now. We’ve got a whole department full of leakers.’

I’d have to talk to Ben as soon as I could. The news just kept getting worse. The press would hang this around our necks like a noose. I felt sorry for Maddy and Elise. And I allowed myself the pleasure of getting pissed off at Robert again for setting all of this in motion. And then I had the most troubling thought of all — what if he was the killer?

The guards just waved us through. At the moment there were only around eight or nine reporters and camera people waiting around. That would change quickly when the first reporter got the news about what Tracy Cabot had told the hotel clerk.

As we walked up to the door, Farnsworth, dressed this morning in a gray tweed sport coat and black trousers and cordovan wing tips, said, ‘I’ll need you to help me keep everyone as calm as possible. That’s why I didn’t bring a crew with me. I’ll call for them after I’ve had a chance to talk to Logan. I know his wife has had some mental issues. There’s no point making things any worse than they need to be.’

‘She was playing the hotel clerk.’

‘Who was?’

‘Cabot. This whole thing was a setup to destroy Logan’s career. When she ratted him out to the press she’d drag the hotel clerk in on it and he’d testify that she’d told him how she feared for her life. So you’d have the affair, which never happened — he never slept with her — and for the cherry on top you’d have this bullshit about how she was afraid he’d kill her.’

‘And you can prove all this?’

‘Yeah, I can.’ I wasn’t happy about the irony of having Howie Ruskin save our ass. The strange bedfellows cliché had never been more apt. I took a few more hits of the chill, clean Midwestern air and then said, ‘You’ll be surprised.’

‘You trying to talk me out of serving this search warrant?’

‘Not at all. Right now at least three or four people in a city of your size are committing felonies of one kind or another. If you’d rather waste your time hounding an innocent man, be my guest.’

‘C’mon,’ he smiled, nodding to the front door, ‘let’s go waste some time.’ Halfway up the stairs, he said, ‘Every political op I’ve ever met is a bullshit artist. I thought maybe you were different. But you’re all alike. And you get paid so much money for it. That’s the part that amazes me.’

‘Hell, if you want more money move to Chicago. I know cops there who make a couple hundred grand a year and they don’t have to report any of it to the IRS.’

‘To protect and serve,’ he said and knocked on the door.

Mrs Weiderman answered, looked first at him and then at me. She didn’t need to be told that something serious was going on here.

Farnsworth had his ID ready. Her eyes went from it to me. Beseeching me. I don’t know what’s going on, Dev. But you need to protect us. These are the people I love. This is the only family I have left. They took me in when I lost everything. Please help us.

But there was nothing I could say or do.

‘We’d like to speak to the senator alone if we could, please.’

‘Dev,’ her eyes on me, ‘do you know what’s going on here?’ Accusation.

‘It’ll be all right, Mrs Weiderman.’

‘Do you know how much this family has been through in the past day and a half?’

‘He’s innocent, Mrs Weiderman. You and I know that. And Detective Farnsworth here will know it very soon now. I’ll have a surprise for him. The best thing we can do now is cooperate.’

She wore a dark blue dress with an old-fashioned white embroidered collar and a large ivory brooch in the center. She touched the brooch now as if it was the only source of salvation she knew of. ‘I still don’t know why you’d help him make everybody here even more miserable, Dev.’ Then to Farnsworth, ‘Follow me, please.’

The den was sunny and smelled comfortably of Robert’s pipe tobacco. Just as she was about to leave us, Mrs Weiderman said, ‘I should have more sympathy — I consider myself a Christian — but I know she was a whore and meant to destroy the senator. I don’t see why you’d waste any time trying to figure out who killed her, Detective Farnsworth. The world is better off just forgetting all about her.’

After the door was closed, Farnsworth said, ‘She might be worth looking into. Motive and opportunity. And means.’

‘Forget her, Farnsworth. Forget everybody in this house.’

‘Oh, yeah? You really believe that?’

I didn’t but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling him so. And I didn’t have to worry about that anyway because Robert came bursting through the door with his face and eyes burning. I’d seen him handle himself in a few situations where the hecklers got threatening. The way he came at Farnsworth I wondered if he might shove him or something.

‘You could have called first, Farnsworth. And you could have saved yourself a trip. I just heard that story about what Tracy Cabot said — or supposedly said — to that hotel clerk. She made it up. She was framing me for the press. I would’ve denied it the same way I’m denying it now and you wouldn’t have had to come all the way out here.’ He was seething but restraining himself. The way his facial muscles bunched I could see how much physical and psychic energy the restraint was costing him.

‘I’m not here for that, Senator,’ Farnsworth said and slipped the search warrant from the inner pocket of his sport jacket. He handed it over.

Robert accepted it, but before he opened it he looked at me. Confused, angry. As if I was responsible somehow. The same way Mrs Weiderman had looked at me.

‘What the hell’s this?’

‘A search warrant.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m afraid I am serious.’

As I reached for my cell phone — in the Old West it would have been a six-shooter — I said, ‘I’ll call Ben.’

‘Don’t bother. He’s on his way out here. He heard the desk clerk story and said he was on his way. What the hell are you looking for?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that right now; we’ll talk about that a little bit later.’

‘Are you hearing this, Dev? Are you hearing this bullshit?’

‘Let them look, Senator.’ In public he was always Senator. ‘They won’t find anything.’

‘Senator,’ Farnsworth said, ‘listen to Conrad here. And for what it’s worth, I hope we don’t find what we’re looking for. Nothing would make me happier than if this turns out to be a wild-goose chase.’

But Robert wasn’t having any of that. ‘Well, isn’t that nice? It’d make you happy if I turned out to be innocent?’ Then, ‘Where the hell is Ben when you need him?’

Farnsworth said, ‘I’ll wait in my car. I have some things I need to work on anyway. I’m sorry about the intrusion, Senator.’

‘Sure you are.’

Farnsworth nodded and left.

‘Just dandy,’ Robert said when the den door had been closed.

‘You need to stay calm.’

‘All the money I pay you, you can’t come up with something better than that? I’m sick of hearing it.’

‘I hate saying it and you hate hearing it, but it’s the truth. This is probably nothing more than a fishing expedition. Hammell is squeezing you, hoping for a confession.’

‘Well, he’s sure as hell not getting one.’

‘You’re innocent. Of course he’s not getting one.’

The word ‘innocent’ had its desired effect. Robert took a deep breath, shoved his hands in his pockets and said, ‘I am innocent. I get so worked up I actually forget that sometimes.’ Then, ‘You really think this is a fishing expedition?’

‘Yeah, I really do.’

‘You learning anything?’

‘I think I was about to when I heard about the hotel clerk and came out here. Ruskin and his girlfriend are still in my room and he’s eager to talk. He wants FBI protection. I have a Bureau friend in Chicago. As soon as Ruskin starts telling me things I’ll bring him in.’

He went around and sat behind his desk. ‘You want to hear something stupid?’

‘The stupider the better.’

That old Robert buddy-boy smile. It made both of us feel better. ‘You’re so full of shit sometimes, Conrad.’

‘You’re not the first person to tell me that, you know. I seem to recall a few thousand other people saying it before you did.’

‘I had this dream last night that I was re-elected. You think there’s any way that’s still possible?’

‘If we can wrap all this up fast enough.’

‘You know, Elise is into astrology and all that bullshit. Always has been. I don’t kid her about it. Or religion. They comfort her. But maybe she’s on to something. She always tells me that sometimes dreams show you the future.’

Right now I didn’t give a damn about him being foolish. The law was still after us — it was about to enter his house, in fact — but if it gave him a brief respite from what he’d been facing, fine.

‘You think maybe I should go to the front door and be cooperative?’

‘Good idea. That’ll surprise them in a good way.’

Before we could say anything else the door was thrown open by a tornado in the form of Ben, who didn’t enter the room — he invaded it.

‘I want to see this search warrant.’

‘Farnsworth is outside in his car,’ I said.

‘On his phone.’

‘Oh.’

Ben was in a white button-down shirt, dark gray suit pants and a black cashmere winter coat. ‘Farnsworth didn’t ask you any questions, did he, Senator?’

‘No, and if he had I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to answer them.’

‘Good, good.’

Mrs Weiderman appeared in the doorway bearing one of the family’s coffee mugs. She called Ben’s name. ‘Oh, thank you so much, Mrs Weiderman. I tell you, come to Chicago and I’ll set you up in business. I mean that. I don’t know what you do to coffee but yours tastes better than any other coffee I’ve ever had.’

For just a few movie frames there Mrs Weiderman was a seventeen-year-old receiving a compliment from a boy she liked. Shy but eye-shiningly happy.

She closed the door behind her. As the den mother she knew when all doors were to be left open and when they were to be closed.

‘What do we know about this hotel clerk?’ Ben said.

Robert said, ‘Tracy called me from the cabin. She told me she’d changed hotel rooms because she was having some trouble.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ I said.

‘She didn’t say. Maybe with Ruskin. I heard her talking to him on her cell phone one night and she was really pissed about something. Maybe about his girlfriend. They hated each other.’

‘This is when we need you to speak up, Senator,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll do it late in the afternoon so we get plenty of play as breaking news. Unless the police find something here — and I’m sure they won’t — all you’re guilty of at worst is cheating on your wife.’

‘Ben. I explained — to both of you — that we didn’t actually have sex.’

An exasperated glance at me from Ben. To Robert, ‘Do you want to get into your inability to have an erection that night? You probably would have had sex if you could have.’

‘You’re making an assumption that isn’t necessarily true,’ Robert said.

‘It doesn’t matter, does it, Dev? Tell him.’

‘Robert, later on we can go into all the details if you want to. Right now we have to stay on one message. You didn’t kill her. You didn’t threaten her, either. If she was afraid of somebody the night she asked the desk clerk for help, it wasn’t you. You didn’t see her that night and you swear to it.’

‘Who the hell is going to believe anything I say?’ Robert broke into one of his circular paces. The den was wide enough to give him some room. Sometimes he talked more to himself than to us. ‘You see these guys on TV denying everything and you know they’re guilty. They just make it worse for themselves. Then the comedians pick it up and you’re really finished.’

‘Then all we — all you do — is make your denial. I’m sure Dev can write something dignified that people will listen to seriously. You’re a serious man, Senator. Even your enemies say that. Nobody has ever questioned your intelligence or your integrity.’

If Ben kept pushing we’d soon enough be watching Robert ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of God. Robert’s last election had gotten so dirty on both sides that both candidates came away roughed up. It became known that Robert had made close to half a million on a couple of sweetheart deals that only US senators hear about and that — whispered but never exactly proved — he’d had an affair that his distressed wife had heard about. There’d also been the guy who gave a TV interview about the time Robert had been so drunk he hadn’t been able to drive his car out of an overnight parking lot where the guy worked. He’d been so drunk, in fact, that he fell out of the driver’s seat and spent the night on the asphalt next to his car sleeping it off. Fortunately he’d been twenty-four at the time. The follies of youth.

‘I need to get this set up,’ Ben said. ‘Can you write something while you’re here?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But I want input from both of you.’

‘If I don’t like it, I won’t say it. You two understand that, don’t you?’

‘Sure,’ Ben said.

‘Of course,’ I said.

A good time was had by all.

If you’re looking for help in writing for your candidate, just remember there is a political cliché for every situation.

In a political world of verbal excess and ten lies per minute, simple heartfelt sincerity gets lost. In fact, it looks suspicious. In Robert’s case just saying that he was innocent would make him look as if he was hiding something. He knows he’s guilty, that’s why he couldn’t even come up with a defense. So as I sat down to write I had to look up on my imaginary shelf of political clichés to find one that might work.

I ran a number of them through and settled on the old ‘political enemies’ routine. Yes, the one and only Dick Nixon (or Nick Dixon as Eisenhower once allegedly called him by mistake). Yes, Bill Clinton, feeling his own pain after being outed for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, used it too. But we had a specific person with a specific political hit woman background to point to. And point to it we would — though carefully; people tend to dislike you when you suggest that the still-warm corpse might be less than perfect when upright and ambulatory.

In the rush to find Robert guilty only one reporter (that I had been able to find online) had spent any serious time writing about Tracy Cabot’s background. It was known that she was a political operative sometimes associated with Ruskin, but nobody had fed Ruskin to the public. There was a connection we could explore. Briefly. I wanted to keep everything under ninety seconds max. Plenty of time for claiming innocence, citing concern for family, thanking voters for their outpouring of support (he must have received at least one email cheering him on) and then offering condolences to the Cabot family over the untimely death of their ‘troubled daughter who had been led into a dangerous lifestyle by people who had no concern for her well-being.’ She wouldn’t have been a treacherous whore if only she’d continued to hang with those two girls who became nuns.

Fire away, Empire News channel!

Three hours and two deliveries of sandwiches and coffee by Mrs Weiderman later, I had my draft and asked Mrs Weiderman if she would please round up Robert and Ben.

‘They’re playing blackjack in the kitchen. Ben has lost two hundred dollars.’

Blackjack was Robert’s favorite card game. When there were two players you changed dealers every ten hands. I’d lost maybe a couple of grand to him over the years.

Ben saw me when I was one footstep inside the kitchen and roared: ‘You got it? Is it finished? C’mon, get over here!’

‘I got to remember to bring the tranquilizer gun I used on that bear that time,’ I said, walking to the nook.

‘Very funny,’ he said.

I’d printed three copies so we could all peruse my brilliance at the same time.

As they started to read, Ben said, ‘I’m not crazy about the first sentence.’

‘I don’t like the second one much better,’ Robert said.

Nothing new here, not with these two. They couldn’t get their engines started without grinding you up a little at the start, then they generally settled down and got serious. I’ve never known what they expected to find in the first five hundred words. Opening remarks that surpassed the Gettysburg Address?

I sat next to Robert. Mrs Weiderman slipped me a cup of her elixir-like coffee and I sat there quietly waiting for them to read it through a couple of times. I watched a squirrel next to a tree digging up some goodies to store for impending winter. He or she was putting in an honest day’s work the way all of nature’s animals do except the human animal. While a good share of humanity works hard with its hands and minds in clean, productive and honest ways, there is another segment, growing larger every year, that sits behind desks and contrives ways to bamboozle and coerce all those whose work is clean and productive into submission.

Ben said, ‘I like it. A few tweaks but I like it.’

Robert said, ‘I like it, too. A few tweaks but nothing serious. I knew you’d come through for us, Dev. You always do.’

Ben said, ‘Now we head to Channel Four. We’re way behind schedule. We can still hit the network news.’ He was out of the booth and going somewhere. When he hit the door he said, ‘I left my coat in the den. C’mon, you two. Hurry up.’

‘Shit,’ Robert said, ‘I’d better run an electric razor over my face again.’

‘Bring it along. You can do it in the car.’

‘I’ll grab a shirt and tie and jacket and be ready in two minutes.’

‘I really appreciate the job you did, Dev. I really do.’

I followed him out of the kitchen. I went to the hallway and he went to the den.

I was just taking my jacket down from the coat tree when my cell phone rang.

The voice on the other end stabbed into my ear with three words: ‘They’re gone, Dev.’

Not panic, not hysteria. But stunned disbelief.

‘Who’s gone?’

‘Ruskin and Sarah,’ Jane said. ‘They drugged Guild’s coffee with something so he’d pass out and then they picked up all their things and ran out. Guild just called me now when he woke up. I want to get him to the ER to make sure he’s all right since we don’t know what they put in him.’

‘Does he remember what time it was when he passed out?’

‘The last thing he remembers it was an hour and ten minutes ago.’

‘What was going on then?’

‘He said that everything had gone fine until this Michael Hawkins showed up and started asking Ruskin some questions. Guild said that Hawkins asked him to leave so that he could interview Ruskin and Sarah but that he didn’t want to leave until he’d talked to you. He finally agreed to wait in the hall for twenty minutes.’

‘And then what?’

‘Hawkins came out exactly twenty minutes later and thanked him, and then rolled his eyes and made a joke about Ruskin and Sarah. Something about how he hoped his own kids never turned out like them. Then he apologized for leaning on Guild in the first place. The trouble came when he went back inside.’

Robert and Ben walked quickly toward me. Seeing me on my cell phone, Ben shot his right sleeve and pointed to his watch. He then stepped past me and opened the door and the two of them went through it. I followed them, still on the phone.

Jane continued her story. ‘When he got inside he needed to visit the bathroom. When he came out he said Ruskin and Sarah had a cup of coffee ready for him. He thanked them. As he drank it he started noticing how agitated both of them looked. He said Ruskin was up and wearing shoes. His Glock was jammed down the front of his pants. He asked them if something was wrong. Sarah blurted out that they didn’t want to talk to any federal agent you hadn’t approved of in advance. They didn’t trust anybody.’

By now we were outside. Robert was getting into Ben’s bronze rental Buick. Ben shouted to me, ‘See you at Channel Four!’

I waved back.

‘Guild said he tried to calm them down but that they acted “crazy.” His word. He said whatever they’d put in his coffee hit him around this time. He was kind of woozy for a few minutes and then he passed out entirely. That was when they escaped. He’s really embarrassed, Dev. He plans to apologize as soon as he sees you. He says he should’ve been suspicious when she had a cup of coffee ready to hand him right away since he sensed that they were acting strange. He couldn’t see why they were so agitated when it had been clear that Hawkins had just been interviewing them the way any kind of government investigator would have. He said their paranoia should have alerted him.’

‘Tell him he doesn’t have anything to apologize for. We’re dealing with two very unstable people here. Now I need to find them all over again before they do something really stupid. The idea of Ruskin toting that Glock around bothers me more than anything.’

‘Isn’t his arm broken? How could he shoot?’

‘Unfortunately his “shooting arm,” as he calls it, is fine. But right now I need to go. Robert’s going to make a statement on TV.’

‘I’ll be watching. Be sure to call me when you get a chance.’

‘I will. It helps me just to hear your voice.’

‘You say the nicest things.’

‘Come to think of it, I do, don’t I?’

Twenty-One

Channel 4 was housed in a refurbished two-story red brick building on the edge of a recently built collection of business buildings. I knew they were recent because they all had the same awkward science fiction look architects seem to prefer these days. A lot of glass and a lot of metal creating sharp edges and a zoo-like peek into the daily lives of their bustling workers. Now in an early dusk of mauve and salmon, in the stingy light of a half-moon, with the lower floors splashed with the headlights of cars rushing to get out of the parking lot and back to places where the overlords couldn’t get to them — not yet, anyway — the sense of frantic escape was unmistakable. Who could blame them?

As we approached the station, I could see a group of maybe thirty reporters and camera people packed in front of the Channel 4 doors. Ben’s arm shot out from the driver’s side of the Buick. He waved me on. We’d keep going right past them. I assumed — and was proven correct — that we’d go around the block and try the back door.

When we reached the rear lot a half-dozen reporters and four camera people bolted toward our cars. I needed to do what I could to make it safe for Robert and Ben.

I whipped my car into a spot on the back edge of the small lot and then waited for them to lurch toward me.

‘The senator is on his way into the station to make a statement. Right now that’s all I’m at liberty to say.’

Only two pairs of them tore after Robert and Ben. The rest of them stayed with me.

‘Is he going to resign?’

‘Is he going to admit that he killed her?’

‘Is he going to resign?’

‘Is he going to admit he killed her?’

The shouted mantra kept going as I rushed to the door. The otherwise dark lot was now being attacked by the alien eyes of the cameras and the unsettling bellers in the relative quiet. I guess they had to get something on tape so my retreating back was as good as anything. I could write the copy for Empire News: ‘Senator Logan’s political consultant refused to talk to the press but instead raced to the door, giving the impression — the same impression the senator has been giving since Tracy Cabot’s murder was first announced — that he’s hiding something.’

A man inside the building had been watching for me and opened the door so I could run inside with the pack of reporters only a few feet behind me. Safely inside, I would have turned and given them the finger except, as you might expect, I was far too mature to do something that juvenile. And I didn’t want to give the supermarket tabloids a juicy side story. ‘Killer Senator’s Consultant Flips Off Hard-Working Reporters Convincing Some That Murdering Senator May Have More Victims Buried Elsewhere! Aliens Involved?’

The man said, ‘You ever get sick of them?’

‘Never. They’re like family to me.’

He was slow to realize that I was joking but when he got it a grin broke his moon face in half. ‘If they’re anything like the ones here they’re pretty hard to take. But you didn’t hear me say that, of course.’ He was probably in his fifties, gone to flesh and weary humor. He wore one of those fish pins marking him as a born-again Christian. Despite that he seemed likable. ‘C’mon. I’ll take you to the senator.’

The makeup room was larger than I expected. There were three small tables with mirrors and bottles of makeup. The room was pungent with the sharp scent of hairspray. A fortyish woman so thin and gaunt I wondered if she’d been sick was daubing Robert up then standing back to appraise her work. Ben had fitted himself into a far corner and was talking low into his cell phone.

‘Are they putting your golden words on the Teleprompter?’ Robert said.

‘Yes, they are. I just hope there’s time for your country-western song, too,’ I said.

The makeup lady’s head swung around to me. ‘He’s going to sing?’

‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ Robert said. ‘He thinks he’ll keep my spirits up by making these stupid jokes.’

She touched a bony hand to her chest. The fragility of the motion and the hand made me feel sorry for her. But the smile was full on and she looked appreciative that I’d made her happy. ‘Gosh, I was thinking how important this is for you, Senator. I voted for you, by the way, and I don’t believe any of this stuff. But when he said you were going to sing—’ She laughed. To me, she said, ‘I have an older brother like you. I was supposed to be the smart one but he’d tell me these stories and I’d always believe them. It was just the way he told them. Real low-key, the way you did.’ She shook her head then picked up a long black comb from the table and went to work on Robert’s hair. In the round mirror encircled in small light bulbs he’d begun to look TV ready.

When she finished, she stood back for a final time and said, ‘You look very nice, Senator. Very nice. And I’ve already said a few prayers for you.’

‘I really appreciate that, Angela.’

‘Now I need to get out of here so you can change clothes.’

When we were alone, Robert said, ‘I should’ve taken some Pepto. My stomach and my bowels are in bad shape.’

‘I’ll spare you the stupid jokes.’ Though I was laughing.

‘I actually appreciate them. They remind me of my life before I became a vicious killer.’ He got up and started changing into his blue button-down shirt, red-and-blue rep tie and blue tweed sport coat. He left his jeans on. ‘You know, I really don’t give a shit if I lose. All I care about is getting out of this mess. And Elise would be delighted if we went to our house in the Hamptons and said goodbye to all this. Does that surprise you?’

‘That giving up your seat looks good to you now? Of course not, Robert. I’d be thinking the same thing you are. You’ve been working the press for sixteen years and now they’re working you. But I believe that everything you’re feeling is temporary. We’ll find the killer and then in a day or two you’ll wake up and think how good it would be to be back in Washington. You like the game the same as I do. And buried somewhere inside the game are one or two actual ideals you’ve held on to while peddling your ass to survive. You care about average people, Robert. You’ve got a good understanding of how they live and what they need and how to appeal to the good parts of their nature. There aren’t many on either side who can say that.’

‘Hell.’ Sad smile. ‘That was so eloquent I’d vote for myself.’

Ben retreated from the wall. ‘Sorry. Chicago business. I’ll have to fly back there tomorrow morning to be in court in the afternoon.’ He raised blocky fists. Then dropped to a boxer’s crouch and swung hard and fast at an invisible opponent. ‘You ready, Senator? We’re going to kick some ass, right?’

‘I’ll try.’ He nodded to me. ‘Dev says it’s all right if I say “fuck” twice.’

Ben picked up the line easily. ‘That’s right, two fucks but only one cocksucker.’

‘Got it,’ Robert said. But the fun in his voice was waning, waning just as the knock came. ‘Senator, we need to get going. Are you about ready?’

‘We’re ready now,’ I said as I made my way to the door.

The same guy who didn’t think much of the Channel 4 Action News Team (I was waiting for the InAction News Team to show up somewhere) waited for us to file out and then we followed him down a corridor to a door marked Studio B.

In small cities, Studio B’s, or whatever they’re called, always look the same. You have a desk with a picture of something on the wall behind the person in the chair — here we had a nature shot — and cheap bookcases filled with hardcover books brought from the homes of various Channel 4 employees.

When the young woman came into the studio, talking to somebody on her headset, I signaled that I wanted to talk to her. Her tight red blouse and tight jeans loved her overweight body a bit too much, but the face was intelligent and pleasant. When she finished talking on her headset she came over to me. ‘I’m Mary O’Brien.’

‘Dev Conrad. I work with the senator.’

As we shook hands, I said, ‘Is there any chance we could lose that photo on the wall?’

‘Sure. What did you have in mind?’

‘Solid background. And shoot everything in medium close except when we open. Then we’re out a little wider.’

‘I was thinking along the same lines. I guess we must both be geniuses.’

‘Speak for yourself. That’s one of the few names I’ve never been called. And for good reason.’

It helps everybody to get along with the local crew. You generally get a better product. I’ve watched too many Chicago hotshots snap out orders to local people as if they were idiots. Once in a while they are idiots. But then so are some of the Chicago hotshots. And more times than they seem to realize.

There wasn’t much to do except set Robert in the chair, spend a few minutes lighting him and then running through the words on the Teleprompter. Ben and I reassured him that he’d do fine and that this was the right thing to do.

The middle-aged gentleman operating the camera was either having an upset stomach episode or he didn’t much like our senator. I caught him rolling his eyes when Robert got to the part about his enemies. And he caught me catching him. The apologetic smile confirmed my read of his political opinion.

The same gentleman gave the countdown. ‘Senator — in five, four, three, two, one — in!’

I listened as carefully as I could. Nuance could kill you just as much as an outright mistake. Even though he insisted on his innocence and apologized to his constituents for putting them through this ordeal, and even though he offered his condolences to the family and loved ones of Tracy Cabot, he could undercut himself with an expression that could be misread or a passage he seemed to hurry through. Every breath he took would be parsed.

Ninety seconds isn’t much in real life but in TV life it can be an agonizing year or two. I stood next to Ben as Robert started in. There was a monitor close by. I kept looking from Robert in the studio to Robert on the tube. He’d managed to relax some and that helped establish an intimacy with the public. He wasn’t this treacherous beast. He was a guy — admittedly wealthy, admittedly a Washington insider and player — who wasn’t all that different from most folks after all. And who had been falsely accused. He was especially good with that part of our response.

At the one-minute mark I realized I was sweating. Cold sweat; flop sweat. If he could just get through the next thirty seconds without screwing up...

And he did.

‘And we’re out!’ the cameraman said.

Ben and I rushed to the desk and started telling him how well he’d done. We didn’t have to hype it; he’d done damned well. I resented the fact that the cameraman was still in the studio wrapping things up. I wanted only true believers around for this little celebration.

‘I wish I felt as good as you two,’ Robert said. But he had allowed himself a tentative smile.

‘That’s the first step back, Senator, and a good one. You’ve faced your public. That’s got to help.’

I put my finger to my lips. Robert and Ben glanced at me then understood when I nodded in the direction of the cameraman. He’d no doubt made an agreement with somebody to report on everything he’d seen and heard when we were here.

He pretended to be intensely interested in pulling a piece of cable a few feet along a baseboard.

‘You about done over there?’ I said. I didn’t bother to sound friendly.

‘I work here, remember?’

‘Great. But we’d like a little privacy, if you don’t mind.’ I realized I likely sounded like one of those Chicago hotshots who pushed around local TV people. At the moment I didn’t give a shit.

He dropped the snaky black cable to the floor and rolled his eyes again. We weren’t in danger of becoming buddies. Then he sort of flounced — yes, flounced — toward the door and let himself out.

‘Friend of yours?’ Ben smiled.

I returned the smile and then said, ‘OK, now we make a run for our cars. I’ll do what I can but they’ll be moving in a pack and that’ll make it even tougher.’

‘This is like a commando raid on our own cars,’ Robert said. ‘As long as I’ve been in public office I’ve never seen anything like this.’ Then he understood what he was really saying. ‘Of course, nobody ever thought I’d killed anybody before, either.’

Ben had brought all of Robert’s other clothes along so we were ready to go, out of the studio, down the short hall, down the long hall and to the back door. I was the one who peeked out. Dark, wintry air and a blast of camera light that hid the mob behind in shadow. They could have been anything, vampires or werewolves or creatures up from the bowels of the earth as in all those wonderful old late-night horror movies I cherished enough to never watch again. The most I could see of any of them was the way some of the camera light illuminated their eyes, which only enhanced the feeling of inhuman beings.

I looked back at them. ‘You ready?’

‘As we’ll ever be,’ Ben said.

I pushed the door open only wide enough for me to step through. If their words had been bullets I would have been in ragged pieces on the ground. They pushed, lurched, lunged and surrounded me. I raised both arms as if I was about to bestow a papal blessing. ‘My name is Dev Conrad. I’m here to see if all you sensitive, caring people will do Senator Logan the kindness of letting him get to his car and go back to his home. I can assure you that everything you want to hear him say you’ll hear in the ninety-second statement he made on tape just now inside Channel Four.’

‘Did he admit he killed her?’

‘Why would he do that? He had nothing to do with her death.’

‘Does he have any idea of who did kill her then?’

‘No.’

‘If he’s innocent why does he need a high-powered attorney like Ben Zuckerman?’

‘Is that supposed to be a serious question?’

‘Yes.’

‘He brought in Mr Zuckerman because before the police forensics team had even left the cabin where Ms Cabot’s body was found parts of the media — especially the TV media — had already found him guilty.’

‘Is there any truth to the rumors that he may resign?’

‘No.’

‘How is his family dealing with all this?’

‘How would any family deal with it?’

I didn’t have to look behind me to know that Ben had appeared. The group of thirty-plus with all their equipment started to lean in his direction as he ran toward his Buick. He was playing football again. Doing some broken field running and not looking back. But most of them stayed in place.

‘Was he having an affair with the Cabot woman?’

‘I don’t mean to be rude but these are the same questions you’ve been asking Mr Zuckerman. He was not having an affair with the Cabot woman.’

I watched Ben swing the Buick around behind the reporters and honk his horn. Robert came rushing out. They were on him like leeches. He did a football run, too. Far to their right and then straight on to the car. Ben had tracked him so that before they could stop him he was diving into the open door and Ben was screeching away before that door was closed.

In most circumstances, all this would have been funny. Everybody from the lowliest and most incompetent of TV writers to the great Federico Fellini had parodied the press trying to overwhelm and lynch its prey. But tonight it held no charm; no charm at all.

The ones who’d strayed returned to the coven so they could join in yelling at me. I answered a few more questions and then said, ‘I’m afraid that’s it for tonight, friends. Now you know as much as I do about the whole story.’

They didn’t believe me and kept shouting at me. I didn’t try an end run. I just started walking toward them and enough of them parted to let me continue my journey until I was clear of them. They stayed behind, a thundering herd, but I guess that by now they were as tired of it as I was. Bars and restaurants sounded much warmer and fuzzier than trying to browbeat a minor player into giving you something you knew he wasn’t going to give you anyway.

I got in my Jeep and gave it the gas before clipping on the headlights, turning on the heat and strapping on my seat belt. I just wanted to get away from here. I did all these things in the next few blocks. I headed by pure instinct toward the same kind of refuge the press sought. My hotel and its restaurant.

There was no escaping the reporters, of course. They were all over the lobby. For the most part these were the A-list boys and girls. Lesser lights would be on less generous expense accounts so would be staying where you had to do a lot of things for yourself, a constant reminder that you weren’t successful enough to deserve A-list treatment.

I thought about going up to my room first but was led by a cosmic force into the restaurant where I asked for a table for two. It was warm in here and the candlelight had a nurturing effect on me, and when I speed-dialed and got Jane a great good peace settled on me as soon as she said she’d join me within ten minutes. There’s a kind of loneliness that only comes with being on the road. Not so much in your twenties and thirties, maybe, but for me my forties were starting to make the road seem bleak and endless.

Jane seated herself with a smile and scents of woman, rain and, more faintly, perfume. The middle-aged waiter’s blue eyes very much approved of her looks.

I’d waited until she was here to order. We decided on Scotch and waters and mushrooms stuffed with lobster meat as appetizers.

‘Channel Four led with it,’ she said. ‘The senator really did well. I’m prejudiced on his behalf so I did my best to be objective. He looked good, he sounded sincere and what he said made sense.’

‘He told the truth. The one thing I expect the right to jump on is the reference to his “enemies.” People always have a problem with that. But in this case I’m pretty sure it’s true. There’s a group called The Alliance for Liberty. That’s the only point of contact we have. Tracy Cabot’s old man was involved with them. But they may not be part of this at all so that’s why we can’t talk about them publicly. There are secret groups working twenty-four/seven and they get bolder all the time. Bring down enough senators on our side and they can take over the government.’

‘That sounds like a science fiction movie.’

‘Something like it happened before.’

‘Really?’

‘You can Google it — ‘The White House Putsch.’ I read about it a few times before but I needed to read up on it again. A retired Marine Corps major general named Smedley Butler claimed that a secret group of millionaires and billionaires were plotting to take over a veterans’ organization — those organizations were powerful back in the thirties — to use as the leading edge of a coup d’état that would overthrow FDR and seize control of the federal government.’

‘Was that really true?’

‘Well, historians are still arguing about it. The consensus seems to be that the plot was true and that a number of very, very rich men were involved. The debate seems to be over how close they came to actually acting on the plot. It’s the same today. I don’t know if anybody could pull it off but maybe they’d try it. There are a lot of true believers with a lot of money. There’s one big problem.’

‘What?’

‘Now I sound like every conspiracy nut I’ve ever made fun of.’

The waiter appeared again and Jane ordered a large Caesar salad. I ordered the salmon.

After the waiter left, Jane said, ‘The idea of a coup is really scary. Most people wouldn’t think it was possible.’

‘There’s this movie I’ve seen a number of times where this actor named Kevin McCarthy is running down a road pounding on car windows and warning everyone that they’re coming.’

‘I love that movie. The first time I saw it I was eight. I was convinced that half the people I knew were pod people. I just wish it had a different title. You tell most people Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a great movie and they think you’re an idiot.’

‘It’s their loss. They’re the idiots. Anyway, I’m not even sure that’s what Ruskin is talking about. And he’s such a bullshit artist, who knows what he’s going to tell me when we finally catch up with him. The only thing I know is that he’s convinced whoever hired him has sent somebody to kill him.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘I believe he believes that. Which doesn’t mean it’s actually true.’

‘And you have no idea where he’s hiding?’

‘None. But he also seems to believe that I’m the only one he can trust. He thinks a number of people on his side are involved. He can’t be sure which ones. That would go along with the conspiracy, of course. So I expect to hear from him.’

She sat back; a melancholy smile. ‘I really am a small-town girl. I thought it was a big deal to have a sitting senator from here and go to parties at his house occasionally where other sitting senators and well-connected political people were hanging out. But all this intrigue — I have to slow it down every couple of hours just to take it all in. And now Ruskin insisting somebody’s trying to kill him.’

‘Robert was set up. Nothing illegal was done on either side so there’s no case against it. A senator made a fool of himself over a pretty woman. In an election cycle that can make a difference between winning and losing. What they’d planned was simple. They’d leak some incriminating photos of the Cabot woman and Robert together — they’d have the hotel clerk testify that she was afraid of him; they’d have testimony that Robert was there in the parking lot clearly angry with her — and that would be that. Robert would be finished. The Cabot woman’s murder changed everything.’

The food was served and the aromas reminded me of how hungry I was.

The salmon and Caesar salad were both tasty and the second Scotch and water so good I knew I needed to cut myself off. Be pretty easy to sit here and get hammered, especially with Jane framed in the candlelight.

‘It’s just so nice to sit and relax for a while,’ Jane said. Then laughed. ‘I keep sounding older every year. More like my mom. She worked hard all her life — she raised my brother and me after my father decided he wanted to stay in the Navy and have a girl in every port — in a place that was a forerunner of Walmart. By the time I was a sophomore in high school I was an activist because I saw how big business treated people like my mother. Long hours, no health insurance, the threat of firing if the word got out that you even mentioned anything about unionizing. So several times a week after ten-to-twelve-hour days she’d sit at our little dinner table and let one of her shoes drop off so she could rub her foot and say, “It’s just so nice to sit here and relax for a while.” I’d been doing ninety percent of the housework and washing and ironing all the clothes since seventh grade to help her out. And my younger brother always had jobs. Thank God I got scholarships for college.’ She used her fork to point to her salad. ‘Sometimes when I eat at a good restaurant I feel guilty because my mom could never afford it. She died of heart disease. I wish there was time travel so I could take her to Chicago and buy her a nice dress and take her to a fancy restaurant and get her a good car. The old Chevy she drove was almost twenty years old.’ For a few moments she was a little girl again doting on the woman who bore her and loved her and raised her. And obviously raised her well. ‘She was a wonderful woman.’

‘I’m getting the same feeling about you.’

Too much. I’d embarrassed her; I couldn’t tell if she was blushing but her expression portrayed her discomfort. ‘I’m selfish and self-centered and have a bad temper. My mom was none of those things, Dev.’ I’d also managed to irritate her. She’d mythologized her mother into a perfect creature. Now I knew better than to try and argue with her.

My cell phone toned. It was Sarah, but at a speed and decibel that defied comprehension. All I was able to get on the first pass were the words ‘scared’ and ‘screaming.’

‘Sarah, Sarah. You have to slow down. I can’t understand you.’

Jane’s eyes were fixed on mine. She’d picked up on the alarm in my voice.

Sarah was sobbing now. ‘He ran out the door. I can’t believe he had the strength to do it.’

‘I assume you mean Howie?’

‘Yes! And Hawkins went after him.’

‘Hawkins? How did he know where you were?’

‘That’s just it. Howard said you told him. He said you sold us out so Hawkins could kill him.’ Everything she said was between sobs.

‘I couldn’t have told him. I don’t know where you are.’

‘The Sleep Tight. A motel out by the airport. If you didn’t tell him, I don’t know who did.’

But I knew. It wasn’t a person, it was a thing. A tracking device. Hawkins had slapped it on their rental just as he’d slapped one on mine. Where it had been the other night when he shot at but failed to kill Ruskin. That good ole buddy of mine, the finest bellman money could buy, Earl Leonard, had lied to me, of course. And Hawkins had paid him to lie, to provide him with an alibi so I wouldn’t think an investigator for a US Attorney, a patriotic cuss and a man among men, could possibly lie under any circumstances.

‘Sarah, Sarah, listen to me. Howard is right. Hawkins may be trying to kill him. I’m on my way. You just sit tight and wait for me.’

Now she was crying so hard she couldn’t even form words. I thumbed the phone off.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I can explain on the way, if you want to ride along.’

That smile of hers could get her into Top Secret rooms without a pass. ‘Of course I want to ride along.’

I waved the waiter over. ‘I’ll leave you a fifty-dollar tip if you can get us out of here in under three minutes.’

He needed fifteen seconds to compute what I’d said then he jerked the card so hard he almost took my hand off with it. And then he was running, yes, running, toward the cash register area.

We were a little more leisurely in our sojourn to the front of the restaurant. We merely jogged there.

The well-dressed middle-aged woman who would normally have processed our card had been pushed aside by the waiter. I knew this from the way her eyes and mouth were set in a Ted-Bundy-spots-his-prey look. Later she would see to it that the manager would take care of the matter for her. Castration with a butter knife would be only the beginning.

I had no idea if he’d made the three minutes or not, but I added fifty dollars to the bill and we rushed out of there.

I spotted our bellman Earl over by the elevators, but like the restaurant manager I’d have to wait until later for my vengeance. Jane and I raced to the hall that would take us to the side door and then the parking lot.

I shot out of the parking lot and into the dark, cold night. Suddenly Howie’s conspiracy theory sounded a lot more believable.

Twenty-Two

The red and blue emergency lights bouncing off low-hanging rain clouds told a story I didn’t want to hear. And we were still three blocks away from the motel.

The parking lot on the west side of the motel was set up for making a movie. All the props and people in place. You had your three police vehicles, your four uniformed coppers, your ambulance with the back door open and you had your crowd of motel guests all bundled up against the low thirties temp. It wasn’t even quite eight o’clock but a few of the women had nightgowns showing under the hems of their winter coats. And screeching into place seconds before I turned into the lot a van with CHANNEL 6 NEWS NOW! splashed across the side in red and yellow action colors.

No problem finding a parking space. The thing was you had to park way back because that was where the police officer, a large man with a flashlight you could club a black bear to death with, directed us. Something terrible had happened in this lot not very long ago.

The official perimeter was at least fifty yards from the motel itself and another squad car pulled in to reinforce the way these officers had decided to mark off the crime scene. Jane shivered next to me. It felt twenty instead of thirty.

We walked up to a slender African-American woman in a dark blue police uniform who was reminding people about the perimeter.

‘Excuse me, Officer.’

She did not seem unduly charmed by my presence. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Can you fill me in a little on what happened?’

‘Fill you in? Are you with the press?’

‘No.’

‘Then why would I fill you in?’

Since I couldn’t give her a quick answer — I certainly didn’t want to bring up Robert’s name — she walked away.

Jane said, ‘I was going to talk to her but she left so quickly.’

‘You know her?’

‘Well, not know her know her, but I met her once or twice at police charity functions. Just wait here. It’s worth a try.’

She left as fast as the cop had.

I eased closer to the crowd itself. A number of them were walking in place and rubbing their hands together or covering their ears with their hands. A prairie wind was streaking across the lot rattling signage and some of those tiny new two-seater cars.

More TV station vans arrived and reporters and camera people were deployed to the front lines where they positioned themselves like snipers.

The crowd members offered conflicting stories. There’d been a shooting or a knifing or a bludgeoning. It had been a lovers’ argument or a robbery or a drug deal. There was one dead, there were two dead, there were three dead. Real, real helpful. And by this time my entire face felt as if it had been Botoxed by the cold night winds.

The crowd swelled and so did my sinuses.

And that was when I saw a familiar figure stepping out of the backseat of one of the unmarked police cars. And it was none other than my old friend Detective Farnsworth. I broke into a run.

And as I was running toward him, Sarah slid out of the backseat and joined him. I could hear her sobbing from here. Head down, her shoulders shaking so hard Farnsworth slid his arm around her protectively as he moved her past the demarcation line and toward the open motel room where light lasered across the lot.

No point in yelling. Farnsworth wasn’t about to let me join them and it would just upset Sarah all the more anyway.

Several steps and I was behind the crowd and headed back toward my previous position. The number of press vehicles had doubled now. Network and cable news directors were dispatching reporters the way Hannibal had dispatched troops.

I got a glimpse of Jane and the cop. They were deep in conversation.

By now I was stamping my feet, rubbing my hands together, covering my ears. As soon as Jane got back and told me what she’d found out I planned to do the unthinkable and walk back to my Jeep and get my hat, gloves and scarf, something in my haste I’d forgotten to do.

‘Oh, God, Dev, what a terrible night.’

‘What’d you find out?’

Her shudder might have been in response to the winds but I doubted it. More likely it had to do with what she was about to relate to me. ‘Howie Ruskin was shot to death by Hawkins. His story is that he’d had Ruskin under surveillance for several hours. When Ruskin came out of his room to go somewhere, Hawkins told him to stop. Ruskin tried to run and when Hawkins came after him Ruskin pulled his gun, but before he could fire, Hawkins shot him twice. Head and chest.’ She paused. Then, ‘And Sarah came out screaming and knelt beside Ruskin, who was dead. She picked up his gun and aimed it at Hawkins but he convinced her to put it down. And now you’re going to ask me if there were any witnesses to Hawkins and Ruskin and from what Connie knows, no. There were witnesses to Sarah and Hawkins, though. God, I feel so bad for poor Sarah.’

‘So Hawkins could be lying about Ruskin pulling a gun?’

Her voice was a whisper. I was sure her mind was still on Sarah. ‘Could be. That’s what Sarah says anyway. It’s just hard to believe that somebody from the US Attorney’s office could be—’

‘Easy way to kill off the one person who could link Howie to the bad guys.’

She still sounded disturbed about Hawkins. ‘What about Sarah?’

‘No. Ruskin never shared the secret stuff with her, she told me. He was afraid a beautiful woman would carry him off to Paradise, leaving Sarah behind with all this “info” as he called it that she could kill him with, so he kept it to himself.’

Then I saw my chance with Hawkins. From the backseat of the car he’d been in stepped a heavyset detective in a gray topcoat. The man wore a fedora and gaped around as if he was worried about an assassin. Then he stepped back from the car and from the open back door Hawkins emerged.

The two men shook hands and said some words, their breath pluming, the detective jamming a cigarette into his mouth, Hawkins digging his cell phone out and checking it as soon as the detective started walking away from him.

‘I need to catch Hawkins. Why don’t you wait in the Jeep and run the heater.’ I pitched her the keys and took off.

As I moved I realized I’d probably have to get past the police blockade; otherwise Hawkins could just walk away safe inside the zone. But he surprised me. He talked to Officer Connie briefly and then headed toward his rental. The one he’d likely used when he’d first tried to kill Ruskin.

He was unlocking the door to his rental when I caught up with him. He’d looked up when I was about twenty feet away from him. He finished with the door but didn’t open it. ‘I was going to call you before I left the parking lot.’

‘Tell me what it feels like to kill a guy, you mean?’

‘You forget. I checked you out; that’s an experience you’ve had yourself.’

‘You had to kill him.’

He was pretty good at it, not great. I’d seen much better, but he wasn’t bad. Tall guy like him with that gaunt face expressing the unique sorrow of a man who’d just taken the life of another man. Hands shoved deep in the pockets of his tweed topcoat. Green eyes tired, mouth broken by a frown, timbre of voice pitched low. Not horse shit, no; a couple of levels up from horse shit, his acting skills. A deep sigh. ‘Of course I had to kill him and I resent the implication that I didn’t. He pulled a gun on me; I didn’t have any choice.’

‘Poor baby.’

His acting got a lot better when he covered the distance between us in four steps, got in my face and said, ‘You don’t want to push me tonight, Conrad. Not in any way. I can make your life real miserable if I want to.’

‘I believe it, Hawkins. You made Ruskin’s life pretty miserable, I’d say.’

‘Keep that in mind.’ Then, abruptly, he was walking back to his car.

‘The people you really work for going to give you a bonus, are they?’

He stopped moving. Stood still for maybe thirty, forty seconds. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sure you do.’ I was winging it now. ‘The first plan was you locate Ruskin so you could see how it was going with Tracy Cabot and Senator Logan. Ruskin must have made your real bosses nervous about something in the setup. But then Cabot got herself murdered and your people got scared and panicked. A lot of law enforcement people were going to snoop around and it was problematic how long Ruskin could stand up to the pressure before he cut a deal and started talking. So your job changed. You not only had to locate him; you also had to take him out. I doubt this was the first time you’d killed somebody for them. You almost nailed him in that little park near the college; if he hadn’t tripped you would’ve had him. When you came up to his room this morning he must have suspected what you were really up to. I was too stupid to catch on. I bought your act.’

There were just the two of us. All the clamor of the cops and the emergency team and the crowd had faded, leaving just me and Hawkins. He’d listened to my accusations without moving but now he was facing me again. And smiling.

‘I hope you invite me to be in the room when you pitch your conspiracy theory to somebody. I want to watch their faces as your story gets wilder and wilder.’

‘It’s happened before. A group of billionaires plotted a coup to seize control of our government and get rid of FDR.’

‘Good. A history lesson. That’ll make your presentation even better. And I happen to know about that attempted coup, by the way. I’m a history buff. They weren’t very good at it. They needed to involve key generals and bungled it. But if you make a study of what they did then you can learn from their mistakes and not make those mistakes again. And today you have more generals who might be interested. Generals who don’t like what’s happened to this country.’ Something in my expression must have alarmed him; he was saying too much. ‘But that’s all theoretical. And crazy.’

He opened the car door now. ‘I’m due at the police station.’ The smile was back. ‘Maybe you can start with them — with Hammell, maybe. I’m told he likes a good story. And you’ve got a good one. It’d make a helluva good movie, in fact.’

He started his car, gave me a kind of half-salute and drove away. This time with a tiny smirk and look of superiority and mischief on his long, New-Englander face.

I was walking back to the Jeep where Jane was waiting when my cell phone interrupted my scattered thoughts. I connected to hear Ben’s voice. ‘Where are you?’

‘At the motel where Ruskin was killed.’

‘So it is Ruskin. Sonofabitch. I had something like that in the back of my mind. All we’re getting from TV is that there was trouble at this motel. Maybe a homicide. I’m at the senator’s. Naturally, we were curious. I doubt a town this size gets many murders. Is this something that could help us?’

‘Yes. But I don’t want to go into it on the phone.’

‘That’s all right. We want you to come out here anyway.’

‘See you soon.’

‘I saw you talking to Hawkins,’ Jane said when I got into the driver’s seat. ‘Any luck?’

‘He claims self-defense.’

‘Of course. Think he can get away with it?’

‘With Ruskin’s reputation for going armed and waving guns in people’s faces, Hawkins should have an easy go. Especially with no witnesses. Then there’s Ruskin drugging the bodyguard you got him.’

‘Oh, sure. In a trial the jury would see how unbalanced Ruskin was the day he was killed. And he was armed.’

‘Exactly. And Sarah herself told me that he ran out the door away from Hawkins. Hawkins is a federal investigator. He has a right to detain him and ask questions.’

‘Slick.’

‘How about going out to Robert’s with me?’

‘Fine.’

I was glad to get away from it all. I still didn’t have any warm feelings for the little prick but I was sorry for Sarah.

And speaking of Sarah...

Just as we were starting to pull out of the parking lot Detective Farnsworth appeared in my headlights, waving his arms for me to stop.

‘What the hell,’ I said, hitting the brakes.

He strode over to my Jeep. I had the window down waiting for him. When he leaned over and looked in, he said, ‘Evening, Jane.’ But he didn’t wait for a response. ‘Conrad, I’m going to pull my car around here so you can talk to Sarah. I promised her I’d set it up. I want to calm her down. I actually like her; that’s why I agreed. I don’t know what she saw in a scumbag like Ruskin.’

So Farnsworth was on our side after all. I pushed my luck. ‘Are you sure yet that Hawkins was justified in killing Ruskin?’

Surprise played on his face, then curiosity. ‘You have any particular reason to say that?’

‘No witnesses. Anything could have happened.’

‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, Conrad. We’ve got a whole investigation to go before we make any judgments. But he’s an investigator for a US Attorney and he had a right to find Ruskin and to ask him questions. Ruskin was a clown but he always made a big deal of carrying a gun and being so good with it.’

Between the lines of those sentences were two words: ‘Case closed.’

‘So wait here. You can get in the backseat with her. ’Night, Jane.’

‘’Night, William.’

After he was gone, I said, ‘See how fast he bought my story about how Hawkins maybe killed Ruskin in cold blood.’

She snapped her fingers. ‘Like that. You’ll get tired of telling your story, Dev.’

‘How about you? Do you believe it?’

‘I don’t not believe it. I’d like to learn more about it. You know, do the due diligence.’

‘Now there’s a vote of confidence.’ But I was smiling when I said it.

Farnsworth’s unmarked car pulled around and parked about fifteen feet from my Jeep. He pulled the emergency brake on and stepped outside.

‘Tell Sarah I said hello,’ Jane said.

‘Will do.’

I got out and walked over to Farnsworth.

‘Ten minutes. Detective Hammell is waiting for us.’

I nodded and walked to the door. As I slid in I saw that Sarah was huddled in the opposite corner as if she was trying to hide. I’d expected tears and panic. Maybe she’d run out of both.

After I had slammed the door and sat there for an interminable silent minute — I wondered if she’d gone into some kind of shock — she said, in a voice I barely recognized as hers, ‘He lied and exaggerated so much it was hard to know what was real sometimes. Until last night when somebody shot at him, I didn’t really believe any of this. And even then—’ For the first time she really looked at me; for the first time her eyes showed the warmth I usually found there. ‘It’s a terrible thing to admit, Dev, but when we were at the hospital I half wondered if he’d set this all up. You know, hired somebody to shoot at him. Every once in a while he’d do things that got him “press” as he always called it. Usually a few months before he had a book coming out or before he was giving a big speech somewhere. He knew how to promote himself. But this wasn’t one of those times.’ No tears, not even now. ‘So I’m alone and I don’t have any idea what to do, Dev. In a weird way I always thought of us as one person. He hated me saying that. We’d have big fights about it. Especially if he was having one of his little affairs. But I really do feel like half of me is gone now.’

‘You’re a whole person, Sarah. And a good person.’ I moved much closer to her.

‘They’re going to be rough on me, aren’t they? The police and the press, I mean.’

‘I doubt the police will be. I never read any of his books but I saw him say on TV one night that he never gave you the details about any of his activities. That he was the only one who knew them. That you only found out what they were after they’d happened. I think the police will believe that sooner than later. But the press is another matter. They’ll be after you for a couple of years. So will the supermarket tabloids and a few of the papers of note. Some people will write books about him. And you. And they’ll make up outlandish stories that the American press will take as fact. There’ll be absolutely no evidence whatsoever for them. But the people who write them will make a lot of money doing it. And now it’s fact quote unquote. So you can expect stories like that somewhere along the line about Howard.’

A childlike smile. ‘You can call him Howie. He was definitely more of a “Howie.”’ Then, her body relaxing for the first time, ‘Is it all right if I start calling you sometimes? Just telling you how I’m doing and maybe asking for advice.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘I’m even thinking of moving to Atlanta. I’ve got a cousin there who’s about my age. She’s divorced and has plenty of room in her house.’ Then, ‘He didn’t have to kill him.’

‘I know.’

‘I said that to Detective Farnsworth and he just sort of mumbled something. He’s been very nice. I was hysterical and he sat with his arm around me the whole time and told me that his little daughter had died from cancer when she was three and that he knew how hard it was to lose somebody, but that eventually things get better. But he still didn’t believe me — about Hawkins, I mean.’

‘I believe you.’

‘You do? Thank God. Thank God.’ She reached out and took my hand.

‘But nobody else will believe us unless I can find more evidence and that’ll be tough.’

She squeezed my hand. ‘But you believe it. That’s the main thing for me right now. That you believe it.’

The way she leaned forward I think she was going to kiss my cheek but just then Farnsworth knocked on the back window.

‘Oh, God, I’m so glad we got to talk, Dev. This means so much to me, you can’t imagine.’

I was the one who kissed her on the cheek. ‘Any time, night or day, you call me, to catch up or if you have a question, all right?’

‘I will, Dev. I will.’

When I got out of the car I looked into the eyes of a man who’d lost a three-year-old to cancer. Unimaginable. We just stared at each other and then he walked away and got into his car with Sarah in the backseat. They drove away. Neither of them waved.

Twenty-Three

Mrs Weiderman was smiling when she let me and Jane in and behind her, in the living room most likely, there was the kind of laughter you hear when people are just sitting around getting stiff on good drinks and saying screw it to everything else. Considering everything he was up against, Robert had done damned well tonight.

Mrs Weiderman led us there then stood aside as if ushering us into a temple of pure delight. ‘Just go in and have some fun, you two.’ I wasn’t going to spoil anybody’s fun by bringing up the possibility that one of them might be the person who had done Tracy Cabot wrong.

Maddy flung herself off a divan and tore across the room and gave me the kind of hug a man of less probity and wisdom might mistake for more than a simple excited greeting. But I knew Maddy and I knew better. ‘Sorry, Jane. I couldn’t resist. And by the way, you two make a very cute couple.’

Jane and I realized, about the same second, that little Maddy was a wee bit tipsy. And all the cuter for it. We smiled knowingly at each other and stood there while Robert and Ben and Elise all toasted us. James just stood there trapped in his prison of being James.

I can’t tell you much about the next twenty minutes or so because it was just chatter. Robert and Ben were at least half bombed and filled with the kind of radiant optimism only alcohol can inspire. Or, as Robert put it, ‘Now we know that Ruskin killed the Cabot woman.’

‘And how do we know that?’ I said.

‘Suicide by cop. Or in this case federal investigator. He intentionally ran away from Hawkins so Hawkins would be forced to kill him.’

Ben, who never played along with anything, played along. ‘You have to admit there’s some logic to it.’

Who was I to parse that sentence? ‘Some logic’ can only be used when your blood alcohol reaches a certain illegal limit.

But for all the underpinning of fantasy and desperate hope it was pleasant to see Robert again. The old Robert, the one I liked if not exactly admired, the one who could often be bought for the going rate but who tried not to let his whoring get in the way of taking a stand when the oligarch party (as well as too many members on our side) tried to make life even easier for people who had yachts to worry about and even tougher for people who had impoverished little ones to worry about.

Somebody decided to check on how the talking heads were assessing Robert’s performance. The giant TV screen bloomed to colorful life, presenting us with three dolorous men and one preening woman. Ostensibly this was ‘our’ cable network but with a few exceptions the yakkers were just the usual Beltway boys and girls who bathed in their own imagined importance. But tonight they were pretty good, actually.

They liked the way he’d handled himself but sensibly enough didn’t make any claims about his innocence. I gave them points for that. I also gave them points for having some fun with some of the nastier comments made by the other side, comments I hadn’t caught up with until now.

‘My favorite,’ said the attractive blonde, ‘was when Sheila St Germaine said that Senator Logan should have to hand over his passport because he’s a flight risk.’

‘Yeah and then Lawrence Todd said Logan would head for Cuba where Castro would let him stay.’ The man had everybody laughing with this; even a crew member or two could be heard chortling.

‘And don’t forget,’ the always-breathless host said, ‘the body language expert who said that Logan reminded him of Ted Bundy based on how his right shoulder moves when he changes the subject.’

Even Elise, not the most demonstrative of people, was laughing. She had to lean against Maddy in order to keep from falling off the divan. Maddy had switched to coffee, which was probably a good idea. With her mother finishing an entire wine cooler by herself, somebody had to protect her from destroying the known world with that sweet-sad smile and that small Monet face. If she had another wine cooler she’d probably sign up to be a NASCAR driver or enter a tractor pull. A drinker she was not.

Soon enough an angel appeared in the person of Mrs Weiderman with a tray of hot deli-style sandwiches and two pots of coffee that she rolled in on a hotel-style cart. I wasn’t hungry for food but I was for coffee.

I enjoyed sitting on one of the couches next to Jane and watching Robert and Ben and Maddy making all the smart-ass remarks about the various jabs and counter-jabs going on in television land. None of it mattered, of course. That kind of speculative talk vaporized as soon as it was uttered. But sometimes it was fun, as it was tonight.

Jane sighed and whispered, ‘I could put my head on your shoulder and go to sleep.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. Why not? I don’t see how you can sleep with all this noise going on but if you can, do it.’

‘I can sleep anywhere.’

I doubted it but I was wrong. Within ten minutes she was gently snoring on my right shoulder. I was a bit muzzy now so I held her hand, and if anyone found that smarmy I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

James’ official job was to glower. He hit the bar three or four times to get more of the devil juice then moved back to an armchair where he disappeared inside his iPad. Porno, probably.

Elise had eaten half a sandwich and consumed two cups of coffee, and her earlier ebullience was now slipping into the melancholy we were all familiar with. Ben and Robert had gone to the billiard room and Maddy had disappeared somewhere. Jane, who was obviously not any more of a drinker than Elise, still slept soundly. I eased her into a corner of the divan, slid a throw pillow under her head and stretched her legs out. I pulled my V-neck sweater over my head and laid it across her chest. Better than nothing.

Behind me I heard Elise say, ‘Oh, God.’

I went over to her and sat down. ‘Everything all right?’

‘You— That was so touching. Robert and I haven’t had a moment like that in years.’

‘Young love, I guess.’

‘You really care for her, Dev. You have to be manly and make a joke of it.’

‘All right, Mom. I like her quite a bit. Is that enough?’

She had that fragile smile. ‘It is for now.’ Then she put her head back. Her neck was a masterpiece. ‘I shouldn’t drink. I’ve got a headache already. But maybe I’ll sleep better tonight. I’ve started having dreams again about Gretchen Cain. I was up every two hours. I’m so sick of the sleeping pills I take — I’m always so groggy the next day — that I didn’t take them yesterday, and so last night it was good old Gretchen again. And I suppose it will be again tonight. You remember Gretchen, of course.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You should. Robert made you tell me about her.’

‘That’s a little overstated. I just said that Robert had confided in me that he’d done something stupid.’

She yawned and that brought her head down. The wan child in her looked at me through a rainy March window. ‘You did his dirty work. I’m naïve sometimes but rarely outright dumb, Dev. When you said he’d been “stupid,” I knew what you were really saying. That there’d been a woman. What else could it have been? And in this case it was Gretchen Cain. Her husband and I commiserated. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘We even talked about sleeping together to pay them back. There’s a term for that.’

‘Grudge fucking.’

‘Oh, right. We got very drunk one night and made out like ninth graders but then gave it up.’ Mischief in her smile. ‘He was a very good kisser, I might add. I shouldn’t say this but he was a much better kisser than Robert, and I would appreciate it if you’d never tell Robert that.’

I drew an imaginary zipper across my mouth.

‘But she still comes back to me, Gretchen does. I always catch them in bed. Our bed. I can even smell her somehow. She wore the most God-awful cologne. I thought she did, anyway. We had several dinners with them. That’s how it started. I plead with her to leave him alone but she just sits up in my bed covering herself with my sheets and smirking at me. Robert, at least, is nice enough to look embarrassed. But she’s very blunt. She speaks for him — for them. She says that Robert will be moving out — that in fact he’ll go with her tonight and he’ll send for some of his clothes in the morning. And by then I’m sobbing and pleading. And by the time I wake up I’m afraid they’ll put me back in the psych hospital again. I hate it there so much, Dev. I can’t tell you.’

No tears. Just talk. Just sorrow and fear.

The sound of my cell phone affected Elise physically. She frowned as if it were a person who’d interrupted us.

‘Excuse me, Elise.’ Then, ‘Hello.’

‘Do you know where my bedroom is?’ Maddy. Sounding sober now.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m out on the little porch. I’d appreciate it if you’d come up here now.’

‘All right.’

‘Anything serious?’ Elise said.

‘My office telling me to check out an internal poll they just sent me. Excuse me. I think I’ll go in the kitchen and have a cup of coffee while I read it. Bring you back anything?’

‘No, I’m fine. Thanks for listening to me. You’re not only less expensive than a shrink, you’re a lot better.’ She squeezed my hand.

Maddy’s bedroom was next to the guest room in which I’d spent some restless nights. I generally didn’t stay over unless there was trouble. It was such a comfortable and decorous room I wanted to stay in it once when I could enjoy it.

When I opened Maddy’s door I wished I’d worn my snowsuit with the snowmen and Santa Clauses decorating it. Given the winds tonight and that the door leading to the tiny porch was wide open, the room was cold enough to make snowballs out of gin.

‘You like it a little nippy, huh?’ I said, shivering for effect.

‘I thought it would help get me sober faster.’ She’d made no concession to the temperature. No extra sweater, no jacket, no hat. Then, ‘Hardy pioneer stock.’

‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said. ‘Brr.’

She hadn’t faced me yet. She stared out at the forest and the glowing half-moon above it. You could taste and feel and smell the snow that would soon be here. Her small hands were wrapped tight around the black iron porch railing. The only item on the porch was a rattan chair.

And it was kind of funny. As soon as she started talking I no longer noticed how plugged-up I was already feeling. I was too engrossed.

‘The afternoon before she was killed I rode my bike to the cabin. I had no idea anybody would be there. I recognized her right away. I asked her as politely as I could — which probably wasn’t all that politely, I’ll admit — how she’d gotten in and exactly what she was doing there. She said she was a friend of my dad’s. But the way she said it — very smirky. You know, implying they were a lot more than friends. And I got mad and I started yelling at her. All I could think of was how my mother would react if she knew that bitch was at our family’s cabin.

‘She started yelling right back at me. Told me to grow up. I told her to leave but she said she was there at my father’s invitation and didn’t care whether I liked it or not. I was so angry I decided the best thing to do was get out of there, find my father and confront him about this. So I left.

‘But I wasn’t able to find Dad until after dinner, and even then I had to wait until late because we were never alone. When we finally had our talk he told me everything and told me how sorry he was and assured me that there had been nothing between them. And then, when the news came about her being found dead, he was afraid the police would bring my name into it and I’d be implicated. He begged me not to tell anybody. But I think you deserve to know.’

So this was what Robert had been hiding from me.

She raised her head, looked up at the stingy moon and laughed abruptly. ‘I just kept thinking how intimidated I would be if I were in her position. But she wasn’t at all. She was just such a bitch...’

And then she went on to give me another example of Cabot’s nastiness, and in so doing reminded me of somebody I should have been thinking about all along.

Ben and Robert came charging in excited as two teenage boys on their first drunken spree. Robert grabbed the remote and shouted with grand and outright glee, ‘I hope he’s still on!’ Ben and Robert stood in front of the giant plasma screen as if they were worshipping a false god.

The first image on the screen was of a plutocrat who’d once accused our sitting president of secretly planning for another 9/11 just so his numbers would go up when he got his best chance to ‘look presidential.’

But the plutocrat’s words tonight surprised me. ‘Susan, Susan, all we know is that at worst all Senator Logan did was maybe have a brief fling. And even that hasn’t been established for sure. I say that as someone who despises everything Logan and his socialist cohorts stand for. But I think it’s time that we let the law do its work before we make any judgments about his guilt or innocence.’

It was Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July afternoon simultaneously, and this was Empire News channel, for God’s sake. The way Ben and Robert dove for the bar foretold just how hammered they planned to get tonight.

Jane pulled herself up into a sitting position and sleepily rubbed a small hand across her right eye. I went over and she said, ‘This is really embarrassing. God, did I snore?’

‘You shattered glass.’

‘Everybody will think I was drunk.’

‘I think they probably know better than that.’

Now those sleepy eyes were narrowing and focusing on me. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘It will be, I hope.’ Then, ‘I need to get going.’

‘You won’t forget I’m waiting here for you, will you?’

I smiled. ‘Probably not.’

Twenty-Four

Moonlight on the ground frost contrasted with the shadows of the windbreak, the line of pine that overpowered the small house and made it seem even more isolated and lonesome. Smoke coiled from the chimney and a large gray cat squatted on the small porch feigning feline indifference when he got a look at me. From inside the bungalow a voice spoke much too loudly.

After knocking, I looked around the yard. A car was in the drive. The voice inside continued to pound away.

I knocked again, this time with more force. I had to compete with the diatribe. I was surprised that the door was opened with no precautions of any kind. Even though this was the country, meth had changed everything from the good old days when people left their doors unlocked and offered to help strangers. Drug dealers carried guns now and traveled the gravel roads of rural America. It no longer made much news when a body or two was found in a ditch, fortunes of a drug deal gone wrong. In Missouri a few years back two nineteen-year-old males were found in a ditch with their hands tied behind their backs and their heads missing. Apparently Mexican drug cartels had made instructional videos of how to deal with drug enemies.

‘This better be good. I’m missing my show. So what the hell do you want?’

‘I’d like to speak with Mark if I could, Mrs Coleman.’

‘He isn’t here.’

‘His car is in the driveway.’

She pulled her dark terrycloth bathrobe tighter around her. A long, light-blue nightie showed beneath the bottom of the robe. ‘You ever hear of somebody going for a walk?’

The man on the radio was bellering now. ‘Why hasn’t the American Congress — and I emphasize the word “American” — why hasn’t the American Congress started impeachment proceedings against the only president we’ve ever had who wrote a secret letter to the head of the United Nations saying that his ultimate goal was to have the UN take over the governance of our nation? And have you noticed that our so-called president — who wasn’t born here, not that that seems to bother anybody in the so-called American press — in his arrogance wouldn’t even speak about this when a reporter from this show asked him about it?’

A cruel, mad smile crossed her crone lips. ‘Are you hearing that?’

‘Oh, I’m hearing it all right, Mrs Coleman.’

‘Probably scares you, doesn’t it? To know we’re on to you. Your Senator Logan’s a Communist and that makes you one, too, since you work for him. I told that to my Mark. He said he’s pretty sure neither you or Logan are Commies. But people have seen that letter, the one to the UN. He wrote it longhand, which was a mistake because Stan on the radio had a handwriting expert on the show and the expert said that once he got a chance to see the letter he’d know if it was the president or not. Stan told him he’d heard of two people who’d seen it and they both said it looked just like the president’s handwriting.’

‘Kind of made it official, huh?’

‘Go ahead and make fun — you’ll be in prison soon enough. You and your kind.’ And with that she started to shut the door.

But I put my hand on it and stopped her. She wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it. ‘You take your hand away right now or I’ll call the sheriff.’

‘I just want to ask you a question.’

‘I don’t answer your questions. I know what you are.’

‘When I was here before you said you could smell perfume on Mark the other night. You said it belonged to his wife.’

‘She’s a whore. All she wants is to get her hands on this house and then get rid of me so she can live here the rest of her life and not have to pay any rent.’

Of course. Now it was clear to me. The ex-wife was driven by her overpowering desire to steal this ramshackle bungalow and spend decades living in rural luxury. Providing the septic tank held fast.

‘Did you really smell perfume on him?’

‘On who?’

‘On Mark.’

‘I said I did, didn’t I? It was enough to make me sick.’

‘What did Mark say?’

‘He didn’t say anything. He just went in and washed up. Like he was in a hurry. I was hopin’ he was ashamed of himself for givin’ into her. That’s how she’ll get him back — sex. Whores always know how to handle men. Now take your hand off the door.’

I stepped back. She slammed it so fast and so hard I was surprised by the fury of it. Such a tiny woman.

I stayed on the small slab of porch for a couple of minutes. The problem I had was her state of mind. She was clearly suffering from some form of dementia so it was difficult to know what was fantasy and what was real. But to the scent of perfume on her son, she’d added that he seemed to be in a hurry to wash up. Maybe because I wanted to believe those two details I decided that they confirmed my suspicions.

Maddy had told me — following our initial conversation on the subject — that Tracy Cabot said that some ‘creep’ had been hanging around the cabin and that he made her nervous. Maddy knew she meant Mark Coleman and said he wasn’t a creep; just a confused vet whose wife had left him. Maddy said she considered that one more reason to despise the Cabot woman. Maddy then told me she’d had a number of conversations with Mark over the past year and liked him very much and that he was just a lost and lonely man searching for the solace of a woman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the scene if he ever came into any kind of contact with somebody like Tracy Cabot.

I started to walk back to my car. I’d known she wouldn’t let me in the house where I suspected Mark was hiding. Now I’d pretend to leave, park down the road and then sneak back here. There was a chance that he would do me the favor of packing a bag, tossing it in his trunk and trying to flee. And I’d be waiting for him.

As I began to open my door, I heard, ‘Put your hands up in the air. I’ve got a rifle pointed right at you.’

Movies and TV have taught us that when you say things like that you’re supposed to snarl the words if you want to keep working in La La Land. But Mark had probably never taken any acting classes so when he said it, it was pierced with the same weariness I’d heard on my previous visit. And I knew the eyes would be the same, too. The ineluctable sorrow and frenzy of men and women who’d died psychically and spiritually on the battlefield who came home to trudge through their nightmare days.

‘You won’t shoot me, Mark.’

‘I don’t have much to lose.’

‘You’d just make things a lot worse for yourself. And this would be first-degree. I imagine the Cabot woman was on impulse. She say something ugly to you?’

My back was still to him but I hadn’t put my hands up.

‘I know I’m a freak. I could see it in her face. I was stupid enough to go in the cabin in the first place. I couldn’t help it. She was so beautiful. I thought that was all finished for me after my wife left, that I wouldn’t ever want another woman again. I wasn’t going to rape her or anything. I just wanted to look at her, was all. Not even touch her.’

‘I believe you, Mark.’ And I did.

‘She wasn’t scared or anything when she saw me. She thought I was some kind of handyman or something. At first, anyway. But she figured it out pretty fast I guess because she started making her remarks. I didn’t blame her. I shouldn’t have been there. I apologized and went to go out the back way — same way I’d come in — and I don’t know why she did it. She kept saying things about me and I guess because I was walking away she came over and grabbed my sleeve and that was when she said it, that one thing.’

He paused a long time.

‘What did she say?’

‘That’s the funny thing. I can’t remember what it was now. Maybe it was somethin’ about the way I walk now. My ex-wife said somethin’ like that when we argued one time. I could see she was sorry right away — my ex, I mean. She even started crying and asked me to forgive her. But when the Cabot woman said it... She doesn’t know a thing about the war, what we went through, and there she was, laughing about it — laughing at me. . That was when I picked up that statue and... I remember thinking that I really wasn’t going to hit her with it, that I was just going to scare her. And I did scare her and she started to turn away and — and then she was on the floor and I was terrified—’

I faced him now. He stood near the edge of the house with his rifle. The stars were vast and alien and couldn’t give a shit about this little drama of ours, the way we couldn’t give a shit about the ferocity and sadness of animal life. He’d go to prison or maybe a mental hospital and I’d go on with my life, or maybe not. Maybe an eighteen-wheeler would flatten my Jeep on my drive back to Chicago. Or the headaches I got more frequently would turn out to be brain cancer. Or maybe in prison he’d figure out how to slash his wrists or his throat. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

‘I want to do everything I can for you, Mark. I’m going to hire Ben Zuckerman to be your lawyer.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s my mom.’

‘I’ll see that she goes to a very good nursing home.’

‘They’re really shit. They’re always in the news.’

‘I know a few good ones.’

‘She doesn’t have that kind of money.’

‘I’m sure she has Medicare and Medicaid.’

A risky line but by God it worked. I can’t say it was a fulsome laugh. It kind of spluttered out of him but it was an honest laugh and he said, ‘She’s going to say this is all a Communist conspiracy to take her son from her; she might even say that the president himself killed the Cabot woman.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s a sneaky bastard.’

‘Well, I suppose wherever she goes they’ll let her plug in her radio.’

I had the sense he was already in prison and locked away and thinking about his mother.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘it’s quite a country, isn’t it?’

Then we allowed each other silence for a time. There was just the swarming night and those stars and that blaring, insane, hateful radio.

‘I really didn’t mean to kill her. I just lost it for a couple of seconds there.’

‘I know.’

‘I never got violent with a woman in my life before then.’

‘I’m sorry, Mark. I really am.’

God damn it. God damn it anyway.

Then I walked over to him and gently removed the rifle from his trembling hands.

Twenty-Five

Someday somebody will write a book about all the politicians who got involved with their babysitters. Politicians of all stripes will make an appearance. For instance, there was the pol who paid for the entire college education of the babysitter he seduced just to keep her quiet; the pol who dumped his wife and children for his babysitter; and the pol who set his babysitter up as a staffer in his Washington office as soon as she turned twenty-one. A fetching lass, she went on to become a highly paid and quite creative lobbyist.

The press did a great deal of backtracking, of course, after Tracy Cabot’s real murderer was named. The exception being Empire, which clung to the adultery angle. Since that was all they had against Robert they pressed on.

Our own polling showed that we’d dropped eighteen points following the story first breaking. Two days after being cleared and after appearing on Today, NBC Nightly News and 60 Minutes we came within two points of tying our old pal and worthy opponent Charlie Shay. Still not enough.

I mentioned babysitters. The last time I’d spoken with Lee Sullivan, private investigator, he’d told me that his son Jason, opposition research wizard, just might have a surprise for us.

Surprise indeed. And babysitter indeed.

Seems there was a twenty-six-year-old young woman that our strapping Irisher Charlie had impregnated when she was seventeen. Jason had told Lee about her and Lee had flown to Madison to interview her. She said that she’d never planned to talk about the incident — she admitted to enjoying her affair with Charlie — but that seeing him on TV ranting about how abortion should be outlawed and abortion docs sent to prison for life... well, she’d talked it over with her husband and her parents and was willing to cut a thirty-second spot revealing what a hypocrite Charlie was. We shot the spot immediately and found enough national money to run it relentlessly.

The press did the heavy lifting for us. Charlie had been married at the time — still was, though to a different woman — so his adultery canceled out our adultery. And his hypocrisy sank him with a good part of his base; they stayed home.

We won by seven hundred and nine votes. There were challenges, of course. There was an official recount. Robert was declared the winner and planned his return to Washington where all the good, dear true friends who’d sold him out when he was under suspicion would throw him a party and say they knew he was innocent all along. Robert would have to accept their largesse because he would have done the same damned thing in their position. There are no heroes in the US Congress on either side of the aisle — some decent people, but no heroes. The test for heroics is simple — would you give up your seat for an issue you believe in? I don’t have to answer that for you, do I?

Jane spent two weekends with me and though we had a good time she decided she’d best stop seeing me, because if we got serious she’d have to consider moving to Chicago and she could never do it — unless, she smiled sadly, I would consider moving to her nice little hometown.

As for Hawkins... he enjoyed a month or so of national media coverage. He was good at playing the reluctant hero, I’ll give him that. His Aw, shucks, me a hero? routine made everybody in the United States of Media Hokum stand up and salute. Hell, he even came up with an explanation as to who had fired the shots at Howie in the park the night before his death. Playing on Ruskin’s gambling problems, Hawkins claimed that Howie had been into a big-time gambler for a couple hundred thou and that said gambler was furious that Howie insisted the games had been rigged and refused to play. So the gambler sent him a message. He ordered that Howie be wounded but not killed. Hence the shots in the college park. He couldn’t say more until his intrepid investigation was finished. The press not only understood, they swooned like a maiden taken for the very first time.

Me? I tested my conspiracy theory on a few of my colleagues and was offered looks of bemusement and pity. The only time I got any kind of direct response was the night I got hammered in a posh Loop club and was met with wild laughter by an old newspaper friend of mine who drunkenly a) brought up the subject of Bigfoot and b) suggested that ole Dev boy needed some time away from the grind.

But I still have the nightmares that started the night Howie Ruskin was gunned down... I am in the epilogue of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers... on that rainy highway running up to cars and shouting that they have to believe me. That there will soon be an attempt to seize control of the government by... it’s really happening. Can’t you see it?

So there you have it. Hawkins was a hero, a Vegas gambler hired the shooter who worked on Howie, and no conspiracy whatsoever.

But sometimes I still think about that first plot to overthrow the government led by the billionaires and that general named Smedley Butler.

If I ever meet anybody named Smedley, I’m reachin’ for my gun, partner.