Found money

54

Sunday was a workday for the presidential appointee. Marilyn Gaslow had just a few days to prepare for her Senate confirmation hearings, and she was wasting not a minute.

Her advisors were working with her at her home in Denver. Some were her friends, some were paid consultants. Today, they would engage in role-playing. Five partners from her law firm pretended to be the Senate Judiciary Committee, firing questions. One of them even showed up with a hangover to lend an added element of authenticity. Marilyn would answer as if it were the real thing. No one was to pull any punches. They assured her that this mock exercise would be much tougher than the real thing.

Marilyn prayed they were right.

To say that head of the Federal Reserve had been a lifelong dream wouldn’t be entirely correct. Marilyn was too much of a realist to dream for things that didn’t seem attainable. True, she had been one of the President’s earliest supporters in Colorado. Her law firm had raised millions for his two campaigns. It didn’t take a cerebral hernia to figure out that someone at Bailey, Gaslow & Heinz was due a political plum of an appointment. The buzz at the law firm was something along the lines of an assistant cabinet position or perhaps an appointment to the federal appeals court in Denver. But not the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve — and certainly not the chair. Some of her colleagues had kidded her, saying she must have had influential friends she wasn’t telling them about. Marilyn took it as good-natured ribbing. She simply smiled and said nothing.

“I need a break,” said Marilyn. By 9:00 A.M., they had already been role-playing for ninety minutes. Marilyn’s head was beginning to hurt.

“You okay?” asked her consultant. Felicia Hernandez was one of the paid assistants, a young and wiry go-getter who survived on caffeine. Marilyn thought of her as a cheerleader with a Ph. D. in psychology.

“Yeah,” she said, massaging her temples. “I think I’d just like to get some aspirin.”

“All right. Everybody take five.”

The group disbursed, most of them heading toward the coffee and bagels. Marilyn headed down the hall toward her bedroom, alone. She was prone to headaches, though not usually this bad. The excitement over the presidential appointment and the apprehension over the approval process was a deadly combination. Although she had passed Senate confirmation once before, years ago, when she was approved for her position on the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, she knew that wasn’t dispositive. Professor Bork had been approved as a federal appeals judge before Reagan had appointed him to the Supreme Court. That didn’t keep his enemies from running down to Blockbuster Video to see what movies he’d been renting — anything to dig up dirt and keep him from getting the higher appointment. And they succeeded.

Marilyn went straight to the medicine cabinet and swallowed two Tylenol. As she screwed the cap back on, a noise startled her. From the bathroom off the master, she could hear the fax machine in the bedroom. Curious, she cut across the room. Sure enough, two pages were resting in the receiving bin. They were still warm to the touch.

She checked the first page. It confused her at first. Every other word was blacked out, so that it made no sense to anyone — except to someone who had seen the original. A closer look took her throbbing headache to yet another level. She could see it was a letter addressed to Frank Duffy. And she recognized the signature of her old friend Debby Parkens — Amy’s mother.

She quickly turned to the second page. The message was brief: “Meet me at Cheesman Dam. Monday. Two A.M. Alone.”

Her consultant appeared in the doorway. “Marilyn?” she said in her perky cheerleader voice. “You coming? Lots of work to do.”

She folded the letter and quickly tucked it in her pocket. “Yes,” she said nervously. “Lots of work.”

A trail of dust followed Ryan up the driveway. The morning sun had already baked the back roads, leaving no sign of last night’s rain. As he stepped down from his truck, he heard the screen door slap shut. He looked toward the house. His mother was standing on the front porch.

“You ready to talk?” she asked as she lowered herself into the chair.

He climbed the stairs, saying nothing, the answer being obvious. Ryan still wasn’t convinced that last night’s timely arrival of Josh Colburn was coincidental. Nor was he convinced that Sarah’s tears were genuine. It all had the makings of a big diversion his mother had created to preempt the family meeting she had promised. Ryan had the unsettling feeling that for whatever reason his mother might never tell him the whole story. Perhaps it was just easier for her, emotionally, to tell him a little at a time. At this point, he’d take whatever he could get.

He leaned against the railing, his back to the yard. “An interesting night,” he said. “Mr. Colburn took me by surprise.”

“Me too.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“You shouldn’t,” she said.

“Are you telling me you knew nothing about the letter in Mr. Colburn’s safe?”

“Ryan, I swear on your father’s soul I know nothing about anything that was part of the blackmail.”

“But you knew about the rape.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“Because I believed it never happened.”

He made a face, confused. “Why did you believe that?”

“Because that’s what your father told me.”

“And you just accepted it?”

“It took time. A long time.”

“You must have had a reason. Did Dad show you something, say something?”

“Nothing. I didn’t want a fancy explanation in some signed and sealed affidavit. Too much time had passed to dig it all up again. I believed him for one reason only, Ryan. Because I wanted to believe.”

Ryan looked at her skeptically. “Mom,” he said in a voice that shook. “I’ve never said this before, but I have to say it: I don’t believe you.”

“What don’t you believe?”

“I don’t believe you just took it on faith that the rape never happened. Dad was convicted. You don’t just take a convicted man’s word for it that the crime never happened.”

“You do if that man is your husband, the father of your children.”

“No.” He started to pace, trying to contain his anger. “You saw the letter, didn’t you?”

“I never saw anything, Ryan.”

“That’s why you believed Dad. You saw the letter from Debby Parkens.”

“I told you, no.”

“You’re the reason he got the letter, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Dad told you it never happened, and you didn’t believe him. So he had to go out and get the letter from Marilyn Gaslow’s best friend saying she made it all up.”

“I never saw the letter.”

“But you knew about it.”

She paused. “Your father told me he had proof it never happened. He said he was going to use it to get even with the bastard who had framed him. I never saw the proof he had. Just, all of a sudden, money started pouring in. Millions of dollars. That was enough for me to believe him.”

“Why didn’t you just look at the letter?”

“Because I believed him without seeing it.”

“You refused to look at it, didn’t you. You felt guilty for not believing him.”

“Ryan, you’re getting this all backwards.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ryan, did it ever occur to you that I didn’t want to see the proof because I believed him just fine without it? That maybe my greatest fear was that seeing the so-called proof would just raise more questions in my mind?”

Ryan searched her eyes. Her agony seemed genuine. He wanted to console her, but he was suddenly thinking back to a pointed question Norm had raised: If his father was innocent, wouldn’t he have told Ryan? The answer might have been right before him all along, deep in his mother’s eyes. Maybe Dad couldn’t face the pain of yet another loved one who said “I believe you” but in the heart harbored doubts.

Then another possibility chilled him.

He got down on a knee and took her hand. “Mom, I’m going to ask you something very important. I want a completely honest answer. Do you think it’s possible that Dad made up the proof? Would he go so far as to forge a document to prove he was innocent?”

Her reply was soft, shaky. “I don’t know, Ryan. But this is the way I’ve always looked at it: Would a phony document make somebody pay five million dollars?”

It was the kind of question that needed no answer. Until he thought about it. “Depends on how good the fake is.” He rose and retreated into the house, letting the screen door slap shut behind him.