Identical

26

Marlinda Glynn, a sharp young woman who’d taken a semester off from the University of Iowa to work on the campaign, was holding out his cell phone when Paul reached the backstage area at the West Town Community Center. They’d tried a morning town hall, but there couldn’t have been more than twenty-five people here, most of them elderly folks who’d arrived largely to alleviate boredom. He was hoping the call was from Peter Neucriss. Peter was an old friend, and the most successful plaintiff’s lawyer in this part of the world. Paul was going to beg him for another hundred thousand. Peter had already produced close to two fifty, bringing in checks in the names of every member of his family and his firm. When Peter said no, as Paul expected, he’d know for sure what was written on the wall.

“This guy says he’s Hal Kronon,” said Marlinda.

“Joke?” Paul asked.

“I don’t think so. It really sounds like him.” Marlinda had been there the day of Hal’s tirade at the pardon and parole hearing. “And his secretary was on the line first.”

Paul took the phone as he walked to the car.

“It’s Hal,” said Kronon, with an easy tone that made it seem as if the intervening decades of nastiness were simply stagecraft meant to obscure the fact that they were actually the best of friends.

“So I was told. Mind if I ask how you got my cell?”

“I have people who can get that kind of information in five minutes. There’s this thing called the Internet.”

Paul smiled in spite of himself.

“I’d like to have a sit-down with you,” Hal said. “Just the two of us.”

“Are we going to discuss the size of the contribution you’re planning?”

Hal laughed, which Paul might not have expected.

“Not exactly. Take the meeting, Paul. I won’t be wasting your time.”

They agreed on 2:30, after lunch. Neither wanted to be seen with the other, so Hal suggested the building office at West Bank Mall, Zeus’s original shopping center, and still one of the most successful in the nation. The place covered a square mile, the white brick buildings connected by networks of open walkways. To compete with the indoor malls, Hal placed heat torches outside in the winter and misters for summer’s dog days, and even hired kids to escort shoppers under umbrellas when it rained. And the center thrived. You were lucky to find a parking space within four blocks of the store you wanted to visit.

Paul was still bewildered about why mall shopping had emerged as Americans’ most thrilling pastime, as if coming back with several bags full of soft goods were the equivalent of big-game hunting. Whenever he was at a place like this, he wondered what we’d done wrong as a nation to make acquisition seem pleasing to so many. There was a kind of resignation to the activity that bothered Paul the most. He had nothing against leisure. It was a proud achievement that we’d given people time away from labor. But why shop, instead of garden or ride a bike?

He might have questioned the lines of folks passing by, if he thought they would have answers. He was wearing sunglasses, but was often recognized. People stared for the most part, but two couples stopped him, one to encourage him, the other to have their picture taken, much as they would have if he’d been walking along dressed up as Donald Duck.

He found the building office, a low freestanding structure. A young woman showed him back to a conference room with a cheap table and a few chairs. Hal was sitting on one of them. He rose and offered his hand for the first time in twenty-five years. Paul took it after some hesitation, then both men sat down.

Paul put a small digital recorder on the table and turned it on.

Hal’s eyes ran back and forth to it.

“I told you this would stay between us,” Hal said.

“Right. But I’d rather not pat you down for a wire or try to figure out if this room is bugged. I’ll have my own copy, in case you ever go back on your word.”

Hal’s look darkened. Paul wasn’t sure Hal was a secure-enough guy to deal with the open distrust, but he was the one who’d asked for the meeting.

“I’ll just get to the point,” Hal said. “I wanted you to know that I’m going to pull all those ads about you. I told the agency to get them off the air, even the ones where we’ve paid for the time already.”

Paul nodded, trying to show no other reaction. There was a “but” coming.

“I suspect Georgia will appreciate that,” Paul said. “I saw her a few weeks ago, and she thinks her hair looks like it was done by the serial killer in No Country for Old Men.”

“Nobody tricked her.”

“I’m sure.”

“She wasn’t lying, was she?”

Paul moved a hand to suggest that wasn’t worth a response.

“What can I do for you, Hal?”

Kronon had a heavy, unhealthy look. He was heading into his late sixties now. His hair was fleeing and age was overtaking him quickly. Zeus looked like a movie star at Hal’s age. Those recessive genes were a bitch.

“I’m considering making a public statement,” Hal said.

“You’ve already made a few.”

“This one will say I’m convinced you had no role in my sister’s murder.”

Paul’s heart spurted, much as he wanted to contain his reaction. They would have a chance, if Hal did that. He still wouldn’t bet on himself-too many voters just had a bad taste in their mouths at the mention of his name, and some by now were unsettled by the thought that his identical twin, a person with the same DNA, was a killer, even if he wasn’t. But still. They might crawl back to second by the time of the first election in two weeks.

“That’s a rather substantial change of heart,” Paul finally said.

“Well, we’ve learned some stuff.”

“Like?”

“That it was your mother’s blood in my sister’s room. Not yours or Cass’s. Lidia’s fingerprints are there, too. I have the report from Dickerman in my pocket, if you want to take a look.”

Paul inhaled a few times to still the combination of fear and rage that flushed through him.

“How in the hell did you get my mother’s fingerprints?”

Hal shrugged. “I already told you. The Internet. Everything’s out there.”

Paul took a second. The last thing he could tolerate was Hal Kronon in the role of wise guy.

“What do you want, Hal? I know you want something in exchange.”

“Nothing complicated. I want to know what happened,” Hal said. “I’ve spent twenty-five years sure you and your brother shorted my family on the truth. So I’d like to hear the whole story. And if you tell me, assuming it’s true, I’ll make that statement.”

“Who decides if it’s true?”

“Me.”

Paul smiled.

“I don’t know what happened, Hal. I wasn’t there.”

“But you know what you’ve been told.”

Paul thought for a second. This was always a tale like the shell of a snail, whorls on whorls, and one that he’d known for a quarter of a century could never be shared. Back in the day, his mother always repeated a Greek proverb. ‘He who reveals his secret, makes himself a slave.’ Hal Kronon was the last person in the world to whom he’d make himself or his family a slave, especially after the sacrifices of the last twenty-five years.

“I’m not talking about that with you, Hal. And if I did, you wouldn’t believe me anyway. But I’ll tell you this one thing as a favor. Even today, I’m not sure who killed your sister. And I never have been. All I know for certain is that it wasn’t me, and that I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“That’s not enough.”

“That’s all I have to say, Hal.”

“You’ll lose the election.”

“Thanks to you.” Paul was in fact increasingly at peace about losing. He’d turned fifty nearly a year ago. This was a good time to pull back and think about his life and what he really wanted, instead of capitulating to momentum, like a kid flying downhill on a sled. He was sick of meetings like this, with people begging or bullying, or trading favors. He’d longed for power for some good reasons, but also because that was what his mother always wanted for them, and because after Cass’s guilty plea, he felt more obliged than ever to redeem their lives. But he’d done it and discovered power was a trap. You controlled less than you thought, and got beaten on like a piñata, and never escaped watching eyes, except at home. He could stand losing. The one who would be inconsolable was Cass. Paul wondered for a second if Cass would have taken Hal’s deal. Probably not. But Cass wasn’t here.

He webbed his hands tightly before he spoke, hoping to contain his anger.

“You know, Hal. I need to be honest. You have a lot of nerve. You’re pulling those ridiculous commercials off the air? Great. You think I don’t realize your lawyers have advised you that if you leave them up now, knowing all this, that I can re-file for defamation and clean your clock? Those ads always were a bunch of malicious lies, and you’ve been promoting them for months. Which is the real point. Any decent human being, having learned what you have, would come here to say one thing: ‘I’m sorry. I’m going to the top of the ZP Building to scream to the world that I was wrong and that I’m sorry.’ Instead, you’re trying to hold me up, and to get me to sell out my family as the price of what even a modest respect for the truth should require you to do anyway.”

Hal leaned over the table, coming perilously close. Paul could feel the heat of his breath when he spoke, and took in the beefy odor of his person beneath his cologne.

“You talk to me about respect for the truth?” Hal asked. “Your family has been hiding it for decades. My parents lived with Dita’s death every day until they died. And I realized all along that none of us knew what really happened. And you think I owe you something, out of duty or honor? Excuse me, but somebody in your family killed my sister.”

“Somebody in my family went to prison for twenty-five years. And frankly, as I told you before, even today I don’t know what happened. Maybe nobody in my family killed your sister.”

“Then why did Cass plead?”

“We’re done with this conversation.” Paul stood up and grabbed his recorder. “I think your political views, Hal, are goofy. I always have. And I think your tactics are low. But I always thought you had some limits, that in your own cockeyed way you were a decent guy.”

Ever a baby, Hal looked for a second like he was going to cry. Then he stiffened himself with a comforting truth.

“You’re done for,” he told Paul. “You’ll never be mayor.”

Paul answered from the door.

“So what?” he asked.