Presumed innocent

"34068."

"Dan Lipranzer?"

"Not in. Who is this, please?"

"When do you expect him?"

"Who is this?"

"No message," I say, before hanging up.

I knock on the adjoining door to see what Mac makes of all this. She's gone. When I ask Eugenia where, she tells me that Mac is in Raymond's office, meeting, as she puts it, "with Mr. Della Guardia." She has been there almost an hour, I stand next to Eugenia's desk, battling my own bitterness. All in all, this has not worked out. Nico is now Mr. Della Guardia. Mac is on his staff, until she takes the bench. Raymond is going to get rich. Tommy Molto has my job. And I'll be lucky if next month I can pay the mortgage.

I'm still standing by Eugenia, when the phone rings.

"Mr. Horgan wants to see you," she says.

In the face of all the stern rebukes I have given to myself while I was marching down the hallway, the juvenile rush of sensation I feel when I see Nico in the P.A.'s chair astonishes me. I am immobilized by anger, jealousy, and revulsion. Nico has assumed a perfect proprietary air. He has removed his suit coat and his face is gravely composed, an expression which I know Nico well enough to realize is completely affected. Tommy Motto is sitting beside him, his chair somehow dropped a few inches back into the room. It strikes me that Tommy has already mastered the art of being a toady.

Raymond motions for me to sit. He says that this is really Nico's meeting now, so he offered him the chair. Raymond himself is standing up beside his sofa. Mac has her chair wheeled up to the window and is looking out. She still has not greeted me, and I realize now, from her demeanor, that Mac wants to be nowhere near this scene. The old saw: harder for her than for me.

"We've made some decisions here," Raymond says. He turns to Della Guardia. Silence. Delay, in his first assignment as P.A., is word-struck. "Well, perhaps I should explain this first part," Raymond says. He is extremely grim. I know his forced expression well enough to realize that he is angry and laboring to remain composed. You can tell, just from the atmosphere, that there were bruises raised during the preceding meeting.

"I spoke last night with the mayor and told him that I had no desire to remain in office in light of the voters' preferences. He suggested to me that as long as I felt that way that I ought to talk it over with Nico to see if he wants to come on early. He does and so that's what's going to happen. With the County Board's concurrence, I'll be leaving Friday."

I can't help myself. "Friday!"

"It's a little faster than I would have thought myself, but there are certain factors-" Raymond stops. Something is precarious in his manner. He is struggling. Horgan straightens the papers on the coffee table. He drifts to the sideboard and looks for something else. He is having a miserable time. I decide to make it easy for everybody.

"I'll be taking off then, too," I say. Nico starts to speak and I interrupt. "You'll be better off with a fresh start, Delay."

"That's not what I was going to say." He stands. "I want you to know why Raymond is leaving so soon. There's going to be a criminal investigation of his staff. We have information-some of it came to us during the campaign, but we didn't want to get into that kind of gutter stuff. But we have information and we think there's a serious problem."

I am confused by Nico's apparent anger. I wonder if he is talking about the B file. Perhaps there's a reason for Molto's connection to that case.

"Here, let me butt in," Raymond says. "Rusty, I think the best way to deal with this is to be direct. Nico and Tom have raised some questions with me about the Polhemus investigation. They're not confident in the way you've handled it. And I've agreed now to step aside. They can examine that question in any way they think is best. That's a matter for their professional judgment. But Mac suggested-well, we all agreed-to make you aware of the situation."

I wait. The sense of alarm spreads through me before the instant of comprehension.

"I am under criminal investigation?" I laugh out loud.

From across the room Mac finally speaks. "Ain't funny, McGee," she says. There is no humor in her voice.

"This," I say, "is a crock. What did I supposedly do?"

"Rusty," Raymond says, "we do not need that kind of discussion now. Nico and Tom think that there are some things you should have spoken up about. That's all."

"That is not all," Molto says suddenly. His look is piercing. "I think you've been engaged in misdirection, hide the ball, ring around the rosy for almost a month now. You've been covering your ass."

"I think you're sick," I tell Tommy Molto.

Mac has wheeled her chair about.

"We don't need this," she says. "This discussion should take place somewhere else, with somebody else."

"The hell with that," I say. "I want to know what this is about."

"It's about," says Molto, "the fact that you were in Carolyn's apartment the night she was killed."

My heart beats so hard that my vision shifts, jumps. I was waiting for someone to chastise me because I had an affair with the decedent. This is incomprehensible. And I say so. Ludicrous. Bullshit.

"What was that? A Tuesday night? Barbara's at the U. and I was babysitting."

"Rusty," says Raymond, "my advice to you is to shut your fucking mouth."

Molto is on his feet. He is approaching me, stalking. He is enraged.

"We've got the print results. The ones you never could remember to ask for. And they're your prints on the glass. Yours. Rozat K. Sabich. Right on that glass on the bar. Five feet from where the woman was found dead. Maybe you didn't remember at first that all county employees get printed."

I stand. "This is absurd."

"And the MUDs you told Lipranzer not to get? The ones from your house? We had the phone company pull them this morning. They're on the way down here right now. You were calling her all month. There's a call from your house to hers that night."

"I think I've had enough of this," I say. "If I can be excused."

I have gotten as far as Loretta's little office outside Raymond's when Molto calls out behind me. He follows me into the anteroom. I can hear Della Guardia yelling Molto's name.

"I want you to know one thing, Sabich." He points his finger at me. "I know."

"Sure you do," I say.

"We're going to have a warrant for your butt the first day we're here. You better get yourself a lawyer, man, a damn good one."

"For your bullshit theory of an obstruction case?" Molto's eyes are burning.

"Don't pretend that you don't get it. I know. You killed her. You're the guy."

Rage; as if my blood had quickened; as if my veins were filled only with that black poison. How old and familiar, how close to my being it seems. I come near Tommy Molto. I whisper, "Yeah, you're right," before I walk away.