Stranglehold

Chapter 15

The grass on the endless lawn of the Cooper mansion glittered with frost that was only now beginning to dry off. As I pulled closer I could see that the flower beds had been covered. Except for a border collie sniffing at the base of a tree I didn’t see anything moving around the place. As I passed the garage I noticed that all four of the doors were closed. I parked in front and took my time getting to the door. The cold air felt good, though the weather report said rain was expected by mid-afternoon.

Winnie answered the door. “They’re just finishing breakfast. I’m sure there’ll be plenty for you.”

“No thanks. In fact, if you wouldn’t mind, I wish you’d let me sit in the study and tell Wyatt I’d like to talk to him at his convenience.” I’d decided to talk to Wyatt alone first. He’d never studied drama.

“You look very serious this morning.”

“This is important, Winnie. All I can tell you is that the whole campaign is starting to come apart. I need to talk to Wyatt.”

Behind her I heard Natalie’s voice. “Winnie, why is the front door open? There’s a draft in case you hadn’t noticed.” I could see past Winnie into the morning shadows of the hall that ran through the center of the house. Natalie was somewhere back there. “Did you hear me, Winnie? Now close that goddamn door.”

“We have a caller, Natalie. Mr. Conrad is here.”

“Here?” she snapped. “What the hell’s he doing here?”

She came into the light like a heat-seeking missile, ready to hit her target. She wore a black dressing gown that had a train like a wedding dress. She came up to me like a punk ready to fight. She looked perfect. “Do you have any idea what time it is? And we don’t receive visitors unless they call first.”

Winnie had stepped aside as if afraid of violence.

“Natalie, I could give a shit about your rules. I want to talk to Wyatt in the study, and I don’t want you in there with him. And I don’t want you listening at the door.”

I moved so fast she had to back up. She made noises that were not exactly words. Finally she shouted, “Wyatt! I want you to call the police!”

A few seconds later Byrnes appeared, walking fast. He wore a Western shirt and jeans. His feet were bare. Before he reached us he said, “What the hell’s going on?”

“I want him arrested.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Natalie, what the hell are you talking about?” To me he said, “Why’re you here so early?”

“Have you read the paper this morning or gone online?”

“No, why?”

“They’re moving on us. Right now they’re just talking about internal squabbling with our campaign. But obviously somebody in our camp is talking to this reporter. I’m pretty sure it’s going to get a lot worse.”

“You bastard,” she said. “This is all your fault. You and Ben. I don’t know why I ever hired you. You’re the most incompetent people I’ve ever worked with.” She stabbed a finger in my direction. “You’re a fucking joke!”

It was a good exit line. She whipped her train around her and stalked to the sweeping staircase. She had learned her Scarlett O’Hara well.

Byrnes sighed and shook his head. “Well, you may as well come in. Natalie’s already going to have my head anyway. Winnie, would you bring us coffee in the study?”

“Of course.”

I followed him into the study. His bare feet slapped on the parquet floor. He was swearing under his breath the whole time.

When we were inside, he walked over to one of the mullioned windows and opened it from the bottom. He pointed to a leather wing chair. I sat and watched him dig something out of his desk. I wasn’t sure what it was until he was standing next to the open window. He tamped a cigarette from a pack of Winstons. “My secret vice. I only smoke one when I’m really stressed. And this morning sure as shit qualifies. It’s going to be hell around here.” He stood by the window, exhaling into the fresh air. I half expected him to stick his head outside and smoke.

He took seven or eight drags, inhaling each of them. Then he licked his thumb and forefinger and squeezed the flame out between them. “My father taught me that trick. Picked it up when he was a cowboy — a real one, not a pretend one like me.” He sounded bitter. He closed the window, locked it, and walked back to his desk.

But he wasn’t done with the smoking ceremony yet. From a different drawer he pulled one of those small battery-powered fans. He turned it on. It sounded like the biggest horsefly that had ever lived. He went back to the window and began covering the entire area with swipes of the fan. Then he shut it off, brought it back to the desk, closed the drawer, and sat down.

“She hasn’t caught me yet.” His smile was sour. He was a prisoner of her wealth and power like everybody else. The stranglehold.

“I assume something bad has happened, Dev, or you wouldn’t be here so early.”

“Craig Donovan paid me a visit last night.”

“What did that bastard want?”

“You mean aside from working on my head with brass knuckles?”

“I want to kill that son of a bitch. He swaggers in here and makes his demands. You can see how much he’s enjoying himself. No matter how low Susan sank when she was running around, I don’t know how she ever hooked up with him. He’s a psychopath. I resented giving him a damned dime. But then it’s not my money. Natalie thought she could buy him off the one time and he wouldn’t come back for more.”

“He’s already come back for more.”

“What the hell’re you talking about?”

“He wants double the amount. Another full payment.”

“He’s crazy.”

“He probably is. But right now that doesn’t matter. We have to figure out how to handle this.”

I was surprised he didn’t go for another cigarette. His face tried to form an expression that contained both anger and misery. He just looked helpless. “Natalie’s going to hit the roof.”

“The threat is he goes public. The trouble is that if you pay him twice he may ask for even more.”

“Goddammit,” he said. “I always think of myself as a man of the world. I’ve been around the block more than a few times, Dev. I’ve even heard of people being shaken down like this. But they agreed to pay and they were left alone for a while. Donovan’s a wild man. Who the hell knows what he’s going to do?”

“There’s always the chance he’s bluffing.”

“You believe that’s the case?”

“I don’t have any idea. He’s too unpredictable.”

There wasn’t any doubt who was pounding on the door. There had been our quiet conversation and now there was a threatening thunder of assaults on the wood that was keeping her out.

He shook his head. “It’s not locked, Natalie.”

“I want to know exactly what you’re talking about. This is my house and my money being spent, and whether this bastard likes it or not I have the final say on this campaign.”

So nice to see you, Natalie. Won’t you have a cup of coffee and sit down and chat for a while? You just have a way of brightening up a room.

She charged up to Byrnes’s desk. “What the hell have you two been talking about?”

“Darling, it would help if you’d calm down.”

“This bastard forces his way in here at breakfast time and I don’t know what’s going on — in my own house? Now I want to hear everything you’ve said.”

And with that she gathered her black train and went to sit in a leather wing chair identical to mine. I took pleasure in watching her try to get comfortable with her ridiculous train piled beneath her. She was angry with her train. If she got mad enough at it, she’d probably set it on fire.

Byrnes sighed and said, “You won’t be happy to hear this, Natalie.”

“And why should that make any difference? I haven’t been happy to hear anything since this man and his flunkies started bungling Susan’s campaign.”

“This isn’t something they did, Natalie. This is—”

I could almost see him drawing himself up to give her the bad news. “Craig Donovan physically attacked Dev last night and told him that he wanted a second payment in the same amount — and he wants it delivered by tonight.”

Both Byrnes and I were ready to crouch into defensive positions because the blast would likely smash windows and toss furniture around. But it didn’t happen. We glanced at each other. It was a cartoon moment, when two characters stare at a stick of dynamite that burns down but doesn’t explode.

She laughed. “Well, isn’t that just fucking ducky? So now Mr. Conrad here has managed to screw up the situation with Donovan, too.” The voice started to rise at the end. “And just why the hell did he come to you?”

I lied. “I’m not sure.”

“That doesn’t matter now. What matters is what we do next. Do we pay him again?”

She put her head down, folded her hands in her lap, and began shaking her head back and forth. Without looking up she said, “If we weren’t so close to the election, I’d fire your ass and rip you up in public, which I plan to do whether we win or lose.” This was the old Natalie. She didn’t want to disappoint her fans. When her head came up she glared at Byrnes. “If you were any kind of a man, you’d punch him right in the face.”

“Oh God, Nat,” Byrnes said. “C’mon. That kind of talk isn’t going to help anything.”

“Oh? And just what kind of talk will help anything?”

He started to push back from his desk. I had the same impulse he did. To get up and walk around, anything to break the tension.

“Why don’t I fix you a brandy, Nat?” Byrnes said.

“It’s eight o’clock in the goddamned morning, Wyatt. What are we, lushes?” But her words lacked their usual fire. She sounded more miserable than angry. When she finally met my eyes, she said, “I want you out of here.”

“All right.”

“I’m going to fix it so you’ll have a hard time getting any kind of clients, Conrad — even city council ones. I’ll ruin you.” Then to Byrnes: “I thought you were going to get me a brandy? You don’t do anything else around here. Can’t you at least do that?”

There was no point in saying good-bye. I was at the moment in crime movies of the forties when the detective always picks up his fedora and walks out. Except I didn’t have a fedora. I closed the door quietly.

About halfway down the hall, just at the point where I could see the sunlight blaze through the vestibule window, Winnie appeared and slid her arm through mine. “I take it Natalie’s not happy.”

“I don’t know how you stand it.”

Her laugh was warm and bright. “Oh, Natalie’s all right. In her way she means well. She’s like most control freaks. They think they’re doing you a favor by having everything their own way. It’s for your own good — and they just don’t understand why you can’t understand that. I had an older sister who was like that, God rest her soul.”

She opened the front door for me. The chill, brilliant day leapt at me. She looked back down the hall. “There are times when I actually feel sorry for her.”

I smiled. “I guess I haven’t gotten to that point yet. And somehow I don’t think I ever will.”

She touched my arm and laughed. “A lot of people say that, I’m afraid.” Then she was closing the door, sealing herself inside the tomb with the one and only Natalie Cooper.

Chapter 16

David Manning and Doris Kelly sat next to each other just inside the office headquarters. Given their expressions you’d think they were patients waiting on bad news from a doctor.

Manning said, “We’re hiding out here, Dev.” Doris nodded. She was pale and nervous.

“From what?”

Before Manning could speak, Ben came back from his desk and said, “They got it after we did.”

“Got what?”

“Reporters,” Ben said. “Three of them were here for an hour. I had to practically push them out the door. Then they went over to the foundation.”

“That’s why we came over here,” Manning said.

From her desk, Kristin said, “Then they started in on me first.”

“What the hell are we all talking about?” I said.

“The son. Bobby,” Ben said. “Somehow they found out about Susan and her son.”

So there you had it. The information hit my brain and my entire body tensed. The word was out and from here on in there was no way we could get ahead of this story. All we could do was defend ourselves, and when you defend yourself a good share of people assume you’re guilty. If we’d broken the story at a press conference that we had called, we could have spun it our way — a mother reunited with her son, sad and sorry that she’d had to give him up for adoption, but now they were together again. Duffy and the press would still have come after us, but at least we would have put a tender face on it before the savagery began.

“I assume we don’t know who contacted the press.”

“Not yet, Dev,” Ben said.

Manning said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do at the foundation, but I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to get trapped into saying the wrong thing.”

“They even followed me to the bathroom,” Doris said. “I was half afraid the woman reporter was going to follow me inside.”

“I suppose Duffy’ll be on TV right away. Gloating.”

“He won’t have to be on TV, David,” I said. “The press’ll do all his work for him. He can stay above it. He gets to sit in the stands while we get ripped up in the arena.”

“Who the hell knew about it?” Ben said. “Just a handful of people.”

“Larson, that’s who I’m thinking of.” Kristin continued working on her computer as she talked. “That’s what he’s good at. He manages to find out things that other people never get to.”

I was thinking of the woman I’d met at Craig Donovan’s. Another possibility. She knew about it. Donovan would have told her. Not unthinkable that he’d beaten her again and she’d decided to ruin his plan for blackmail.

The first thing I had to concentrate on was preparing a presentation for the press. I had to find Susan and we had to work out a story. Then we had to find Bobby. Even though our heartwarming mother-and-son reunion spin was late, it had to be performed, anyway. We had to do our best to keep Susan in a sympathetic light. We would lose votes over this; the thing was to hold those losses to a minimum.

“I need to talk to Susan,” I said. “What’s her schedule today?”

“She doesn’t have anything until late this afternoon,” Kristin said.

“Where is she now?”

Kristin shrugged. “I don’t know, Dev.”

I tried her cell phone number. No answer. “When was the last time anybody talked to her?”

Manning said, “I managed to get her when the reporters started coming. I think she was out at Jane’s.”

I grabbed a phone book from a nearby desk and searched for Jane’s number. I punched the digits in. Jane answered. “How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty good. Jane, is Susan there?”

The phone seemed to go dead. “Jane?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“You just did answer it. I need to talk to her. I’m sorry about putting you in the middle, but she’s got to talk to me.”

“We heard the news station. About Bobby.”

“Please put her on.”

“I’m not sure she’ll talk to you — or anybody, Dev.”

“Try. Please. She’s a big girl. She’s got to face this.”

“She’s scared.”

“So are the rest of us.”

“Damn,” she said. “Just a minute, Dev. I’ll do what I can.”

When she finally came on the phone, Susan said, “I don’t think there’s anything I can do except resign. I’m just trying to get up the nerve to call a press conference and get it over with.”

“We need to talk.”

“I just told you I’ll need to resign.”

Her words didn’t surprise me. I’d seen this happen to politicians before. There are those who hang on forever. Sure, I visited whorehouses every night for twenty years and took more than a million dollars in graft and have a fifteen-year-old girlfriend. But is that any reason to deprive my constituents of my brilliance? At the other extreme you find those who just get overwhelmed and decide they don’t have the strength they thought they had. They get tired, they get worn down, they get embarrassed, and they think, The hell with it. One painful press conference and they’ll slink off the stage. Susan was in that mode now.

“Not before we talk. I need to know everything before we talk about resigning.”

“This isn’t your decision; it’s mine.”

“That’s true. But maybe I can help you make the right one.”

“You really think we still have a chance?”

“It’s possible to put a good face on this, Susan. If we think it through. You have a son. You’ve been reunited. You’re about to become a grandmother.”

“I guess that’s why we pay you.” Her laugh was weary. “I got a chill when you said ‘grandmother.’ I could see how it might work. I love Bobby and I love Gwen.”

“Good. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

After I hung up, I saw them looking at me — Ben, Kristin, Manning, and Doris Kelly. Kristin was smiling. “You should write soap operas. You had me going there. I can really see how this could play at a press conference.”

Doris Kelly said, “There was a lot more of that going on than anybody wanted to admit — giving children up for adoption when the mothers didn’t know what else to do. I don’t see where that would be such a big deal.”

It wasn’t the force of her idea that startled me; it was the fact that she’d expressed it. I’d never heard her really say anything before.

“This is a long way from over,” Ben said.

“I’m going out to see Susan. You’ve got my cell number if you need to talk to me.”

“What do you want to tell the press for now?” Kristin said.

“Tell them we’ll be announcing a press conference and until then we won’t have anything to say.”

“That’s going to be some press conference,” Ben said.

“It had better be, Ben. Or we’re all through.”

All the way out to Jane’s I played a fantasy press conference in my mind. With Susan standing with Gwen and Bobby and presenting the whole thing as a happy story of reunion rather than any kind of scandal — and promises of being together from now on — we could create a reconciliation narrative that the press would go for. Interviews with Bobby about his growing-up years. Interviews with Gwen about what a fine man Bobby was and how the baby would bring them even closer together. David Manning would have to put in an appearance, too. Some camera time for all four of them, David, of course, delighted at this sudden surprise. I’d keep Natalie chained in a bunker somewhere. Duffy would keep going at us, but he’d have to be careful. These were no longer the days of The Scarlet Letter. These were the days of watching fame-driven nobodies giving blow jobs to other fame-driven nobodies right there on the family screen. They called them reality shows. Well, our show was G-rated compared to that kind of sleaze.

Jane met me at the front door. Given her somber appearance, there should have been a black wreath on the door and I should have been bearing condolences.

“Just go easy on her, Dev. She’s really confused right now. And very vulnerable. She’s a tough cookie and always has been. So seeing her this way is kind of scary.”

I went inside. It seemed natural to pull her to me and give her a hug. It seemed even more natural to give her a kiss. She smelled good and tasted even better.

There was a coat tree in the vestibule. She pulled down a blue goose-down vest. “I’m going to do some grocery shopping. She’s in the kitchen in the breakfast nook. She’s had way too much coffee, too. There’s plenty of caffeine-free diet Pepsi in there. Get her to drink that instead.”

She gave me another hug and then left.

Susan wore a simple white shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail. The first glimpse I got of her she was biting one of her manicured nails.

“You’re wasting a lot of money.”

“What?”

At first her eyes didn’t seem to focus. She had to bring them back from whatever terrible land she’d been visiting. “Wasting a lot of money?”

“You pay to get your nails done and then you’re biting them.”

“Oh.” The smile was sad. “I guess you’re right. Sort of ruins the whole effect, doesn’t it?”

She lifted her cup.

“Jane thinks you’ve had enough coffee.”

“God, I wouldn’t make it through this without Jane. I’ll switch to something else when I finish this.”

I slid into my side of the booth. On the other side of the window the backyard was filled with Disney creatures — squirrels and birds and two small dogs playing in the dusty light of fall.

“How’re Ben and Kristin taking it?”

“They think we can pitch our side and the majority of people will understand.”

“Really?”

“We have to be careful how we present it, but we have enough time before the election to see it mostly go away. If—”

She stopped me. “If?”

“If Donovan doesn’t up the ante again — or do something else.”

“Oh, God, what did he do?”

I told her about last night and demanding another payment.

“He’s the most devious person I’ve ever known — a sociopath who loves to play games. He’d blackmail people, and then when they paid him, he’d immediately demand more. Right on the spot. He told me he knew he couldn’t get it; he just liked to see them suffer. He enjoys the torture as much as the money.”

“That doesn’t exactly surprise me.”

She took a deep breath, exhaled. “This whole moment — I wish I could just enjoy the fact that I’ve been reunited with my son and his wife and that I’m going to be a grandmother. And poor Gwen, what she’s going through—”

“We need to call a press conference for this afternoon. Three-thirty at the latest so we can get on all the evening news shows. This is going to be tough for you, but you’ve got to do it right.”

“I don’t want to go on television and lie, Dev.”

“You won’t be lying. You’ll talk about how good it is to be reunited with your son and that you’ll go into detail at a later date. If anybody brings up the fact that the police questioned him, just say that they’ve been questioning a lot of people, which they no doubt have.” I didn’t tell her about the great grand dream I’d had of her, Bobby, and sweet pregnant Gwen all together in front of the cameras. We were past that now; all we could do was get on the air as soon as possible and start controlling the message as best we could. No long-lost sons or winsome daughters-in-law for props.

“I’ll run, that’ll help. It always relaxes me.”

“Run, shower, get dressed, and then spend some time with Ben and Kristin at the office. They’ll know what to do. You’ll be nervous when you see the reporters, but once you start talking you’ll be fine. It’s what you said awhile ago, how this should be a happy time for you. That’s all you need to convey. The happy time. The family together again. Make a few jokes about being a grandmother at your age.”

“You have a lot of faith in me. I hope I can do it.” She sat back and looked at me. “The terrible thing is that I want to get reelected. All these other awful things going on all around me and I’m still thinking about my job.”

“You’re a good congresswoman. You enjoy your work and you’re actually helping people. Nothing wrong with that.”

A bittersweet smile. “Poor Natalie. She’ll probably have to be sedated by the time this is all over.”

“That’s a nice thought,” I said. “Natalie Cooper — sedated.”

As I slid out of the booth, I said, “I’ll check in with Ben in an hour or two.”

She held out her hand. I took it. Ice cold. “Maybe I’m the one who needs to be sedated, Dev.”

Chapter 17

Peter Cooper didn’t like me because I’d rejected his speeches. I didn’t expect a warm welcome and I didn’t get one.

Mandy Gilmore, his secretary, had accompanied Peter on a visit to my office a few months ago. She hadn’t liked me much that time, and now that I’d declined to use his speeches she liked me even less. She was on her headset when I opened the door. She was also riffling through some papers. She started to look up, the automatic smile already in place. When she recognized me she flipped the friendly greeting switch off instantly. She pointed to one of the green leatherette-covered chairs beneath the map of Susan’s district.

I went over and sat down and tried not to listen to her. She turned away and muttered something that contained one word I understood: “Asshole.” I was pretty sure who she was referring to.

After she hung up she gave me a sharp look and said, “I know you don’t believe in appointments, but that’s how we do things around here.”

Today she wore a frothy amber blouse and a dark skirt. She would have been attractive if she’d ever let go of her anger. But she’d found a way to channel all the sorrows of her life into her gatekeeper job, and the sullenness was taking its toll.

“I know he’s here. I saw his car. I need to talk to him now. If you won’t tell him I’m here, then I’ll walk over to his door and tell him myself.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that? Do any of you people know how hard he works? But Natalie and Susan and everybody else treat him like shit. Just like shit. No respect at all for his schedule. Do this, do that, and no warning whatsoever.”

“So which’ll it be, Mandy? I’m not trying to be an asshole here.”

“But you’re succeeding, so—”

“So I really need to see him and right now.”

She jammed a finger against a button. Peter’s disembodied voice said, “Yes?”

“Mr. Conrad is here.” She made my name a thing that dripped with revulsion.

“Well, uh, bring him in.” But he sounded doubtful. He was obviously recalling our last meeting.

I’d never encountered this before, a district office that disliked — hell, despised — the congresswoman it represented. Apparently Peter and Mandy did their jobs well, tending to the various constituent services that the voters needed. And with an economy sinking lower every day, they had to be busier than ever. I wondered if they secretly drew mustaches on Susan’s photographs after they closed up shop for the day.

“You can go in.”

“Thank you, Mandy.”

Her face wrinkled. She turned away. As I walked toward Peter’s office, I saw the room where constituents filled out forms for help. The table sat twelve, six per side. All the seats were taken and half a dozen more people were standing around a coffeepot waiting for their turn to sit down. There would be a lot of heartbreak in that room.

Peter wore a gray suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie. With his sleek dark hair and bland smile he looked like every successful male senatorial staffer in Washington, D.C.

“I’ll bet you’re having a busy day,” he said. He couldn’t quite keep the sound of pleasure from his tone. He might be witnessing the downfall of his stepsister.

“Yep.” I closed the door and walked over to one of the chairs in front of his desk. Photographs of major state pols from a generation ago, the men who would have helped him fulfill his dreams if only he’d had the guts and savvy to help himself. In the wide window behind him a 747 was just getting speed, elegant against the flat perfect blue of the sky.

“I’ll do all I can.”

“I’ll bet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I’d been thinking about the newspaper story and all the inside information the reporter had gotten from somebody close to the campaign. What about a stepbrother who was jealous of his stepsister? “Somebody talked to that reporter. Somebody who knows the campaign. Otherwise that story would never have been written.”

He’d been slouching. Now he sat up straight. He had Natalie’s eyes. He could never match her scorn. He merely looked petulant.

He gritted his teeth and sighed. “Did Susan and Ben send you here to accuse me? They can shove this up their ass. I really resent this. I can’t believe that my mother sanctioned this — you coming here.”

“Things have moved way beyond what your mother sanctioned or didn’t sanction, Peter.”

“This is total bullshit.”

But everything — the body language, the anxiety in the gaze, the too-loud voice — told me he was lying.

I gave him my best lizard smile. “I talked to the reporter, Peter. I also offered him five hundred dollars to tell me who’d ratted out the campaign. He told me it was you.” Lies can come in damned handy sometimes. He went back into his slump. He sulked. He waved a hand to dismiss me.

“I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t have to talk to anybody.”

“Mommy’s not going to be very happy when I tell her what you did. She’s put an awful lot of money into this campaign,” I said.

“You just get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back.”

“Mandy’s going to stop me, is she? Between Mandy and Mommy, you’re pretty well protected, aren’t you, son?”

At the door I said, “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?”

Fortunately for both of us, Mandy wasn’t in the reception area when I left.

Chapter 18

The press conference started promptly at three-twenty. Eighteen reporters filed into campaign headquarters and assembled in front of a rostrum we’d brought in. A good share of the office space used by the volunteers had been cleared to make more room for the press and a table had been set up with coffee and cookies. Staffers stood at the back, looking as if they’d been invaded and were just waiting for the jackboots to come back and kill them.

Susan arrived a few minutes after I did. I’d spent the earlier part of the afternoon working on our other two campaigns. Things were still going well for us, but there were problems my field people wanted me to work through with them. I spent half an hour in the gym. By the time of the press conference I’d cut my anxiety in half. I was stoned on some inexplicable form of optimism. Susan was not only going to do well, she was going to triumph.

In the staff office, she clutched my hand and said, “Wish me well.”

I kissed her on the cheek. “You’ll be fine, Susan. All you’re going to do is tell the truth. You don’t have anything to hide. That’s all you need to remember. There’s no reason to be on the defensive at all. And you’ve written a really fine statement to read.”

She knew how to write and the words would be more meaningful if they were hers, rather than something contrived for her. I’d read them and they were good, strong, and honest. She’d dressed carefully, too. Her black pants suit was softened by a single strand of pearls. The burgundy blouse complemented her skin tone and the blonde chignon she had carefully fashioned. The look was efficient but still warm.

By the time we worked our way up front, the press was in place. There was the usual rumbling about deadlines and when the hell was this thing going to start, anyway. Ben and Kristin pacified them by pointing out that we were actually starting ten minutes earlier than we’d promised.

“Good afternoon,” Susan said after stepping up to the microphone. By now there was a small bank of microphones from various TV and radio stations mounted on the rostrum. She’d always been comfortable with the press. “Thank you for coming here on such short notice. I know there is a story about me you’d like clarified, so I’ll try to do that without keeping you too long. I know you’re in a hurry to get your stories filed.”

She glanced at me and then said, “And I’ll take questions after my statement.”

And so the beast set to feeding. Recorders were turned on, cameras focused, old-fashioned reporters’ notebooks scribbled on as she began to read her statement.

“Twenty years ago I was a very different person than I am today. I was just out of college and living pretty selfishly. When I look back I’m not very fond of the young woman I was. One day I learned that I was pregnant. The man I was with wanted me to abort the child, and I have to admit that that was my first inclination, too. But something stopped me. I’d never really thought about abortion in a personal way. I was all in favor of a woman’s right to choose — as I am today. But somehow it wasn’t right for me. The father of my child and I went our separate ways. I had the child. But over the course of the next month I realized that I had too many personal problems to be a decent mother for my son. Maybe I was just being selfish; maybe I just didn’t want the boy to interfere with my lifestyle. I took him to some nuns I knew at a convent near where I was staying. We talked for a long time, and the sisters decided that it would be best for the boy if they found a new home for him. It was a terrible experience for both my son and me. About a week after the nuns had taken him, I changed my mind in the middle of the night. I went to the convent. I was hysterical. I wanted my son back. But it was too late. Arrangements for a new family were under way. And I’m sure I didn’t look very stable pounding on the convent doors at three in the morning. There hasn’t been a day in my life when I haven’t longed to know about my son. And there hasn’t been a night when I don’t wish I had kept him and raised him and let him know how much I loved him. And that’s why I’m so happy to say that he’s here in Aldyne and that we’ve been seeing each other and talking things through. My son’s name is Bobby. He’s married and I’m happy to say that his wife Gwen is pregnant. So not only am I a mom, I’m also about to become a grandmother. And I’m so grateful to the family that adopted him and gave him a good home.”

I have to say that the press received all this respectfully. Yes, they gave her a respectful three or four seconds between the time she finished reading her statement and the time they started trying to rip apart what she said. They wanted to study the entrails for portents. But from the smiles Ben and Kristin were directing my way, I knew Susan had done very, very well.

Came the questions, came the answers: No, there was no point in naming the father. No, Bobby had not decided if he’d be staying in Aldyne. Yes, the friends of hers who mattered were happy for her. No, she didn’t think this revelation would hurt her, and if it did she felt she had done the right thing, anyway — she was proud to acknowledge her son, she wasn’t trying to hide it. No, there was no reason for Bobby to be interviewed right now — maybe later — but for now they were just getting to know each other. No, she didn’t want to say anything more about Bobby at this time; if he wanted to come forward and talk to them, that would be his decision, not theirs. No, as she thought she’d made clear, she hadn’t changed her mind on pro-choice — the decision she’d made twenty years ago was a personal one, not meant to make any kind of political statement.

All this took forty-three minutes. I kept shooting my cuff to keep track of the time. According to my watch, we had two minutes to go. That was the time we’d given the press. It was like sitting on a two-point lead in a basketball game. We needed to rush to the clock before any reporter lobbed a hand grenade.

Said hand grenade exploded with one minute to go. A pert young woman with horn-rimmed glasses and a stylish brunette bob had come in about ten minutes ago. I didn’t know who she was or what station she was with. All I knew was that she had a camerawoman with her and that she was skillful at angling her way through the clutch of reporters. She hadn’t asked a question until now, so Susan said, “Yes, Donna.”

I had no idea who Donna was, but I was about to find out.

“The police are looking for a young man named Bobby Flaherty. They believe he has information about the murder of a man named Craig Donovan. Congresswoman Cooper, is Bobby Flaherty the son you’ve been talking about?”

This would be one for Donna’s reel. TV reporters keep a tape of their best moments. They like to show a mix of the sentimental (kitten stories) and the bombastic (standing in front of a crooked businessman’s door and demanding that he come out and answer some questions). This was a big moment for Donna’s reel.

Susan’s eyes went wide and wild — panic. She bumped into the podium. Ben started to lunge forward, then pulled himself back. He had to leave her alone. If he rescued her in some way, he’d only make things worse.

The expected rumble worked through the crowd. Donna’s competitors would be pissed that she’d gotten the story before they did. A few of them were on their cells, calling their newsrooms for updates on the murder.

Susan took a deep breath, picked up her water glass, took a prim sip, set the glass down again, and said, “Yes, Bobby Flaherty is my son. I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to, Donna. But I hope you and the others here will forgive me for leaving now. As Bobby’s mother, I want to find out what’s going on.”

“Is there any possibility that he might be involved in this murder?” another reporter yelled.

Susan’s gaze was hard now. “No chance whatsoever.” And then she was turning away from the podium and they were shouting questions at her retreating form.

A handful of reporters tried to follow her back to the staff office, but Ben and Kristin and I moved fast enough to form a line that blocked them.

“Fun’s over,” Ben said. His voice was thin, as if he had trouble speaking.

Kristin glanced at me, shook her head. A camera caught her troubled expression and immortalized it. A telling image on the six o’clock news — Congresswoman Cooper staffer shocked at the breaking news about Bobby Flaherty.

“C’mon now,” Ben said to the remaining reporters. We started herding them over to the door.

“You’re Dev Conrad, right?”

“Yep.”

The man asking the question aimed his microphone at me. “Did you get any warning about this?”

“We’ll be issuing a statement very soon.”

“Maybe the congresswoman doesn’t know as much about her son as she thinks.”

“We’ll be issuing a statement very soon.”

“Any chance she might withdraw?”

“Any chance I could get you to leave?”

“You getting tough?”

“No. You asked me a question. Then I asked you one.”

“So you won’t say anything on the record.”

But we were at the door now. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go have a very strong cup of coffee. I wish we had enough to go around, but I guess we’re all out.” Behind me I heard Ben laugh.

The reporter and his microphone finally left.

The volunteers had collected in a far corner. They resembled the stunned people you see immediately after tornados, intense distress that as yet they couldn’t put into words. Hopes and dreams were collapsing, and they knew they were helpless to do anything about it.

Ben and I went back to the staff office. Kristin was alone there. She sat at her desk punching numbers into the phone with violent authority.

Ben and I listened.

Kristin spoke into the receiver: “Nick Rainey, please. This is Kristin Daly. Thank you.” She cupped the phone and said to me: “The news director at Channel 4. He has a son-in-law who’s a detective. His daughter is a big supporter of Susan’s.” Then: “Hi, Nick. I don’t have to tell you why I’m calling. We just heard. I wondered if you could give me some background. All we got is that the police are looking for Bobby Flaherty to question him.”

He spoke for a couple of minutes. All we heard was Kristin saying, “Yes” and “I see” and “Oh.” Finally she said, “Thanks, Nick. I really appreciate this.”

She turned her chair to face us. “Seems this Craig Donovan was sleeping with this local woman. She found him dead in his room. He’d been shot twice. The police think he was killed sometime last night.”

“What the hell is going on?” Ben said. “This is crazy.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Just stay focused on the money. Monica and Donovan were partners in blackmailing Susan. Wyatt delivers the money to Monica. Donovan wants it all for himself. He kills Monica.”

“Then who killed Donovan?”

“Somebody who knew about the money and figured out that Donovan must have it. This person waits until Donovan is alone and then goes in, kills him, and takes the money.”

“A quarter of a million dollars,” Kristin said.

“Tax-free,” Ben said.

“The stranglehold.”

“What stranglehold, Dev?”

“Natalie’s money. That’s why Wyatt and Manning, and even Susan to a degree, stay with her. They need her money. And she extracts her fee by humiliating and degrading them. But this time it was Donovan who had Natalie in the stranglehold. This time she got to know what it feels like.”

“Don’t try and make me feel sorry for Natalie,” Kristin said. “I don’t have that much empathy in me.”

“I want to talk to Donovan’s girlfriend,” I said as I walked over and took my coat from the coat tree. “I’ll stay in touch, but I probably won’t be back for a while.”

“I’ll get a statement ready, and I’ll read it to you over the phone for your changes.”

“Thanks, Ben.”

“I’m still thinking about Natalie being at somebody else’s mercy. I’m a terrible person, I know, Dev. But I enjoy imagining how miserable she must be.”

“I’m just as bad as you are, Kristin,” I said, pulling on my coat. “The only good thing in all this is that maybe it’ll teach Natalie a little humility.”

When I got to the door, Kristin laughed and said, “Yeah, right.”

The Stay-Rite hadn’t changed, still the stucco-cracked, window-cracked hellhole it would always be. I wondered if Heather’s black eye had faded any.

I parked my rental in the nearest slot I could find. There were still several official vehicles taking up the other spaces and uniforms and forensic people combing the littered parking lot.

A battered SUV pulled in next to me, one of those despondent metal animals that would soon be laid to rest in a scrap yard. It had been red once, but now it was a pinkish color. And when the side door opened the hinges made a noise not unlike a scream.

Out stepped one of those ragged little women you always see in church basements where free food is given to the indigent. She wore a rumpled white Western hat, a Toby Keith T-shirt, and a pair of jeans that were ripped from age, not fashion. The sallow unhealthy skin and the desperate brown gaze made guessing her age impossible. She was likely a skinny, beaten forty going on seventy.

She had been facing me without looking at me. She went back to the SUV and reached in and withdrew a child of maybe three or four, a chubby but pretty kid. She took the little girl’s hand, and they moved to the walk running in front of the motel.

The husband appeared then and he was a perfect match for his wife. The same unhealthy grayness of skin, the same forlorn look in the eyes. His T-shirt was from NASCAR. His Western hat was flat and black. And when he started to walk it was shocking and grotesque to see. He limped with such violence that most of his body was jerked about when he moved. The woman, still holding the little girl’s hand, went over and slid her arm through her husband’s. And it was the sort of thing that could break your goddamned heart because it was so simple and loving and said so much about their years together. They were playing a shitty hand, one the dark Lovecraftian gods were probably still laughing about, but they were bound up and redeemed by their loyalty.

The little girl smiled at me as they crossed in front of my windshield. I waved back. Then her mother saw me and smiled, too.

I didn’t have any problem finding Detective Kapoor. She appeared to be the only Indian woman in sight. She stood just inside the yellow crime-scene tape talking to a uniform. When she saw me she nodded in my direction. I doubted that she’d tell me much, but I waited her out.

The crowd was sparse. From what I’d been able to gather on the radio reports coming over here, the body had been discovered three hours ago. People had most likely drifted back to work. The crowd seemed to be residents here. A number of them stood in front of open motel doors. A baby bawled. A wind carried the scent of forensic chemicals from inside the murder room.

When Kapoor walked to the edge of the tape, she had her sleek head attached to a cell phone. She was laughing, but as soon as she clicked off the laugh died and she frowned at me.

I stood on my side of the tape.

“Unless you’ve come to answer my questions, I don’t know why you’re here, Mr. Conrad. You’ve been no help in the death of Monica Davies, and I’m sure you’ll be no help with this one.”

“You’ve already decided that Bobby Flaherty is guilty of this one, too.”

She wore a dusky gray silk jacket and black skirt. The white blouse revealed small upscale breasts. “There is a connection between these two. As a citizen, I’d think you’d want to help us find out what that connection is.”

“As I said, you’ve convicted him already.”

“He’s wanted for questioning.” The dark eyes seemed amused now. “Just because he was seen at Monica Davies’s room on the night of her murder and now we learn that he had several physical altercations with his father — why do you think I’ve convicted him already?”

I tried not to look surprised. I probably didn’t pull it off.

A woman in a white lab coat appeared in the doorway of Donovan’s room. “Detective Kapoor, would you come in here for a minute?”

“If you decide to be honest with me, Mr. Conrad, you can get hold of me day or night.”

With that she was gone. In another situation I would have stayed to admire the elegant way she walked back to the room. For now, curiosity triumphed over idle lust. I needed to find Heather, the beautician who’d been staying with Donovan.

Hair Fare was located in a strip mall between a video shop and a pawn shop. One step inside I knew that this wasn’t a place for men. Four women under hair dryers and four women in barber chairs gaped at me as if I were something rarely seen in this shop. The odors of the sprays and oils and lotions suffused my nostrils. I counted three Chicago Bears calendars and four Bears pennants.

The place was filled with posters and counter displays for hair products. At a line of sinks against the back wall a woman was getting her hair washed. The beauticians wore their own clothes, no kind of uniforms at all. The last of them to look up from cutting hair was Heather. When she saw me her body jerked, as if she was going to bolt. “Sorry,” said the older woman who was clearly Heather’s sister. “We just cut for women here. Cost Cutters is just two blocks down.”

“I’d like to see Heather when she’s free. My name’s Dev Conrad.”

“Oh, yeah?” She was chewing gum. At the mention of Heather, she cracked it. She was heavier than Heather and not as pretty. She wore something that resembled a bouffant hairstyle and was dyed an orangish red. In her Bears sweatshirt and jeans she looked ready for a tailgater. She angled her head back to Heather and said, “You hear, this guy wants to see you.”

“Well, I don’t want to see him.”

Sister smiled at me. The customers were intrigued by the potential for some nasty fun. “My sister’s got a bad disposition.”

“Really? I hardly noticed that.”

A number of the customers laughed.

“I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to,” Heather said.

Sister said, “She drop you, did she? You’re better dressed than most of the bums she hangs out with. She should’ve hung on to you. She’s always trying to find a rich one. You look like you might get lucky someday.”

“I hope that’s coming up soon.”

She had an amazing female smile. “I didn’t mean to give you a bad time. It’s just that my little sister never stops getting into trouble.”

“I don’t want to talk to him and you can’t make me.”

“I think he’s cute,” said a woman in one of the barber’s chairs. Three or four others laughed.

I was in a world of women and I didn’t know the rules. Should I press the issue or just go away?

“I’m trying to help somebody who’s in trouble, Heather. I need to talk to you.”

“He’s talking about the kid that killed Craig,” Heather said from down the row, silver scissors poised to snip away at the garishly dyed red hair of her customer.

Sister said, “Didn’t surprise me when somebody killed him. Man who hits women has got it coming. My sister’s too dumb to understand that.”

A woman in one of the chairs said, “I told my husband if he ever lays a hand on me I’m gone for good and I’m taking the savings account with me.”

“I wish I could convince my next-door neighbor of that,” another woman said. “The son of a bitch she’s married to is always hittin’ her.”

“You a friend of this kid Heather is talking about?” Sister asked.

“He’s twenty. His wife is pregnant. He isn’t really a kid.”

“Heather likes ’em in their forties.” Sister smiled. “That’s why she thinks this guy is a kid.” She glanced back at Heather again. “You get done with Shirley’s hair there, you go in the back room and talk to this man.”

“You don’t have no right to boss me around like that.”

“He’s tryin’ to help somebody, honey.” There was an odd sweetness to her tone, as if she’d spent years hoping that her little sister would change her ways.

Sister pointed to a row of chairs lined across the front window. “There’re some magazines there for you to read and you’re welcome to help yourself to the coffee. She should be done in fifteen minutes or so.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised at her largesse.

“All she can give you is a few minutes, though, Mr. Conrad. We’re real busy today.”

Heather scowled at me every thirty seconds or so as she cut her customer’s hair. She seemed a lot more interested in me than her customer. This woman might end up with a very strange hairdo.

I tried reading an issue of Cosmopolitan, but I could only slog through a couple of the articles. Whatever happened to feminism? This was all man-pleasing stuff. I remembered reading my smart-ass uncle’s magazines when I was in my teens. When he’d been in his teens, National Lampoon was at its height. They did a parody issue of Cosmopolitan and one of the articles was titled “Ten Ways to Decorate Your Uterine Wall.” The magazine hadn’t changed much.

“Mr. Conrad.”

I’d switched to an elderly issue of Time and was engrossed in their predictions about the next election. Looked like Giuliani was a shoo-in for el presidente. I put the magazine down and looked up to see that Heather’s customer was finished and walking toward the cash register. Sister was letting me know that Heather was ready for me. Or had damned well better be.

“This is really bullshit.” As she spoke, Heather was sweeping up the floor around her chair. Sister ran a clean, tight shop. “The guy’s a jerk.” The ladies were getting a full measure of daytime drama right here in the beauty shop.

“You’re the jerk,” Sister said. “I told you not to get involved with that bastard.”

By now I was getting used to the idea that the argument was public business. This whole salon was sort of like one big family. The other kids obviously sided with Sister.

“Thanks,” I said as I walked past Sister toward a closed door in the back of the place. When I reached Heather’s chair I stopped. She glared at me and shook her head. Then she gave up and flounced to the door, opened it, and disappeared inside.

It was a storeroom and office combined. There was a desk, a table for a computer and printer, a noisy refrigerator, and boxes piled floor to ceiling. Heather sat behind the desk and lit a cigarette. So much for the No Smoking law.

“This is really bullshit.”

“You said that.”

“That Bobby’s an asshole. He came to the room three or four times. Craig always made me leave. I’d wait outside. I couldn’t hear their words, but I could hear their voices. Bobby was always yelling. My opinion is that he snuck in and killed him. I want to see that little prick go to prison.”

“And you told the police that?”

Exhaled ice-blue smoke. “Damn right, that’s what I told them.”

“Did anybody else ever visit Donovan while you were there? That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

“Didn’t the police ask you the same question?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“What did you tell them?”

“I didn’t tell them anything because it didn’t matter. Bobby killed him and that’s all there is to it.”

“So somebody else came there, too?”

Another ice-blue stream of smoke. “Bobby killed him. Two nights me ’n’ Craig were really getting along good, and then Bobby barges in and starts yelling and ruins the whole thing. Craig was in a shitty mood afterward. He gave me the black eye one of those nights. I blame Bobby for that. He had another fight with him the night before last.”

A knock on the door. Sister peeked in. “Just wanted to see how it’s going.”

“He’s tryin’ to tell me that Bobby didn’t kill Craig when I know damned well he did.”

Sister said, “She being any help?”

“Not really. She wants to see Bobby get charged with the murder whether he did it or not.” Heather watched me with the fleshy face of a bellicose infant. “I’m pretty sure somebody else came to see Donovan while she was there, but she won’t tell me who it was.”

“That true, Heather?”

“How the hell would I know who came to see him? I wasn’t there all the time.”

Sister frowned. “I’m sorry, Mr. Conrad. She’s got three more appointments back to back. Best I can do is give you a few more minutes.” She closed the door. I listened to her walk back up front.

“He was gonna marry me.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yeah, for your fucking information, I really did. He told me he’d come into a lot of money. A lot of money. He said he had these friends way down in Mexico, where the drug people would leave him alone. That’s where he was gonna take me — until Bobby killed him.”

Then she was up and charging around the side of the desk. She went right for the door. She had it open before I could stand up. “You heard my sister. We’re real busy. Now, you quit botherin’ me or I’m gonna call that detective, that colored one or whatever she is.”

“She’s Indian.”

“Well, I’m gonna call her and tell her you’re botherin’ me. I’ll bet she won’t like that at all.”

She walked out front. By the time I crossed the threshold, she was at her barber chair, feigning profound interest in her scissors.

I was on parade as I walked up to the cash register. As I passed Sister I said, “Thanks for trying to help.”

“She’s some piece of work, isn’t she?”

A couple of the customers laughed.

As I opened the front door, two women whispered behind me. I didn’t pick up on the words but I heard the giggles.

The motel had a central office and two wings that formed a V. After the Oklahoma City bombing we became aware of shadowy men who moved across the country staying in motels like this one, vague members of even vaguer groups that hated the government and hoped to destroy it. The feds began to miss the days when most of these people could be found in racist or seditionist compounds and were much easier to keep track of. Now they were scattered and impossible to track, much like the days before and during the Civil War when seditionists were hiding in the mazes of lodging houses in Washington, D.C., and other Northern cities.

Gwen had given me the room number. It was second from the end on the west half of the V. The newest car I could see was at least fifteen years old. A baby cried in one room, in another a TV preacher shouted Bible words, and in a third a woman wept. I knocked on Gwen’s door. She opened it immediately.

She wore another faded maternity top. This one was a kind of puce color. She’d put on makeup and combed her hair. The gamine face was somber. “He isn’t here, Mr. Conrad.”

I’d hoped to get something helpful from Heather before coming out here. Something that would help make my case when I talked to Bobby — but nothing.

“You know the police are looking for him. And there isn’t any time for this, Gwen. He’s in real trouble. Now let me in.”

“I told you, Mr. Conrad, he isn’t—”

“Gwen, listen. He’s inside and he’s in trouble. I’m trying to put this whole thing together. He can help me and maybe I can help him.”

“Oh, Mr. Conrad...”

“Screw it, let him come in.” A male voice, young, despondent.

“You sure, honey?”

“Am I sure? Of course I’m not sure. I’m not sure of a thing right now. But you might as well let him in.” Hard to know which was the dominant tone, the fear or the self-pity.

“He didn’t kill anybody, Mr. Conrad. He really didn’t.”

I followed her into a room that was a coffin of old griefs and old fears, the sort of place the human animal goes to hide out like any other animal that is being chased by yesterday. The room was painted mustard yellow. There was a double bed that appeared to slant from both ends into the middle. The ugly brown bedspread once had merry nubs on it. Most of the nubs were gone. There was a bathroom. The doorknob was missing, so all that remained was a hole. The tiles on the room floor curled upward in places. I couldn’t be sure, but tiny pieces on the floor looked like rat droppings.

Bobby Flaherty sat in the only chair, a beaten armchair with so many stains they looked like part of the design. He was a handsome kid in a sullen way. He wore a black sweatshirt, jeans, and blue running shoes. Gwen closed the door behind me. “You be nice to him, Bobby. He wants to help us.”

Bobby added to the haze of smoke in the room by tamping out another cigarette from the pack on his lap. He dug out a long blue plastic lighter and snicked it into flame. He blew out enough smoke to hide behind. He just watched me, animal-alert, assessing a potential enemy.

“You call the police before you came over here?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you.”

“You be nice,” Gwen snapped. She might have been talking to her snarling dog. “Tell him you appreciate how he’s helped me. You promised you would.”

He laughed but in a tender way. “Honey, I do appreciate it. But I want to make sure he didn’t call the cops. Is that all right?”

“He said he didn’t call the police. And I believe him.”

He stared at me through the blue haze. “All right, I believe him.” Then: “I didn’t kill anybody.”

“All right. But you were seen running from Monica Davies’s room. And there’s a witness who said you’ve had several fistfights with your father.”

“Heather,” he said. “He could really pick ’em.”

The east wall hummed with TV dialogue from the room next door. I sat on the edge of the bed.

“How did your father get back in touch with you?”

“Why?”

“Because your mother is very worried about you. And so is Jim Shapiro and so am I. You’ve got to face this, Bobby. I’m trying real hard to believe you’re innocent, but I have to know what happened, starting with your father coming back into your life.”

“If you don’t tell him, Bobby, I will. You need to let him help us.”

Bobby’s glance met hers. He sighed and looked back at me. “I got adopted out to the Flahertys when I was little, that’s where I picked up the name. I didn’t know anything about my old man until a year ago. He managed to track me down.” The smile was bitter. “He was a con man. Did some time in Joliet for running a scam in Chicago, so he wouldn’t have had much trouble getting through the adoption system and finding out where I lived. He gave them a bullshit story that they went for. He was very good at bullshit.” There was nothing but contempt in his voice for his father. “But I’m probably being hypocritical. I did a little time in county myself. The six longest months of my life. Got drunk and got into a fight and beat the guy up pretty bad. By then the Flahertys didn’t want me around anymore and I couldn’t blame them. I’d been in trouble a lot in school and they just couldn’t deal with me anymore. All the time I was in county I kept thinking of how good they’d been to me and how I’d hurt them. I was a real asshole.”

“But you’re not anymore, honey.”

This smile was warm. “She’s my number-one fan.”

“What did your father say to you when he found you?”

He fired up another cigarette. As a card-carrying liberal I should have whipped out my CD about the dangers of secondhand smoke, especially around pregnant women, but I decided I’d be selfish and push him for more information instead.

“He gave me a line of crap about how sorry he was he’d never contacted me and how he wanted to make it all up to me and how he’d had some rough times — the way he told it, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and he’d made the mistake of hanging around the wrong kind of people and he’d had a bad childhood, all the usual bullshit — and that he wanted to help me make some money so I could get the chance in life that he’d never had. I just sort of watched him — I actually thought it was kind of funny. The way he was trying to work me, I mean. I think he actually thought I believed everything he was saying about wanting to be my old man now and how we’d hang together the rest of our lives.”

“He scared me. There was just something about him.” Gwen had her hands pressed protectively against her stomach as she said this. “And I hated what he got Bobby involved in.”

Bobby’s shrug hinted at my reaction to her words. Bobby was smart. Bobby was tough. Nobody involved him in anything — he involved himself.

“The blackmail?”

“Yeah.”

“His idea was to present you as proof that you were his son with Susan Cooper?”

“Right. We were going to make a lot of money. And the way he figured it, we’d keep on making money as long as she kept running for office.”

“I was totally against it,” Gwen said. “By that time I hated that man. And now look what’s happened.”

“Why did you go to Monica’s room?”

His eyes found his wife’s. “I was going to tell her to forget it. That I didn’t want any part of what she and my old man were up to. I wasn’t getting anywhere with my old man, so I thought I’d try Monica. Gwen really leaned on me about it. She said that she didn’t want to bring our baby into the world this way. When I got there Monica was already dead. I ran and that’s when somebody saw me. And as soon as Mr. Shapiro got me out of jail, I went to my old man’s to tell him the same thing — that I didn’t want my name mixed up in it, that I was going to have a kid now. He didn’t care.”

“How did Larson get involved in this? He said that Monica worked this by herself.”

“I don’t know. He just started showing up and one day we got into it. All I knew was that the money was coming from Natalie. And Monica was handling that. Larson wanted to know all the details.”

“Bobby, do you have any idea who killed Donovan and Monica?”

He ran a rough hand across his face. “No. When that Indian detective was firing questions at me, I kept wishing that I knew a name to give her. But I don’t.”

“You need to turn yourself in, Bobby.”

He glared at Gwen. “I told you that he’d say this.” His gaze on me was no less harsh. “No way, man. We can raise our baby in Mexico. Start a life there.”

“You read much about Mexico lately, Bobby?”

“You mean all the drug gangs? I know how to handle myself. And I know how to stay out of trouble.”

At any other time I would have smiled. The life he’d described as his own had been nothing but trouble, ending in this motel room wanted for two murders.

Gwen said, “I don’t want to move to Mexico. But I don’t want Bobby to give himself up, either. I might never see him again.” She put her head down and started crying softly. Bobby got up and went over and sat next to her on the bed. He held her and I felt good for both of them. He was troubled and half crazed, but he knew enough to care for the one person in his life whose love was clean and true.

I made an effort to sound gentle. “You can’t run, Bobby. There’s no place to go. And I doubt you have any money.”

Gwen sobbed, “You can’t expect him to turn himself in!”

“Shapiro’s a good lawyer. Running will just make things worse.”

“I won’t let him turn himself in! I’ll never see him again!” Gwen sobbed even louder.

“There’s no other choice right now, none.”

But Bobby’s expression had softened. His gaze was more sorrowful than belligerent. He took her to him and held her close and kissed the top of her head. I hoped that my daughter’s someday man would be this loving. Then he started slowly shaking his head, staring at the wall. He must have realized that I was right. Mexico was a pipe dream. And where would he go if he stayed in the States?

I had my own realization to face. There was no way any of this would stay out of the press for long. Police departments are filled with snitches eager to call reporters. And given Susan’s liberal record, they’d likely be eager to help Duffy. Not all of them, but most of them. I hoped that when the news broke, Duffy would be sensible enough to go out and get drunk for at least a day. I would. As for our campaign, we’d be playing defense right up until the election. If neither Susan nor Natalie had anything to do with the murders, the scandal would settle on her bearing a child she’d put up for adoption in her wild days. In recent years some people had been reelected after being outed as wife beaters, check forgers, hooker lovers. The only thing in our favor was that this was an old story. And being cynical, if we could put Susan and Bobby in a loving interview together, maybe we could get lucky and find sentiment on our side.

Bobby said, “Call Mr. Shapiro, I guess.”

“No!” Gwen cried. She was coming apart and I felt like hell for being a part of it. Then she lay back on the bed and covered her face with her hands.

I slid my cell phone out of my pocket. Bobby held Gwen even tighter. Then she was struggling up and heading to the bathroom. Moments later she began to vomit.

Chapter 19

When the police station came into view, Bobby made a grunting sound as if he’d been punched in the belly. “This might be the last day I ever spend outside of jail. Maybe Gwennie’s right.”

“I don’t believe that.” The day had turned cold and windy; the light rental rocked as wind gripped it. We had stashed Gwen in a nice warm hotel room.

“Yeah? And what’s that supposed to mean to me? You’re in this because of some stupid political campaign. I’m in this for my life.”

I pulled into the parking lot and shut down the motor. I sat there silent for a long moment, then said, “Bobby, I’ll tell you what. You think I don’t want to help you and Gwen, how about this? You open that door and start running. I’ll give you two hours before I let the police know about any of this. How’s that sound?”

He fell back against the seat. He was still strapped in. His eyes closed. From what I could tell, a sob had caught in his throat. “I should never have listened to my old man. I suppose I did because I’m just like him.”

“No, you’re not. That’s bullshit and you know it. The way you treat Gwen, the way you love her — from what I know of your old man, that wasn’t him at all. And you backed out. You told him that and you went to see Monica to tell her that.” I hesitated to say this because I wasn’t sure it was true. “You take after your mother.”

He didn’t speak for a time. He brought his head up and stared out the side window. A few cars passed, their exhaust silver ghosts in the daylight. A black-and-white squad car pulled into the lot and went on past us to the back of the station where a number of other black-and-whites were parked. Wind came then and grasped the rental from below and rocked it back and forth like a boat. In the glass, Bobby was wiping his tears with his fingers and taking deep breaths. “You trust that detective?” He was back to looking at me again.

“Kapoor? Yeah. For a cop, I mean. She’s got her job to do and we’ve got ours. She’ll try and nail you and we’ll try to show her that she’s wrong. Jim Shapiro knows what he’s doing.”

“I get the feeling you do, too.”

“Well, maybe. I hope so. If this thing isn’t going our way by tomorrow afternoon, I’m sending for a private detective we work with in Chicago. He’s relentless.”

A second black-and-white swept in and headed for the rear of the building.

“I really want to open this door and just start running.”

“I know you do.”

“And you wouldn’t stop me?”

“No.”

“Poor Gwennie.”

“Think of what you running would do to her, Bobby. She doesn’t want to think of you in jail, but think of the nightmares she’d have if you were on the run. Not knowing where you were, how you were surviving. Always worried that you’d draw a bad cop some night and he’d kill you just for sport. Think of that, Bobby. Think of what it’d do to your wife and what it’d do to your baby.”

He opened the door and angled around in the seat as if he were going to get out. Then he just sat there. The wind rocked the car again. The cold chased all the heat out of the rental.

He got out then and just stood there, gaping around as if he’d awakened in a new realm. Then he ducked his head back in and said, “C’mon. We might as well get this bullshit over with.” Then: “Think you could pick me up a couple packs of smokes and drop them off? I’ve only got about five or six left in this pack. Generics’d be fine.”

“What kind do you like when you can afford them?”

“Regular Winstons, I guess.”

“I’ll get you a couple of those.”

He nodded and withdrew his head.

A quick minute later we were walking through the front doors of the police station.

It was the day of weeping women.

We passed three young black men watching us suspiciously just inside the doors as we walked up to the information counter. Behind us we heard sobbing. In the corner where I’d waited this morning a young black woman was trying to comfort a sobbing middle-aged woman I guessed was her mother. They both wore Bears jackets and jeans. Large cheap purses squatted on the floor next to them like waiting pets. Her sobs were so sharp I felt them physically. Helpless proximity to suffering is a form of suffering itself.

“May I help you?” This was a female cop in a light-blue uniform shirt. She was built like a wrestler and had a voice to match.

“I’d like to talk to a detective. Preferably Detective Kapoor.”

“What’s this about, sir?”

“I’d rather discuss that with the detective.”

“Well, Kapoor — she’s in court right now.”

“Well, then, whatever detective’s on duty, I guess.”

“And your name?”

“Dev Conrad.”

“And yours?” Her eyes met Bobby’s.

He mumbled, “Bobby Flaherty.”

The hard blue eyes bloomed with recognition. “You go sit down over there. I’ll have a detective out here right away.”

We went to the waiting area and sat down. The older woman had quit crying and had now folded her hands in her lap. Her lips told me she was making a silent prayer. She was worn beyond her years, sweat sheening her dark skin. It wasn’t hot in here. The sweat came from panic and terror. I’d caught just enough of her conversation to recognize that one of her children was in one of the interrogation rooms and that he was in the kind of trouble that would send him away for long years that only his mother would worry about.

Bobby closed his eyes and set his head against the wall. His sighs came out as daggers. His jaw muscles were busy and his shoes danced in time to music only he could hear.

The detective who appeared resembled the broker my firm used. I put his age at late thirties. He wore a good blue suit, a quiet blue-on-blue tie, his thinning hair was cut military-school short, and he proffered a smile that said he was happy to meet us, even though “us” included a young man who just might have popped two people.

“My name’s Detective Brian Courtney. Why don’t we take a walk down the hall over here and I’ll hunt up some coffee for us.”

The officer at the information desk watched Bobby with her upper lip curled up. She was probably around fifty and hadn’t yet acclimated herself to the public-relations approach cops took these days, at least when there were witnesses around.

Courtney put us in a small beige room with five folding chairs and a five-foot-long folding table. We were being videotaped — standard operating procedure. “I’ll get us that coffee.”

Courtney came back with three paper cups of vending-machine coffee. He did this while opening and closing the doors. When he set them down, he said, “It tastes like shit, but hey, it’s warm, right?” Then he did Police 101. “Bobby, let’s get the basic facts down fast, and then we can go back for the details.”

“What facts?” Bobby snapped.

“Basically, how you killed them — the Davies woman and your father.”

Bobby lurched from his chair. I was sitting next to him and grabbed his arm and forced him to sit back down.

“We didn’t come here to confess,” I said. “Bobby didn’t have anything to do with those murders. There’s a warrant out for his arrest. All we’re doing is honoring the warrant. And in a few minutes Jim Shapiro will be here, and I don’t plan to say anything else about the case until he’s here.”

“Jim Shapiro. Must be nice to have the kind of money it takes to hire him.”

“He says it’s pro bono. He believes, as do I, that Bobby didn’t have anything to do with the crimes.”

“Pro bono. Jim must have bought his allotment of classic MGs for this year. He collects them, you know.”

“Yeah, I heard they were going to pass a law against that. It must’ve gotten through, huh?”

It was at that moment that he discovered me. I’d just been some nuisance bastard dragging a double-murderer into his clutches, but now I was as much his enemy as Bobby was. Now I was real and he didn’t like me at all.

“Exactly what is your interest in this?” His fake cordiality had a nasty edge to it now.

“I’m a friend of his wife’s.”

“Oh? And how does that work?”

“It ‘works’ that I’m a friend of his wife’s.”

“Uh-huh. Are you a lawyer, Mr. Conrad?”

“No, I’m not. I’m a political consultant.”

You could see all the computing going on behind the robot eyes. “I see. And you’re working in this area?”

“My firm is. For the Cooper campaign.”

The smile was deadly. “Congresswoman Cooper. I wouldn’t advertise that in this building if I was you.”

A knock interrupted our sparring. A voice said: “I’ve got Jim Shapiro out here, Lieutenant. All right if he comes in?”

“Fine. Send him in.”

Shapiro came in like a bullet. He looked ready for court in a custom-cut gray pinstriped suit. He carried a briefcase and a cup of 7-Eleven coffee. He smelled of masculine cologne and cold air. He set the briefcase on the table and nodded to me. He didn’t look at Bobby; instead his eyes focused on Courtney. “You’re not nearly as pretty as Kapoor, Brian.”

“Kapoor is in court. I got ahold of her. She’s on her way. For now here I am and here you are and now that you’re here I don’t know exactly why our friend Mr. Conrad has to sit in.”

Shapiro’s tone was icy. “He did you and the police force a big favor, Lieutenant. This was successfully resolved without anybody being injured.” The implication being that Courtney might be disappointed about that fact.

Courtney shrugged. “Whatever. I’d be just as happy if he left.”

I was on my feet before Jim Shapiro could say anything. Bobby watched me with the eyes of a child who knew he was about to be deserted.

“It’s been a pleasure, Lieutenant.”

“Right back at you, Mr. Conrad.”

Shapiro glanced at me, then at Courtney, then back at me. He laughed. “I take it you two aren’t in danger of falling in love, huh?”

“He works with Congresswoman Cooper.”

“Oh, yes, the dreaded Congresswoman Cooper. Hell, Brian, I’m one of her supporters, too.”

“Right. But Mr. Conrad here is actually in the business of getting her elected.”

“Thanks, Jim.” I reached over and put my hand on Bobby’s shoulder. His eyes were despondent; his mouth was crimped. “Jim’ll call me when this is over, Bobby. We’re going to take care of this. I promise you.”

I knew I was amusing Courtney. He was taking great pleasure in my frustration.

Shapiro patted me on the back. I went to the door. I thought of looking back, taking a last shot at Courtney. But what would be the point?

I opened the door and stepped into the hall. A friendly face above a blue uniform said, “There’s some fresh coffee in the break room down the hall. You won’t have to drink any more of that machine crap.”

“Thanks,” I said. I had a fair share of police friends in Chicago. Nice to know that the Aldyne police had at least one member who decided that civility wasn’t an admission of weakness.

But all I wanted was to get out of the station house. My footsteps snapped down the polished floor of the corridor and around a corner. Detective Kapoor, sheathed in a sleek blue suit, had probably been checking something at the front desk before heading to the interrogation room.

When she saw me, her dark eyes gleamed with humor. “Good to see you again, Mr. Conrad.”

“I just met your Detective Courtney.”

The smile now touched her rich red lips. “Careful what you say. He hears everything.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. The problem is he’s hearing things that aren’t true. Bobby Flaherty didn’t kill anybody.”

“And you’re going to do our department the favor of telling us who did?”

“Maybe even better. How about you tell me since you’re the police and I’m not?”

The polite smile left the perfectly constructed face. “Detective Courtney and I have put together a good preliminary case against your young friend, Mr. Conrad. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop looking for other suspects. But it does mean that we’ve got good sound reasons to make him our chief suspect, at least for the time being.”

She started walking past me before I could say anything. “Have a good day, Mr. Conrad.” Not favoring me with a look back as she spoke.

Then I was outside in a lashing wind and hurrying to my rental.

Chapter 20

Sitting in a Starbucks, I used my cell phone to call Heather at her sister’s beauty shop. Sister answered the phone, and when I identified myself, she said, “I’ve been working on her but she won’t tell me anything. She got drunk last night and didn’t come in until late this morning. She’s not in real good shape. I’ll do my best to get her to talk to you.”

“I appreciate that. Thanks.”

I called the office and spoke to Ben.

“I got a call from a media rep, Dev. He said Duffy’s media man just made a big buy for both thirty-second and ten-second spots. And he’s heard that he’s buying them all over the district.”

“They’re going to jump on it. But Duffy’s smart. He won’t come at us head-on. It’ll all be by inference.”

“The rep says he’ll let me know the minute they get a spot. I’ll run out there to look at it.”

“I can see it now. Three women sitting at a table and an off-camera voice says, ‘Will the woman who had a child out of wedlock please raise her hand?’ And then the Susan look-alike will not only raise her hand, she’ll start bawling her ass off because she’s so ashamed of herself.”

“You should be in advertising.”

“Please, isn’t politics scummy enough for you?”

He laughed. “Good point.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Sure thing.”

Over coffee and a muffin I tried to make it as simple as possible. Craig Donovan and Monica Davies blackmailed Natalie. Natalie paid them the money. Monica was killed in her hotel room. I was assuming that Donovan had killed her and taken the money for himself because there was a good chance that his murder had also been a robbery. The longer I thought about it, Susan’s words played into my take on everything. “He’s the most devious person I’ve ever known — a sociopath who loves to play games. He’d blackmail people, and then when they paid him, he’d immediately demand more. Right on the spot. He told me he knew he couldn’t get it; he just liked to see them suffer. He enjoys the torture as much as the money.” But in this case maybe he didn’t just want to see Natalie suffer; he wanted more money for real. But now it was moot. Alive, he could have talked to the press and revealed a lot of Susan’s secrets from her days of drinking and drugging. That would have been his last resort. But he was dead and so were all his secrets. Now the problem was finding the killer. Our last chance at recovering from the Bobby story was getting ahead of the next one. The police were happy to keep Bobby in jail, case closed.

I decided to drive to the foundation. I hadn’t talked to David Manning yet. He might have connections with the press that even we didn’t. He was a local, and as head of a nonprofit, he’d know local important people. Management and CEO-level people who just might have a hand in controlling local media. Getting even one sympathetic outlet for our story would help. Fog and drizzle gave the afternoon streets a watercolor patina. Stoplights burned through the clouds like spreading wounds. I found an oldies station. Music transports me back into the past faster than anything else. I was once again a teenager of no particular note, given to a brown leather bomber jacket that was obstinate proof of my coolness. There’s a lot of self-pity in looking back — you want to look at who you were and warn him, make him smarter and tougher. You want to protect him. He is almost your child. Then I thought of Susan as a teenager. I wondered if she’d worn one of those bombastic hairstyles you saw on music videos. Then I thought of Jane, tried to picture her. Somehow the mental photo had her in jeans and a T-shirt, and smiling the way she had at dinner. The image made me smile.

And then I thought of Craig Donovan — no specific image, just a feeling of anger and dread. The most difficult thing for most people to imagine is evil. Real evil. Not Hollywood evil. The obvious ones are the drifters and the hobos and the lonely little ones who are invariably described as “quiet” when they’re caught after killing six or seven women. But then there are the swaggerers. They have looks and sometimes charm. I kept thinking about how he tortured his blackmail victims. I kept thinking about how many people he’d likely killed before, during, and after the time Susan had traveled with him. But at some point his luck had run out. The clothes weren’t so good, the motel was a shithole, and he’d put on the kind of weight that gave him a thuggish look. The man I’d fought with the other night was a career criminal destined to live out his days in a maximum-security prison. He’d had his vengeance for Susan deserting him, though. He’d forced her to publicly face her past.

The Cooper Foundation stood stout and stern against the dim day, the classic red brick with its concrete parapet and wide front steps, impenetrable by any agent except time itself. The lot on the east side of it was only half full, so I had no trouble finding a spot. I hurried through the drizzle and walked inside. The museum setting of the first floor imposed quiet the way a church does. I’d seen this floor in brochures. The walls told their stories in paintings, photographs, and the drawings of children — expressions of suffering from every part of the planet. Senator Cooper’s wife had wanted everybody to understand that while they were enjoying happy hour a good share of the world was dying of famine and illness and war. These were the places the Cooper Foundation sent its money. I remembered Ben making a joke about how different the foundation would have been if the second Mrs. Cooper — Natalie — had set it up. “It’d all go to fashion designers and Paris Hilton types. You know, the real Americans.”

I crossed the parquet floor to the front desk — the solemn air filled with Debussy on the sound system — where a young black woman sat reading a book. She smiled when she looked up. She was quite pretty, winsome, in her crisp white blouse. There was a hint of mischief in her eyes as she saw me trying to read the title on the spine of her paperback. “Sister Carrie,” she said. “Theodore Dreiser.”

“One of my favorite novels.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Mandatory reading for people my age who grew up in Chicago.” Sister Carrie was about a country girl who comes to Chicago at the turn of the last century and uses her looks and cunning to become a creature of high society. It is a brilliant, bitter novel.

“God, the story’s fascinating, and the way Chicago was back then...” She had a wonderful smile. “My English professor said it was banned in places when it first came out.”

“The publisher said he was sorry it was ever brought out.”

She had a sweet smile and a smart laugh. “It always amazes me what was so scandalous back then. She’d be on a reality show today.” She put her slender hand forth. “I’m Keisha, by the way. I work here after my college classes are over, answer the phone and greet people and do homework when nothing’s going on.”

“Dev Conrad. Is David Manning in, do you know?”

“No. They’ve been trying to find him. When I come in I always check upstairs with Doris. She’s very upset. Scared, I think. Nobody’s heard from him all day.”

“Doris is in then?”

“Yes. Would you like to see her?”

“Please.”

Nobody’s heard from him all day, I thought as she picked up her phone and punched in a single digit. “Hi, Doris, it’s Keisha. There’s a Mr. Conrad to see you. Is it all right if I send him up?” Pause. “Thanks, Doris.” Then: “You can go right on up. She sits at the reception desk. The other offices and the conference room are behind her. If you need to see anybody else, she can direct you.”

“Enjoy the book, Keisha.”

“Oh, I am. I just can’t help feeling sorry for Carrie sometimes — I don’t think I’m supposed to feel that, do you?”

Before I could answer, her phone rang and she started explaining to someone how a group went about setting up a tour for an entire class. She gave me a little wave.

The upstairs was all business. Wine-red carpet instead of parquet flooring, the walls covered with photographs of the late senator and various dignitaries of various eras, and a front desk wide enough to play tennis on. Doris Kelly looked almost childlike sitting at it. There was no music up here. She didn’t seem to hear me until I stood right in front of her desk. When she looked up, I saw her pull open a drawer and drop something inside quickly. She closed it with a look of shame. “I really shouldn’t be doing that, Mr. Conrad.” She knew I’d glimpsed what she’d hidden away. “I’m not a very good Catholic. I only go to Mass occasionally, but, of course, whenever something bad happens, there’s old hypocrite Doris saying her rosary.”

Tears had stained the flower-blue eyes red. The nostrils were red, too. A small box of Kleenex sat next to her phone setup. Today’s suit was black — I wondered if she believed in omens — the blouse fuchsia.

“All I got was from Keisha downstairs.”

“She’s such a sweetheart.” She plucked a tissue from the box and dabbed her eyes and nose. “We’ve been calling everywhere all day. He had a meeting at a bank and a meeting with an investment group. He spends a lot of time talking to financial people, trying to steer some of their wealthiest clients to put us on their list of charities. He’s very good at it.”

“When was the last time anybody here talked to him?”

“From what I can tell, it was Keisha. She said she worked until five forty-five and walked out with him. She said he locked up and said good night and then walked to the lot and got in his car. I’d usually have been here, but I had a four o’clock appointment with my doctor. You know how doctors’ offices are. I didn’t get in until nearly five. Oh, God, I’m just babbling, aren’t I?” Her voice was trembling.

“You’ve called Ben?”

“Yes. I didn’t tell him what was going on. I didn’t want to alarm him. Or anybody there. But I said we really needed to hear from David in case he made contact with campaign headquarters.”

“Has David ever done anything like this before?”

She looked at me as if I’d asked a dirty question. “Of course not. He’s the most responsible man I’ve ever known.”

She was talking about the man she loved, that was obvious. Whether David felt the same way, I had no idea.

“I was thinking of calling the police.”

“No!” My anger surprised me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap there. But no — we’ve got enough problems with the press, and if we bring the police in on this the press will have another story to flog us with.”

“I happen to care about him very much.” She blushed.

“Look, Doris. We don’t know what’s going on. People just walk away from things sometimes. Not for long. They just take a day off. I’ve done it myself. Haven’t you?”

“I have a perfect employment record. You never know when you might need your employer to give you a recommendation.”

She was starting to irritate me. It was easy to see her now as the snitch in grade school who reported everything to the teacher.

“The police wouldn’t do anything, anyway. There’d be no reason to. Not at this point. Did you try his home?”

“Yes. I talked to the maid. She said that David came home late and went to bed. She said he had an early breakfast and left for the office. That was around seven o’clock. Nobody’s seen or talked to him since.” She touched a slender finger to the Kleenex box; there seemed to be solace in the act because she sighed. “I’m just so worried about him.”

I took out my card and placed it on her desk. “There’s my cell phone. No matter what time it is, if you learn anything, call me. Meanwhile, I’ll do some checking of my own.”

“You’ll really help me with this?”

“Of course. I just want to keep it quiet while I’m doing it.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Conrad. This has — this has just really frightened me.”

She’d always called me Mr. Conrad, even when the group of us had had dinner in Chicago. She was just being proper, I supposed, the way her favorite book instructed her to — The Secretary’s Guide to Anal-Retentive Behavior. There was no point now in trying to get her to call me Dev.

“Remember, call me the minute you hear anything.”

“I will. Of course I will.”

I reached over and placed my hand on hers. “This’ll have a happy ending, Doris. He’ll turn up and he’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Then I was walking to the stairs. I wondered how long it’d be before she hauled her rosary out again.

On the way to campaign headquarters I punched between three radio call-in shows. Each was dealing with the subject of Congresswoman Cooper’s son and the fact that he was being held for questioning by police. Somewhere amid the din of disapproval there was a gentler, more reasoned voice, female, making the point that a fair number of women had put illegitimate children up for adoption and that the fact that they were together again would be good for both of them. And that maybe we — the public we — should wait to see what kind of evidence the police had before judging Bobby guilty. She wasn’t on long. Who wanted to hear this kind of conciliatory crap when finding a tree for lynching was so much more fun?

At four-thirty in the afternoon the front of headquarters was empty except for volunteer staffers. Between rain, fog, and headlines the usual crew of young helpers had found other things to do after school. In the staff office in back, only Ben and Kristin remained. Kristin was laboring through a telephone conversation with a reporter who was obviously checking out various rumors. Duffy was probably floating a few of them — just as we would — but this kind of situation produces fictions through some kind of organic process that borders on magic. Then Susan wasn’t a lesbian after all? Had Susan produced other illegitimate children we didn’t know about and were any of them of the colored persuasion perhaps? Was there any possibility that Susan had been impregnated by an alien and that Bobby was a Venusian spy?

I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down at a Mac to check my e-mail. I needed to get caught up on the two other races my company was handling. The news made me feel better than it should have. I was probably just thankful that there weren’t any scandals associated with either one. We were holding small leads in both, but right now that felt like smashing victories.

“I’m meeting somebody for an early dinner,” Kristin said, slipping into her tan Burberry and grabbing her umbrella. “If either of you need me, I’ll keep my cell on.”

“What could go wrong?” Ben said. “Not on this campaign.”

Kristin laughed. “Oh, God, don’t even joke about it. I just keep thinking the worst is over and then something else happens. It’s been like that since they found Monica Davies in her hotel room.”

“Dev here has assured me that if we can just keep Susan’s police record as a hooker away from the press, everything’ll be fine.”

“And don’t forget when she was teaching grade school and selling crack to her students,” I said. I was glad to be making fun of it all. At this point there wasn’t much else to do with it. “But I’m pretty sure that won’t come out, either.”

“You two are terrible,” Kristin said. “You should have more respect for teachers who sell crack to their third-grade students.”

And with that she was gone into the cold, wet, black afternoon.

Ben took three calls from the press with no more than a few minutes between each one. He was patient and professional until the very end of the third one, when his sighs filled the room. “No, I told you Bobby hadn’t been officially charged with murder. Right now all they’re doing is questioning him.” Pause. “I know there’s a story on one of the radio stations that he’s been charged, but it isn’t true and that’s why we don’t have a statement about him being charged.” Pause. “I’ll tell you what, Nina. Call the police station. They’ll confirm what I’ve said.” Pause. “You’re welcome.”

After he hung up, he turned in his chair and said to me, “Kristin’s off to meet the new one.”

“I figured.”

“It won’t work out any better than the other ones, but right now she won’t admit that to herself.”

“But as soon as he mentions settling down and raising a family—”

“Kristin’s a political junkie just like us. She should settle down and have kids, but she probably won’t.”

“Look at her role models — you and I were shit parents. No offense.”

“She’d be a hell of a lot better at it than we were.”

“That wouldn’t be too hard.”

I always wondered if that wasn’t one of the reasons Ben and I were such good friends. We’d only gotten to know our children after they were grown. There was a lot of remorse and shame in our conversations.

But now it was back to work. We both knew what we were up against, and that the odds of succeeding were getting longer by the hour. I’d spent half a delusional day convincing myself that after a fess-up press conference the story would go away. But we’d had to play defense at the press conference. And we hadn’t expected the news about Bobby being sought by the police.

Another reporter called. Ben went back at it. He threw fastballs, sliders, curves. Ben at his best, which was very, very good.

And while he was talking I wrote e-mails to the managers of our other two campaigns. One of them wrote back immediately, saying that the Susan story was starting to get traction up where he was working. Not what I wanted to hear.

I was thinking about dinner and a few drinks when the cell phone in my pants pocket bleated. I didn’t recognize the number of the caller. “Hello.”

“Mr. Conrad?” The voice was unmistakable. Sister from the beauty shop.

“Yes.”

She identified herself and then said, speaking quietly, almost a whisper, “We’ll be closing up here pretty soon. I had a talk with Heather and I’m real worried about her. She says she’s gonna leave town tonight.”

“Did she say why?” I tried not to sound excited — you know, like a doctor when he sees a thirty-pound tumor; nothing here to get agitated about at all, Mr. Gleason — so I stayed calm. But obviously Heather was afraid now and I wondered why.

“She—” Now her words were barely audible. “Could you just come over here? I need to go. She’s coming back here to the office now.” She clicked off.

Ben was answering another call as I hung up. I heard him say, “Yes, Natalie. He’s right here.”

Ben waggled the receiver in my direction and rolled his eyes. Sotto voce he said, “She’s pissed off!”

I punched in the blinking line and picked up the receiver. “Hi, Natalie.”

“This is to inform you that as of this moment our reelection campaign is officially being run by Crane and Wilbur from Washington, D.C. In return for your help with any transition problems they might have, I’ll personally see to it that all your reasonable fees and charges are paid promptly.”

I was pretty sure she’d written this down and was reading it.

“They’re flying six people out here tomorrow morning. I’ll be announcing the changeover tonight. I’ve called two newspapers and three TV stations. I plan to be professional. All I’ll say is that we had certain intractable disagreements about procedures. I won’t get into personalities.”

“I appreciate that, Natalie.”

Ben stood over me now. He sensed the nature of the call.

“Wyatt said to tell you that he sends his best and that he wishes all of you good luck.”

“That’s very nice of him. And good luck to you and the campaign, Natalie.”

“Good-bye, Dev.”

“Bye, Natalie.”

“She fucking dumped us?”

“Yep,” I said, hanging up.

“This late in the campaign?”

“Crane and Wilbur.”

“No shit? Well, at least she made a good choice. They’re on a roll.”

“They’re sending an invasion force tomorrow. Six people. They’ll want to see everything. According to Natalie, if we help them with the transition, she’ll pay all the ‘reasonable’ bills we submit.”

“I love that ‘reasonable.’ Pure Natalie.”

I pushed back from the desk and went to get my coat. Natalie’s call hadn’t done its damage yet. It probably wouldn’t do its worst until the middle of the night when I’d wake up and face the fallout from being fired. I doubted Natalie would keep her word. She’d managed to stick a shiv in us at least once during these interviews. She’d also try to cheap-jack us on the bills, denying this one and that one as legitimate expenses. If she said anything especially nasty, we’d have to respond. The public wouldn’t care about our battle, but insiders would. Like Susan at her press conference, we’d be on the defensive. We’d have to explain ourselves, and even those who’d been in our position from time to time would pretend otherwise and shake their heads and say poor old Dev must be losing it. It was vanity mostly, I knew. But the image of certain enemies smirking over martinis at the mention of your name was not comforting.

“Where are you going?” Ben said. He sounded plaintive. He didn’t want to be alone at this moment, and I didn’t blame him. But just because we’d been fired didn’t mean I wanted Bobby to sit in jail any longer than he had to.

“I’m sorry, Ben. Sometime tonight steaks and drinks are on me.”

“A lot of drinks.”

“A lot, a lot.”

“Dumped by a fricking starlet,” he said. “With one of the greatest asses in history.”

I laughed. “So you had fantasies about her, too?”

“You, too? God, how can we hate somebody this much and still want to go to bed with her?”

“A question for the ages, my friend. For the ages.”

Chapter 21

Rain and darkness hid the grim little strip mall. The only light came from Hair Fare and that was in the back of the shop. I peeked through the window. The front of the place was in shadows. The barber chairs were empty. The light came from the tiny office. I knocked and got no response, so I started pounding.

Sister appeared soon after. She waved and shook her head. With the unlocking of the door came the apology: “I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you. The rain drowns everything out.”

“Is Heather still here?”

“Yeah. Sitting in the office. Hurry up. I didn’t tell her I asked you to come over. She’ll try and get out the back door if she figures it out.”

We hurried through the darkness ripe with the scents of hair spray, hair dye, and all the other chemicals used in the various processes.

Sister was right about the bolting. Heather was facing front when I reached the threshold of the office, but when she turned and saw me, she jumped up and said, “No way! Goddamn you, why did you tell him to come here?” Then she lunged at me, palms flat so she could push me away. She was a forceful woman but not forceful enough. I spun her around and dragged her back to her chair and pushed her down in it. Then I slammed the door shut behind us.

“I’m not going to say a single goddamn word to either of you,” Heather said, folding her arms across her chest. “We can just sit here all night.”

Sister sat behind her desk now. “I did this for your benefit, whether you believe that or not, Heather. You’re terrified of something and all you can think of is running away? To where? You don’t have any money. I’ll bet if I checked your account you’d be overdrawn as usual. And where the hell would you go anyway?”

“To Aunt Sally’s.” Heather had broken her vow of silence, but now wasn’t a good time to point it out.

“Aunt Sally’s.” Sister found this hilarious. “Between her cooking and his farting, you’d go crazy after one night.” Sister looked at me and said, “Aunt Sally gave people food poisoning at three different family reunions over the years. And Uncle Len’s always had these gas problems. And it’s not just that he farts loud — he smells. We used to have to sit on his lap when we were little, and you just had to hold your breath.”

I stood to the left of the desk so that I could see both their faces. Heather couldn’t help herself. She smiled at the memory. Sister smiled, too. Her eyes gleamed with tears. “Honey, you got to tell Mr. Conrad here about what you saw. I know you saw something, and I know that you think if you tell anybody, the cops will think you were in on the whole thing.”

Heather, blond, blowsy, beaten, now said quietly, “I was in on the whole thing, Sis. I mean, I helped him with things.”

“What sort of ‘things’?”

Heather’s ruined eyes met mine. “I made a couple calls to Cooper’s mother. That rich bitch. I disguised my voice though.”

“Anything else?” I said.

A long sigh. “I stood in the hallway the night he killed Monica Davies. He wanted me to warn him if anybody came along.”

“Oh, God, honey. Oh, God.”

Sister’s tears reached her cheeks now.

“So he admitted that he killed Monica and took the money?”

“Oh, yeah. He told me all about it. He told me what her face looked like when she was dying.”

“What do they call that, Mr. Conrad — assess—”

“Accessory.”

“Oh, shit, honey. When Mom finds out—”

We sat in silence. All three of us knew the implications of what she’d just said. Sister started crying now, openly. Put her elbows on her desk and put her face in her hands. She’d been tough and now she was no longer tough, and it was sad to see.

“That’s why I want to run away.”

You and Bobby, I thought. The pipe dream of Mexico.

Sister snuffled up her tears and sat back in her chair. In the silence, it creaked. “What can she do, Mr. Conrad?”

“The first thing she needs is a lawyer.”

“We know one, but he’s pretty much a cokehead.”

“You mean Larry? The one I dated?”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t want him as my lawyer. I couldn’t even stand him as a boyfriend.”

“I guess you weren’t listening, Heather. I wouldn’t want him as a lawyer, either. That’s why I said he was a cokehead. What’s so damned hard to understand about that?” Then: “Sorry I snapped at you. It’s just—”

“Let me help you find a lawyer.”

Heather’s hard gaze met mine. “All this is for Bobby, right?”

“Right.”

“And you don’t particularly give a shit about what happens to me?”

“I give a shit only to the degree that you tell me everything you know about who killed Donovan in his motel room.”

“That’s fair,” Sister said. “That’s damned fair. You help him, he helps you. What the hell’s wrong with that?”

Heather traced her fingers across the top of her skull. A sigh exploded from her ripe lips. “I don’t know if this means anything or not.” She was watching me. “I lied to the cops. I told them I wasn’t at Craig’s motel last night. But I was. He told me he had some business to take care of and he couldn’t see me till morning. Sometimes I’d stop in before work. He never got tired of it, that’s one thing you could say for him. You could never wear him out.”

“But you went there?”

“Not inside. Not at first. I stood behind a tree — it was like I was back in junior high and following a boy I had a crush on — and just watched. I didn’t even care about the rain. I was picturing him in there with a girl. I was really mad. I wasn’t there very long before I saw this other guy come out. He was really in a hurry. I wondered why. Dumb me, I thought maybe he was in there on business or something. I didn’t think he might’ve done something to Craig. So when he left I went up to the door. It wasn’t closed all the way. I just kind of nudged it with my knee, just enough so I could see inside, you know? And that’s when I saw Craig. And I knew he was dead. He was the first dead man I’d ever seen except for people at funerals. But I knew he was dead. And I knew I had to get out of there. I thought maybe the police wouldn’t connect me with anything, that maybe I could get by with it. But too many people knew about Craig and me, so the cops found me right away.”

“Who was the man you saw?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I saw the car he was in.”

“What kind was it?”

“Some kind of foreign thing, really expensive from the looks of it. It was silver.”

There wasn’t much doubt about whose car she was describing. But to be sure, I said, “Was it a convertible?”

She sounded curious and surprised. “Yeah. How did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess.”

Sister said, “You know who that car belongs to, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I do.”

Then she looked at Heather. “I hope you’re happy, Sis. This is going to tear Mom apart.”

But by then I was already at the door and moving fast.

Fog rolled down the streets on my way to foundation headquarters. Streetlights were dulled by ghosts and stoplights burned like evil eyes through the mist. A long stretch of fast-food places shone like a cheap carnival midway in the rolling clouds. And always there was the relentless cold rain, gutters and intersections filling up fast.

Maybe I would have done what Manning did. Maybe I would have started to hate myself so much for being in Natalie’s grasp that only an act of violence could make me feel honorable again. Easy to rationalize killing a monster like Craig Donovan. Easy to rationalize taking the money and hiding it until one day you made your escape. People escaped all the time. Just vanished. A good share of them were caught. But some weren’t. Some were never heard from again. The lucky ones. The ones who got to start over, clean and whole.

It was funny thinking of the pain he’d feel when he had to give up his sleek new Aston Martin. But he’d have to be careful with his bounty. He could squander it in fast order if he wasn’t cautious. There wouldn’t be any more Aston Martins in his future unless he was very, very lucky. But he would be free of the stranglehold.

The foundation parking lot held two cars, the Aston Martin and an inexpensive little Ford two-door. I parked near the street end of the lot and reached in for the Glock I’d put in the glove compartment.

The fog on the sidewalk was thick enough to get lost in. Somewhere on the street, headlights tore the fabric of the gray stuff as they headed to the end of the block. Smells of fried chicken from a KFC around the corner. A car radio pounding out rap. Somewhere behind me a pair of cars dueling with their horns. All of it lost in the swamp of gray.

I made my way to the front entrance and tried the door. Unlocked. I went inside and stood on the parquet floor. The only lights on this floor were on the tracks above the framed pieces in the gallery. Keisha’s desk was empty.

A churchly quiet was threatened only by my footsteps as I moved through the shadows. The stairs to the second floor looked iconic, like stairs in a movie poster that led the audience to places it shouldn’t go. The heating system came on with a tornado of noise.

I eased the Glock from my overcoat pocket and started my way up the wide, curving staircase that ended in what appeared to be impenetrable gloom.

Near the top, trying to make myself alert to even the faintest sound, I heard the first of it. An animal noise. I thought of kittens sick or kittens dying. But it wasn’t a kitten, of course. When I reached the top of the stairs and tried to orient myself — I remembered that I turned left to find Manning’s office — I heard it again and recognized it for what it was. Another weeping woman.

Between sobs she was talking to somebody. I moved on tiptoe down the hall to the glass-paneled entrance. The reception area was dark. Down the hall behind Doris Kelly’s desk I saw a spear of light on the carpet. Manning’s office door was open a few inches. I went into the sort of big pantomime movements actors in silent films used. I made it into the reception area and then the hall without being heard. I took a deep breath. I was a silent-movie comic sneaking into a house. I eased the door open just enough to slip through. Then I waited, heart pounding, for any sign that they’d heard me.

I pulled the door closed with great care. I stood there and listened.

“Doris... Doris, I followed you last night. The way you were acting... so crazy... I knew something was wrong.” He stopped, sounded as if he was gagging. “You killed him before I could get inside.” He was wheezing now as he spoke. There were long rasping pauses between words. “You... murdered... a... man.”

But she was angry, unrelenting. “Why do you think I did it? For us. Because I couldn’t stand to see you treated the way they treated you. Do you have any fucking idea of the risks I took?”

Quiet little Doris was now furious little Doris. She was shrill. One half octave up and she’d be shrieking.

“I knew about Wyatt taking the money to Monica Davies. I went to her room to get the money, but Donovan beat me to it. Do you have any idea the courage that took? Do you? And then when I killed Donovan and finally got the money — for us — so we could finally go away together — think of what you said to me, David. That I was insane — that this whole thing between us was just my fantasy — that you would have stopped me if you’d known what I was doing — and how the hell do you think that made me feel? After all I went through. After I put my life in jeopardy with scum like Donovan!”

I was on tiptoe again, but I was wondering if either of them would hear me even if I walked on the soles of my shoes. Her voice was about to start shattering glass.

“I did it for us. I thought you’d be happy. I thought we’d finally go away together. I knew you wanted to, even though you wouldn’t admit it. I knew it, David. I knew it. I prayed for it and my prayers are always answered. Always, David.”

By now I was expecting to hear Manning say something. But there was nothing. Or maybe he couldn’t talk. She was speaking in a kind of reverie, the kind I associated with people in alcohol or drug dazes. And maybe she was speaking to a ghost. Maybe Manning was dead.

I took the final four steps to the office door. The space between door and frame was at a bad angle for me. I could see one end of the desk, but I couldn’t see Doris or the chairs in front.

“You betrayed me, David. No matter how hard I tried to make you love me, you turned me away. Nobody loved you the way I did, David. Nobody even came close.”

I heard him, then. Not words. Just a deep, shaky moan. Then: “Help me, Doris. Help me. Call an ambulance.” He sounded as if he’d be sobbing if only he had the strength.

I raised my Glock then raised my foot and gave the door a push so that it opened wide. Then I went in with my gun pointed right at Doris, who sat, prim as always — the wan pretty girl you always wondered about when you sat studying in the library at night, those heartbreaking little legs and that lost nervous gaze — pretty Doris all grown up now.

“Don’t move, Doris.”

Her eyes remained on Manning, who was slumped in the chair in front of the desk. A bloody hand hung limp, plump drops of blood splashing on the carpet below. As I moved into the office, I kept scanning the desk for any sight of a gun. Her hands were folded and in clear view. I wondered what she’d done with the gun. I could smell the powder in the small confines of the office.

I came around the side of the desk so that I could see Manning. The pale face and sunken eyes startled me. He had the pallor and pain of one of those beggars you see on TV when those greedy ministers want to soak you for some more tax-free money. I doubted he had much longer to live. From what I could see, he’d been shot in the chest twice. His white shirt was soaked red and something like puke ran down both sides of his mouth. He saw me but he didn’t see me. His head gave a little jerk when his eyes and brain came together to recognize me.

He started crying. “Dev — she’s crazy, Dev. Never had anything to do with her. Crazy, Dev...”

I started to reach for the phone on the desk, but she was faster than me. She grabbed it and hurled it into the air. When it reached the end of its cord length it crashed to the floor. “No! No! I want him dead! All I did for him! All I did for him!”

Kept my Glock on her as I jerked my cell phone from my pocket and punched in 911. I heard myself at one remove talking to the police dispatcher. She was calm and professional. I envied her.

Doris was on her feet, ripping open the middle drawer of the desk. I saw everything in broken images — hand inside the desk — hand coming up — shape and sheen of the .45 — gun being raised.

I went into a crouch and started to pull the trigger of my Glock. All this in mere moments. But then more broken instant images — Doris raising the gun higher, higher — the barrel of the gun gleaming in the overhead lighting — the point of the gun against her head— And then the cry, the plea, the scream. And then the explosion.

Mere moments again as I watched blood and brain and hair freeze for a millisecond in midair, the scream still shocking my entire body. And then in a wild grotesque dance her arms flying out from her body, the gun tossed against the wall, and then the final abrupt death of will and awareness and soul as she collapsed to the floor.

I was shaking and I was cold from sweat freezing on me. I started uselessly toward her, but just then Manning cried out for his mother, and by the time I was able to turn back to him I saw from the terrible angle of his head that he was likely dead.

Sirens, then, coming fast and coming close. There was no point in looking at either of them now. Doris had had her way. She was finally joined with the man she’d never been able to seduce.

Chapter 22

SCANDAL TARNISHES A POLITICAL FAMILY.

This story appeared on one of the news services a week before the election. It was picked up by hundreds of papers, TV and radio stations, and, of course, cable news where talking heads feasted on murder, blackmail, and the end of what Natalie had hoped would be a political dynasty. I’m sure some people said that the story had ensured Congresswoman Cooper’s defeat, but I think that defeat was inevitable, anyway. Duffy won by six points; without the story he might only have won by four or five.

Eight days after the election Natalie showed up for a half-hour interview with Larry King. She looked gorgeous. And she gave great press. She cast herself — as a writer would — as a concerned but suffering stepmother to an ungrateful stepdaughter whose reckless early years came back to destroy not only her but poor Natalie as well. All Manning got for his death was a tsk-tsk. She stressed that she’d never liked or trusted Doris and was not surprised that Doris was both a thief and a murderer. She pulled it off with consummate skill. Despite her differences with Susan, she had called her many times over the past months, but Susan would never return her calls. Summoning Tinseltown tears and a scratchy throat, Natalie said, looking directly into the camera, “I still love you, Susan. If you need anything, please call me. Night or day.”

In January, Susan vacated her congressional offices and moved to Portland, Oregon, where a college friend of hers ran a public-relations and lobbying firm. There are good lobbies and bad lobbies. This was a good one, its clients working to make life at least marginally better for people society had cast aside.

As for Greg Larson, he found another business partner, and on the day they started smearing people the IRS announced that it was investigating him for tax evasion and tax fraud. He, of course, sputtered about “communists” and this being nothing more than “political revenge,” even though the head of the IRS was a Bush appointee who’d stayed on.

And after a while a photo of a tiny pink infant showed up on my Mac screen. Gwen and Bobby, who had also moved to Portland, where Bobby had found work in a supermarket managerial program, had named the boy Devlin Robert Flaherty. “We’ll call him ‘Dev,’ of course,” Gwen wrote.

In his first four months in Congress, Duffy surprised many people, including me, by voting for some very liberal bills. We would never have been as savage toward him as the far right proved to be.

I’m writing all this with the scent of pot roast in the air. Jane’s here for what she calls her “Chicago weekend,” which seems to be a regular thing these days. We swap cooking chores. When it’s my turn I take her out to a very expensive restaurant.

I’ll be driving back with Jane tomorrow. Sister has asked me to testify on Heather’s behalf. She did in fact help find the killer. I’m not sure how much that will help, but I’m willing to do it. The few times I’ve had to testify in trials I’ve been nervous and probably not very effective. Maybe I need some pointers. You know, how to give one of those rousing Perry Mason performances where the judge bangs her gavel and proclaims, “This trial is over!”

I imagine Natalie could give me some help with that. But then she may be too busy. The word is that she’ll be announcing Peter’s candidacy for Congress very soon now.

I may be wrong, but somehow I don’t think she’ll be calling me for any help. And even if she did, I wouldn’t have the guts to break it to Ben.