The Widening Gyre

Chapter 24

The Subaru dropped a passenger on P Street and continued on for three more blocks. At random I decided to stick with the driver. It would be harder for her to claim she was dragged against her will. She pulled into the driveway of a handsome brick-front town house. The brick was painted an antique white and there was a bow window to the right of the entrance with the wood trim painted Williamsburg blue.

I pulled in next to the curb and got out and joined her at the door.

"Excuse me," I said, "but we need to talk."

She was a little under the influence, and she looked frightened at being braced by a stranger at her doorway. I held out a picture of her, recently taken, and said, "I mean you no harm. I just want to talk."

She looked at the picture. "Jesus Christ," she said.

"Yes," I said. "I agree."

"Where did you…?"

"We need to talk. We can sit in my car if you wish, or walk on the street if you'd feel safer, or go in your house."

"What do you want?"

She had olive skin and blond hair. Her cheekbones were high and her dark eyes were almond-shaped. There were pleasant crow's feet at the corners of her eyes.

"Want to walk?" I said. I still held the picture so that she could see it. As she looked at it a faint flush tinged her skin. Embarrassment. A good sign.

She nodded and we descended her front steps and walked east along her street.

"Are you going to blackmail me?" she said.

"In a sense, yes," I said. "May I see your driver's license?"

"I…"

"I merely wish to know your name. I'll give it back. If you won't show it to me, it's all right. I'll get your name anyway. I know your address and the registration number of your car."

"Then why don't you just ask me my name?"

"Because I'd have no way to know if you'd given me the right name without checking anyway. Your license will save me that trouble."

"What if I tell you to go to hell?" she said.

"I'll make the pictures public."

"I'm not ashamed," she said.

"I'm not telling you you should be," I said. "But do you want the pictures public?"

She was silent as we walked. I could sense her fighting to get lucid. Finally she stopped and turned and looked directly at me.

"No," she said.

"License please," I said.

She took a wallet from her purse, and the license from the wallet and gave it to me. Her name was Cynthia Knox.

"Thank you, Cynthia. What I need is information."

"No money?"

I shook my head. "What I want is information about Gerry Broz."

"You're not a policeman?"

"No."

She looked puzzled. "What do you want to know?"

"How'd you meet him?"

She gave a short, joyless laugh. "Actually I met him through my husband."

"How does your husband know him?"

"He… he just knows him."

"What's your husband do?"

She hesitated.

"I can find it out," I said. "I could even hang around your house until he came home and ask him."

She shook her head. Her dark eyes looked a little clearer. "You really aren't a cop?"

"No."

She sighed. "Cocaine," she said. "My husband used to score coke from him."

"And what does your husband do?"

"He's with the Department of Transportation."

"How'd he meet Gerry?"

"A friend that teaches at Georgetown."

"What could be more natural?" I said.

"Coke's a fact of life in D.C.," she said.

"How about the woman that was with you today?"

"I don't think I should tell you about someone else."

"Same old answer. I can find out. I know where she lives. I know what she looks like. I have her picture too."

"I still don't feel right."

"Don't use her name," I said. "How'd she meet Gerry?"

"I introduced her."

"He the candyman for her family too?"

Cynthia nodded. "I think so."

"You recruit her for the, ah, matinees?"

Cynthia said, "Yes," very softly.

"Do you know how many other women party like that with Gerry?"

"No."

"Do you know if there are others?"

"Yes. There are. Sometimes there have been other women there. I don't know them."

"Always the same young men?"

"No. Always Gerry, but the others change. Sometimes Gerry doesn't even participate. How did you get that picture?"

"I stood in the bathroom and took it through the oneway mirror. That's what Gerry does when he's not participating. Only he uses videotape."

Cynthia stopped dead still and looked at me.

All the houses on Cynthia's street were brick with colonial trim. Very elegant, very muted. Softened by care and charm and maybe a faint scent of the river that drifted up.

"Videotape?"

I nodded. "Yes. I represent someone who was videotaped."

"My God."

"Your friend's husband with the government?"

She nodded. Her mouth opened and closed. Wordless.

We turned back toward her house. The trees along the street were old trees, maples mostly, and even leafless in December they looked graceful and sheltering. Cynthia looked at her watch.

"My husband will be home in an hour and a half," she said.

We walked some more.

"Can we sit in your car for a little while?" Cynthia said.

"Sure."

We were silent till we got to the rental and sat.

"What are you going to do?" she said.

"I'm going to try and put Gerry out of business without blowing the whistle on the person I represent, or anyone else."

"Can you do that?"

"Maybe."

It was nearly dark. We were getting close to the winter solstice.

"Have you ever watched the way politicians' wives look at them with an adoring smile in all their public appearances?" Cynthia said.

"Yeah."

"I've been doing that in public for nineteen years," she said. "And my husband's not even a politician. He's a bureaucrat."

I nodded. I'm not sure in the dark that she could see me. It didn't matter. I didn't think she was really talking to me.

"Nineteen years breathless with adoration. At all the parties we could get invited to, and when we weren't invited he'd be in dark despair and I'd have to cheer him up adoringly. Even when he was at work I had to adore him from afar at bridge games and luncheons among department wives and charity teas. The perfect complement to him. The adornment of his career. The beautiful wife, the lovely children, the gracious home."

"Kids still home?" I said.

"No. Private school. See them on holidays. A fine school in Virginia. One of the assistant secretaries sends his daughter there."

Two young girls in school uniforms walked past. They looked Indian or perhaps Pakistani. Their skirts were the identical blue plaid. They wore blue knee socks and blue blazers over white blouses. One wore cowboy boots, the other wooden clogs with a leather slip-on top. Diversity.

"Some women drink," she said. "I do gangbangs."

"With college kids," I said.

"I am as old as their mothers."

"Do a little dope with them too, I imagine."

She nodded. She was watching the two schoolgirls as they diminished down the narrowing perspective of the long residential street.

"I've already had hot flashes," she said, watching the schoolgirls. "Imagine that? Hot flashes. Pretty soon a mustache and middle-aged hump. You know what the kids call us?"

"Grannies," I said. "This morning you attended a granny party."

She nodded. The schoolgirls were quite small in the distance now. She shook her head.

"When I was a little girl there was a song my father used to sing to me," she said. "One line in it was 'Stay away from college boys, when you're on a spree/Take good care of yourself, you belong to me.' " She sang the line over again and her voice was a little shaky. The streetlights had gone on and in the gleam of the one nearest us I could see the brightness of tears on her face.

"Nothing is irredeemable," I said.

"I don't even know why I do it," she said. "Neither does Ellie. There's some thrill to it, but mostly it's humiliating. The boys are crude and stupid. Afterward I feel like… like something that's been passed around."

"That's part of its charm," I said.

The schoolgirls turned a corner, far down the street, and disappeared. Cynthia looked at me. Her face was wet.

"Charm?"

"Sure. You're acting out a lot of stuff that I'm not qualified to analyze, but you've found a way to do it and build in your own punishment."

She stared at me for a long time. "You think I need a shrink?"

I shrugged. "What you're doing doesn't seem to please you. Maybe a shrink. Maybe a divorce? Maybe a boyfriend on the side? Maybe a job?"

"I think psychology is a lot of crap," she said.

"Okay by me," I said. "All I'm saying is that if you're unhappy, there are other solutions besides balling a bunch of dim-witted college kids."

She nodded slowly. "I've got to go in," she said. "My husband will be home."

"I'll keep you out of it," I said. "I might ask you to write out a statement of what you told me that I could show to a private person. But I probably won't need it."

I took the picture of her from my shirt pocket and gave it to her. "It's the only one I took that shows your face," I said.

She took it. "Do you think there's videotape?"

"If there is, I'll take care of it," I said.

"Why do this for me?"

"I'm doing it for the person I represent," I said. "Costs me nothing to include you."

"And Ellie?"

"Sure."

She got out of the car and stood for a moment on the sidewalk. I got out on my side and leaned my forearms on the roof and looked at her.

"It's really odd," she said. "I don't even know your name and you know things about me that I've never told anyone."

"As they used to say in the movies, your secret is safe with me."

She took a step toward her house and hesitated; she looked back at me. "Is it going to be all right?"

"Sure," I said. "But stay away from college boys, when you're on a spree."

She nodded and took two more steps and stopped again.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome."

She reached her front steps and turned at her front door and looked at me.

"Mrs. Knox." I said. "For what it's worth, I think you're quite beautiful."

She stayed motionless at her door for a moment, looking back at me. Then she opened it and went in.