Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

EIGHT

THREE DAYS PASSED. THERE was nothing in the papers about Luis. I had no idea if he was dead or alive. There were no police visits, no calls from Garrett or John Moreland. It was as if that night had never happened. I could say I felt relief with each passing day, but it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, I felt the tension mounting, anticipating their next attack, wondering this time if it would be with real bullets. And never doubting that it would come.

While women can generally intuit the subtle feelings and motivations of other human interactions better than men, men instinctively know one thing: when they’re at war. What shocked me was how smoothly I slipped from the bank into the full current.

ON FRIDAY, I went to the office early to tie up loose ends. I wasn’t the only person at the bureau, despite the early hour. Jim Doogan, the mayor’s chief of staff, flashed by in the hallway but made a point of pausing in front of my open door and looking in.

I waved hello.

“Let me get a cup of coffee,” he said, and continued down the hall.

I smiled. Doogan couldn’t even wave back until he had coffee.

Doogan was a curious man-he looked just like his name. Late fifties, Irish, beefy, red-faced with short-cropped red hair speckled with gray. He was a blunt object, so different from the mayor, who was young, thin, handsome if effete, so filled with energy one expected shooting sparks from his enthusiasm to start a fire in the wastebasket. But Doogan was necessary. Someone had to scare off sycophants and interest groups who wanted too much of the mayor’s time. Someone had to run interference and fix things out of public view. Doogan was the man sent in to tell someone who’d met with the mayor and claimed Halladay had promised them something to tell them no, the mayor had simply acknowledged the problem. I’d always kind of liked Doogan. There was nothing slick about him. He reminded me of men in Montana-cattle buyers, country commissioners, who, when they bested you, would throw an arm around your shoulder and offer to buy you a beer.

Apparently, the mayor was having his monthly breakfast meeting with our bureau president, H. R. “Tab” Jones. Before being appointed to the bureau, Jones was the mayor’s campaign manager and chief fund-raiser. Jones was tall, loud, slick, and from what I gathered from longtime staff, not as intolerable as past presidents. Jones came from banking and had no background in tourism promotion, which never stopped him. In staff meetings, he threw around hot business buzzwords and catchphrases-“metrics,” “skill sets,” “paradigm,” “worldview”-but he often used them incorrectly. He urged us to “push the envelope” and “think outside the box.” Behind his desk were dozens of current business and motivational books which, I noticed, had uncracked spines.

Doogan finally came back with a cup of coffee and entered my office, shutting the door behind him. He’d never done that before. I looked up and leaned back in my chair. His aftershave smelled sharp.

He shook his head and pursed his lips, as if what he was about to tell me saddened him.

“Brian Eastman?” he said simply. “Not a good idea.”

And with that he was out the door before I could ask him how he knew so quickly, or more important, how the mayor knew.

LATER, LINDA LEANED INTO my office after an executive staff meeting, asked, “What on earth did you do to piss off the mayor?”

“What do you mean?”

She said Tab Jones told her Mayor Halladay specifically asked him about me.

“He asked if you were competent or some kind of loose cannon,” she said. “The mayor asked if you could turn out to be a liability. Tab said he defended you and our department, but I think that’s horse shit. I think he…” she delivered a devastatingly accurate imitation of Jones’s best executive voice, “expressed shock and concern and assured the mayor he’d look into it.” She reverted to her real voice. “Meaning, in all likelihood, your days could be numbered. Which leads me back to my first question: What on earth did you do to piss him off?”

I suddenly felt cold. I desperately needed this job.

“I didn’t do anything to the mayor,” I said. “But it’s possible John Moreland said something to him.” Wondering, did Garrett tell his father what happened Monday night? Or did he lie, make up some story about how he’d come to our house to see Angelina and was jumped by a maniac, his friend left to die in a vacant yard? Did our friendship with Cody, the disgraced cop, or Brian, who’d had a sour business relationship with the major before he was mayor, bring about this sudden interest in me? Were Brian’s inquiries hitting soft spots? Or was it all Judge Moreland?

And I realized the Morelands didn’t need bullets, or paintballs, to attack. Breakfast with the mayor accomplished the same purpose.

“Keep your nose clean,” Linda said, studying me, the wheels spinning in her head. “I can’t afford to lose you right now. I’m not sure we’d be able to hire a replacement, the way things are going with our bud get. And even if we could, it could take months, and we don’t have months. The trade-show season is upon us.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “I always do.”

She nodded, agreeing with me, but still with that look. The look of a race horse owner assessing a promising colt who’d just come up lame.

MY FLIGHT TO BERLIN was to be Sunday, two days away, with arrival at Tegel at 7:05 A.M. Monday. The suitcase was nearly packed upstairs in our room, my briefcase heavy with my laptop, lead sheets, business cards, brochures, a six-pack of Coors beer for Malcolm Harris, who loved the stuff. I would be gone a week, returning the following Saturday. In my mind, I must admit, I was already halfway out the door.

I had tried to convince Melissa to take Angelina and stay with her mother in Seattle while I was gone, but she’d have none of it. Melissa was still smoldering about her parents’ divorce and disliked her mother’s new husband. Even given the circumstances, she didn’t want to see her mother “hat in hand,” as she put it.

CODY STAYED AT OUR HOUSE. He slept on the couch at night and watched television and helped around the house during the day. He’s better at fixing things than I am, plus he had the time. He rehung a couple of sagging doors, fixed the toilet so it would stop running, and painted the kitchen. Melissa said he took breaks only to follow the Coates trial on TV and smoke cigarettes on the deck. He told her he couldn’t remember what he said to Luis that night, but he had a feeling he “went all Dirty Harry on his ass.” He asked if he could stay with us until the reporters camped out around his house gave up and went away, and we agreed. Melissa appreciated his help and companionship, and I liked the idea of his being there with his weapons and training and capacity for violence in case Garrett and his boys showed up again.