Trust Your Eyes

THIRTEEN

Bridget Sawchuck believes that if she’s going to have to discuss her situation with her husband’s closest friend and chief adviser, Howard Talliman, it better be in a public place. Maybe he’ll be able to resist the temptation to throttle her if there are witnesses, although she isn’t one hundred percent sure that will save her. She invites him to lunch at the Union Square Cafe, booking a table for one o’clock.

Talliman has been Morris Sawchuck’s best friend since God was a boy. They went to Harvard together, got drunk together, practiced law together, vacationed together, probably even got laid together on a joint trip to Japan a couple of years after Geraldine died. Howard, very early on, began working behind the scenes on political campaigns-Republican, Democrat, didn’t matter. Only winning mattered. If a hockey player could be traded from the Rangers to the Bruins, then slam his former teammates into the boards, Talliman could formulate strategy for any party that was willing to pay his price. He’s never wanted to be the candidate. He is short and paunchy, and says he has the sex appeal of a garden gnome, but he knows how to play the political game from behind the bench and turn others into winners.

“You can take this as far as you want to go,” Howard told Morris more than a decade ago. “The only thing that limits you is your own ambition. If you’ve got enough of it, it’ll take you right to the top. But you have to build in increments. A tough prosecutor, then an attorney general-you start drawing a line and see where it takes you. It takes you right to the fucking top, that’s where it takes you.”

Howard Talliman mixes the Kool-Aid, and Morris drinks it.

All the hard work is paying off. Big time. Morris is surely headed to the governor’s mansion, and who knows where the hell he’ll go after that?

As proud as Howard is of shaping his best friend into a political star, it was finding him a new, beautiful young wife to stand at his side during victory speeches that really puffs him up. He’d encountered Bridget at the PR firm he had hired on behalf of another client, a circuit court judge who’d found himself with his nuts in a vise after his son was arrested for running a meth lab out of the judge’s summer place in New Hampshire. The moment Howard saw her he knew she’d look perfect standing next to Morris at every campaign stop across the state of New York. She was sexy in a Michelle Obama-Jackie O kind of way. Statuesque, long neck, nice figure but not too busty. Poise to spare.

Howard, Bridget realizes now, maneuvered Morris and her together without their even knowing it at the time. He brought her in to organize that kids’ baseball diamond fund-raiser, which put Bridget and Morris together at the same place at the same time. Howard made the introductions, whispered into each of their ears that the one was interested in the other.

Machiavelli with a little Cupid’s arrow, that’s what Howard was.

But there was something there. Within a week, Bridget found herself sprawled across the backseat of Sawchuck’s limo, belts unbuckling, snaps unsnapping, a would-be governor’s head between her legs.

A lot of fun, even if Bridget has not always been, strictly speaking, exclusively heterosexual. But what the hell. Once she found out the kind of life she was looking at, hooking up with someone like Morris Sawchuck, she figured she could play on just the one team forever.

Didn’t turn out to be the case, but that realization didn’t dawn on her until after she and Morris were married.

Not that Allison was her first time falling off the hetero wagon. But she was the first one Bridget had slipped away with for a few days. She didn’t consider it serious, and Allison didn’t appear to, either. Bridget hadn’t used her real name-made sure Allison never saw her passport-and stuck with the oversized sunglasses and sun hat whenever they were out and about. The truth was, even though people spotted her husband in public and sometimes even asked for his autograph, very few recognized her when she was on her own. Sure, men noticed her, and women, too, for any number of reasons. But people didn’t look her up and down because of who she was, only because of what she was: gorgeous.

And now Bridget’s in trouble.

She glances at the cafe menu, and when she looks up, there he is.

“Bridget,” he says, bending down and giving her an air kiss on the cheek. “You look delicious, as always. Good enough to eat with a spoon.”

“And you look wonderful.”

“Oh please. When I was coming past the bar I heard someone whisper that they just saw Danny DeVito.”

Bridget laughs awkwardly as Howard settles into his chair across from her. She can see it in his face. He knows something is up. He wouldn’t be where he is now without being able to read people.

Although he never read her right. Not when he met her. If he had, well, they wouldn’t be where they are now, would they?

“We’re going to need drinks, I suspect,” he says. “What will you have?”

“Uh, white wine spritzer,” she says.

Howard’s eyebrows go up. “Things can’t be that bad, then, can they? A spritzer? That’s the kind of drink you turn to when your Times shows up at the door fifteen minutes late.” He turns in his chair and catches the attention of a passing waiter. “The lady will have a white wine spritzer. Scotch neat for me. So, what’s on your mind, Bridget? I figure you didn’t bring me here to start an affair. I honestly don’t think I could squeeze one into my schedule.” Howard has never been married, and if he has any kind of love life-other than his love for political chicanery-no one is aware of it.

But then, everyone has secrets.

Bridget swallows. “You know I would never do anything to intentionally cause trouble for Morris.”

“Oh my,” Howard says.

“I would never want to embarrass him. Never.”

Howard studies her. “Well, let’s see…” He looks her over, like he’s trying to guess how much Morris spent on her diamond earrings. If he’d guessed twenty grand, he’d have been right, but that wasn’t what he was thinking about. It was what kind of trouble Bridget had gotten herself into.

“It’s money, or it’s sex,” he said. “Or it’s both. There’s really nothing else. No matter what you’ve done, it’ll come back to one or both of those.”

“It’s both,” she says.

“I see,” Howard says. “Just how bad is it?”

Bridget looks down into her lap, then back to Howard. “Bad.” She collects herself. “I’m being blackmailed, Howard.”

“So, there’s the money part. And the leverage your blackmailer has over you, that will be the sex part. Unless, of course, I have this all totally wrong, and you’ve gone and killed someone.”

“I haven’t killed anyone,” she says.

“Well,” Howard says, as the drinks are placed in front of them, “there’s a cause for celebration. Although, I’ve seen people bounce back from murder convictions.” He takes a sip of his scotch and watches the waiter retreat. There is a part of him, Bridget suspects, that’s probably actually enjoying this, because Howard thrives on problems. But if he is enjoying this, she doesn’t think it will last for long.

He asks, “And there aren’t pictures out there of you having sex with a goat or anything, are there?”

“No.”

“Well, anything else should be a breeze to deal with by comparison. Out with it.”

“I had an affair,” Bridget says.

Howard nods wisely, as though he has been expecting this. “We’re talking about something recent, something that has transpired since you and Morris engaged in the bonds of holy matrimony.”

“Yes.”

“Is it over? This affair?”

“Yes.”

“Do I know him?”

Bridget pauses. “No.”

Howard cocks his head slightly. “That was a troubling hesitation, Bridget. It means I may know him, and you’re lying, or you’re responding truthfully in a deliberately obtuse way. Let me see if I can discern which it is.” His eyes bored into her. “I think it’s the latter.”

Bridget says nothing. Howard is, if you can take a step back, which is rather difficult for Bridget at this moment, amazing to watch.

He keeps his eyes on her another moment, then asks, “Who is she?”

He really is something. “Her name’s Allison Fitch.”

Howard’s eyelids flutter rapidly. It’s what he does when he’s searching through his mental database. “You are right. I don’t know her.” He drinks more of his scotch. “You know, Bridget, you might have mentioned, after I arranged for you and Morris to connect, and I quietly asked you whether there was anything compromising in your history, that you were a muff diver.”

Bridget sits rigidly in her chair and says nothing.

“Did you make it known to this Allison Fitch that you were the wife of a prospective governor, the state’s current attorney general?”

“No. I gave her another name altogether. But she saw me on television, on the news, at a function with Morris, and there wasn’t much to put together after that.” Bridget gives him the Reader’s Digest version of the story. Where they’d met, how many times they’d seen each other, the time they’d gone away together.

Howard smiles humorlessly. “I mentioned pictures of you with a goat a moment ago. What about with this woman? Are there any photos? Hidden camera, that kind of thing? A goat, now that I think of it, might be less politically damaging.”

Bridget’s gaze narrows. “Are you worried about their blackmail potential, or did you just want me to get you a copy?”

“So they exist?”

“I don’t think so. Allison never mentioned it. I don’t see why she would have filmed me. She didn’t know, at the time, who my husband was.”

“Then what proof has she? One possible strategy is to ride the thing out. It’d be ugly, but we stonewall, deny, suggest that your husband’s opponents choreographed the entire episode. In the meantime, we dig into her past, find something good on her that destroys her credibility, and believe me, we will find something even if we have to make it up, and after the press has some fun with it for a while, everyone gets bored and we continue on as though it never happened. In fact, without any proof, I make some calls and a police investigation is initiated and before you know it she’s up on an extortion charge. Handle it like that talk show host, what’s-his-name with the teeth, who was getting blackmailed by the guy who said if he didn’t pay up he’d tell the world he’d been sleeping with half his staff. Brought in the cops, set up a sting, the bozo did time. Difference with you is, you’ll stick to the line that you don’t know this woman. Maybe you bumped into her someplace, on vacation, at some function, but you have no idea who she is. By the time we’re done with her no one will believe her if she says it’s raining in the middle of a Katrina.”

“There are texts,” Bridget says.

“Say again?”

“No pictures, but there are texts. Between us. Phone records, and texts.”

“And what do these texts say, Bridget? What is their nature?”

“They’re…I guess the word would be salacious.”

“And would you be the author of any of these salacious texts, or are they all written by Ms. Fitch?”

“Fifty-fifty, I’d say.”

Howard runs his tongue over his teeth. “How much is she looking for, and what does she intend to do should you not meet her demands?”

“One hundred thousand. Or she goes public, to whoever’ll pay the most for the story.”

“I see. Not very imaginative, is she?”

“I’m sorry?”

“If I were her I would have asked for at least a million. And how do we know she won’t take the money and sell her story, anyway?”

“She said she wouldn’t do that,” Bridget says.

Howard leans back in his chair and opens his arms. “Ahh, well then, nothing to worry about.”

“I know what you’re thinking. That she’ll come back again and again, always asking for money.”

“I think that’s very likely, Bridget. Perhaps, with the right degree of persuasion, she can be happy with one reasonable sum. And then she agrees to go away, and we never hear from her again.”

Bridget sighs. “I knew you’d know how to handle this. You’re just so…so cool and collected about these things.”

“It’s all about putting out fires, my dear. We want to douse this one before it consumes an entire forest, that’s all.”

“Howard, I don’t want Morris to know about this. I mean, Morris and I have been very frank with each other about our…idiosyncrasies, but he doesn’t have any idea that I’ve seen someone else since we were married. You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

He shakes his head and reaches out to touch her hand. “What purpose would that serve? I love you both too much to do that. You have a beautiful future ahead of you if you learn to control your…impulses.”

“It was a slip,” she says. “It’s never going to happen again.”

“Of course not,” he says, still patting her hand, “because I will not-repeat, not-allow anyone to get in the way of Morris’s destiny, and that includes you. So if there is a repeat of this kind of behavior, then I will personally strangle you with your own brassiere, chop you into bits, feed you to the Central Park squirrels, and find a way to pin the whole thing on your husband’s opponent. Is that clear?”

Bridget nods. “Perfectly.”