We Know

Chapter 7

A few ribbons of yellow crime-scene tape had been stretched haphazardly across the open doorway, a spiderweb that had lost its momentum. My door rested flat in the middle of my torn-up living room. I stood for a few moments in the hall, contemplating the mess. I was wearing an I L.A. T-shirt and baggy muscle pants from the hospital gift shop. My head was throbbing-I could feel the pulse intensified in the cut on my cheek-and the hallway lights seemed unusually bright. My mouth tasted bitter, like the rind of some fruit. I had been looking forward to getting home so much that it hadn't occurred to me what would be waiting.

I stepped through the tape, picked up the door, and rested it carefully back in place. I walked around and checked all the locks. Stupid, I know, given that the door was leaning against the frame, but old habits are hard to kill. I closed all the blinds, then surveyed the condo. When I got home, I usually checked that none of my things were out of place, another part of the ritual, but what was the point? Every drawer had been dumped. My books, bills, and papers had been rifled through and dropped unceremoniously.

The TV had been moved to the carpet and Frank's old steamer trunk flipped, jaws to the carpet, its contents strewn around my bedroom. I hadn't gone through them in years. My first baseball trophy, broken at the base. The Punisher's debut in Spider-Man. My dad, still smoking, still smiling in Kodachrome. All these artifacts, imprinted in my memory so strongly that seeing them felt like deja vu. But they were also somehow altered, diminished. The shine of the trophy had worn off. The baseball cards looked faded. My father's smile wasn't as relaxed as I'd remembered, and it held an element of self-righteousness.

Callie's sketches had landed over by the IKEA bureau. The back porch of Frank's house.

Fernando Valenzuela at the near-topple phase of his Charlie Brown windup. A pear on our battle-scarred kitchen table. They transported me back in time as swiftly and vividly as the smell of fresh-mowed outfield grass. I unrolled the portrait of Frank and sat cross-legged on the floor with it. I'd forgotten how capable Callie was. She'd accented Frank's lips and given him the benefit of the doubt on his nose, making him not more handsome but perhaps more refined. Yet she'd captured precisely the creases in his face, the depth and vigilance of those dark pupils.

An image knifed into consciousness-me cradling that face while the body beneath it shuddered and failed. Half my life I'd spent running from that spotlit moment and the fallout from it.

The ache in my knees drew me back into my present confusion. Tufts of couch stuffing, key in my shoe, the charcoal portrait of Frank in my lap. The acid flicking at the walls of my stomach reminded me why I'd consigned the sketch to the trunk, why the trunk had stayed closed. I rolled up the drawing and put it away with everything else, then set the TV back on the trunk to prevent it from leaping open like a horror-movie effect.

My discomfort came to life as an itch under my skin. I clicked the remote, hoping the background noise would make me feel less alone. A "Reelect Bilton" spot oozed from the TV with an inspiring symphonic track. The commander in chief decked out in a sweater and khakis before the Oval Office desk, his high-school sweetheart still sedated at his side, surrounded by three generations of Biltons- grown children, it-generation grandkids, and a few burbling great-grandsons. "Senator Caruthers says he doesn't 'understand family values.' Do you really want someone in the White House who's proud to make that claim?"

Three channels over I found Wile E. Coyote on a precipice, about to misjudge his pendulum swing.

I took a deep breath, contemplated my next move. I'd missed a morning interview, not good considering I was beholden to my ex-girlfriend for setting it up. Induma, a software engineer when we'd dated, had sold a storage-management application to IBM or Oracle for an obscene amount of money and for stock options that turned out to be worth even more. She now acted as a part-time guru, helping troubleshoot for the hundreds of companies and institutions using her system. They included Pepperdine, which offered a joint M.B.A./Master of Public Policy I'd had my eye on for a while.

In the last eight years, I'd worked my way from soup-kitchen ladler to co-executive director of an umbrella charity that channeled money to various programs for L.A.'s homeless. At thirty-five I had just convinced myself I was ready for something bigger. Last week I'd left to explore options and start studying for the standardized tests required for Pepperdine's joint-degree program. And Induma had hooked me up with an informational interview with a dean of admissions; I didn't want to screw up my chances, but even more I didn't want to make her look bad.

I picked up my cordless phone to give her a call. A chill tensed the skin on my arms, and I threw the phone down on the bed. I found a screwdriver among the dumped-out tools at the bottom of the coat closet and pried the phone's casing open. I lifted out the perforated disk of the receiver. No C-4. And no bugs, but I knew from Law amp; Order that these days they tapped calls from outdoor junction boxes. Deciding to play it safe, I left the phone dismantled on the kitchen counter.

I headed into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub, and at long last wiggled the key from the sole of my shoe. Brass, like I remembered. Thicker than a house key. Stamped on the front, three uneven numbers: 229. On the back: U.S. GOV'T, UNLAWFUL TO DUPLICATE.

An office in the Secret Service Building? A government vault? A safe-deposit box?

A knock at the front door startled me. As I sprang up, a thud vibrated the floor. Jamming the key back into the air pocket of my sneaker, I scrambled out into my bedroom.

A ginger-haired young man in his early twenties stood at an uncomfortable forward tilt, peering apologetically into my apartment, his fist still raised from knocking. He wore a white shirt, almost the shade of his skin, and a red paisley bow tie. The front door lay flat on its side just inside the threshold. We regarded each other, startled. I looked like an idiot or a schizophrenic-muscle pants, gift-shop T-shirt, eyes glassy with fatigue.

"Uh, sorry. Mr. Horrigan?"

"Nick."

"I'm Alan Lambrose. One of Senator Caruthers's aides. The senator got into town late last night after the debate, and he'd like to thank you in person."

"Is that really a bow tie?"

"It is. It's sort of how I'm known. Senator's aide with a bow tie." He smiled brightly and fanned a hand down the hall. "I have a car waiting for you, if that's okay."

I walked into the living room, the Aztec pattern of the muscle pants flashing with my movement, and gestured around. "Not the best time."

"Is there some way we can help?"

"Sure. I'd like my door fixed."

"We'll get that taken care of. And we'll see that you're reimbursed for the damage."

"Look," I said, "I get it. There's fifteen minutes of fame to be had. Everyone's eager for me to have them, and to get a picture shaking my hand."

"Everyone?"

"Every presidential candidate."

Alan's pale lips firmed to suppress a smile, the first break in his wonkishness. "I won't lie to you," he said, "and pretend we're not pleased you didn't wait around for Bilton's call."

"How do you know about that? Did Wydell tell you?"

"I don't know Wydell, but I can tell you that it became Service scuttlebutt before you left the hospital."

That struck me as odd and made me wonder at the reach of Caruthers's influence. "I'd always thought the Service was about discretion," I said carefully.

"Times are different, I suppose," Alan said. "Everything's gone to shit and politics."

"Right," I said. "Well, please thank Senator Caruthers for the offer, but tell him I'll take a pass. I need to… you know, figure out what to do here about my place." I hoped I didn't sound as helpless as I felt.

"I didn't mean to upset you." Alan withdrew.

I tried shoving some of the stuffing back into the couch, growing increasingly frustrated. I wanted to restore something to its former shape, even a damn couch. But the more I fussed with it, the more the fabric tore and stretched, and after a while I gave up and sat, splay-legged and discouraged.

When I looked up, Alan was in the doorway again, sliding his cell phone back into his pocket. "The senator told me I was an asshole for playing the political angle. He said he has no interest in publicizing his meeting with you. He just wants to meet you because he was such an admirer of your stepfather."

I considered this skeptically. But I remembered how Frank had always spoken about Caruthers. "Can I take a shower?"

"I'm sorry, the senator's on a bit of a schedule today."

He turned away obligingly while I changed. I kept the IS? L.A. shirt but switched out the muscle pants for jeans.

"Watch your step there." He held the crime-scene tape up for me as I ducked through the doorway, a boxer entering a ring.

I followed him down the hall, on my way to meet the next president of the United States.

Waiting for the elevator, Alan raised a hand, touched my shoulder. "You mind my asking why you're so reluctant to be noticed?"

"Yes," I said, my thoughts yanked back seventeen years.

I minded quite a bit.