“I’m calling security,” Margaret said, turning away.
“Don’t,” said Stratton. His mother stopped, one hand on the doorknob.
“When I started getting close, Palmer and Burke went over their options,” I said to her. “It was clear to them that I wouldn’t stop until I had answers. Burke knew that before long I’d steal a bit of food or a water bottle he’d tossed in the trash and have tests run. If that test came up negative for my father, I’d keep digging. Maybe I’d even find out the names of other friends of Moira’s from back in the day. Like Palmer.”
“That’s wrong. Palmer never knew—your mother,” Margaret said, as if that settled things.
“So they got out ahead of the problem,” I continued. “Palmer gave Burke a swab from his cheek. Burke gave it to me. It would come up positive and I’d think Burke was my father. And it worked, for a day or two.”
They were silent now. Waiting to see what cards I turned over, so they would know if they had any of their own left to play.
“I was already half convinced that Moira went for the bad-boy type. Then I remembered Burke had mentioned something else, about the two of them hanging with his friends from school. So I made some calls. Sean went to Whitaker Academy, I learned. Moira met someone else in that group, someone she liked more.” I pointed at Stratton. “You. One of the academy’s most distinguished graduates, and that’s saying something.”
“Whitaker has a lot of alumni,” he said. “Your mother may have taken up with someone, but it wasn’t me.”
“There were other things that bothered me, too. Agent Martens had come to the bar where I work just a couple of nights prior to Burke giving me the swab. He lifted a bottle of beer I’d been drinking from out of the recycling bin. I have him on camera, skulking around. That got me puzzling. Why would Burke give me his swab if his C.I. handler had already stolen a sample from me? Unless someone on the task force was running a test for themselves. Maybe in private. Did you tell Martens you wanted my DNA for the case?”
“Conjecture,” Stratton said, “and wishful thinking. I’m sorry Sean Burke doesn’t meet with your image of what your father should be—”
“But he did,” I interrupted. “Burke and I have more in common than I’d like. We’re both raised by criminals. Both with a history of violence. And we’re loyal to a damned fault. Burke was about to disappear into WITSEC. You two would work together to take down Liashko, who had killed his father, Gus.”
I shrugged. “Tricking me, pretending to be my dad for a month or two, was a small price for Burke to pay. Especially since a shitstorm in the news about U.S. Attorney Stratton’s out-of-wedlock kid could sink the task force, and ruin Burke’s chance to nail Liashko right along with it.”
“You’ve no proof—” Stratton began, and then stopped. Maybe guessing what was coming.
“Your makeup table at the fund-raiser,” I said, pointing a finger-gun at him in confirmation. “I lifted a few hairs out of the brush. Too bad your dye job doesn’t mask genetic testing. I’ve got a whole profile rundown. One of the state’s leading authorities explained it to me earlier this morning, but I have to confess I only understood about half of what he said. The conclusion spoke for itself, though.”
“If you say anything,” Margaret said, “we will sue you into oblivion.”
“That’s the spirit, Grandma.”
Her lips curled back. “Don’t you dare call me that.”
“What do you want?” said Stratton.
“Palmer—” said Margaret.
“It’s over, Mother,” he said, “except for the negotiating.” He turned back to me. “How much?”
“You think this is a transaction? I’d say it’s more of a plea bargain.”
Margaret would not be denied. “I was sure this would come to pass. From the first moment I heard about that horrid girl. You’re all malignant.”
I stopped, and Stratton’s mouth dropped open. Both of us caught off-guard this time.
“You knew about Moira,” I said.
“Of course we knew. Do you imagine Palmer could be involved with people like you and we wouldn’t know?”
Stratton stiffened. “Mom. What did you do?”
“What you should have. I told that girl to stay away from you. That if she didn’t, James and I would make sure that monstrous father of hers went to prison where he belonged for the rest of his days. The child had just enough sense to know I meant what I said.”
I looked at Stratton. He still stared at Margaret, aghast.
“Moira wasn’t protecting you from Dono by breaking up,” I said to him. “She was protecting Dono from you. Your family.”
“James and I had people keeping watch after Palmer left for college,” Margaret said, “in case she had lied. We found out she was expecting.” The word was cyanide. “I couldn’t believe it might be Palmer’s. But I warned her again, in case the little witch thought she could lay any claim on you. I told her we would arrange for a medical procedure to clean things up. That if she even hinted that Palmer was involved she would regret it forever. She said—it doesn’t bear repeating what she said.”
Good for you, Mom.
“You knew,” Stratton said to Margaret, as if his thoughts had become trapped at that point. “All these years. Moira was pregnant and had our child and you knew?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, going to him. “It didn’t matter then. Or now.”
Stratton stood and brushed her questing hand away. “Don’t. Don’t pretend this is nothing. That what you tried to do . . .” Words apparently failed him.
She talked past him to me, an edge of desperation in her voice. “We will pay you a reasonable amount. But then it’s done. Do you understand?”
I understood, all right. The teenage Moira was leaps and bounds tougher than any of them. I bet that had scared the hell out of Margaret Stratton and the honorable congressman.
“Get out,” Stratton said to his mother.
“Palmer, this is unaccep—”
“Get out of my sight right now.”
Margaret’s face paled. She looked at her son, then back to me.
It was cruel, but I didn’t even try to resist smiling at her.
“Dads and I have some catching up to do,” I said.
Margaret went, immediately and directly, as if fury had given her wings.
Stratton closed the door behind her. When he came back to the chair I realized he was nearly as pale as Margaret had been.
“God,” he said. With a tone of honesty directing his words upstairs. “How can this be?”
“The how explains itself,” I said. “It’s the why I’m wondering about.”
Stratton was staring at the medal of Saint Brendan, still resting on the desk.
“Confession’s good for the soul,” I said.
He closed his eyes before he began speaking.
“Moira. She and I—we met when she came out with Sean. It was immediate between us. Even Sean saw it. He punched me in the gut, but he couldn’t get too mad. It was just one of those things. And Sean had had a lot of girls. Moira was the first one I cared about.”
He might be weaving me a story. Politicians were good at that, creating empathy out of nothing. But I didn’t think so.
“We both accepted I’d be going east for college at the end of the summer,” Stratton said, easing back into his chair. “We’d even talked about her coming to visit, once she got up the nerve to tell her dad she was seeing me. Then she stopped calling. I got a letter. Moira had sent it through Sean, and now I understand why. My parents might have intercepted it otherwise. Moira said she had to end things between us, that she hoped I understood. I didn’t. At all. I suspected it was because of Dono, but I didn’t care if he came after me.”
Foolhardy. But Stratton had been young and in love.
“I went to her house one day, when I knew Dono was away, but Moira refused to let me in. I finally got the picture. She wasn’t coming back. Then a cou
ple of months later, at Cornell, I received another letter forwarded through Sean. With that inside.”
He nodded to Saint Brendan. “I’d seen it before, the one time she allowed me into the house. Moira had told me then that the medal was a sort of heirloom she’d inherited, from back when the family were regular Catholics. Before Dono moved to America. I’d—encouraged her to start up again while we had been dating. But then . . .” Stratton folded his hands. “She wished me well in the letter and said she was okay. And that she hoped I’d keep it.”
She had learned she was pregnant. And said nothing, to Dono or to Palmer, to keep the Strattons from using all of their influence to bury my grandfather.
“I nearly threw the damn thing into Beebe Lake the day I got it,” Stratton said. “But no. The medallion was the only thing I had from her. Eventually I met Carolyn, and everything worked out.” Stratton’s interlaced fingers fiddled with his wedding ring, twisting it by habit around his finger.
“Until Burke.”
“When Sean told me about you last week, I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a trick. Liashko trying to pull something over on Sean, getting him to trust you. I’d found out Moira had died years after it happened. I was still in the Navy, and overseas. It never occurred to me that she might have—that you might exist.”
“Must have been a hell of a shock.”
“The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know the truth. Even if I couldn’t do or say anything about it. Sean and I cooked up the idea of having you run the test on my DNA, believing it was his. I sent Martens to get a sample from you if he could, to find out privately for myself, and, well . . .”
“To keep me from upsetting the apple cart.”
He had the decency to look abashed. “Yes. Moira was gone. Past helping. If I had known about you when you were young, perhaps—” He exhaled. “I gave Sean the medal to give to you. To sell the lie. And because of all people you should have it.”
I picked up the brass disc. It felt heavier than I knew it was.
Stratton shifted uncertainly. “If you want money—”
“Not yours.”
He flushed.
“You’ll leave my name out of the investigation,” I said. “No interrogation, no deposition, nothing. Sean Burke took down Liashko and his men and chose to disappear rather than suffer through life in WITSEC. You make sure Liashko gets the worst hellhole the Feds can arrange for him.”
Stratton hesitated. But his mind was back in gear. Making deals was his wheelhouse. “You’ll have to sign nondisclosure agreements.”
I laughed. “For what? I don’t exist.”
“That’s all? Nothing more than to stay out of it?” said Stratton.
“What price freedom?” I said. “I don’t like attention. Notoriety is even worse.”
Updates on the Liashko case would be scrolling on cable news chyrons for weeks. A Ukrainian arms trafficker arrested with stolen Russian bioweapons on American soil. There would be think pieces and committees at every level of government. Seattle would become the temporary base of every national news service and true-crime podcast, and everyone remotely involved would have their moment in the spotlight. Like it or not.
“You should—you should have something,” Stratton tried again.
He wanted to make amends, maybe feel absolved through his generosity if not his suffering. But Stratton wasn’t the one who’d sinned, any more than Moira had.
I stood and put the medal of Saint Brendan in my pocket. “Good luck in February. Not that you’ll need it.”
Stratton nodded. When I closed the door, he was staring at nothing, still turning his ring around his finger like it might rewind time.
That night, I slept. That night, I finally dreamed. Or remembered.
“Mom?” I said. “Momma? What’s this?”
If the box had been on Mom’s shelf before, I hadn’t seen it. But she had a lot of little things, and I wasn’t allowed to touch them unless she said.
“What’s what, honey?” She was in the kitchen and couldn’t see.
“This. Um.” Like quarters but bigger, and yellow. “Coins. In the box?”
“Oh. Those are saints, baby. Do you know what saints are?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Well, they protect people, kind of. Each medallion there is a different saint.”
I looked closer. There were—I counted—five of them. Four men and one woman. And one missing. Leaving a circle in the wooden box, like a puzzle that wasn’t finished.
“Can I play with them?”
“Yes. But on the table and wash your hands after. You’ll remember?”
“Uh huh.” I lifted the box carefully over some little glass horses and brought it to the table, setting it down before I pulled out the chair and climbed up to see.
The coins fell out all at once when I tipped the box over, clinking and clattering real loud onto the table. Mom didn’t say anything, so I guessed that was okay. I picked them up. They were much heavier than the loose change in my elephant bank. Like pirate money.
I lined them up to look at the pictures. One man held a book, and the woman carried something hard to tell, maybe flowers, but two of the men had long sticks like wizards. They all wore long clothes, and one man had a big tall hat, which was funny.
“Are you excited about first grade, Van?” The kitchen timer beeped like it was answering for me.
“Yeah.” The coins spun best if I used two hands and pushed on them first with my fingers. Soon I could make them go for a long time, spinning upright until they started to tilt, making circles on the table and getting louder and faster. I counted to twenty-seven before the last one finally shuddered to a stop.
“The school’s closed for the summer, so I’m going downtown to the district office tomorrow to get your forms,” Mom said. “We’ll find out who your teacher will be. And then I think you and I should get a lunchbox for you. Your kindergarten one is Worn. Out. Too many cookies broke the handle!”
I giggled. Maybe the lunchbox would have Hulk on it. Superstrong to hold more cookies. That made me laugh more. I spun the coins some more and stacked them and made them bounce off each other until Mom said over the sound of the oven closing that it was time for dinner. Something smelled good, maybe pork chops. When I put the coins back in the box with all their faces showing, I remembered the missing one.
“Um, Mom? There are only five. One was gone before,” I said.
“I know.”
“Did you lose it?”
Mom didn’t answer. Maybe she hadn’t heard. “Momma?”
“I didn’t lose it, baby. I gave it to someone who . . . who could use a little help. That’s what they’re for.”
“Help how?”
“Maybe . . . maybe knowing the right thing to do when they’re not sure. We can all use that sometimes.”
I looked at the coins again. Did they have powers? “Did it? Help them?”
“I’m gonna say yes, it did.”
“Okay.” Cool. I put the box back careful behind the horses.
“What were you going to do next?” She brought in plates and forks and set them on the table.
I was still looking at the coins in the box. One was tilted, and I fixed it. “Wash my hands.”
“Right.” She kissed me on the top of the head. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too, Momma.”
I went to wash up. The coins would be there tomorrow, after we came back from getting my new lunchbox. I bet I could get one to spin till I counted to a hundred.
Epilogue
Bully Betty had allowed me to take over the back room for a private party. It was a small enough group that on a Tuesday night in early February we all could have easily gathered in the main bar, but putting it in a separate space allowed Cyndra to be present with some deniability. The kid, me, Addy Proctor, Oscar and Cannonball and Twelvetrees from the gym. My usual suspects Hollis, Willard, and Elana. Betty and A-Plus and Mo and a few othe
rs wandered through to say hello. Hollis and Willard sat across from one another, regaling my fellow gym rats with stories of youthful indiscretions. Which for them usually involved a large quantity of alcohol with a dash of felony.
And Wren. I looked across the room. She and Elana had hit it off, and Cyndra watched every move and joke the two women made with rapt fascination.
The party was supposedly for me, in honor of my thirtieth spin around the sun. I’d put Addy and Cyndra off planning anything until I was certain Palmer Stratton would keep his word and I wouldn’t find myself in a holding cell, biding time between interrogations by everyone from Homeland Security to Parks and Rec.
Now Palmer Stratton’s image appeared on the muted screen in the corner. Waving to the crowd in whatever hotel ballroom his campaign had rented for election night. A much larger room than for the fund-raiser at the Alexis. The Stratton bandwagon had swelled exponentially during the month since Liashko’s arrest.
It was only eight in the evening. Votes would be counted for hours yet, if not days. But every poll during the past week had shown U.S. Attorney Stratton leading the race, most by double-digit percentages. The candidate was just marking time until his acceptance speech.
On the screen, Palmer Stratton held his wife, Carolyn’s, hand. He waved, she waved, their twins behind them beamed, both boy and girl looking a little dazzled by the lights and the adulation.
Margaret Stratton shared the stage with her family. She stood to one side, graciously leaning down to accept the proffered handshakes of people in the crowd. Was it me, or had she aged since I’d seen her at campaign headquarters? She moved hesitantly, responded to the well-wishers slowly. Maybe it was just the stress of the race.
I waved to Addy Proctor, who’d stepped out to use the restroom and had returned with a pint of stout for me and a shot of vodka for herself. Addy was the only person with whom I’d shared the truth about Palmer Stratton, and Moira.
She joined me at the wall counter, and both of us watched events unfold on the television.
A Dangerous Breed Page 37