Happy Endings

by Sally Quinn

  Here she had just decided that she would accept Des’s religion because it gave him strength and solace and now she was finding out that his religion would not only not accept her lack of belief but would actually punish her for it. She was appalled.

  She skipped down further, perhaps expecting to find something that would mitigate the unrelenting horror of those last lines. She got to the end of chapter three, to the last passage in black ink.

  36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

  The wrath of God had nothing on hers.

  She threw the Bible as hard as she could across the room. It hit the full-length mirror on the back of the door and shattered it, scattering the glistening shards throughout the room.

  She stood up, walked around the bed and through the door, out the hall, not stopping to pick up the Bible or the shards. She could hear the sound of crunching glass under her sneakers as she walked.

  She went down the stairs and into the study, heading straight for the bar. She found Des’s bottle of Irish whiskey and poured a large glass, neat. No ice. No water. She sat down on the sofa and began to drink. By the time Des got home that night she was completely blotto.

  * * *

  It was freezing cold, gloomy, and pouring rain. It reminded her of London and made her a bit nostalgic. Her life then had been so simple compared to her life now. The bedroom scene with Des the week before had left her even more determined to put everything but work out of her mind. She had become a genius at compartmentalizing.

  Sprague had offered to pick her up at her house on Olive Street to drive the few blocks down to the Georgetown waterfront.

  He honked the horn and she ran out, startled to see a big burly man sitting in the backseat. She jumped in the front seat and shot Sprague a quizzical look.

  “This is Ralph,” he said. “Ralph is my bodyguard. Ralph is a killer. Ralph is one mean son of a bitch. Right, Ralph?”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “So don’t mess with me, woman.”

  She turned to get a good look at Ralph. He had a crewcut, a nose that had been broken many times, a shiny suit, and several diamond rings.

  “Ralph?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I’m his boss. I’m also a killer.”

  Ralph seemed somewhat startled and a little skeptical of the admission by this slim, blond woman.

  “If anything happens to him, Ralph, you’ll have to answer to me.” Yes, ma’am.

  Ralph’s eyes were on sticks.

  “And Ralph?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “If anything does happen to him, it’s your ass.”

  It was all Sprague could do not to run off the road.

  They parked in the underground garage, took the elevator up to the terrace level, and walked past the fountain to Jaimalitos. The Mexican restaurant was almost completely empty except for a few people sitting in the front by the large glass window overlooking the river.

  Sprague told Ralph to position himself at a corner table next to the entrance to the back of the restaurant. Then he led the way around the adobe wall to the dimly lit room behind it and took the farthest booth, tucked away between more fake adobe walls and piled high with brightly colored Mexican pillows. She slid in first and Sprague slid in beside her, much to her surprise.

  “I want both of us to be on the same side,” he said. “When he comes, you’ll see why.”

  She had never been close to him before and it was slightly awkward sitting next to him like that, wedged into the banquette. She had to lean back against the pillows to talk to him. There was something almost suggestive about the two of them being there alone.

  They waited for almost half an hour eating tortilla chips and sipping sparkling water. They talked about nothing in particular.

  Finally Garcia came in, hurriedly, casting furtive glances around to see if anyone was watching. He looked like a grade-B actor in a low-budget movie. It was all Allison could do not to laugh. He slid into the other side of the booth as though he had done it many times before, and pounced on the tortilla chips. Even though she had seen him in photographs and on television, she was surprised at how sinister he looked in person: swarthy, paunchy, darting eyes. He was, after all, the head of the DEA, the good guy. She had to take Sprague’s word for it that he was smart, crafty, and a good source. Garcia hardly said a word. After ordering a margarita, a huge plate of nachos, and an equally large portion of fajitas, he ate and listened as Sprague outlined the death threats and what he and the paper had done about them.

  Garcia wiped his mouth.

  “Don’t fuck with them, man,” he said to Sprague in a heavy Hispanic accent, completely ignoring Allison. “They’re bad. They don’t joke around. There is a saying in the drug trade: ‘A marijuana deal is done with a handshake, and a coke deal is done with a gun.’ If they think you’re getting close to the big enchilada you’re dead meat.”

  “Then you think this threat is serious?” Allison asked.

  He looked around again as though he were being followed.

  “I think,” he said, looking at her for the first time, “that if this guy doesn’t get off the story, you better start looking for a new investigative reporter.”

  “What do you mean by—?”

  Allison had barely gotten the words out when Garcia slid out of his side of the banquette and disappeared as fast as he had come.

  Frightened as she was by what Garcia had said, she started to laugh.

  “He’s got to be kidding. You’ve got to be kidding. What was that? And who is the big enchilada?”

  “The big enchilada is Foxy, and that was the guy who spends a lot of time identifying the mutilated bodies of his agents who have not taken death threats seriously.”

  She pondered that for a moment.

  “I think I need a margarita,” she said.

  “Good idea.”

  As cool as he was, she could see that Sprague too was unnerved.

  They both took long sips, Allison licking the salt off the side of her glass.

  “Sprague,” she said, not looking up, “I don’t want you to get killed.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She looked up from her glass.

  “Please be careful. Please don’t do anything dumb. I’ve said it before. It’s just not worth it for a story.”

  He could see the pleading in her eyes. He was not smiling. There was no mischief in his eyes, no “I didn’t know you cared” teasing.

  “It’s an important story, Ally.”

  There was the Ally again. She liked it. It was proprietary on his part, presumptuous. But she liked it.

  “I don’t care. I… I just don’t care, that’s all.”

  “We’re talking about bringing down the government, getting rid of a bunch of sleazeballs and corrupt bastards who are hell-bent on screwing up the country. We’re talking about saving thousands of innocent people’s lives. We’re talking about crime. The people who are running the country, the attorney general for Christ’s sake, the top law enforcement officer in the nation, is sponsoring this bad business. I’m on to them. I’m this close. I think if I can get these two guys on Jenkins’s Cove connected to the Foreign Minister I can get them to lead me to Antonia and Foxy. It’s the DEA report on them that Foxy’s trying to squelch. They’re blackmailing him through Antonia. If I can get them I can blow this thing. I’ve got to go down there.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She knew that what she was saying, the way she was saying it, was unprofessional. She couldn’t help it. She felt overwhelmed by the idea that something might happen to Sprague. Somehow, Sprague had filled a part of that yawning, empty crater inside her. Des couldn’t do it for her. Des had nothing to give her. He had his own emptiness to deal with. Besides, she loved Des. She was trying to get away from love. Sprague was a distraction. If she thought about Sprague she did
n’t have to think about herself or Des or Kay Kay, so she found she was thinking about him all the time. She was almost obsessive about it. But it was a therapeutic obsession.

  “Spoken like a true editor.”

  Maybe it was the margarita, which she had practically consumed in one gulp, but the whole conversation had her on the verge of tears. She hadn’t cried for four months, but the thought of Sprague dead, killed, panicked her.

  “I can’t deal with this,” she said, blinking and looking away.

  He hadn’t quite realized how upset she was.

  “Look,” he said gently. “I’ll be careful. I won’t do anything stupid. I promise. I have a wife and a child, remember?”

  The mention of Jane jarred her. Her expression showed it.

  “My child needs me. I won’t take any chances.”

  She smiled. He returned her smile.

  The waiter reappeared with the bill. Sprague ordered two more margaritas.

  “You’ll have to carry me out of here,” she said.

  “I can think of worse assignments.”

  “Like going to Jenkins’s Cove with Ralph?”

  “To name one.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Marooned out on that sailboat or on a desert island Ralph might start to look pretty good.”

  “There are others I’d rather be stranded with.”

  They were both surprised that he had said it and they both laughed self-consciously.

  Sprague looked down at his watch.

  “Oh Lord, we’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “I’ve got a five o’clock plane to Miami.”

  “You’re leaving today?” she said a little quickly.

  “I have to. I’ve got to go back to the hotel and get my suitcase and leave the car.”

  “I knew you’d moved to a hotel. Which one?”

  “Right around the corner from you. At the Georgetown Dutch Inn on Thomas Jefferson Street.”

  “I remember that place. I once had a love tryst there with a famous movie star in my wild single girl days. It seems like another life.”

  The jaw muscles started to work the way they did when he got angry. She realized he wasn’t at all happy to hear that she had had another life. Could he be jealous? That pleased her. She had told him that story to make him jealous. She knew what she was doing. And she had gotten the desired response.

  “I knew there must be a reason why I chose to stay there,” he said. Cool, very cool.

  He stood up abruptly, threw some cash on the table, and signaled to the ever alert Ralph that they were leaving.

  It was still pouring when they got outside so she accepted a ride home from him. They rode in silence up to Olive Street. When they got to her house, she opened the door, then turned to Ralph in the backseat. She had intended to say something smart and funny but as she started to speak she realized she was about to choke up.

  “Don’t let anything happen to him, Ralph. Please?”

  Before either one of them could answer she had jumped out of the car into the downpour.

  * * *

  “Sterling,” she said, picking up the phone.

  It was after eight-thirty, after deadline, and the newsroom was pretty quiet. She was sitting back in her chair with her feet up on her desk going over expense accounts.

  “Ally?”

  She bolted up in her chair.

  “Sprague? Thank God! You’re all right?”

  She was so relieved to hear his voice that she forgot how furious she was at him for not calling for almost a week.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” she said. “I’ve… we’ve been worried sick about you. You promised you’d call the minute you got off that boat.”

  “Yeah, well, I cruised around a little longer than I had planned to.”

  “What happened? Did you learn anything?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”

  He obviously didn’t want to talk on the phone.

  “Where are you now… can you say?”

  “I just stopped off for a day or so on the way back to see my father.”

  She knew his father was dead. So he must have decided to go visit Jane and Melissa.

  “When will you be back?”

  “I’m getting in tomorrow night.”

  “Okay, I’ll set up that meeting at my house for Wednesday morning. Alan and Walt are anxious for us to brainstorm this thing. It’s getting out of control. Too many cooks. Everybody wants a piece. Nobody knows what anybody else is doing. We’re falling all over each other. It’s a mess.”

  “Fine with me. What time?”

  “Nine-thirty sharp. I need you there at the beginning to lend a note of cohesiveness to the enterprise.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  She hadn’t been joking. The whole project was so confusing that even she, who had been involved from the very beginning, was losing track. Everyone knew that Sprague was working on something big. A lot of them resented him for his cool, standoffish style, his privileged background, his Pulitzer. But they had to admit he was good. The best. He was like a vacuum cleaner. Wherever he went he just turned it on and sucked up every bit of information available. Allison had never seen anything like it. He was dazzling as an investigative reporter. He knew where to go, who to go to, and how to make people talk. He was dogged, persistent; he never gave up. Where most reporters would try a couple of times, he’d go back forty or fifty times until the person was worn into submission. He worked day and night. Other reporters watching him saw visions of Pulitzers dancing in their heads. Whatever he was working on, they wanted to work on. He had been at this story long enough that several of the reporters who sat next to him and covered some of the beats he’d been sniffing around were beginning to pick up bits of the story here and there. They would come to Allison with their findings. They were getting close to the DEA stuff, the Foxy stuff, the Antonia Alvarez stuff. Sprague’s trips to Colombia had intrigued everyone. They all knew he had won his Pulitzer for a series on drugs for the Savannah paper. They also knew he had had his life threatened, that he had sent his family away, that the paper had had a bomb threat, and that he was off again on another dangerous assignment. Plus, there had been lots of grim-faced meetings in Alan’s glass office with the door shut. All of this was enough to have any self-respecting reporter hyperventilating to be a part of the action, to agitate until they found out what was going on. Allison had decided to co-opt the ones who were causing the most trouble with this meeting at her house. They would share the information and proceed as a team. They were disgruntled that Sprague had had a series of drug stories on page one already and had not cooperated with any of them on what they were doing. If she could get them all working on this together they might really have a crack at the Pulitzer, maybe this one for the paper. Once they got a whiff of the possibilities, like the fact that they could bring the whole government down, she was certain she could bring them in line.

  * * *

  The meeting was at her house so as not to arouse any more suspicion than necessary in the newsroom. Walt Fineman would be there; Malkin, her deputy; Sprague; Estrella, the bombthrower who covered the agencies; Lauren Hope, back from maternity leave, covering Congress; Rod Taylor, the diplomatic correspondent; and Robin, the woman researcher on the national staff. She had asked Robin to stop off at the American Café and pick up some croissants and muffins and she had made a big pot of coffee and had a large pitcher of fresh orange juice.

  Des had an early breakfast meeting so he was out by seven-thirty. She took a shower and washed her hair, then thumbed through her wardrobe looking for just the right thing to wear. She usually didn’t pay that much attention to her work clothes. But today she wanted to look good. She picked out a white gabardine skirt and a pale pink cashmere sweater set with white trim, springy but warm enough for the chilly April weather. As she put on her makeup she realized that she was dressing for Sprague. That embarrassed her. She didn’t w
ant to think about him. For one thing, it was pointless. For another, it was wrong.

  She knew that he had always elicited strong emotions in her, usually anger and exasperation. But he had been talking to her differently lately, looking at her differently. He seemed less challenging to her now, gentler, more sensitive, more vulnerable. She tried to tell herself it was because of Kay Kay and his feelings of sympathy toward her, that it was because they were working so closely together on a dangerous project, that Jane wasn’t here and he felt lonely. But her gut instinct told her it was more than that. She was finally admitting to herself that Sprague was attracted to her and that she was attracted to him.

  * * *

  Allison had called this meeting for two reasons. She needed to pull together all the information her staff had been collecting. But she also was using her work as a way to blot out her sorrow. It was the only antidote she had found to the pain.

  She had assembled the group in her small dining room on the ground floor of her house, next to the kitchen. That way they could sit around the table, take notes, and eat while they talked. The entrance was on the ground floor so people could come and go depending on how long the meeting lasted. The room had glass French doors that gave out onto her tiny garden, bursting with pink, white, and lavender: dogwoods, cherry blossoms, tulips and wisteria. This was thanks to a gardening service, since she had never held a trowel or gotten dirt in her fingernails. Domesticity was not her strong point.

  They had been told to be there between nine and nine-thirty so of course nobody showed up until around nine-thirty. Robin had come early, still smarting over having been given the menial task of getting the food. The rest of them began straggling in after the appointed hour. By ten everyone was there except Sprague. She couldn’t hold up the meeting just for him even though she was so anxious that she could barely concentrate. Her dread was that something terrible had happened. Her suspicion was that he hadn’t bothered to get there on time.