“Sure. He thinks politics is good for me. Give me some values, he says.” The contempt on the girl’s face was obvious.
“So you stayed behind,” cued Murray.
“Yeah, I stayed. I had some more beer. He offered to give me a ride home, so I said okay. And then he fucked me.” The blunt language made him blush. And she liked the rise it got out of him.
“Who?”
“Fucked me? That guy Shakespeare.”
“Did he rape you?”
“I was drunk. I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t like it, if that’s what you’re asking. But I didn’t exactly say no. He was gonna help me in New York.”
“Did you tell your father?”
“No way!” That look again. She hated him. “You think he’d believe me? My dad’s like angry about everything, you know? Mexicans. The president. He thinks Shakespeare McCann…it’s like he’s all my dad talks about. But hey. Like he’d believe me, anyway. He sees the guys I go out with. And he knows I’m not a virgin no more.”
“But you got pregnant.”
“Yup. First time, too. I wanted to get an abortion, but that was gonna cost three hundred at the clinic, and that was almost half my savings. So I went to Shakespeare for the money. I mean, what’s three hundred to him when he’s gonna be a senator?”
“Congressman.”
“Whatever. But that’s when he kicked the shit outta me. Hit me hard. Kicked me hard. I hate him!”
“And you didn’t tell anybody else?”
“Not a soul. And my dad? He didn’t even ask. He just called me a slut and told me I was going to hell.”
Now came the hard part. She’d told Murray. But would she swear to it?
“Would you tell anybody else?” he asked.
“Like I’m telling you?”
“Would you go on the record? Sign an affidavit?”
“What’s that?”
“A statement that says what happened to you.”
“No way.”
“Not even if I could help you get to New York?”
Magic words…
Jennifer was suddenly thinking. “I don’t know. Could Shakespeare do anything about it?”
“You mean, could he hurt you?”
“Yeah. Could he hurt me?”
“I don’t think so. Give me a day or two. I’ll see what I can put together.”
“With Mitch Dutton, you mean?”
“With the campaign. You see, it’s like this. Mitch is the good guy. Shakespeare is the bad guy. It’s really that simple. And as I see it, the world will be a lot better off as soon as Shakespeare exits the picture. You could help. Maybe we could help you in return.” Murray got up to leave. “I can find you at the salon?”
“Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Just don’t call me at home.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
And as Murray was leaving, she couldn’t help but ask one more thing. “Hey. Is this what they call dirty politics?”
FIVE
THE CANDIDATE sat stock-still behind his desk, listening while Fitz and Rene ran down the details. According to a young girl named Jennifer, she was raped and later beaten by Shakespeare McCann when she’d asked for abortion money. Murray said she would agree to swear out a sexual assault complaint in exchange for two thousand dollars cash and a bus ticket to New York City.
Street money. Campaign cash. Won’t be traced.
“Name your suitor,” said Fitz. “Sandy Mullin. Pete Peterman. I’ll betcha we could get Vidor Kingman to make the payment.”
Rape. Assault. They weren’t talking about Candidate McCann. Instead they were talking about the violent man Mitch knew from the alley behind the Mairzy Doats Cafe. His insides ground as Fitz went on, secretly regretting he’d never sworn out his own complaint against the bastard.
“I know this is against every fiber of what you are, Mitch. But it’s bigger than you. It’s about her.”
“You know, Mitch. The cash doesn’t mean she’s lying, either,” offered Rene. “She’s sixteen. She’s scared of her father. This is her ticket out.”
“We’re doing her a favor,” said Fitz.
“Or she’s extorting money from us in exchange for the complaint,” said Mitch. “We’re complicit in a crime.”
“Now you’re sounding like a lawyer,” said Fitz.
“I am a lawyer.”
“It’s McCann who broke the law. He had sex with an underage girl. He beat the crap out of her,” said Fitz.
“And if we let this go?” said Mitch.
“More than likely? He gets away with it,” said Fitz. “No guarantees the young lady will make a complaint, swear out an affidavit, or even stick around to see the general election. She’s on her way to New York, for Christ’s sake!”
“With our help, she is,” reminded Mitch. He was simply arguing, though. He knew Fitz was right. The longer they waited, the more likely the crime wouldn’t be reported. Jennifer O’Detts would bury it like a dead pet and move on with her young life.
“So it’s the money that’s got you worried?” asked Rene.
“I’m trying to be circumspect.”
“Networks pay for stories every day,” she said. “They say they don’t, but they do.”
“Why shouldn’t we?” added Fitz.
“Because I didn’t want my campaign to go negative.”
Fitz was on his feet now. The opening was clear. “Listen to me closely. Primary Tuesday, Hurricane falls off a horse. Suddenly you’re the front-runner. You pick up his slack. Your positives hang at a solid seventy-plus percent and your negatives are around twenty. Where are your positives now?”
“Pretty much the same.”
“Yes. And that’s good,” continued Fitz, insisting that Mitch hear the ugly truth. “But your negatives are up to forty. And that’s Shakespeare McCann. He’s not out there building himself up as much as he’s trying to tear you down. Calling you everything from a communist to a nigger lover.”
“I don’t like that word,” said Mitch.
“Live with it. Now, McCann’s positives are thirty, but his negatives are only twenty. That’s because nobody knows about him.”
“You want me to get in the mud and throw it. I can’t. We’re better than that!” intoned Mitch, sounding less forceful than earlier. The candidate was not convinced. He could feel the earth eroding from underneath his feet.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Mitch. We’re not better than anything. You are,” snapped Fitz, his finger pointed.
“You’re not in the race.”
Fitz moved in, leaning over the desk. “Hear me good, mister. The only high ground in this great country is on Capitol Hill. That leaves the rest of us to fight it out down here in the dirt and mud of the floodplain.
“Now, your opponent. He’s got the momentum. He started at less than ten and now he’s at almost thirty. And he’s bringing your negatives up with him. The time to draw blood is now. Let him know you aren’t scared of his bite.”
“He’s right, Mitch,” said Rene, too diplomatic to add much more. This was between Mitch and Fitz. The candidate sat with his feet up on the windowsill, staring out at a smoked sunset. Deciding. The pragmatist inside him trying to make it all fit.
“We got the girl at the clinic,” said Murray. “She saw the bruises. She heard her dump on Shakespeare.”
“Hearsay.”
“This ain’t court and you ain’t counsel,” argued Fitz. “This is politics and we don’t have to do a Goddamn thing. There’s so many leaks inside Cathedral PD, how the story leaked and to whom, nobody can point the finger at us.”
“People will ask why she didn’t tell her parents,” Mitch tested.
“Shakespeare beat the crap outta you and you didn’t even tell your wife,” was Fitz’s cutting response.
The room went silent. Fitz had spoken sacred words that had been tucked neatly in a drawer since June. Words that made Mitch feel like a coward. The rage swelled inside him again.
“I’m sorry,” added Fitz, knowing the apology was a notch too late.
“The truth hurts,” said Mitch.
Fitz looked up at the ceiling in a mock prayer, spun around, and ended up back in his seat with a resounding thud. “I’m still sorry, okay? Listen. It’s up to you. It’s your campaign. We work for you. You’re the boss—”
“Shut up,” barked Mitch, his eyes slamming shut.
Fitz tried his last shot. “It’s a Goddamn silver bullet, Mitch. It kills McCann dead.”
The Silver Bullet Theory. Mitch had heard of it. It’s the shot that, once fired, explodes the heart of the opposition’s campaign. Certain death. Game over.
“And how many silver bullets have you fired in your career?” asked Mitch. It was a gut test for Fitz.
“I’ve had a few. Mostly twenty-two-caliber. Not much penetration. But this one. It’s a forty-four, and we’re gonna fire it point-blank right into the fucker’s skull.”
“Sounds messy. But I’m the one who has to pull the trigger.”
Fitz relented, his arms up in the air in surrender. “It’s your call. I just need to know what it’s gonna be.”
The candidate’s lips pressed together, then finally released with a heave of air. “Do it.”
“Do what?” asked Fitz.
“Whatever you have to do.”
“You serious?”
“Just get out and do it. I don’t want to hear any more about it,” ordered the candidate.
Exchanging looks, Fitz got up, gestured for Murray to exit in front of him, then waited for Rene. She nodded for him to leave first. “Mitch?”
“Yeah?”
“McCann deserves what he gets.”
“And so do I.”
She had to think about it. All she could come up with was, “Yes. I guess you do.”
“Shut the door, please.”
She left the room, easing the door closed behind her. That left him alone with his thoughts and the sunset. With his eyes closed, he reeled back to the Mairzy Doats Cafe and the concussion of blows suffered at the hands of Shakespeare McCann. One shot after the next. The kicking and the dust in his throat. Busted glasses. And then that squeaky voice:
“I have faith in my Destiny!”
When Mitch’s eyes popped open, the sun was gone, leaving a tortured sky, black against the ever-darkening blue.
Revenge, he thought. Revenge.
The word floated into his consciousness just as Fitz’s words faded back into his ears. “This is politics,” he had said. “Love it or leave it. They hit you, you hit back.”
Revenge.
“Look at the shit he pulled with Jamal La Croix and that phony picture.”
“Deserves what he gets,” Rene had said with that Mississippi lilt and soothing rhythm. “He’s a bad guy. He’s a violent guy. He oughta be in jail.”
Revenge.
The word had muscled its way front and center in the candidate’s psyche. It was a powerful desire. A visceral want as if for food or sex. Without intellect or remorse. He would screw the ethics and screw Shakespeare and his home-fried homilies and South County wit. The blood that he was tasting in his mouth was no longer his own, but the opposition’s. The other guy’s. The bad guy’s. Mitch was emotionally resolving that it was time for Shakespeare to go down. And go down hard.
“Fuck him,” he cursed.
The deal with Jennifer was done the next day. She’d told Murray that she didn’t like the idea of filing the assault complaint against Shakespeare. In fact, she’d said it scared her to death. But Fitz was convinced that without a formal charge, even with a signed affidavit, the accusation might not stick. Through Stu Jackson, Fitz learned he could time the complaint in such a way that, if filed at any midnight hour, the girl could be safely on a bus and out of Texas well before a judge would issue a warrant.
On Wednesday afternoon a hand-delivered package with Jennifer’s name on it arrived at Carol’s Sunny Nails Salon in Cathedral City. It was a coffee-table book filled with big, glossy photos of New York City. On page sixty-four the sixteen-year-old found an envelope containing two thousand dollars in cash and a ticket.
She was on a bus by the next morning.
As was his tendency, Charlie Flores was going ballistic. A leak inside the Mirror’s rival publication, the Cathedral Evening Breeze, had called him just before the lunch hour and informed him that Superior Court Judge Coretta Tyson had signed a warrant for the arrest of Shakespeare McCann. The charge was sexual assault on a sixteen-year-old minor named Jennifer O’Detts. Charlie wanted to make sure that Hollice Waters was in it up to his ears.
“I pay you to dig this shit out,” barked Charlie. “Now the Breeze has got it!” The subtext was that the Breeze, an evening edition published off-island, would break the news by four. After that, TV would saturate the story throughout the evening’s newscasts. By the time the story would appear in the Daily Mirror the following morning, the arrest of the Republican congressional candidate would be old news. After that, the election and the fait accomplis result. The horse race would be over.
“I got my people working on it,” answered Hollice, sore and obviously beaten by the news. Dutton was going to Congress. “All I know is that the source was inside the PD.”
“You don’t have sources inside the PD?”
“What can I say? I write a good story, the source gets shit-canned.”
“If there’s an angle nobody’s got, I want in. I’ll pay for it. I want the real story in tomorrow’s edition.” That was style à la Charlie Flores. Irritate. Inspire. Then bark the marching order. “I don’t care how you do it. Just get it done.”
Hollice took the orders with him back to his office. That and not much else. Once there, he eased his angst with one of Charlie’s precious Cuban cigars, one of the three he’d stolen while the boss was out to lunch. With feet up on his desk, he drew in some of the Havana smoke and took to his habit of tossing sharpened pencils into the acoustic tile ceiling. Those two-by-two-foot soundproof tiles were better than a dartboard, making for an excellent distraction when he found himself clueless and without a solid lead on a story. Like a circus knife thrower, he’d stick the pencils in the ceiling, one by one.
Shakespeare McCann, Arrested for Sexual Assault.
So what? thought Hollice. Shakespeare screwed and beat up some sixteen-year-old slut-puppy. Probably some groupie who wouldn’t go all the way with him. Hollice understood those kinds of feelings. Teenagers, too young to be legal, but sexually active and willing as hell. They looked of age, drank like whores, carried fake IDs that’d fool any cop, and fucked like the Energizer Bunny.
So what? The reporter needed a headline.
Shakespeare McCann, Populist, Plagiarist, and Pugilist.
Did Shakespeare have a violent history? As far as Hollice knew, he had no history. Hollice had already dug deep and found out next to nothing about McCann, other than what the candidate had published himself. There was without a doubt a story there. But dig up the whole enchilada by the next morning? Next pencil. Thwack! The number 2 stuck into the ceiling tile.
Mitch Dutton, Congressional Shoo-in.
Hollice’s old school chum Mitch Dutton, a.k.a. the front-running Democratic nominee, and now a certain-fucking-winner—in a congressional contest against the soon-to-be-arrested-for-rape dead horse, Shakespeare McCann. How would the Democrat react? Did he already know? Surely. Mitch Dutton had many fans inside the Cathedral PD. Mitch must have known before the Breeze did. All other media would be looking to Mitch for some kind of statement. A well-spoken sort of statement. Rehearsed. Not too gleeful. The Dutton camp would be feverishly hammering it out as Hollice impaled another pencil into the acoustic tiles above his head.
Hollice Waters Explains to Charlie Flores Why There Is No Other Story than the Obvious.
The phone rang just as Hollice impaled another pencil into the tiles above his head. “This’s Hollice” was how he always answered his telephone.
“Hollice
. It’s Marshall Lambeer.”
Hollice Waters’s position changed instantly. His feet were off the desk as he instinctively reached for a notepad. “Marshall. Good to hear from you. Been a while—”
“There’s an all-media press conference tonight at eight. McCann HQ.”
“Why so late, Marshall? By that time your boy’s gonna be trashed from here all the way down to Corpus Christi. The TV’s gonna eat you up. Now, if you were to give me an exclusive before—”
“We’re way ahead of you, Hollice. We want the bad press. After all, we’ve got the girl. And we’re willing to give you her first interview.”
“The girl? The O’Detts girl? I heard she was already out of state.”
“Untrue. She’s right here in town. She feels bad about what she’s done and wants to get things straight, if you get my meaning.”
“I’ll quote her, all right. But it’s just me. Only me. Hollice Waters, Daily Mirror exclusive.”
“For your morning edition. Sure. Then it’s open season.”
“Where and when?”
“Four-thirty out in Acre Lakes. She lives with her parents at 458 Lake View Terrace. Don’t be late.” Marshall hung up the phone.
Hollice didn’t hang up. He simply switched lines and left a terse message on Charlie’s voice mail. “Charlie. It’s Hollice. Hold tomorrow’s front page and save me about twelve inches above the fold.” Hollice thought that should do it. A helluva tease that guaranteed Charlie a second heart attack if he didn’t hear from Hollice by 7:00 p.m. By then the news wave over Shakespeare’s arrest warrant would most likely have already crashed on Cathedral’s political beachhead, only to recede with a powerful undertow written by Hollice himself. Who that undertow might pull underneath was still uncertain. But none of that mattered. In the ebb-and-flow game played between the media and politicos, there were always casualties and cannon fodder. The willful soldier along with unwilling victim. Such was life. Such was politics. Such was the philosophy of Hollice Waters.
Acre Lakes was one of those middle-class communities born from seventies’ tax deals and the early eighties’ real estate boom. Half-acre lots spread across ten square miles of South Texas flatland. Seventy-five prefab homes surrounded a man-made lake with a still undetermined drainage trouble creating a stagnant hazard that was so bad, the EPA had forced the developers to drain it permanently. Soon after, the guilty parties filed for bankruptcy protection and fled for the indemnity-rich shores of Florida.
Dark Horse Page 18