Immaculate Deception

by Warren Adler

  “I don’t think you would want to create a scene, Mr. Rome,” she said coolly. She was into it now, strong and confident, studying him for clear signs of her theory’s validation. She hadn’t expected him to crumble without a fight. After glaring at her for a long moment, he sat down.

  “There are heavy consequences in false accusations,” he said, lowering his voice.

  “I know.”

  She watched as he forced himself under control. This was a man of enormous discipline. Through willpower and imagination he had literally shaped himself into an image of what apparently passed for a “statesman.” He projected dignity and bearing, especially with his greying hair and superb grooming. Combined, these attributes gave his words the tone of wisdom. It was fair to say that he was long on style. As for substance, she knew little about his performance, but a good guess would be that he was more of a power broker and a “force” rather than an imaginative conceptualizer of new legislation.

  If his head were transparent, she was certain, she would see the patterns of a computer program set to trigger a kind of charming indignation. It was really his only option. The fact that he had not stormed out of the restaurant was a hopeful clue that she had not guessed wrong.

  “You realize, of course, that that is the most absurd notion I have ever heard in my life. I am a happily married man, a constant and devoted husband. I suppose I should be flattered to be accused of infidelity with such a lovely woman as Frankie. The idea is fascinating, even attractive, but I’m afraid a clandestine affair is not my cup of tea.”

  He was ladling out the charm from a bottomless inner bucket, slopping it over her with what he must have thought was elegance and finesse.

  “Just hear out my fantasy, Mr. Congressman,” she said. She hoped he noted the sarcasm and contempt in her tone. She didn’t care. She was encouraged now, her gut instinct vibrating like a tuning fork with sympathetic certainty.

  “I’ll listen, of course. But I would appreciate it if this bit of fiction stopped at the door of this restaurant.”

  Despite his calm exterior, she continued to sense his fear.

  “We found a latent fingerprint,” she said, sucking in a deep breath, wondering if her nose was growing. “Yours.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” he said calmly. “We visited Frankie often.”

  “On the toilet seat, at that point where a man’s hand is used to lift the seat.”

  “And yes, I most probably did use the facility,” he said with contrived bemusement.

  She was strictly improvising now, jockeying for position, waiting for the moment of vulnerability. Since he was a man of vast talking experience and a heavy reliance on wit, it would be natural for him to best her in any rebuttal and deflect accusations.

  “You reached her discreetly through the exit stairway. A cautious man could effect such an operation without being seen. Unfortunately that was not a foolproof operation.”

  “Of course you have a witness for these fictional assertions,” he muttered.

  “Yes, we do. Two in fact. Both quite credible. They saw you in the corridor on Frankie’s floor. They’re dead certain. I showed them pictures. They didn’t know your name, only that they saw you often coming out of the exit door and proceeding to Frankie’s apartment.”

  “That’s sheer madness,” he protested. Still, he made no move to leave. She noted, too, that despite his control, he could not quite dominate his fingers, which shook, and his skin, which had grown pinker.

  “What is, your being Frankie’s lover?”

  “And this is your own brilliant theory?”

  “I do not believe it’s theoretical,” she snapped.

  “Your superiors know nothing of this?”

  “Nor my partner.”

  “And the technical people? The fingerprint.”

  “That doesn’t mean an accusation. Prints are often identified without comment. And you were a visitor to Mrs. McGuire’s apartment.”

  “With my wife.”

  He shook his head and forced a smile.

  “On occasion.”

  “Sounds to me like something in someone’s dirty tricks department. Who are you really working for, FitzGerald?”

  “Now it’s a conspiracy,” Fiona said. “Mr. Rome, you have a very safe seat.”

  “No one is immune to reckless slander, especially in politics.” He thought for a moment. “I get it. You’re part of the pro-lifers. They’ve been trying to get me for years. So old May Carter has finally found a weapon.” His face reddened further revealing his accelerating anger. “The old bitch finally found a way to get me. How utterly disgusting.” He had, she could tell, truly believed he had found a way to get off the hook.

  Her certainly knew how to wiggle. She started to say something in protest, but he interrupted before she could get the words out. “It’s all quite clear to me now. You won’t get away with this. You know why?” He pointed a finger at her. “There’s a basic flaw in your theory. Nothing you have said can prove that Frankie was murdered by me and that is, apparently, what you’re suggesting. Even if I were her lover, which I deny categorically, you still have to prove that I murdered her, which is impossible and untrue.”

  He stopped, sucked in a deep breath and seemed quite satisfied with his explanation.

  “There is a baby involved here,” Fiona said, feeling her own emotional system ride into high gear.

  “Fetus,” he corrected.

  “A life.”

  “And it was Frankie’s choice to decide what was right for her. She chose to eliminate both herself and the baby.”

  “Your baby,” Fiona said quietly. It seemed suddenly, to her, the profoundest issue in the case and for the first time she discovered the true nature of her own personal policy on that issue.

  If it happened to someone else it was a moral issue only, abstract and high-minded, on whichever side one came down. If it happened to you it was a matter of life and death. Last night, tossing and turning in bed, she must have subconsciously debated the point with herself. She had, in effect, lost her baby. Albeit it had been in her imagination but it had been just as real to her as any biological conception. And she had experienced the same psychic hollowness, the same sense of despair and loss, as if something had been stolen from her body by forces outside of her control.

  “I don’t know why I’m listening to this,” Rome said, but something in his tone lacked conviction. For the first time she noted that a moustache of perspiration had grown on his upper lip. Also, his clear intense eyes had grown suddenly vague as if he were looking inward.

  “Because you know I’ve got it right.”

  “This is preposterous. I have a good mind to call the mayor,” he said.

  “I’m sure they can bring you one of those cordless phones.” She began to look around for the waiter. Seeing one, she raised her arm and he reached out and brought it down.

  “I don’t want to embarrass you, FitzGerald,” he said. “My advice to you is to have our coffee, then leave here and forget about all this.”

  He started to raise his coffee cup, but his hand shook so hard that the cup slipped into its saucer, spilling the coffee on the white tablecloth. He was quite obviously losing control and knew it.

  “I’ve made a mess,” he said, his voice breaking.

  “Yes, you have,” she said. She was noting other physical signs of a crumbling facade. His lips were trembling. She knew what she had to do now.

  “Do you and your wife have any children of your own?” Fiona asked. He had been studying the coffee stain on the table, his eyes lowered. Suddenly he looked up as if his face had been slapped. She knew she had struck a deep nerve.

  “No, we don’t,” he whispered, clearing his throat. “That’s all public record.”

  Where he had sought her eyes, he now shifted his gaze to his hands. Then he shrugged and spoke, his tone low, as if he were addressing his fingers. Slowly, he lifted his head, but his look was still vague. “The doctors said
I had too low a sperm count.”

  The assertion came as a shock. In a court of law such evidence could rule out the possibility of his being the father of Frankie’s baby. Then why all this display of angst?” she wondered.

  “So you see I couldn’t have been the father,” he sighed.

  “Not necessarily, Mr. Rome. All it takes is one.”

  “Yes,” he said vaguely. “Just one.”

  Her long shot, she knew now, was paying off, but in an entirely different manner than she had expected.

  “You were pretty proud, weren’t you, Mr. Rome?”

  He looked up at her, his eyes lugubrious, moist with tears. The facade had suddenly disappeared. What was left was a terrible psychic nakedness.

  “I couldn’t do that to Frankie,” he said, swallowing hard, obviously trying to assert control over his emotions.

  “Or to your baby.”

  He averted his eyes and wiped his face with his napkin, still fighting for control, but obviously losing the battle. Halfway home, she thought with relief. Unfortunately his revelation had underscored her principal fear, that Frankie’s lover might not be her killer.

  “I loved her, you see,” he croaked, clearing his throat.

  Despite the visible evidence of his surrender, Fiona was shocked. Watching this strong confident man crumble so quickly came as a surprise. But she knew that it often happened this way, a spear of truth hitting that tiny nerve of vulnerability.

  “I was proud as hell,” he whispered. His shoulder shook and he again picked up a napkin as a kind of prop, bunching it in his hands as he dabbed his face with it. All pretense of dignity had disappeared.

  She sat watching him, feeling genuinely embarrassed, wondering if this was not simply another performance. It was, she knew, a time for silence, a time to respond to his need for confession, even in this unlikely setting. A compulsion to expiate was a powerful force and she knew from long experience when to get out of its way.

  “It had no logic. It wasn’t preconceived. I am not a philanderer. Nor was Frankie a loose woman. It simply happened between us, at first without our knowing, then finally as an epiphany. We fell in love. Imagine that. We were, in fact, on opposite ends of the political continuum but we fell in love. Despite everything. Love is a blind madman.” He shook his head, blinked his eyes, squeezing out a few more tears which he wiped away with his napkin. By then, she had recovered her surprise. The fact was that the man had roused her compassion. She could empathize with his pain. Love, when it happened, was ruthless and demanding.

  “We found a way,” he sighed. “Early mornings. It was quite simple. I had always risen at the crack of dawn, headed for the office early. Always the first in. Get a great deal of work done before everyone arrives.” He laughed self-mockingly and, of course, she understood. Barbara had confirmed his habit of rising early. “Dawn to midnight. A congressman’s work never ends,” she had said.

  “We found a precious hour or two to be together,” he sighed. “It was the happiest time of my life. And hers.”

  Discreet as well, she thought. It was unlikely that he would meet anyone at that hour on the stairs or in the corridor. Getting out without being seen would be slightly more risky. Obviously he had managed it.

  He became suddenly contemplative and she sensed it was time for her to encourage him.

  “Did you know about the child?”

  “Yes, she told me.” He nodded in emphasis, offering a clown’s smile, the kind which indicated that you were crying on the inside. “I was the happiest guy in the world.”

  “And she?”

  “Confused. And yet . . . joyous at first. We were like kids, you see. In love.” He sighed deeply. “Then, of course, reality set in. We are rather high-profile political figures. The scandal would be devastating. At our age, it would be hard to portray us as romantic lovers, which we were in fact. Abortion, of course, was considered.”

  “But she was a pro-lifer by conviction.”

  “Yes she was. But you also have to understand that she was in a powerful position to serve her cause. With Jack McGuire pressing for a divorce, she would have made herself a laughing stock to her constituents. The media can be quite ugly. There is a way to rationalize things, FitzGerald. She was thinking, I suppose, of the greater good, a kind of self-sacrifice for the ultimate end.” He shook his head. “In this case I was the more passionate naysayer.”

  “You? I thought you were an abortion advocate.”

  He paused.

  “This would have been my only child, FitzGerald,” he said, recovering, for a moment, his earlier commanding vigor. “It was unthinkable.”

  “What about marriage?”

  “That, I’m afraid, was another problem. I couldn’t leave Barbara. Why should Barbara be punished? I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Not after what we had been through together. Barbara wanted children more than anything else in the world. We could have adopted early on, I suppose. But the doctors always held out hope. Then suddenly we were older and it was too late.”

  “But she had given Jack her permission for a divorce?” Fiona asked. “Then changed her mind.”

  “She was still contemplating things, you see. When I vacillated, unable to find the courage to leave Barbara, she decided to change her mind about Jack. At least the child would have legitimacy.”

  “Then she did opt against abortion,” Fiona pressed.

  “More to it than that,” Rome sighed. “She loved me, you see. The child would be ours. She knew how important that was to me. It would have been her gift.”

  “With a minimum of political risk,” Fiona added.

  “That, too.” He looked toward the windows for a moment. “To us politics is everything.”

  Fiona remembering her parents, knew exactly what he meant.

  “Did she know that Beatrice, Jack’s mistress, was pregnant?”

  “I don’t think so. It was you who told me that she was informed that night. By Beatrice. Damn. How tawdry it looks from the outside. How awful it sounds.” He chuckled drily, bitterly. “All this conception. My whole adult life was dominated by the idea of conception. My weak sperm. God, how vulgar. Then suddenly, as if God had chosen it, Frankie and I . . .” He caught her eyes again, looking deeply. “How unfair it all is.”

  “What exactly happened that night?”

  Suddenly, he was back in character, the consummate picture of the dignified congressman and politician father figure. He put the napkin aside. Apparently, he had great powers of recuperation.

  “We had a late staff meeting at the Monocle restaurant. Every month we do this. It broke after eleven and I was home before midnight.”

  “You never talked to Mrs. McGuire?”

  “I would have seen her the next morning.”

  “She never called your apartment?”

  “Not at that hour. We both knew better than that. Barbara, you see, didn’t know about us. Dear Barbara. She didn’t have the slightest suspicion. Thank God for that.”

  He seemed calmer now. The confession had unburdened him. And, of course, she had tested him on the question of the call. She knew that Frankie had not called. They had, indeed, checked. Despite the emotion and her own reaction to his confession, his veracity had to be confirmed. It was, or seemed to be.

  “Did you actually attempt to see her that morning?”

  “I started to. You people got there first, I’m afraid. There was a policeman at the door.”

  “Did you return to your apartment?”

  “No. I went to the garage, got in my car and rode around. I was quite upset and anxious. I knew something had happened.”

  “What did you suspect had happened?”

  “I . . .” He hesitated, vacillating back to vulnerability, the mask of calm command removed once again. “I suspected that she had killed herself.”

  “You did?” There was no end to his surprises.

  She looked around the restaurant. It was almost totally empty. Most people had left
. He became silent, turning to look out of the window. She followed his gaze and saw the panorama of Washington.

  “Had she ever talked about suicide?”

  “Not in so many words.” He turned to face her, his expression deeply pained, his lips trembling. “She was under very heavy pressure, caught in a triple bind. The woman was a member of Congress, for crying out loud. She was carrying another man’s child. Not your usual political scandal. Abortion might have been a solution, but neither of us wanted that. Her career was on the line.”

  “And yours.”

  “Possibly. But she was a woman . . . under all the hullabaloo the fact was that she represented a very conservative district. The truth would have spelled disaster. A baby by the liberal Charlie Rome. Blasphemy. The reality of her husband’s mistress’s pregnancy could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. She might have felt that there was only one way out.”

  “Suicide?”

  “Look, FitzGerald, I’m quite sick about all this. Do you know how it feels to grieve alone? I told you the truth. Frankly, you have it in your power to destroy my career. The idea that my actions might have . . . in fact did . . . precipitate Frankie’s suicide would not exactly make me a sympathetic figure. By the time the media were finished with me, I’d probably have to leave for some remote South Pacific island. I have to tell you, though. I feel a lot cleaner having told you. I’m a politician, but I’m really not very good at carrying heavy burdens and dark secrets. So you have the gun in your hand. All you have to do is pull the trigger. Oh yes. There’s more. The idea that you people were considering that Frankie was murdered panicked me and I did consult the Speaker on the issue. He did empower me to make a quiet investigation. Yes I manipulated him to do this. I knew that the longer this case was kept open, the better the chance of having all this come out. I was right.”

  “But how do you account for the use of cyanide, the absence of a note, the lack of fingerprints . . .?” It was too late to swallow the word. Her lie was out now.

  “I suspected as much,” he shrugged. “Also the bit about the witnesses. The fact is that I didn’t murder her. I loved her. In the end, the truth will out.”