by Ed Gorman
Beers were hoisted. Big, wet, beery kisses were exchanged. Teresa and Warren got so intense people started flickering the lights on and off to the great amusement of the lovers. For once the psychic rush was positive. We had reclaimed the argument. Somewhere lurked the information that Lake had been treated for gonorrhea while in the tenth year of his marriage. And the press was going to find it. And the press was going to ask him about it in the context of his constant criticism of our “libertine” society—–single mothers, gay people, lurid TV shows, and, of course, the centerpiece of his attack, “those who would destroy the basis of our civilization, the sacred institution of marriage.” You shouldn’t be saying those things after requiring heavy doses of penicillin.
Somewhere along the line I got drunk and ended up making out with a thirty-seven-year-old nurse who worked as a volunteer. It was pure high school. By the time I thought I was going to get to third base in her nice warm Chevrolet, she had to go to the hospital, where she was on the night shift this week. She’d been drinking ginger ale.
One of the other volunteers gave me a ride to my hotel. I stopped at the desk and asked if anything had been left for me. The clerk, assessing my blood alcohol level, handed me a large manila envelope. In the elevator, I studied the reports that Tully had left for me. I’d spent two grand on nothing. He’d left a note inside saying that he’d actually worked two jobs for Wylie, the second relating to a painting of Wylie’s stolen from a gallery he’d loaned it to. Wylie had hired Tully to follow two prominent fences. Not a damned thing to do with Warren being blackmailed.
I sprawled on the bed, not even bothering to take off my suit. It had been a long time since I’d had a beer drunk and it would have its revenge on me in the morning with a swollen head and dehydration.
Sometime in the process of falling into REM sleep, I realized that tomorrow night I was expected to drop off one million dollars …
CHAPTER 26
I took a cab to headquarters, then decided I’d best hit the café down the street first. I poured three cups of boiling coffee directly into my eyes. Faster that way. Soon now I’d be able to check off “human” in one of those little boxes where they ask the name of your species. It would be a proud moment for me and the entire clan.
I went to relieve myself and when I returned, Warren and one of his bodyguards were there. The guard was an ex-Marine. In his blue pinstriped suit and white shirt and tie he looked almost civilized. Now that Warren was big in the news again, he needed protection. The crazies would be coming out for sure now. Hopefully just the harmless crazies.
“Karl,” Warren said politely, “would you mind sitting over there at the counter? I need to talk to Dev here privately.”
“No problem, sir.”
“He’s the best of the best,” Warren said as Karl left. “He has laser vision. You wouldn’t believe what he sees that I miss every time.”
Warren had a pol’s love for celebrating people. It becomes an instinct after a certain number of years and a certain number of rubber-chicken dinners where you have to extol the virtues of a tubby little man who’d contributed X amount of dollars to the party for the past X number of years. Thank God there are such people, but by the time the speechwriter has had at them they sound as if they were a combination of astronaut, scholar, and clairvoyant.
“Guys like him are the reason we win wars, Dev.”
“Yeah, except for the last two.”
The smile was sour. “Never can let it lie, can you, Dev? Always have to spoil the moment.”
“Guess I can only gag down so much bullshit, Warren. Sorry. Now let’s talk about tonight.”
This time the smile was coy. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll need much discussion.”
“You have the money?”
“I have the money. Every penny of it.”
“That’s amazing.” And it was. When R. D. Greaves was shaking us down, Warren had had to struggle to raise three hundred thousand. And now he had a million?
“I cashed some pretty heavy-duty bonds.”
“I thought you couldn’t do that.”
“My CPA showed me a way to do it without attracting much attention.”
“But I mean you said they were tied up and you couldn’t get to them.”
“A little white lie, Dev.”
“Gee, you telling a lie. Who’da thunk it?”
“There you go again. Spoiling the moment.”
I sipped some coffee. “I’ve never seen anybody this happy to be losing a million bucks.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not going to lose a million bucks.”
“You’re not?”
“No. And it’ll be thanks to you. Because you’re going to follow the money. You’re going to wait in the shadows and see who makes the drop and then you’re going to follow them.”
“Ah.”
“Just make sure you have your Glock. And make sure your car is all ready to go.”
“This is just like TV.”
“You see something wrong with it?”
“I see a lot wrong with it. Mainly that we have no way of verifying what’s on the tape we get.”
“We have to trust them.”
“Nobody I trust more than a blackmailer.”
“Then what the fuck is your idea, Dev, you sitting there so smug and everything?”
“I don’t have a better idea, Warren.”
Warren looked idiotically triumphant. The Hollywood smile was back in place. He’d kidded himself into believing—at least for a few giddy moments here—that everything was just hunky-dunky. “Things are going so well, Dev. Three different newspapers ran editorials this morning saying that Lake should release all his medical records.”
“He respond yet?”
“Not yet. But we’ve got him boxed in. If he releases all his records, he’s dead on the spot. And if he doesn’t, we’ve got a club to beat him over the head with from now till Election Day. I just can’t believe how this has turned around.”
He was a kid again and that ten-speed he’d been wanting had just been wheeled up to his front porch and he was experiencing an orgasmic moment here.
It was all coming back to him—the power, the glamour, the glory of being a United States senator.
“You hit everything just right, Dev. And I really appreciate it.”
“I’m going to spoil the moment again, Warren. We’ve still got two weeks to go. We don’t know what their oppo people have on us. Fine to be happy but, man, don’t take anything for granted.”
His face crimped in distaste. He’d been junkie high and I was forcing him back to drab winter gray. “I’ll do my best not to be happy, Dev. You know, I sure wouldn’t want to piss you off by feeling better about the campaign.”
“You’re being stupid, Warren. All I said was—”
“All you said the other day was”—he leaned in—“that I was a piece of shit and you’d be glad to be rid of me. You think I’ve forgotten that, you’re fucking crazy.”
He stood up, signaling Karl. To me he said: “You’ll have the briefcase about five this afternoon. I’d appreciate a call as to how it goes.”
“Are we breaking up, Warren? You want your ring back?”
“The ladies think you’re real cute. I don’t. For what it’s worth, I’d planned on firing your ass anyway, Dev.”
A pretty good line to leave on.
Around two that afternoon Jim Lake’s press person announced that all of the congressman’s medical records would be released in twenty-four hours. That brought a lot of smiles from the staff. Kate seemed particularly amused: “Maybe he’ll use the Latin word for gonorrhea. It sounds classier.”
“There’s no way he’s releasing that,” I said. “He’s going to trick it up some way. The press already has a pretty good idea of what he’s hiding and if it’s not there, they’re going to jump all over him.”
“I could almost feel sorry for him,” Laura said, “if he wasn’t such a hater. That’s what he’s buil
t his career on.” She smiled and snapped her fingers. “There. I’m cured. I don’t feel sorry for him at all.” She addressed the rest of us. “Let’s get together and tear his throat out.”
We all went out for pizza and beer together. Even dour Gabe was enjoying himself. “I’m going to miss you people.”
“God, if I didn’t know better,” Billy said, “I’d say Gabe is getting sentimental.”
“I can’t help it. I really like working with you people.”
Kate said, “Well, we’re going to miss you too, Gabe. We go back a long ways.”
“Yes, and I’ve been a hail-fellow-well-met through every one of our times together. Always smiling. Always with something positive to say. Always there to make people glad that they’re alive.”
At first we all thought Gabe was being serious and had to wonder if he’d had some kind of mental breakdown in front of our eyes. Then he gave us his hippie grin and we all started laughing.
Back in the office, everybody drinking coffee to compensate for the two or three beers they’d had, I polled several of our key sites to see how the volunteers were doing getting out the message. You always expect some marginal exaggeration—“They are as the legions of Rome, Master!”—but even chopping the enthusiasm down twenty percent, it sounded as if the volunteers were working hard and taking on extra duties the closer the election drew.
Next I called three Chicago reporters I knew to see if they’d heard anything yet from Lake and his people. I didn’t tell them the exact nature of what he was trying to hide, but I did say that it would be interesting if he claimed to be presenting his entire medical history. One of the reporters asked if she could “see all his records in case he doesn’t come through. I’m assuming here, Dev, that you have them.” “What a sordid accusation.” “Yeah, right, babe.”
Near the end of the afternoon Karl the bodyguard showed up with a stout black leather briefcase. It was padlocked. He handed me the key. “The senator said you’d know what this was.”
“Thanks, Karl. Where’s the senator now?”
“He’s at the house in Evanston. He has the night off and he wants to relax.”
“I appreciate you bringing this by.”
He nodded as he surveyed the staff. “Nice to see people working this hard for the senator. We’ve got to make sure he wins.”
Like most pols, Warren was most comfortable when he surrounded himself with true believers. They had their own doubts, of course, but they expressed them rarely if at all. Each entourage usually had one skeptic—in this case, me. But when the news got really bad, the rest of them stared at you as if your skepticism had caused nasty things to happen. And right after the campaign manager—almost always the first to get canned—you the consultant were next up. At the very latest you’d be fired the day after the election, win or lose. You had, merely by being honest with everyone, brought the campaign bad luck. You know, voodoo.
One by one people left for the day. All but Kate were headed back to the pizza place for more of the same. Kate said, “I’m going to bake a very special cake for my daughter tonight.”
“Her birthday?”
“No, but I just feel like celebrating. That whole thing with the debate—seeing Warren that way …” She shrugged. “Past history.” Then: “Oh, that report from the detective’s been over here on the fax all day. I’m surprised nobody gave it to you.”
The phone rang seconds after she left. It was Detective Sayers himself. “You get the report?”
“Haven’t had time to look at it.”
“Nothing special from what I can see. Thought you might look at how the crime scene broke down. Stuff we found.”
“I’ll bet you want to hear me say that I figured out who stiffed Warren’s drink and who murdered Greaves.”
“I thought you might have something. I sure don’t.”
A decent enough ploy—the sad, lonely cop who had nary a clue—but a bit broad to play believably to an old cynic like myself.
“Wish I could help you.”
“I’ll bet you do. Well, talk to you later.”
“Thanks for the report.”
“My pleasure.”
Two minutes later the door opened. One of the older volunteers from up front escorted four high school journalists in. They wanted to interview me for their respective newspapers. I’d forgotten about it.
We spent nearly ninety minutes together and a lot of it was fun. They were bright kids for one thing and for another they had a serious interest in politics. I was surprised at the breadth of their knowledge. They knew just about every pol I mentioned in the course of citing various campaigns for this or that reason. And just at the end they focused on Congressman Lake and why he seemed reluctant—even a bit afraid—of releasing his health records.
“I’m afraid I can’t give you the answer. He’s the only one who’d know that. What I can tell you is that after the debate where Senator Nichols got so sick, Lake made a big deal of the senator’s health. He forced us to respond the way we did. By making our entire medical history available online.”
“Is Congressman Lake in trouble if he doesn’t release his records?”
“Hard to say. The press and the public will decide that.” I said this having no doubt that the press now stood ready to bring him down.
The volunteer came back and told the students that their time was up. It had been an enjoyable break.
I grabbed the briefcase Karl had delivered from under my desk and then filled my own briefcase with two different field reports I planned to study later tonight. Then I grabbed the police report about the crime scene and gave it a quick look. The door to the dressing room hadn’t been jimmied; there was no evidence that anything had been damaged inside. That pretty much confirmed that one of the staffers had put the drug in Warren’s drink.
I’d shut the phone off while the students were here. Now I checked for messages. Only one. My friend in the police department said that the medical examiner was still trying to determine if Greaves’s death had been a crime or an accident.
I shut off the lights, taking note of how badly my right hand was trembling.
CHAPTER 27
There was a conventioneers’ dance in the main ballroom of the hotel. I’d parked my car per instructions from the blackmailer, then come inside and suddenly it was 1943. I was about to say “Nineteen forty-three again.” But there was no again for me, of course. I hadn’t come along till much later. But I’d developed a real passion for music of that era, especially the female singers, Billie Holiday and Jo Stafford and Lena Horne in particular.
So I stood near the back entrance of the place, ten minutes early, watching for signs of anybody sneaking up on my car, which was parked in the front row. My plan was to make a run for him, grabbing tape and blackmailer alike. I had my Glock, brass knuckles, and a small billy. I was ready for a war. I hated to admit that I was looking forward to it. But I realized that it would free me of my lingering depression. There’s something to be said for simply taking action, a kind of purgative that doesn’t do our species proud.
I had to step aside several times to let people in and out of the back door. I was in the middle of letting someone out when I saw a dark shape emerge from a six-deep row of cars and begin working its way slowly toward mine. The way it kept looking right to left, the way it hunched down slightly, the way it kept patting its gloved hand against its chest—was that where the tape was being kept?—made its purpose clear.
I got ready to move. I pushed the door open and stepped out into the dark night. The mercury vapor lights cast a strange color over all the new sports cars and Benzes and the handful of Rolls-Royces. The figure was very close to my car now.
I kept to the shadows. A narrow sidewalk stretched to the parking lot. Walls were close in on both sides. But there was enough space that I could stand on a strip of grass and watch it.
And then it stood straight up, a grandmotherly sort who clutched her purse to her chest as if she
feared an imminent mugging. You get a lot of false leads in this business.
I wasn’t paying any attention to the small groups of people who came out to get their cars. They were all dressed very well, all seeming liquor happy and Black Card confident, headed to their cars and the prospect of hitting some of the tonier nightspots in the city.
So I didn’t even consider that I was in danger until he brought something heavy down against the back of my skull. Not once but twice. He wanted me out. I was conscious long enough to get a mental still photo of what happened next. I fell sideways, onto the sidewalk. I hit it in such a way that my nose cut against the edge of the walk and sent a splash of blood into the air and right onto a gray trouser leg. My last thought being that there was something familiar about the material and pattern of that trouser leg—
I was aware of pain just before I opened my eyes. The picture presented was of an acoustically tiled ceiling with a square of electric light filtered through a horizontally patterned piece of plastic.
A woman said: “He’s coming around. I’d appreciate some fresh water here.”
She pushed her pleasing face into my view. “I’m Dr. Ryan. I’m a guest here and they asked me to help. Can you remember what happened to you?”
No memory problems. “Somebody knocked me out.” I’d been shaken enough by the attack to want to say more. But I had to be careful and give no hint of what was behind the attack.
“You were found on the north sidewalk that leads to the parking lot.”
“Yes, I was going out to my car.”
“And somebody just hit you?” A male voice. Man in suit. Detective. Unmistakable.
“Probably a mugger.”
“Didn’t look that way to me. Your clothes weren’t torn. You still had your wallet with several hundred-dollar bills. You’ve got your watch, which is expensive, and your cell phone. I don’t think a mugger would leave you with all those things.”