“And you think she’s been telling him about me?”
“I don’t know. I had the impression that she is too professional to gossip. Even about someone like you who isn’t really a patient. But I do think she may have told him, no doubt in strictest confidence, a couple of things about Bobby.”
“Like what?”
“Did you ever mention to Karen that he was in therapy back in college?”
She rests her forehead on the heel of her hand for a moment. “Yes. She suggested we try couple counseling. I explained we couldn’t while the campaign was on. If anyone got wind of it, it’d be all over the papers. And I m-mentioned that Bobby even worried sometimes about the fact he’d seen a psychiatrist just after he came back from Vietnam. There’d be no way he’d go to a marriage counselor now.”
“And did you ever mention he’d taken a hallucinogen?”
“Possibly. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Try,” I say. “It’s important.”
“Wait. Back up. Let me see if I follow this. You’re saying you think Karen is telling Hank things which he’s telling Wheatley.”
“Yes. That’s my theory, anyway.”
“You think she is doing it on purpose?”
“I don’t know, Laura. You know her better than I do.”
“Well, she’s not. She couldn’t.”
“Okay. Perhaps she’s doing it unintentionally. You said yourself she was too trusting sometimes. You also reminded me people make mistakes.”
“I can’t believe this.”
I shrug. “What about the drug use?”
It takes her a second to refocus. “Yes,” she says. “I was describing how he closes up sometimes. I mentioned that Bobby got so paranoid during campaigns, he even worried that someone would reveal the one time in college he t-took something other than pot.”
I nod and remind her that Clive Sanford was grilling Kurt Swanson and Allan Bernstein about drug use in a way that made clear he already knew the answer. I sit silently and wait for this all to sink in. It doesn’t take long. I put myself next to her. She sits, stiff, in the circle of my arm.
“One last thing,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. She is rigid with anger at Karen, at herself, at Hank Spencer.
“And you have also told Karen that you were thinking about sleeping with me?”
She nods.
I let out a long breath.
“What can we do about it?” Laura asks.
“She may not tell Spencer about you.”
“She shouldn’t have told him about Bobby.”
“She is in love with him. He asks how you’re doing—you are her best friend, after all. She says fine, but there are some marital tensions. Hank says what about counseling? Karen says good question, but, just between the two of them, Bobby’s nervous about that stuff. Hank asks why. And she explains.”
“How could she not know he was friends with Wheatley?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never met the man. But I do know you have to talk to Karen directly. Maybe I’m wrong about all this.”
“I hope you are,” she says.
Laura and I agree to talk that afternoon at five o’clock sharp. Anxiety having beset us, too, in order to be safe, she places the call from a pay phone in the hospital lobby and calls me at the pay phone in the corridor just outside my office.
“Hello?” I say.
“Ben?” she says.
“Yes.”
“You ready? It’s true. All of it.” Even though I expected it, this news makes me draw in a sharp breath. “She didn’t even catch the little article saying Henry Corporation had bought the land. She says he never talks about what he does, anyway. He always shrugs and waves and says it’s just business.”
I wait until a passerby goes in another office. “Did she tell him about us?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“He asked how Bobby and I were doing, and Karen told him not so well. When he asked what she meant—all concerned and solicitous, as usual—she said it was bad enough that I was starting to get very attracted to another man. No names.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Someone in earshot?” she asks.
“No. ‘Uh-huh’ is all I can think of to say.”
“He’d asked if it was anyone she knew, and she changed the subject. She’s a wreck over this. She was sobbing by the end. She feels horrible.”
“I expect she does.”
“She wants to know what to do. She’s in love with the man. If she confronts him, she’s afraid he may be devious enough simply to deny it, and then she’ll never know the truth. She says there’s always a chance, however small, that it’s all coincidence.”
“Is she still at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her not to do or say anything.”
“Just go home and pretend nothing’s happened?”
“Exactly. Just for one day. I need a day. I’ve got to think this one through. This isn’t simple.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine. Worried about Bobby’s campaign is all. We don’t want to make a wrong move here.”
I say “we.” I mean me.
“God, but this is all so weird.”
“Let’s just hope we’re the ones being weird. Bye, Laura.”
I sit by the pay phone for a second. Nothing is simple anymore.
I start to go over it, and over it, and over it. I am up most of the night with it. The Wheatley campaign may know nothing about Laura’s and my flirtation. Fine, great. But if it does, what could it do with it? The press won’t touch it. The only thing they could do is pass the information on to Bobby, try to destabilize him. Get him to rip loose with his once-famous temper in public. A rumor wouldn’t be good enough; he’d laugh it off. They’d have to have photos or tapes or something tangible. Photos were impossible. Tapes? Who knew. Maybe it is all three-in-the-morning paranoia, but as of now I put nothing past Clive Sanford. Just to be sure, I decide to try to get somebody who can sweep for electronic eavesdropping devices. Somebody trustworthy.
We are in the last weeks of the campaign. We cannot afford a false step. Bobby has maintained his equilibrium pretty well, but there’s no doubt in my mind that his emotional reserves are no longer bottomless. Cindy says between stops he is already often angry and irritable.
But what about Hank Spencer? Karen ought to send the guy packing, but it makes sense she would want to be sure he is a bad apple first. Maybe, I think at about three thirty in the morning, we could use him for some disinformation.
But what? It would have to be something that would make Wheatley look bad. I can’t think of anything. If it’s a false accusation against Bobby, it would just be one more smear, and even though false, it could end up making Bobby look bad, anyway. At around four I decide to give up the search. I find I can’t. My mind whirs on and on in the same groove, car tires spinning in the mud. Bobby or Jeannie or Scott Bayer would doubtless have some good ideas. But I can’t ask them for fear this could all blow up in my face. I am the one who had a compromising phone conversation. Pieces of it appear unbidden in my mind. Laura saying, “You can see me and still get your bed rest.” “We can dim the lights. Or turn them off if you want.” “…there are all kinds of ways for a person to get aerobic exercise.” And my final reply, “Come over.” I drift into an uneasy sleep at dawn. I awaken, jaws still clenched, from a dream that I am a foot soldier defending the West Coast against an Iraqi invasion. I am forced to kill dozens of men before I am overrun.
I lie in bed, heart pounding, mouth dry, thinking about guns and uniforms. During my time in the county prosecutor’s office, I made some friends on the city police force. One of them, Ross Hacker, became head of the city’s police union a few years back. I have been out
of the circuit of favor-swapping for years, but as I lie in bed I get an idea. It is the only idea I have, so it will have to do. He can advise me about someone to do the sweep for bugs. And maybe I can get him to do me one last favor, if I present it properly.
I call him a little before eight in the morning.
“Yeah?” he says.
I tell him my name. It takes him a full three count to place me, about what it would have taken me if he had placed the call.
I ask him about a bug sweeper. He knows two, both retired FBI. One’s his father-in-law, John Van Scoy: smart guy, loves gadgets and computers, wouldn’t tell his priest who his clients are—though if you named several of the state’s biggest corporations, you might get lucky.
I thank him profusely. Tell him I’ve got a favor I might be able to do him in return.
He says hold on, yells goodbye to his wife and kids. “Okay. Now you’re talking.”
“You’ve got a contract coming up soon.”
“Every two years,” he says. “And this is one of them. In fact, I’ve got to go to a negotiating session in about ten minutes.”
“Fine. I’ve got a way to get you some publicity on issues you’re concerned about. And some attention from folks in high places.”
“I like this so far,” he says. “What do I have to do?”
I tell him he’s going to get a worried phone call from somebody in the Wheatley campaign, somebody convinced he and his union are going to endorse Bobby for senator.
“What do I tell ’em?”
“Tell him you’ve been approached. Tell him that Wheatley’s position favoring selling automatic weapons and against a five-day waiting period before purchase has your membership nervous.”
“Now, that’s fucking true enough.”
“Good. Then make any deal you want—the best one you can—for your union to stay neutral.”
“They would anyway. Who knows which of those jokers is gonna win? Besides, it’s only the governor who can really help us.”
A new idea occurs to me, one more ambitious than my original. “If he helped you a lot, could you get your union to endorse Bobby Parrish?”
“A lot, you say? What exactly are we talking about, a lot?”
“I don’t know. I’m just talking the principle of it.”
“If you’re talking principle, well, my union will always consider endorsing somebody who can do right by us.”
“Great. I’ll have Bobby raise it with the governor.”
“This is a nice favor. Real nice. What’s the catch?”
“Let’s wait and see what I can deliver. Maybe I can’t, and that’ll be the catch. Thanks for referring your father-in-law.”
“You call him. I’ll make sure he treats you right, catch or no catch.”
I call Bobby at home. Laura answers. She sounds alarmed to hear my voice. I explain I have called to speak to Bobby. We exchange some excruciatingly correct formulas.
Bobby gets on the line.
“Yes, kimosabe,” he says. “Something from Erickson Bruce?”
“Nothing, though I did get a postponement. But I’ve got another campaign matter to talk over,” I say. “Where will you be at lunch?”
Lunch won’t work out—he’s got a teachers’ association appearance in the capital—but he can drop by my house in about ten minutes. I shave, dress, and pour some coffee into myself just in time for his arrival.
He doesn’t sit. His driver and a staff member are waiting in the car with the motor running.
I come right to the point. “You know the spongy-soft on crime commercial Wheatley’s running?”
“Too well.”
“What if we got you the capital city police endorsement? That’d make a good reply.”
His eyebrows lift. “Very good. How do we do it?”
I explain it to him. He says he’ll be seeing the governor this afternoon and can run it past him then. I ask him if he can wait a day or two first.
“How come?”
“I have to talk some more with Ross Hacker. Set things up. In fact, keep the whole idea under your hat for now.”
“Fine. Good. Don’t wait too long, though. We could use some good news.”
“You hanging in there?” I ask.
He takes a deep breath and then slowly releases it. “Hangin’ in there,” he says. “Seas are starting to get mighty choppy, though. New territory for an old farm boy like me.” He straightens, sticks out a hand. “Keep in touch.”
At five o’clock the pay phone in my office corridor rings.
“Okay,” I say. “Here’s the deal. Tell Karen to volunteer that things are much better with you and Bobby. And that Bobby’s in good spirits because the capital police union membership is going to endorse him any day now.”
“Are they?” Laura asks.
“Who knows? Basically this is a setup. If Wheatley’s campaign calls the union head, we’ll know Hank Spencer is the source.”
“Okay,” she says. “Got it.”
I explain I’m going to get a debugging expert in to check my home and office and, with her help, her home and office.
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
She doesn’t ask why. She, too, has concluded that the only usefulness of information about her and me is to try to undermine Bobby personally.
“Anything else we can do?” she asks.
“Tell Bobby what’s happened. That’d be the best course all around. How do you think he would handle it?”
“Right now? That you and I almost slept together?” She sighs. “Not well. Not well at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean his plate is already heaped. If we told him, we’d also be doing Wheatley’s work for him. It might relieve our anxiety, I suppose, but I’m not sure we would be doing Bobby any favors.”
“You know his state of mind a lot better than I do these days,” I say. I wonder if discomfort about her own behavior is also playing a role in her wish to withhold information. Explaining herself wouldn’t be easy.
“But if they have it, I just don’t know how we could keep the news away.”
“Let’s take this one step at a time.”
“How soon can this debugger come?”
“Tomorrow, twelve o’clock,” I say. “Your house first? Or office?”
“Office. How long does it take?”
“I don’t know. Not long, I think.”
“All right.” Her voice sounds small.
I am worried, and too long unpracticed at shouldering this kind of responsibility. One step at a time, I remind myself.
“Well,” she says. “Karen’s waiting for me. I’ve got to give her your message.”
“At least as of tomorrow we’ll know what we’re dealing with. Once this man’s done his work.”
“What’s his name?”
“John Van Scoy. He’ll be dressed like a telephone repairman. And he’ll say he’s there to check on the phones, as you’ve requested.”
“Okay,” she says: “Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
Neither of us hangs up for a moment. It is as if we are each waiting for the other to say something more.
“Don’t worry,” I add, trying to sound convinced. “We’ll work it out.”
“Work what out?” she asks.
“It. Everything.”
“I hope so,” she says. “But why do I keep feeling we can’t?”
John Van Scoy comes to my house. As promised, he is wearing a lineman’s helmet and uniform, and he is also carrying a leather case the size of a small suitcase. He shakes hands, removes his helmet from his squarish balding head, politely refuses a cup of coffee, and starts with the phone circuit in the basement. While I cannot get him to talk about anything else except the w
eather, he does explain in a soft-spoken voice what he is doing as he does it. His search requires a small but impressive-looking array of devices that “read” the lines for unexpected electrical impulses. Using several gadgets each time, he reads the line coming into my house, each one of my phones, and each line to each phone. He then unhouses every phone and every receiver, looks them over, reads them again by clipping on various wires, and puts them back together.
“Okay,” he says. “Everything’s clear. No problems with your phones or phone lines.” The whole process takes less than twenty minutes.
He follows me to my office and does a similar check. Upon finding that the door that leads to the phone circuits in the basement is locked, he looks swiftly around and then asks me if it’s all right with me if he lets himself in. “We can avoid involving anyone else that way,” he says. He takes out a couple of metal hooks, jiggles them into the lock for a while, turns the handle. The door opens. Because of all the lines running into the building, he cannot simply unplug my line and read it, so this scan takes a bit longer and requires some digital device that reads my two office numbers alone. Still, he completes his work in less than half an hour. All clear. While I am not totally surprised about this, I am still relieved.
I give him directions to the hospital and remind him of Laura’s phone number and office number.
An hour passes. I wait for Laura’s call. Another hour goes by. I try to concentrate on my work. Margie goes out to and returns from lunch. Still nothing. Finally, at 2:15 p.m., Laura’s call is put through. Her voice is strained and flat. I guess the results before she tells me.
“Two bugs,” she says. “One at home and one in my office.”
“Shit…”
“The one at my office was r-right there in the phone. Mr. Van Scoy said it was a nice middle-of-the-line device, cost perhaps two hundred dollars, available in most mail-order catalogs. He dusted it for prints. There were none.”
“And there was one at home, too?”
“A transmitter, he says, hooked to the circuit running into the house at our telephone pole. He had to c-climb the pole to get it.”
“Is that what took so long?”
“Yes. Plus he still had to check the house and phones. Every single phone was tapped.”
Sounding the Waters Page 26