Sounding the Waters

by James Glickman

  I drive on through the tunnel of my headlights, the harvested fields of alfalfa and corn and soybeans smooth and uninterrupted as a dark ocean on either side of the highway, the lights of the occasional farmhouse like a small boat adrift on a night sea. As I near the city, I can see the blue flicker of televisions through the windows, many of them, I imagine, watching Wheatley and Parrish debate.

  The streets near Hindley Auditorium are jammed with passenger cars and press vehicles. I have to park several blocks away. By the time I get inside the building, the debate is over and Bobby and Laura and Annie and Jimmy are gone.

  Just inside a large reception area off the auditorium, I find a confidently smiling Scott Bayer talking to a group of journalists. I catch his eye and motion to him. His smile vanishes. He shakes his head.

  I step close enough for him to hear me. “It’s important.”

  He gives me an astringent look and shakes his head once again. I don’t know what he knows about anything, but having disrupted the campaign on the eve of the final debate, I am evidently not welcome in his presence anymore. I ask one of his assistants who is standing nearby where Bobby is.

  “He and his family have left,” she tells me.

  “Where?”

  “To celebrate,” she says, as if I am some particularly lowly member of the unfriendly press, not the old friend and trusted adviser she has seen involved almost since the campaign began.

  “Where?” I repeat.

  Her chin lifts slightly in the air. “It’s private.”

  I see the campaign staff may not have spoken to outsiders since yesterday, but they obviously have spoken to one another. I glance around the crowded hall. “Where’s Cindy?”

  “She’s giving television interviews now. She’ll be unavailable until after the late news.”

  “Jeannie?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Irritation rises in me in a flood. I walk back to Scott Bayer, step through the crowd around him, grip his elbow, control myself just enough to excuse myself to the surrounding journalists, and say, “Where’s Bobby?”

  “Let go,” he says, looking down at my hand.

  “Look,” I say, pulling him away and putting my face within an inch of his. “You want this campaign to fucking blow up in your face?”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  I shake my head. “I have got to talk to Bobby. Now.”

  He sighs. “He and Laura and the children have gone up north to some inn for the next two days. They intentionally didn’t leave a number. They don’t want to be disturbed. Bobby said he’ll check in with me tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon? That’s too goddamn late.”

  “Can’t help you.”

  “Okay.” I let go of his arm. “Okay, then.”

  I am on my own with this. It cannot wait. Not even another hour, much less another day.

  I walk over to Wheatley’s side of the large reception hall. There, amid the red, white, and blue bunting and the flag-draped tables, another crowd still lingers. Gerry Dolan is there, and some others I recognize. I see he is still there, too—not Wheatley, but the man I am looking for. He is turning aside questions from the press with a grin and a shrug, explaining that he is not with the campaign right now. He’s just a friendly citizen and an interested observer.

  “Clive?” I say. “We need to talk.”

  He looks at me, eyes widening for a second, and then he cocks his head back and chuckles. “Surprised to see you here, big guy. Hey. Talk by all means.”

  “Let’s go someplace.”

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  “Too public.”

  He nods his head toward a table with trays of delicate-looking canapés on it. “Don’t you want to say hello to your old friend Allan?” Allan is fastidiously choosing among the baked cheese puffs and smoked salmon and truffled foie gras and stuffed grape leaves.

  “I want to talk to you. Alone.”

  He puts his hands on his chest, fingers spread. “Me?” He is enjoying this. “You and me? Well, all right…” He says this like a resigned man fulfilling a tiresome duty.

  We step out a side door, across a corridor, and through a sign marked exit. We stand on a loading dock at the side of building.

  “So,” he says, rubbing his hands together. The arc-carbon light makes his face look yellow. “You going to offer me a bribe?”

  “When is Allan Bernstein going to make his charges?”

  “He’s not going to make any charges. He’s simply going to tell the truth about what you bad old Yalies did for fun back in the good old days.”

  “When’s he going to do it?”

  “Hard to say. His article’s all written and set to go.” Clive’s voice slows, a man prolonging his pleasure. “It’s a good one, too. And he’s even taken a polygraph about what he says in it. Passed with flying colors. In case anyone asks.”

  “Kill it,” I say.

  “‘Kill it?’” he says, then laughs. “Kill it? Now, why in the world would I do anything like that? I figure if the overnight polls on the debate look good, we wait a few days. See how Bobby’s little temper tantrum plays. If not, it’s in the evening papers tomorrow.” He hitches up his pants. “Just between you and me, I figure it’s going to have to go in the evening papers. Your boy was smokin’ tonight. If you’ll pardon the expression.” He laughs hard enough at his own wit that his face reddens.

  I take the fax of the invoice from Teleline Electronics and Security from my pocket. He looks at it. The grin fades slowly from his face.

  As he stares at it, I explain to him the federal and state penalties for illegal wiretapping. I explain his civil liability. I explain that I have the devices themselves as well as an expert, a former FBI agent, who will testify about what sites he removed them from. I explain that I also have physical evidence of the fruits of the illegal wiretap from the tape he sent Bobby by Federal Express. Finally, I tell him if he doubts the accuracy of any of this, he should consult a lawyer.

  He looks at me and waits. For a moment, because his face has gone so blank and slackened, I fear he is going to shrug it off. Then, lizard-like, his tongue darts nervously across his lips. “What…” he says, his voice so raspy I can hardly make him out. His mouth opens and closes twice, three times. Words have failed him. “What,” he tries again, “do you want?”

  “Here is what I want,” I say. “First, I want you to kill Allan Bernstein’s article, and I want you to send him back to New York on the next plane. Second, I want every last one of the tapes you’ve made of Bobby and Laura’s phone calls. If you had any transcripts made, I want them, too. All of them. And I don’t want ever to hear you kept a tape back to amuse yourself or your friends at private parties. That’s all I want.”

  His eyes, which have been wide through all of this, suddenly narrow. “How do I know you won’t fuck me over anyway?”

  “Well, Clive, I guess you can’t know that. But I can promise you if a whisper from Allan comes out, you will be prosecuted and you will be sued. And you will lose.”

  “I don’t know if I can stop Allan.”

  I detect something like a whine in his voice. “That’s not my problem. But you’d better stop him.”

  “I don’t know what I can do,” he says, panic in his eyes and his palms turning toward the night skies.

  I am enjoying his discomfort so much I hate to alleviate it. But the stakes are too high for me to indulge myself. “Oh, c’mon, Clive. There’s nothing to it. You’re a master of this sort of thing. Tell him we have got a secret about Wheatley so big and so slimy that if we reveal it, the campaign is sunk. And we’ll reveal it if Allan doesn’t go home and let the voters have their say.”

  Clive nods. “Yes,” he says.

  “And if Wheatley should lose this election and decides to run again
against Bobby, we won’t want to hear from Allan then, either. Or ever. When you ask a lawyer about all this, have him explain to you that there is a long, long statute of limitations on felonies. Got it?”

  “Yes,” he says and licks his dry lips once again.

  “One last thing.”

  His eyes flash panic. “What?”

  “Who planted the bugs in the Parrishes’ house?” I watch him weigh the wisdom of answering. He shrugs.

  “Alex Stafford. Parents are old friends, and they owed me a favor or two.”

  Of course. The boy with the Bulls hat who not only knew about the sound-and-light of moviemaking but probably learned the way to Annie’s bedroom. He had access, opportunity, and, apparently, know-how. Still, I am a little shocked. Using someone’s kid for committing a felony is remarkable. Every time I think Clive has hit bottom, I learn there is a level further for him to descend.

  I take the fax from his hand. “I’ve really enjoyed our enlightening talk. Let’s go back inside. By the way, I wouldn’t want to see Allan chatting to anyone this evening. Take him to the airport. Take him anywhere. But get him out of here. Now.”

  We make our way back to the reception hall. I have a brief fantasy of walking over to Allan, taking his plate of canapés, and saying, “Checkmate.” Instead I content myself with watching Clive, pale-faced and his eyes pink-rimmed, speaking urgently into Allan’s ear. Allan’s eyebrows climb higher and higher, then drop. He looks around the room until he sees me. I raise a hand and ripple my fingers goodbye. Clive’s hand clamps onto Allan’s elbow, restraining him from moving toward me, and he ushers him swiftly out.

  I amble over to Wheatley’s table and try one of his finger sandwiches. It is delicious, cool, and moist. I get a clean plate and help myself to everything. A few of Wheatley’s campaign workers who recognize me point and, frowning, whisper to one another.

  It has been quite an evening. I find, though, as I return to Bobby’s side of the hall and the minutes pass that even triumphs are not as satisfying when you discover there is not a single person in the world you can tell.

  I am sitting on the front steps of my house the next night, something I have not done in a very long time. It is full dark and there is the scent of wood smoke and spiced apple drifting out upon the sharp fall air. Houses in the neighborhood are preparing for Halloween, and tonight the children will go to bed with their mouths sweetly stinging with the taste of candy. A cloud passes over the half-moon and then skids silently past. I think of Becky’s last pink-and-gold costume of Glenda the Good Witch—the one she and her mother made together from scratch—and I miss my daughter so keenly the sensation is physical, like hunger or cold. My eyes scrape with the start of tears. I wait for the old despairing feeling that comes next, my soul dropping off the edge of a cliff, but it does not happen. I stare at the silvered moon and miss Becky as much as ever, but tonight she does not haunt me in the shape of desolation. Instead, I miss her specifically, her arms and legs and face and voice and hands. This feeling dwells in me all by itself, without the cascade of sorrow that usually attends it. Painful as it is, missing her in detail also lets me remember her in detail.

  I have left the door behind me ajar, and I hear the phone ring once, twice. My answering machine clicks on. It is Laura. I consider going in to talk to her, but I have done what I have done with Clive Sanford and Allan Bernstein, and Bobby and Laura have their own matters to settle. I remain on the steps looking at the moon. Laura’s voice behind me sounds relaxed and almost repertorial, a friend checking in, and when she is finished, I notice she has spoken with hardly a stutter.

  The next day I have to get back to my heap of unread court records to consider for appeals. I find I am reluctant to begin, as if I have other business I should finish first. But what that business is I cannot imagine. For better or worse, any work I might do for the campaign is done. My legal work is all here in my office. Jeannie’s case is now settled. Finally I recognize it. What I have to do is not business at all. It is personal, a category of concern to which I have grown so unaccustomed I find it difficult to locate.

  Bobby’s campaign headquarters are relatively quiet this morning. I see the phone banks are set up and the voter lists have been printed. I read on a posted instruction sheet that all the county and precinct captains have their assignments and car pools have been established for people who need rides to the polls. In another week, this office, calm now, will be in bedlam. I knock on Cindy’s office door. A phone receiver squeezed between her shoulder and cheek, she glances through the door’s large glass pane and waves me in.

  She covers the mouthpiece. “I’ll be off in a minute.” She gestures to a chair on the other side of her desk. I lift a large red Elmo doll off the seat and put it on my knee. She is talking to the head of the capital’s campaign office about Governor Roberts’ speaking at tomorrow’s big rally to kick off the last stretch of Bobby’s campaign. “Tell the governor he’s got five minutes… I know he loves stem-winders. Just tell him the balloon drop happens at noon whether he’s done or not… Right… Good. Well, tell him it’s on an automatic timer… Yes, fine. Talk to you later.”

  She hangs up, puts her hands on her hips, and looks at me, stricken. “More trouble?”

  “No, no,” I say. “At least I hope not.”

  She puts a hand on the center of her chest and lets out a breath. “Good. You have not exactly been the bearer of glad tidings, you know.”

  “I suppose I haven’t.” I shift in my seat. I do not know how to go about this, so I put it off. “What’s the news?”

  She frowns. “Polls all tell us Bobby won the debate big.”

  “Why so glum?”

  “I watched Mondale clobber Reagan in a debate. Humiliate him. Reagan won in a landslide. Debates aren’t elections.”

  “That was their first debate. Reagan recovered in the second one.”

  “Well, our polls haven’t budged. Wheatley still has an edge.”

  “It takes a few days for the effect of the debate to sink in. You know that. You reminded me of it after the last debate.”

  “I know the effect of his blowup at his now-famous press conference will sink in, too. It raised his negatives and ‘the character issue’ all over again.”

  “I’ll bet you as many people liked his getting angry as were upset by it. You don’t lose many votes these days by trashing the media.”

  She brightens. “You think so?” I nod. “I don’t know,” she says. “But why do I have the sense you didn’t come here for a campaign update?”

  “Because you’re a smart cookie.” Her eyes widen and she leans forward in her chair. “Don’t worry,” I say. “There is no other shoe I’m going to drop. Not a political one.”

  I notice I am still holding her child’s doll. I put it down on the floor. “I…I wanted to explain about the tape.”

  She flushes, looks away. “You don’t have to explain anything. Not to me, anyway.”

  “I know. But I’d like to.”

  “It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have listened to it in the first place.”

  “I’m the one who embroiled you in it to begin with.”

  She laughs uneasily and fidgets with a paper on her desk. “Well, what difference does it make what I think?”

  I am unable to stifle a sigh. It has been a long time since I have had to deal with the mysteries of social cues and conversational codes. I cannot tell if Cindy is telling me please to keep my mouth shut and not embarrass us both, or if she is asking whether I care about what she thinks. I take a breath and force myself to continue. “I’d like to know you better. If possible, I’d like to see you outside this campaign situation. But I couldn’t do that if I can’t first clear up this…this misunderstanding.”

  She looks at me blankly for a long moment, a moment during which I wonder if I surprised her into speechlessness. Then she blink
s and nods once.

  “Before Bobby and Laura met,” I begin, “Laura was my girlfriend. My first one, really.”

  “So you told me.”

  The phone rings, loud in the small office. I say, “This is no good. What if we talk tonight?” She shakes her head. “No. Tomorrow night, then?” She shakes her head again. The phone keeps ringing. She puts her hand on the receiver but does not pick it up. “Dinner. You have to eat dinner.”

  “I’m busy,” she says over the ringing. She puts both elbows on the desk and supports her chin on the back of one hand. “Tell me now.”

  “All right,” I say. Then I reach over and unplug the back of her phone.

  “Much better,” she says.

  When I get home, I discover I cannot sleep. Despite the optimism I offered Cindy, I am still worried about the election. Victory has a thousand fathers, they say, but defeat is always an orphan. Not this time, I think, with a catch at my throat. Defeat, if it should happen, will have my name and address and fingerprints all over it.

  17

  The earth tilts its northern hemisphere a single degree farther from the sun, and for those who live in the north, winter descends. While nationally Bobby’s party took a drubbing, the state’s voters proved themselves unpredictable once again. Bobby will be going to Washington, having won his race handily, 54 percent to 46 percent.

  A few weeks after the votes are counted, Laura calls and asks me if I might come over.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “You’ll see,” she tells me. “Bobby’s in the grip of some kind of depression. Talking to him is like yelling at someone stuck at the bottom of a well.”