Senator

by Richard Bowker

  I unlocked my car and got in. It was only then that I noticed the parking ticket stuck beneath the driver-side windshield wiper. I opened my window, grabbed it, and flung it onto the seat next to me. Staring at it, I felt a twinge of guilt for breaking the law.

  What a joke.

  I started the car and headed off to Harold's place.

  Chapter 3

  My campaign manager lives in a waterfront condo that perversely faces the city instead of the ocean. There is much about Harold White himself that could be considered perverse. Why does he own a sports car if he never drives over fifty miles an hour? Why does he think tax rates are too high if he won't deduct his charitable contributions on Schedule A? Why does he constantly rail against me, my political acumen, and my general fitness as a human being if he won't consider working for anyone else?

  I sit here and look out the window at the bare trees, their branches swaying in the wind, and I try to understand Harold, along with everyone and everything else. Occasionally I think it's all clear, but then the understanding seems to slip away, like a dream dissolving with the dawn. Harold enjoys being perverse, obviously. But he really is different from the rest of us, and the way he lives is far less an act than the way I live. I have heard staff members joke about getting him drunk so they could see the real Harold at last. Would he run naked through Downtown Crossing? Proposition a state trooper? Write out a check to the ACLU? But I suspect that none of those things would happen; he would still be Harold, and the mystery would remain.

  One thing is clear to me about Harold. It is said of some liberals that they love The People; it's people they can't stand.

  Well, Harold is a conservative embodiment of that contradiction. He believes that government should get off the backs of the working stiff and the small businessman and the entrepreneur, he is passionate in his support for the victims of crime, but he hasn't the slightest interest in the poor souls he is trying to help. I don't think he wants to come much closer to them than the view from his tenth-story window. And that's why he enjoys being a political operative. I'm the one who has to deal with the sweating, belching, dull-eyed masses, with their fears and prejudices and mindless yearnings. Harold has to deal only with me.

  And the brain trust.

  I was the last one to arrive. Everyone else was in the living room, watching me on the news. Harold has three television sets, for just such occasions as this. It's important to compare coverage during a crisis: The raising of one anchorman's eyebrow might be an isolated reaction; the raising of three eyebrows could portend disaster. I went into the kitchen and got a beer. I didn't need to study the eyebrows; the people in the living room would do that for me. And I didn't want to see shots of the body sliding into the ambulance, the interview with the grief-stricken parents, the pontifications of the political commentators.

  Harold doesn't drink, but he always keeps some Coors around on general principle. I opened a bottle and waited for someone to come and get me.

  Kevin—who else?—was the one they designated. He was wearing the mournful expression of the typical fatalistic Irishman. Sure, there'll be pestilence and destruction a-comin' now. Kevin often reminds me of my father. "Senator," he whispered. "They're wondering if—"

  "Of course." I stood up. Did he feel betrayed, with me heading to this woman's apartment instead of going home? Did he wonder what other lies I had been telling? No, not Kevin. Kevin was trying to figure out some way in which this was his fault. After all, it couldn't be mine. I patted him on the shoulder and went into the living room.

  The TVs were still on, but the sound was muted. Roger sat by the windows, sipping what looked like whiskey; he must have brought it with him. Poor Roger, I thought. He had the beginnings of a problem. Harold was talking on the phone in the corner.

  Marge Terry was sitting on the couch opposite the TVs. She was wearing jeans, a Cornell sweatshirt, and no makeup—not the standard uniform for a media coordinator. There were circles under her eyes. Harold had probably rousted her out of bed. A lot of people would be losing sleep tonight. She didn't meet my gaze as I came into the room. I hadn't thought about her reaction. Would she be as bad as Harold?

  Yes, I realized, she would.

  Standing next to the TVs was Sam Fisher, our media consultant. I don't think I've ever seen him sitting down. He is as expansive as Harold is buttoned down. His frizzy hair seems to explode from his head in a kind of Jewish Afro; Marge claims she saw birds nesting in it once. I could smell his cologne from across the room.

  "Nice job back there, Jim," Sam said. "I particularly liked the way you said 'we,' 'the campaign,' so on. Keep it all objective, impersonal. You're distressed, of course, anyone would be, but this really has nothing to do with you."

  If a politician ever has the audacity to think he's real, talking to someone like Sam will put him in his place. Sam sees only the image, cares only about the image. He does like to start out by buttering you up, though, in case there are real feelings lurking inside; this is especially true when he has bad news. I was too tired and worried to play games, however. "But?" I said, knowing full well what the "but" was.

  "But it's a disaster," he said, spreading his arms, as if trying to encompass the magnitude of the debacle. "An absolute fucking disaster. You've put yourself in the hands of your worst enemies. Bobby Finn is probably doing backflips through the streets of Belmont even as we speak."

  "If they try and pull anything, it'll backfire on them," Kevin said. "No one'll believe the senator's a murderer."

  Good old Kevin. Like a mother shielding her young. "Doesn't matter, Kevin," Marge explained. "He was alone in the apartment of an attractive single woman who happened to get herself murdered. That's sordid on the face of it. The Herald's on our side, but even they'll have to put this on the front page for a week. Cavanaugh doesn't have to arrest Jim. He just has to string things out so he gets maximum publicity."

  "What is the essence of Jim's appeal?" Sam asked, pacing back and forth as he started his lecture. More of the obvious, I was sure. "How can a Republican like him be elected to the Senate from such a heavily Democratic state? First and foremost, it's his integrity. People trust him. Trust his commitment to family values, honesty in government, so on. They're voting the man, not the party. But if people sense there's something wrong with the man, then there's no reason left to vote for him."

  "But someone like Ted Kennedy—" Kevin protested.

  "Different story. People don't mind if a politician isn't a saint so long as he doesn't pretend he's one. But they don't like being taken in. They'll vote for scoundrels, but not for hypocrites."

  "Well, I think it's clear what the problem is," Roger said. "Why don't we start trying to figure out a solution?"

  "There's just one thing I want to get clear," Sam replied. "How come I didn't know about this book deal? No offense, but books are media, and that's what you're paying me for. How come no one asked me what I thought about Jim showing up alone at the apartment of an attractive young reporter?"

  Silence.

  "There was no book deal," Harold said finally. He was off the phone now but still standing in the corner of the room.

  "Oh," Sam said. He stroked his bushy mustache, for once at a loss for words.

  The phone rang. Harold answered it. It wouldn't stop ringing for a long time. The people who had my home number would be calling it, too, but I doubted that Liz was answering. She liked to unplug the bedroom phone and go to sleep early. So she probably didn't know yet. Poor Liz. It was time to start thinking about her.

  I sat down in a cushy wing chair next to the sofa and took a swig of my Coors. "Harold and Marge here didn't like Amanda's proposal," I said.

  "If there had to be a book, we preferred a ghostwritten autobiography," Marge said. "We didn't know what this woman's agenda was, and she wouldn't give us approval over her manuscript. So we thought it was a bad idea. The discussion never reached the point where we had to bring it up with you, Sam."

  "
I went ahead with it on my own," I said.

  "Oh." Sam was tugging at his mustache now. "Of course, no one in the campaign is going to say that this was all Jim's—"

  Marge waved the idea away. "Of course not. We were behind this project a hundred percent. Best thing that ever happened to the campaign. Hell, we practically had to bludgeon Jim into going along with it." She fumbled in her Coach bag for her cigarettes, then stopped and tossed the bag aside in disgust. This was probably one of the weeks when she had quit.

  I noticed an ugly bruise on her forearm. She noticed me notice and quickly pushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt down. Had that bruise been there at the meeting this afternoon?

  "And is it true what you said on TV," Sam asked, "that Liz introduced—"

  "That's true," I said. This was painful, but there was worse to come. Liz, wake up, we've got to talk.

  The phone rang again. Harold ignored it this time. Sam moved over next to Roger and leaned against the windowsill. Sweat stains had appeared under the arms of his shirt. On TV, Jay Leno and Ted Koppel and David Letterman were all talking soundlessly at me. "Jim," Sam said, "maybe you don't want to answer this, but believe me, complete honesty is the only way we're going to figure out the best thing to do here. Were you and this woman having an affair?"

  Complete honesty. I considered it for a microsecond and then rejected it. I wasn't just dealing with a campaign strategy here; I was also dealing with a murder investigation. What if I told these people the truth and Cavanaugh subpoenaed them? How many of them would commit perjury for me? Harold and Marge, at least, knew some of the truth without my telling them. If they knew the rest, would they turn me in, even without a subpoena? I couldn't afford to find out. "Sam," I said, "she was writing a book about me. Maybe I got carried away and disagreed with my staff because she was young and good-looking. And I'll grant you that going to her apartment by myself was stupid. But the police aren't going to uncover any evidence of some torrid love affair between us."

  "Did she have a contract for this book?"

  I shrugged. "I don't think so. She told me she wanted to finish it before trying to sell it. Thought she'd get a better deal that way."

  "How far along was she in the manuscript?"

  "I don't know."

  Sam tried not to look suspicious. "Will the police find a manuscript, Jim?"

  "I don't know. She might not have started it yet."

  "Well, did she tape the interviews, take notes, what?"

  "What's going on here?" Kevin interrupted. "This isn't a trial. We should be helping the senator, not cross-examining him."

  "You think we're in hot water now," Roger said to Kevin, "but it'll really start to boil if Cavanaugh claims Jim is lying about this book." He took out a flask and poured more whiskey into his glass.

  The phone rang. Why didn't Harold unplug it if he wasn't going to answer it? Probably just trying to annoy me. I couldn't stand talking about the book anymore. "All I'm saying is that I didn't pay attention to her writing methods," I said. "She didn't take notes during the interviews. She didn't say anything about taping. Maybe she did it secretly. Maybe she took notes afterward. Some reporters do that to make it seem more like a conversation, so you let your guard down. I'm sure this won't be a problem, Sam."

  "If you say so, Jim." He didn't sound convinced. I wasn't convinced myself. "Jim, I think you know as well as I do who holds the key to our survival right now."

  I nodded. Not District Attorney Cavanaugh, not Detective Mackey, not Governor Finn. Not even Senator James O'Connor; it was out of my hands, too. "Liz," I said. I finished the beer and set it down next to the chair.

  "Can I get you another?" Kevin asked immediately.

  "I guess not, Kevin," I replied. Marge was looking at me. She has big, easy-to-trust green eyes that she uses to good effect when she's trying to put one over on a reporter. Now they were boring into me, blazing messages that were not difficult to interpret. "What do we want Liz to do for us?" I asked softly.

  "You should hold a press conference tomorrow," Sam said, his hands framing the scene. "On the lawn outside your home. Liz by your side. Kathleen's bicycle parked in camera range. Liz talks about how she introduced this reporter to you. Make it sound as if she was Liz's friend, not yours—or at least a friend of the family. Liz, of course, is as distraught as you are by this tragedy, so on. If some insensitive boor asks her if she was jealous of the victim, she reaches for your hand—you know, surreptitiously, but so the cameras can pick up the gesture—squeezes it, says, 'Jim and I have been married for fifteen years, twenty years, whatever, and we know each other too well to be jealous. We have a good marriage, and I believe this tragedy will only strengthen the bond between us.' See what I mean?"

  We were silent for a moment, indulging in the fantasy that we could actually get Liz to say something like that. "What if we just draft a statement for her?" Roger asked, trying to be practical.

  Sam shook his head. "Not good enough. We need the visuals. We need the loyal wife by the candidate's side. It's not what she says but how she says it."

  The phone rang. This time Harold picked up the receiver and immediately put it back down again. "She should go to the funeral, too," he said.

  I closed my eyes. That was really asking too much; Harold was trying to rub it in. "It might seem inappropriate for either of us to go to the funeral," I suggested. "You know, concern for the victim's family. We don't want to turn it into a media circus after all."

  "You think it won't be a media circus anyway?" Sam asked.

  He had a point.

  "The family doesn't have anything against you, do they?" Marge asked.

  "I don't see why they should."

  "Then you have to go," she said. "It'll look bad if you don't. And if you go, Liz should go. Think you can get her to do it, Jim?"

  "I don't know," I replied. In fact, I doubted it very much.

  Sam held his hands up over his head, like a referee signaling a touchdown. "Tell her this is it," he said. "This is the ball game, right here. That's the truth, and we all know it. The election's neck and neck now. You're popular, but so is Finn. If this gives Finn some momentum, we may never catch up to him."

  Sam was right, but the important question was: Did Liz care? Would she care even less after I got home and had my talk with her? "We should do some polling," I noted, changing the subject.

  "I've already talked to Steadman," Harold said. "We'll have numbers tomorrow night."

  "I suppose you've talked to Washington, too," I said, not doubting it.

  Harold nodded. "I told Art to refer all inquiries to the campaign. He knows how to handle this sort of thing."

  "Fine." On TV a comedian was laughing at his own joke. A bearded guy in a tweed jacket gestured at a map of eastern Europe. A baby squeezed a roll of toilet paper. "I'll talk to Liz," I said. "I can't promise anything."

  "Good," Sam said. "Now, I think we should cancel your schedule for tomorrow. Focus everything on the one event. Hold the press conference at, say, two. I can come over ahead of time and talk to Liz, give her some pointers."

  "Fine," I said. "Call me first thing in the morning. Now if there's nothing else—"

  Kevin spoke up. "Aren't we leaving out the most important topic?"

  People looked at him in surprise. Kevin is not the kind to add his own items to the agenda. "What's that, Kevin?" I asked.

  "Well, I think we should talk about who murdered Amanda Taylor."

  Blank looks all around—except, perhaps, on Harold's face. But he was still in shadows in the corner, and I couldn't make out his expression. "Okay, Kevin," Sam said. "But I don't see what there is to talk about. On TV they thought maybe robbery—"

  "Mackey doesn't think it's robbery," Roger said.

  "What then?" Sam asked.

  "Jim has a lot of enemies," Kevin said. "Isn't it possible one of them is behind her murder?"

  "But why?" Roger asked. "Why kill this woman to get at Jim?"

  "To put
him in precisely this situation," Kevin said. "They found out he was going to her apartment alone, and they decided to take advantage of it. Maybe they didn't mean to kill her. Say they broke in looking for compromising photographs or something, and she surprised them." His eyes glistened with righteous indignation. I thought about the Polaroid in my raincoat.

  "I'm the first one to believe the Democrats are evil," Sam remarked, "but I don't think they're that evil."

  "Not necessarily Finn's people," Kevin said. "But someone with a grudge. Donato must be out, right? If it weren't for Jim sending him to prison back when he was attorney general, Donato might be governor now; he might be running for senator instead of Finn."

  I hadn't thought of Donato in years. It was true, he'd be out now. I wondered what kind of grudge he carried.

  "Jim does have his enemies," Roger admitted.

  "But let's be realistic," Sam said. "What do we do with this, even if we have our suspicions? We can't exactly make an accusation at the press conference. I suppose we could float a rumor, have a friendly columnist do some speculating. But that doesn't get us very far."

  "I think we should look into this murder ourselves," Kevin said. "Cavanaugh is going to try and pin this on the senator, right? He's not going to care about who the real murderer is. So why not do our own investigating?" Clearly Kevin was enamored of the idea: the good guys fighting back against the bad guys. More satisfying, at any rate, than contemplating random urban violence that just happened to put our whole future in jeopardy.

  "Cavanaugh's bound to find out," Roger said, "and that will make things messy. He'd probably accuse us of trying to obstruct justice. I think we should lay off. We can always take some potshots at him later if we think he's playing politics with the investigation."

  Good old Roger, the voice of prudence. People looked at me. In a way I wanted to side with Kevin. I wanted to know who killed Amanda. But the thought of my campaign investigating Amanda's death wasn't much more palatable than the thought of Cavanaugh investigating it. I nodded at Roger. "I think you're right," I said. "Let's see how things go. Mackey won't be anyone's puppet. He'd arrest the police commissioner if he had the evidence. And anyway, we probably won't get very far solving the murder on our own. More likely we'll just remind people like Donato how much they hate me."