Senator

by Richard Bowker

  I settled down on the couch, but I couldn't sleep, couldn't even close my eyes. There was a sudden movement, and Angelica was staring down at me from the top of the couch.

  I took a deep breath. "Trying to give the old senator a heart attack there, huh, Angelica?"

  She continued to regard me suspiciously. This wasn't right, and she knew it.

  "Better get used to it," I said. "No telling when things'll get back to normal. Maybe never."

  She meowed, then jumped down and padded off into the darkness. I lay back against the small pillow perched against the hard arm of the couch. My neck would ache in the morning, I knew. I tried to think about something constructive, but nothing came to mind. Instead I wallowed in thoughts of Roger and Liz. Their little love games. The stolen caresses in public when they hoped no one was looking. Roger's pity for me. Liz's grim revenge.

  I thought about the old days. Had the spark always been there between them? I remembered one time when we were all a little drunk, walking across the Boston Common and looking at the Christmas lights on the trees. Liz slipping on the ice and Roger helping her to her feet. His arm around her, her look of gratitude. Doris standing meekly by, smiling at her husband's gallantry. Had he always longed for her? Had she always thought: What if...?

  I thought of Roger at Amanda's apartment the night of the murder and the way I had told him to take off his silly rain hat. How laughable that must have seemed to him when he had just come from cuckolding me that afternoon, when his senses were still suffused with the smell and taste and feel of my wife. Sure, he'd take off his hat. It was the least he could do for the poor guy.

  And then I thought: The damn hat. The witness—what was her name? Kevin had told me, and I immediately forgot—didn't she say the man she saw going into the apartment building was wearing a hat? Yes, a white man, wearing a hat, carrying a black umbrella.

  Could have been anyone. Could have been Roger. I thought of how nervous he had been when he showed up at the apartment. I had figured it was because he was uncomfortable doing criminal law after all these years. Could have been something entirely different.

  Why not?

  Well, why? Jealousy—my first stab at a motive for Roger—clearly wasn't right. He had no reason to be jealous of me. In fact, the opposite was true: He was better off with Amanda alive, if he thought, like Liz, that I was still seeing her. That kept me from paying attention to Liz and kept Liz angry at me.

  But what if Liz had put him up to it? Clearly he was more enamored of her than she was of him. She sets him a test, and he is eager to pass it, no matter what the consequences. If you really loved me, you'd murder that bitch my husband is screwing.

  No, too crude. What if it was rhetorical? Who will free me from this turbulent priest? Like the knights listening to King Henry, he mistakes a bitter question for a command from his liege. He cannot believe his good fortune in possessing Liz. He knows she still has feelings for me. He longs to prove his love for her, to prove that he is every bit the man her husband is. So after Liz leaves him that Friday afternoon, he goes immediately to Amanda's apartment, while his blood is still hot. Perhaps he has a drink or two first, to keep his courage up. Amanda doesn't know what to make of his visit. She is a little afraid, but mostly she is amused. She knows Roger Simmons only through my eyes, after all, so what is there to worry about? But his courage stays with him, and he strikes. Afterward, scarcely able to think, he bumblingly attempts to make it look like a robbery, he leaves the message on the computer—a message to Liz, to his beloved.

  And then, triumphant, does he tell Liz? Perhaps not. His courage has deserted him by then, especially when he sees the problems the murder causes for me. Liz suspects, but she is afraid to ask. The murderer could be either her husband or her lover, and she doesn't want to find out which.

  I pulled the blankets more tightly around me in the cold living room. Roger couldn't be a murderer. But then, I wouldn't have thought he could be an adulterer either. Not with my wife, at any rate.

  No more theories, I resolved suddenly. It was clear that I didn't know anything about anyone, so what was the point of speculating? "Everyone is guilty," Cavanaugh had told me. Or perhaps no one is guilty. "No one's an angel, and no one's a devil": That was Jackie Scanlon's analysis. I was beginning to have reasonable doubt about the entire universe.

  I closed my eyes, and there was Amanda's corpse staring at me. I turned and pressed my face into the rough fabric of the couch, praying that I would go to sleep and stop thinking. Enough was enough; I needed some peace.

  But when I finally slept, there was still no peace. I dreamed I was a bird, or perhaps a ghost, and I was watching myself watch Roger screwing Liz, his flabby white body working away on top of her while I stood by, helpless to stop them. I—the bird, the ghost—plunged to earth to join my other self, to somehow rouse me to action. Finally I moved, in the lead-limbed way of dreams, and I reached out toward the beast with two backs. Liz turned her love-glazed eyes to me as I approached, but it wasn't Liz, it was Amanda, and her eyes were wide with terror, and I realized that my hand held a knife. "No! No!" I shouted to myself, but it was too late, the hand was already in motion through the heavy air, the knife flashed in the darkness as it descended, and when I looked again, oh, God, it was no longer Amanda but my mother, and she screamed as she must have screamed giving birth to me, and I screamed, too, as I realized what it was that I could not stop myself from doing.

  And then through bleary eyes I saw something orange.

  Kathleen was holding a glass of juice out toward me. "I think you were having a nightmare," she said.

  I took the glass from her and struggled to a sitting position. It was morning. Kathleen was dressed for school. She had a "Senator O'Connor" bumper sticker on her book bag. "You should read the Globe," she said. "Finn is running a rotten ad about how you're weak on defense."

  I couldn't work up any interest in Finn's ad. "Okay," I said. I gestured at the rumpled blankets. "Your mother and I had a—a—" I couldn't bring myself to describe what it was that we'd had.

  Kathleen looked as if she'd had enough of this. "Are you two going to get a divorce or what?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Things are—" I also couldn't bring myself to describe how things were.

  "Things suck," Kathleen said.

  I shuddered. She was right, but it hurt to hear her say it. "I'm sorry," I said.

  For once she didn't object to my apology. She just looked at me, waiting for more.

  "After the election," I said, begging for a reprieve. "Everything will get thrashed out after the election."

  She shook her head, unappeased. "I've gotta go," she said.

  "Me, too."

  She reached out a hand. I took it, and she yanked. I was up. Ready, more or less, to face another day. "Thanks for the help," I said.

  "Don't mention it. You look like you can use all the help you can get."

  She was certainly right about that.

  Chapter 21

  Harold got hold of me in the car on the way to the airport. "You saw the ad," he said.

  "Yes."

  "You realize we could cut Finn's legs off if we produced Larry Spalding."

  "What about his friend—what's his name, Sid? Have you found him yet?"

  "No, but—"

  "Find his friend, and then I'll consider going public."

  Harold was silent for a moment, and then changed the subject. "There's a reporter trying to get an interview," he said. "I think he's out to prove you had an affair with—"

  "I know," I said. "Roger mentioned him. Stall him for a few days, okay? I don't feel like dealing with that right now."

  "If he's got dirt, Jim, we're better off having it come out sooner rather than later. There's not much time left for damage control, you know."

  "He won't have any dirt. He'll have inference and conjecture. I'm not worried about him."

  "Then talk to him, for God's sake. Roger tells me Cavanaugh has taken over—"
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  "I know. That scares me more than this reporter."

  "Cavanaugh and Finn are going to try something, Jim. I can feel it."

  "I don't see what we can do to stop them."

  "Larry Spalding," Harold said. "Larry Spalding."

  I hung up. Not a good start to the week for either of us.

  * * *

  The day didn't get any better when I spotted Brad Williams lying in wait in the departure lounge at Logan. He approached me, smiling, hand extended, like an old friend or a life insurance salesman. He was wearing a double-breasted suit and shiny black loafers. His hair looked even greasier than before. "Senator, I thought I might run into you here."

  I ignored his hand. "You would've gotten your interview," I said. "No need to ambush me."

  He continued to smile. "You've got to understand, Senator, I'm under deadline pressure here. I'd hate to go to press without getting your comments. This is a very serious matter."

  I sat down. Williams sat next to me. He produced a pocket tape recorder. "Who's going to print your story?" I asked. "Hub can't run it before the election. And what's the point afterward?"

  "I'm free-lancing it for the Real News."

  The Real News is a weekly paper that aspires to be both respectable enough to attract advertisers and outrageous enough to appeal to counterculture types who scorn the dailies. It has always despised me. "Don't you think that might damage the credibility of your story?" I asked. "Most people would automatically suspect anything that paper printed about me."

  "I think the facts will speak for themselves, Senator. Shall we begin?"

  I wasn't thrilled to be doing this in an airport, but I figured I might as well get it out of the way. "Whenever you're ready," I said with an air of bland confidence.

  Williams turned on the tape recorder and began the interview. And I began lying. He started with some straightforward questions about Amanda and our book interviews. Nothing that hadn't already been asked, nothing for which I didn't have a ready, if not entirely satisfactory, answer. He made a big deal about my having a key to Amanda's apartment. He made it clear that he didn't believe my explanation, but so what? He was out of the Mike Wallace school of tough-guy interviewers: "Are you seriously asking people to believe that you're no longer a drug-crazed wife beater?" Interviewers like that don't worry me nearly as much as the Barbara Walters oozing-sympathy kind, the ones who make you think that telling the world about how you beat your wife will somehow cleanse your spirit and make you a better person. The only thing you can do in either case is stick to your game plan and hope for the best.

  After the preliminaries Williams brought up San Francisco quickly and unexpectedly: "Were you at a criminal justice conference in San Francisco in early April, Senator?"

  No denying that. "Yes, I was."

  "Did you meet Amanda Taylor while at that conference?"

  So what was my game plan for this? I knew that I should have expected questions about it from somebody. If I said I had met her, then I was admitting to something that looked awfully suspicious. But it was easy enough to prove that we both were there, and it would strain credulity to suggest that we hadn't met—even if there were no witnesses. My general rule is to stick as close to the truth as possible, and that's what I decided to do now. "Yes," I replied. "It turned out that she was at the conference as well, so it seemed convenient to schedule an interview out there. I don't recall the circumstances offhand."

  Williams couldn't hide the triumph in his expression. He hadn't had the proof, but now he didn't need it; I had confessed. "Don't you think it's strange Amanda Taylor would attend that conference?" he asked. "She never showed any interest in the topic before."

  "I don't know about that. She wanted to write a book about me, and criminal justice is an issue I'm closely identified with."

  "She paid her own way to the conference; she wasn't on assignment from the magazine," Williams pointed out. "And she didn't subsequently write about the conference for any other publication. Doesn't that suggest that attending the conference was just a pretext for meeting you?"

  "Well, in the sense that she was trying to be as accommodating as she could to ensure my cooperation on the book, sure. Clearly the book she was writing about me meant a lot to her career, and my free time is quite limited. But that's all supposition on my part."

  Williams smirked. "Are you asking people to believe that she followed you across the country to do an interview that she could as easily have done in her apartment, like all the others?"

  "I'm telling you that she was a good reporter, and she saw this book as her big break. So it doesn't surprise me that she went to some lengths to make sure she got her material."

  "And yet you were the one who was accommodating her by going to her apartment. And it was her annoying habit of being late for these supposed interviews that caused you to demand a key to her apartment. Doesn't that sound somewhat inconsistent, Senator?"

  "But who says life is perfectly consistent? I tried to be accommodating to her when I could, and on a couple of occasions she wasn't as professional as I believe she should have been. That's the way things go."

  "Were there any other instances when you met Amanda out of town?"

  "Not that I can recall offhand." Did he know about her trips to Washington? If he did, let him bring them up. My flight was called, and I stood up immediately. "Have enough?"

  Williams turned off the tape recorder and got to his feet. "Oh, I think so, Senator. Thanks. Can we go off the record?"

  I shrugged. "If you make it quick."

  He leaned close. I recalled his cologne from when we stood on the footsteps of the church after the funeral; it hadn't improved with age. "This article is going to be devastating to you, Senator," he murmured.

  "If you say so."

  "No doubt about it. I've got dates and places. I've got your own admission that you met her in San Francisco. I've got my own personal observations of Amanda. Senator, I think you might consider what it's worth to you to keep this article from appearing."

  "You've got to be joking."

  "We're talking about your political career, Senator. Not to mention a possible murder charge."

  I glared at him. "Listen, you little prick, go ahead and print the article. Maybe you'll win the Pulitzer Prize and become rich and famous. Or maybe you'll end up an unemployed and unemployable muckraker with enemies in high places. Take your chance. But you're not going to blackmail me. Understand?"

  Williams reddened and started to reply, but I didn't wait to hear what he had to say. Instead I strode off toward my plane, full of righteous indignation. Who was he to think I would submit to blackmail?

  * * *

  San Francisco. It had been a risk, but we couldn't resist. The affair had been going on for a few months; the initial excitement was waning, and the stolen evenings had begun to seem insufficient for the danger they entailed. This would be more dangerous, but it also gave us more time—time we could use to figure out what was real and what wasn't about our relationship. I had a keynote speech to give and a couple of panels to sit through. Other than that I was on my own. And I spent all my free time with Amanda: riding the cable cars, wandering through Golden Gate Park, feeding the pigeons in Union Square, taking the ferry across the bay to Sausalito.

  And making love. Yes, Brad. Yes, Mike. Yes, Barbara. In her room, in my room. In the shower and on the bed and on the carpet next to the bed. Lying and sitting and standing up. We made love till our loins ached, till our mouths were sore, till our brains reeled.

  The whole experience was suffused with guilt for me, but I couldn't seem to help myself. The risk just seemed to make it more exciting; the knowledge that it had to end just made me determined to enjoy it more.

  Now, on the plane to Washington, it all seemed childish and irresponsible. If we had stuck to occasional trysts in her apartment, Williams wouldn't have had a story. But San Francisco would look bad even if no one had seen us holding hands on a cable car. So W
illiams had his scoop, and God only knew what Cavanaugh would do with it.

  And I wondered: What was Liz up to while I was having my fun? She probably knew perfectly well what the trip to San Francisco was all about. Perhaps that was when she started her affair with Roger. He calls, looking for me, and she answers, lonely and bitter. She invites herself over to his place for a drink. He is confused, frightened, excited. She arrives, and one drink leads to another. They reminisce about the good old days. They talk about their loneliness. She leans against him. He gives her a fraternal hug. She looks up at him...

  I closed my eyes. It was all too plausible.

  I would have to talk to Harold about the article and how to deal with it. But not now, not now.

  * * *

  In Washington Congress lurched toward adjournment, and the crime bill finally made it to the floor of the Senate. Art Chandler remained doubtful about the chances of my amendment passing. "If you've got Hutchins, maybe," he said.

  "I think Hutchins will be okay," I replied.

  "Did you get a commitment?"

  "Well, not in so many words."

  "Then you haven't got anything."

  Still, I was confident. Denny Myers had grudgingly redrafted the amendment so that it cost less, and that meant fewer Republicans could complain. And even with President Kenton opposed to it, some Democrats might go against him in order to look tough on crime just before an election. He couldn't afford to veto the bill, even with my amendment attached. So I thought I could come up with a slim majority.

  The bill's floor manager, Glenn Courtney, was scared that last-minute amendments would derail the whole thing. He was right to be scared. Anything can happen in the last days of a session. Some liberal senators might manage to get an amendment restricting the sale of handguns passed, for example, and all the senators who were wholly owned subsidiaries of the NRA would then feel obliged to filibuster the entire bill to death. But Courtney recognized that my amendment was serious and not especially threatening, so he agreed to let it be considered early in the process, before there was a chance that the bill would be moved for a final vote.