Senator

by Richard Bowker

  I shook my head. It was a little disconcerting, seeing my opponent at home, with the heels of his slippers caved in and late-night stubble on his chin. He looked vulnerable. Just another quick-witted, street-smart mick at an age when you need more than street smarts to keep you going. He was a good politician, but he had also been very lucky: in getting through the war unscathed; in finding a wife like Elsa; in having me shoot down Donato for him. And, I figured, he probably thought his luck was holding strong: He goes up against the formidable incumbent senator, and the senator self-destructs in front of the voters' eyes. He probably thought I was here to beg him not to release Amanda's tapes. But he was about to find out that his luck had run out.

  "Now, what brings you to the enemy's lair in the middle of the night?" Finn asked.

  "I wanted to play a tape for you," I said.

  I watched to see if the mention of a tape provoked a reaction; it didn't. He pointed to a sleek stereo system in the far corner of the room. "What is it, your concession speech?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "Sorry." I went over to the stereo and inserted the tape.

  "The button on the left," Finn called out as I fumbled with the cockpitlike complexity of the equipment. I pressed the button and returned to my seat, glancing at a wallful of awards as I passed; among them were a couple of framed military decorations. The tape began before I could read the citations.

  "All right, I've started the tape," a tinny voice said. "I'll just ask a few of the questions again, okay?"

  "Sure. Whatever." There was a background of clattering dishes and muffled loudspeaker announcements.

  "Okay. What's your name?"

  "Sid. Sid Blomberg."

  Sid's voice was rough. He had a phlegmy cough that interrupted the conversation once in a while. I looked at Finn. He closed his eyes as Sid said his name.

  "And you were in Vietnam with Robert Finn?"

  "Yeah. He was my second lieutenant for a while there."

  "Okay. So we want to know about what happened that time you entered the village you thought was deserted, and Finn was shot."

  "Yeah, well, the way Larry told it is right. The other guys were taking care of the sniper, and me and Larry and the lieutenant went into this hut, and there was this old woman there, and he just blew her head off like it was, I dunno, a piece of fruit or something."

  "Finn did."

  "Yeah, Finn did. Fuckin' Governor Finn. I dream about it sometimes, y'know? I'm full of bad memories about them days, but that's one of the worst. She was just sittin' there. Maybe she was VC, but we never had a chance to find out, 'cause he unloaded on her before she even opened her mouth. He shouldna done that. He was just pissed off. Shit, if I blew away someone every time I got pissed off, wouldn't be anyone left in the state of California." He coughed.

  "And you're willing to sign a statement to that effect?" the other voice said after the coughing stopped.

  "Sure, I'll sign whatever. I bet they all think he's a hero back there in Massachusetts. Some hero. Of course, this won't do any good, you know. He'll get his lawyers and all and say, this guy's a lush, and probably Larry's a lush now, too, or whatever, and it'll get to be our fault somehow. We're lying, we shoulda done something to stop him. But I don't care. What can they do to me? Kick me out of this dump? Might as well tell the truth, see if it does any good."

  "Okay, Sid. I think that should do it."

  There was more coughing, and then the sound ended abruptly, leaving only the hiss of the tape in the elegant office.

  Bobby Finn opened his eyes. He walked slowly over to the stereo and shut the tape off. "We've got a statement from Larry Spalding, too," I said. "He lives here in Massachusetts. He's eager to come forward and tell his story."

  Finn looked at me, holding the tape in his hand. "Elsa doesn't know," he said softly. "She really did think you were here to do something crazy like concede. She said you looked like you were at a funeral. Didn't know it was mine."

  I didn't say anything. He came back and tossed the tape onto the desk between us. Elsa was probably off picketing draft boards while Finn was shooting innocent women in the jungle; it was common knowledge that his stands on defense issues did not meet with her approval. Was that the thing that bothered him most: the prospect, not of public disgrace, but of his wife's contempt? Somehow that moved me.

  "Sid talks about all his bad memories," Finn said. "Strange, but for me there's just that one bad memory of the whole war. That stupid, awful moment. But that was enough. God, I thought I was born to be a soldier. It wasn't just that I was good at it; I loved it. Loved it all, until I went haywire, and I did something so—so evil that it destroyed everything. And I wasn't even man enough to admit what I'd done. I lied, and I got away with it, and I thought it was all behind me, but it isn't, is it? It couldn't be, even if Sid and Larry hadn't been there. Because I can still see the look on that woman's face. I can still feel my hand press that trigger—" He stopped abruptly. "You sure you don't want a drink?"

  I shook my head again.

  "Think I'll have one myself," he muttered. He reached behind him and grabbed a bottle, but then he put it back down. "Ah, forget it," he said. He looked at me. "You didn't come here to listen to my confession," he said to me. "What is this, a courtesy call? Give the condemned man a little advance notice, let him get his affairs in order? Damned decent of you, old chap, like they say in the movies."

  I was surprised. I thought he would be the one to make the offer. Maybe the revelation had slowed his quick wits. "I don't want to go public with this, Bobby," I said.

  He looked puzzled and then suspicious. "Why not?"

  "Because I want to make a deal. You don't tell people what you know about me, and I don't tell what I know about you."

  He continued to study me, searching my face for the catch. "Okay," he said finally. "Fine with me. But why?"

  Why? "Because I don't want to be ruined any more than you do."

  That didn't seem to satisfy him. "I mean, I know we're both sort of hypocrites, Jim, but the cases aren't exactly comparable. So you were gettin' a little on the side. Big deal. No one really believes you murdered her—even the Monsignor, to tell you the truth, and you rank somewhere between Albert DeSalvo and Charles Stuart on his shit list. But I sure murdered that Vietnamese woman back then."

  Was it possible that he didn't know? I tried to figure it out. It didn't seem possible, but there it was. He thought I was talking about my affair with Amanda. Maybe Cavanaugh was actually keeping it secret. No, that didn't seem possible either. And Finn couldn't be playing a game with me, not now.

  My heart leaped up. If Finn didn't know, then why go through with the deal? Let Harold loose with the information. Destroy the bastard. Finn would destroy me if he were the one with the incriminating tapes and the sworn statements. And his wife would help.

  Why indeed?

  "Look," I said, "I just want to get rid of the extraneous garbage and focus on the issues. For example, I know in my bones that Cavanaugh is going to try something with the Taylor case before the election. You can do me a favor and make sure he doesn't."

  "Of course, Jim. Don't worry about it."

  "Great." I reached over and picked up the tape. "We've only got a few days till the election, Bobby. Let's both take the high road and forget about this stuff."

  Finn looked a little frightened now. He couldn't figure me out, and that made him nervous. Sparing him certain disgrace in return for him putting in a good word for me with the DA? There had to be something going on that he didn't understand—or else this wasn't the kind of politics he was used to. But so what? He could get used to it very fast if it kept him from losing the election. "Okay, Jim. I don't know why you're doing this, but of course, I accept."

  I shook his hand and stood up. "Fine. Now go back to bed and come out fighting in the morning."

  "All right. Except I'm not quite sure who I'm fighting anymore."

  "I'm not quite sure either, Bobby."

 
; * * *

  I stopped at an all-night supermarket and bought a bunch of red carnations; the girl at the checkout counter gave me the glazed look of semirecognition I had gotten from Bobby Finn's son. Then I drove to the waterfront and entered Harold's building. The doorman was delighted to see me; it broke up his night. He called up to Harold, and an elevator ride later I was standing in front of my campaign manager, offering him the bouquet. "Let's kiss and make up," I said. "And then let's figure out how to win this goddamn election."

  Harold accepted the flowers graciously. He put on a pot of coffee, and I put the carnations in a vase. When the coffee was ready, we sat at a table looking out over the city and set to work with the vase of flowers between us. We didn't stop till morning.

  Neither of us mentioned Everson's tape. I think Harold was just grateful that I was functioning again; besides, there wasn't time to argue about settled issues. It felt right that at the end it should come down to the two of us, without the consultants and the pollsters and the staffers; we had started all this, ten long years ago, and it was up to us to finish it.

  I convinced Harold that for the final push we should go positive. We had done enough damage to Finn. What we needed now was to shore up my own image. I told him that I liked the approach he was taking with the wheelchair shocker: Jim O'Connor is more complex than you think. Let's go with that, I said. Let's turn the deficits into advantages. Let's make the people believe in me again.

  By the end of our meeting we had sketched out the print ads and the TV and radio commercials, and we had come up with a list of talking points for my appearances. The others could organize the media buys and the logistics of the appearances. Marge and Sam Fisher could clean up our prose. Roger could find the money.

  "We're going to do it, Harold," I said when I stood up at last to go.

  Harold allowed himself to smile, the first smile I had seen on his face in a long time. "I went to bed not believing that," he replied. "Now I think I do."

  "See you at headquarters."

  "I'll be there."

  I drove home to catch a little sleep, going against the rush-hour traffic that crawled toward the city. Finn doesn't know about the tapes, I thought for the hundredth time. I may have shocked Finn by making the deal with him, but I hadn't really shocked myself. He deserved his freedom as much as I did; he certainly didn't deserve to end up someplace like the Lynn Arms. I could beat him without destroying him.

  Even in the midst of my relief, however, I could still feel the uneasiness that hadn't left me since the moment I discovered Amanda's corpse.

  Cavanaugh was letting me twist slowly in the wind. And there was a murderer out there, still waiting to be discovered. If Bobby Finn didn't know about the tapes, then the murderer surely did. And what was the murderer planning to do with them?

  I arrived home to a deserted house. I went to sleep on the couch, and the murderer was there in my dreams. But after a while I awoke, and there was too much to be done to dream anymore.

  Chapter 27

  The election approached, and I twisted in the wind.

  For what it was worth, the polls showed that my slide had stopped. All of them gave me a slight lead, but it was well within the margin of error. In addition, there were plenty of undecideds, and even those who had made up their minds weren't as firmly committed as they should have been at this stage of the race. I may not have blown the election, but I had certainly turned it into a cliff-hanger.

  If my flowers had mollified Harold, Kevin was inconsolable. "Donato's guilty, Senator," he insisted. "We've got to do something."

  "We've got nothing on him, Kevin," I explained patiently. "So Amanda Taylor interviewed him. That's not a crime."

  "But he's got a motive and—"

  "And if we tried to make a public accusation, how would it look? Like we were kicking a man while he's down, that's how. That's not the image we want to get across to the voters. Keep your guy on the case, Kevin. But we need something more than this."

  My father went home from the hospital. "They did their best to kill me," he growled, "but I guess I was just too tough for 'em." He was carless, but he insisted that cabs were just as convenient, and cheaper in the long run. I pressed him about moving in with us, but the most I could get out of him was "After the election. Maybe we'll talk about it after the election."

  Danny had taken care of everything, just as he said he would.

  Melissa called. Some company had contacted Danny out of the blue, wanting to interview him for a sales position. Imagine that. She asked if I had anything to do with it, and I swore that I hadn't. She seemed suspicious, but she also seemed eager to believe me. By the end of our conversation she sounded almost proud of Danny.

  Liz told me to stop sleeping on the damn couch. If I was going to live in the house, I might as well sleep in my own bed. I asked her if she wanted to talk. "After the election," she said. "We'll figure everything out after the election."

  And then Detective Mackey called. When I got the message I thought: Another summons to Cavanaugh's office. But then I noticed that Mackey had left his home phone number. And that scared me even more than a summons.

  I called him back when I arrived home after a long day of campaigning. Mackey answered on the first ring. "Mack, it's Jim O'Connor," I said. "What's happening?"

  "I need to see you, Senator. It's important."

  "Why, Mack? What's going on?"

  "Well, for starters, I've been taken off the Taylor case."

  Yes, this was going to be bad. "Cavanaugh's about to pull something, isn't he?"

  "I'd rather talk about it in person, Jim."

  "When? Where?"

  He offered to come over to my house right away, and that was fine with me. I thought about calling Finn in the meantime, but I decided I had better get my facts straight before laying into the governor for breaking his promise.

  Mackey arrived inside an hour, wearing a windbreaker and chinos. The outfit looked strange on him; I couldn't recall ever seeing him when he wasn't wearing a rumpled suit. We shook hands rather solemnly, then went into my office and sat down. He looked around, drumming his fingers on the side of his chair. He was as nervous as I was; the last thing he wanted was to get squashed in the politics of this case.

  "We go back a long way, Senator," he said after we were settled.

  "Sure do," I agreed. Let him take his time.

  "You've always been solid. Even when you were a defense lawyer."

  "Even when I became a politician?" I asked.

  He smiled. "You may be the only decent politician I ever met."

  Then he couldn't know about Jackie Scanlon, I thought, or I'd be on the trash heap with all the rest of them. "Mack, I'm no better than anyone else. It's tough to stay clean in this business."

  "It's tough to stay clean in any business," Mackey replied. "But some of us try harder than others." He leaned forward; he was ready. "Jim," he said, "I've been on this case since it started, and I still don't have any answers. It's clear to me you were sleeping with Amanda Taylor, and I think a good prosecutor could convince a jury of it. That book business was just a cover, and not a very good one, or why don't we have tapes of any interviews before September? That suggests the relationship went sour, and maybe that's why she was suddenly interviewing people and taking notes and so on; she was getting ready to do a hatchet job on you.

  "So there's bitterness over the end of the affair and fear that she's going to tell the world about it and ruin your career. It's a reasonable motive.

  "The trouble is, it doesn't feel right to me. I listen to the tapes, I read the notes, and it sure doesn't feel like that's what's going on. I don't know what she was up to, exactly, but it wasn't a hatchet job. And I don't think a jury would buy it either. They probably wouldn't believe your story, but that doesn't mean they'd believe the prosecution's.

  "So from where I sit, you're still a suspect, no matter how much I like you personally. You're our best suspect, basically our only susp
ect. But I haven't got enough to arrest you, and I don't know if I'll ever get it."

  I shrugged. "Fair enough," I said. "I never asked for special treatment."

  "The thing is," Mackey said, "Cavanaugh doesn't see it the way I see it. He wants to arrest you for the murder of Amanda Taylor."

  "And you refused to go along?"

  Mackey nodded. "So he's gonna find someone who will go along."

  "Will that be a problem for him?"

  "Not really. The commissioner owes Cavanaugh too many favors. If Cavanaugh wants an arrest, he'll get an arrest."

  "Does he honestly think he has enough to make a case, or doesn't he care?"

  "I don't know. He's not quite rational when it comes to you, Jim."

  "Tell me about it. Do you know if he's talked to Finn about arresting me?"

  Mackey shrugged. "The Monsignor doesn't take me into his confidence, unfortunately."

  "He'd have to clear it with Finn," I said, trying to convince myself.

  "You're the expert on that sort of thing, Jim."

  If Cavanaugh didn't happen to think it was necessary, then I was sure glad I had the warning, so I had time to call in my IOU from Finn. "Mack, I owe you for this. You're risking a lot to come here."

  "I am," he agreed. "The commissioner won't fire me just for refusing to cooperate with Cavanaugh, but he'd get rid of me in a minute if he found out I was leaking this to you or anyone else."

  "No one will know it came from you, Mack."

  Mackey looked uncomfortable. "If you make it public," he said, "Cavanaugh and the commissioner—they'll know who you got it from. Jim, this job is all I've got—and it's all I want."

  "Then I won't make it public."

  He nodded his relief and leaned back. "I appreciate it, Jim." We sat silently for a moment, and then he stood up. "Well, I imagine you've got things to do."

  "You're right about that, Mack."

  Mackey had made it clear enough already, but at the door I decided to settle the Jackie Scanlon issue once and for all. "Mack, you said you listened to those tapes of Amanda's interviews, right?"