by Ed Gorman
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen to this country.’
‘It’s already happened, Tom. That’s the hell of it.’
SEVEN
Yellow crime scene tape was the brightest color of the gray and cold fall day. Rain had turned the once colorful leaves sullen. A squad car sat next to the back door. The downstairs was a symphony of whispers. Mrs Rosenberg waved to me. It was obvious she’d been crying.
I climbed to the second floor. Apparently the no-smoking law was no longer being honored. I saw a couple of junior staffers hurrying toward me, both of them bearing cigarettes. They nodded and hustled on by.
David Nolan’s office was empty. I stood in it for a few minutes and cursed Jeff Ward. There are moral politicians and immoral politicians. You’ll find both on both sides of the aisle. You’ll also find the sociopaths on both sides. Power attracts them. They feel it’s their due. The hell of it is some of them vote your way, so if you want to keep the country safe from being overrun by the robber barons and the madmen you have to reluctantly support them.
I suppose Nolan had felt that way about Jeff Ward. He’d known him so many years he had to see what kind of a man Ward was. He had to have excused a lot in the name of friendship. Or maybe he drank a little of the heady wine himself. Washington is a gaudy young whore. She can make you feel important and in some respects immortal. You want to keep going back and back. It’s the only place where you can get the magic wine. But then your ticket in, who has been your lifelong best friend, sleeps with your wife and you’re forced to look not just at him but at yourself as well. How could you not see this coming with a man like Jeff Ward? You’d covered for him so many times with the wives of other men, why would it be any different with you?
Kathy Tomlin came in wearing a crimson sweater, black pencil skirt, and black heels. ‘David was supposed to be at an advisory board meeting this morning but he didn’t show up. That’s really not like him. I’m worried about him. He’s just such a decent guy. He really is.’ She came closer to whisper. Her perfume made me fall in love with her. So did the finely-made face. A true pleasure to contemplate. ‘Unlike another guy I could mention, I mean. David told me about Jeff and his wife. He is such a bastard. How could he do that to poor David?’
I wanted her to keep whispering to me but she had the nerve to lean against the door frame. ‘If that ever gets out-’
‘You think David might ever-’
She shook her head. ‘No way. Even if he hates the messenger, he believes in the message. Burkhart is a fascist and I know we’re not supposed to use that word because he isn’t technically a fascist but that’s what he is to me. I just wish we could get something big on him.’
I said, ‘This campaign is so dysfunctional I don’t know how you won two elections.’
‘David Nolan. That’s how we won two elections.’
Lucy came into the room looking as if she had absorbed the shock of Waters’ death and was forcing herself to come back to the world of the living. She had even tricked up a nervous smile for us.
‘Am I interrupting?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re just trying to plan the day. How’s the press conference coming along?’
‘Pretty well. I’ve got both the nun and the relative. A little old lady whose voice trembles when she speaks.’
Kathy caught the moment. Grinned. ‘Shameless, Dev.’
‘That’s what they pay me for. And even if we pull it off that won’t stop the questions. Did Waters take drugs? Was he gay? Did he belong to a terrorist organization? The local hate radio boys and girls will be slandering him every time they’re on mike. And they’ll use that slander to paint our whole campaign.’
‘He wasn’t gay and he didn’t take drugs and he sure wasn’t in favor of terrorism,’ Lucy said. As she spoke her voice rose defensively.
‘God,’ Kathy said, ‘those brochures with Jeff in all those tuxedos and dinner jackets and with all those bimbos. Think what the radio jerks can do with them.’
‘He told me they were all from very good families,’ Lucy said. She sounded serious.
Kathy joyously put a maternal hand on Lucy’s shoulder. ‘Sweetheart, we know he got a bj from one of those very good family girls in the parking lot of a Burger King one night. And I mean outside the car.’
‘God,’ Lucy said. ‘I forgot.’
Kathy smiled devilishly at me. ‘That was probably the one and only time he was ever at a Burger King, by the way.’
I spent the next hour and a half going through every newspaper in the state. They all had extensive websites. Then I went to the sites of the TV and major radio stations. The coverage ran predictably. The conservative sources had already turned Jim Waters’ murder into a mystery with hints of the diabolical. ‘Friends said that although they liked him, he was often strange and secretive. He had worked as a speechwriter for Congressman Ward for three years, even during the time that the congressman was under suspicion for seeing several women outside his marriage.’ Nice way to work that in. If they’d had more time they would have worked Ward’s history to include bedwetting, public nose picking and leading terrorist cells in singing anti-American rap songs.
The more moderate outlets, print and electronic alike, weren’t as hostile but most made the point that with the election so close a murder was not exactly what the congressman needed. They all cited the noon press conference and predicted that it would be well attended. Then I saw a quote from a fat junkie who had a radio show. It was a long quote. I could only stomach a few sanctimonious lines of it. God and family values. I wondered what any of his three former wives would make of it.
As I was about wrapping things up I decided to check on Burkhart’s site. Any kind of official comment would wait until after the press conference of course but Sylvia had gotten her first shot in already. ‘I want to offer the Waters family our true condolences. I’m told he was a very bright young man and an extremely hard worker. This is why it is so important that our youth get off to the right start. They get caught up in all these liberal causes and they lose their way. You can’t have a mission that includes drugs and sex and a belief that big government can solve everything and expect to stay sane. I’ve seen a lot of my friends destroyed by these things in my lifetime. I certainly hope this wasn’t the case with poor James Waters.’
Well, she hadn’t included horse fucking anywhere in her list of liberal sins so I guess that put us ahead of the game.
When my cell phone toned I was glad to see the name Sarah Conrad on the caller ID. My twenty-two-year-old daughter was a senior at Smith. She planned to work for my firm over the summer as she had the last two summers. Then she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Right now she had a live-in boyfriend, Robert, who was an intern at a local hospital.
‘Hi, honey.’
‘Hi, Dad.’ But it wasn’t the usual happy ‘Hi, Dad.’ This one was serious. ‘You busy?’
‘You all right?’
‘Dad, Mom has third-stage breast cancer.’ Now I could tell she’d been crying.
Norman Mailer once wrote that the most powerful word in the world was cancer. He knew what he was talking about. I had a dozen thoughts and no thoughts at all. I had to say something, but what? ‘When did you find out?’
‘About twenty minutes ago. Andy called me from the hospital. She’s there having more tests. Since he’s a doctor there he can get her through pretty fast. He said she should be home in two hours.’
Dr Andy Connelly was the man Erin had left me for. I was long past blaming her; the fact that I was gone sometimes for three weeks running hadn’t exactly been conducive to a good marriage. She warned me about it the last four or five years we were together. Her resentment, her anger, her loneliness. She was raising Sarah alone, she said. She was tired of going to movies and concerts and dinners alone, she said. She wanted me back, she said. And then one day she didn’t. She came into our bedroom as I was packing and she told me a
bout Andy and how she’d fallen in love with him and how she was sorry and how I could see Sarah just about whenever I wanted. And how she had instructed her lawyer to ask for very little. Then she said she was sorry again and left the room. She wasn’t waiting for me by the front door as usual with a hug and kiss. I have virtually no memory of the next thirty-six hours. Maybe an alien swooped down and picked me up and took me to the planet Evunom. Shock. I couldn’t form coherent thoughts.
I was having the same trouble now.
‘Andy said he’d like you to call her. She wants to talk to you.’
I didn’t say it out loud but I thought how awkward he must have felt passing along that message. I’d met him three or four times over the years. We’d been painfully cordial with each other but when it came to real conversation we both floundered. I’d liked him more than I’d intended to. Sarah had convinced me over the years that he was a great stepfather and had made her mother very, very happy. Something I’d been too selfish to do, even though I’d always known that I’d never love anyone else the way I loved Erin.
‘You’ll have to give me her number, honey.’
‘I’ve got it here. You ready?’
I wrote it down. ‘Tell Robert I want him to take you out for a very good dinner tonight and get you drunk.’
Her laughter was frail but real. ‘He’s second shift at the hospital. That means if he does take me out it’ll have to be after ten o’clock. The new head doc has it in for interns. He hasn’t given Robert the day shift in three months. Only his pets get them.’ Then: ‘I’m scared, Dad. Robert’s still here so he walked me through everything as well as he could without seeing a specific diagnosis. He told me how staging people can be deceptive. How it’s not always as bad as it sounds.’
‘You don’t believe him?’
‘He loves me, Dad. He loves Mom, too. He wants to make us feel better. I just hope he’s not keeping anything back.’ Then: ‘Oh, there’s somebody at the door. Can I call you a little bit later? I know none of us go to Mass anymore but say some prayers for Mom, will you?’
‘I sure will, honey.’ invasive non-invasive ductal carcinoma lobular phyllodes tumor angiosarcoma
These were just a few of the words I encountered over the next hour as I battled my way through at least twenty different websites dealing with breast cancer. An alien language, to be sure. One would give me a modicum of hope, the next would dash it. They were all dealing with the same facts, or so it seemed to my ignorant eye, so it was the writing that made the difference. I opted for the more reassuring assessments, though none were really all that hopeful anyway.
It was close to noon. I managed to get out of the building without anybody seeing me. I found a tavern six blocks away that offered the balm of beer and microwave pizza. You couldn’t go wrong with that combination.
Kathy and Lucy were looking at a computer screen together when I walked past the conference room. Kathy glanced up and said, ‘Dev, I’ve got some news for you.’
I walked in and helped myself to a cup of coffee while they finished up looking at some new demographic breakdowns on Ward’s base. Apparently they were still worried that more than six percent of union voters would end up in Burkhart’s column even though Burkhart was actively anti-union. The American tradition — voting against your own interests.
I sat at the conference table trying not to think about Erin. Work was my only hope. Work would keep me sane.
They finished in a few minutes.
Kathy got some coffee for herself and sat across the table from me. Lucy closed up the laptop and took it with her after waving goodbye to us.
‘The Porsche was registered to a Pellucidar Corporation. I typed in the name on Google and got nothing. Then I tried Bing. No luck there, either. I found it ten minutes later. All that was listed was the name and the explanation that Pellucidar was in the business of selling audio equipment for stage shows and outdoor concerts. None of the names of the company’s officers was familiar to me.’
‘It could be a dummy corporation. You know, a cover for somebody who doesn’t want to be known.’
‘Burkhart?’
‘Maybe. I’ll call my home office. We’ve got an intern there from Northwestern who’s really good at penetrating all these corporate names. Second year in law school and she’s already a wizard.’
‘Both CBS and NBC will be at the news conference. Their reporters have been spotted outside headquarters here.’
‘Figures.’
‘And our favorite not-news network is already asking, “What did Congressman Ward know and when did he know it?”’
‘That doesn’t make any sense. But it doesn’t have to. All that matters is the implication. He’s somehow involved in the murder according to them.’
She consulted her delicate wristwatch on her delicate wrist. ‘I need to go help Lucy set everything up for the press conference. You’ve got my cell number if you need me.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’
‘If David should happen to call in-’
‘I’ll see that you get to talk to him.’
I called my Chicago office. Howard Steinberg who runs the office when I’m gone got me up to date on all the good and bad news. The two main parties were about evenly balanced. No big surprises, either. We were still ahead where we planned to be ahead and still behind where we’d been from the start. But it was a tricky cycle this time and not even the best of polls could track the vagaries of public opinion very well.
I was forcing my way through some new internals, still deliberately not thinking about Erin, when my office phone buzzed. The receptionist downstairs said, ‘There’s a young woman calling for you, Mr Conrad. All she said was that her name is Jenny.’
‘Oh, right. Put her through, please.’
When Jenny came on she said, ‘Have you had lunch yet?’
‘Actually, I have had lunch. Why?’
‘I just wanted to talk to you. Could you stand just watching me eat?’
‘As long as you use the right fork for the salad.’
‘I know you think that’s funny but my father is big on that stuff.’
‘Not your mom?’
‘She just does what my dad tells her. Makes life easier for her, I guess. The only time they disagree is about me. My dad would already have me on death row if my mom hadn’t stopped him.’
‘Is that what you want to talk about?’
‘Now you’re making fun of me again. I want to talk to you about what we were talking about last night except then I didn’t want to talk about it.’
I smiled. ‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘The secret? Jimmy’s secret?’
‘Right. Jimmy’s secret.’
‘I guess I should break my word to him. I need to help you.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
‘So you’ll buy me lunch?’
‘I’ll buy you lunch if you can wait till one thirty. We’ve got an important press conference coming up.’
‘Yeah. Man, they’re really on Ward’s ass. I’ve been watching the telly all morning.’
Telly. British. Cute.
‘I cry every time they put Jimmy’s picture on. I can’t believe how much I miss him. I feel like I did when Roger died.’
‘Who’s Roger?’
‘My border collie. And don’t make fun of me. You live in my house, a dog’s your only chance of staying sane.’
‘I cried when my old tomcat Doc died.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘Are you shitting me? You cried about a cat when you were thirty-eight? Is that really true?’
‘Really true.’
‘Wow. Maybe you’re not so bad after all.’
‘One thirty then. Royale Hotel. The restaurant. How’s that sound?’
‘You and Jimmy would’ve gotten along. Especially after you told him you cried about a cat when you were thirty-eight.’
I actually did h
ave a cat named Doc once. That part of the story was true. I sort of fudged the age, though. Doc died when I was eight.
EIGHT
While there are no punches thrown — at least not that often — press conferences are a form of boxing matches. There is a very real quest for a knockout. Under most circumstances Jeff Ward wasn’t a household name outside his district. But with my least favorite not-news network already hinting that Ward was somehow implicated in the murder, the rest of the press, their tabloid credential intact, would be all too eager to follow suit. Maybe they would’ve been reluctant if he hadn’t had the playboy image. But sex and now the death of one of his own staffers was too much to pass up.
Both sides here were performing a script. As far back as silent films you saw a mad-dog press attacking a pompous top-hatted politician on the steps of a government building. Reporters raging in silence for the head of the man they were stoning to death with their words. The pompous politician more pompous than ever. Until the fatal question. And then, in the way of silent films, a great melodramatic seizure of some kind when the question is asked. The pol clutching his heart; staggering, then falling. His aides grabbing him. A close-up of the pol’s face as he dies. Jubilation on the faces of the reporters. All was right in America again.
TV has turned news conferences into gladiatorial contests. They’re fun but sometimes I feel sorry for even the people I hate. I wouldn’t do any better than they did.
All of us inside headquarters were tense. We stood at the front windows staring out at the press. I recognized the network reporters as well as the not-news reporter who was going to fry us for sure. Right now the camera people were shimmying and nudging into position for the best shots. The men and women vying for news stardom were checking their clothes and their makeup and their hair. The security people we hired were now in place around the narrow rostrum from which Ward would speak and take questions. The police were helping with the surging reporters. They doubtless enjoyed shoving the press around.
Everybody around me started applauding. Ward was downstairs now, talking with the staffers. He wore a very conservative blue suit, a white shirt that could blind you, and a tie more appropriate for a funeral than a press joust. On one side of him was Mrs Ruth Watkins. On the other was Sister Louise.