by Ed Gorman
‘She’s heard good things about you. From David. He was the only one who liked the idea of bringing you down here. The rest of them were threatened.’
‘Why now? What changed her mind?’
‘I guess her two little daughters. They keep asking about their father. She’s getting scared that maybe something happened to him. You know, the way it happened to Jim Waters.’
‘Well, I suppose I can give her a call.’
‘No!’ he said. ‘No, not a call. You have to see her in person. The phone won’t cut it.’
‘What the hell are you talking about? I need to be here at ten when the news comes on. We need an angle so we can respond.’
‘This isn’t a big city. She’s maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes away. I can give you the address. Hell, you can watch the news there. She’ll appreciate the company. She’s going crazy and she doesn’t think I’m a help at all.’
‘I really resent this, Ward.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
‘You don’t blame me but you still want me to do it.’
‘I’m desperate. You bought in, too — so now we’re both desperate.’
I took down the address. Of course. And then went down to my rental. Of course. And set out in the dark rainy night. Of course.
PART THREE
SIXTEEN
Bryn Nolan wasn’t as highly lacquered as Mrs Burkhart. She didn’t need to be. She was a tall, preppy blonde with one of those freckled upper-class faces that you find in an F. Scott Fitzgerald. She wasn’t quite a beauty but her face was so urgently pretty that she drew you in without any tricks. Gatsby would have invited her to any number of his parties.
She wore a dark brown sweater and a tweed skirt and a frown. ‘This was so stupid of Jeff, Mr Conrad. I’ve already made up my mind. I’m sorry he made you make the trip.’ She was as jittery as a junkie in need of needle love.
‘So I should just go back to my car and get out of here?’ Pity has never worked well for me. But I keep trying.
‘Oh, Lord.’ She flung a welcoming arm out. ‘Please come in. At least let me pour you some coffee. David loves my coffee. Says it’s the best he’s ever had.’
She said all this to my back as I entered a small vestibule and turned left into a large living room at the suggestion of one more arm fling. The good taste assaulted me. This woman or her decorator had contrived a room that was imperious in its perfect harmony. Stone fireplace, Persian rugs, enormous couch, small sofa, love seat, and hardwood coffee table. Not necessarily all that expensive but not a single element that would upset a snob. Unlike my apartment in Chicago, there wasn’t a stray sock or shirt to be found anywhere.
The fire was as appealing as she was. I sat in a leather chair staring into the flames. My mind was so overloaded it refused to deal with any of the problems at hand. It just roamed around image to image, mostly related to other fireplaces that had figured in my life. I thought of my ex-wife and of our daughter, of a girl I’d loved in high school, and of a cabin I’d rented once that had made me feel like a pioneer — until I’d had to use the outhouse in the middle of a snowy night.
‘Here. I’m sorry it took so long.’
She was breathless; a few seconds away from hysteria. I took the saucer and cup she handed me. She went over and parked herself primly on the couch. She folded her hands as if in prayer and then loosed them like fluttering doves.
‘You need to calm down, Mrs Nolan.’
‘I know; I know. This is all my fault. All of it. If I hadn’t been so stupid…’ Her hands returned to prayer. ‘I’m thirty-six years old and I feel like a college slut or something. Really. I even went to Confession. He was one of those new priests who “understands.” I wanted the old-fashioned kind.’ She had a smile that could start wars. ‘You know, some big old monsignor who’d come over to your side and drag you out of the confessional and then start yelling at you in front of everybody else.’
‘Well, if you find a church like that, let me know. I’d like to go there.’
The joke landed about thirty seconds after I sent it.
‘Oh — right. You’re kidding. God, I’m so scattered I can’t think straight. I keep thinking David’s dead.’ Then, ‘I wish I could tell you it wasn’t exciting. It was. He made me feel alive again instead of like some dreary housewife. Jeff’s very good at that. He got me to the point where I’d come to him any time of night or day. I was ashamed of myself but I couldn’t stop. It was so high school. And then one day one of our daughters started screaming about something so I ran downstairs to see what was wrong. Jeff had sent me a kind of sexy letter and I was writing him back sort of a sexy one myself. I thought it was kind of a goof. I didn’t close my computer. And I forgot about it because Chrissie had fallen on the driveway and had a cut on her head. When David found the letter he exploded, even though I told him it didn’t mean anything.’
So Ward was telling poor Nolan that it didn’t mean anything and his wife was telling Nolan that it didn’t mean anything — apparently the only person it meant anything to was Nolan himself.
‘He’s a bender drinker,’ I said. I wasn’t in the mood to play a righteous monsignor. I wanted to find out where the hell her husband was.
‘Yes. He goes to AA meetings twice a month.’
‘So it is a definite possibility he’s trying to drink through this.’
‘Yes. But after what happened to poor Jim-’
‘Does he ever call you when he’s on one of his benders?’
‘Not usually.’
‘Does he tend to go to the same places?’
‘He says not. Sometimes he goes into Chicago. A lot of the time he’s not even sure where he went. He has to reconstruct his trips with credit card receipts.’
We fell into one of those uncomfortable silences that neither of us had the ingenuity to break. The phone rang and she leapt for it with Olympian zeal and prowess. It was on an end table. She probably could have picked up the entire table with her crazed strength.
‘The Nolan residence.’ Then: ‘Oh, God, no, listen — I don’t want to take a survey now and why the hell are you calling me at nine twenty? The cut-off’s supposed to be nine o’clock!’ She slammed the receiver down so hard I thought I heard the phone groan.
She touched long fingers to her perfect right breast. A hint of nipple made her all the more fetching. ‘Now I know how people get heart attacks. Every time the phone rings my mind just explodes. And then my heart does, too.’
She came back and sat down. Her very nice legs were set exquisitely together. ‘What were we saying?’
‘I was wondering why you wanted to call in a missing persons report now?’
‘Oh, yes. Of course. Because I’m having nightmares. I studied medieval English literature in college. Nightmares figured in a lot of the plays. They foreshadowed what was to come. We do some of that today. Look at all the paranormal shows on TV.’
‘So you’ve been having nightmares about your husband.’
‘As soon as I close my eyes they start. He’s usually trapped somewhere — buried alive — or on an elevator — or in the trunk of a car — and he’s always crying out for me to help him. He never talks about how I betrayed him. He doesn’t have to. It’s all I think about. Over and over and over. God, I wish I’d never met Jeff Ward.’
Sometimes the greatest mystery of all is the mystery of ourselves. We do something so out of character that we spend years trying to understand it and never do. Sometimes it’s the liquor and sometimes it’s simply some dark and deranged impulse. We go back and back to it as if to a great library in search of the one book that will explain it. But that book is always checked out.
‘And you know what’s so funny? I’m the jealous one in our marriage. I’m always worried some other woman will steal him away. I cringe every time I see him around Kathy Tomlin, for instance. Even when I know it’s business, when he’s sitting with a reporter talking and she’s wearing a skirt that barely covers her. I even
got jealous one day when I saw him having coffee or something with Mrs Burkhart. At least I don’t accuse him as much as I used to. My first true love cheated on me all the time. I’ve never trusted men since.’
Nothing to say to that. She was talking to herself, not me. I checked my watch. Eight minutes to go. ‘We’re in a lot of trouble. Could you at least hold off calling the police for twenty-four hours?’
‘What if he’s lying somewhere half dead?’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘That doesn’t mean it’s not true.’
‘All we can go on is past behavior.’
‘I don’t want him to die without saying he forgives me.’
Selfish, even narcissistic, but understandably human. She loved him and betrayed him and that was bad enough. But for him to pass on without there being some resolution ‘I understand, Mrs Nolan.’ I was a mere human, too, and I did understand the need for absolution, pitiful as that was.
‘Mrs Nolan. I have a first name, for God’s sake.’
‘All right, Bryn. I understand, but I still have to ask you to hold off for at least twenty-four hours.’
‘You’re all the same.’ She shook her head angrily, a quite pretty child feeling sorry for herself. ‘As loving as David is, he can be the same way. So callous when it comes to politics. Winning is everything.’
‘Is it all right if we watch TV now?’
‘What? Oh, right, Sylvia’s on. God, I hate that bitch. She’ll say anything.’
She was up again. ‘Family room,’ she said, and led us to a door with stairs that ended in a voluptuously furnished room complete with bar, gigantic plasma TV, pool table, and carpeting so thick you could lose your shoes in it.
We waited through six thirty-second commercials, two of them for Burkhart, before the local Ken and Barbie came on and sounded as urgent as possible about several of the headline stories.
Then Ken said, ‘But we begin tonight with a visit from somebody who’s frequently in the national news.’ The camera widened out to a two-shot. Sylvia wore a white silk blouse and the same dark chignon that Audrey Hepburn had worn in numerous movies. Subtle sex. Cameras had always lusted after her and tonight was no exception. But what was that in her eyes? The expression I’d expected would have been joy, trashing and thrashing us with Ward’s infidelity and kinky ways. But Sylvia’s dark eyes were furtive; she was scared. And Sylvia was never scared.
‘Sylvia Fordham is legendary in the business of politics. She is considered one of the toughest, if not the toughest, of all the political operatives in our country. She’s working for the Rusty Burkhart campaign in our district and she’s here tonight to tell us some things she says she’s learned about Mr Burkhart’s opponent, Congressman Jeff Ward.’ Ken gave her his Ken smile. ‘Would you like to make some news tonight, Sylvia?’
‘I certainly would, Chad.’
‘Something’s wrong with her,’ Bryn said.
‘Yeah. For sure.’
She licked her lips and swallowed hard before starting to speak. ‘Our campaign has learned that the state attorney general’s office might finally look into some possible discrepancies in Congressman Ward’s PAC reporting. He may not have reported everything during the last election cycle.’
‘What the hell?’ I said.
Ken blinked a couple of times. The magical coach had turned into a pumpkin and the beautiful maiden into a gnarled hag. This was the freaking big story they were breaking tonight? Some bullshit little routine accusation about PAC contributions — and in the last election cycle, for God’s sake? If they had a mean TV columnist in this town, Ken and Company were going to get worked over big time for spending all night pushing the big reveal only to see it turn into nothing more than carping.
‘I see. But I guess I need to ask if Mr Burkhart didn’t already bring this up at the start of the campaign?’
‘Yes, he did. But we think it’s worth mentioning again now that the attorney general’s office said they might look into it.’
Ken was less of a Ken than I’d thought. ‘But the election commission has already looked into this and said that there’s nothing improper in the filing. And you keep saying that the attorney general’s office might look into it.’ A quick smile. The contempt in it was blade sharp. ‘I doubt Congressman Ward’s going to lose any sleep over this tonight.’
A hint of professional sympathy stirred in my racing mind. Their plans had changed quickly. They weren’t going to mention the DVD. But Sylvia had to go on anyway. She’d once staged a car accident to get out of an interview, but there hadn’t been time for that tonight. So here she was on the tube with a story so lame even the news reader was mocking her. Knowing Sylvia, she’d want to get her hands on his scrawny neck and dispatch him on live TV. Which would have been a hell of a lot more interesting than what she’d done so far.
‘Well, I know we have a lot of viewers watching tonight to see what kind of charges you wanted to unveil. I’m sure they understand the implications of this claim and I’m sure they’ll be eager to learn more about the story as the election draws closer. Thanks very much for coming on, Miss Fordham.’
She was a trouper. She found a radiant smile for a closer and she shook his hand as if they’d just agreed on a pact to end poverty, all wars, cancer, and make prime-time TV more fun to watch.
‘This is what Jeff was so nervous about?’ Bryn asked, clicking off the picture.
‘Either Sylvia changed her mind or somebody changed it for her. Maybe Burkhart himself.’
‘But why would Burkhart stop her?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe it was as simple as deciding to hold it till closer to the election. It could have been any number of things.’ My mind was already out the door. My body followed soon after. ‘All I can ask you is to hold off calling the police until you hear from me tomorrow. Right now I need to find out what’s going on.’
As I stepped over the threshold she grabbed the back of my arm. ‘Tomorrow’s the night of the debate. If I do it then I’d be betraying David. As much as he hates Jeff, he believes in defeating Burkhart.’ She got all junkie jittery again. ‘God, why did I sleep with him?’
I left her alone with the nasty night. And that miserable question she’d be asking herself for a long time to come.
SEVENTEEN
The parking lot glistened with slick pavement. Dirty moonlight and tumbling trash, like something out of a noir sci-fi film. Both Lucy and Kathy were in David Nolan’s office when I got back. Each had a bottled wine cooler in front of her. They didn’t seem to be in danger of becoming rummies anytime soon.
‘We don’t know whether to celebrate or not,’ Kathy said.
‘We just wish we knew what was going on,’ Lucy said.
‘Well, at least we won’t have to be in at seven thirty,’ I said. ‘No reason to have a news conference.’
‘That doesn’t clear things up,’ Lucy said.
They still hadn’t been told about the DVD and I wasn’t going to be the one who broke it to them. ‘There’s beer in the fridge down the hall, Dev. That’s where Kathy found the wine coolers.’
I went and got one and came back. ‘Right now all we can do is concentrate on the debate tomorrow night.’
‘Jeff was crazy tonight. He said there was going to be this big explosion after Sylvia went on TV. But it was nothing.’ I watched Kathy’s lips. She had an interesting way of applying them to the neck of the bottle. Very neat and tidy. Almost chaste. Fascinating.
‘Well, for whatever reason, it didn’t happen.’ I twisted the cap off my beer. ‘I assume Jeff and I can get into the auditorium in the afternoon and check everything out.’
They glanced at each other, still not happy that I was keeping information from them. But they were pros and acted like it.
‘They said two o’clock to three o’clock,’ Lucy said.
‘It’s a good venue,’ Kathy said. ‘Great acoustics. Jeff has had three debates there over the years. He’s comfortable there.’
‘You have any video of Burkhart debating, Kathy?’
Two minutes later Kathy handed me a DVD marked Burkhart vs. Steinem. The date was three years ago. ‘This was from the primary when he was running for governor. Some amazing stuff in there.’
I went over to the video rig and set things in motion. I punched play. The forty-inch plasma TV bloomed. The first image told me that I was looking at a home video. Not a bad home video but a home video nonetheless.
Whoever had shot it must have come late because the first audio belonged to then-Congressman Norm Steinem and he was already in the middle of a sentence.
‘-at California. Look at the trouble they’re having with all their anti-tax legislation. The state government is paralyzed. It’s virtually impossible to raise taxes when it’s necessary. And sometimes it is necessary. We need government services and sometimes that means taxes.’
The camera panned over to Burkhart while Steinem was talking. He looked uncomfortable in a suit and tie. His toupee was cartoon red. The way he gripped the podium suggested he might crush it sometime soon. He knew how to steal a scene. As Steinem spoke Burkhart winked at his supporters, rolled his eyes once and then put a finger gun to his head at the mention of taxes and pulled the trigger. The laughter from his side of the auditorium was loud. The moderator who sat between the two podiums appeared most unhappy.
‘Mr Burkhart, I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t pull any of the stunts you did in the first debate.’
Burkhart loved it. He pointed to himself, grinned to his people and said, ‘I’m a bad boy.’ Then: ‘I apologize to you and I apologize to Mr Steinem. I just enjoy having some fun. But I can see that this isn’t the time or place for it.’
Everybody in the house was waiting for the punch line but it never came. The debate settled into sonorous titting and tatting.
It was eighteen minutes and thirty-six seconds before Burkhart let Burkhart become Burkhart, when it was his turn to respond to a question on prayer in school. Then he riffed, then he wailed, a born-again jazz man sending his lumpen messages out to true believers everywhere.