by Lee Child
Beth was confused and scared, but still, it was good to see her daughter get better, week after week. And as promised, a weekly check made out to her arrived, and she caught up on all her bills and even managed to start a savings account, a first. But truth be told, she always felt a bit self-conscious depositing the checks, like she was doing something bad. Yet Janice was slowly improving, and Janice didn’t say anything more about the senator’s son, so Beth let everything be and kept hoping for the future.
And so it would have remained, if it weren’t for the night of the Iowa caucuses.
IT HAD BEEN a long day, first at the rehab center in the morning and then at the hair salon in the afternoon. Beth had accidentally double-booked two of her clients, so she had to work later than expected. Dinner was a quick takeout from McDonald’s and after she got home, she went through the mail—another stipend check and an electricity bill from PSNH—then washed up and went straight into her bedroom.
There she switched on the TV, and instead of her usual Law & Order, there was a special report about the Iowa caucuses being held that night. In the dark bedroom, covers pulled up around her neck, she watched the panel for the news discuss the Iowa results, and something chilled her feet when she learned that the senator from Georgia had squeaked out a victory. He was now the front-runner, but as some of the commentators stated, he was still on shaky ground. A win in three weeks in New Hampshire could make him unstoppable.
The view of the camera switched to the senator making his victory speech at an auditorium in Iowa. His face was happy and lit up as he stood in front of a large blue curtain and waved to the cheering crowd, the supporters holding signs high. And there was the senator’s man Henry Wolfe standing to one side, applauding hard, smiling as well, sometimes ducking his head to say something to somebody on the stage.
She picked up the remote to change the channel, and her hand froze. Just like that. A young man was there as well, cheering and laughing and looking very, very happy indeed.
The senator’s son.
In Iowa. In public. On the stage!
He didn’t seem to have a care or worry in the world, looked fine indeed as he applauded and cheered his winning father—
Beth stumbled out of bed, raced to the bathroom, and made it to the toilet before vomiting up her small fries and Quarter Pounder with Cheese. She washed her face with cold water, wiped it down with a towel, refused to look at herself in the mirror, and went back out to the bedroom.
The senator was speaking, but Beth muted the television, stared at the screen. His son Clay… out. Free. Not punished at all.
While her daughter, Janice, was still in rehab, still trying to form words and sentences, still refusing to use her computer.
Beth went to her bureau, roughly pulled out the top drawer, went through a few things, and came back out with Henry Wolfe’s business card with the handwritten phone number on the reverse. Hands shaking, she sat cross-legged on her bed and dialed the number.
It started ringing. And kept ringing. With the phone up to her ear, she watched the television, and it was like being trapped in one of those horror movies where you saw something bad happening and couldn’t do anything to save yourself, for what she saw was…
Henry Wolfe onstage, listening to his boss speak, and then pausing. Reaching inside his coat pocket. Pulling out his phone or minicomputer or whatever they called it.
From little New Hampshire to busy Iowa, she was calling him, was calling him to find out what in hell the senator’s son was doing up there onstage. What about the promise, the pledge, that justice would be served?
She stared at the television, willing herself not to blink, for she didn’t want to miss a thing.
Henry Wolfe stared down at his handheld device. Frowned. Pressed a button, returned it to his coat.
And her call went to voice mail.
Later on during the night, she called the number six more times, and six times, it went straight to voice mail.
AFTER A RESTLESS night, she woke with her blankets and sheets wrapped around her, moist from her night sweats, her phone ringing and ringing and ringing. She reached across to the nightstand, almost knocked the phone off the stand, and then got it and murmured a sleepy hello.
The voice belonged to Henry Wolfe, who started out sharply: “Mrs. Mooney, I don’t have much time, so don’t waste it, all right?”
“What?” she asked.
He said brusquely, “I know you called me seven times last night, and I have a good idea what you’re calling about. And I’m telling you don’t waste your time. You have a signed nondisclosure agreement with a very attractive compensation package and a very unattractive clause that will open you up to financial and legal ruin if you say one word about the senator and his son.”
She sat up in bed. “But he’s free! That bastard Clay, I saw him last night! The one who hurt my daughter! You promised me that he’d be sent away!”
Henry said, “And he was sent away.”
“For three weeks? Is that all?”
“His doctors judged that he had recovered well, and—”
“Doctors you paid for, I’m sure!”
Henry said, “This conversation isn’t productive, Mrs. Mooney, so I think I’ll—”
“Is that what you people call justice? Throwing some money around, making promises, and walking away? You promised me justice for my girl!”
By then, she was talking to herself.
THE NEXT DAY she met with Floyd Tucker, an overweight and fussy lawyer who had helped her sort through the paperwork when she had divorced Joe. He sighed a lot as they sat in his tiny, book-lined office. He flipped through the pages of the agreement she had signed for the senator, sighed some more, and finally looked up. “Beth, you shouldn’t have signed this without running it by me first.”
“I didn’t have the time,” she said.
“This agreement”—he held up the papers—“there’s a good compensation package, no doubt about it, but the restrictions… Hell, Beth, if you even hint at breathing what’s gone on with the senator’s son and your daughter, you open yourself up to lawsuits, financial seizures, and penalties totaling tens of millions of dollars. Do you understand that?”
“I do now,” she said, staring at the polished desk. “But I didn’t have the time.”
“Beth, you should have called me,” he said.
She reached over, plucked the documents from his hand.
“I didn’t have the time,” she whispered.
A DAY LATER, she was at her town’s small library. Past the rows of books and the magazine racks, there were three computers, set up in a row. She sat down and stared at the screen, which showed a picture of the library and said that this picture and the words on it were something called a home page. She put her hands over the keyboard and then pulled them away, as if she were afraid she would make something blow up if she pushed the wrong key.
Beth leaned back in the wooden chair. What to do? She felt queasy, empty, nervous, like the first time she had approached a paying customer with a pair of sharp scissors in her hands.
“Mrs. Mooney?” a young girl’s voice said. She turned in her seat, saw Holly Temple, a sweet girl whose hair Beth cut and styled. She said, “Do you need any help?”
Beth said, “I’m afraid I don’t know how to use this, Holly. I’m looking for some information, and I don’t know how to begin.”
Holly pulled over a chair and sat down next to her. “Well, it’s pretty easy. I’m surprised that Janice couldn’t help you.”
Her voice caught. “Me too.”
SHE WAS DRIVING to the rehab center to visit Janice, who had had what the doctors and nurses delicately called a setback. Physically she was improving day by day; emotionally, she was withdrawing, becoming more silent, less responsive. Beth found that she had to drive with only one hand, as she had to use the other to keep wiping her eyes with a wad of tissue.
At a stoplight, scores of supporters for the senator were ga
thered at the intersection, holding blue-and-white campaign signs on wooden sticks that they raised as they chanted. They waved at cars going by, gave thumbs-up to passing cars that honked in support. Two young men were staring right at her as they chanted. The light changed to green and she drove by, and she couldn’t help herself—she gave them the middle finger.
THAT NIGHT, FOR hour after hour, she dialed and redialed Henry Wolfe’s number. Eventually, at two a.m., he answered, and she got right to the point.
“Mr. Wolfe, next Tuesday is the New Hampshire primary. The day after tomorrow, I plan to drive to Concord and visit the offices of the Associated Press. There, I’m going to show them the documents that I signed and tell them what the senator’s son did to my little girl.”
Voice sharp, he said, “Do that, you silly bitch, and you’ll be destroyed. Ruined. Wiped out.”
“And come next Tuesday, so will your candidate. I may be silly, but I’m not stupid. I know if he wins the primary with a good margin, he’ll be your party’s nominee. And after that, he’ll be the favorite to be president. So destroying him in exchange for losing my shop and my double-wide and the one thousand two hundred dollars I have in my savings account… that sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.”
She could hear him breathing over the phone line. “What do you want?”
Beth said, “The first time we met, you said the senator’s life was scheduled in fifteen-minute chunks of time, and that your job was to make sure that time went smoothly. So here’s the deal. Sometime over the next two days, I want five minutes with him. And with you. Alone.”
Henry said, “Impossible.”
“Then make it possible,” she said curtly. “After all, you’re paid to solve problems.”
This time, she hung up on him.
TWO HOURS LATER, her phone rang. She picked it up and a tired voice said, “A deal. The Center of New Hampshire hotel. Two this afternoon. Room six ten.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Look, you need to know that—”
Taking more pleasure in it this time, she hung up on him again. And went back to sleep.
LATER THAT DAY, Beth drove to Manchester—the state’s largest city—and instead of going into the pricey parking garage, she found a free spot about four blocks away. She trudged along the snowy sidewalk and walked into the hotel, past guests and people streaming in and out. In one corner of the lobby, there were bright lights from a television news crew filming an interview with somebody who must be famous.
She took the elevator to the sixth floor, got off, and within a minute, she found room 610. A quick knock on the door and it opened up within seconds, a frowning and worn-looking Henry Wolfe on the other side. He was dressed as well as ever, but his eyes were sunken and red-rimmed. Beth had a brief flash of sympathy for him before remembering all that had gone before, and then she didn’t feel sympathetic at all.
He started to speak and she brushed by him and into the room. Wow, she thought. This wasn’t a room. It was a palace, bigger than the interior of her double-wide trailer. Couches, chairs, big-screen television, kitchen, bar, and doors that led into other rooms. Flowers and baskets of fruit and snack trays and piles of newspapers.
She turned to Henry. “Is this what they mean by a suite?”
“Yes,” he said. “Look, Mrs. Mooney, before the senator comes in, I really need to know that—”
“A suite,” Beth said, shaking her head in awe. “I’ve heard of hotel suites, but to think I’d ever actually be inside of one, well, I never figured.”
“I’m sure,” Henry snapped. “Mrs. Mooney, we don’t have much time before the meeting and I must insist—”
She made a point of looking around again. “All of those nice senior citizens, the retirees who send your senator a dollar bill or a five-dollar bill or whatever they can scrape together to help elect him president, do you think they know that their money is paying for this suite? And all those who donated time and money because they believed in the senator’s idea of justice, what do you think they’d say if they knew what his son did to my daughter?”
“Mrs. Mooney—” he began again, and then another door within the suite opened up, and the senator walked in, tall, smiling, wearing a fine gray suit and a cheerful look. The room he was emerging from, she saw, was filled with well-dressed men and women, most with cell phones against their ears or in their hands, and then the door was shut behind him.
The senator strode over, and Beth felt her heart flip for a moment. It was one thing to see him on the cover of a magazine or a newspaper, or on the nightly news, but here he was, right in front of her. My God, she thought. What am I doing? This man coming at her could very well be the next president of the United States, the most powerful and famous man on the planet. And she was a single mom and a hairdresser. For a moment she felt like turning around and running out the door.
Then she remembered Janice. And she calmed down.
“Mrs. Mooney,” the senator said, holding out a tanned hand with a large, fancy watch around his wrist. “So glad to meet you. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Me too,” she said, giving his hand a quick shake. “And, Senator, I know you’re very, very busy. In fact, I can’t imagine how busy you are, so I will make this quick.”
The senator looked to Henry, who looked to her and said, “We appreciate that, Mrs. Mooney.”
Beth took a breath. “So here we go. I’m sure you know your son’s actions, what happened to my daughter, and the agreement that was reached between me and Mr. Wolfe.”
The senator said, “If there’s something that needs to be adjusted in the agreement, I’m sure that—”
“Senator,” Beth said forcefully, “I don’t want an adjustment. I don’t want an agreement. In fact, you can stop all the payments. What I want is justice for my little girl.”
The senator’s eyes narrowed and darkened. Now she could see the toughness that was inside this man who wanted to be president.
“Do go on,” he said flatly.
She said, “You can stop the payments. Stop everything. But I intend to go public with what your son did to my daughter today, this afternoon, unless my one demand is met.”
Both men waited, neither one saying a word. So she went on.
“By the end of the day today, I want you to announce the firing of Henry Wolfe,” she said. “And I want your pledge that he will never be in your employ ever again, either directly or indirectly.”
The senator didn’t make a sound, but Beth heard a grunt from Henry, like he had just been punched in the gut. She went on. “That is it. Nonnegotiable.”
“Why?” the senator asked. “Why should I fire Henry?”
“To keep me from going to the newspapers,” she said. “And because he promised justice for my girl. And she still doesn’t have it.”
She could sense the tension in the air, something disturbing, as she noted both men looking at each other, inquiring, appraising, gauging what was going on. The senator checked his watch. “Well, our time is up, Mrs. Mooney, and—”
Henry spoke desperately. “Tom, please—”
“Henry,” the senator said calmly, touching his upper arm. “We have a lot of things to talk about, don’t we?”
Henry continued, “For God’s sake, Tom, the primary is in just a few days and—”
The two of them went through another door, and Beth was left alone. She looked around the huge, empty suite, went to a fruit basket, picked up two oranges, and left.
THE NIGHT OF the New Hampshire primary, she rented a DVD—Calendar Girls—and watched the movie until she fell asleep on the couch. She had no idea who had won and didn’t rightly care.
TWO MONTHS LATER, Beth was in her hair salon checking the morning receipts when the door opened and Henry Wolfe walked in. He wasn’t dressed fancy, and his face was pale and had stubble on it. When she looked in his eyes, she was glad there was a counter between them.
“Lookin
g for a trim?” she asked cheerfully.
“You… I…”
“Or a shave?” she added.
He stopped in front of her and she caught his scent. It was of unwashed clothes and stale smoke and despair. “You… do you know what you’ve done?”
“I don’t know,” she said, flipping the page on her appointment book. “But I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“The senator… he barely won the New Hampshire primary. There was a shit storm of bad publicity when he announced my firing, talk of a campaign in crisis, a senator who couldn’t choose the right staff, of chaos in his inner circle. And then he lost the next primary, and since then, he’s been fighting for his political life. There’s even speculation about a brokered convention. What should have been a clear road to the White House has become a horror show. All thanks to you.”
“Gee,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he demanded. “To get back at the senator. To hurt his chances of becoming president. All because his son didn’t get punished the way you wanted. You knew that firing me, his most trusted fixer and adviser, days before the New Hampshire primary would cripple him.”
The phone rang, but she ignored it. The door opened and her newest employee walked in, nodded to Beth, and then got a broom and started sweeping near one of the chairs.
Beth said, “You just don’t get it, do you?”
He gave a sharp laugh, and in a mocking tone, he said, “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
She picked up a pen. “I didn’t know much about you when we first met. So after I saw the senator’s son up onstage in Iowa, and after you blew me off on the phone, I did some research. I goggled you.”
“You did what?”
“I goggled you.”
He shook his head. “Stupid woman, it’s Google. Not goggle.”