The Pinocchio Syndrome

by David Zeman

  “Why so much booze?” Kraig asked.

  “Reporters are all drunks,” she said. “With a few exceptions who are downer addicts or speed freaks. It’s related to the alcoholism of writers. We are writers, in our way.” She grimaced. “Frustrated writers.”

  She puffed at her cigarette. There was, Kraig reflected, a desperation about her far worse than his own, but so controlled, so camouflaged by her competent exterior that it was hard to see.

  “I read an article in a medical journal once,” she said, “in which the author argued that the gene for writing might be somehow involved with the gene for drinking. He wasn’t a geneticist so he couldn’t prove it, but I thought the argument had merit.” She swirled the bourbon in her glass, watching the ice cubes bump against each other. “Writing makes drinking worse.”

  “And vice versa?” Kraig asked.

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Kraig looked at her in silence, the bottle of Guinness in his hand.

  “What about you, Kraig?” she asked. “Did you ever flirt with booze?”

  “Not really. There was a time when I graduated from one martini before dinner to three. Not long before my divorce. The fights with my wife got out of control, and I quit.”

  Karen smiled. “You’re an amateur. I’ll bet you never even had a DUI.”

  Kraig smiled. “You’re right.”

  The reporter looked thoughtful. “The little scares,” she said. “Every drinker has had them. You crack up the car, you leave the stove on all night, you forget a cigarette burning in the ashtray . . . I know my way around the rough spots. I’m very careful. I never get bombed until I’m safe at home and free of responsibilities. It’s a preparation for bed, really. I get into the bath and have a few snorts. Then I go to sleep. You’d be surprised how many people have never seen me drunk. Colleagues, editors . . . They think I take a glass of chardonnay at dinner, and that’s all.” She grimaced. “What do we know about people?”

  Kraig nodded. The words struck him at an uncomfortable tangent.

  The reporter seemed to notice it.

  “The girls I told you about in Boston,” she said. “One girl seems to have been involved and to have escaped. Why, I don’t know. I visited her aunt—her parents are dead. The aunt showed me some of the girl’s memorabilia. Diaries, snapshots, things like that.”

  “Did it help?” Kraig asked.

  “Not much.” Karen dragged at her Newport, intentionally not mentioning the audiotape she had copied. She was not sure whether she should tell Kraig about it.

  “So?” he asked.

  “So, I think she’s out there somewhere. I’d like to find her. She was with the other girl, Jane Christensen, the night Jane was drugged, or whatever. This girl, Justine, might be an eyewitness to what happened.”

  Kraig was looking at her steadily. “If anything happened.”

  Karen shook her head with a resigned smile. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she asked.

  Kraig sat back in his chair. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re a reporter who is after a hot story. At the back of your mind you’re thinking of it as a Pulitzer Prize winner, a book. A scoop.” He shrugged. “I’m a federal agent trying to get a political leader’s wife home alive. That’s a different thing. A different agenda.”

  “The truth is the truth, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Kraig lifted his Guinness to his lips, but did not drink.

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” he said. “Maybe it depends on who’s looking for it. On why they care. Or who they’re trying to help.”

  Karen stubbed out her cigarette. His relativism annoyed her. She was almost tempted to play him the tape of Justine Lawrence’s youthful voice, just to get his attention. But she held back.

  Kraig was watching her. He thought about the smell of nicotine, the way it must cling to her hair. He wondered how she got it out. He wondered if she even tried.

  “Something happened back there,” she said. “The voice on Susan’s phone told her that. If it weren’t for that voice, I wouldn’t be pursuing the connection.”

  “That’s your right,” Kraig said. “It may make a great story.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Kraig.” Anger flashed in the reporter’s green eyes. Kraig thought of her Irish blood.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not myself.”

  “Anyway,” she said, lighting another Newport, “it’s more than you’ve got.” She looked at him. “Isn’t it?”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Whatdo you have?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you that.”

  She gave a soft laugh. “So be it.”

  She finished her drink and put the glass down. “I’d better go.”

  He guessed she wanted another drink, but was sick of his company. They were at cross-purposes, in more ways than one. She was an aggressive woman, hell bent on getting what she wanted. Her very energy tired him, filled him with depressive thoughts. Yet something about her was endearing.

  He got up and went to her side. He reached for the glass as though to take it for a refill. She held it up. He put the glass on the table, took both her hands and lifted her to her feet. He kissed her. He put his arms around her, feeling the slender back under her cotton blouse. She seemed much smaller and softer than he had expected.

  Her lips tasted good. The smell of tobacco mingled with something sweeter on her breath. Her hands were around his waist, holding him but not pulling him closer.

  Suddenly he was very hard under his pants. It was too late to hide it from her. His breath came short.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured, patting his shoulder. There was something tender and almost pitying in her manner. Kraig let himself be comforted by it.

  She drew his face to hers and kissed him, slipping her tongue into his mouth. That was too much for Kraig. He picked her up like a doll and took her to the bedroom. He pulled the cotton top over her head and removed the skirt. Her hair tumbled over the white skin of her shoulders. She helped him with the bra, and he saw small breasts, pale, with sweet little areolas around the nipples. He kissed them.

  She lay back to watch him pull the panties down her legs. In her nakedness she looked very young. He took off his clothes, fumbling with the belt and zipper, and lay down beside her.

  He cradled her to his chest. She rested her head against him. Her thigh grazed his hip. He kissed her again. He was wet already—even as he realized this her hand was discovering it.

  A tremor came over him, and he was inside her before he knew it, out of control and pumping madly. She wrapped her legs around him and buried her fingers in his hair. He came too soon, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  They made love three times. Each time he tried to let her go, and couldn’t do it. He kept pulling her back, holding her head against his chest, embracing her, squeezing the slim shoulders with needful hands. He couldn’t get enough of her.

  She came the second time, her orgasm sounding as a soft thoughtful gasp in her throat. The third time they both savored it. Her fingers caressed him delicately, inquiringly, and he stayed inside her a long time, stroking slow and deep until the paroxysm overtook them at the same instant.

  Kraig had not felt this satisfied in years. He drank in her messy unhappiness, the smell of the nicotine in her hair, the liquor on her lips. He was turned on by her loneliness and by a soft, innocent quality that hid behind it. For the first time he really liked her.

  They slept in each other’s arms. Kraig awoke with a hangover, though he had drunk little. He staggered to the bathroom naked and bumped into Karen as she came out wrapped in a towel.

  “Aspirin,” he said.

  “I left it out for you,” she offered with a smile.

  He took three aspirin and padded back to bed. He lay with his head on her breast. She smelled fresh and sweet now. She must have showered and washed her hair while he slept. She cradled him to her breast, running a soft finger over his throbbing temple
s.

  He indulged himself by not looking at the clock. He knew it was early. This would be a long day. He would be tired. But it had been worth it. Karen Embry was, in her way, a very beautiful woman. A man could become strongly addicted to that subtle body. He rested a hand on her thigh.

  After a while she disengaged herself and went to make coffee. He lay with his eyes closed, waiting. She returned with orange juice in little glasses and coffee on a tray.

  “Milk and Equal, right?” she asked. He nodded with a groan, his eyes still closed.

  She stirred it for him and he drank greedily, almost scalding his lips. She turned on the little bedroom TV as though by reflex, but considerately avoided turning up the volume. Susan Campbell’s face was on CNN, the same file footage Kraig had seen a hundred times in the last two weeks. The light of the screen hurt his eyes. He moved his head so that Karen’s slender back obscured it.

  When the cup was finished he lay back against the pillows. Karen was looking at him. She was smiling, but the softness of the night had left her eyes.

  “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Kraig narrowed his eyes. “With who?”

  “Susan Campbell.”

  He closed his eyes. This was no time for cross-examinations.

  “What made you think that?” he asked.

  “Everything.”

  “Last night?” he asked.

  “Last night, too. But everything.”

  He sighed. Women. Their radar was unlike anything in the arsenal of men.

  She was right. But he wasn’t going to admit it.

  “She’s a friend,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Karen lay down beside him and closed his eyes with a gentle hand, as though to shield him from unpleasant truths as well as from her own inquiry.

  He lay in silence, his hand still on her leg. Weak as he felt right now, his sex stirred at the contact with her.

  Suddenly she tensed. “Just a minute.” She had seen something on the TV and was looking for the remote. She darted off the bed, a naked Peter Pan with no shadow, and turned up the volume.

  The legend “Special Report” was on the screen over the face of Michael Campbell. An anchorperson was saying, “A family spokesman made the announcement fifteen minutes ago. Senator Campbell will give his response in a public statement at his Senate office at nine o’clock this morning. For nearly six days the public and Campbell’s political colleagues have waited for his answer to the abductors of his wife. It has been a tense vigil . . .”

  Karen was putting on her clothes. “I have to go.”

  Kraig was out of bed, his head throbbing again. “Christ,” he said, “why didn’t they call me?”

  “It must have happened just now,” Karen said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get there in time.”

  Their tenderness was gone. She spoke to him as a fellow professional. Already she was pulling the blouse over her head. Her eyes were hard, her hands were quick. Kraig had sat up, and he watched as she hurriedly combed her hair.

  “Jesus,” she said, “I look like shit.”

  Kraig smiled. She was still barefoot, the pretty calves he had caressed last night disappearing now under the skirt. Her profanity was the anthem transforming her from a human girl into a hard-as-nails reporter.

  “Wait.” He got up and embraced her. He breathed in the fragrance of her wet hair. For a brief second he felt her hands pet him, almost as they had done last night, but not quite.

  Then she was leaving.

  “Take a shower,” she called over her shoulder. “You’ll feel better. Thanks for the bed.”

  He started to say something, but didn’t bother. She was gone already.

  In the car Karen lit up a Newport and turned on the radio. The Campbell story was the big news. She realized that since the demand came in she had been on tenterhooks, wondering how Campbell would respond. In recent weeks she had come to feel that no one really knew him after all, that his personality was a mystery on which the entire political situation turned. She knew he was a brave man. Anyone who had seen the tapes of the Olympics knew that. But was he a good man? She wasn’t so sure. Her contact with Susan Campbell, convincing her beyond doubt of Susan’s basic goodness, had made her doubt that of the husband. The voice of the crank on Susan’s phone had increased her suspicions. Her trip to Boston had not attenuated them.

  As a reporter, Karen had long since given up her instinct to trust people. Believing the worst, she felt, was rarely a mistake. It was good protection.

  This morning before her shower she had watched Joe Kraig sleep. She had liked the way he made love. A passionate man, tired of controlling himself, wanting to give, wanting to trust. With him inside her she had felt less alone. That had weakened her defenses.

  She was on the point of telling him about the tape of Justine Lawrence’s slumber party. Once he heard it, he would know that the voice on Susan Campbell’s phone was a link to the past he had tried to ignore. He would also know it was the voice that had made the demand that Michael Campbell refuse the president’s nomination. He would no longer deny the truth of Karen’s arguments.

  Then the news about Campbell’s upcoming response had come on. Karen held back from Kraig, wanting to know how Campbell responded before she trusted Kraig with what she knew. It was only a hunch—perhaps an irrational fear—but she saw Kraig as part of the larger structure that included Campbell, the president, Colin Goss, and all those who lived by courting the favor of the public without telling the whole truth. Those who sought power, and wielded it by using only the truths that were useful to them.

  For the first time it occurred to Karen that if Justine Lawrence had Susan Campbell and the authorities found out about it, the result might be disastrous. For Justine, certainly. For Susan, possibly. For the country . . .

  There are moments in history, Karen knew, when those who know too much don’t live to tell what they know. When the truth is buried under the fist of power, often never to see the light of day again.

  With that thought in mind she had pulled back from Kraig, the man who had made her happy last night.

  This was not a time for trust.

  63

  —————

  Washington

  April 13

  MICHAEL CAMPBELL made his announcement in a special broadcast from his Senate office. Every network and cable news station had interrupted programming to cover his speech as a special report. People everywhere stopped what they were doing to listen on car radios, TVs, Walkman radios. The broadcast was piped through speakers in discount houses, electronics stores, and even in the common areas of shopping malls.

  Michael’s face was drawn. He had obviously lost a lot of weight. But his eyes were clear and his voice strong.

  After a brief preamble describing the abduction of his wife and the demand made by her captors, Michael described the role Susan had played in his life.

  “I first met Susan Bellinger,” he said, “when I was getting ready for my second spinal operation. I was a junior at Harvard, Susan was just starting at Wellesley. She was introduced to me by a friend of my roommate. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Today, after thirteen years of marriage, she is still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  Emotion forced him to pause.

  “I have long since given up trying to put into words what it is about Susan that I find so irresistible,” he said. “When you love someone, that person becomes part of you. You can’t step back and see her as though she is an outsider. All I know is that Susan is the sweetest, kindest person I have ever known. She is also a quirky, exotic, funny, and supremely vulnerable person. For thirteen years I’ve had no more fervent wish than to grow old with her and have children with her. She is the only life I want.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “In this country,” he said, “we have faced more terror in the last few years than any nation should be expected to endure. We have seen our hopes for ourse
lves and our children endangered. We have seen our very institutions attacked. We have seen the world we spent two hundred years creating in this nation placed under siege. Now, through my situation and Susan’s, we see our way of life held hostage once more.”

  Tears welled in Michael’s eyes. With obvious effort he fought them back.

  “I have spent the last four days asking my family, my friends, my colleagues, and above all my God what is the best thing for me to do in this situation. Obviously, this is the most difficult decision I have faced in my life, or will ever face. I would gladly sacrifice my own life to bring Susan back to her family. Certainly I would end my political career today and spend the rest of my life as a private citizen, if only I could have her back.

  “But the decision I face is not a personal one. The welfare of our nation rides on it. I cannot make the choice that is natural for me, if that choice places my country at risk. And in today’s violent, unpredictable world my country is definitely at risk. It is crucial that every American do everything in his power to safeguard the great experiment in freedom which our founding fathers launched, and which we have collectively pursued.”

  Michael paused. He swallowed. He seemed unable to overcome the catch in his throat. But he kept his eyes on the camera.

  “If we have learned one lesson from the political events of the last forty years,” he said, “that lesson is that we cannot negotiate with terrorists. Terrorism is more than capable of destroying every freedom we cherish, if we allow it to do so. Our free society is only as strong as the will of every American to defend it. Accordingly, I have made a difficult but necessary decision. I will not give in to the demand made by my wife’s abductors by withdrawing my name from consideration for vice president of the United States. If the Senate confirms my nomination I will gladly join the president in working to make sure that our nation continues to grow and prosper as a symbol of freedom and justice in this new century.”

  The broadcast went on for another three minutes, but the die had been cast. Reporters rushed to get the story into early editions. Network and cable commentators launched into discussions of Michael’s speech and its repercussions, not only for himself and Susan, but for the political future of America and its allies.