To Catch the Moon

by Dempsey, Diana

  Mac crossed his flannel-covered arms and narrowed his eyes, as if that would aid his decision. “For tonight, I was thinking of a little Italian place in Pacific Grove.”

  “It better be good,” Tran said. “Remember that one we went to in Kansas City? With the white sauce that had those chunks in it? When we did that piece on roll-over tractors.”

  “That wasn’t Kansas City,” Mac said. “It was Des Moines.”

  “It was Lincoln,” Milo said, then thought better of it. “No, you’re right, Mac, it was Des Moines. But it wasn’t the tractor piece—it was the quintuplets.” It was a muddle, these stories, one after the next, blurring into each other in an amorphous chain that carried him from year to year. Feed the beast, one of the WBS bureau chiefs said about network life, and the beast was always famished. Milo calculated that the prior year he’d slept seventy-nine nights in his own bed. Sometimes it seemed pointless even to own a bed, though he loved the brownstone in which it stood waiting for him, just off Embassy Row, only a few blocks from the house he considered home even though his family had never owned it. It was the official residence of the Greek ambassador to the United States, and while the Pappas clan had been able to lay claim for fourteen years, they’d had to give it up eventually. Just another part of Milo’s life stamped with impermanence.

  “Let’s wait it out in the truck.” Mac hoisted the camera from the tripod. “It’s too goddamn cold out here.”

  All three made for the white Ford Explorer, whose rear compartment was packed full of the bulky aluminum stowage containers loaded with broadcast gear that they hauled from site to site. They were using two vehicles: the rental Explorer plus an ENG—or electronic news gathering—truck on loan from the local WBS affiliate, which gave them live-broadcast capability. Milo claimed the Explorer’s front passenger seat—shotgun being the standard correspondent position—while Mac got in behind the wheel and Tran crammed his smaller body onto the collapsible seat. Milo cranked the all-news radio station.

  They’d settled in to wait the twenty-odd minutes until the final live shot, when the cell phone in Milo’s inside jacket pocket vibrated. He pulled it out. “Pappas.”

  “Milo?” A breathy female voice, whispery, clearly half asleep.

  He sat up straighter, his heart beginning to thump.

  “Milo?” the woman repeated.

  Instinctively he turned away from Mac toward the passenger window. “Yes?” He didn’t want to say—or to assume—Joan?

  “I saw you on TV. You’re here.”

  It had to be Joan. And she’d seen him. But she didn’t sound angry so much as out of it. How had she gotten his cell number? Apparently she was as resourceful as ever. “How are you doing?” he asked carefully.

  “I’m fine.” He heard a rustle—sheets?—and then she let out a long, soft breath. Milo remembered that breath. “You’re very good, you know,” she said. “Even better than you used to be. You’re just”—another sigh—“amazing.”

  “No ...” Automatically he began to demur.

  “Oh, yes. Amazing.”

  She said nothing more. Had she fallen asleep? He was unnerved. He gazed out the Explorer window at the gloaming sky. It seemed darker now than it had five minutes before.

  “Why don’t you come over?” she asked suddenly.

  “What?” He was shocked. “Come over?”

  “I’m at the Lodge. You know where that is?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean ...” He stopped. Your husband’s been dead twenty-four hours and you want an old boyfriend to visit you in your hotel room?

  “Are you thinking about Daniel? Oh”—and she sounded dismissive, at the same instant she read his mind—“don’t worry about Daniel. It doesn’t matter about him anymore, anyway.”

  Soft click. She’d hung up.

  *

  Alicia lingered in the corridor outside Penrose’s office while he made his phone calls. He even shut the door when he phoned the governor, as if her overhearing him would somehow be disruptive. Afterward he pulled the door open and ushered her back in. She felt like a kid being summoned into the principal’s office.

  He reclaimed the throne behind his desk. “Let’s get a few things straight here and now,” he said the instant she crossed his threshold.

  That immediately got her back up. “Like what?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t seen how you’re trying to inject yourself into this case.” His eyes were cold. “It’s unseemly, this naked ambition of yours.”

  “You’re going to sing that old tune?” She sat back down in the chair out of which she’d been hoisted twenty minutes before. “If Rocco Messina behaved the way I did, you’d be trying to think of a way to promote him. I’ve got news for you, Kip. The old-boys’ club is officially illegal.”

  He looked affronted. “This has nothing to do with gender favoritism.”

  Right. “You also seem to forget I was the one who picked up Bucky’s initial call.”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Is it also irrelevant that it was me who called Niebaum and Shikegawa to the scene?” She heard her voice get louder but couldn’t seem to rein it in. “And me who got the Sheriff’s department deployed to handle the press?” All while you were AWOL, which didn’t surprise anybody around here.

  “I don’t like that tone of voice,” he said. Then he slapped his desk and abruptly rose to his feet, causing his rolling chair to bang into the wall behind him. He leaned toward her over his desk and pointed a finger in her face. “And insubordination won’t do you a damn bit of good.”

  She met his gaze steadily, refusing to blink. Finally he backed off and reclaimed his chair. “I’m not assigning you the case,” he said, and her heart plummeted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t have sufficient experience prosecuting homicide.”

  “That’s a crock and you know it!” Damn him. She abandoned her chair to pace his office. This was exactly what she’d been afraid he would do, though it made no sense at all. It was so Kip-like! Thickheaded and counterproductive.

  And no doubt inspired by sheer malice.

  She decided to try to reason with him, though Kip Penrose was rarely moved by logic. She returned to her chair and leaned toward him. “I have done homicides,” she said. “I’ve won them. I’ve been handling serious felonies for seven years. And I have the highest conviction rate in this office.”

  “I don’t dispute that. But this is a special case.”

  “I don’t dispute that. But you and I both know that when it comes right down to it, a case is a case is a case. You do the prep work, you pay attention to the details, you get a working knowledge of the record.” She locked onto his eyes, blank as ever. “Kip, I’m the best you’ve got. I win more than anybody around here. And,” she added as inspiration struck her, “it’s a must that you win this case. Not only because of how high-profile it is, but because of your special tie to the Hudson family.”

  He stared at her, appearing to consider that. Nothing like a reference to campaign money to get Kip’s attention. Finally he nodded, his gaze skidding away. “That’s true,” he said.

  She was surprised, and pushed on. “Appointing me will make you look good. To the voters.” She let that sink in. “You put a woman, a Latina, front and center? That makes you inclusive. It makes you forward-thinking. You can use it in November.”

  “True,” he said again. He smiled, or at least his mouth did. His eyes, now back on her face, remained cold. “All right, Alicia. You’ll be involved.”

  She frowned. Something about that phrasing made her wary. For all that he wasn’t that smart, Penrose was a master of parsed language. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “You’ll work up the case.” He leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head, his eyes triumphant. “But I will argue it in court.”

  She felt like she’d been stomach-punched. “You’ll argue it in court? When’s the last time you did
that?”

  “It’s like riding a bike, Alicia.” His tone was offhand. “You don’t forget.”

  Yes, you do! she wanted to scream at him, staring at his stubborn, stupid, self-satisfied face. You get rusty, you get nervous, your mind doesn’t work as fast as it should. It’s like the first time you run after not exercising for months. But these were all things Kip Penrose didn’t know. Why? Because he was never in court. And hadn’t been since he was a prosecutor himself, years before in Massachusetts.

  What a slap in her face. She stood up again, shaking, stunned, though she realized she shouldn’t be, knowing what she did about Penrose. She walked away from his desk and stared sightlessly at the swinging pendulum of his grandfather clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Beating away the precious minutes and hours of her career. She’d be behind the scenes, doing all the work and getting none of the glory. While Kip Penrose—Kip Penrose!—used her heavy lifting to score points with the voters.

  “If you don’t like it,” he said to her back, “you’re free to go elsewhere.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

  The damnable truth was, they needed each other. They were like codependents, or spouses in a bad, inescapable marriage. She needed him because there was no other prosecutor’s job in town, and moving out of Salinas, tempting though that idea often was, would leave her family high and dry. He needed her because she was his best deputy D.A., which was why she was standing in his office at that very moment.

  And while she was sure that Penrose had his moments when he would love to get rid of her, he could never fire her and they both knew it. Ditch his star prosecutor, conviction rate 90.3 percent and Latina to boot? NOW and the Mexican Bar Association would be all over him. The press would have a field day.

  “Of course, I’ll handle the media,” he continued.

  “Another enormous surprise.” Somehow she couldn’t make herself turn and face him. Anger had gotten the better of her and she could barely speak for it. Times like these she understood how murderers could commit the crimes they did. Sometimes her own rage felt like a beast throwing its body against the bars of a cage.

  Part of her wanted to tell Penrose to go straight to hell. Work up his own case. Fall on his own face. But another, more rational part—that later she would be glad was still functioning—thought better of it.

  Penrose was a lightweight. He personified the term. What was to say that when the trial date arrived Alicia Maldonado wouldn’t be front and center? Penrose cracked under real pressure, and the pressure of this trial would be enormous. If she worked up the case, she’d be ready to step in and argue it.

  “I’m calling a press conference for tomorrow morning.” He rose. She was dismissed. “I expect you to be there, but I don’t expect to hear a peep out of you unless I ask you a direct question.”

  “Forget it. I’ve got a trial starting tomorrow morning.”

  “Get a continuance.”

  She shook her head, her heart pounding. He was so damn cavalier. “Why, Kip? Why should I?” Her voice rose. “Doesn’t this tell you something? That you’re already scared shitless you can’t answer questions about the case without me there to tell you what to say?”

  “I’m not worried about a damn thing.” His voice was harsh. He pointed his finger at her face again. “But you just be there. For support only. No other reason.”

  That comment lifted the entire enterprise from infuriating to ludicrous. She put her hands on her hips and laughed. “Kip Penrose, you picked the wrong D.A. for that assignment.”

  Chapter 4

  At nine the next morning, Kip Penrose was bending low over the sink in the D.A. office men’s room. His right hand cupped water, which he then sucked into his mouth; his left carefully held back his faux Hermes tie so its tip wouldn’t get wet accidentally in the sink.

  Damn! Why had he left his mouthwash in his desk drawer? He’d never get rid of the vomit taste this way and his press conference was due to start this very minute.

  Kip raised his head and imagined all those reporters and camera crews massed on the courthouse steps waiting for him. For him! This was only the second time in his three years as D.A. that he’d been able to justify calling a press conference. And for all he knew he could be holding press conferences every day this week. A thrill ran through him, followed by yet another wave of nausea. This was the most exposure he’d ever had. What if he screwed up? Then whoosh! All his hopes and dreams would get flushed down the toilet.

  He grimaced. At the moment he could picture that all too clearly.

  Kip backed away from the sink and grabbed from the hook on the stall the red-and-green-striped scarf he’d brought from home special for the press conference. A cheery holiday touch, plus it gave his face some much needed color. He draped it just so around his neck, then pulled on his Burberry-knockoff trench coat, bought at an outlet mall in the wine country. Apparently it had some defect, but for the life of him he couldn’t find it. As the final step in his routine, as detailed as a pilot’s preflight checklist, he smoothed the newly clipped hair at his temples and tamped down an unruly cowlick.

  His ministrations complete, Kip stood back from the mirror to take in a wider view. As always, his reflection buoyed him. Even under the harsh fluorescent lights, he thought he looked pretty damn good for a fifty-three-year-old man. He puffed with satisfaction. Not one of those reporters would guess that he’d just upchucked. And every voter at home would think he had the look of a man destined for bigger and better things.

  Privately, Kip wasn’t sure what those things were. Most often he ricocheted between wanting to be state attorney general and thinking himself better suited to state comptroller, but sometimes he got so ambitious he thought, Why not governor? In his mind rose a vision of patriotic red-white-and-blue signs with PENROSE FOR GOVERNOR! in convincing block letters, plastered on trees and billboards and rear bumpers throughout the Great State of California.

  Of course, Kip had a marriage problem. Two too many marriages, to be exact, and voters didn’t always understand that sort of thing. His third wife was shaping up pretty well, but One and Two were driving him nuts, coming to him with their hands out like he was Midas himself. They both spent money like there was no tomorrow, and neither one could hold a serious job. One was an interior decorator and the other a caterer. Those were hobbies, not jobs!

  Kip felt himself getting upset, as always happened when he thought about One and Two, but he forced himself to calm down. First things first. The press conference. He stood still and visualized a spectacular performance, reporters having so many pithy sound bites to choose from that they’d all be forced to use more than one. You can do it, he assured his reflection. Finally, when he could delay it no longer, he exited the men’s room to find Rocco Messina outside in the corridor cooling his heels.

  He didn’t like Rocco Messina. Rocco Messina wanted his job. He didn’t like anybody who wanted his job.

  Kip gave Rocco a hearty slap on the back and made his voice boisterous. “How you doing, Rocco?”

  “Fine, how are you? Ready for the circus?”

  “Ready to rock ‘n’ roll!” he crowed. That couldn’t be further from the truth, but Kip never let facts stand in the way of a good story. He headed back toward his office but saw Rocco’s face kind of pucker as he walked into the men’s room.

  Uh-oh. Must still smell in there. Well, maybe Rocco would think somebody else did it.

  Kip took long, confident strides down the corridor, as he knew a man of his position should. “Colleen,” he boomed to his secretary as he passed her desk, not stopping as if he were very, very busy, “is Alicia in my office?”

  “No,” she called, which he could plainly see a second later when he arrived there. He paused at the threshold, his purged stomach roiling. Where in the world was she?

  He would never tell her this but he would not, not, go out to that press conference without Alicia. The chance of one of those reporters aski
ng him something he couldn’t answer was extremely high. For all that she was an exceedingly annoying, full-of-herself women’s libber, she was good on her feet.

  And was she smart or what? It scared him sometimes. Good-looking, too. Thank God she was a woman, and Hispanic. Otherwise she could be a real rival. Fortunately, what with the agricultural and Italian communities, Monterey County was conservative enough that it was nearly impossible for a candidate like her. Both times she’d run for a judgeship, she’d lost. Of course, part of her problem was that she was so combative and opinionated. But now she’d never get the backing to run again, at least not for his job.

  “You finally ready?”

  It was Alicia, standing just outside his office. Thank God. “You’re late,” he informed her, making his voice stern, but she just rolled her eyes and headed for the exit, not even checking to see that he followed.

  Which forced Kip to scramble to get out in front of her. Most unseemly, he thought, his stomach clutched in yet another knot. Thank God no one who counted had seen.

  *

  Milo hadn’t covered a press conference in a long, long time. Unless it was happening at the White House, State, or Defense, a presser was a low-prestige event passed over by network news stars of his caliber.

  He sipped the low-fat latte he’d procured at Starbucks and wondered when this show would get on the road. No sign of the D.A. and it was already twenty after nine. Milo was one of several dozen reporters, TV camera crews, and print photographers massed in front of the Monterey County Courthouse, a three-story structure built of oatmeal-colored sandblasted concrete that looked like a mix of New Deal construction and neoclassical pretensions. Carved heroic heads paid tribute to the Spanish, Mexicans, and Native Americans who’d once claimed California as their own. The building took up most of a city block in downtown Salinas, downtown being distinguished by two traffic lanes in each direction. Curb lanes on both Alisal and Church Streets were jam-packed with news vans and ENG trucks, their masts high in the air.