To Catch the Moon

by Dempsey, Diana

  Ten thousand dollars, in neat bills newly extracted from Wells Fargo Bank and now conveniently tucked into a business-size envelope in her handbag. The money had come from one of her personal accounts, where Mr. Fukugawa already had wired his promised down payment of twenty-five thousand dollars. And there were several multiples of that to follow when the first shipments arrived in the port of Tokyo. This afternoon she would do her own cash handoff to lumberman Hank Cassidy, make the final arrangements, and get this operation going.

  It was really happening. Her mother couldn’t stop it, even if she knew about it. Nobody could. Joan supposed it was juvenile to derive such satisfaction from doing things Libby Hudson would disapprove of, but there it was. This was Joan’s small way of declaring independence, which she’d thought she’d done numerous times before but which somehow never seemed to take.

  Joan saw from a white-on-green highway sign that she was fast approaching the town of Redcrest. She had to focus so as not to miss it; sometimes these towns went past before she even knew she’d hit them. It was quickly obvious as she slowed the Jag that Redcrest was a major stop for tourists out to see the Avenue of the Giants, a thirty-mile scenic drive boasting some of the biggest, oldest redwoods in the state. Given her own intentions in Headwaters’ forests, it gave Joan the creeps.

  It was easy to spot the Burlwood Cafe at Redcrest’s main crossing; Hank Cassidy had given her directions from there.

  She headed north and took the first right onto a dirt road that led straight into the woods. About sixty yards in she found the promised clearing, a black pickup truck, and Hank Cassidy. He was leaning against the truck chewing a weed, which he tossed aside when he saw her. Joan knew lumbering was a highly dangerous profession, and she regarded its practitioners as he-men of the first order. Tall, broad-shouldered Hank Cassidy fit the bill. She was surprised to find him fairly attractive, in a jeans, cowboy hat, and work boot sort of way.

  He tipped the brim of his hat at her when she emerged from her car, an Old West gesture she rather liked, too. “Ma’am.”

  “Mr. Cassidy.” She held out her hand, which he shook, briefly. He seemed to have his features permanently arranged in a half scowl, with frown lines deeply etched into his skin. Then he cocked his head to indicate the woods behind him. “Let’s mosey on a little further back there.”

  So he wanted to be even more hidden. That showed caution, a trait she was happy to find in Hank Cassidy. Never having “moseyed” before, Joan tiptoed along the dirt, which she rapidly could tell would not be kind to her Cole Haan calfskin mules.

  When they were twenty yards or so into the woods, Cassidy turned to face her. “Thought you’d be wearin’ black.”

  She was puzzled. “You mean because I came from the city?”

  “Because your husband’s newly dead.” The scowl deepened.

  She had no idea how to respond to that.

  But Hank Cassidy spoke into her silence. “Your husband understood the lumberin’ business.” Admiration was evident in his voice. “None of this fool worryin’ about habitat or too much silt flowin’ into the river, killin’ off the chinook salmon or the steelhead trout. Not that I don’t fish the Mattole River,” he added, as if to forestall that horrifying suggestion. “But a man’s gotta make a livin’. And sensible loggin’ and sensible nature preservation can coexist side by side—that’s what I say.”

  “I quite agree, Mr. Cassidy.”

  “Let’s do our business. You got what we talked about?”

  “Yes.” She reached into her handbag, but Cassidy held up a restraining hand, his eyes looking past her at the clearing. “Wait—I hear somethin’.” Seconds passed, while Joan struggled to hear anything other than the natural sounds of the forest. “Now,” he said.

  Joan found herself quite impressed at the speed and agility with which Hank Cassidy claimed the chunky envelope and slid it into the interior pocket of his well-worn sheepskin jacket. “You’re not going to count it?” she asked.

  His eyes got even narrower. “Doin’ this kinda business, Mrs. Gaines, we best trust one another.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”

  He nodded. “That’s that, then. My men ‘n’ I’ll start this evenin’.” He began to walk away.

  “What? That’s it?”

  He stopped to look at her. Somehow she knew the phrase fool woman was lumbering across his brain.

  “I mean,” she hissed across the few yards that separated them, “you know what to do?”

  “I went over all that with your husband, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you need a way to contact me if you need to?”

  For just an instant the scowl became something like a smile, though it was less of comradeship than derision. “Ma’am, I’ll find you if I need you.” Then Hank Cassidy tipped his hat at her again and went off on his way.

  Well, apparently that was that. Joan began the return trip to her Jag, oddly reassured despite the brevity of their interaction.

  Hank Cassidy seemed to know what he was doing. She watched him drive away, the tires of his black truck kicking up dust. In his own way, he struck her as a powerful man. And as Joan Gaines well knew, powerful men could handle their own business.

  *

  Kip Penrose sat at his desk, his manicurist at his side for his regular Friday 3 PM appointment, when his intercom sounded. He pulled back his right hand, whose nails the tiny Korean woman had been buffing, to press the intercom’s little red button. “What is it, Colleen?”

  “Mr. Penrose,” she said, sounding unusually tentative, “people are telling me there’s a press conference about to start on the courthouse steps.”

  She sounded perplexed, and so, he had to admit, was he. “A press conference? Called by whom?”

  “That’s the strange thing, sir.” She paused. “It sounds like by Alicia Maldonado.”

  “How could she be calling a press conference?” he boomed. “She doesn’t even work here anymore!”

  A few beats of silence. “It is her, sir,” Colleen then came back on to say. “It’s been confirmed.”

  Kip fell back against the hard spine of his desk chair. Alicia Maldonado called a press conference? He didn’t like the sound of that, not one bit.

  His manicurist cocked her chin at his right hand. “Start again?” He barely understood a word she said, but she charged only eight dollars a visit and came to his office. You couldn’t beat that.

  “Not yet,” he told her. Why in the world was Alicia Maldonado staging a press conference right under his nose? Possibilities sprang to mind, all of them highly disconcerting. Then he had an idea.

  He pressed his intercom button. “Colleen, is Alicia actually on the courthouse steps?” Because if she was, he could throw a wrench into this whole thing. She had no right to be actually on the county property, using it as if she were a government employee. She wasn’t anymore. He’d seen to that.

  “No, sir,” Colleen said. “Actually she’s on the sidewalk. Quite a group of media she’s drawn, too, sir.”

  Kip frowned. The sidewalk was public property. In other words, fair game. “Any sheriff’s deputies out there?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m told a few are keeping an eye on things.”

  Damn! Maldonado wasn’t doing anything actually wrong, so he couldn’t just stop her press conference from happening. So what was he going to do?

  Terrifying ideas crashed through his brain. Had she figured out the truth behind Owens’ felony conviction? Was that what she had assembled the media to announce? Kip had known that was a risk, but it was one he’d been forced to take to keep Joan Gaines happy.

  Kip slammed his hand down on his desk. Damn that Alicia Maldonado! She was too smart for her own good.

  His manicurist’s voice piped up. “Start again? Start again?”

  “No! That’s it for today.” He’d just have to live with five buffed nails and five unbuffed. That was the least of his troubles. He pulled a ten out of his wallet, dema
nded a dollar back, and sent her on her way.

  After she was gone, he began pacing his office. How was he going to find out what Maldonado was saying before it hit the news? He didn’t want to stand out there and listen, like some fool who had no idea what was going on. It was highly upsetting how close to the truth that was.

  Maybe the best thing to do was go home. He could slip out through the back door, drive home, and watch the news. Then he’d hear what Alicia Maldonado had said and how the reporters assessed it. After that he could craft his own response.

  Kip stopped pacing, suddenly calmer. He’d always been good at putting a positive spin on events. Really, when it came down to it, that was how he’d gotten as far as he had. And who was he up against? A woman. A Hispanic woman. Lost two elections she should’ve won. Token all the way. He’d gotten the better of her once, and he could do it again.

  Kip ran to his desk, pressed the button on his intercom, and tried to sound casual. “Colleen, I have a late-afternoon dental appointment. Please send all my calls to voice mail. I’ll see you Monday.”

  Somehow he had a feeling she didn’t believe him, but he couldn’t worry about that. He grabbed his trench coat and briefcase, turned off his lights, and left, giving Colleen a businesslike nod.

  Kip kept up a fast pace. The real challenge was not to get caught by a reporter between the D.A.’s office and his Mercedes in the lot across Alisal Street. He’d already decided that his best bet was to use the walkway from the west to the north wing, then exit onto Church Street. From there he could hightail it to the lot and hope to high heaven that no reporter noticed him, though he did have to get dangerously close to them at one point.

  Out the D.A. office door. Across the red tile. Upstairs and through a few corridors to the walkway. Through the walkway. Downstairs, and to an exit.

  Ah, fresh air. Kip crossed Church Street, his pace never flagging. He felt dampness in his armpits and under his suit and trench coat. By now his dress shirt was clinging to his back. Thank God it wasn’t too far to the lot. The last danger spot was crossing Alisal. He arrived at the corner of Church and Alisal and glanced to his right. What he saw fifty yards away, right in front of the courthouse as Colleen had described, made his heart thump even more than his fast-paced escape: Alicia Maldonado in front of a pretty big crowd of reporters. She seemed to have their full attention. That was both good and bad.

  Kip was forced to wait for the light to change. The flow of cars was too heavy for him to dash across the street, plus he might catch somebody’s eye if he tried. As he waited he heard Alicia Maldonado’s words wafting his way, as if carried by the wind.

  His heart plummeted through his rib cage like a bowling ball through thin air. It was as bad as he had feared.

  “—incontrovertible proof that D.A. Kip Penrose knowingly withheld information about a felony conviction that he himself won years ago in Massachusetts. This is a clear attempt on the part of the district attorney to thwart the course of justice, and to derail me, one of his own deputies, from its pursuit.”

  Finally the light in Kip’s direction turned green. He leaped into the crosswalk, made it across Alisal quickly, and stepped onto the opposite curb. At that moment something, something perverse, made him glance behind him, and what a mistake that was. Because wouldn’t you know it? He caught Alicia Maldonado’s eye. She raised her eyebrows, clearly amazed to see him. Then damn happy. She pointed in his direction, and all of a sudden the reporters were turning their heads and staring at him, too.

  One of them, Jerry Rosenblum from the WBS station, raised his hand in the air. “Hey!” he called. “Mr. District Attorney! Please wait up!”

  But Kip had no intention of waiting up. He pointed at his watch, contorted his face into an expression of Sorry, too busy to talk now! and made for his Mercedes.

  Oh, if only his Mercedes were close. Or if only life were simple. For some of the reporters were running, and some were already across Alisal—why did the light change for them right on cue?—then some of them were across Church, and before he knew it they were surrounding him, shouting questions at his face, their cameras shooting videotape of his fleeing form, as if he were a fugitive on the run.

  “Why did you tell Deputy D.A. Maldonado to plea-bargain the Owens case when you knew Theodore Owens had a felony conviction?”

  “Did you set Deputy D.A. Maldonado up for a firing she didn’t deserve?”

  “Do you have a bias against women prosecutors in your office?”

  “How will you explain firing Ms. Maldonado to the Mexican-American Bar Association?”

  He had answers to none of those questions. He simply unlocked his Mercedes, got in, and drove away, knowing that he had handed Alicia Maldonado one of her biggest victories ever.

  *

  Milo stood six feet in front of Mac’s camera in Old Town Pasadena, ready to go live. A lavalier microphone was attached to his lapel, Southern California’s midafternoon sun baked his shoulders, and his earpiece fed him the audio to the WBS Evening News, emanating that very moment from the network’s Manhattan studios. Tran stood a foot behind Mac, shoulder strap holding up the audio box that rode on his hip, his eyes never straying from the little knobs and dials that adjusted his correspondent’s sound quality.

  A small crowd of gawkers eyed the proceedings, which were taking place in a town square where earlier that day California Governor Brandon Steele had held a press conference. As usual Milo enjoyed the onlookers’ attention, though he couldn’t shake the unease he’d felt ever since that morning’s run-in with Joan at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.

  In his earpiece he heard the director from the control booth back in Manhattan. “Forty-five seconds back.” The newscast was more than halfway through its first two-minute commercial break. Milo would lead the “B” segment with his live package on Governor Steele’s new antiterrorism program, which sought massive federal reimbursement. It was a big story, partly because California was an important state with lots of electoral votes and partly because Steele was positioning himself as the governor most willing to challenge the president on this issue.

  Milo smiled to himself, guessing that Steele’s campaign strategist, Ms. Molly Bracewell, was pushing her candidate in this direction. She was one woman who would relish facing down the current resident of the Oval Office if she thought it would gain her man any ground with the voters.

  But Molly Bracewell made Milo think of Joan, and thinking of Joan made his smile fade.

  She would seek revenge on him, he knew. For not only had he dumped her, he had committed the even greater sin of replacing her with a woman Joan regarded as beneath contempt. But what would she do? What could she do? Bracewell’s words raced across his brain, leaving dread in their wake. She was a total wild card. We were constantly worried she’d derail Daniel somehow.

  And maybe she had, in the worst way possible. For a time Joan had loved Daniel; then she had stopped; then he had died. Where did that leave Milo? He didn’t think Joan would try to kill him, but that morning her eyes had held a vow that she would hurt him if she could.

  “Fifteen seconds back,” came in his ear.

  Focus. Milo nodded, raised his chin, and stared into the lens. His heartbeat accelerated, as it always did before going live. It wasn’t nervousness so much as high alertness, the same adrenaline rush that fueled an athlete in the seconds before a competition, or an actor about to step onto a stage.

  He was ready.

  That is, until he saw Robert O’Malley stride into his field of vision and halt a few steps behind and to the right of Mac and Tran. Though Milo never looked away from the lens, out of the corner of his eye he could see O’Malley cross his arms over his chest. He could feel the heat of O’Malley’s stare. O’Malley was in California. And he was going to watch the live shot from that challenging, in-your-face position.

  Milo heard Jack Evans’s voice in his earpiece. “Today in California, Governor Brandon Steele—” In seconds, Milo would be on. T
hrough the thunder in his ears he listened for his cue, though part of his frazzled brain asked questions he couldn’t begin to answer. What in hell is O’Malley doing here? What does he want?

  For it had to be enormous to draw O’Malley across the country. O’Malley didn’t travel. He stayed put in New York, like a king in his realm, the better to protect his territory and massage the network relationships that kept him on his throne.

  But Milo had to push all thoughts of O’Malley aside, for soon he would be live and would not give that bastard the satisfaction of seeing him stumble. He focused on Evans’ voice, now intro’ing Milo’s segment. “—Newsline correspondent Milo Pappas joins us live from Pasadena with this report. Milo?”

  He made his own delivery strong and sure. “Jack, Governor Brandon Steele tossed down a gauntlet today, one his campaign hopes the president soon will pick up.”

  In his earpiece Milo heard his package roll. He forced himself to practice his tag. He did not acknowledge O’Malley in any way. Seventy seconds crawled past. Milo waited for his own recorded voice to deliver his cue.

  At which point he spoke. “Governor Steele has a tough campaign year ahead of him. He enjoys the advantage of incumbency, but along with that benefit comes the burden of a record his many challengers can attack. Milo Pappas, WBS News, Pasadena, California.”

  For a few beats he didn’t move. He heard Jack Evans thank him, which he acknowledged with a nod. Then he heard the director again in his ear. “Thanks, Milo. Great job. See you next time.”

  Again Milo nodded, unable to find words to respond to that good-bye. He pulled out his earpiece and removed the mike from his lapel, handing both to Tran. Neither Mac nor Tran would meet his eyes. There was nothing for it now but to face O’Malley.