by Ed Gorman
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.
‘You know why I wear this little American flag pin? You know what it symbolizes to me? It symbolizes the America I grew up in. Hard work and family church and belief in the finest country God ever created. And no matter how much they try to dirty and pervert this land of ours, this pin right here is my shield. It protects me and my family from the atheists and the degenerates and the global-warmers and the gay-pushers and the liberals who mock those of us who love our country and mean to save it. And prayer in school is one of those issues where I’m using my shield – and picking up my sword – to make sure that it’s still allowed in schools everywhere. I pray to God every morning at my desk and I don’t see anything wrong with our children doing the same thing. All we’re asking is that we have the right to keep America the way it was – and the way it should still be!’
Maybe he wasn’t Reagan but he was just close enough to make a solid impression. The physical heft, the hard face, the rich voice… he was corny but effective.
I watched the entire debate. I judged Burkhart the winner by a few points. What had cost him the election were all the stories about the lawsuits at the various companies he owned. Age discrimination, sex discrimination, unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, and some video clips of him at a Chamber of Commerce meeting railing against the minimum wage. ‘This is destroying the opportunity to offer Americans what they really want – more jobs.’ Yes, at $1.25 an hour.
But all of this had failed to seriously damage Burkhart this time around. His flag pin speech was packing them in. He was still the odds-on winner of this campaign.
I walked the DVD down the hall to Kathy’s desk.
‘I’d vote for him,’ I said.
‘He’s good on the stump. And he’s not a moron. He’s just a country-club bully who picked the right year to trot out all his bullshit again.’
‘Other than that you’re nuts about him.’
‘I’m secretly in love with him.’ She pointed to a chair. I sat. She planted her nice elbows on her desk and her face in the V of her hands and said, ‘You really going to keep us in the dark?’
‘I’m going to try to.’
‘You don’t trust us.’
‘This really bother you or are you just having fun?’
She shrugged and sat back in her chair. ‘A little of both, probably. Lucy and I have been with Jeff since the beginning. It kind of hurts our feelings that you come along and keep us out of the loop.’
‘So it’s me you’re pissed at?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Anything I could do to change that?’
She put a finger to her cheek and pretended to be pondering the question. ‘How about buying me a drink and not putting the moves on me?’
EIGHTEEN
‘The first congressman I worked for was in the late nineties. I was just out of college. I wrote his speeches and did the scheduling, even though I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. I really liked him for taking a chance on me until I found out he was doing all this so he
could get me in bed. You know when you hear all these actresses complaining about how being beautiful is really a pain sometimes? Well, it really is. I’m pretty but I’m hardly beautiful. But just being pretty – and God, there are millions and millions of girls prettier than I am – even then it gets in the way. He wanted me to go back to Washington with him. Yeah, right.
‘The second congressman was straight-ahead but he had this insanely jealous wife. She called me out at this party one night. Made this big scene about how I was destroying her marriage. This was in their home. One of their teenage daughters was on the stairs listening to it all. The story got into the press. I quit. Even the tabloids picked it up. There was the photo of the congressman and me on the front page right in the checkout lane. My poor parents. My dad’s a doctor in a small town. It was humiliating for him. I kind’ve liked the congressman I’d been working for. I always felt that maybe we should have slept together after all. At least we would’ve gotten something out of it. He lost, of course. The scandal did him in. He’s still married to that hysterical bitch and I’ll never know why.
‘The third congressman was straight-ahead, too. Good, bright family man who practiced what he preached. But the other side planted a spy in our camp. He started leaking stories to the media about the congressman and I having an affair. If I was a reporter I’d have believed him, too. He looked legitimate. He was a driver and he worked with the volunteers. By the time we figured out he was a plant he’d done some damage. The media had played with some hints and the hints had started to have an effect on the voters. Fortunately, we were able to win, anyway.
‘Then Lucy called me about Jeff Ward. Everybody always thinks that I was a sorority girl or something in college. Actually, I was very shy. In high school I’d been fat and had a bad complexion. By sophomore year in college I’d sort of bloomed outwardly but inwardly I was still the same high school girl so I didn’t hang around with any of the cliques. Lucy and I had two poly sci classes together and we became friends. I thought it’d be great to work with her so I joined the Ward campaign just under three years ago.’
She was as pleasant to listen to as she was to look at. The late hour and the drinks that brought on a melancholy kind of sexuality made me feel comfortable for the first time since I’d arrived in town. I could close my eyes and imagine myself back in Chicago in similar circumstances.
‘I’m just afraid of what I’ll turn into.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Oh, one of those older women you see on the Sunday talk shows. Kind of coarsened by all the years of working on campaigns and being strident and adamant about things. There’s always something sad about that. The men get to be gray-haired and wise even if they’re morons but the women just look used up and kind of hysterical. And nobody really pays attention to them. They just have them on the shows because they need females for their demographic base.’
‘So where will you go after Ward?’
‘Not sure yet. Maybe try to find a small college somewhere and teach. I’ve got a master’s in poly sci. I could work on a doctorate while I taught.’
‘You wouldn’t miss the fun?’
She frowned. ‘Some fun. Jim gets murdered, nobody can find David, and Burkhart seems to have something on Ward. And Ward has really disappointed me. I’m thirty-four years old. I think it’s time for a husband and a family, and the kind of guys you meet on the trail aren’t exactly the right kind of material for domestic bliss. And since I’ve never been much for one-night stands, I get pretty lonely.’
I remembered her telling me not to put the moves on her. I wondered if I was that obvious. Probably. I was as lonely as she was and needful of bed. My mind was getting clouded with the one thought that banishes all other thoughts – sex.
‘You’re going to start glowing in the dark pretty soon,’ she said.
‘Pardon me?’
‘You’re starting to radiate.’ She stretched out her arm and offered me her hand. I took it. ‘Do you ever just sleep with a woman? No sex, I mean. Just sleep.’
‘I’ve tried. It’s a bitch.’
‘At least you’re honest.’
Then I realized how dumb I was. ‘But I’d be willing to try. I’m pretty tired. Maybe I’d fall asleep right way and it wouldn’t be any problem after all.’
I was a dog, tongue hanging out, begging for scraps.
‘Now I sound like a tease. I’m sorry. But you were right in the first place. It’s a bitch trying to just sleep. But I have this thing about one-night stands.’ She glanced at her watch.
The crew was starting to close the hotel restaurant. They did so with great and pointed clamor. I didn’t blame them. It was late and they wanted to go home.
Our hands parted. ‘Maybe some other night, Dev. It’s just all so crazy tonight.’
I wasn’t quite sure what had distressed her so much. Given all the campaigns she’d worked on she’d certainly run into moments like those of seeing Sylvia Fordham on TV. Most modern campaigns depend on bombast and calculated revelations. And this revelation had been pulled at the last minute. Maybe it was the hour, the two drinks we’d had, or the simple fact that she decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. So here I was near midnight, isolated again, even though a most fetching woman sat less than two feet from me.
She was out of the booth in seconds. ‘I just need some sleep, Dev. But I’ve really enjoyed our talk.’
‘Me, too.’
In my room I checked messages and e-mails. Tom Ward had written me an especially long message. He wanted to know if he should fly here and help out. He wouldn’t ask any questions on the computer in case we were being monitored. But he used a kind of code to let me know that he had guessed that something big was about to break and that Sylvia Fordham pulling her punch was only a temporary break. He surmised correctly that she’d be back. Sylvia had the vampire gene. You couldn’t kill her.
I wrote back, also in a kind of code, that I thought we could handle things here. Tom would just make things worse. He’d play father to Jeff’s prodigal son and that would only complicate things all the more.
I needed three shots of whiskey to get to sleep. Not anything I wanted to depend on. Thoughts of my daughter and ex-wife came as I felt myself slipping into the soothing darkness. We’d been happy for the first four years. Even now I could smell the baby powder and the baby food and the wonderful scent of our daughter sleeping as my wife and I stood by her bassinet. I had never loved a woman as much as I did my wife in those days. Just thinking about my daughter could make me cry. But somehow I’d smashed it all.
I wanted to be standing next to that bassinet again with my arm around my wife and my tiny daughter sleeping with sweet and utter bliss.
But the dream gods were not kind to me tonight. I didn’t remember the nightmares exactly, but in the morning I was depressed and frightened. I feared for beautiful Erin.
NINETEEN
Between the hours of eight fifteen and ten o’clock the next morning I followed Mrs Burkhart from her home. She went to a pricey restaurant, presumably for breakfast, and then drove to a mall. Since tailing her wasn’t doing me much good I was ready to just go up to her in the parking lot of the mall, but there were too many people around. I could hear the news reader now: ‘Eyewitnesses said that a political consultant from Congressman Jeff Ward’s camp accosted Teresa Burkhart in a mall parking lot this morning. Teresa Burkhart is the wife of Rusty Burkhart, Congressman Ward’s opponent in the upcoming election. Police are investigating.’
I didn’t have any trouble finding her inside. The upscale stores were on the second level, east side. She was window-shopping.
She was assessing a display of winter coats. I walked up beside her. ‘I like the belted one.’
She didn’t look at me. ‘You’re stalking me.’
This morning she was dressed as a spy in her black Burberry and cute little faux fedora. She’d changed perfumes. This one had the same power of Eros as her previous one. She was wort
h every penny he spent on her.
She twisted around. Angry. ‘What the hell do you want from me anyway?’
She said it with crowd-pleasing fury. Shoppers slowed to see what had so displeased the lady. Everybody loves a free show.
‘Why don’t we go have a cup of coffee, Mrs Burkhart? We need to have that talk.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Then I guess I’ll have to call the police. I think I mentioned before that the police’ll be interested in why you were taking photos of Jim Waters on the day he died. From a car. Without his permission.’
‘Have you ever stopped to consider the possibility that I had his permission?’
‘That’s so stupid it’s not worth answering. So what’s it going to be – coffee or the cops?’
‘I hate you.’
I began walking away. She was good. I got five stores down before she caught up with me. She’d shaken my confidence. I’d started to wonder if she was just going to let me walk away.
Neither of us spoke. We used the escalator. On the ground floor we found a restaurant open and went inside. The motif was medieval. I wondered if grog was on the menu.
I’d only had a piece of toast and coffee for breakfast so I ordered scrambled eggs and hash browns. The waitress kept glancing at Mrs Burkhart, who looked as if she was being held here against her will. When the waitress asked if there was anything she wanted, all Mrs Burkhart did was shake her head.
‘I hate you.’
‘I think the waitress heard you say that.’ I wasn’t joking. She’d said it when the waitress was only a few feet from our table, walking away.
‘I don’t care.’
‘If somebody recognizes who you are, you’ll care. Somebody’ll let the media know that you were seen having coffee with a strange man. And that you might have been having a spat, a lovers’ spat.’