by Mike Doogan
“You can tell he’s a Republican,” the other man on the couch said. “He said ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Ms.’”
“Miss. Ms. It’s all the same to me,” Silversmith said.
“Mrs., too,” the man behind the desk said, “if the rumors are true.”
That ignited another round of laughter.
“A slur,” Silversmith said. “A canard. My seconds will call on you, sir.”
If I let these guys get any more booze on board, Kane thought, they’ll be plotting a panty raid.
“So what can you tell me about Miss or Ms. Foxx?” he asked.
“I can tell you she was a very desirable young woman,” Silversmith said, “and seemed totally immune to my not-inconsiderable charms.”
“Hard to believe,” the man behind the desk said.
“Would you mind telling me about that?” Kane asked.
Silversmith laughed.
“A politician mind talking about himself?” he said. “Not likely.”
He took another sip of martini.
“As you may have noticed,” he said, “this is a target-rich environment for a single man.”
“Don’t have to be single,” the man leaning on the windowsill said.
“Don’t interrupt,” Silversmith said. “People will think you’re drunk.”
“They’ll be right,” the man behind the desk said.
“Anyway,” Silversmith said loudly. And into the silence that followed, he said, “So I didn’t actually get around to Ms. Foxx until the beginning of this session. I asked around, was told she was unattached, bided my time, swooped in, and asked her out. And she said…no.”
The man behind the desk and the one leaning against the windowsill pounded on the desktop. They and the other men said, “Woof, woof, woof.”
“Children,” Silversmith said, shaking his head. “I’m surrounded by children. Anyway, I pursued the lass with some diligence, but she met my every sally with polite refusal.”
“So eventually he got bored and went looking elsewhere,” the minority leader said.
“’Tis true, ’tis true,” Silversmith said. “I had other fish to plow, greener pastures to fry.”
“So what did you make of the experience?” Kane asked.
“That the woman had good taste,” the other man on the couch said.
Silversmith sat straight up and looked down his nose at the man, then turned to Kane.
“As you can see,” he said, “I am a man of dashing good looks and considerable charm. And I am a powerful member of the House of Representatives, the chairman, in fact, of the ultra-important State Affairs Committee. So when she turned this package down, I assumed she was a lesbo.”
That brought a roar of laughter from his listeners.
“Lesbo?” the minority leader said. “You said ‘lesbo’ in the twenty-first century? If your constituents could only hear you now.”
“Besides,” the man behind the desk gasped between guffaws, “that—that’s what you said about that babe in the governor’s office, what’s her name, right up until the night she was caught giving Senator Bodkins a blow job in that hospitality suite.”
When the laughter had subsided, Silversmith said, “All right, I retract ‘lesbo.’ But she was gay—gay, I tell you. Or perhaps she’d already secretly hooked up. Maybe both. Who knows? I need another drink.”
Kane took his leave then. The minority leader followed him out.
“Don’t know if that does you any good,” he said. “But Silversmith cuts a pretty wide swath through here, so if Melinda Foxx turned him down flat she must have had some reason.”
“Thanks,” Kane said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He looked at his watch.
“Got to go,” he said. “Dinner plans.”
He went down the stairs, sat on a bench in the entryway, and put on his ice grippers. Then he walked down the hill to his hotel to change clothes.
Maybe Melinda Foxx was gay, he thought. Maybe she had good taste. Or maybe, just maybe, she was at twenty-four more mature than that crew. It wouldn’t be hard.
21
The future will be better tomorrow.
J. DANFORTH QUAYLE
Dylan had picked a sushi place several blocks away from Kane’s hotel. Kane thought about calling Cocoa, but the night was warm enough and the exercise would do him good. The ice had melted off most of the sidewalks, so he stuck his ice grippers in a coat pocket and followed the bellman’s directions uphill, across a couple of streets, past the Capitol and the state office building, then down the longest flight of steps he’d ever seen. The steps were metal grates set in a frame of four-by-fours that zigzagged down a steep hillside. Kane counted 109 of them before he set foot on solid ground again at the base of the hill.
The rest of his walk was fairly flat, and Kane spent it thinking again about Dylan. A close relationship with the boy, young man now, might not be possible, he decided. He’d just have to take things a step at a time and see where they went.
Seong’s was a brightly lit, nondescript rectangle on a corner. The multistory federal building loomed over it like Godzilla over a toy Toyota. The restaurant was packed. Kane was glad to see Dylan seated at a table when he entered.
“Got here early,” Dylan said as Kane hung his coat on the back of his chair and sat down. “A table can be tough to find here.”
Dylan was wearing a black T-shirt with the name of some rock band entwined in a semi-obscene drawing. He was a good-looking kid, thanks to Laurie’s genes, but seemed thin and drawn. He had a bottle of Sapporo in front of him. Since Dylan was still underage, Kane recognized the beer for what it was, a challenge. He ignored it.
“Is the food that good?” he asked. “To draw a big crowd?”
Dylan laughed.
“This is Juneau,” he said. “You don’t ask if a restaurant is good. You ask if it’s open.”
“That bad, huh?” Kane said.
“Actually, the sushi here is pretty good,” Dylan said. “Not as good as you’d find in Boston, or even Anchorage, but edible.”
Kane picked up the menu and scanned it.
“Sushi and Chinese food,” he said. “Not the most common combination.”
Dylan drank some beer.
“This isn’t all that unusual,” he said. “We’ve got a Mexican-Italian place downtown.”
Kane recognized the small talk for what it was, a mutual defense mechanism. It continued as they ordered, then Kane cut it off by asking, “How’s school?”
Dylan shrugged.
“School seems pretty far away at the moment,” he said.
“You are going back to finish, aren’t you?” Kane asked, wincing at something he heard in his own voice.
Dylan didn’t reply.
That’s right, Kane thought, drive him back into his shell. He let a couple of minutes pass in silence before asking, “How’s the job?”
“Job’s good,” Dylan said. “My politics aren’t exactly the same as my boss’s, but the work is interesting and the people are nice. When they’re not trying to stick a knife in your back, that is.”
“Literally?” Kane asked.
Dylan gave Kane a crooked grin.
“No, not literally. At least, not yet,” he said. “It’s just that the legislature is pretty top-down, and the staffers whose bosses have a lot of power think they’re special. And they’ll mess with you just to prove it.”
“That’s funny,” Kane said. “I would have thought the legislature was pretty democratic because every member has one vote.”
Dylan picked up his menu.
“You’d think that,” he said, as he read the menu, “but actual small-d democracy is pretty rare. Human beings are uncomfortable in unstructured groups. They like structures where they know their place. Especially Republicans. They can’t seem to live without a pecking order. And once a structure is established, an individual’s most important goal is maintaining his or her place in the structure. Their second most impor
tant goal is moving up in the structure, gaining more status.”
He set the menu down and smiled apologetically.
“Sorry,” he said. “I took a course in organizational dynamics last semester.”
A waitress came over.
“Why don’t you order?” Kane said. “You know the food.”
Dylan rattled off the names of several sushi rolls, Kane asked for green tea, and the waitress departed.
“So your boss isn’t very high up?” Kane asked.
“He is a Republican, so he’s in the majority,” Dylan said, “but he’s just a freshman. The allocation of power in the legislature is dictated by an odd mix of partisan allegiance, seniority, geographical distribution, personal relationships, and skill.”
“With skill last?” Kane asked.
“With skill last,” Dylan said.
The waitress brought Kane’s tea. He poured some into a small porcelain cup and sipped. The tea was watery and tasted the way a new-mown lawn smells.
“You don’t sound like you think this is going to be your career,” he said.
Dylan nodded.
“It’s not,” he said. “We’ve got this real-world learning requirement at school, and Chief Jeffords helped me get this job. I’m learning a lot, but politics just doesn’t interest me that much. But what about you? Are you okay after that fall? You hit the street hard.”
“I’m fine,” Kane said, “take away a few bruises. I thought it was nice you and that woman came to help me. I could have been anybody.”
“That’s more Samantha than me,” Dylan said. “She wants to save every living thing.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Kane said. “Are you two an item?”
He watched wariness fill his son’s eyes.
“Like, is she my girlfriend, is that what you mean?” Dylan said. He shook his head. “She’s too old for that. Or I’m too young. But we do have fun together. And she’s great in bed.”
Kane opened his mouth to say something, paused, then said, “Well, she seems nice enough.”
Dylan nodded and drank more beer. Kane was happy to see that he drank like his mother. Laurie could make a bottle of beer last a week.
“How is your investigation going?” Dylan asked.
“It’s not really going at all,” Kane said, pouring himself more tea. “Nobody seems to have known the victim very well, and those who might have don’t want to talk. Did you know her?”
“Melinda?” Dylan said, nodding. “I knew her to talk to. But she was an important Senate staffer and I’m a nothing House staffer, so I didn’t know her that well.”
“Did Samantha know her?” Kane asked.
Dylan looked at him like he was a complex puzzle that needed solving.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “She’s a lobbyist, so I’d guess she did. But I don’t know that for a fact.”
Kane opened his mouth and shut it again.
“Well,” he said at last, “I guess I can ask her.”
The waitress arrived and started taking small plates from a big tray and setting them on the table. When she finished, Kane said to Dylan, “What is it I’m eating?”
“Better not to think about it,” Dylan said with a grin. He picked up a pair of chopsticks and began mixing things in a small bowl. When he was finished, he plucked a ball of rice topped with something brown from a plate, dipped it, and popped it into his mouth. He was reaching for something wrapped in seaweed when he noticed Kane was just sitting there.
“Don’t see anything you like?” he asked.
“Don’t know what to do,” Kane said. “They didn’t serve sushi in prison. And my diet before that didn’t run to raw fish.”
Dylan shook his head slowly.
“Nik Kane, the socially retarded detective,” he said. He took another little bowl, poured in soy sauce, and picked up a glob of green paste.
“This is wasabi,” he said. “Do you want it hot or mild?”
“Mild,” Kane said, and watched as Dylan put most of the paste back, mixing in just a bit.
“Now,” he said, “all you have to do is pick up those chopsticks and eat.”
Kane picked up the chopsticks, arranged them the way Dylan held his, and reached for a piece of sushi. After several stabs, he managed to grab it with the sticks, dip it in the sauce, and drop it into his lap.
“Way to go,” Dylan said. “At this rate, you’ll starve before you get a mouthful. Want a fork?”
Kane shook his head.
“I’m not going to let this beat me,” he said.
He maneuvered a second piece of sushi toward the sauce, but it squirted out from between the chopsticks, skittered across the table, and vaulted over the side of the table into Dylan’s lap. Both of them began laughing.
“That was—that was way smooooth,” Dylan said with difficulty.
They both laughed some more. Then, suddenly, Dylan wasn’t laughing.
“What are you doing here?” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “What the fuck are you doing? Do you think you can leave me like you did and then just come back into my life like nothing happened?”
His voice rose as he continued, and other dinners began shooting glances at the two of them.
“I needed a father once,” Dylan said, “but you weren’t around. I don’t need you now. So why don’t you just go back to wherever the fuck you came from and leave me alone?”
Dylan leaped to his feet, snatched his coat from the back of his chair, and ran out of the restaurant. Kane sat for a moment, stunned by the suddenness and ferocity of his son’s attack. When he came back to himself, he could see the other diners staring at him.
“Just another successful family dinner,” he said in a loud voice.
The other diners quickly looked away and began talking to one another. Kane took some money from his wallet, put it on the table, and got to his feet.
“Lotsa food left,” the waitress said from behind him. “You want box?”
“No, thanks,” Kane said. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
He put on his coat and left the restaurant, retracing his steps toward the hotel.
Laurie was right, he thought. The kid hates me. And when you think about it, can you blame him? He needed a father and I wasn’t there. What does he care about the reason?
His thoughts chased one another through his mind, guilt mixing with anger mixing with despair. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he gave his head a vigorous shake.
There’s no use wallowing in it, he thought. What’s done is done. I reached out. He slapped my hand away. It’s time to move on.
He mounted the stairs steadily, forcing himself to think about how to get people, including his own client, to talk to him. The water on the stair treads had turned to ice, so he stopped at a landing that had a bench on it and put on his ice grippers. Then, keeping a hand on the railing, he climbed. He was breathing hard when he reached the top and the big muscles in his thighs burned.
Live here and you’d have legs like Lance Armstrong, he thought.
His mind slipped back to the incident with his son.
It’s like he’s forcing himself to hate me, he thought. He knew what that was like; he’d done the same with his own father. If only I could tell him how useless that all is, he thought.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he almost missed the scene behind the Capitol. But the flicker of emergency lights brought him back, and he climbed the sidewalk beside the building to see what was going on.
The lights belonged to an emergency van and a police car, which were parked cattywhompus in the parking lot behind the building. A third, unmarked car was parked there, too, motor running and door open. A pair of EMTs and a uniformed policeman stood in a tight circle, talking with a red-haired man in plain clothes. A couple of bystanders watched as another man in civilian clothes looked at something beneath a sheet.
“Hey, Tank,” Kane called. “Tank Crawford.”
Crawford dropped the edge
of the sheet and walked over to where Kane stood outside the railing that divided the parking lot from the sidewalk.
“Evening, bubba,” Crawford said. “What are you doing here?”
“On my way back to the hotel from dinner,” Kane said. “What you got?”
Crawford shrugged.
“A male Caucasian, hit the asphalt from a considerable height,” he said.
“Defenestrated?” Kane asked.
Crawford gave him a grin.
“Yeah, I love that word, too,” he said. “But who knows? Fell, jumped, or was pushed at this point.”
“Know who it is?” Kane asked.
“Landed on his head,” Crawford said, “so official ID will take a while. But his wallet says he’s a guy named Ralph Stansfield.”
The Juneau detective must have seen something in Kane’s face, because he said, “You know this guy?”
“If it’s Stansfield, I’ve talked to him,” Kane said. “He worked for Senator Potter.”
“Aw, Christ, bubba,” Crawford said. “This was going to be political enough if it was somebody connected with the legislature. But this. Crap. What did you talk to him about?”
Kane thought about telling Crawford the whole story but decided against it. He didn’t know what the detective, or his bosses, might do with the information.
“I was just trying to find out what it’s like working in Potter’s office,” he said, “to try to understand Melinda Foxx better. And maybe get some inside dope about her, too.”
Crawford looked at him for a long time.
“Well,” he said at last, “I can’t see where talking to him gets you into this, bubba. Unless he told you something?”
“No,” Kane said, “he didn’t.”
Crawford was silent for a minute or two.
“Why don’t you stick around anyway?” he said. “I’ve got a few things to do, and then maybe you can tell me what you know about this guy.”
Kane thought about Alma Atwood waiting for him. Business before pleasure. God damn it.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait.”
Crawford walked back to where the other men were talking. Kane took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.
“Hi, Alma,” he said. “It’s Nik. I’m calling to say I can’t make it.”