At last he finishes with Dwight and rejoins me in the hall, but my questions go unanswered until we are alone together in the elevator. He hits the button for the ground floor, then faces me.
“Toshio never pinned the fraud on Ambassador Asahaki. Who’d you hear this from anyway?”
“Dieter says it was Asahaki. He says Toshio knew that too, that Toshio was involved in the investigation. Why the hell didn’t you tell me that?”
“Toshio wanted it to be Asahaki, that’s not proof. There was no evidence.”
I frown. This sounds like blarney.
“Jesus, Sam, use your head.” Patrick taps his own head. “What was Toshio’s big mission lately, what was he trying to screw up?”
I suggest the obvious, the Japanese seat on the Security Council.
“In one. And can you tell me a better way to do that than by sandbagging Asahaki? Hang a fraud charge around Asahaki’s neck at the last minute, he’d be a lame duck. He’s leading the last big push for votes on this thing; if he gets sunk, the vote’s probably dead in the water too. With Asahaki out of the game, chances are the Japanese don’t get the Council seat. You follow?”
I follow. And I also follow the unstated corollary. Patrick must have been as keen to keep Ambassador Asahaki in the game as he claims Toshio was to close Asahaki out. And I don’t buy Patrick’s take on Toshio’s motives anyway.
“Toshio wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have put Asahaki in the frame for the fraud unless he believed it was true. And it wasn’t just Toshio, Pascal says the same thing.”
“Pascal,” Patrick murmurs, pinching the skin at his throat. “He and Dieter both came to see you?”
“Well, they didn’t seem to be having much luck getting hold of you.”
Before he can decide whether I am taking a shot at him, I remind him that I’ve worked with Pascal Nyeri before. That Pascal Nyeri knows what he’s doing. Not something you can automatically assume in the Secretariat; the place is stuffed with deadwood employed solely to fill the geographic quota.
“Dieter wouldn’t be handing an investigation like that to a jackass. And Pascal agreed with Toshio. It looked like Asahaki was skimming the committee budget.”
“You think Nyeri doesn’t know what’s good for him?” Patrick says. “He was working under a special envoy, for fucksake. Toshio puts the finger on Asahaki, you’re telling me some wombat from Oversight’s going to object? If Nyeri had made any trouble, Toshio’d have had him on a plane back to wherever he came from.” He snaps his fingers. “Like that.”
“The Cameroon.”
“Wherever.”
The elevator door opens, and we step out across the black-and-white checkerboard marble floor toward the exit. The delegates’ exit, which Patrick frequently makes a point of using just to show that he can. The guard at the door nods us out. I wait till we are down the steps before I say it.
“I have to speak to Ambassador Asahaki.”
“You can’t.”
Patrick straightens his cuffs and runs a finger over his jacket collar as we walk on toward the gatehouse. Times like this it is hard to believe that when his appointment as Undersecretary-General for Legal Affairs was announced, I went out with several other senior guys from the department and celebrated. Just before Sarah died. Since then there has been ample time to get to know the man behind the reputation. Ample time to have taken more of his bullshit than I care to remember. Now in the center of the UN forecourt, I angle myself in front of him, forcing him to stop.
“Do you even want to know how Toshio died?”
“You’re not going to find that out speaking to Asahaki.”
“That’s for me to decide, Patrick. Or do you want me to pass the ball to Mike, let him handle the whole thing?”
The thought of UN Security wresting control of the homicide investigation away from Legal Affairs strikes Patrick into appalled silence a moment. Then he speaks.
“You want to see Asahaki.”
That’s what I want, I tell him.
“Well, you bloody well can’t. You can’t, Sam, because he’s not here.”
My glance slides across to the Assembly Hall.
“Not here at Turtle Bay,” Patrick goes on. “Not here in New York. Not even here in the U.S. The man’s gone back to Tokyo.”
I am astounded, stunned.
“Officially for last-minute talks on their push for the Council seat,” says Patrick. “Unofficially Asahaki got the feeling he was being set up. First he had Toshio asking a lot of questions about the fraud. Then Toshio dies. And then you crash in like a bull in a china shop this afternoon, telling Asahaki you want to interview him. Jesus Christ, how did you expect him to react?”
Buffeted by his evident anger, I sway back.
“How about you do like I tell you from now on,” says Patrick, stepping around me, waving to a cluster of men in dinner jackets and women in evening dresses alighting from cabs across First Avenue. All laughing. Everyone set and ready to give their expense accounts the first five-star belting of the UN session. “Show some tact,” Patrick tells me, buttoning his jacket as he walks away. “Act with a little diplomacy.”
He passes out the gates, head held high, and joins his friends and disappears up the street. Off to my right the spotlit flags, all one hundred and eighty-five of them, flutter gently, shackles clinking. The wondrous UN family. Across First Avenue the Tibetan monks are rolling out their sleeping bags. Turning back to the Secretariat building, I find that my fists are clenched, my stomach knotted. I am so fucking angry.
Mike is up in Surveillance. Once I’ve finished explaining the situation to him, calming him down a little, I go up to my own office and sit brooding awhile. What was it Moriko said? Toshio’s work was his life. This place. People like Patrick.
Then at last I do what I know I should not do. I make a call.
A young woman answers. “Waldorf-Astoria,” she repeats when second thoughts make me miss a beat.
“I want to be put through to one of your suites,” I say, lowering my forehead into my hand. “Suite Twelve.”
12
WHEN WE’RE DONE, JENNIFER JUST LIES THERE BESIDE me, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling, the back of her hand resting on my chest while her chest rises and falls beneath the rumpled sheet. Her upper lip is beaded with sweat. From outside, there come the distant sounds of traffic, an occasional siren.
“Is this”—she asks finally between broken breaths—“is this where I ask for a cigarette?”
I pinch her thigh and she rolls away, swinging her feet to the floor. My finger traces a slow arc from her shoulder blade across her spine to her hip. We are in an executive suite at the Waldorf, in the biggest bed I have ever seen, and if this were any other night, I would not consider leaving before daybreak. But when Jennifer asks me now to stay, I tell her no, that I have to be getting home.
“Hmm,” she says, then, rising, she slaps her butt lightly and makes some ribald remark about modern romance. She catches a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror and frowns critically as she disappears into the bathroom. In truth, she has very little to be critical about. For a woman nearing forty, her body remains remarkably firm and unlined, the result of ten years of hard labor, half an hour per day, in the local gym.
She calls to me from the bathroom. “I wasn’t really expecting you to call.”
“You got lucky.”
“Huh.” And then after a moment, “Hatanaka’s death still off limits?”
“Yes.” It was the first thing I told her when I arrived, a direct warning. “Was the sex meant to addle my brain, make me weaken?”
Her face reappears in the doorway. “Usually works.”
I make a weak pretense of tossing a pillow in her direction, and she jerks the door closed. “How did Rachel’s move go?” she asks.
“Fine.”
“Nice place?”
“I’ll tell you when she’s let me see it.”
“Want some advice, Sam?”<
br />
When I don’t answer, Jennifer seems to take the hint. Anyway, a moment later the shower is running and I ease myself over to the edge of the bed and sit up. There is a half-empty bottle of champagne on the side table, two half-empty glasses. Picking up one of the glasses, I take a sip, studying my own reflection in the dresser mirror. Unlike Jennifer, I have not availed myself of the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by gym membership; the daily workout has never held a place in my routine. And somewhat regrettably, the consequences have now started to show. Once, the muscles on my shoulders and arms had firm definition, but now there is a slackness, a lack of tone that if I am not careful will soon pass beyond the point of no return. My stomach muscles that I still think of as hard ridges are showing signs of settling into three distinct and heavy rolls. Drawing myself up for a second, I suck in my gut. My penis flops drunkenly, comically, sideways. Breathing out, I let the natural slump of middle age fall back into place. I sip my drink. I consider the man in the mirror and the woman in the shower.
There have been other women since Sarah died. Not many, just a few. Friends allowed me to wallow in the slough of despond for six months before trailing an assortment of divorcées and late-unmarrieds across my path. For a while, messages on the answering machine at home were a source of dread, invitations to meals the only purpose of which was to introduce me to women I did not want to meet. A couple of times I tried to play the game, ended up in some lonely woman’s bed, but emotionally I wasn’t even trying to make it to first base. After a while I simply refused all invitations. Then, during the eighteen months of Rachel’s battle with anorexia, I was too worried, too helplessly distraught over my daughter’s condition to be giving serious consideration to anything beyond her desperate need.
But Rachel had been out of the hospital for months by the time Jennifer reentered my life. The timing worked. The searing flame of grief over Sarah, the heartrending anguish over Rachel, both had at least partially receded. Time—everyone from the Secretary-General on down had platitudinized—would heal. And now to a greater extent than I ever believed possible, time has done that. Three years from the death of my wife, I am finally able to look to the future with hope. And the reason for that, quite simply, is Jennifer.
She wants me in her life. A woman who knows her own mind, she told me that early on, the second or third time we slept together. I made no serious response, and whenever the issue has risen since, I have always turned it aside, but I know that we cannot go on like this much longer. She deserves an answer, at least to know what I’m thinking, and I guess what I’m thinking is that all the hurdles don’t appear as insurmountable as they seemed even three months back. But I cannot kid myself; some hurdles remain. Because in the way of those who find themselves unexpectedly dating in their middle years, neither one of us has arrived at this point unencumbered, free of obligations or, for that matter, wounds.
For me, the big two are obvious: Sarah’s death and Rachel’s illness. With Jennifer it is her ex-husband, another lawyer, Stephen Morrelli. She refers to him infrequently, she can hardly speak his name without spitting some venomous epithet. Their marriage lasted barely a year before imploding upon Jennifer’s discovery that Stephen had carried on an affair from the time of their engagement and on through their marriage. A regular Wednesday-night appointment, apparently, when Jennifer was led to believe he was doing pro bono work for a group of Pentecostal churches up in Harlem. Four years later the pain of this betrayal remains raw. The memory of her ex-husband still prowls the shadowed regions of Jennifer’s emotional life like some dark nocturnal creature, one she keeps hidden from the light. Though she can turn her ready wit to most anything, about Stephen Morrelli, and infidelity, she does not jest.
And she has one major obligation too: her son, Ben, now four. He was born three weeks after her marriage crashed.
Swirling the champagne in my glass, I fix my eyes on the eyes of the man in the mirror. Her son. Another man’s child. Jennifer has never pushed the point, but she never shirked it either. Over the summer the three of us went on a few picnics together, lately some kid things like the zoo. Last week we went to see Fantasia; walking down the street afterward, Ben reached up unprompted and took my hand. A strange moment that Jennifer pretended not to notice. The boy has dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin; he looks nothing like his mother. He doesn’t smile much or speak often; he couldn’t be less like what Rachel was at that age, but a likable kid just the same. And I sense that he wants me to like him. A son. Could I cope? Is the man in the mirror ready for that?
Finally rising, I cross to where my jacket is draped over a chair, dig in the inner pocket, and pull out the letter from Professor Goldman, the leading light in the Department of International Affairs at Columbia. The letter is a job offer. A job offer for me. After idly rescanning it, I toss the thing onto the bed, then I refill both glasses with champagne and wander in to join Jennifer in the shower.
“What’s this?”
“Read it.”
“I have,” says Jennifer. Swathed in a white bathrobe, the Waldorf-Astoria logo embroidered on the pocket, she sits with one leg drawn up beneath her on the bed. The letter from Goldman is open in her hand. Toweling off, I stroll from the bathroom to where my clothes are piled on the chair beneath the window. “Goldman wants you at Columbia?” she says.
“If I want to go, sure, he wants me.”
Tossing my towel aside, I pull on my shorts.
“And do you? Do you actually want to go?”
I lift a finger. “Ah,” I say, then step into my pants.
“What’s that mean, ‘Ah’?”
“It means I was hoping you might have some opinion.”
“On whether you should give up your career?”
“Call it a change of direction.”
“Honestly, Sam.” With a despairing gesture she lets her hand and the letter fall back to the bed. “Sometimes I just don’t get you, where you’re coming from. You want to make a decision like this now? You can’t do that.”
I raise my eyes from the buttons on my shirt. My fingers keep working. “No?”
“Jesus,” she mutters. She considers the letter, then asks, “What brought this on anyway? Hatanaka?”
I draw her attention to the date on the letter. The offer was made to me last week.
“You didn’t ask me for my opinion last week,” says Jennifer, the razor-brained USUN legal counsel. When she looks at me, I turn my gaze in the direction of the giant television screen by the dresser. It is tuned to BBC World, the volume turned down. Some flak-jacketed journalist is standing in front of a pile of twisted metal wreckage, possibly a bridge, and talking soundlessly. “Sam?” says Jennifer.
“If I took the job at Columbia, it might make things easier.”
“Who for?”
“Us.”
Silence. When I face her, she is looking at me hard. Storm clouds gathering.
“That is such crap. If you’ve got a problem with your career, you can’t put that on us. If you don’t like your job, leave. But don’t kid yourself it’s anything to do with us. With me.” She jabs a finger into her sternum. “Because that’s a lie.”
I pull on my socks. I wriggle my feet into my shoes. Don’t hold back now, I say quietly. Speak your mind.
“I’m serious. I’m fed up with it, Sam. Maybe our careers don’t make it straightforward, but what does that matter if you really want this to work? Don’t keep blaming your career, it’s too easy.”
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want you.”
I raise my eyes. She regards me steadily.
“And sometime soon,” she says, “I’d like to hear that from you too. Plain and simple. No hiding behind your job or pretending that Rachel still needs all of you.”
Bending, I do up my laces.
“And your wife’s been gone three years,” she says, looking away. “That’s about long enough for you to be letting go there too.”
I
keep my head down. I study my fingers and the laces on my shoes. Though we have talked about Sarah several times, Jennifer has never once pushed me further than I wanted to go. Those conversations, I thought, had brought us closer, helped Jennifer see where I am. This is the first indication she has ever given me that where I am is somewhere she doesn’t much like.
“I was right the first time, wasn’t I?” she says after a moment. “It’s Hatanaka, isn’t it?”
“Partly.”
“Not partly. Mostly. Seeing him laid out like that. A guy you knew, and suddenly he’s dead. I mean, it’s made me think too.”
Mortality. Now I see where she’s coming from with the mention of Sarah. The sands of time are running for us all.
“I bumped into Goldman last month. We had a drink, got to talking.”
“Talking,” she says.
“I guess I gave him the impression I wasn’t totally satisfied with spending the rest of my career as Patrick’s bag carrier,” I admit. “Goldman must have figured I’d be open to an offer.”
“And you weren’t last week, but today you are?”
Moving to the chair, I collect my jacket. By this time, of course, I am aware that I have made a mistake. This was not the opportune time to signal the depth of my discontent with Patrick, or to trail any thoughts of a possible alternate future.
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