Stranglehold

by Ed Gorman

  She gave me another hug and then left.

  Susan wore a simple white shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail. The first glimpse I got of her she was biting one of her manicured nails.

  “You’re wasting a lot of money.”

  “What?”

  At first her eyes didn’t seem to focus. She had to bring them back from whatever terrible land she’d been visiting. “Wasting a lot of money?”

  “You pay to get your nails done and then you’re biting them.”

  “Oh.” The smile was sad. “I guess you’re right. Sort of ruins the whole effect, doesn’t it?”

  She lifted her cup.

  “Jane thinks you’ve had enough coffee.”

  “God, I wouldn’t make it through this without Jane. I’ll switch to something else when I finish this.”

  I slid into my side of the booth. On the other side of the window the backyard was filled with Disney creatures—squirrels and birds and two small dogs playing in the dusty light of fall.

  “How’re Ben and Kristin taking it?”

  “They think we can pitch our side and the majority of people will understand.”

  “Really?”

  “We have to be careful how we present it, but we have enough time before the election to see it mostly go away. If—”

  She stopped me. “If?”

  “If Donovan doesn’t up the ante again—or do something else.”

  “Oh, God, what did he do?”

  I told her about last night and demanding another payment.

  “He’s the most devious person I’ve ever known—a sociopath who loves to play games. He’d blackmail people, and then when they paid him, he’d immediately demand more. Right on the spot. He told me he knew he couldn’t get it; he just liked to see them suffer. He enjoys the torture as much as the money.”

  “That doesn’t exactly surprise me.”

  She took a deep breath, exhaled. “This whole moment—I wish I could just enjoy the fact that I’ve been reunited with my son and his wife and that I’m going to be a grandmother. And poor Gwen, what she’s going through—”

  “We need to call a press conference for this afternoon. Three-thirty at the latest so we can get on all the evening news shows. This is going to be tough for you, but you’ve got to do it right.”

  “I don’t want to go on television and lie, Dev.”

  “You won’t be lying. You’ll talk about how good it is to be reunited with your son and that you’ll go into detail at a later date. If anybody brings up the fact that the police questioned him, just say that they’ve been questioning a lot of people, which they no doubt have.” I didn’t tell her about the great grand dream I’d had of her, Bobby, and sweet pregnant Gwen all together in front of the cameras. We were past that now; all we could do was get on the air as soon as possible and start controlling the message as best we could. No long-lost sons or winsome daughters-in-law for props.

  “I’ll run, that’ll help. It always relaxes me.”

  “Run, shower, get dressed, and then spend some time with Ben and Kristin at the office. They’ll know what to do. You’ll be nervous when you see the reporters, but once you start talking you’ll be fine. It’s what you said awhile ago, how this should be a happy time for you. That’s all you need to convey. The happy time. The family together again. Make a few jokes about being a grandmother at your age.”

  “You have a lot of faith in me. I hope I can do it.” She sat back and looked at me. “The terrible thing is that I want to get reelected. All these other awful things going on all around me and I’m still thinking about my job.”

  “You’re a good congresswoman. You enjoy your work and you’re actually helping people. Nothing wrong with that.”

  A bittersweet smile. “Poor Natalie. She’ll probably have to be sedated by the time this is all over.”

  “That’s a nice thought,” I said. “Natalie Cooper—sedated.”

  As I slid out of the booth, I said, “I’ll check in with Ben in an hour or two.”

  She held out her hand. I took it. Ice cold. “Maybe I’m the one who needs to be sedated, Dev.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Peter Cooper didn’t like me because I’d rejected his speeches. I didn’t expect a warm welcome and I didn’t get one.

  Mandy Gilmore, his secretary, had accompanied Peter on a visit to my office a few months ago. She hadn’t liked me much that time, and now that I’d declined to use his speeches she liked me even less. She was on her headset when I opened the door. She was also riffling through some papers. She started to look up, the automatic smile already in place. When she recognized me she flipped the friendly greeting switch off instantly. She pointed to one of the green leatherette-covered chairs beneath the map of Susan’s district.

  I went over and sat down and tried not to listen to her. She turned away and muttered something that contained one word I understood: “Asshole.” I was pretty sure who she was referring to.

  After she hung up she gave me a sharp look and said, “I know you don’t believe in appointments, but that’s how we do things around here.”

  Today she wore a frothy amber blouse and a dark skirt. She would have been attractive if she’d ever let go of her anger. But she’d found a way to channel all the sorrows of her life into her gatekeeper job, and the sullenness was taking its toll.

  “I know he’s here. I saw his car. I need to talk to him now. If you won’t tell him I’m here, then I’ll walk over to his door and tell him myself.”

  “You’re a real bastard, you know that? Do any of you people know how hard he works? But Natalie and Susan and everybody else treat him like shit. Just like shit. No respect at all for his schedule. Do this, do that, and no warning whatsoever.”

  “So which’ll it be, Mandy? I’m not trying to be an asshole here.”

  “But you’re succeeding, so—”

  “So I really need to see him and right now.”

  She jammed a finger against a button. Peter’s disembodied voice said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Conrad is here.” She made my name a thing that dripped with revulsion.

  “Well, uh, bring him in.” But he sounded doubtful. He was obviously recalling our last meeting.

  I’d never encountered this before, a district office that disliked—hell, despised—the congresswoman it represented. Apparently Peter and Mandy did their jobs well, tending to the various constituent services that the voters needed. And with an economy sinking lower every day, they had to be busier than ever. I wondered if they secretly drew mustaches on Susan’s photographs after they closed up shop for the day.

  “You can go in.”

  “Thank you, Mandy.”

  Her face wrinkled. She turned away. As I walked toward Peter’s office, I saw the room where constituents filled out forms for help. The table sat twelve, six per side. All the seats were taken and half a dozen more people were standing around a coffeepot waiting for their turn to sit down. There would be a lot of heartbreak in that room.

  Peter wore a gray suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie. With his sleek dark hair and bland smile he looked like every successful male senatorial staffer in Washington, D.C.

  “I’ll bet you’re having a busy day,” he said. He couldn’t quite keep the sound of pleasure from his tone. He might be witnessing the downfall of his stepsister.

  “Yep.” I closed the door and walked over to one of the chairs in front of his desk. Photographs of major state pols from a generation ago, the men who would have helped him fulfill his dreams if only he’d had the guts and savvy to help himself. In the wide window behind him a 747 was just getting speed, elegant against the flat perfect blue of the sky.

  “I’ll do all I can.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I’d been thinking about the newspaper story and all the inside information the reporter had gotten from somebody close to the campaign. What about a stepbrother who was jealous of his stepsist
er? “Somebody talked to that reporter. Somebody who knows the campaign. Otherwise that story would never have been written.”

  He’d been slouching. Now he sat up straight. He had Natalie’s eyes. He could never match her scorn. He merely looked petulant.

  He gritted his teeth and sighed. “Did Susan and Ben send you here to accuse me? They can shove this up their ass. I really resent this. I can’t believe that my mother sanctioned this—you coming here.”

  “Things have moved way beyond what your mother sanctioned or didn’t sanction, Peter.”

  “This is total bullshit.”

  But everything—the body language, the anxiety in the gaze, the too-loud voice—told me he was lying.

  I gave him my best lizard smile. “I talked to the reporter, Peter. I also offered him five hundred dollars to tell me who’d ratted out the campaign. He told me it was you.” Lies can come in damned handy sometimes. He went back into his slump. He sulked. He waved a hand to dismiss me.

  “I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t have to talk to anybody.”

  “Mommy’s not going to be very happy when I tell her what you did. She’s put an awful lot of money into this campaign,” I said.

  “You just get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back.”

  “Mandy’s going to stop me, is she? Between Mandy and Mommy, you’re pretty well protected, aren’t you, son?”

  At the door I said, “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?”

  Fortunately for both of us, Mandy wasn’t in the reception area when I left.

  CHAPTER 18

  The press conference started promptly at three-twenty. Eighteen reporters filed into campaign headquarters and assembled in front of a rostrum we’d brought in. A good share of the office space used by the volunteers had been cleared to make more room for the press and a table had been set up with coffee and cookies. Staffers stood at the back, looking as if they’d been invaded and were just waiting for the jackboots to come back and kill them.

  Susan arrived a few minutes after I did. I’d spent the earlier part of the afternoon working on our other two campaigns. Things were still going well for us, but there were problems my field people wanted me to work through with them. I spent half an hour in the gym. By the time of the press conference I’d cut my anxiety in half. I was stoned on some inexplicable form of optimism. Susan was not only going to do well, she was going to triumph.

  In the staff office, she clutched my hand and said, “Wish me well.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “You’ll be fine, Susan. All you’re going to do is tell the truth. You don’t have anything to hide. That’s all you need to remember. There’s no reason to be on the defensive at all. And you’ve written a really fine statement to read.”

  She knew how to write and the words would be more meaningful if they were hers, rather than something contrived for her. I’d read them and they were good, strong, and honest. She’d dressed carefully, too. Her black pants suit was softened by a single strand of pearls. The burgundy blouse complemented her skin tone and the blonde chignon she had carefully fashioned. The look was efficient but still warm.

  By the time we worked our way up front, the press was in place. There was the usual rumbling about deadlines and when the hell was this thing going to start, anyway. Ben and Kristin pacified them by pointing out that we were actually starting ten minutes earlier than we’d promised.

  “Good afternoon,” Susan said after stepping up to the microphone. By now there was a small bank of microphones from various TV and radio stations mounted on the rostrum. She’d always been comfortable with the press. “Thank you for coming here on such short notice. I know there is a story about me you’d like clarified, so I’ll try to do that without keeping you too long. I know you’re in a hurry to get your stories filed.”

  She glanced at me and then said, “And I’ll take questions after my statement.”

  And so the beast set to feeding. Recorders were turned on, cameras focused, old-fashioned reporters’ notebooks scribbled on as she began to read her statement.

  “Twenty years ago I was a very different person than I am today. I was just out of college and living pretty selfishly. When I look back I’m not very fond of the young woman I was. One day I learned that I was pregnant. The man I was with wanted me to abort the child, and I have to admit that that was my first inclination, too. But something stopped me. I’d never really thought about abortion in a personal way. I was all in favor of a woman’s right to choose—as I am today. But somehow it wasn’t right for me. The father of my child and I went our separate ways. I had the child. But over the course of the next month I realized that I had too many personal problems to be a decent mother for my son. Maybe I was just being selfish; maybe I just didn’t want the boy to interfere with my lifestyle. I took him to some nuns I knew at a convent near where I was staying. We talked for a long time, and the sisters decided that it would be best for the boy if they found a new home for him. It was a terrible experience for both my son and me. About a week after the nuns had taken him, I changed my mind in the middle of the night. I went to the convent. I was hysterical. I wanted my son back. But it was too late. Arrangements for a new family were under way. And I’m sure I didn’t look very stable pounding on the convent doors at three in the morning. There hasn’t been a day in my life when I haven’t longed to know about my son. And there hasn’t been a night when I don’t wish I had kept him and raised him and let him know how much I loved him. And that’s why I’m so happy to say that he’s here in Aldyne and that we’ve been seeing each other and talking things through. My son’s name is Bobby. He’s married and I’m happy to say that his wife Gwen is pregnant. So not only am I a mom, I’m also about to become a grandmother. And I’m so grateful to the family that adopted him and gave him a good home.”

  I have to say that the press received all this respectfully. Yes, they gave her a respectful three or four seconds between the time she finished reading her statement and the time they started trying to rip apart what she said. They wanted to study the entrails for portents. But from the smiles Ben and Kristin were directing my way, I knew Susan had done very, very well.

  Came the questions, came the answers: No, there was no point in naming the father. No, Bobby had not decided if he’d be staying in Aldyne. Yes, the friends of hers who mattered were happy for her. No, she didn’t think this revelation would hurt her, and if it did she felt she had done the right thing, anyway—she was proud to acknowledge her son, she wasn’t trying to hide it. No, there was no reason for Bobby to be interviewed right now—maybe later—but for now they were just getting to know each other. No, she didn’t want to say anything more about Bobby at this time; if he wanted to come forward and talk to them, that would be his decision, not theirs. No, as she thought she’d made clear, she hadn’t changed her mind on pro-choice—the decision she’d made twenty years ago was a personal one, not meant to make any kind of political statement.

  All this took forty-three minutes. I kept shooting my cuff to keep track of the time. According to my watch, we had two minutes to go. That was the time we’d given the press. It was like sitting on a two-point lead in a basketball game. We needed to rush to the clock before any reporter lobbed a hand grenade.

  Said hand grenade exploded with one minute to go. A pert young woman with horn-rimmed glasses and a stylish brunette bob had come in about ten minutes ago. I didn’t know who she was or what station she was with. All I knew was that she had a camerawoman with her and that she was skillful at angling her way through the clutch of reporters. She hadn’t asked a question until now, so Susan said, “Yes, Donna.”

  I had no idea who Donna was, but I was about to find out.

  “The police are looking for a young man named Bobby Flaherty. They believe he has information about the murder of a man named Craig Donovan. Congresswoman Cooper, is Bobby Flaherty the son you’ve been talking about?”

  This would be one for Donna’s reel.
TV reporters keep a tape of their best moments. They like to show a mix of the sentimental (kitten stories) and the bombastic (standing in front of a crooked businessman’s door and demanding that he come out and answer some questions). This was a big moment for Donna’s reel.

  Susan’s eyes went wide and wild—panic. She bumped into the podium. Ben started to lunge forward, then pulled himself back. He had to leave her alone. If he rescued her in some way, he’d only make things worse.

  The expected rumble worked through the crowd. Donna’s competitors would be pissed that she’d gotten the story before they did. A few of them were on their cells, calling their newsrooms for updates on the murder.

  Susan took a deep breath, picked up her water glass, took a prim sip, set the glass down again, and said, “Yes, Bobby Flaherty is my son. I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to, Donna. But I hope you and the others here will forgive me for leaving now. As Bobby’s mother, I want to find out what’s going on.”

  “Is there any possibility that he might be involved in this murder?” another reporter yelled.

  Susan’s gaze was hard now. “No chance whatsoever.” And then she was turning away from the podium and they were shouting questions at her retreating form.

  A handful of reporters tried to follow her back to the staff office, but Ben and Kristin and I moved fast enough to form a line that blocked them.

  “Fun’s over,” Ben said. His voice was thin, as if he had trouble speaking.

  Kristin glanced at me, shook her head. A camera caught her troubled expression and immortalized it. A telling image on the six o’clock news—Congresswoman Cooper staffer shocked at the breaking news about Bobby Flaherty.

  “C’mon now,” Ben said to the remaining reporters. We started herding them over to the door.

  “You’re Dev Conrad, right?”

  “Yep.”

  The man asking the question aimed his microphone at me. “Did you get any warning about this?”