Ms. Wyatt shifted in her chair, and a deep sadness crossed her face. She raised her head as if steeling herself to do something most difficult. “I presume you have these notes with you. Please show them to me. I would like to make my own assessment of Benjamin’s words.”
Now I shifted in my chair. “I would like to do just that, but I can’t.”
She interrupted, and for the first time, her tone sharpened. “You can’t? You come in here making allegations of this nature, and you refuse to show me your source material. Maybe I was incorrect in my original assessment of your character, Mr. Nolan?”
“I can’t show you the notes because they were stolen from me. I believe there are people who will go to great lengths to quash this matter.”
Sitting back in her chair, Ms. Wyatt, regarded me with blue eyes that were now piercing. “I suppose you are also alleging that Robert was responsible for the theft of these notes?”
“I believe the materials were stolen on his direction, or at the least on his behalf, but I have no proof and am making no such allegation.”
Now she shot back at me. “You have no proof of anything else either, but you come here making allegations.”
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I wrapped my hand around my phone. I had anticipated that Ms. Wyatt would ask to see Benjamin’s notes, and I intended on my way here to play the recording of my conversation with Katharine in response to that request. It wasn’t the notes, but it certainly lent credence to their existence and their contents. Now that the moment had arrived, something paralyzed me. I had made the allegations, need I rub her nose in them? I believed Christine Wyatt to be a woman with strong moral values. She would reflect on the situation, and she would believe my words. There was no need in embarrassing her with Katharine’s rant.
“Benjamin Whitt’s character is my proof. I do not believe that Benjamin would have created records over a time period spanning more than two decades if the information was not true. That was not the Benjamin I knew, and I don’t believe it was the Benjamin you knew.”
Nodding subtly, Ms. Wyatt asked, “What would you propose I do with this invisible information, Mr. Nolan? Would you have me accuse my husband? What exactly would you have me do?” Her voice was now strained with emotion.
It was obvious to me that Ms. Wyatt was utilizing every ounce of her cultured upbringing and professional experience to hold herself together. In the courtroom, I had occasionally destroyed the composure of witnesses on the stand but had always felt justified because they were either lying or withholding. This woman had done nothing of the kind. Probably the greatest transgression of her entire life was marrying Robert Armstrong. I felt a tsunami of guilt wash over me. My actions today had potentially destroyed this woman, but for what purpose? What could she really do? I suddenly felt like the room was closing in on me. I took a deep breath to clear my head and said, “I don’t know what to tell you, Ms. Wyatt. I know that there is nothing I can do to fulfill my promise to Benjamin. You were the only person I could think of who might be able to, but I don’t have the answer to your question. I don’t know.” Standing, I nodded and said, “Thank you for your time today, Ms. Wyatt.” I started toward her office door, turned, and added, “And, I am sorry.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
As I retraced my route along 23rd Street toward the Metro station, a cocktail of emotion crept over me. Feelings of failure, guilt and shame were the predominant ingredients. I had failed in my efforts to fulfill Benjamin’s request. Bringing the information to Christine Wyatt left me with nothing but guilt. Even if she had suspected the behavior of her husband, I felt guilty for being the person who removed any doubt. To what avail? She certainly couldn’t alter her husband’s behavior. If she could, she would have long ago. The sadness reflected in her face as I left crept over me as the cold chill of shame. All I had accomplished was to make her just one more victim of Robert Armstrong’s behavior.
At the lodge, I had allowed Katharine to dupe me into believing she was somehow on my side. My naivety had jeopardized any real opportunity I had for fulfilling Benjamin’s request. Although, I still hadn’t identified what my strategy would have been. I was restrained by the attorney-client privilege that existed between Benjamin and Armstrong. The privilege belongs to the client and survives the death of the attorney, so I couldn’t have released the notes even if I still had them in my possession. I was also keenly cognizant of my own desire to protect Benjamin’s reputation. The last thing I wanted to do was to be the instrument by which his legacy was tarnished by his actions as “fixer” for a social deviant. A dark cloud was enveloping me.
My funk was nearly ended, along with my life, when I stepped out in front of a car on one of the streets that flow into Washington Circle like spokes on a wheel. The screech of brakes coupled with the blare of a car horn brought me back to reality with but a split second to spare. I leaped backward onto the sidewalk and stumbled like a drunk for several steps before regaining my balance. The driver of the car that nearly killed me waved wildly as he passed as if he thought I was nuts. Couldn’t really argue with him.
As I approached the Metro station, I realized I was hungry. I still had three hours before my flight to Florida, so I looked around for somewhere to grab a bite. A sandwich shop across from the emergency entrance for George Washington University Hospital caught my eye. Entering Devon & Blakely, I found a boundless selection of salads, wraps, and sandwiches. If nothing already prepared struck your fancy, several energetic folks were working behind a huge selection of ingredients to construct anything you desired. A selection of eighteen soups made the potential combinations mind-boggling. For once, I was pleased to be standing behind several people already engaged in the selection process. Salad eaters in the know were grabbing prepackaged bowls of various types of lettuce from a table in the center of the space and handing them to the salad makers to be enhanced with additional ingredients dictated by the purchaser. The salad maker would dump the lettuce into a large metal bowl, add the ingredients requested before mixing it with the selected dressing. While the process was quick and efficient, it gave me time to study the menu selection on the boards behind the various stations. Nothing worse than people getting to the counter in a situation like this and only then begin to ponder their choices.
When it was my turn, I stepped forward like a seasoned regular and ordered a Vermont Wrap, which included turkey, cheddar, tomatoes, bacon, cranberry relish, and romaine in a whole wheat tortilla. To that I added a cup of corn chowder and a coffee. The seating area was small, it looked like much of the business was “to go,” but the turnover was rapid, and by the time I had paid at the register a small table in a back corner opened. I was soon lost in the enjoyment of my selections. This was the kind of place where a person could eat lunch every day and never repeat the same meal.
The crowd seemed to be a mixture of medical personnel from the hospital, students from the university, and business people. I was just starting to eat when a tall black man approached and asked if he could join me. All other seats were taken at the moment. Sharing a table with strangers is common in Europe, but the tradition has never really caught on here. Still, what do you say to a guy balancing a cup of soup, a salad, and a large cup of iced tea? He thanked me and introduced himself as Reginald, adding that everyone called him Reggie. I asked if he worked in the area. From his tailored suit, I guessed he was a doctor or an attorney. He told me that he worked in the information technology sector supporting health care.
I asked a couple of questions about his field and our conversation migrated into a discussion of health care costs in general. We bantered about insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical malpractice attorneys for most of our meal. Finally, Reggie took a long drink of his iced tea and said, “Really, the whole health care mess is like a baseball team that keeps losing. Each player is just pointing a finger at someone else and blaming them rather than concentrating on what they could do to impr
ove their own game and consequently the entire team. It’s much easier to point fingers at others, to shift responsibility to them, than to look inward and identify your own shortcomings. I’m doing everything I can to guide my company in improving the efficiency of a small portion of the behemoth health care industry. Still, when I tell people what I do for a living, they just assume I’m part of the problem.”
I wanted to pursue this chance conversation because like most people I’ve always felt that the solution was for everyone in health care to just charge less. Obviously it’s not that simple. Seldom is. Unfortunately, I suddenly realized that my quick stop for lunch had taken much longer than I planned. I needed to get back out to Reagan National if I was going to make my flight. Shaking hands with Reggie, I told him how much I had enjoyed our chat.
During the subway ride back to the airport, the darkness of my earlier mood returned. My time with Reggie had only momentarily distracted me from my feelings of failure. By the time I reached the gate at the airport, I was working myself into another real funk of self-loathing. I had just settled into a seat in the waiting area at my gate when my phone buzzed. It was PJ. I’d called her when I arrived in Washington this morning, but the call went to voicemail. I left a short message with my revised travel plans but no other detail regarding my meeting with Katharine or my plan to meet with Christine Wyatt. Just too complicated for voicemail.
When I answered, PJ apologized for missing my earlier call. She said it had been crazy at work. Seems even private detectives have bad days, although I think PJ enjoys chaos just a bit. Probably the product of her years as a cop. She asked, “So, why the stop in D.C.? Couldn’t you get a direct flight out of Detroit?”
Getting up from my seat, I found an unoccupied gate with no flight immediately scheduled. This was not a story to be overheard by one hundred strangers. I opened with, “Do you have a few minutes?” PJ said she would give me all of the time I needed. I said, “Good,” and embarked on an outpouring of both the events and my emotions.
PJ listened as I went through the entire chain of events that had occurred since we last talked. It wasn’t until I started to talk about how disappointed I was in failing Benjamin, being duped by Katharine, and crushing Christine Wyatt that she interrupted me. “Whoa there, cowboy. Let’s take a realistic look at the situation. Enough of this beating yourself up.” She paused, but before I could respond, she forged ahead. “Due to the circumstances, Benjamin Whitt dying before he could give you any information about his request, you set out on an impossible mission. It’s amazing that you were even able to identify what he was even referring to when he made his request of you. How many people would have put forth the effort you did to go through, what was it, fifteen boxes of records?” I nodded, but of course she couldn’t see me. “My gosh, Jack, he was your ex-father-in-law. You hadn’t talked with him in years. Granted, you ignored his efforts to connect immediately following your breakup, but he didn’t reach out any time in the years since. Still, you responded to his beckoning and poured yourself into a request that was nebulous at best. No, Jack Nolan, you can’t say you failed. What happened was that you did not accomplish the undefined impossible. That is not failure in my book.”
She paused, but again before I could say anything, she said, “And let’s be frank about it, Jack. Benjamin Whitt had a lifetime to correct his errors. If they weighed so heavily on him, why didn’t he do something years ago? He had all of the information that you didn’t have. And why were you the only person in the entire world who could right his wrongs? If he was as well connected as you have indicated, he could have utilized any one of a number of people to pursue his goal. You need to consider that maybe his real motive was to get you back up there. Maybe he thought it would rekindle something with his daughter? Maybe that was his real deathbed need? You said that the two of you had been close when you were married to Katharine. Maybe he really wanted to see you two back together and he utilized his request as a means toward that end?”
“I don’t think that was the case. If it was, it failed miserably because all it did was show me how gullible I am and how devious she is.”
“Jack, you’re not gullible. Well, maybe a little. Sometimes. But you weren’t gullible in this instance. Katharine offered to help. You put aside your cynicism toward her in your efforts to fulfill her father’s request. Besides that, she said that she needed a change of scenery to go through the grieving process.” PJ paused and then added, “Of course, I wasn’t there, so if her motives and actions carried a different message, then maybe you were being gullible.” A hint of skepticism resonated in the tone of that last sentence, and she paused, obviously fishing for a response.
“No. I don’t think she had any other motive. Her friendly behavior was definitely an anomaly. It was calculated for the sole purpose of finding out what I’d found in Benjamin’s notes. When she realized that I was in the process of identifying the governor and his behavior, she set into motion the whole scam about being kidnapped. Again, she made a fool of me. Look at all of the people I coopted into helping me. It was totally unnecessary. I’m a damn fool.”
PJ’s voice took on a motherly tone. “Jack, you need to remember that at one time you believed that woman was the person you wanted to spend your life with. Suddenly, you were confronted with a terrible transgression on her part, and your opinion of her was altered. Then, when she appeared at the lodge, you were exposed to a person more like the one you had fallen in love with years earlier. It’s human nature to want to align your present assessment with your previous long-held belief. To believe that the instance of bad behavior was the abnormality. If we were otherwise, we wouldn’t ever be able to move past someone’s mistakes, and it would be a pretty miserable world.” Her soothing tone stiffened. “Now, if you were to continue to repeat the cycle, that’s when I would say that you were gullible.”
What she said made sense. Maybe I hadn’t been as gullible as I had just been human. At least it felt better to think that, but then Christine Wyatt, and the look on her face when I left her office, popped into my mind. I sighed and said, “Yeah, but I feel terrible about the way I hurt Christine Wyatt.”
There was no mistaking the steel in her tone now. “Damn it, Jack. What are you trying to do, have a pity party? You’re taking on the sins of the world and then feeling sorry for yourself. You didn’t do anything to Christine Wyatt. Robert Armstrong is the one who hurt her. Besides, from what you’ve told me, coupled with my experience with people, I’d bet that she knew he was a sleaze. She just didn’t want to face it. All you did was call the question. She just had to face reality, and she didn’t like what she saw. She wasn’t surprised by what she saw, she had suspected it, she just didn’t like it when she was forced to face it. You can’t take responsibility for any of that. No, I won’t let you take responsibility for that.” She paused, and I heard what sounded like a faint laugh. “I have seen you do some naive, even stupid, things since I’ve known you, but this isn’t one of those times.”
“Gee, thanks. So, what you’re saying is that in comparison to the other stupid things I’ve done, this isn’t so bad.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, you blockhead!”
I was suddenly aware of the announcement of continued boarding of my flight. “Thanks for the pep talk, but I’ve got to run, they just called my flight.”
“Hey, Jack, where are you staying tonight? It’s not like you’re going back to Cap’s Place.”
I was walking toward my gate. “Oh, I thought I’d stay with you.” The few nights we had together between the hurricane and my going to Michigan had been — had been enjoyable — to say the least.
“Ah . . . ah, sorry, Jack, that’s not possible. Angela is home tonight, and she even has a friend staying over. It just wouldn’t be appropriate. Wouldn’t be the example I want to set.”
“I’m just kidding you.” That was only partially true. “I’m going to stay at Moe’s. He’s offered to let me stay with him as long
as I need to. That’s going to be my home for a while.”
“Okay. Sorry about here. About you not being able to come here. Give me a call when you get settled at Moe’s. We can at least talk some more. I mean, if you want to.” The uneasy tone of PJ’s voice had an uncharacteristic nervousness to it.
“Sure. I’ll give you a call.” I started to say goodbye but first added, “And thanks for the counsel, PJ. I can always count on you to provide a clear-eyed perspective on things.” I ended the call, handed my boarding pass to the young lady at the gate, and entered the jetway that led to the aluminum tube that would hurl me toward Hollywood.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The two-and-one-half-hour flight to Florida was uneventful. I didn’t have a rental car reserved at the airport and planned to take a Lyft to Moe’s house. I’d pick up a car somewhere tomorrow. Mine had been destroyed in the hurricane, and I wanted to talk to my insurance company before I decided whether to buy something immediately or rent for a while. It can be tough to get a decent purchase price on a car after a big storm. Supply and demand at work. Yet what if my insurance won’t cover the cost of a rental car for the period I’m shopping to purchase? Any savings I obtain by waiting can be quickly wiped out by the cost of the rental car. Mundane stuff but part of life.
Towing my suitcase, I walked out of the terminal into the warm South Florida evening in search of the designated pick-up spot for Lyft. I wanted to locate the pick-up spot before calling a car on the app. As I walked along the sidewalk studying the various signs, a vehicle pulled alongside and seemed to be pacing me. The vehicle seemed familiar, but I couldn’t immediately identify it in my mind. I leaned down and looked through the passenger window to the driver. It was PJ. I stopped abruptly, and she stopped. I opened the passenger door and said, “Wow, what a surprise. Didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
Loyal Be Jack Page 23