by Davis Bunn
Sol followed them in worried silence. At the foot of the stairs, Matt said, “I can take it from here.”
Sol looked worried. “You sure?”
Paul Kelly took a two-handed grip on the railing. “Didn’t you know? My son’s a cop. He’s paid to handle drunks.”
In the bedroom Matt continued to play the dutiful son. His mother would have wanted it. “Mind your father,” she always said quietly, part admonition and part plea. Matt remained where he was. “Pop, don’t you want to lie down?”
Paul Kelly was weaving about, struggling to focus on a room and a world where his wife no longer resided. “Still can’t believe she left me like that.”
Megan Kelly had truly loved her husband. The fractured relationship between father and son had caused her great pain. Matt watched his father meander toward the closet and heard in his mind the angry words that his father had so often shouted at her, the only times Matt had ever heard raised voices in the house. Whenever his father yelled, “Why do you always take his side?” Megan Kelly always replied in the same soft and forceful way: “Because he’s your son.”
Paul Kelly made it no farther than the corner cupboard. Matt became filled with the same gut-wrenching tension he had known since childhood, the internal Klaxon that shouted alarm. The cupboard was placed between closet and bathroom. Megan Kelly had packed it with memorabilia. Whoever had set the bomb had first come upstairs and shattered every pane of glass and stolen one item, Paul Kelly’s Congressional Medal of Honor. The picture of President Ford pinning the medal to his father’s uniform was gone too, but the police had that. They had found a thumbprint on the frame and taken it in for identification, but had so far come up with nothing. The killer had gone through every room in the house. Stealing one thing, smashing another. Just one item from each room was missing. Matt knew all this because Sol had told him. Sol called the act demented, the Washington heavyweight shivering slightly as he described the mangled cabinet door. The police took it as routine. A lot of killers took trophies.
In Matt’s room, the killer had smashed a clock and stolen an award. The clock had been a brass antique timepiece that once had sailed in a British privateer. The award had been for Matt’s first full-contact win.
Paul Kelly asked the shattered cabinet, “Why did he steal the medal?”
“I don’t know, Pop.”
“I always wanted to throw the junk away. But Megan wouldn’t let me.” Paul Kelly weaved about and stared at his son. “My legacy.”
Matt made his face like stone. Here it came.
“My success is my legacy. Not even Megan’s murder is going to destroy that.” He tried to bounce back and forth from one foot to the other. The boxer’s stance was how he faced the microphone. It was a trademark move. The political cartoonists were already dressing him in a fighter’s robe and gloves. Only now he was scarcely able to keep on his feet. “Know what my only failure is?”
Matt crossed the room. His father tried to shrug off Matt’s hand. Matt kept hold and guided him to the bed. “Give me your jacket.”
“My son had everything going for him. Not like me, clawing my way out of Fells Point with nothing but guts and empty pockets. What does my son do? Hides away in some bureaucratic D.C. tombstone.” Paul Kelly fell onto the canopied bed. He dropped his tie to the floor. Kicked off his shoes. The thuds seemed timed to his words. “My son.” Clunk. “The failure.”
Matt scooped up the shoes and tie and carried them and the jacket to the walk-in closet. His leg was throbbing.
He froze in the doorway.
His father, oblivious, kept talking. “Couldn’t even give him one of my companies to run. Oh no. I knew all along he wasn’t man enough to take up the reins.”
His mother’s side of the closet was completely empty. Someone had come while Matt was still in the hospital and cleaned out all her things. Matt limped inside. A lingering trace of her scent was all that remained. The vacant space glared at him accusingly.
His father stained the shadowy room with his words. “Only reason he’s alive today is because he let his own mother get killed.”
Matt had long since stopped questioning why his father showed one face to the outside world and concealed another for moments like this. Before, Megan Kelly had always been there to stop him. A few words from her had always been enough.
His father continued tossing verbal daggers. Like he was slowly waking up to the fact that Megan was no longer around to shut him off.
One of Matt’s secret gifts was an ability to copy almost anyone’s voice. His mother had been the only one to ever know. Others had suspected—teachers, fellow students, a few opponents who had let him slip from dark corners because they thought they heard the law. Matt had never used it against his father. Perhaps there had been an unconscious dread of being discovered and labeled even more a fraud than his father already thought him to be.
Matt pressed the palms of both hands to his temples, clamping down hard enough to push back the pain. He tilted his head slightly and pitched his voice lower.
“Paul? That’s enough now. Give it a rest.” He used the voice of Uncle Sol, the balm applied to a thousand such episodes from his past. Speaking to the empty side of the closet. Recalling other times when his mother had been absent and Sol had stepped in. “How’d you like the press to hear you?”
Matt hung up the jacket and draped the tie around the hanger. He limped back into the bedroom. “Did you say something, Pop?”
His father lay on his back, staring mutely at the ceiling, blinking slowly. Nothing stopped his father like the threat of public disclosure.
There was a soft knock on the door. Sol Greene stepped inside. “Just thought I’d check and see how Megan’s boys are doing.”
“Everything’s fine,” Matt said. “Right, Pop?”
His father continued to study the ceiling in silence.
“I suppose we better let Paul rest, then.” Sol Greene let Matt usher him from the room. “Call if you need anything, Paul.”
Matt shut the bedroom door and followed Sol down the upstairs hallway. Sol stopped at the head of the stairs and said, “I thought I just heard the strangest thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Put it down to an awful day.” Sol’s face was slack with bitter regret. “Your limp is worse.”
Matt patted his arm, liking Sol immensely for the unshed tears. “I’ll be fine.”
Matt wrenched himself free of the nightmare that had held him under with suffocating force. He rose gasping from his bed and waited for the panic to ease. It had been the same dream as in the hospital, made worse by his mother’s funeral and the absence of painkillers. He was blown out of his body by the explosion. He became lost, never to find his way home again. Standing now in the center of his bedroom, Matt willed the sound of wind chimes to fade away.
He showered off the dread and entered a world filled with his mother’s memory. The downstairs apartment had been her gift upon his graduation from Duke Law. Eight years earlier, Paul Kelly had sold his Vail hotel and moved back to Baltimore. Matt had felt no tie to his parents’ hometown and had no desire to return. He had opted instead to join the local police force, which his father had fought tooth and nail. In the dark hours that came with any job, Matt knew he had selected the profession partly because it made his father’s blood boil. What Matt had not expected was how much he had loved the work.
Two and a half years as a Vail cop, however, had convinced Matt he had found the right profession but the wrong job. The work and the people were both too restrictive. The best local cops had no interest in a world beyond the county’s boundaries. So he had quit and gone back to school.
By his third year at Duke Law, Megan Kelly had resigned herself to her only son living in harm’s way. Not even the year of clerking for a state supreme court justice had altered Matt’s focus. Megan Kelly had redone the ground-floor apartment in a surprisingly masculine manner, with muted colors and walnut wain
scoting and Revolutionary War prints. It was to be a place where her grown young man could return between postings. A silent message of acceptance. Despite the perpetual loathing her husband might feel for Matt’s chosen field.
That morning, narrow daylight greeted Matt as he fixed a solitary breakfast. The rising sun managed a tight fit between the trees and the carriage house, illuminating the void where his mother’s presence used to dwell.
Matt took his time dressing. He selected the same dark suit as yesterday, his best. Today he chose a striped shirt and woven silk tie. His day was carefully mapped out, but the timing was down to others. He listened to the house overhead awaken and gradually fill. Campaign staff moved back and forth between the carriage house and upstairs, careful not to look inside as they passed beside his kitchen window. Matt could imagine the fumbling as they sought out new routines, ones where Megan Kelly was no longer there to smooth and hug and smile and care.
The call he was waiting for came at ten minutes past nine. “Matt, this is Jack van Sant. Ambassador Walton would like to see you.”
“Any time.”
“Can you make it down here for eleven? Good. I’ll pencil you in.”
Matt went upstairs. This required passing the side wall. He had seen it the previous day, but it had not registered. Today the crowd was gone, the press chasing somebody else’s tragedy. The hole had been repaired with new brick, but the scar was still evident, as big as the wound to his heart.
He used his key to let himself in the front door. Dark-suited power brokers clustered in the living room and the front hall. Matt recognized a deputy mayor, two aldermen, a banker, and one of Sol’s D.C. staffers. Another group gathered by the office doorway. His mother might be fresh in the ground, but his father’s business and campaign both rolled on.
Muted voices sounded from within his father’s office as Sol slipped through the door and gave the next group his professional hello. Matt knew Sol was very aware of his presence. Other people were watching as well. Matt took his time greeting the people he knew and accepting their quiet condolences. In their faces Matt saw the same barely suppressed excitement he sensed in Sol Greene. These people gave special emphasis to their words. Matt was to make sure to tell his father Paul Kelly could call on them for anything. Matt accepted the words with somber thanks. He read the unspoken as clear as day. He felt the tension vibrating through the handshakes and words and electric gazes.
His father was going to the United States Senate.
The house’s main floor was split in two, with a large central hallway joining the halves. To Matt’s left was the living room, which opened into his father’s office by way of sliding doors. A broad stairway faced the front door. To his right were the dining room and a small den which led to the side entrance. Everyone in the front hall and living room glanced at the door from time to time, but never for very long.
Matt walked down the hall. Behind the stairway and his father’s office was the entrance to what had been his mother’s study. The shut door stood as silent and forlorn as a wooden tombstone.
Matt entered the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee he did not want. He looked out over the carriage house and waited. He did not wait long.
Sol entered and shut the kitchen door behind him. “Can I have a word, Matt?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s step into the dining room, why don’t we.”
A long crack ran up the wall connected to the den. Matt turned so that his back was to that wall.
“How are you holding up, Matt?”
“All right. Tired.”
“Yeah, I doubt any of us are sleeping all that well. You need a staffer to help with something—drive you around, do shopping—just say the word.”
“Thanks, Sol.” Sol had played the mediator for as long as Matt could remember. The giver of birthday gifts his father forgot. The man who escorted Megan Kelly at Matt’s starring events. The one who helped them pack or unpack or cook or pretend that all was well in their travel-torn existence. “Is that what you wanted to see me about?”
“No.” Sol Greene was the same age as Matt’s father, fifty-eight, but looked ten years older. Maybe fifteen. And seriously out of shape. Sol’s neck spilled down from a lumpish chin. Small ears seemed scarcely separated from his head. His hair was wispy and colorless. “I was wondering how long you were planning on staying around.”
Matt gave no sign this was why he had come upstairs. “A few days more. Nobody is in that big a hurry to have me start active duty.”
“Could you maybe take some sick leave?”
“I suppose I could.”
“There’s no good time to ask this. But the pressure, Matt, you wouldn’t believe the strain we’re working under.”
“I hear the latest polls have you eight points up.”
“These things can change overnight.” Sol gave him a worried look, clearly not finding what he sought in Matt’s expression. “You know how much your father wants this to happen.”
Matt gave Sol the opening. “And Mom.”
Sol expelled a tight sigh. “She would’ve been perfect. The Washington society queen.”
They shared a moment’s silent reflection. Then Sol added, “Matt, I know you said you weren’t going to do anything for the campaign. And I respected that.”
“But things have changed, right, Sol?”
“Matt, he’s all alone out there. I can’t stand at his side. It won’t work. He’s alone and he needs . . .”
“Me.”
“It’d mean the world to him. I was sort of hoping he’d have said as much when you guys headed upstairs yesterday.”
Matt hid his bitterness in his mug. “He was pretty tanked.”
“Who could blame him, right?” The appeal was naked in Sol’s gaze. And the excitement. They could win. “What do you say?”
Matt set his mug on the dining room table. “I want something in return.”
Before he finished talking, Sol was already nodding his head. “This could be good for us, Matt.”
“It’s not about the campaign.”
“No, no, of course not.” Even so, his eyes scanned ballots not yet counted. “The police are handling it, though. We’re getting periodic updates.”
“The police don’t have a lead to their names. I want to do what I can to keep them focused.”
“When have I ever refused you anything? Of course I’ll try and set this up.”
“No, Sol. What is it you’re always telling me? You get paid to win.”
He liked that enough to smile. “You say that like a politician.”
Matt headed for the door. “If you want me, you’ll make this happen.”
From the outside, the new Baltimore Times Building was a study in bland functionality. The downstairs lobby contained three alert security guards, a bas-relief of H. L. Mencken, and the intense young woman. “Mr. Kelly? Judy Leigh. Thanks for calling.”
Judy Leigh was petite, intelligent, direct, and visibly pregnant. She was also frizzy-haired and dark-eyed and looked like she would never willingly waste a single minute. She asked, “Mind telling me how you got my name?”
“I followed your reports from my hospital bed.”
“A number of other journalists covered the murder.”
“That’s right. They did.”
She smiled acceptance of his compliment. “While you were still laid up, we were read the riot act by your father’s campaign manager.”
“Sol Greene.”
“He basically told us if anybody came near you, we’d be permanently barred from further access for as long as your father is in politics.”
“I’ll handle Sol.”
“To what end?”
Matt glanced to where a young photographer pretended not to listen.
Judy Leigh said, “Why don’t you go set up in the dining room?”
The photographer replied, “I’m good to go right here. The light’s—”
She applied more force
. “Give us a minute.”
When the photographer had sulked off, Matt said, “I’m offering you a permanent exclusive. Call me any time. If I can’t respond, I’ll tell you.”
She made no attempt to mask her eagerness. “In exchange for?”
“One question now. Maybe more later.”
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “I can’t divulge confidential sources, Mr. Kelly.”
“Matt.”
“Confidences remain confidences for keeps, Mr. Kelly. Everything else is public record.”
“Still, that’s my request.”
“I’ll tell you what I can in good conscience and nothing more.”
“That will have to do.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go into D.C. If you’re free, you can interview me while I drive.”
She did not need to think that one over very long. “Do we have time for a couple of photos before we hit the road?”
The longer Judy Leigh listened to this kid talk, the more convinced she was that Matt Kelly’s greatest struggle was against himself. He could hardly have been more than a few years her junior, but that was how she thought of him. A tall, muscular, soft-spoken kid who desperately needed a mother’s comfort.
Judy Leigh suspected she was having a hormonal attack. Her mother had warned her these things could rise up at any moment during her first pregnancy. And when they did, those chemical triggers would totally eradicate the myth that she had control over her body or her mind. Judy Leigh decided there was no other possible reason for this sudden urge to wrap her arms around a total stranger and let him weep the tears he was just begging to shed.
Even though Matt offered a lot less than she wanted, Judy definitely had a story. The day after they lay the lady to rest, the candidate’s son speaks of the mother who was murdered on her own doorstep. The unsolved crime of the year, two weeks to the election, a Baltimore Times exclusive. But Matt Kelly was not a good interview. His responses were terse, his silences lengthy, his strain constant. A personal question shut him down entirely.
Even so, he made a valiant effort. His voice grated as if he were gar– gling broken glass. But he kept on. Mile after grueling mile down I-95. About how his parents had grown up Fells Point poor. Harbor town tough. Heavy drinking, brawling, crime ridden. His father’s father had been a steelworker in the shipyards. His mother’s mother had run a dive known for smugglers and gunfire. Those tidbits alone made the journey worthwhile. No such historical color emerged through Sol Greene’s careful sanitization.