“There are less noble ways to spend it,” I said, thinking of the Ferrari in the driveway.
“Blair has never lost her devotion to good works. And she’s never quite found the right niche here. She hates being the president’s wife.”
“Yeah . . . well, I’m not here for that.”
“No.”
I dropped wearily into the other plastic office chair.
“Need a drink?” he asked.
Lying, I shook my head no.
“Janet Morgo called a few minutes ago to say you solved the bridge murders.”
I briefly told him what had happened since our last conversation. When I finished, I said, “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look like the two cases were connected after all, aside from the fact that Wheatley’s money was at the root of both.”
He grimaced.
“I guess I knew it wasn’t really possible.”
“I tried. I just ran out of time.”
Taking in my physical condition, he said, “I hope you’re not hurting too badly.”
“I’m okay.”
I didn’t tell him that I had killed the man who had been filming him. That could wait.
“A few hours ago, I told Blair I was being blackmailed,” he said. “I . . . told her it was something related to a trip I took to Cuba last year . . . something political.”
“Did she buy it?”
“I don’t know. She got very upset.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Well . . . I need a few minutes to finish this resignation statement,” he said, not turning away soon enough for me to see his eyes fill with tears.
I was retracing my steps past the oil burner when he called out, “Blair wants me to go back to Detroit again.”
“You were good at it,” I said.
“It’s only now that I’m about to lose my damn job that I realize how much it matters to me. You don’t know the kind of difference I could make here in the years ahead. Education on the world stage is changing so fast, Jake . . . oh, well . . . in another life.”
“Yeah . . . the next one.”
“Jake . . . Blair started drinking right after I told her about my being blackmailed. Could you try to reassure her that things will turn out all right?”
“Brian Razzano is up there doing that,” I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
“Yes . . . he and his wife, Dawn, have been here off and on since this morning. I might have told you that she and Blair have become good friends since he joined the board of trustees. Look, you’ve known both of us for a long time, Jake . . . just tell her this isn’t the end of the world.”
“Sure, Jordan,” I said, trudging up the basement steps.
When I walked into the living room, Blair was sitting on the rattan couch with her long slender legs resting on the coffee table in front of it. She was dressed in a cotton blouse and tight-fitting stretch pants that accentuated the fine curves of her figure.
She was holding a tumbler of what looked like heavy cream with froth on top. A big Siamese cat was curled up on the couch next to her. Brian Razzano sat on the other side of the cat, trying to look thoughtful.
“Is Jordan still preparing his resignation speech?” she asked, slurring the words.
“Get out,” I said to Razzano.
His thoughtful look disappeared. He didn’t move.
“I told you to get out,” I repeated.
She turned toward him and said, “S’allll right, Brian.”
Razzano got up from the couch.
“I’ll be right outside if you need anything, babe.”
When he turned to leave, I saw that the back of his suit jacket and pants were covered with Siamese cat hair. For some reason, it temporarily improved my mood. I heard the back door close behind him, and it was quiet again.
“‘Babe’?” I repeated sarcastically.
“He’s in love with me,” she said. “He and Dawn are having problems.”
“I wonder why. When did Jordan first tell you he was going to resign?”
“Um . . . this afternoon,” she said, sipping her drink.
I heard the low throaty growl of the Ferrari as Razzano started it up in the driveway.
“Did he tell you why?”
“I’m not sure if I’m supposed to tell you,” she said. “Do you know?”
I shook my head.
“He said it was something that happened on the trip he made to Cuba last year,” she said. “Some political thing.”
She began studying me through red-rimmed eyes, her chin resting on her closed fist.
“The immortal Jake,” she said, attempting to smile.
Her face collapsed, and tears began running silently down her cheeks.
“What are you drinking?” I asked, sitting down in one of the easy chairs facing her.
“It’s Kahlua . . . and vodka, and . . . Bailey’s Irish Cream . . . Brian mixes them for me. It’s my third one. He says it’s called a blow job.”
She giggled through the tears.
“What a great guy,” I said.
Her mind had already traveled elsewhere.
“We don’t need any of this,” she said. “We can go back to Detroit . . . it was so good there when we were starting out at ground zero . . . we can start the center again. It will be something good . . . something meaningful.”
“He’s already doing something meaningful.”
“This shit?”
Part of the drink slopped over the edge of the glass.
“What are you so angry about?” I asked.
“Everything . . . this place . . . my role as his glorified robe fluffer . . . you name it,” she said, taking a long sip of Razzano’s drink. “This country is so pathetic right now . . . a culture that deifies excess without restraint, the degradation of women, sexual release without love or even caring, friends with all the benefits, celebrity without accomplishment, and the pure worship of money and greed,” she said, the words smearing together, “while billions of people around the world wake up every day not knowing if they will even survive.”
“Things haven’t changed very much in three thousand years, have they?”
“Screw you, Jake,” she said defiantly. “I still believe that Jordan and I can make a real difference . . . one person at a time.”
Something gnawed at my muddled brain. I tried to remember what it might be.
“This tastes awful,” she said, making a face after taking another swallow of her drink.
“Then don’t drink it,” I suggested, standing up to leave.
I was going through the kitchen when I heard a stifled sob coming up the basement stairs from the study. Sorry, old buddy, I silently apologized. Opening the back door, I headed outside.
Behind their old Volvo, I could see Razzano in his blood-red sports car. He had put on a red baseball cap embossed with the logo of the Ferrari racing team and was holding the steering wheel as if he was coming into the last straightaway at Monza.
“Friends with all the benefits,” I said aloud.
Turning around, I went back inside the house. Blair was sitting exactly where I had left her. The Siamese cat had crawled onto her lap and was licking its paws contentedly. They looked up at the same time.
“Friends with all the benefits,” I repeated.
“What?” she asked.
“In your little rant, you used the phrase ‘friends with all the benefits.’”
“Friends with benefits is a very common term today,” she came back. “I assume you know what it means.”
“I know what it means,” I said. “But you said friends with all the benefits. It’s the name of a local call-girl service.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, continuing to stroke the cat.
“You told me you loathed being the president’s wife. Remember?”
“In Detroit, we were full partners . . . we were making a real difference in people’s lives. How would you like to be relegated
to the role of the adoring wife whose sole contribution is to stand at the side of my perfect husband and bat my eyelashes up at him?”
The anger had focused her attention. It was finally starting to make sense.
“I probably should have figured it out before now,” I said. “He’s not so perfect, is he?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked while continuing to stroke the blue-eyed Siamese.
“I’m talking about your sending Jordan the video and giving him the demand for five million dollars from Wheatley’s unrestricted gift. He told you about the gift, didn’t he?”
“What video? You’re not making any sense, Jake.”
“That’s why you came out to visit me at the lake, isn’t it? Razzano wanted to know how much I had learned about the blackmail scheme.”
She had run out of words.
“You and Razzano cooked this up together. You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
“Why not?” she came right back. “At least he cares about me and what I think.”
“Yeah. Five million dollars’ worth.”
“You’re wrong about that. Instead of Jordan spending the money on another lame building, it would have gone to all the causes I believe in. Brian was setting up a foundation. I would have controlled it. Now that Jordan is resigning, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, you would have controlled it. You don’t know your new partner. Behind the curtain, he isn’t the Wizard of Oz. Blackmail is his business. His idea of doing good is corrupting judges and politicians and buying more influence. And he was happy to add Jordan to the list.”
“You’re wrong about Brian.”
“And you’re a gullible fool. It ends now, Blair, or I’ll turn you and Razzano over to the DA.”
She started to cry again.
“How did you find out what he was doing?” I asked her softly.
Her eyes seemed infinitely sad.
“You think you know someone so well,” she said. “On certain days, he just acted . . . so strangely. I knew something was going on. One night I borrowed a car and just followed him up to that place . . . you can’t imagine . . . when I saw them through the opening in the curtains.”
“Can you forgive him?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, swallowing the last of her blow job.
“I can understand how you feel . . . the private humiliation of seeing him that way the first time. And then when you found out what he was doing, you asked counselor Brian for help . . . and he contracted the video job out after giving you some tender solace. And you convinced yourself that five million dollars could do a lot more good than the money in Jordan’s paycheck. Except once you went down the blackmail road, Razzano would have taken most of it for himself.”
She was staring hard at me now.
“You’re going to go down there now and tell Jordan he can keep his job . . . that the blackmailer just called to let him off the hook. Tell him anything you want as long as you give him the miraculous reprieve.”
She didn’t say anything.
“He loves this job, Blair, and you need to let him keep it. Find something constructive to do with your time aside from fucking Razzano.”
“All right,” she said finally.
“And if you want to save your marriage, wait a few days and tell him the truth about what you did . . . and that he doesn’t have to worry about being publicly exposed. Tell him that the master video file was destroyed. I have it, and I’ll get rid of it.”
She nodded as I tried to stand up. My body felt like dead weight as I walked back through the kitchen and out the back door.
Razzano was still sitting in his Ferrari while continuing to rev the twelve-cylinder engine. I could hear the repetitive beat of a rap song blaring from the car’s sound system through the closed windows. I stopped at the driver’s-side door. He pressed a switch on the center console, and the window rolled down.
“Anything I can do to help?” he asked earnestly over the pounding music.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning into the car and pulling him toward me by his silk tie. “If you breathe a word to anyone about what Jordan did at the Wonderland, or if you continue trying to blackmail him, I’ll kill you, Brian . . . just like your hard boy, Sal Scalise.”
Letting him go, I began walking back to my truck. I couldn’t tell if he believed me, but he turned down the rap music.
My battery was dead when I tried to start the engine. I wasn’t about to ask Razzano for booster cables. Fortunately, Jordan lived on a hillside. Letting my foot off the brake, I let the truck roll back down the driveway and jumpstarted it.
Heading down Campus Hill, I was glad to know that Bug was still alive. I would find out from Ken Macready where she was and bring her home. I was ready to go home. I really missed home.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the gifted Kim Hastings for her contributions to this novel. And much appreciation to my editors at Crooked Lane, Matthew Martz and Peter Senftleben, whose recommendations made the book a more compelling and hopefully enjoyable read. And finally to my sainted literary agent, David Halpern, who has guided my writing career for eighteen years.
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