Ties That Bind aj-2

by Phillip Margolin

  "Who's your friend, Frank?"

  She was being cautious. Kerrigan guessed it was because she knew that Dupre was under investigation. Kerrigan had read Bennett's file. It contained a list of johns with their phone numbers and addresses. There had been a guy from Pennsylvania in town for a convention six months ago.

  "Randy Chung. He's from Pittsburgh. He spoke very highly of you."

  "Did he? He had fun? He enjoyed himself?"

  "Very much."

  There was dead air.

  "It wouldn't be all night or anything like that," Kerrigan said. "Just an hour or so. I know it's late."

  "Okay, but I'll want five hundred dollars."

  "Five. I . . ."

  "It's your decision."

  Kerrigan knew a motel where the night clerks asked no questions and were used to clients who paid for the night but stayed for an hour. Ally knew the motel too. They hung up. Kerrigan was light-headed. He thought that he might throw up. He tried to slow his breathing as he went back to his car. What was he doing? He should call back and call it off. He should just go home. But the car was already rolling.

  Traffic was light. His mind wandered. He was going to use a false name, but what if Ally discovered his identity? Was that part of the thrill? Did he want to be ruined?

  It was that run--that ninety-yard run. How he wished that a Michigan player had stopped him anywhere on that field short of the goal line. What he'd said to Hugh was true. No Michigan player had been close to him during those three Rose Bowl runs. His blockers wouldn't let them. But he got the credit. And then everything had snowballed out of control.

  A car signaled into his lane, and Kerrigan dragged his thoughts back to the road. He tried to keep them there, but images of Ally Bennett intruded. Ally in court, what he imagined she'd look like naked. She was incredible, heart-stopping, and he would be with her in less than an hour. A driver honked, and Kerrigan's grip tightened on the wheel. That had been close. He forced himself to concentrate on his driving. Even so, he didn't notice the black car that had been following him since he left the hotel.

  Kerrigan parked in the shadows of the motel lot. The rain started to fall again, pinging on the car roof. The sound startled him into flashing on the night a week and a half before the Rose Bowl, when he'd sat in another car in the rain. Tim shook his head to clear the vision. His heart was beating too fast. He needed to calm down. Once he'd pulled himself together, he dashed across the lot to the motel office.

  A few minutes later, Tim hung his rain-streaked trench coat in the closet of the room he'd rented for the night. There was a lamp on the end table next to the bed. He turned it on but left off the overhead light. He phoned Ally with his room number, then sat in the room's only armchair. He felt sick with fear and self-loathing as he waited for Bennett to arrive. Twice he started to leave, but turned back at the door. Several times he wondered if Ally would come to the motel and each time part of him hoped that she wouldn't show.

  A knock startled Kerrigan. His stomach felt like it held a hot coal. When he opened the door, she was standing there, as beautiful and sensual as he remembered her.

  In the lot, the man in the black car watched Kerrigan open the door for his visitor.

  "Aren't you going to let me in, Frank?" Ally asked with a seductive smile.

  "Yes, of course," Kerrigan answered, stepping back. She glided by him, taking in the room before turning to study her client. Kerrigan locked the door. His throat was dry and his lust made him dizzy.

  "Here's the deal, Frank. You give me my fee and I give you your dreams. Does that sound like a fair trade?"

  Ally was wearing a short wraparound skirt that showed her legs to the thigh, and a tank top that revealed the curve of her breasts. Her voice was huskier in person. Just hearing her speak made Kerrigan hard. Without taking his eyes from Ally, he removed the money from his pocket and held it toward her.

  "Bring the money here, Frank," Ally said, establishing her dominance. It was what he'd hoped for and he obeyed, gladly surrendering his will to her.

  Ally counted the money and put it in her purse. Then she peeled off her tank top and unwrapped her skirt until all she was wearing was a pair of black-lace bikini panties. Kerrigan's breath caught in his throat, and his knees almost gave way. If he could have invented a woman he would have invented the woman who stood before him.

  "Tell me what you want, Frank. Tell me what you dream about."

  Kerrigan lowered his eyes until he was looking at the floor. He whispered his wish.

  Ally smiled. "Are you a shy boy, Frank? You spoke so softly that I didn't hear you. Say it again."

  "I . . . I want to be punished."

  Cindy Kerrigan turned on her light when Tim crept into the bedroom.

  "It's almost two."

  "I'm sorry. Hugh Curtin was at the dinner. He's having personal problems and needed to talk."

  "Oh, really," she said coldly. "And how is Hugh?"

  "Okay. You know. Hugh is Hugh."

  Cindy sat up and leaned against the headboard of their king-size bed. One strap of her silk nightgown slipped down, revealing the curve of her left breast. She had ash-blond hair and lovely tanned skin. Most men thought that she was beautiful and desirable.

  "Megan missed you," she said, knowing Tim would feel guilty. He could not avoid her without avoiding his daughter, whom he loved.

  "I'm sorry. You know I wanted to come home," he said as he stripped off his clothes.

  "What exactly was the problem?" Cindy asked in a tone that let him know that she saw through his lie.

  "Office politics. Making partner wasn't all he thought it would be," Tim answered vaguely as he grabbed his pajamas. "It's complicated."

  Cindy stared at him with contempt but dropped the subject. Tim walked into the bathroom. She clicked off her light. He thought about Cindy lying there in the dark, hurt and angry. For a moment, he almost went to her, but he couldn't. She'd see through him. And if the holding and the touching led to sex, he wouldn't be able to perform. He was spent. Of course, the likelihood of kindling any passion between them was remote. Sex had almost completely disappeared from their marriage.

  Shortly after their wedding, it dawned on Tim that he had not married Cindy because he loved her. He had married her for the same reason he'd gone to law school. Marriage and law school were places to hide--islands of normalcy after the media frenzy that followed the Heisman award and his decision to forgo pro football. The moment Kerrigan had his epiphany, he felt like a gray cloth had been draped over his heart.

  Cindy was the daughter of Winston Callaway and Sandra Driscoll. The Driscolls, the Callaways, and the Kerrigans were old Portland money, which meant that Tim had known Cindy his whole life. They had not become a couple until their last year in high school. When Cindy followed Tim to the University of Oregon, they continued to date, and they had married the weekend Tim received the Heisman Trophy.

  Tim had hoped that having a child would make him love his wife, but that experiment failed miserably, as did every other attempt he made to force himself to feel something for her. Playing a role twenty-four hours a day was exhausting and had worn him down. Cindy was no fool. He wondered why she stayed with him when all he did was hurt her. Tim had considered divorce, but he could never bring himself to leave Cindy, and now there was Megan. He dreaded losing her or hurting her.

  Kerrigan slipped onto his side of the bed and thought about his evening with Jasmine. Sex was not the magnet that had drawn him to her. Freedom was the attraction. When he was naked in that seedy motel room, he had been truly free of the expectations of others. When he knelt before Jasmine, Kerrigan felt the mantle of the hero fall from his shoulders. When he used his mouth on her, he was perverted and not perfect, a deviate and a criminal, not an idol. Kerrigan wished that every person who had praised him and held him up as an example to others had seen him lying on those stained sheets, eyes closed, begging a whore to degrade him. They would turn away in disgust, and he would be fre
e of the fame he knew was built on a lie.

  Chapter Seven.

  Harvey Grant, the presiding judge in Multnomah County, was a slender man of average size with salt-and-pepper hair, a life-long bachelor and friend of William Kerrigan, Tim's father--a hard-driving businessman and a perfectionist whom Tim had never been able to please. "Uncle" Harvey had been Tim's confidant since he was little, and he'd become Tim's mentor as soon as Kerrigan had made the decision to go to law school.

  Normally, the judge attracted little notice when he was not wearing his robes. At the moment, however, he was preparing to make a key putt, and the other golfers in his foursome were focusing every ounce of their mental energy on him. Grant stroked his ball, and it rolled slowly toward the hole on the eighteenth green of the Westmont Country Club course. The putt looked good until the moment the ball stopped on the rim of the cup. Grant's shoulders sagged; Tim Kerrigan, Grant's partner, let out a pent up breath; and Harold Travis pumped a clenched fist. He'd played terribly all day and he needed the missed putt to bail him out.

  "I believe you gentlemen owe Harold and me five bucks apiece," Frank Jaffe told Grant and Kerrigan.

  "I'll pay you, Frank," Grant grumbled as he and Kerrigan handed portraits of Abraham Lincoln to their opponents, "but I shouldn't have to pay a penny to Harold. You carried him all day. How you made that bunker shot on seventeen I'll never know."

  Travis laughed and clapped Grant on the back.

  "To show that I'm a compassionate guy I'll buy the first round," the senator said.

  "Now that's the only good thing that's happened to me since the first tee," answered Kerrigan.

  "He's just trying to buy your vote, Tim," Grant grumbled good-naturedly.

  "What vote?" Travis asked with a sly grin.

  The Westmont was the most exclusive country club in Portland. Its clubhouse was a sprawling fieldstone structure that had started in 1925 with a small central building and had grown larger and more imposing as membership in the club grew in prestige. The men were stopped several times by other members as they crossed the wide flagstone patio on their way to a table shaded by a forest green umbrella where Carl Rittenhouse, the senator's administrative assistant, waited.

  "How'd it go?" Rittenhouse asked the senator.

  "Frank did all the work and I rode his coattails," Travis answered.

  "Same way you rode the president's in your last election," Grant joked. The men laughed.

  A waitress took their order and Grant, Kerrigan, and Jaffe reminisced about the round while Senator Travis stared contentedly into space.

  "You're awfully quiet," Jaffe told Travis.

  "Sorry. I've got a problem with my farm bill. Two senators are threatening to keep it in committee if I don't vote against an army-base closure."

  "Being a judge has its upside," Grant said. "If someone gives me a hard time I can hold him in contempt and toss his butt in jail."

  "I'm definitely in the wrong business," Travis said. "I don't know about jail, though. Civil commitment would probably be more appropriate for some of my colleagues."

  "Being a senator is a bit like being an inmate in a fancy asylum," Rittenhouse chimed in.

  "I don't think I could win an insanity defense for a politician, Carl," Jaffe said. "They're crafty, not crazy."

  "Yes," the judge said. "Look at the way Harold tricked us into letting him partner with you."

  "I did read somewhere that not all sociopaths are serial killers," Jaffe said. "A lot of them become successful businessmen and politicians."

  "Imagine what an asset it would be in business and politics to be free of your conscience," Kerrigan mused.

  "Do you think guilt is innate or is it taught?" Travis asked.

  "Nature versus nurture," Jaffe answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "The eternal question."

  "I believe the potential to experience guilt is part of God's design," Grant said. "It's what makes us human."

  Harvey Grant was a devout Catholic. He and the Kerrigans attended the same church, and Tim knew that the judge never missed a Sunday.

  "But serial killers, professional criminals and, as Frank pointed out, some politicians and businessmen, don't seem to have a conscience. If we're born with one, where does it go?" Kerrigan asked.

  "And what if there is no God?" Travis asked.

  "Hey," Rittenhouse interjected with mock alarm, "let's not say that too loudly. All we need is a headline in the Oregonian : senator travis questions the existence of god."

  But Travis wasn't finished. "If there is no God then morality becomes relative. Whoever runs the show sets the rules."

  "The point is moot, Harold," Frank said. "The fact that the judge missed that putt on eighteen proves beyond question that there is a God."

  Everyone laughed and Travis stood up.

  "On that note, I'll leave you gentlemen. Thanks for the game. It was a welcome break from work and campaigning."

  "Our pleasure," Grant told him. "Let me know when you can sneak away again so I can win back my money."

  Frank Jaffe stood, too. "Thanks for inviting me, Harvey. I love the course."

  "You should think of joining the Westmont. I'll sponsor you."

  "Hey, Harvey, I'm just a simple country lawyer. I'd be in over my head in the company of you sophisticates."

  "Get out of here, Frank, before we have to start shoveling the patio clean," the judge answered.

  Travis, Jaffe, and Rittenhouse headed for the locker room. "Harold was in a good mood," Kerrigan observed when they were out of sight.

  "Why wouldn't he be? He's going to be the next president of the United States." Grant signaled the waitress for another round. "So, Tim, how have you been?"

  "Overworked."

  Grant smiled. "And Megan? How is she? I haven't seen her in a while."

  "You don't need an invitation to drop over." Kerrigan smiled. "She asks about you."

  "Maybe I'll come over next weekend."

  "She's so sharp. I read to her every night. Lately it's been Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . A few days ago I caught her sitting on the floor in her room with the book in her lap sounding out the words."

  "It's her good genes."

  Talking about Megan made Kerrigan want to go home. For a moment, he wondered if he should desert the judge, who lived alone and who, Kerrigan imagined, must be lonely at times, despite the parties he threw and his constant round of social engagements. Then he thought about his own situation. He was married to a good woman, he had a wonderful daughter, but he still felt lonely. Maybe the judge was okay on his own. He had his work and the respect of the legal community. He also had integrity. Kerrigan stared out across the green expanse of the eighteenth fairway and wondered what that would feel like.

  * * *

  "Don't forget, we've got that fund-raiser at seven-thirty, tonight," Carl Rittenhouse told his boss as they left the clubhouse.

  "The Schumans?"

  "Right. I'll pick you up at seven."

  "See you then."

  Rittenhouse walked to the country club entrance to wait for the valet to get his car moments before another valet parked the senator's Range Rover near the bag drop. The valet put Travis's clubs in the back of the Rover then jogged away after the senator tipped him generously. Travis smiled as he walked to the driver's door. Everything was going so well. A recent CNN poll showed him fourteen percentage points up on the favorite to win the Democratic nomination in a head-to-head race, and the money for his campaign kept on pouring in.

  The screech of tires tore Travis from his reverie as Jon Dupre's Porsche squealed to a stop next to him. Dupre threw open the door and hopped out, leaving the motor running.

  "Lori's dead," Dupre shouted.

  "Lower your voice," Travis answered, alarmed that someone might hear them.

  "I'll keep my mouth shut just like I did when I was indicted. I could have caused a lot of trouble by telling the DA what I know about you."

  "I appreciate that, Jon," Travis sa
id, desperate to calm down Dupre. He could not afford to be seen having an argument with a pimp.

  "I bet you do. And I'm certain the DA would be very interested in knowing about your relationship with a woman who's just turned up beaten to death."

  "Lori was fine when she left me. I don't know what happened to her later."

  "You know goddamn well what happened to her," Dupre said, jabbing a finger at the senator. "Look, I'll make this simple, Harold. I need money."

  "Are you trying to blackmail me ?" Travis asked incredulously.