Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II

by H M Wilhelmborn

  When prompted to provide the client’s billing number, I entered a general billing code into the machine, and I made sure that I selected a billing code to which only I paid attention because it was my job to signal anomalies in that particular code’s use to the name partners.

  The copying complete, I bumped into LSD again, and she asked how I was doing.

  “Great,” I said.

  “That seems like a lot of copying,” she said. “Do you ever get tired of it?”

  I ignored her and made my way back to my desk.

  Hannah came by my desk, where she saw all of the CWP materials, laid out in piles.

  “What are you doing with those documents?” Hannah asked. “Have you converted?”

  “No,” I said. “Larry got Sheila’s permission for me to access these and send them to him. It’s nothing I don’t already know. I took all these notes. Look. Here are some notes from the meeting in which you talked about 1(a)(1), which you drafted. Here are my notes from the meeting in which we talked about the Chief Justice, and here are Larry’s own notes, which I typed up.”

  “But there’s an ethical wall in place,” Hannah said.

  “And they’ve removed it so that I could access these documents. Ask Larry. Or Sheila. I am required to send Larry these documents.”

  “This place!” Hannah said. “It drives me crazy. First, they tell you one thing. And then they reverse themselves. If I really cared for my sanity, I’d honestly resign and move back to Cleveland tomorrow.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said.

  A wave of sadness swept through me, and I started crying. I sat down in my seat and cried. My children. What had I done? Would they ever forgive me? Would Mauru understand that I hadn’t set out to hurt him? What if me and Mike didn’t work out?

  Hannah thought that her decision to convert to the CWP had wounded me and left me without any allies at work (given Larry’s, Amandine’s, and Andy’s decisions to convert), which was why I was crying. She asked me to join her in her office. I put all the CWP documents in my drawer, and I joined Hannah in her office.

  “It’s nothing personal,” Hannah said as I took a seat across from her, wiping my eyes. “You are such a good friend and colleague, Janet. I’d trust you with my life. But I’ve got to do this for myself. This is something they don’t teach you at law school. You either go where the work is, or you join the unemployment line. There is absolutely no dignity in being the smartest person in the room, holding on to the moral high ground, and having the dimwits get ahead of you. And the dimwits will do it. I’ve beaten them in the classroom. I’ve beaten them in the courtroom, and now I’m finally learning to beat them at the game of life. And, right now, the CWP holds all the keys to the game, and there are lots of dimwits around.”

  “I’m so stupid,” I said. “I’m so stupid.”

  “You’re not, Janet. You have your morals, and I love and respect you for that. You’re like a compass, perpetually pointing north. I actually wish I were more like you, sometimes. You stick to your guns. Your kids will turn out great.”

  “Do the opposite of what I do, Hannah. I’m just so stupid.”

  “You’re one of my favorite people,” Hannah said. “I know that I can rely on you, even when you drive me crazy. And we have similar takes on things.”

  “You’re so kind.”

  “I’m not. I’m just like Larry. I’ll bury someone by dinner if they cross me.”

  I thanked Hannah, and she hugged me. She promised me that nothing would change when she converted, and I’d always be her friend and colleague.

  I took the CWP documents out of my drawer. I placed them in two piles—one pile for Larry, and another pile for me. I went to Larry’s office, got all the other files he’d requested, sealed all the files in new manila envelopes, which I encased in tamper-evident envelopes. I called the courier delivery service directly and had them pick the materials up from me.

  The documents expedited to Larry, I sent him an e-mail, copied Diana on it, and said that the documents had been sent.

  I told Amandine and Andy that I was stepping out of the office for a bit.

  I hurried home with the documents in my bag. I opened an envelope at random, pulled out a document, and read it.

  “Chief Justice Cathay of the United States Supreme Court thinks he can tell us what to do because he’s most aligned with us on every issue, and he’s the swing vote. We have a lot on him, and we’ve done a lot for him, more than anyone knows. It’s not about blackmail but about keeping people on the Right Path, and sometimes that requires us to remind them of their pressure points.”

  I pulled out another summary, which I had also written.

  “Don’t be alarmed when you all read in tomorrow’s Herald that four justices of the Supreme Court of California are up for impeachment for renovating their homes with taxpayer money.”

  I hid the documents on the topmost shelf in the kitchen.

  A few weeks later, Mauru announced that he was taking the kids up to Sacramento for the summer vacation, which was only a few weeks away. He didn’t ask for my permission. He just did it, and everyone in the family said I should let him do it because I had put him through hell.

  Larry returned to work, and he announced that they were trying an experimental treatment called high-intensity oxygen therapy on Hudson, and the jury was still out.

  “As long as my son is still alive,” Larry said, “there’s hope that he’ll pull through, that he’ll finish high school, go to college, get married, and give me grandkids. I’ll go up and see him this weekend.” Larry tried to appear impassive. “Hudson’s a Wagon, Janet. Wagons never lose a fight.”

  On Larry’s desk was the first gold stripe for his CWP uniform.

  He, Amandine, Andy, and Hannah had all passed the seven-day CWP exam, and they were now members of the CWP, bound for life—and who for knows whatever the CWP said came afterward—to Jeremiah Trehoviak and the CWP.

  “Guess what?” Hannah whispered. “I scored higher than anyone who’s ever taken the exams, and that includes Larry, Amandine, and Andy.”

  I was impressed—if a little disappointed—with Hannah.

  “Know something, Janet? Technically speaking,” Hannah told me as she showed me her new blue uniform, which she’d just received, “Larry, Amandine, Andy, and I are all neophytes, which means that we’re at the bottom of the ladder. All the CWP people at WS&X outrank us, including Sheila and Gertrude, which creates its own Pandora’s box. As a neophyte, I have to do as I’m told, especially from someone in Sheila’s position, but I work for Larry, who’s at the same level as me in the CWP, and I outperformed him on the exam. Anyway, what matters is that I’m back on all of my old projects, and I couldn’t be happier. I have job security again.”

  I recalled Hannah making fun of the “Hoviaks.”

  I remembered us laughing at Scrimmage, and I recalled Hannah disdainfully calling the seven postulates of Scrimmage the Seven Commandments. I remembered Larry saying that he’d never vote for the CWP ever, but he’d only take their money. But there they both were with CWP uniforms in their offices, excited about having passed the CWP conversion exams.

  “I’m really proud of myself,” Hannah said. “I’ve even made my mom proud, which is really hard to do. She says I’ve made an excellent professional choice. She couldn’t be happier for me.”

  21

  Utterly

  About four months after the intervention, the kids and Mauru were still at my parents’ place.

  Jon was finally talking to me again, and Mauru’s anger had abated somewhat. I was glad that Mauru and I could sit in the same room and have a conversation.

  Mom still refused to talk to me, and she told Dad and Mauru that she’d only ever talk to me again if I promised to “really apologize for what I’d done, which means leaving WS&X and never again seeing that terrible man from that terrible organization.”

  I spent several hours with the kids on the weekends, a
nd although Mauru wasn’t ready to move back in together, his summer vacation with the kids in Sacramento and Boston had convinced him that he should try to make things work between us, provided that I was willing to stop seeing Mike and that I left WS&X.

  Mauru and Mom were closer than ever, and Dad and Maria were the only ones who came to the condo to spend time with me.

  “You really did break my heart, Janet,” Dad said. “But it wasn’t your fault. I put you in that situation in which you were trapped between two worlds.”

  I missed having Mauru at home. It hurt to think of him with Mom and Dad—my parents—and me on my own, sobbing my way to sleep and eating all the carbs and sugars I wanted. Some nights, I was woken by what sounded like the twins crying, but they weren’t there; they were at my parents’ home in La Jolla, with their dad and grandparents.

  I thought about Mauru’s conditions for us to get back together (which were also Mom’s conditions).

  I’d already tried to leave WS&X (without success), and I couldn’t stop seeing Mike. To say that I’d never see him again would be to place myself in the impossible position of guessing what I might do when he was released, which I couldn’t do.

  Knowing this, I felt both free and terrified.

  I was honoring a fundamental truth about myself—I could not let one man go for the sake of another. But in accepting that truth, I stood to lose my husband, maybe my kids, and my mother.

  Was I really like those women who gave up their families for a man they hardly knew—transported by ephemeral feelings of desire and delight—only to find themselves alone and scorned once the transports of the moments were over, and the man had moved on to other women to whom he had made similar, or even more compelling, protestations of eternal love?

  I’d seen such women on TV. They’d all been drawn to the forbidden and the dangerous. Their photos were framed in rectangles on the front pages of blogs and newspapers, and some of them still had the gall to say, “I love him, and I’d do it all again because there’s nothing as pure as love.”

  I’d laughed at some of them. I’d told myself that they’d come from broken homes, and in those homes, they hadn’t learned self-respect, integrity, and self-love. Which woman, after all, would allow herself to fall for something so fleeting as her desires for a man with whom she was almost entirely unfamiliar?

  And yet, there I was, one such woman.

  And the more I felt pressed (by Mauru and Mom) to let go of Mike, the more I felt the urge to hold onto him; I even referred to Mike and me, as I thought of our future together, as “we” and “us.”

  “You will not win in this fight against your mother,” Maria told me. “That’s the nature of the relationship with our parents. We can never win.”

  “It’s not about winning anymore,” I told Maria. “It’s about the truth.”

  “And the truth is that you don’t know what you really want.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You used to tell me that you could never love any man like you love Mauru. You said your family came first. Now you’re falling for a man in the CWP, and you say you want him and Mauru, but you still don’t know this other man. I think it’s an early midlife crisis.”

  “Maybe. Whatever it is, it feels true.”

  “That’s the problem. Too much heart and too little head.”

  “Sometimes thinking’s overrated. But, if you think about it, monogamy’s overrated.”

  “Janet, are you crazy? You would never have spoken like this before you met this guy. You were the one who sang ‘Find Me a Unicorn.’ That was your song about finding one man you could adore.”

  “People get into all sorts of trouble by promising to sleep with only person for the rest of their lives. At least the CWP is honest about what they do. Everyone—at least at the top—is allowed two partners for life, and everyone gets involved in making the selection.”

  “This isn’t who you are, Janet. This is who they are and who they’ve made you become. I know that it’s hard being the child of an immigrant in these times. I am, too, but we don’t belong by becoming what we are not. Until now, you have never criticized faithfulness in marriage.”

  “Because I didn’t have to. What’s the big deal, anyway? So, I slept with a married man, and I’m a married woman. Mike and I have another in common. We’re both adulterers.”

  I smiled.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Janet. If this gets to the press, there will be death threats, and there will be demonstrations, and who knows what else. You are living a fantasy, and fantasies have a way of convincing us that they’re real; it’s their venom, and it kills so many people.”

  I thought of “Vipers and Voyages” and was tempted to smile again. Maria said she’d stand by me, but she believed that it would only get a lot worse before it got better—and it would only get better when I let go of Mike and came to my senses.

  Later that evening, I got a text message. “Janet, it’s Louise. I’m outside, outdoors.”

  Louise? The only Louise I knew was superfluous, redundant Louise, and she was up in Menlo Park.

  Another text message followed: “Janet. It’s urgent and pressing. I can’t stay put and wait forever and for always.”

  Who was this? And at 7 p.m. on a weeknight!

  I wondered if I should respond. Should I see if someone was actually outside?

  I thought of opening the drapes to check, but I decided not to.

  “?!” Another text message said. Then, “!?”

  I opened the front door and stepped into the warm evening air, sneezed, and looked straight ahead. A woman in a CWP uniform waved energetically at me, tapped her watch to suggest she was running out of time, and she beckoned me over.

  It was redundant, superfluous Louise.

  What was she doing in San Diego?

  “Jump in!” She said, pointing at her car. “Hop into my car, my vehicle.”

  “Are you crazy, Louise! I’m not going anywhere in the middle of the night like some bandit’s daughter.”

  “He only has an hour, sixty minutes,” Louise said. “And he wants to see you, lay eyes on you.”

  “Who? The bandit?”

  “Absolutely, positively not,” she said. “There is no bandit or outlaw, Janet. It’s Mike. He’s just been released and freed, and he’s in a safe, secure place. Do you want to lay eyes on him and see him?”

  Hope had arrived. At last.

  I jumped into Louise’s car and looked around. Mike wasn’t in the car.

  Louise told me to lie flat on the back seat and to keep my head down.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” I told Louise. “I’m a proud woman, and I can sit up if I want to, Louise.”

  “No, you can’t,” she said. “It’s impermissible, not allowed. There are always risks and chances of being followed and tailed, so I won’t have you sitting up.”

  I lay on the seat, muttering obscenities to myself and wondering what I’d gotten myself into. If we were stopped by the cops, what would I say: “Hello, officer. I was just taking a nap after a long day at work, and my CWP chauffeur over here drove all the way down from Menlo Park to drive me home?”

  About ten minutes later, we arrived at a home in a part of the city I didn’t recognize.

  Louise unlocked the front door of the home.

  There he was in his full uniform.

  I embraced him.

  The scar beneath his eye seemed more prominent than I had remembered, and I wondered if he still had bruises on his arms.

  “You know Louise, right?” Mike asked as he took me by the hand.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I think I mentioned that Louise was a good friend,” Mike said.

  “And you thought I was stupid, simpleminded, and ignorant just because I love and adore synonyms, Janet,” Louise interjected.

  “I’m so sorry, Louise. I get lots of stuff wrong. I’m quick to judge people,” I confessed, “and when yo
u denied Hannah and me the nine-courses at the fundraiser, I was furious at you.”

  “You have forty minutes with each other,” Louise said as she left me with Mike.

  We walked to the nearest bedroom and closed the door. We removed our clothes, and, surprisingly, we just lay beside each other for a while.

  He caressed me, and he asked how I was doing. I told him about the photos, the intervention, and what amounted to a separation between Mauru and me.

  He kissed me and apologized. There was nothing he could do to stop the photos from going out. Greta had given the order. Would I convert?

  No. But I was sure that I wanted us to keep seeing each other.

  “You’re stubborn,” he said. “Louise told me that the CWP scared clients away from your dad, that they prevented you from being employed by law firms in San Diego, that they got to Helen, and they even had a member’s son bully Jon at school. They also sent the photographs—”

  “The CWP did that to my son and my dad?”

  “And not only that—”

  “I absolutely won’t join now. I’m not like Hannah, who sold her soul to the devil for thirty pieces of silver.”

  “She’ll go very far, but I’m not interested in her. There’s nothing respectable about her. Nothing.”

  We embraced, kissed, made love, and he told me that he loved me. He was certain now. “You are utterly foolish for wanting me,” he said, “but it turns me on.” We made love again, and I almost called him “Mauru.”

  The word “utterly” rang in my ears like a word that captures everything we desire and want to destroy about the man we want. He’d never used that word before.

  Utterly.

  Utterly.

  Utterly.

  “One minute! Sixty seconds!” Louise yelled as she knocked on the door.

  We embraced again, he kissed me, we took a quick shower, and we got dressed.

  Louise knocked, and Mike opened the door.

  “What will you do about Mauru?” He asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’m not giving you up. They’ve put me through hell. They’ve put us both through hell—”