The Nomination

by William G. Tapply

  Soon the new leaves would fill the gaps in the maples and willows and the pretty stream would disappear behind the foliage, but now, in the middle of April, although the rising sap and swelling buds were turning the branches pink and yellow, the trees were still skeletal, and from her little house huddled against the Catskill hillside, Simone could still see the stream running milky and swollen with snowmelt.

  Simone loved the leaves, the way the thick summertime foliage hugged her in and protected her in her little sanctuary. But she loved her view of the moving water, too.

  In the Catskills, the streams were called Kills. A Dutch word, she’d been told, meaning stream or creek or river.

  Simone had heard that some earnest group of animal lovers had staged a demonstration against the name of one of the creeks—the Fishkill—because they believed it promoted violence against trout. How empty their lives must be, she thought.

  The newspaper clipping lay flat on the table beside her cup and saucer. The crease across its middle had started to rip from all the times she had folded and unfolded it in the past few days, trying to make up her mind.

  “Abortion Doc Assassination Foiled!” blared the headline.

  Jill, her best friend, her nurse, her housemate, and her lover, had brought home the paper from the dentist’s office. Simone had no interest in the news, subscribed to no newspapers or magazines, didn’t own a television. She’d paged through the newspaper because she rarely saw one, idly, without any interest or curiosity.

  Simone Bonet didn’t care about abortions or assassinations, foiled or otherwise. She no longer cared about issues or policies, wars or catastrophes, heroes or celebrities. She’d had her fill of all those things.

  She was only interested in the inevitable, comforting passage of the seasons, the leafing out of the trees, the blooming of the lilacs, the arrival of the migrating songbirds, the gentle unfolding of whatever life she had left.

  At least, that’s how she’d felt until she saw the photo.

  It wasn’t the headline that had grabbed her attention.

  It was the photograph of the young woman kneeling beside the abortion clinic assassin with her arm raised. Her face was alive with emotion. Simone read triumph and something like terrible agony in her expression.

  The name was wrong, of course. Carol Ann Chang. Chang was a Chinese name, and anybody could see that this young woman wasn’t Chinese. But her age, that was about right, Simone judged. And her eyes, Vietnamese, not Chinese, they were Simone’s.

  The sharp nose, the wide mouth, the curly hair, they could certainly be his.

  This was May. Even after all these years, a mother would recognize her baby. Her name should be Jessie Church, not Carol Ann Chang. Simone felt it with absolute certainty. This was her child.

  Simone picked up the newspaper. Her right hand trembled, causing it to flutter. It was getting worse. She took the paper in her other hand and skimmed the story again. The world-famous doctor, outspoken defender of a woman’s right to choose, director of the Woman’s Reproductive Center in San Francisco, celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary on that morning a few weeks earlier, the crowds, the demonstrations, the foiled assassin—a random, anonymous fanatic—and the hero, the bodyguard, Carol Ann Chang, a private investigator employed by Bay Security and Investigations of Oakland. She had subdued the armed fanatic with her bare hands and then refused to be interviewed for the article.

  Good for her. She was smarter than Simone had been when she was that age. No good would ever come from compromising your privacy.

  The doctor, Richard Bryant was his name, had been quoted at length. Ms. Chang was a hero, he said. She’d saved his life. He’d never seen anybody move so fast or incapacitate anybody so quickly and decisively.

  Simone touched the face on the photo with her fingertip, gazed up at the sky, and drifted into that place where truth would separate itself from expectation and hope and despair . . . and she felt she was right.

  This was her May, and this newspaper photograph was the omen that Simone had been waiting for, fearing and expecting for all these years.

  Another wave of dizziness rolled through her brain. She squeezed her eyes shut. She hated the double vision the most, and the awful vertigo that accompanied it, the sensation of falling even when she was secure in her wheelchair.

  The dizziness passed a moment later. She blinked her eyes experimentally, then opened them. She realized that she had been crying.

  She pressed the buzzer on the lanyard around her neck, and a minute later Jill came out onto the porch.

  Jill bent down, pushed Simone’s long pigtail to the side, kissed the side of her neck, then knelt in front of her. She peered into Simone’s eyes, then reached up and gently touched her cheek. “You’ve been crying,” she said. “Did you have a spell?”

  Simone nodded. “Just a little one.” She smiled. “I am fine.”

  “Do you want to try to walk a little bit?”

  “Maybe later,” said Simone. She reached for Jill’s hand and held it in both of hers. “Bring me my stationery and a pen, would you please? The one with the green ink. And then check the Internet, see if you can find an address for this, um, Carol Ann Chang for me.” She handed her the newspaper.

  Jill folded the paper and slid it into the hip pocket of her pants. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said.

  “I am not sure about anything,” Simone said. “But I do feel strongly that she is the one.” She shook her head and smiled. “I am quite sure that after I finish writing the note, I will be ready for my massage.”

  THOMAS LARRIGAN WAS parked in the far corner of the McDonald’s lot, as close to the shadows as he could manage with all the floodlights on the tall poles surrounding the lot. He sipped the coffee he’d bought at the drive-through and fumed. He’d said seven-thirty, and here it was, nearly quarter of eight, and Moran still hadn’t showed up. As if his time was more valuable than that of a United States District Court judge, soon to be Supreme Court justice.

  He checked his cell phone again. No messages.

  Then, without warning, the passenger door opened, the dome light went on, and Moran slid into the front seat.

  “Shut the damn door,” said Larrigan.

  Moran shut the door, and the dome light went off.

  “Do you have to do that?” said Larrigan.

  “Do what?”

  “Sneak up on people?”

  Moran chuckled. “It’s what I do. I sneak up on people. It’s what I’m good at.”

  “You’re good at being late, too.”

  “Somebody’s gotta watch your ass, Judge. Or don’t you mind if you’re seen in my company?”

  “I definitely mind,” said Larrigan.

  “So what’s up, you gotta meet in a fucking McDonald’s parking lot?”

  “Bunny Brubaker,” said Larrigan.

  “What about her?”

  “You should’ve taken those pictures when you had the chance.”

  “I explained it to you,” said Moran. “She probably doesn’t even know they’re there. That box was way in the back of her closet. But if she ever noticed they were missing, she would’ve put two and two together. She’s no dummy. It would’ve blown both of us. This way, we know more than she does. That’s always how you want it to be.”

  “You said she wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Moran shrugged. “She didn’t want to talk about it. It was a long time ago. Another lifetime. She hadn’t touched that box of pictures for years. She’s into dolphins, for Christ’s sake.”

  Larrigan reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the lettersized envelope, and held it up for Moran to see in the glow from the parking lot’s floodlights. “This came to my office this morning.” The envelope was addressed to Judge Thomas Larrigan, Federal District Court, Boston, MA. It was postmarked Miami, FL.

  Moran looked up at him with his eyebrows arched.

  Larrigan slid the newspaper clipping out of the envelope and handed it t
o Moran. “Read this,” he said. Larrigan himself had pretty much memorized it.

  It read:

  JUDGE CRENSHAW TO RETIRE

  Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Crenshaw will announce his retirement from the seat he has held for the past thirty-two years, effective at the end of this term.

  A source close to the Justice said: “Justice Crenshaw has informed the president of his intention to step down. He will make his formal announcement at the end of the current session.”

  Justice Crenshaw celebrated his 86th birthday in February. He has been in failing health.

  According to Beltway insiders, the search for a replacement has already begun. Leading contenders for Justice Crenshaw’s seat include Maria Anna Alvarez, Circuit Court judge in San Diego; William Howard Raymond, former Virginia Attorney General; and, Thomas R. Larrigan, Federal District Court judge in Boston.

  White House sources declined comment.

  Moran glanced at it, then folded it and handed it back to Larrigan. “So it ain’t a secret,” he said. “Congratulations, I guess, huh?”

  “Take a look at this.” Larrigan handed Moran a photograph. Actually, it was a photocopy of a photograph. “Look familiar?”

  Moran glanced at it and nodded. “It’s like those from Bunny’s shoebox. There’s you and your Vietnamese chick—what was her name? Li An?”

  “Yes,” said Larrigan. “Li An.”

  “And me and Bunny.” Moran laughed. “We’re all looking pretty drunk, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, we are. We’re not looking very dignified.”

  Moran frowned. “How’d you get ahold of this?”

  Larrigan didn’t answer. He took the note out of the envelope and handed it to Moran.

  Larrigan had memorized the note, too. It had been eating at him all day.

  There was no date or return address on the top.

  “Dear Tom,” it read. “Now it all makes sense. Congratulations. And then Eddie Moran just happens to show up after all these years. Nice to see him again. He’s still cute. I’m guessing that the National Enquirer or Hard Copy or Geraldo might enjoy our story along with some photographs from those happy days. I bet one of them would give me $50,000 for it. Maybe all four of us could go on TV together. Have a tearful reunion, talk about old times. What do you think?”

  She had signed it: “Bunny.”

  Larrigan studied Moran as he read the note. His lips actually moved. If you didn’t know better, you might think that Eddie Moran wasn’t very bright.

  Larrigan knew for a fact that Moran was extremely bright. Unprincipled, devious, amoral. Borderline sociopathic. But plenty bright.

  Moran folded Bunny’s note and handed it to Larrigan.

  Larrigan put it back into the envelope. “Well?” he said.

  “I probably shoulda taken the damn pictures,” said Moran.

  “She expects me to give her fifty grand.”

  “Extortion’s illegal, Judge.” Moran was grinning.

  Larrigan snorted. “Yeah, we’ll have her arrested. Good idea. A public trial. Just the ticket.”

  “You want to pay her off?”

  “You think that’ll shut her up?”

  “Probably not,” said Moran.

  Larrigan gripped the steering wheel with both hands, squeezing as hard as he could, as if he could strangle it. All that was thirty-five years ago. Nobody who hadn’t been there could have any idea what it was like. You could watch all the movies, read all the novels and memoirs and history books, and you still wouldn’t have a clue.

  They were just kids, and they all thought they were going to die. They had all resigned themselves to that. It was the only way they could keep going.

  You did whatever you had to do to stay alive, and you hoped that tomorrow, not today, would be the day you died. You killed so you wouldn’t get killed. You set huts on fire, and sometimes you slaughtered women and children and old men, because if you didn’t, they might kill you.

  Larrigan himself had not done that. But he knew, if he’d been in the right situation, he would have. In a heartbeat. Without giving it a second thought. And without remorse.

  The only other way was to blow your brains out. Plenty of boys did it that way.

  That’s how it was. Unless they’d been there, they had no right to judge.

  But, of course, they would.

  He turned to Moran. “Only four people know, and two of them are sitting in this car and one of them most likely died a long time ago.”

  “Leaving Bunny,” said Moran.

  “Get those fucking photos, Eddie.”

  Moran looked at him. “You really think Bunny’s gonna—?”

  “Do what you have to do,” said Larrigan.

  BLACKHOLE SAT IN his nondescript Subaru and watched the judge’s Lincoln Town Car, parked in the corner of the McDonald’s lot, through his zoom lens. When the unidentified man opened the passenger door and slid in, he snapped one picture in the brief flash of the dome light. Hard to say if the man’s face would show up, although the computer techs could do wonders with blurry, underexposed digital photographs. Not that it mattered. Blackhole had already photographed the license plate of the Ford Explorer the man had parked on the other side of the lot. Identifying him would be no problem.

  The two of them sat in the front seat for twelve minutes—from 6:42 to 6:54 by Blackhole’s watch. From where he watched, he couldn’t see what they were doing. Then the stranger opened the passenger door, stepped out, and went back to his Explorer.

  Blackhole snapped several photos of the judge’s friend in the light from the parking lot floods. He looked to be somewhere in his fifties. Five-ten, about one-seventy-five. Thinning hair, bony face. Bulky around the shoulders. He walked with his arms held a little bit away from his body. Wrestlers carried their arms that way on account of their overdeveloped upper bodies. But this man wasn’t awkward or muscle-bound. There was a smooth efficiency to the way he moved. Graceful, almost, like a confident, well-conditioned athlete.

  Most people, civilians, they wouldn’t take a second look at this guy, and afterward, they wouldn’t remember him, or if they did, they wouldn’t be able to describe him. He was nondescript, ordinary. He blended in—which, of course, was the whole point.

  Blackhole knew the type, though. He knew a lot of men who carried themselves like this one. They were highly trained. Former SEALs or Special Forces, civilians now, still valued for their particular skills. Dangerous men. Men without normal compunctions.

  Blackhole himself was one such man.

  The Town Car and the Explorer started up, flashed on their headlights, and headed for the parking lot exit at the same time. The judge turned left, which, Blackhole knew, would take him home. The Explorer turned right.

  Blackhole was briefly tempted to follow the Explorer. But his orders were to stick to the judge, so that’s what he did.

  Perhaps that would change now that he had finally come up with something worth reporting. Blackhole’s job was to gather intelligence, not to judge it or interpret it. But he knew that Federal District Court judges didn’t meet highly trained, dangerous men in the shadowy corner of a McDonald’s parking lot unless they were up to something.

  CHAPTER 5

  Eddie Moran drove slowly past the little square modular home. It was nearly three in the morning, and this was his fifth trip past the place since he’d gotten to Key Largo late that afternoon.

  On his first pass, Moran had observed that the trash still hadn’t been cleaned out of the carport. Nor had the boat’s hull been scraped or the shutter repaired or the lawn cut or the gardens weeded.

  Now, after five trips past her place, the maroon VW with the daisy on the antenna still hadn’t showed up.

  Bunny Brubaker, he figured, had gotten lucky. She was shacked up for the night.

  He smiled to himself, remembering his night with her. If she was shacked up, he thought, it was definitely the guy who’d gotten lucky.

  I could do it now, he
thought. She’s not coming home tonight.

  Nope. Can’t take that chance.

  So he drove the rental—it was a Chevy sedan this time, rented under a different name with a different credit card from a different Miami rental agency—back up Route 1 to his motel. Not the same motel as last time, either.

  THE NEXT MORNING he thought about going to the dolphin place, but he couldn’t risk Bunny spotting him. So he looked up the number in the motel directory and called it on his cell phone, and when a guy calling himself Carlos answered, he said, “May I speak with Bunny Brubaker, please?”

  If Carlos said he’d go get her, hang on a minute, Moran would hang up. If he said Bunny was busy, could he take a message, he’d make something up.

  What Carlos said was: “She not here.”

  “When do you expect her?”

  “I don’t,” said Carlos. “Bunny don’t work here no more.”

  Moran sighed. “Damn. That’s disappointing.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  “Look,” said Moran. “I’m her cousin Joey, see. We used to be real close. I haven’t seen her since she moved to Florida. I finally get down here, first thing I want to do is see Bunny. I talked to her, it was only a couple weeks ago, told her I was coming. I just got in this morning, tried calling her house. No answer. She mentioned that she worked there. I figure, she’s at work . . .” He sighed. “You don’t know how I could reach her, do you? Maybe she took another job . . . ?”

  “Can’t help you. Bunny told me nothing.”

  “Is there anybody there who she might’ve told what she was doing?”

  “No,” said Carlos. “Just me. She quit, that’s all. Called last week. Told me she wasn’t coming back. Too bad. Bunny a real nice lady, hard worker, good with the kids.”

  “Well, okay,” said Eddie. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  HE LEFT THE Chevy at the turnaround at the end of her street and walked back. It was a little after noon, the best time to commit a burglary. That’s when houses were empty and most of the neighbors would be out, and in the midday heat of the Florida Keys, those who were home would be huddled inside with their air conditioning turned up high and their curtains drawn against the sun.