She hadn’t really gotten it before.
“No, you were right,” Caitlin said with a sigh. “He was a crazy guy. He wasn’t going to do anything. I just … I just get nervous sometimes.”
“I think we should do some yoga tomorrow morning, it’s a great way to get more centered.”
Michelle could hear the frantic edge in her own voice. She hoped that Caitlin couldn’t.
She had to stay calm. Had to keep it together. She couldn’t afford to think about what had happened to Caitlin.
Couldn’t afford to think about the things that had happened in Mexico.
She couldn’t let herself feel those feelings, not now. There was too much at stake for her to lose it, too much at stake for her and for Danny.
For Caitlin.
If I tell her what’s going on, Michelle thought, would that help? Could Caitlin handle it? Would she believe it?
How could I even begin to explain? she thought.
And if Gary found out …
Michelle smiled. Sipped her wine. “Maybe we should schedule a massage after yoga. It might help you relax a little.”
Chapter Fourteen
You couldn’t call Century City a neighborhood. It was a business district, built on the former 20th Century Fox Studio’s backlot, which the company had to sell when Cleopatra bombed at the box office. There were very few reasons to go to Century City if you didn’t work there. Lunch at the Fox Lot, a screening at CAA, dinner at Craft, maybe, but there were nicer parts of town to eat expensive meals. There was the Century City Mall, but it was just a mall like any other mall, and Michelle had generally gone to Santa Monica when she needed to pick up a couple of Tshirts from J. Crew or a mascara from Sephora.
The Century Plaza was a hotel that Michelle associated with presidential visits, foreign affairs lectures, conventions and fundraisers. Not a place where anyone she knew from out of town actually stayed.
If you had a meeting on the Fox Lot or CAA, maybe.
Or if you were a part of Safer America’s fundraiser, like board member Matthew Moss.
She’d been right about him being a talking head, a cultural commentator. He hadn’t been that well-known, back when she used to pay more attention to such things. And he wasn’t anyone you could call “famous” now. He didn’t have his own cable show, or anything like that. But she’d done a little Googling and found that he was a regular guest on those cable shows and a columnist who’d gotten his start on a popular blog.
“Hello,” he said now. “Michelle, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Nice to see you again.” Which was a lie. He stood too close, a bulky man who radiated heat in an expensive suit. Sweat glistened at his forehead. Up this close, his hair looked even more like a plastic fiber helmet.
“You look very sharp tonight,” he said, slowly sweeping his gaze up and down.
She told herself to smile. It wasn’t like she’d dressed to attract any attention. She was wearing her black Armani suit, because it was LA, and when in doubt, wear black, and she was barely showing any cleavage.
“Why, thanks! So do you.”
He snorted. “My wife dresses me. I’m pretty sure I’d be helpless without her.”
She took a step back. The banquet room was crowded, but not so crowded that he needed to stand this close.
“Oh,” Michelle said. “Well, she does a great job. Is she here tonight?”
“No. She’s more the stay-at-home type.” He continued to stare at her, with a fixed smile. As plastic as his hair. “Speaking of, how’s our little leader?”
“You mean Caitlin? She’s great. We’ve had a really nice day.”
This was not entirely a lie. She’d arranged a private yoga session for Caitlin in the morning, not too early, then a “healing organic red-flower therapeutic massage followed by a smoothing sea-salt exfoliation and hydrating sea-algae masque.”
Caitlin seemed to like it.
“I’m so relaxed,” she’d said to Michelle over a sushi lunch on Ocean Boulevard. She’d actually eaten something for a change, and only had one glass of chardonnay.
And she’d reached out across the sushi bar, and grasped Michelle’s hand. “Thank you,” she’d said. “Thanks for, I don’t know … giving me a little push.”
Thinking about it now, Michelle felt a sick, acid churn in her stomach.
Caitlin had latched onto her hand, and Michelle feared she was leading her someplace very, very bad.
“Good to hear,” Moss said. “She’s one brave little lady.”
Michelle found the brave little lady over at the bar.
“Oh, hi,” Caitlin said. “What do you want to drink?”
Michelle very much wanted something to drink. But that wasn’t a good idea. Not right now. “Just a Pellegrino,” she said.
Caitlin did her little wave, with more emphasis than usual. “Come on, I’m not gonna judge. There’s not that much for you to do, anyway. Just shadow me when we’re mingling and take down any names of people I talk to. Not that I really wanna talk to any of them.” She laughed. “I just wanna do my talking-dog act and get the hell out of here.” She took a slug of her wine and laughed again, more loudly this time. “You know that joke about the talking dog? It doesn’t have to talk well. It’s just that it talks at all.”
Had she already had more than one drink? A pill? Something? She’d seemed okay when they’d ridden over to Century City from Santa Monica, if somewhat quiet and distant, wearing one of her beautiful white and beige outfits that threatened to blend her into the furniture. Pre-event jitters, Michelle had assumed.
They’d arrived at the Century Plaza some fifteen minutes after the event had officially begun, in the Constellation Room on the Plaza level. “I need to go check in with the event coordinator,” Michelle had told Caitlin. “Are you going to be okay, is there anything I can get you?”
The little wave, weak this time. “No, I’m fine. Go do what you need to do.”
She’d gone, found the coordinator, a stringy, slightly frantic woman named Cyndee, who Michelle was pretty sure had been in one of her Pilates classes a few years ago, but she wasn’t about to bring that up.
“Okay,” Cyndee had said, “So, here’s the schedule, we do cocktails and mingling till seven, then salad, we’ll have the introduction from Perry Aisles, Matthew Moss for the main course, and Caitlin O’Connor for dessert. Then Perry comes up and closes the deal.”
“Sounds good.”
Cyndee’s oversized eyes darted around the room. “Everything looks great, don’t you think? Fantastic turnout.”
Doing a quick count of the tables, Michelle had estimated the crowd at around or over three hundred people, close to capacity for this room. Good enough. Men in suits, women in cocktail dresses. An older crowd, mostly, and very white.
They’d hung huge plastic banners around the room, photos of smiling multi-ethnic children’s faces, mostly, with the occasional suburban home and green lawn and more little kids running through sprinklers and riding little bikes with big training wheels, the words A Safer America written across every other panel. Floral centerpieces, white chrysanthemums in blue and red bunting, decorated the tables.
“It looks great. Excuse me—I’d better get back to Caitlin.”
She hadn’t been gone that long, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes between the conversations with Cyndee and Moss. But here was Caitlin, apparently already on her second glass of wine, and not scheduled to speak for another hour at least.
“Come on, let me get you something,” Caitlin said. “Believe me, you don’t want to try and get through one of these things sober.”
“I’m going to need to keep my hands free to take notes,” Michelle said. “While you’re mingling. We still have half an hour before dinner starts.”
Caitlin sighed. “You know, the last thing I want to do is talk to any of these people. And I’m not in any kind of mood to hear Matthew go on and on the way he does. Let’s go downstairs and get a drink.”
“You have a drink, Caitlin,” Michelle snapped.
For a moment, Caitlin stood there, wine glass in hand, staring at Michelle like she’d been slapped.
She put the glass down on the bar.
“Not any more.” Caitlin made a face and smiled, like a kid who knew she’d been bad but figured she could get away with it. “It wasn’t very good, anyway.” She put her hand on Michelle’s arm. “Tell you what. I just want to get out of here for a few minutes. Get some air. I promise I’ll be back in time for dinner, even if that means I have to listen to Matthew. You don’t have to come with me.”
Oh yes I do, Michelle thought.
“I’ll come,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind some air.”
x x x
On the way out, they passed Cyndee, who stood by the sign-up table at the entrance to the banquet hall. An older man wearing an expensive suit was there, signing a check with a flourish. “In case I have to leave early,” he said, presenting it a volunteer who sat behind the table. Michelle couldn’t read his name or the amount, but she was pretty sure she saw a lot of zeros.
“Oh, hi, this is Caitlin?” Cyndee asked. “I’m such an admirer of yours!”
“That’s so sweet of you, hon,” Caitlin said, meeting her eyes and clasping her hand for a moment, before heading out the door.
Michelle could see now that Caitlin had that particular gift, the ability to connect with someone in an instant, and then break apart without a backwards glance.
“Where is she going … is everything okay?” The tendons in Cyndee’s neck looked ready to snap.
“Fine,” Michelle said. “Just fine. She needs some air, that’s all. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“But the donors—”
“There’ll be plenty of time for them to talk to her, I promise.”
She hoped there would be, anyway.
The Century Plaza had an outdoor bar off the lobby, with round tables and dark wicker furniture and overstuffed earth-tone pillows, illuminated by warm-hued lanterns. “Just one drink, I promise,” Caitlin said. “As long as you join me.”
“Okay.” Better to have one drink with Caitlin if that kept her from having two, Michelle figured. She hoped that wasn’t just a rationalization. The drink was tempting.
They sat at a small table next to a low wall made from stacked wooden cubes that separated the bar from the gardens and reflecting pool. Faux votive candles sat in the wall’s open-air alcoves. Flattering light all around, Michelle noted.
“Just a glass of red wine,” she told the waiter.
“Pinot, merlot, cabernet, zin?”
“How’s the pinot?”
“I’d do the cab.”
“I’ll have that too,” Caitlin said.
After the waiter left, they sat in silence. Michelle wasn’t sure what there was to say. Did she owe Caitlin an apology? She didn’t think so, but she hadn’t exactly been the deferential employee back there in the ballroom.
And what she said … it had all kinds of implications.
Inferences.
“Look, there’s something that you’re gonna have to trust me about,” Caitlin finally said. “I realize I’m not … I don’t take care of myself as well as I should, and I know I have to change that. But this?” She gestured toward the hotel lobby. “I know how to do this.”
“I’m sorry,” Michelle began. “I was—”
“Don’t apologize. I know why you’re here.”
For a moment, Michelle froze in her chair. She couldn’t know. Could she?
“You’re here to make sure I don’t get into any trouble. Maybe help me clean up my act. Look, part of that was my idea anyway. I understand, you’re just doing your job.”
The waiter appeared with their wine.
“Enjoy, ladies!” he said, depositing their glasses in front of them.
Caitlin lifted up her glass. “Just realize that I know how to do mine.”
Michelle raised hers. What else could she do? They clinked.
“You know what I don’t know?” Caitlin said with a sigh. “Whether I want to keep doing it.”
They’d worked together how long, a little over a week? And how many times had Caitlin already said that she was feeling ambivalent about Safer America?
Were those doubts important? Was that why Gary wanted her here?
Why would it matter if Caitlin stepped away from Safer America?
For some reason, Michelle thought of the check she’d seen upstairs, the one with multiple zeros. Safer America was on track to earn $37 million dollars this year, hadn’t Debbie said that, back at the board meeting?
It was always about money.
Caitlin was the draw. The rainmaker. If she quit, would Safer America raise as much money?
Maybe Gary and the Boys got a cut somehow. Maybe it was some kind of money-laundering scheme, where Safer America was taking in money that wasn’t exactly clean, freshening it up, and funneling it to some CIA shell company that was “off the books.”
Did that make sense, or was it something simpler?
Our donation.
Those tattooed Mexican mobsters buying some guns and throwing in over $900K extra …
Some of that money had been her payment. Where had Carlene taken the rest of it?
Maybe it really was a donation.
A drug cartel wouldn’t favor marijuana legalization, would it?
And the Boys were all about buying elections, from what Danny had told her.
“Michelle, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Sorry. I was just, just thinking about what we have to do tonight.”
“Oh, trust me, it’s easy. We talk, we drink, we eat, we talk some more. And then we take their money.” Caitlin grinned, and tilted her wine glass to her lips.
“Excuse me.”
A deep, male voice. Michelle turned.
A big black man in a rust-colored suit and black shirt. Shaved head.
“I’m sorry to interrupt. Are you Caitlin O’Connor?”
Caitlin hesitated. Michelle could see her shrink back into her seat. Then she straightened up and nodded. “I am.”
The man stuck out his hand. A big hand, like a basketball player’s.
God, stop thinking in clichés, Michelle told herself.
Besides, he really looked more like a football player: muscular, solid, a little thick through the middle.
Caitlin took his hand, with that same hesitation she’d shown before. Her hand was dwarfed in his. He handled her hand gently, Michelle thought. Not a squeeze, just letting it rest there a moment.
“I’m Troy Stone. I was really hoping to meet you tonight.”
“Oh,” Caitlin said, with a sort of brightness that sounded more studied than sincere. “Are you coming to the event?”
He let out a chuckle. “Not exactly. I’m with PCA. Positive Community Action.”
“I think I’ve heard of you,” Caitlin said distantly.
“I’m not surprised. Though we’ve been playing opposite ends of the field, it seems like.”
He crouched down next to Caitlin. Michelle could see him better now. His face was all planes joined at sharp angles. She hadn’t thought he was handsome at first glance, but his eyes were nice, she thought: big, dark and expressive. Now they were focused on Caitlin.
“I’d really like to talk to you about your efforts here in California. I’ve heard a lot of what you have to say, and I think we want the same things. We just have different ideas of how to go about it.”
“Very different ideas, from what I understand.”
Caitlin’s body language—sitting back in her chair, arms crossed—was clear. She wanted nothing to do with him.
He shifted on his haunches, like something was hurting him, and then he held very still.
“Mrs. O’Connor … I’ve lost people too.”
They stared at each other. Michelle had the oddest feeling just then, that she’d somehow intruded on a private moment.
“A
ll right,” Caitlin said abruptly, uncrossing her arms. Still watchful. “There’s no reason we can’t talk. Michelle, would you make sure to get Mr. Stone’s contact information? We’ll set up a time.”
“Now, in the months coming up, you’re gonna hear a lot of talk.”
Matthew Moss stood at the podium. He’d been talking for a while. In her seat at Table #1, Michelle was close enough to see him sweat.
“You’re gonna hear talk about how pot is harmless. You’re gonna hear talk about how we’re sending too many people to prison. You know what they aren’t gonna talk about?”
He paused. Put both his hands on the podium. Leaned forward.
“How since we got tougher on crime, crime rates in the US have gone down. Way down.”
Michelle watched a bead of sweat roll down his forehead, getting caught on his eyebrow.
“What we’ve done is made America safer. And anyone who tells you otherwise? Is either deluded, a criminal … Or a poverty pimp.”
If that was one of his catchphrases, he really ought to practice saying it in front of a microphone without popping his Ps, Michelle thought.
“There are people out there who profit from keeping poor people down. From keeping them dependent on big government. On handouts from Uncle Sugar. Poverty pimps.” He laughed. “You know what they don’t want? They don’t want people helping themselves. Working their way up. Taking responsibility for their own actions. Because if that happened? They’d all be out of a job!”
Polite laughter.
Did the people in this crowd really buy any of this? Michelle wondered. They seemed to be willing to write big, fat checks for it.
“All this talk about how we need to put fewer people in jail, well, I do agree with that. But I disagree with how we make that happen. We don’t let criminals go free.” He slapped the podium. The low, hollow thud echoed through the ballroom. “We demand people take responsibility for their own actions. We examine cultural dysfunctions, honestly, without letting special interests and politically correct garbage get in the way.” He slapped the podium again. “Why aren’t we talking about black-on-black violence? Why isn’t anyone willing to look honestly at that?”
Next to her, Caitlin sighed. She leaned over to Michelle. “Honey, can you pass me some of that wine?”
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