by Ed Gorman
The man with the red beard and the eye patch and the enormous nineteenth-century Austrian military coat that had spent at least one night in the shop of a Broadway costumer said, “That’s very lower-class.”
“A bribe is lower-class?”
“Do you have any idea who lives on these sixteen floors?”
“I know it isn’t the pope. He’s in the Vatican. And I know it isn’t the president. They’ve got him in a psychiatric hospital now.”
“Is your patter supposed to be funny?”
One of the clichés that’s true is that the minions of the rich tend to be even snottier than the people who employ them. This six-six warrior was well spoken, his ruddy cheeks as frosty as his blue eyes, and his loftiness sort of humorous for a man who probably earned a nice, comfortable middle-class living, had a couple of kids and a pleasant but modest home, and yet saw himself as belonging to the elite.
“Well, I guess you’re not interested in four hundred dollars.” (For people who keep track of such things, when last seen my wallet was empty but for a hundred bucks. Thank God for ATMs is all I can tell you.)
We were inside the marble lobby of the building where Phil Wylie had once lived. About ten feet away, on the street, was where his body had hit. The street was busy now. He’d had his moment in the spotlight. I had a kind thought about him. Anybody who could win the affections of so many disparate staffers had to have been a pretty decent guy.
“But I’m curious.”
I turned my attention back to him. “Yes?”
“Would breaking any laws be a part of this?”
“Marginally. But not likely.”
“You’d have to do better than that.” Irritated.
“I want to get into Mr. Wylie’s condo for about fifteen minutes or so.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you why. I just need to check something.”
“You’re not going to damage anything?”
“No.”
“Or steal anything?”
“Nope.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
“Well, I guess you can’t where the damage thing is concerned. But why would I want to damage anything? Do I look like a thug to you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, you do.”
“Ah.”
“Nothing personal.”
“It never is. But as for stealing anything, you can shake me down when I come back down.”
“That might work. But I’d need six hundred dollars.”
“I have five hundred in my wallet. And unless you take credit cards, that’s the best I can do.”
“I suppose that might suffice. But I’d need to see the money before I made any judgment.”
“Aren’t you afraid one of your tenants might see me handing you the money?”
“Most of them are in bed by now or coming back here so drunk they wouldn’t know what they were seeing.”
“How low-rent.”
“Yes,” he said without humor, “isn’t it, though?”
CHAPTER 21
The condo had the feeling of a museum. Artwork from half a dozen centuries lined the walls like a historical parade; the shiny hardwood floors were covered with Persian rugs and many derivations thereof; a grand piano sat next to a long vertical window through which came a mix of moonlight and streetlight. The silence was utter thanks to the construction of the building. The smells in the living room were those of the fireplace, wine, and marijuana; in the kitchen of good meals well prepared. Seven rooms cluttered with objets d’art of every kind—religious paintings, wallpaper, tapestries, glassware, ceramics, and many other things I was too ignorant to recognize for what they were.
Only when I walked near the doors leading to the balcony did I notice the evidence of the police investigation. The scuffs on the floor. The lingering scents of chemicals. Suicide investigations are also homicide investigations. Eliminate one and you have the other. The serology here is important. What were the contents of the victim’s stomach, for one thing. Loaded up with drugs or alcohol may tell you something, for example. But there’s always the possibility that the suicide was staged. A smart killer has been known to read a lot of material online looking for the best way to convince authorities that his man or woman did the deed themselves. I know of two cases where only after the medical examiner ruled suicide and the case closed was new evidence found that the person had actually been murdered. With as many friends and no doubt enemies as Wylie had had, the police would spend some time following up on any homicide leads no matter what the ME said.
I spent most of my time in the library because that was where his computer was. But that came to a quick dead end. The hard drive had been removed. I was assuming the police had taken it, but maybe not. The police or someone else had also emptied the desk drawers. I went to his videotape library, which didn’t make sense. If he’d known anything about the blackmail tape, was he likely to leave it in full view on a shelf with his Fellini and David Lynch movies? I checked anyway.
I’d given the doorman my cell number. “It’s been twenty-two minutes.”
“I said ‘or so.’”
“That’s ‘or so’ to me.”
“Five more.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“All right. Two and a half.”
“You’ve already used up the half.”
I clicked off.
I know what you want here. The same thing I do. You want that last-second discovery where I shriek Zounds! And come bursting out of the condo like a madman, waving the blackmail tape and shouting the name of the person who’d not only hired Greaves but had also murdered him. And might have murdered Wylie in the process.
That happens in real life. Sometimes. This wasn’t one of those times.
The final excitement for the long, long day and night awaited me back in my hotel room.
I’d been in just long enough to take off my coat when the phone rang. It was nearly eleven o’clock.
Billy said, half-hysterical, “Somebody broke into her place. It’s a mess. Busted up all kinds of stuff.”
He didn’t have to say who he was talking about. Nor did he have to say why somebody had busted in. In fact he couldn’t say why because, if he was telling the truth, he didn’t know anything about the tape. Because presumably that’s what the burglar had been after.
“Who the hell’d do something like this?”
“Nobody was hurt, Billy, right?”
“Well, no.”
“It could’ve been a lot worse then.”
“But what the hell would they expect to find here? In a neighborhood like this?”
“Junkies, Billy. They’re desperate. They figure they can find a couple of things that’ll help them make it through another day. Ask any cop.”
“But then to go and trash the place on top of it. I just got here after work. They even left the door open.”
“Maybe they heard somebody coming or something.”
“Yeah, maybe. But you know this’ll scare the hell out of Beth.”
“It’s up to you to convince her that she’s safe there.” And she would be. Tossing a place the way he or she had must have convinced them that no tape was to be found. Right now they’d be trying to figure where to put their skills to work next. They were working on a parallel course to mine. If Lake got it, the election was all over and Warren was finished forever. But there was the chance that it might come back to us via the blackmail route. Maybe they’d take Greaves’s place in selling it to us.
I had all kinds of questions. Had they worked with Greaves? Were they freelancers who’d stumbled onto word of the tape? Or, the question I didn’t want to ask myself, was one of our staffers involved?
“She said she grew up scared that somebody was going to kill her dad. And that they’d kill her, too. She said that when she was eight her dad and a guy opened fire on each other in their backyard. He got wounded pretty bad and
the other guy got away. The weird thing is there’s a part of her that still loves him even after all the crap he’s done. I don’t understand that, Dev. If my father was like him I’d never speak to him again. And even after her mother died, she stuck by him. But she was pretty pissed off at herself that she was at a movie when her mom passed away.” He sighed. “I would’ve told R.D. to piss off a long time ago.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’d think it’d work that way. But blood ties are hard to break sometimes. I always remember Jeffrey Dahmer’s father showing up every day in court. Think of what he had to hear about his son. But he showed up anyway. I don’t think I would’ve had that kind of nerve. Or love. Or whatever the hell it was. But he showed up anyway.”
“I guess I’d never thought of it that way.”
“I need some sleep, Billy. Just keep the doors locked.”
“I bought a gun a couple weeks ago, Dev.”
“Have you ever fired a gun, Billy?”
“I guess not.”
“How about Beth?”
“I guess not, either.”
“Then empty it out and put the bullets in one drawer and the gun in another.”
“Maybe we’ll need it.”
“Trust me. In a panic you’ll most likely shoot yourself or Beth.”
“God, I was sort of looking forward to—”
“Bullets in one drawer. Gun in another. G’night, Billy.”
CHAPTER 22
My mentor in the business was a former speechwriter for LBJ who quit over the Vietnam War early on and went into business looking for major pols who opposed the war as well. His name is Martin Steiner and he’s still alive and well on his retirement farm on the coast of Maine.
As I sat in my office scanning the new internal polls, I thought of what Martin had told me about the situation I—and he, many, many times—was facing here.
Lake had the Big Mo right now. According to these internals he was two points behind. Which meant, all variables considered, that he was at least tied with us and maybe even ahead.
There are two kinds of TV spots you have to watch out for. One is when an issue breaks open suddenly. In Missouri a woman who’d been lagging opened fire in the last few weeks on her opponent’s stand against stem cell research. The man had badly miscalculated the feelings of his state or he’d acted on principle. Whichever it was didn’t matter. His stem cell stand cost him the election. Sometime issues work for you and sometimes they work against you.
The other is the attack ad leveled against your candidate. You have to determine quickly if the ads are hurting you. Some of the most virulent attack ads never gain much ground. If they’re making a lot of noise but not doing much if any damage, you let it slide. But if they’re damaging you, then you hit him five times harder than he’s hitting you. Your oppo research people have a few juicy bits they’ve been pleading with you to use. You use them the last few weeks of the campaign—the Wild West of politics. There was a Midwest campaign in the forties in which one candidate (unfortunately on our side) continued to support his opponent by saying that he was sure the other man’s campaign “was not being funded in part by the Greenleaf kidnapping case,” a notorious recent abduction. That was the kind of support nobody wanted, especially since no reporter had ever suggested that kidnapping money was being used to support the opponent.
Lake’s new hurried-up spot. (You can get them on the air in hours these days.) Medium close of Lake running around a track, good old all-American sweat streaming down his face, an American flag fluttering in the breeze behind him. Copy: “Sound of body.” (And guess who wasn’t sound of body?) “And sound of mind.” (A magazine page that says: “Ever notice how many good-looking women work for congressmen? Suspicious?”) Four quick stills of congressmen with true-blue babes who work for them. One of the stills was a pic of Warren at a bundle of microphones with Kate at his side. “And a man who honors his wedding vows.” Medium close on Lake’s kids and wife standing camera-frozen in front of an SUV with a dog hanging out the window that really looked like it needed to piss.
One way or the other they wanted to assault you with two facts. Maybe Warren was gravely ill and covering it up. And as for the good old family values—now that you mention it, Mr. TV commercial—maybe Warren, who’d been known to carouse in his early days, really hadn’t stopped carousing. Look at some of his female staffers in Washington.
We’d have to decide fast how to respond to this commercial. I already had some thoughts. One of the oppo research guys had given me the thought two months ago. Then, I thought it had been out-of-bounds and might destroy us instead of Lake. Now I wondered. Now I had a notion of how we could use it without seeming to use it.
I called my secretary at the shop and asked her to get Warren’s unabridged medical records and have them couriered to me right away. I didn’t want them online. Docs knew better than to put anything menacing into a computer where important people were concerned.
Billy came in late. He had the haggard visage of a man who’d been worn out by alcohol, sex, or worry. We were alone in the office at the moment. “I couldn’t sleep for shit.”
“I kinda got that idea.”
“Huh?”
“You look beat.”
“Oh. Yeah. Beth’s just as bad.”
“Well, it’s over.”
“What if they come back?”
I had to play it confidently: “They won’t.”
“Easy for you to say, Dev.”
“They know there’s nothing there. Why would they come back? By the way, what did they take?”
“That’s the funny thing. We went through everything carefully but nothing seemed to be gone. That’s why we didn’t call the cops. We figured we’d look ridiculous when they asked us what was stolen and we had to say, nothing.”
“You’re making my point for me, Billy. No offense, but you don’t exactly live in luxury digs.”
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it that way and you know it. All I’m saying is that if they didn’t turn up anything the first time, why would they go back for seconds?”
“God, I hope you’re right.” Then: “Man, did you hear the new Lake spot?”
“Got the copy on the TV spot. I’m sure they’re just using the same track for radio. There’s just one problem. They’ve got a family values radio spot implying that Warren’s fly is still unzipped. If Warren’s as bad off physically as they claim, how can he be schtupping all these women on the side? I mean, as much fun as sex is, it does require a little energy.”
He had a nice rich laugh. “Thanks for trying to cheer me up. That’s a good one.”
“We’ve got a little ammo tucked away.”
“The oppo people?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
I knew he’d take it personally. “I can’t tell you right now.”
“I guess I’m not important enough, right?”
“Shit, Billy, give me a fucking break, will you? Warren and I are the only two in the whole campaign who know what it is. If I’m snubbing you, then I’m also snubbing Kate and Laura and Gabe, too.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. That’s right. Sorry. I better get to work on his speech for tomorrow night.”
No interruptions for the next half hour. I wondered if there’d been a nuclear attack that had knocked out phone lines. I wrote and three times revised the spot I had in mind for the big bomb. It was a risky idea. These kinds of spots are similar to the traps of declaring war. You never know where it will all end up. It could well do you in. Warren and I would both need some Xanax before the afternoon was over.
Laura came in late but appeared to be in control of whatever was troubling her so deeply. “Gym.”
“It shows. You’re more beautiful than ever.”
“Sure.”
“You’re telling me you’re not beautiful?”
“A bit above average is all.”
But I could tell she was enjoying herself. I
t was nice to be with the real Laura again. The playful one. “Well, maybe a little better than above average.”
“There we go, that old Laura arrogance I love.”
“Not as beautiful as Kate.”
“Matter of taste.”
A giggle. “I can hear you saying the same thing to her only reversed.”
“You think I’m insincere?”
“You’re in politics aren’t you?”
“Guess you’ve got a point there.”
Then she, too, got down to work.
Last in was Gabe. In my idle times I thought about Gabe a lot. He still had the best reason that I knew of to do Warren in. Greaves had videotaped Warren only to get money. Gabe had a personal reason and personal reasons are usually the ones that burn hottest in the mind. Aging hippies don’t like being in hock to peacock politicians.
“You hear that new Lake radio spot?”
“Yeah, Gabe, we talked about it a little earlier.”
“To me he sounds like asshole number one.”
“That’s because he’s on the other side. He’s not saying anything that’s not in the wind. Warren taking that tumble the other night left a lot of questions in people’s minds.”
If I wanted some kind of guilty expression, I didn’t get it. He just said, “Maybe. But it still could come back to haunt him.”
“It’s got less than three weeks to do that.”
He smiled. “You don’t believe in happy endings?”
“There’re a lot more happy beginnings than happy endings. The internals are in from yesterday and they ain’t good.”
“Lake picked up?”
“Picked up and at least tied us.”
“Shit.”
Then we were in the bunker. Phones, faxes, e-mails. And we all got them. Work became something you grabbed between responding to queries of all kinds from outlanders and barbarians who dared interrupt the holy process of getting our man elected. Insensitive bastards.
