American Quartet

by Warren Adler

  “Not him,” she muttered. “Not Jefferson.”

  The eggplant observed her squirm, enjoying her discomfort. Finally he stood up and leaned over her, pointing a big finger, almost touching her nose. She confronted it, unblinking. She knew he was itching for her to show some insubordination. Controlling her anger, she let the confrontation become a checkmate. It was futile for both of them. They had no witnesses and, if he had the room bugged, she wasn’t going to give him any evidence. Besides, it was a case that no one wanted. It was doomed to be a standoff, like a bad Irish Catholic marriage.

  The eggplant suddenly turned to his telephone and dialed a number. His rudeness was an obvious dismissal.

  She was surprised to find Jefferson standing outside the door, waiting. His lugubrious heavy-lidded eyes matched her mood. His lips were tight with contempt.

  “It ain’t my idea, mama,” he said, observing her like a meat inspector.

  “Ours is not to reason why.”

  “Ours is but to do or da,” he took up the beat, showing off. So he was not as dumb as he looked. She also was struck by his ghetto accent, slightly awry, as though it were forced.

  He drew air through the spaces of his teeth and offered her a mocking smile.

  “All I ask from you is professionalism,” she said.

  “Say what?” he said, scratching his crotch.

  “And I’d appreciate it if you stopped that disgusting habit.”

  “Got to be sure it stays put, mama.” Jefferson swaggered to the door, his large tight bulging rump moving like chunks of granite under his jacket.

  The other detectives were eyeing them. The blacks seemed to snicker, the whites wore an air of futility. They turned away, avoiding comment. She saw Teddy in a corner, typing with fierce concentration, obviously too ashamed to look up. Shrugging off a biting guilt, she followed Jefferson’s big rump down the hall.

  “But you said you were working,” Fiona said gently, although she had been at it for nearly half an hour. Celia’s fingers shook as she lit a cigarette from the butt end of another. Jefferson leaned against the wall at Hagerstown Police Headquarters, watching them. The girl was obviously lying. Jefferson was growing restless, scornful of her method of interrogation.

  “I was,” the girl repeated for the twentieth time.

  “Your mother says you weren’t.”

  “She was sleeping.”

  “And your father agrees.”

  “He was drunk.”

  They had the manager cooling his heels in another room. So far they had prevented the Hagerstown police from getting into the act, particularly O’Leary. Even Fiona had to admit that it was Jefferson’s awesome presence that had done the trick. He knew how to use his power and could produce an intimidating scowl on demand. On the way to Hagerstown she had made some effort to connect with him, but his grunts told her he was in no mood to meet her even halfway.

  The wife of the McDonald’s manager had told them her husband had gone fishing that morning. It was his day off and he had caught some trout from a mountain lake which they had had for dinner. They in turn did not tell her that the manager had taken unscheduled leave.

  To Fiona, the connection between the two seemed obvious, and she sensed that the girl was frightened of Jefferson.

  “Maybe if you left us alone . . . ,” she suggested as they conferred in the corridor.

  “No way,” he sneered. “It’s bad enough ahm lettin’ you do it to her.”

  “I suppose you can do better.”

  “Sheet.” She did not want him to have a go at the girl. Left to him, the poor kid would confess to anything.

  “She’s just not guilty. The chief is wrong. Dead wrong.”

  “If you don’t do it . . . ,” he said menacingly.

  “You think she’s guilty. Or the other one.” She motioned to where the manager sat glumly on a nearby bench.

  “Sheet, no. Ah jes want to hear it so we can get the fuck outa here, mama.”

  “So you know it’s an exercise in futility?”

  “It’s bullsheet.”

  When they came back in, Fiona went up to the girl, who looked pale and forlorn in the harsh light.

  “You’re not helping yourself,” she said. The girl shrugged stubbornly.

  “You want me to sic him on you?” She pointed to the scowling Jefferson.

  “I ain’t gonna let no nigger cop mess with me,” she cried. Jefferson grabbed his bulge in his big hand and clicked his tongue.

  “It’s disgusting,” Fiona said. Jefferson accentuated his gesture. Irritated, Fiona looked at the girl, who glared at Jefferson and sneered.

  “You were shacking up with the manager. He told us,” Fiona snapped. She had wanted to be gentle, but the girl’s arrogance and Jefferson’s obscenities now irritated her.

  Celia’s eyes opened wide; her jaw dropped.

  “He didn’t tell you nothin’,” she said angrily. At that point Jefferson exploded, moving his big bulk to within a hairs-breadth of her, crotch high, confronting her with his raw maleness. He opened his jacket, revealing a Magnum .44, snug in its holster, hanging down his right side. On his left side, under his armpit, she could see his regulation .38. The exhibit, Fiona knew, was also for her benefit.

  “You little honky cunt. Dumb ass. Ah gonna give you a clue . . .”

  “She’ll talk,” Fiona objected. “You said you’d stay out of it.”

  “Sheet. You want us to take you to DeeCee and put you in a room with a bunch of nigger cops like me? They’ll pound your ass dry. Now you stop this bullsheet, mama, cause I’m gonna do that.” He waved a big black fist in front of her nose.

  “I’ll scream,” the girl gasped.

  “You do that,” Jefferson said, caressing the length of the Magnum. “And ah know jes where to put this.”

  What little blood was left by then drained from the poor girl’s face. Before Fiona could react, the girl spoke in a rush.

  “So I was shackin’ up. So what? I never killed no one.”

  It went quickly after that, the manager capitulating easily. It would be all over town soon.

  “I’ll lose my job. Maybe my wife,” the frightened manager said when they confronted him. Fiona felt unclean.

  “You are one mean bastard,” she said to Jefferson in the car. The two statements in manila envelopes lay between them on the front seat. “I could turn you in for that piece. Also for the way you leaned on her.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ but a woid,” he said, turning toward her, revealing the shrewdness under the macho pose. “You do that to me?” He put his big hand on her thigh and squeezed it.

  She quickly reached for her gun and pointed it at his crotch.

  “I could invent a good cover story.”

  He ignored her and accelerated the car.

  “Did you wanna waste your time with all that bullsheet? Jes because that asshole at headquarters got a bug up there? We got killers to catch, mama.”

  “I’m not your mama,” she said sharply. “Unless you’re not sure yourself.” The gun felt useless in her hand and she slipped it back in its holster.

  He laughed, for the first time, indicating a softness behind the glowering ebony facade.

  “Jes wanna see how tough you are.” He winked.

  “I don’t like tests.”

  “In a pinch, you’ll be glad I’m around, woman,” he said.

  “There’s another test I don’t want to take,” Fiona said. But all the same she found it an oddly reassuring remark.

  She had tried. She had put her heart into it. Her last conversation with Mrs. Damato the night before she left Hagerstown for good eliminated any possibility of a hard theory. Jefferson had left them alone, swaggering out to get a few beers.

  “Maybe whoever did it put him out of his misery,” Mrs. Damato said, her face bloodless, her eyes dry.

  “We’ll find out who did it,” Fiona said, catching the rhythm of the woman’s pain.

  “He had this dream that he was
going to be great, a foremost American impressionist. Ever since I married him. The worst thing is that I believed it.” She sighed sadly. “A case of more ambition than talent, I guess. I gave up everything for that idea. I bought it whole. I guess I can start living for myself again.” She shook her head and played with her fingers. “And the kids.” She looked up at Fiona. “I envy you. Out there living life.”

  “The grass is always greener,” Fiona said.

  “Don’t ever get mixed up with a man with an impossible dream,” Mrs. Damato said, her eyes misting. The warning found its mark.

  “I never graduated college,” the woman said. “I gave it up to make him a family.”

  “Maybe you can go back now.” Fiona wondered what her own regrets would be ten years from now.

  “I envy you,” the woman repeated.

  “You’ll be fine,” Fiona said, letting Mrs. Damato hug her. Fiona smelt her acrid odor. At least, she had had her husband’s dream. Better than nothing. A sob welled up in Fiona’s chest. She was happy Jefferson wasn’t around to see her unprofessional compassion.

  What was worse, the woman had forced her to look at Bruce in a new light. Was he, too, chasing a futile dream?

  By then it was apparent that Bruce’s opposition was formidable and he had to spend more and more time in his Queens constituency. Fence-mending, he called it, but on the days she went up to New York with him, she saw what he was really facing. The demographics of his district, which hugged the borders of Brooklyn, were changing rapidly.

  “There aren’t any fences to mend,” he confessed. Although he kept an apartment in his district, the air conditioning was broken and they stayed at the New York Sheraton. He was restless, hyped up by his frenetic activity and the frustrations of his campaign. Even the party system had broken down and his opponent had opted not to try to beat him in the primaries, but to run on an Independent-Liberal ticket, tempting a Republican to further split the vote.

  “I’m being squeezed from both ends,” he would tell her, usually in the middle of the night, sitting up in bed.

  “You’ll be stronger if you win. Then no one can ace you out of the Senate race.”

  “If I win.”

  “You can’t lose your confidence.”

  “It’s around here somewhere,” he said with sarcasm. The fear of losing had made him a different person.

  “I really need you, baby. More than ever.”

  She was flattered. But the summer’s tension was taking its toll.

  “My mind is elsewhere,” he confided. She also retreated from sharing her professional frustrations. The campaign absorbed him completely.

  “Hasn’t that fellow found the answer?”

  “Clark? He’s working on it.”

  An air of desperation seemed to cling to him.

  “Maybe I can put a contract out on the lady.” He had first raised the point as a joke, but when he repeated it she caught an undercurrent of wishful thinking.

  “Like your friend at the gallery. Bing bang. Not a clue.”

  “I told you that in confidence,” she rebuked him.

  “A random shot by a hired killer. Sounds to me what happened to your gallery man.”

  “The finger would point right up your nose,” she said. “You’d be suspect number one.”

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  He spent much of his time in New York, trying to save his political life. Her work kept her in Washington. Mostly she rattled around in the Georgetown house by herself, waiting for his calls.

  “I need you here. Not there,” he would plead.

  “I have my work.”

  “But this is really a crisis. Really important.”

  She dismissed such selfishness as being caused by panic.

  “This campaign is life or death for me, Fi. I need the woman I love beside me.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “But you can.” He was really saying that his career was the more important of the two. She promised that she would take her vacation in late October and be with him at the height of the campaign. It didn’t placate him.

  “I need you now.”

  “I can’t, darling. I really can’t.”

  What she did not tell him was that she had been on the verge of asking the eggplant for leave. Unfortunately the timing was out of the question. She had to stay on the Damato case, if only to resist hearing him rave about the unsuitability of women cops.

  “Always something,” she imagined he would say. “If it’s not your damned periods, it’s your love life or your damned pregnancies or abortions . . . or whatever. Always something going on down there.”

  “If you really loved me, you would,” Bruce whined.

  “But I do,” she protested.

  “You’d also benefit,” he said. “Especially if we got married.”

  “Is that a proposal?”

  He hesitated. “After I win.”

  “Suppose you lose?”

  He didn’t respond. She sensed the manipulation and it offended her. What did one thing have to do with another?

  8

  STANDING in the foyer of his home, Remington greeted each man in turn, flashing the patrician smile. He had accepted the fundraising assignment for the presidential challenger with joy and relief. Through the month of July, he had waited for another sign. None came.

  The candidate himself had called him right after the Republican convention. Remington had sent him a polite telegram and an offer of support.

  “I need you, Tad.” The candidate had responded with a phone call, his trained television voice warm, charming. Here was a personal involvement. The man himself had called. Was it the sign?

  “I’m ready,” he had promised the candidate, assuring him that he could muster at least a hundred thousand dollars if he would appear at his home to press the flesh. The candidate had agreed instantly.

  “Is he coming?” someone asked. The man was a banker, he needed instant reassurance.

  “Yes,” he said emphatically, although the man in charge of appearances had been suspiciously tentative, undermining the clear-cut sign. If he doesn’t show, Remington vowed, the sign would be a false omen. He had set himself a deadline of September 5. Today! To provide the essential replication, the deed would have to be achieved by the afternoon of September 6. Tomorrow!

  As the hour of the candidate’s arrival approached, he became increasingly nervous. The voices in the room grew louder and eyes gazed anxiously toward the door.

  “He’ll be here,” Remington assured those who asked, glancing at the large grandfather clock poised to sound its ten chimes. The candidate was already half an hour late. Many of his guests would not ever have been granted access to his house without having paid the political price of admission, one thousand dollars. They were the cream of merchant Washington, the bankers, brokers, drug and retail tycoons, real estate developers, the backbone of the city’s commerce and, with the exception of a few, not social equals, certainly not among the capital’s permanent elite.

  “Money has its limits,” he mused, looking over the crowd.

  They were his father’s words. He looked up at the portrait of the golden hero, searching for reassurance. His father’s persistent mocking reverberated in his mind.

  “Joe Kennedy gave his kids the political drive,” his mother had protested to the old man. “All you do is inhibit Tad’s.”

  “Politicians are whores,” his father had replied. There was a thirty-year difference between them, and by the time Tad was certain of his calling, the man was doddering. To the end, his father fought his mother’s ambition for him.

  “He has everything,” his mother had contended, an assessment that he secretly believed himself. His mother’s judgment had, by then, become infallible.

  “Who is going to run this business?” his father had protested. He was a great believer in blood. To him, Tad’s future was preordained.

  “I married you for heirs.”

  “I’m not a
brood mare,” she had told both of them more than once. It took him years to understand what she really meant, and by that time his father had died and he had won his first race for the state senate of California. He was twenty-three years old, fresh from Korea.

  “I wish the old bastard could see you now,” she had said on that election night, at a party for two hundred in her big Nob Hill house.

  “This boy will be President,” she had told the crowd while standing on a chair in her stockinged feet. “And I’m being perfectly objective.” The crowd had laughed, but he was sure that she was absolutely correct. She had always believed that.

  The power and enormity of her drive had always been Tad’s guiding force. It was she who had stepped in to run the business—cattle, oil, real estate—amassing a considerable fortune that had been enhanced by three generations of Remingtons.

  After his father’s funeral, she had taken him along to the old man’s massive office near the vaunted Pacific Club, detouring from the cemetery. She had summoned his top men.

  She looked wonderful, he remembered, dressed in black, her sculpted cheekbones subtly rouged and her pouting sensual lips painted lightly with pink lipstick. Her eyes were his. When he looked into hers he saw his own, long lashed, deep, as blue as a spring sky.

  Lifting her veil, she settled into the soft brown leather swivel chair. The young Tad stood beside her, his hand in hers, feeling the power of its grasp, their shared secret, safe and warm, between them.

  His father’s six top executives, uncomfortable in their mourning pinstripes, faced her. She did not ask them to sit down, and they shifted and harrumphed in discomfort as her blue eyes searched their frightened faces.

  “This is my company now,” she said quietly, her free hand stroking the polished mahogany of the ancestral desk.

  The men facing her were granite faced and solemn, and nervously glanced at each other.