by Mark Dawson
Robinson moved among his rivals like a Mafia don, giving them his double-clasped handshake, clapping them on the shoulders, squeezing their biceps, all the while shining out his gleaming smile. He laughed at their jokes and made his own, the consummate professional. Crawford didn’t have that ease with people, and never had. It was an unctuousness that you had to possess if you were going to make it as a player on the national stage. That was fine. He was happy with his strengths and he recognised his weaknesses. That kind of self-awareness, in itself, was something that was rare to find and valuable to possess. Robinson had amazing talents but his instincts were off. Crawford’s instincts were feral, animal. He was a strategist, a street fighter, and you needed a whole different set of skills for that. Robinson was surface but Crawford was detail. He devoured every tiny bit of public life. He hovered above things like a hawk, aware of the smallest nuances yet always conscious of the whole. He could see how one small change might affect things now or eleven moves down the line. It wasn’t a calculation he was aware of making; it was something that he processed, understood on a fundamental level.
One of the local party big shots came into the room and announced that it was time. Robinson, who was talking to the Senator for New Mexico, wished everyone good luck and led the way to the door. Crawford waited at the back, absorbing the energy of the room and the confidence––or lack thereof––that he could see in other candidates. The retinues filtered into the auditorium. He hooked a doughnut from the refreshment table and followed them.
THE DEBATE COULDN’T have started any better. Robinson was totally in control, delivering his opening position with statesmanlike charm, so much so that Crawford found himself substituting the drab surroundings of the auditorium for what he imagined the General Assembly of the United Nations might look like with his boss before the lectern, or with the heavy blue drapes of the Oval Office closed behind him during an address to the nation. He was, Crawford thought with satisfaction, presidential. The first question was posed––something on healthcare reform––and Robinson stayed away from it, letting the rest tear strips out of one another. Crawford watched and could hardly believe their luck. It wasn't hard. They were murdering themselves. Scott Martin tried to explain his very elaborate health-care scheme and got so bollixed up that he threw up his hands and said, “Well, this thing makes a lot more sense on paper.”
“Next question,” the moderator said.
“Delores Orpenshaw.” A shrew in a green dress and white pearls. “The way folk around here see it, this country is broken. My question for the candidates is simple: how would they fix it?”
“Governor Robinson?”
Crawford felt the momentary chill of electricity: nerves. Robinson looked the questioner right in the eye. “How would I fix it? Well, Delores, there are some pretty fundamental things that we need to do right away. We need to reverse the flood of Third World immigration. The Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans––we need to stop the flow and we need to send back the ones who are here illegally. It’s only logical that the more a country gets a Third World population, the more it will suffer from Third World problems. We need to reverse globalisation to bring back real jobs to this great country. That will help bring back personal pride and that helps restore pride in the community. We need to expose the climate change lies. That’s the constant claim of the technocrats but not everyone agrees. As an army of global warming zealots marches on Washington, the truth is that their Orwellian consensus is based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics. We need to restore discipline in our schools and respect for others. We need to rebuild a sense of national unity and pride. Only if we do those things can we start to take back this great nation from the political elite in our nation’s capitol.”
There was a smattering of applause that grew in intensity, triggering more applause and then more, and then, suddenly, it had become a wave as the audience––almost all of them––rose to their feet and anointed the Governor with an ovation. The moderator struggled to make her voice heard as she asked the others for their views.
It went on for another hour in the same vein: Robinson picked his spots and was rewarded volubly every time he finished speaking. Eventually, the moderator brought the debate to an end. They all dashed to the spin room, another wide space that had been equipped with folding tables with trailing multi-plugs for laptops and cellphones. Crawford and the rest of his team split up and worked the room, button-holing the hacks from the nationals and talking up the points that Robinson had made that had gone down well, quietly de-emphasising the points that hadn’t found their marks. There was no need to spin things.
Crawford remembered the old political adage: losers spin, winners grin.
And they were winners.
21
MILTON TURNED THE KEY. The ignition fired but the engine didn’t start. He paused, cranked it again, but still there was nothing. He had serviced the car himself a month ago and it had all looked alright, but this didn’t sound good. He drummed his fingers against the wheel.
Eva paused at the door of her Porsche and looked over quizzically.
He put his fingers to the key and twisted it a final time. The ignition coughed, then spluttered, then choked off to a pitiful whine. The courtesy light dimmed as the battery drained from turning over the engine. He popped the hood, opened the door and went around to take a look.
“Not good?” Eva said, coming over as he bent over the engine.
“Plugs, I think. They need changing.”
Eva had insisted they come back to Top Notch. Julius had never let him down and the meal had been predictably good. The unease that Milton had felt after reading the Promises had quickly been forgotten in her company. He almost forgot the interview with the police. They had talked about the others at the meeting, slandering Smulders in particular; they agreed that he was well meaning, if a little supercilious, and she had suggested that he had form for coming onto the new, vulnerable, male members of the fellowship. She had cocked an eyebrow at him as she had said it. Milton couldn’t help but laugh at the suggestion. His troubles were quickly subsumed beneath the barrage of her wit as she took apart the other members of the group. The gossip wasn’t cruel but, nevertheless, he had wondered what she might say about him in private. He said that to her, feigning concern, and she had put a finger to her lips and winked with unmistakeable salaciousness. By the end of the main course Milton knew that he was attracted to her, and he knew that the feeling was mutual.
She watched now as he let the hood drop back into place.
“What are you going to do?”
“Walk, I guess.”
“Where’s your place?”
“Mission District.”
“That’s miles.”
That much was true. He wouldn’t be home much before midnight and then he would have to come back out in the morning––via a garage––to change the plugs. He was a little concerned about his finances, too. He had been planning to go out and drive tonight. He needed the cash. That obviously wasn’t going to happen.
“Come on––I’ll give you a ride.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You’re not walking,” she said with a determined conviction.
Milton was going to demur but he thought of the time, and the chance to get some sleep to prime him for the day tomorrow, and he realised that would have been foolish. “Thanks,” he conceded as he locked the Explorer and walked over to her Cayenne with her.
The car was new, and smelt it. It wasn’t much of a guess to say that her job paid well––her wardrobe was as good a giveaway as anything––but as he settled back in the leather bucket seat he thought that perhaps he had underestimated how well off she really was.
She must have noticed his appraising look as he took in the cabin. “I’ve got a thing for nice cars,” she said, a little apologetically.
“It’s better than nice.”
“Nice cars and nice cl
othes. It used to be Cristal and coke. The way I see it, if you’re going to have an addiction it better be one that leaves you with something to show for it.”
She put on the new Jay-Z as she drove him across town. Milton guided her into the Mission District, picking the quickest way to his apartment. The area was in poor condition; plenty of the buildings were boarded up, others blackened from fire or degraded by squatters with no interest in maintaining them. The cheap rents attracted artists and students and there was a bohemian atmosphere that was, in its own way, quite attractive. It felt even cheaper than usual tonight and, as he looked out of the window of the gleaming black Porsche, he felt inadequate. They shared a weakness for booze but that was it; he started to worry that there was a distance between the way they lived their lives that would be difficult to bridge.
The El Capitan Hotel and Hostel was at 2361 Mission Street. It was a three storey building with eighty rooms. The frontage was decorated with an ornate pediment and a cinema style awning that advertised OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY and PUBLIC PARKING – OPEN 24 HOURS. It was a dowdy street, full of tatty shops and restaurants: to the left of the hotel was the Arabian Nights restaurant and, to the right, Modern Hair Cuts. Queen’s Shoes and Siegel’s Fashion for Men and Boys were opposite. There were tall palm trees and the overhead electricity lines buzzed and fizzed in the fog.
“This is me,” Milton said.
She pulled up outside the building.
She killed the engine. “Thanks for dinner.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That was fun.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“So––um…?” she said.
He looked at her with an uncertainty that he knew was ridiculous.
“You gonna invite me up?”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
She smiled. “What do you mean? Two recovering addicts? What could possibly go wrong?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Really?”
“Maybe it was.”
“So?”
He paused, couldn’t find the words, couldn’t even think what he could have been thinking when he said it, and laughed at the futility of it. “Come on, then. It’s at the top of the building so you’re going to have to walk. And I’ll warn you now, save the view, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s not five star.”
“Not what I’m used to, you mean?” She grinned. “Fuck you too.”
She locked the Cayenne and followed him to the door of the building. The narrow heels of her shoes clacked against the pavement as she took his arm and held it tightly. He was aware of the powerful scent of her perfume and the occasional pressure of her breast against his arm. He opened up and accepted her hand as she pressed it into his.
The reception was incredibly bright; the fluorescent tubes did not flicker, shining down with unflattering constancy onto the occupants roaming the stairs and hallways, occasionally stopping by the front desk with its glass partition and signs apologizing for the inability to lend money and forbidding the use of hot plates in the rooms. The night manager, Ahmed, nodded at them from behind the glass enclosure. There were all manner of people here. For some, it was a permanent residence and, for others, a room for the night. Many of the residents had mental problems and Milton had seen plenty of disturbances in the time he had been there. No-one had ever bothered him––the cold lifelessness behind his eyes was warning enough––and the place had served him well.
They climbed the stairs together and he gently disengaged as he reached into his pocket for the key to his door. A short, unkempt man with stringy gray hair and an oversized brown jacket peered around a potted plant at them. He stared at them, vigorously rubbing his eyes, and, after Milton returned the stare with interest, he darted back around the corner again.
“A friendly neighbour,” he explained. He didn’t mention the man who was found hanging in his room across the other side of the building, or the woman who stood in her underwear in the corridor complaining about “the radiation.”
Milton opened the door. Inside was simple and ascetic but it was all he could afford. The owner was happy enough to take cash which saved him from the necessity of opening a bank account, something he would have been very reluctant to do.
Milton’s apartment was tiny: an eight-by-twelve room that was just big enough for a double bed with a chair next to it and a small table next to that. There wasn’t much else. The bathroom and kitchen were shared with the other rooms on the floor. Milton had always travelled light, and so storing clothes wasn’t an issue; he had two of everything and, when one set was dirty, he took it down to the laundromat around the corner and washed it. He had no interest in a television and his only entertainment was the radio and his books: several volumes of Dickens, Greene, Orwell, Joyce and Conan Doyle.
“What do you think?” he said, a slightly bashful expression on his usually composed face.
“It’s…minimalist.”
“That’s one way of describing it.”
“You don’t have much––stuff––do you?”
“I’ve never been much of a one for things,” he explained.
She cast a glance around again. “No pictures.”
“I’m not married. No family.”
“Parents?”
“They died when I was a boy.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was years ago.”
“Siblings?”
“No. Just me.”
He had a small pair of charged speakers on the windowsill; he walked across and plugged these into his phone, opening the radio application and selecting the local talk radio channel. The presenter was discussing the Republican primary; the challengers had just debated each other for the first time. The candidates were trying to differentiate themselves from their rivals. J.J. Robinson, the governor of California, was in the lead by all accounts. They were saying that the primary was his to lose. He killed the radio app and scrolled through to his music player. He selected ‘Rated R’, by the Queens of the Stone Age, and picked out the slow, drawled funk of ‘Leg of Lamb.’
“Good choice,” she said.
“I thought so.”
The room was on the third floor and the window offered a good view of the city. She stood and looked out as he went through the affectation of boiling the kettle for a pot of tea. It was a distraction; they both knew that neither would drink a drop. He took the pot to the table and sat down on the edge of the bed; she sat on the chair next to him. She turned, maybe to say something, maybe not, and he leant across to press his lips gently to hers. He paused, almost wincing with the potential embarrassment that he had misjudged the situation even though he knew that he had not, and then she moved towards him and kissed harder. He closed his eyes and lost himself for a moment. He was only dimly aware of the physical sensations: her breath on his cheek, her arms snaked around his shoulders as her mouth held his, her fingers playing against the back of his neck. She pulled away and looked into his face. Her fingers reached up and traced their way along the scar that began with his cheek and ended below his nose. She kissed it tenderly.
“How’d you do that?”
“Bar fight.”
“Someone had a knife?”
He had no wish to discuss the events of that night––he had been drunk, and it had ended badly for the other guy––and so he reached for her again, his hand cupping around her head and drawing her closer. Her perfume was pungent, redolent of fresh fruit, and he breathed it in deeply. He pulled off her sweater and eased her back onto the bed with him. They kissed hungrily. He cupped her neck again and pulled her face to his, while her hands found their way inside his shirt and around, massaging his muscular shoulders. They explored their bodies hungrily and Milton soon felt dizzy with desire. Her lips were soft and full; her legs wrapped around his waist and squeezed him tight; her underwear was expensively insubstantial, her breasts rising up and down as she gulped for air. He kissed her sweet-smelling neck and
throat as she whispered out a moan of pleasure. He brushed aside the hair that framed her face. They kissed again.
His cellphone buzzed.
She broke away and locked onto his eyes with her own. Her eyes smiled.
“Don’t worry. I’m not answering.”
The phone went silent.
He kissed her.
Ten second later it rang again.
“Someone wants to speak to you.”
“Sorry.”
“Who is it? Another woman?”
He laughed. “Hardly.”
“Go on––the sooner you answer, the sooner they’ll shut up. You’re all mine tonight.”
Milton took the call.
“Mr. Smith?”
The boy’s voice was wired with anxiety. “Trip––is everything all right?”
“Did you see the police today?”
“Yes,” he said.
“They say you’re a suspect?”
“Not in as many words, but that’s the gist of it. I’m one of the last people to see her before she disappeared. It stands to reason.”
“They had me in, too. Three hours straight.”
“And?”
“I don’t know, I think maybe they think I’m a suspect, too.”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re doing what they think they have to do. Standard procedure. Most murders are committed by––well, you know.”
“People who knew the victim? Yeah, I know.”
Milton disentangled himself from Eva and stood. “You haven’t done anything. They’ll figure that out. This is all routine. Ticking boxes. The good thing is that they’re taking it seriously.”
