“That’s too soon,” Christina said. “How can we possibly turn around public opinion by Monday?”
Carraway cracked her knuckles. “What could we do to turn around public opinion if we had a year? Hope the world develops a case of collective amnesia? This nomination is over. Finished. Dead in the water. Gay, I could work with. Gay bars, even, I could work with. But abortion? It’s hopeless. If Roush has any brains, he’ll withdraw.”
“But he won’t,” Ben said quietly.
“Then he’ll wish he did.”
Ben sighed. “At least it couldn’t possibly get any worse.”
Annabeth hated it when the boss failed. It didn’t happen very often. Maybe twice in the ten years she’d worked as his AA. Keyes had one of the most successful track records in the history of the Senate—that’s how he ended up chairing the Judiciary Committee in the first place.
“Massage your neck?” she asked. It had always worked in the past.
“If you insist,” Keyes grumped.
Annabeth walked behind his desk, removed her glasses, and began slowly and gently kneading the elderly man’s shoulders. “You didn’t fail, you know. How could you possibly know Matera would do a Benedict Arnold on you?”
“I should’ve known. It was my job to know.”
“She’s just a sad old woman who wanted to do something memorable before she goes gently into that good night. I don’t think she had a prayer of getting the VP nod; I don’t care what anyone says.”
“And I’m just a sad old man who would happily accept the vice presidency if it were offered, but my chances went down like the stock market on Black Friday when Roush got out of committee. Especially when those scheming bastards on the other side made it a matter of conscience.” He swore silently. “I hate matters of conscience.”
Annabeth kept stroking, sinking her long fingernails into Keyes’s almost gelatinous flesh. She could see the short hairs rising on the back of his neck. “So what’s the problem? Surely you don’t think the Senate will confirm his nomination. Not after the abortion revelation.”
“Not a chance.”
“Then what’s to worry about? He’s going down.”
“Yes, he’s going down. But he’s not going down because of me!” Keyes shrugged off her hands. “I’m supposed to be the power broker in this chamber. Nobody should be able to get to first base without my help. Instead, in this mess, I come off looking like a doddering old has-been who couldn’t even keep a goddamn baby-killer from getting out of committee!”
“I think you’re taking this much too seriously,” Annabeth said. She was trying to sound soothing, but he was making it increasingly difficult. “A few months from now, no one will remember that you didn’t ground him in committee. They’ll just remember that he didn’t get on the Supreme Court. You’ll be blameless.”
“Have you learned nothing in the time you’ve been working for me, woman? In this town, there’s no such thing as blameless.”
“Come on,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and hugging tightly. “Where’s that Texas optimism? There must be a silver lining in this somewhere. When Thaddeus Roush steps into the Senate chamber, you’ll destroy him.”
“Wish me luck with that,” Keyes burbled. “Probably the only comfort that man has at this point is, no matter how bad everything is, it couldn’t possibly get any worse.”
Judge Haskins’s cell phone popped open. “I told you never to call me on an open line.”
“You told me never to call you at home, too.”
“So take a hint. Don’t call.”
Richard Trevor sighed heavily into the receiver. “I’m sensing some hostility here, Judge. What’s the matter? Haven’t you read the papers? Or watched television?”
“Of course I have. How could I miss that influence-peddling barrage? It’s the most embarrassing display since LBJ’s little girl with the daisy.”
“But it’s working. Polls show—”
“I don’t care about your polls. I don’t want any part of your seedy operation!”
“That’s not what you said last week.”
“Last week you promised me the Roush nomination wouldn’t get out of committee.” Haskins made sure the doors to the bedroom were closed and his wife wasn’t listening. He must remember to keep his voice down, no matter how excited he got. “You were wrong.”
“Details, details. Roush will be rejected. Monday. Probably before the lunch break.”
“I don’t care! Don’t you see what you’ve done!”
“No,” Trevor said wearily. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“You’ve made it dirty! Before it was supposed to be a clean, aboveboard affair. The nominee turns out not to be the person the President thought he was, so the committee rejects him and the President picks someone else. I could live with that. But now it’s something entirely different. Now it’s more like the committee found nothing wrong with him, so some big-money power players dug up some dirt because they have a vendetta against homosexuals!”
“I can assure you, that’s not the way it’s playing in the public eye. I’ve seen the tracking polls.”
“I want you to stop calling me, stop trying to meet with me. I want you to leave me alone.”
He heard Trevor’s long exhalation on the opposite end of the phone. “So does that mean you are no longer interested in being a member of the Supreme Court?”
Haskins didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought. You want it so bad you can taste it. You just want to get through the confirmation process and emerge squeaky-clean. Like a hero.” He chuckled in a way that set Haskins’s teeth on edge. “Don’t worry, hero-boy. You’ll be okay. You can stay as far away from me as you like. But stay close to the President, okay? And when the time comes, I expect you to remember who got you the job you’ve wanted your entire professional life.”
Haskins’s lips pressed together; his eyes were livid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. Have a nice weekend, and fear not. Roush will not be confirmed.”
“How can you know? He’s risen from the dead before.”
“I know. This time, I know.”
“What, like you have even more dirt you haven’t used yet? Don’t make me laugh.” Haskins stared at the cell phone, tempted to throw it across the room. “If I know nothing else, I know this: no matter how bad it is for Roush now, it couldn’t possibly get any worse.”
Roush was getting used to sitting alone at night. The price of fame, he liked to tell himself, as if he hadn’t paid that price enough times already. But he knew that this wasn’t what it was really about. This was his own fault. All of this mess was his own fault.
He’d known this could happen. He’d known it all along. He took the risk, he decided to keep the truth to himself, and now he was paying for it.
Of course, if he’d told anyone about the abortion, he wouldn’t be here at all. Wouldn’t have been considered at all. Had he made the right choice? It seemed so pathetically unfair to be automatically disqualified just because of a foolish mistake he made all those years ago. He was just a kid. She was just a kid. He didn’t even know who he was—obviously—or he wouldn’t have been with a woman in the first place. Why couldn’t the past remain in the past?
Asking himself rhetorical questions wasn’t getting him anywhere. He was rationalizing, trying to come up with excuses for—well, if not lying, withholding the truth. Funny. This whole thing began to go sour when he chose not to hide the truth, chose to be honest about who and what he was.
Without telling Ray first.
And now he was being hanged by one tiny thing he had kept to himself.
Ben had called three times today, trying to put together a strategy session. What was the point? He was smart, sort of, but naïve in so many ways. Ben still believed in him. Worse, Ben still believed he had a chance, when everyone else knew better.
Self included.
But then�
��he knew something Ben didn’t. He knew what everyone was thinking: it may look bad for Roush now, but at least it couldn’t get any worse.
But Roush knew that it could.
48
Pretty Boy slammed a fist into Loving’s face. Given the force of the blow, Loving should have fallen backward about ten feet, but the rope—Trudy’s rope, from the motel room—held him tightly to his chair. So Pretty Boy hit him again.
Blood gushed out of Loving’s nostrils. It looked as if the light in the storage closet at Action was blinking on and off, but Loving knew the only thing blinking was his tenuous grasp on consciousness.
This had been going on for almost an hour. His face was so cut, bruised, and bloodied that Loving suspected it barely resembled his usual handsome self. But at some point, even he had to worry about how much he could take. Or how long before Renny would get sick of the game and just kill him.
Renny stepped into the light cast by the low-hanging lamp descending from the ceiling. “Would this be a time when you would be feeling comfortable talking to me, my friend?”
Loving licked the traces of blood from his lips. He wanted to wipe away the blood dripping into his eyes, but his hands were tied behind him. “Never been much of a talker,” Loving managed. “But the ladies tell me I’m a great listener. Why don’t you do the talkin’, and I’ll just keep my ears open.”
“Fool.” Renny’s irritation was almost as pronounced as his cruelty. “You were tough and merciless when you had me strapped to your chair. Do you find torture for information so amusing now as you did then?” He snapped his fingers at Pretty Boy. “Hurt him some more.”
The next five minutes were not among the most memorable that Loving had experienced. Okay, they were memorable, he supposed, but nothing he’d remember by choice.
Could be worse, he tried to tell himself. Not too long ago, he’d been certain he was a dead man. He saw Max—no, Feodor—press the gun against his chest. He’d seen him pull the trigger, heard the action fire. When he’d lost consciousness, he felt quite certain it was for the last time. Except a funny thing happened. Turned out that gun wasn’t one of your garden-variety firing mechanisms flinging molded pieces of lead. It was a taser gun. About a trillion volts of electricity rocketed through his body. Renny was wearing a dog collar—an electronic homing device—on his ankle, like a criminal on parole, which explained how his paid assassins were able to find him so quickly. Loving woke up later in this tiny storage closet in the back of the club, with barely enough room for him and Renny and Pretty Boy.
“Perhaps I have not made myself clear enough to you,” Renny said, clipping off each word with a bitter emphasis. “These men here—they do not like you. My young son Wilhelm, he in particular does not care for you. It would seem that you have embarrassed my boy Wilhelm. Badly. At a public place. A shopping mall. In the ladies’ department, no less. It is all much too horrible to contemplate.” He leaned forward. “Confidentially, my friend, I am not surprised. I have tried to protect Wilhelm with experienced partners and big guns, but at the end of the day, some problems cannot be remedied.”
“Hey!” Wilhelm protested.
Renny waved a hand. “Do not bother. It is true and we both know it.”
“He’s not so great. All he did was sneak up behind me. Like a coward. He hit me with Alexander’s gun. It hurt!”
Renny shook his head, eyes closed. “Do not make it worse than it already is, my son. This man Loving—he has no need for surprise. Take away your gun and he could use you for a sledgehammer even now.”
“Not sure I could now,” Loving grunted. “But I like the sound of it.”
The corner of Renny’s lip turned up. “Let me cut to the chase, my friend, or we will be forced to continue cutting your face. Wilhelm would very much enjoy the chance to kill you, and I cannot say that this would cause me much pain, except for my own security and that of my associates. I would like to know how much you know and how you came to know it and who you have told about it. That is all. It could not be more simple. So there you have it. You tell me what I wish to know and you will live. You fail to cooperate and you will die.”
Loving spat out the blood dribbled between his lips. “Liar.”
“You do not believe me?” Renny said, a hand pressed against his chest. He feigned offense for a moment or two, then gave it up. “All right then. You are correct. There is in fact no chance that you will walk out of here alive. You have embarrassed me too greatly. Even if I was not concerned about the information you have learned—and I am—I could never let you leave. But I can very much rearrange the manner in which you die. One bullet to the cranium and it will all be over in an instant. Quick. Painless. Or we can make it a much slower, more protracted, more…memorable affair.” He leaned in close. “We will make you feel such pain that this simple torture you have undergone so far will be as nothing. It will seem like your mother’s sweet kisses compared to what will follow. So what will it be? The quick death, or the excruciating one?”
Loving grimaced. “Geez, I don’t know. I’ve always been a choosy shopper. Can I have some more time to think about it?”
“I think not.” Renny lunged forward and pinched Loving’s nostrils closed with one hand, covering his mouth with the other, squeezing so hard it hurt. Loving’s senses were immediately overwhelmed by the loss of air. He wanted to gasp for breath, but the fingers on his nose remained firmly in place. He soon depleted the remaining air in his lungs and worse, had no way to release the carbon dioxide building in his system. His head felt as if it might explode; his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. Blood trickled down his throat.
Just at the instant he was certain he would pass out, Renny removed his hands.
Loving lurched forward—or at least his head did, the only part of his body that wasn’t tied to the chair. He coughed and wheezed and gasped for air, desperate to get something circulating through his lungs.
“A nasty way to die, isn’t it?” Renny said. “But even at that, much too quick. Much too painless. I want something that you will experience with more…extended pleasure. Unless you are perhaps ready to tell me what I wish to know.”
Loving wanted to be defiant, but found he was unable to form the words necessary to do it. How much longer could he hold out? He knew every man, no matter how tough, had a breaking point. And he feared he was very much approaching his.
“This is your last chance, Mr. Loving. Talk to me!”
Somehow, some way, he managed to find words. “No, thanks. I’ll go with Option Two.”
“Idiot!” Renny threw up his hands, enraged. He grabbed the lamp behind him, jerked the electrical cord out of the base of the lamp—without unplugging it—and peeled back the rubber coating. Once he was able to reach the wiring beneath, he pulled the two threads apart, careful not to let them touch.
“Americans,” Renny swore under his breath. “You have such stupid notions, these preposterous ideas of what it is to be a man. Where did you learn your lessons, from the James Bond movies? Let us see if your little secrets seem so important after this.”
Loving felt a surge of raw electricity delivered to his chest. His entire body lurched up and down; his heart beat wildly. Renny had only begun his work. He touched the exposed wires to Loving’s forehead, his cheeks, his damaged nose. He ripped apart Loving’s T-shirt and touched the wires to his nipples, and when that wasn’t enough, he touched the wires to his crotch. Loving fought to stay awake, fought to avoid cardiac arrest, fought to keep his lips closed a little longer.
What would it hurt to talk? he heard the evil voice in his head saying. Ben and Christina could take care of themselves. He didn’t even like Thaddeus Roush. Who was he trying to protect? His investigation had come to a dead stop. What was it he was trying to save this time? What exactly was it he was going to die for?
And then the answers crystallized in his head. He wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t going to take Option One or Two. He was going to live—live for the
chance to turn the tables on Pretty Boy and Renny. He had to pull through. If nothing else, for that.
And perhaps for that beautiful painting of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee.
“Damn you!” Renny shouted. He continued electrocuting Loving, but Loving had removed his mind to another place, had focused on thinking, not feeling. Nursery rhymes, country music lyrics, the Pledge of Allegiance, anything to distract him. He couldn’t even be sure which parts of his body had been electrified. All he knew was that he had survived it.
Renny was furious. “We need something better. Something that hurts even more! Something this monster can’t ignore!”
“I’ll get to work on it, Father,” Pretty Boy said.
“Don’t bother. I have had all of this one that I can stand. If he has told what he knows to someone else, they will soon show their hand. And then we will kill those people. We will kill that senator for whom he works and everyone in his office. We will kill everyone he knows, if necessary. But we will start with him.”
He clasped his hand tightly around Loving’s throat. “Play time is over, my oversized friend.” He squeezed even tighter. “Your death is now upon you.”
49
The radio spot began with a voice-over in the usual clipped stentorian tones over a driving electronic beat that had been sampled from an action-picture sound track.
“Do you believe liars should be trusted?”
DUH-duh, duh, ta-da, the electronic heartbeat boomed in the background. DUH-duh, duh, ta-da.
“Do you believe sex offenders should be running the justice system?”
DUH-duh, duh, ta-da. DUH-duh, duh, ta-da.
“Do you believe a murderer should be on the highest court in the land?”
The music swelled, adding a pizzicato electric guitar riff that elevated the tension level of the music to the magnitude of a slasher flick. Then, all at once, the music disappeared. And after a moment of silence, the chorus of baby cries began, a mass cacophony of infant pain.
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