But only one life concerned him now. From the moment he had heard Sheila’s breathless explanation the night before, Jason had allowed himself to remember just how much that life meant to him. After he’d checked in at the reception desk, Jason was briefed by a young doctor before he was allowed to see Cassie.
“I understand you initiated mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the middle of our minor hurricane last night.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, as far as we can tell, it saved your friend’s life. She has pneumonia and a number of nasty contusions,” the doctor continued, glancing down at his clipboard. “We’re not out of the water yet, so to speak, but it looks as though she’s going to make it eventually. I wouldn’t stir her up with a lot of talk. She needs her rest.”
At first he thought she was asleep. Her eyes-were closed, her arm connected to an IV, extended in a gesture of helpless appeal. He sat down quietly on the chair beside the bed. Her paleness terrified him, as did the ragged edge of her breathing. He didn’t want to wake her, but he found he had to take her hand in his.
“Hi,” she said, looking directly into his worried gaze. “What’s the matter? You look terrible.”
“You should talk,” he said, squeezing her hand, and for a moment unable to go on. Her right eye was swollen almost shut, her cheek bruised an ugly purple—both probably caused by his frantic attempts to keep her afloat the night before.
“So tell me,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. “How does the other guy look? Nobody around here will tell me anything.”
“You’re lucky you made it,” Jason replied. The doctor had warned him not to stir her up, and news of Magnus’s death would certainly fall under that category. “I think we should both sit here quietly and count your blessings.”
“You count,” she said, “I’m too tired.” He held her hand as she slept until the end of the visiting hour. When he came back in the evening, she seemed stronger. She smiled when he walked into the room with his arms full of flowers he’d picked from the house gardens, late-blooming marigolds and mums.
“I should be giving you flowers,” she told him. “I understand you’re responsible for saving my life.”
“A rather alert team of paramedics helped a little.”
“That’s not how the doctor tells it. I’m afraid I don’t remember much, except that I finally learned how to swim.”
“I hate to have to be the one to tell you, but your form needs a great deal of work.”
She laughed briefly, then fell silent. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it, as soon as I woke up the first time. It was in the middle of the night and the moonlight was streaming through the window. I felt such peace, I knew either I was dying … or Magnus already had.”
“He pulled his gun on one of the rookie cops in the search party. He was shot point-blank; died instantly. I’m sorry, Cassie.”
“Don’t be. I never thought I’d say this, but he deserved it. He was a murderer.”
“I know, Cassie. Sheila told me everything.”
“But how?” Cassie tried to sit up in bed, but the sudden movement made her wince with pain. “He told me he’d killed her.”
“He tried,” Jason told her, taking her hand again. “But he missed by quite a bit. She’s in Roosevelt, recovering quickly. Last time I checked in, she was raising hell because they wouldn’t let her send out for Chinese.”
“So that’s how you knew where to find me.”
“Yes. And why you were out here.”
“She told you about Felice? How she died?”
“Yes, but I should have figured it out for myself a long time ago. I was too angry—and then too guilt-ridden—to think it through. You see, the last night Miranda was alive she accused me of killing the girl. I just exploded. Oh, God, it was a truly awful fight. I’ve always felt, I guess I’ve always known, that I caused Miranda’s accident. We were both so angry—blind with fury—I can see how she would have lost control.”
“All these months—you’ve felt you were responsible for her death?”
“It’s why I haven’t been able to talk about her. To anyone. Even you. I know … how you must feel about me.”
“I don’t think you do,” she said. She reached out. She touched her fingers to his lips. “I don’t think you have any idea.” It took her a little over ten minutes to recount what Magnus had told her about Miranda’s final hours alive. At one point Jason got up and moved over to the window. He stood there silently for several seconds after she was finished, looking out across the moonlit landscape of parking lot and carefully clipped lawn.
“Magnus was right about one thing,” Jason said at last. “I stopped loving Miranda very shortly after we were married. She didn’t want to have Heather, you see. She said she wasn’t ready to be a mother, she had her career to think of, et cetera. I stopped loving her and started loathing her at just about the same moment. But I wouldn’t let her have an abortion. I promised her that I’d do anything she wanted—do all the real child-rearing if necessary—if only she’d go through with the pregnancy. I think she realized even then that she needed leverage with me, that she’d lost my respect—and passion. But it was awful. She hated being pregnant, despised giving birth, and blamed me for everything.”
“I’m sorry,” Cassie said.
“I was at fault, too,” he went on. “I demanded things of her she simply couldn’t give. She saw the world only in terms of how it benefited her—forwarded her glorious career. Even poor Heather turned into one of her pawns. She knew how much I hated the way she coddled her—so she did everything she could to turn Heather into a spoiled brat. We were a disastrous family, but she refused to let go. Said she’d demand custody—and she’d probably have gotten it—if I sued for divorce. By the time you visited last Easter, I was living off pure venom. And then I saw how sordid the whole thing was, how hopeless.”
“Why?”
“Because I fell in love with you. And the more I wanted you, the more I hated her. Magnus might have killed her, Cassie, but in my heart I did, too.”
Thirty-seven
Cassie had a great deal of time to think during her two-week stay in the hospital. Though her condition was slowly improving, the doctors refused to let her travel until her lungs had thoroughly cleared. It was not an unpleasant place to be: the room blossomed with dozens of flower arrangements from friends and colleagues, and the rich golden autumn sunlight flooded through the double windows. She spent her mornings reading every newspaper she could get her hands on, watching the morning news shows, and talking on the phone, primarily with Sheila who was likewise incarcerated in Roosevelt Hospital. At least twice a day Cassie spoke with Jason and Heather on the phone, and Jason drove out to see her as often as he could.
“You must be exhausted,” she said one evening, noticing the smudges of fatigue under his eyes and the tightness around his mouth.
“Not at all,” he replied easily, taking her hand. “You know how I feel about the Harley. And the highway’s almost empty this time of the year.” But a few minutes later, he swallowed a yawn, and half an hour after he started reading to her—a routine he had begun when she complained once briefly of the difficulty of doing so with an IV in one’s arm—his voice faltered and his eyes closed.
She was happy for this opportunity to study him without his being aware of the scrutiny. She lived for the moments when they were together, for the rough intimate tenor of his voice. And yet, despite his rather awkward declaration of love, he remained to Cassie—as he did to the world at large—a deeply private man. It was not something she wanted to change about him, rather it was one of the many things she wanted to try to understand.
Another was that, with almost maddening conviction, he refused to discuss anything he felt might upset her. Claiming he was operating under doctor’s orders, Jason made sure that their conversations remained light, neutral, loving. They
spent a lot of time talking about Heather and the puppy he had brought her—a boisterous little beagle named Satchmo—to cheer her up while Cassie was away. And though Cassie sensed that Heather had taken the news of Cassie’s “accident” pretty hard, Jason fed her only hilarious stories of Heather’s and Satchmo’s latest high jinks. Even the books he chose to read to her were funny and fun. He’d fallen asleep over James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times.
But despite his constant attempts to infuse her life with sunlight, the dark side—the murders Magnus had committed, Haas’s corruption—refused to go away. Cassie knew that darkness wouldn’t lift until it was faced head-on and resolved. Jason would not discuss it with her, but it was clear to Cassie from the news reports that—although information about Magnus’s death had spread quickly through the major media—the real story behind it had never caught fire. The funeral service had been small, almost secretive. It had taken place before the papers caught wind of it. Senator Haas’s name never came up, except in the various obituaries where he was mentioned as a friend and recipient of the deceased’s largesse. Magnus’s death was being termed “an accident, pending further investigation by the East Hampton police force and the Manhattan D.A.’s office.”
A great many people, Cassie concluded, were working hard to keep the story quiet. As her health improved, so did her sense of unease over what she perceived to be a cover-up. There was only one other person she could talk to about these concerns; in fact, Sheila and she rarely discussed anything else.
“Mac dropped in on me last night,” Sheila had told Cassie on the phone that morning. “He looks like hell. Magnus Media’s board of directors has taken over the company for the time being, and they’ve involved poor Mac in the restructuring plans. Mac of all people! One of the all-time worst administrators in the world. He actually asked me if I knew anything about project efficiency reports. Like, the man is running totally scared.”
“He knows what really happened? You told him about Magnus and Haas?”
“I tried, Cassie, but it was really weird and kind of sad—he didn’t want to hear about it. He said he has enough on his plate without hurling unfounded accusations about our dear departed leader and the Democratic senatorial front-runner.”
“Unfounded? But surely we have the ammunition to make somebody listen—whether it’s Mac or the D.A. We’ve just got to get to the right people. I can’t believe this hasn’t come out already. I bet Haas is putting on political pressure at City Hall.”
“He is, after all, best friends or something with the Mayor.”
“Okay, so we’ll have to be very careful whom we approach.”
“And, like, what are we going to tell this person when we meet? If I remember correctly, our hard evidence went up a certain chimney in East Hampton.”
“I still have Miranda’s disk. We have the death certificate. We’ll just have to start putting the pieces together again. Sheila, listen, after everything you went through I’ll really not hold it against you if you want to forget about this. But I can’t.”
Cassie misunderstood the silence on the other end of the line; she felt her heart drop.
“We’re forgetting something,” Sheila said at last. “What about Jason? If he would agree to back us up—support our story—it wouldn’t matter what we have on paper. All we’d need is his corroboration.”
“You’re right,” Cassie replied uneasily.
“There’s an unmistakable ‘but’ in your voice.”
“He won’t talk about it. And he won’t let me.”
“Why? You don’t think…”
“He’s still somehow connected with Haas?”
“Well, it’s a possibility. I mean, think about it: Magnus murdered his wife, almost got the two of us. If I were him, man, I’d be dying to blow this thing sky-high! Why else would he want to keep quiet?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not him. Now now. How can you say that?”
“You said it, sweetheart, not me.”
No, Cassie told herself now, studying Jason’s face in repose. Sleeping, he looked ten years younger, the dark circles under his eyes softened by his lashes. His mouth curved in an unconscious smile. She looked at his hands—the long, fine fingers curling around the pages of the book—and remembered the feel of them against her skin. She believed that he loved her, that he wanted to protect her, and yet…
“What?” Jason had woken suddenly and caught her expression. “I think you know.”
“We’ll talk about it later. When you’re better.”
“No. It has to be now, before it’s too late.”
“Darling, I would think you’d know by now that it’s never too late.” He leaned over to kiss her, but she turned her face away. He sat back. He folded his arms across his chest.
At last, he said, “I’m going to tell you a different kind of bedtime story tonight, okay? It’s about a young, ambitious kid determined to make his mark in the world. His father, an unemployed stone carver, is not a good enough model for this kid. He wants to emulate someone powerful. Connected. He works one summer for a junior congressman and thinks he’s found his idol. The politician is good with words, knows his way around the city, has a knack for making things go easy for people he likes. Well, the kid adores him. Works for him straight through high school. And after the kid puts in a stint in Vietnam, the congressman does him some favors, and before you know it a building project the kid’s been trying to put together—is suddenly a reality. Union problems solved. The guy even cosigns a bank loan for the kid.”
“And then, once the construction started,” Cassie continued for him, “the congressman hits the kid up for a kickback.”
“Oh, you already know this story,” Jason said with a weary-looking smile. “What was so horrible about it all was that Haas just assumed I’d buy in. ‘It’s the way of the world, son,’ he told me. ‘I’m stunned you’re so naive.’ He told me if I didn’t kick in he’d call back the loan or start union trouble. One way or another, he said he’d manage to shut me down. I couldn’t let him. I was too full of myself, too proud of where I’d gotten to see it all taken away. But, believe me, although that was the one and only time I ever buckled under to Anthony Haas, he’s been taking it out of me ever since.”
“So why don’t you help me do something to stop him?”
“No, you’re not to get involved.” He sat forward again and took her hands in his. “Listen to me, Cassie. For as long as I live I will regret the fact that I didn’t do something to stop him sooner, that I pretended not to see what was going on around me—how sick Magnus really was, the scams Haas was still pulling. That I cut myself off from everyone except Heather. But mostly that I let you step in—where I should have months before.” He brought her fingers to his lips. “That’s what bitterness does to you—it turns you to stone, makes you blind. Well, I’m awake now, even if I haven’t got much sleep recently.”
Finally she realized what he was trying to tell her. “You are doing something—on your own,” she said.
“No, with help. Very professional help. I know Haas too well. He may be greedy, but he’s no fool. The only way to make any of this stick is to catch him red-handed. We’ve got to keep the thing quiet so he won’t suspect. That’s one of the reasons the story on Magnus got quashed so quickly in the media. The other being that Magnus Media wants to keep its embarrassment to a minimum. They’re reorganizing, rethinking their goals, but they very much want to stay in the game. I think they’re hoping to pin a lot of what happened on Haas.”
“Magnus Media is actually cooperating in all this?”
“The board, yes, with the help of a small army of lawyers. The Feds are involved, too. Even a well-placed person on Haas’s staff.”
“Not—”
“Yes, Geoffrey Mellon. With a promise of immunity, of course. He’s one clever little operator. I wouldn’t be the least surprised if he made it to the House himself one day.”
“It�
��s terrible what I was thinking.”
“That I was somehow still involved with Haas? I’ll tell you the truth, Cassie, until we nail him—I feel like I am. I want to be the one responsible for bringing him down. The one he’s looking at when he’s taken into custody. I want to be the one he blames for the rest of his life.”
Two days later, Haas was the top story on every morning television news show in the country as well as the front page national lead of every major paper. Though many of the national editors across the country were surprised by the scope and detail of the information about the episode that came to them over the wire, Ian McPherson was not. He had headed up the team of Magnus writers and editors who had been allowed to help craft the press release supposedly prepared by the F.B.I. In it, the extent of Vance Magnus’s role in Senator Anthony Haas’s dirty politics was played down considerably. But no one hearing or reading the story would have any trouble sensing that there was more to it than met the ear or eye. Typical of the scandalous nature of the story, the front page headline in the Daily News read:
SENATOR STUNG!
New York Senator Anthony Haas, seeking reelection for his fourth term in November, was the target of a successful F.B.I, sting operation yesterday evening that purportedly captured him on video accepting a large cash payment for promised political favors. The operation, which involved the cooperation of several local law enforcement agencies as well as the F.B.I., took place in the corporate offices of Darin Associates in the World Trade Center. The Senator, believing that he had just been handed $300,000 in cash in an expensive attaché case, apparently promised Mr. Darin that certain overseas trading restrictions would be loosened in the near future for Mr. Darin’s business convenience.
Heart and Soul Page 27
