The 3rd Woman

by Jonathan Freedland

  O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

  12.17pm Finally, right by the entrance, Mario Padilla has appeared, lifted on the shoulders of two fairly beefy supporters. They’re resting him on one shoulder each, as it were, holding him steady. He has a bullhorn.

  12.18pm He thanks everyone for coming. Says the size has surprised everyone.

  12.19pm Says no one wants any trouble. Urges people to protest peacefully.

  12.21pm Urges the Chinese authorities to listen to what the people of Los Angeles are saying. That they don’t want revenge, they just want justice for the people they love. They just want the Chinese to co-operate.

  12.22pm Padilla says if the people in charge of the base have any knowledge that could lead to the capture of the man who killed Rosario Padilla, Eveline Plaats or Abigail Webb, all they have to do is hand that knowledge to the LAPD. That’s all.

  12.23pm Says they must do it. It’s their duty.

  12.25pm Now ramping up the rhetoric. Padilla is quite the speaker. Amazing intensity. His words being relayed via other bullhorns and makeshift speakers. Slight delay as word gets passed along the ring. Only makes it more powerful somehow.

  12.26pm Now he’s giving a direct message to the PLA in charge of the garrison. ‘If you are harboring a fugitive from justice, the time to hand him over is now. Be open. Do not hide behind these fences and barriers. If you have nothing to hide, be open. You don’t need these men and these guns to protect you. Be open. And if you love justice as we believe you do, then tear down this wall. Tear down this wall! Tear down this wall!’

  12.28pm The entire crowd are still chanting it. They won’t stop. The words are encircling the garrison. There’s no way the men inside can’t hear this message. ‘Tear down this wall! Tear down this wall! Tear down this wall!’

  They were in the car, on their way to the launch of a new children’s literacy initiative in Santa Cruz. Leo looked at the briefing note resting on his lap. ‘Book It!’ the scheme was called, and it involved giving a free book every semester to every child in the district, paid for from the estate of a local boy who’d gone on to make a fortune in Silicon Valley. Leo turned the page to see a potted bio of the late donor. He’d asked Ross, the upstart asshole, to check for any landmines and he’d said there were none. But Leo ran his eye over the bio anyway, looking for signs of any rogue affiliations or past donations that could cause problems. In politics, it was always best to trust no one but yourself. Not just in politics.

  Berger was on the phone, smooth-talking an early backer who needed some reassurance. The mayor wasn’t asking him for money this time. Instead, he was keeping the benefactor sweet, offering him the illusion that he was being consulted. Illusion it most certainly was. At one point the candidate pulled the phone away from his ear and hit the mute button, allowing him to speak to Leo while the donor kept right on talking to him.

  ‘You got the numbers yet?’

  Leo realized he could stall no longer. ‘When you’ve finished your call.’

  Berger clicked the un-mute button on his phone. ‘Adam, I think the argument you’re making is too important to wait. I’m going to take it to my senior staff right away … That’s right … We have a meeting now, in fact. It’s going to be top of the agenda … No, it’s me who should be thanking you … I’ll keep you posted. Love to Cindy and the girls.’ He put the phone on his lap. ‘OK. What have we got?’

  Leo was balancing a printout on his knees, directly below the Book It! papers and the design of a proposed new campaign flier: a shot of Berger and his gorgeous blonde wife against a backdrop of giant redwood trees. But he had to maintain the pretence that the data had only just arrived. He looked at his phone, recalling the numbers from memory. ‘Remember, these are raw numbers. They haven’t been weighted or adjusted for—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Leo, just give me the fucking numbers. I’m not a child.’

  ‘You’re down eleven on last week. Berger forty-four, Sigurdsson forty-two.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s within the margin of error.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a statistical tie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is California, Leo. Democrats are not meant to tie with Republicans in California IN FUCKING FEBRUARY!’

  The driver looked over his shoulder. Leo gave him a ‘don’t worry’ expression.

  ‘I know, Richard. But this is a temporary blip, brought about by unforeseen and extraordinary events. This will pass.’

  Berger swivelled to face his aide directly. ‘How exactly is this going to pass, Leo? Hmm? How?’

  ‘Well, we—’

  ‘I’ve become the pro-China candidate in this race. That’s what Sigurdsson and Doran are putting on me. It’s political death, Leo, that’s what it is. I’m the guy who’s let some psycho with a needle on the loose because I won’t stand up to the garrison, because I’m too far up the PLA’s ass. That’s the message. Every day Sigurdsson sucks Padilla’s dick, that’s the message: vote Berger and it’s a vote for the People’s fucking Republic. If you don’t like secretive Chinese killers and if you don’t like a big fucking Chinese base in the middle of LA, then vote Republican. I mean, how the hell do we fight that, Leo?’

  Leo allowed himself a short exhalation of breath, cutting it shorter lest it sound like a sigh. ‘We need to get out in front of this issue. We could try again to have a meeting and a photo with Padilla. No harm in that, but I think you should go substantive. Plays to your positives, hints at Sigurdsson’s negatives. You’re the heavyweight in this race, remember.’

  ‘Substantive?’ Berger said, quieter now. ‘Like what?’

  ‘You do a big, set-piece speech, maybe in DC. Council on Foreign Relations, National Press Club. You know, statesmanlike. You go through the history, the context, all that cr— … stuff. Then you float a commission. Bipartisan. Former senators, couple of governors. Some big-swinging dick professors.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To renegotiate the Treaty.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘No,’ said Leo, now facing the mayor, their knees touching. ‘Why not? You’re jumping ahead to the heart of the matter, ten moves ahead of Sigurdsson. You leave her way back, still whining and bellyaching about the garrison. Meanwhile, you’re going big, focusing on the solution. It’s classic Eisenhower. “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.”’

  ‘The press would kill us. Everyone knows we can’t change the Treaty. It just can’t be done. It’s an open question whether the President of the United States could do it, even if Congress wanted him to. The Governor of California can do nothing. Not on his own. And I’m just the mayor of Los Angeles! Can you imagine what the press would do with this? It would just advertise my own impotence.’

  ‘I think you’d start a debate in the prime—’

  ‘I don’t want to start a debate: you can leave that to NPR. I want to win this fucking election.’

  ‘It makes you the big picture guy, the geopolitical, strategic leader. She’s a complainer, on the same level as the street protestors. You’re above that. You’re planning for a better future.’

  It wasn’t getting through, Leo could see that. Politicians liked the long term in theory; they made speeches about it, especially when they were campaigning. They always hoped and planned to govern for the long term. But the brute reality was they cared more about right now. And ‘now’ was getting more immediate all the time. Leo could recite Doran’s lectures on the subject: ‘When I started out in this business, it was all about the next morning’s newspaper headlines. And everyone complained that was too short.’ Then the news cycle got shortened, Doran would say, ‘It became about that night’: what pictures you got on the evening news, the daily tracking polls. Now the old twenty-four-hour news cycle seemed an impossible luxury, a pace of near-academic slowness and deliberation. These days it was all about the next thirty seconds on Weibo. If a politician contemplated a horizon beyond th
at, he was instantly branded far-sighted and cerebral.

  Leo understood his boss did not want some high-minded plan for the future that might take weeks to bear fruit politically. He wanted a quick fix to get his numbers back to where they had been a matter of days ago, leading Sigurdsson fifty-five to forty-five.

  ‘There is something more immediate you could do,’ he began, reaching for an idea he had had that morning but had hoped not to have to deploy. ‘Just to establish your anti-garrison cojones.’

  Berger had returned to his prior position, leaning back into his seat, once again staring straight ahead. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘This would be something you could do, rather than just say. In your capacity as mayor.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Parking fines.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘I mean it. Remember the estimate we got from Jack? Tens of millions of dollars in unpaid fines, unregistered vehicles, speeding infringements.’

  ‘Which the garrison refuse to recognize. Extraterritoriality, diplomatic immunity, all that bullshit.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The point is, you’ve let that go quiet. That’s one reason Sigurdsson’s able to whack you now for being soft on the Chinese. And the polling was always very strong on this stuff, you’d be surprised. That’s what people resent. That the garrison get to drive as fast as they like, park anywhere, behave like they’re above the law.’

  ‘Which they are.’

  ‘So why not serve them with a legal notice for the money they owe?’

  Berger shook his head. ‘Because it will make us look pathetic, that’s why. Make me look pathetic. They’re killing our women and I’m worried about a few boys driving through a red light? We’ll look like fleas on an elephant’s ass.’

  Now he leaned forward again, his face so close to Leo’s, the aide could smell his aftershave. ‘You were gonna close this down for me, Leo. Remember? I told you. “Shut it down.” That’s what I needed you to do. I don’t want me or my name within a thousand miles of this case. You need to keep me out of it.’

  ‘I understand, Richard. And I have ensured that—’

  ‘Don’t “Richard” me, Leo. I’m not gonna be soothed and calmed like I’m one of those interns you’re boning. No way. I don’t wanna be soothed and calmed. I want action. I want you to solve this problem by cutting it off at source, like I asked. And if you have “personal reasons” for not wanting to do what I ask, then I’m afraid your time on this campaign will be done. Do I make myself clear?’

  Leo nodded. But Berger was not finished.

  ‘And when I say “at source”, are we clear what I mean? Or rather who I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re clear about that?’

  ‘Crystal.’

  ‘Good.’ The mayor settled back into his chair, gazing out of the passenger-side window. At that moment they passed a crop of Sigurdsson for Governor lawn-signs. ‘Then get it done. Now.’

  With dread, and a rising sense of failure, Leo Harris reached for his telephone.

  Chapter 36

  Maddy had tried to leave her building long ago. She walked into the side street where she had parked the rental car she’d picked up the day before and took a while to absorb what she saw. She had been clamped, a bright yellow ‘boot’ immobilizing the front wheel on the driver’s side. The windscreen was covered with an oversized sticker, fully obscuring the view and announcing that she was in violation of parking restrictions for the City of Los Angeles. She cursed herself. Her idiocy for parking in a residents’ zone in a car that had no permit. Except, once she studied the signs, she saw there were no such restrictions here. She looked around. None of the other cars, equally lacking in permits, had been clamped. Only hers. She filed it away along with the fruitless hunt for Tony Gilper as a tactic her opponents were using to delay and derail her. And to signal that they knew exactly where she was and what she had been doing. This was their way of saying that, for all her attempted evasions yesterday – and her stop at Leo’s apartment – they had never let her out of their sight.

  She could not afford to let that cow her. That was what they wanted and she would not give it to them. She would do what she needed to do and if they wanted to watch, they could damn well watch.

  So Madison had walked a few streets, sticking to the busy ones, then used her phone to summon a cab. Even though she was using one of the burners, which she hoped had not yet been tracked by her pursuers, she took extra precautions. She called three taxi companies, one after the other, rejecting the first two that arrived just in case. She reasoned that those who had been stalking her were well-resourced – the two-way mirror, the three-person, plain-clothes surveillance team on the street corner, the false suitor despatched to woo Katharine – and that they might well stretch to having a fake cab standing by. But even they would be unlikely to have three. When the third car pulled up, giving the name she had given to the dispatcher, she nodded and got in. ‘To Terminal Island,’ she said.

  And now here she was, having arrived just after noon – in time to catch the beginning of Padilla’s speech. She held her notebook in front of her, not that she planned to use it. She was not here to write. But it helped to have something to do with her hands. It separated her from everyone else here, too, which she liked. Most reporters took notes electronically these days, tapping into their phones. But Maddy stuck with pen and paper, clasping her notebook like a shield.

  All around the crowd were chanting. Tear down this wall! Tear down this wall! Tear down this wall! They kept it up, as if they believed the words were an incantation, an open sesame that would suddenly and miraculously see the fence disappear and the gate swing open, the Chinese garrison exposing itself to the wintry daylight. They were enjoying it, this crowd, high on their own self-righteousness, their shared mission, that sense of momentum you feel at a big rally, the conviction that the tide is turning, that soon nothing will stand in your way.

  Padilla had played them beautifully, no doubt about that. He was a natural; you’d think he’d been working crowds all his life. He stood at the front, perhaps twenty rows of people between them, slightly raised on a homemade platform and with a bullhorn in hand, joining in the chorus. Tear down this wall, tear down this wall.

  He had, Maddy assumed, finished his speech; there was no way he could top that climax. Yet his posture indicated he had something else to say. Finally, he spotted a dip in the chanting and brought the horn to his lips. ‘We’re going to stay here all day, our hands linked around this base until our voices have been heard.’ A big cheer. ‘Before I finish, I do want to thank some folks who have made today possible.’

  He thanked the police, which brought an ironic round of applause, praising them for keeping things orderly. A couple of police officers near Madison raised their hands in appreciation: ironic or sincere, it was hard to tell. Next Padilla thanked the stewards, ‘all volunteers who came forward in the last twenty-four hours because they love this town and its people’. And then he said, ‘I want to single out just one person, though. I’m not sure she’s here today, I can’t see her, but if she is, I hope she’ll give us a wave so we can express our thanks. Because without her, I don’t think all of you would be here. I know I wouldn’t. It was her reporting, her refusal to give up, her determination to get to the truth and to let all of us know about it, that started this movement. She is, like me, one of the bereaved. Like me, she lost a sister. Please, let’s give a big hand to Madison Webb.’

  She was suddenly enveloped in a roar, so loud the air around her seemed to vibrate. Someone started a chant: ‘Madison, Madison.’ From the front, Mario was back on the bullhorn. ‘Come on out front here, Madison, if you’re here. These folks want to see you.’

  The noise was solid, a thick wall encircling her. She considered a wave and shake of her head, a modest brush-off to Padilla, but realized even that would draw attention she did not want. She remained frozen, with no intention of going u
p front. Wading through this crowd would be impossible for a start; they were packed in so tightly, she could barely move. More to the point, the very idea appalled her. She was a journalist, not a politician. She wanted to know what was happening, that was all. She didn’t want to make things happen, just understand those that did.

  What Padilla chose to do was his business, but she found the idea of being cheered and applauded for being the sister of a murdered woman appalling. Abigail was dead. That did not make Maddy a movie star.

  So she stayed fixed to the spot, willing Mario to drop it and let the moment pass. She stared down at her feet, an anonymous, unrecognized face in the crowd, hoping the lack of eye contact would somehow make her disappear. It was in that moment that she felt herself shoved in her left side, a move that pushed her two or three paces rightward. There must have been a surge from that part of the crowd, she thought, as she tried to keep her footing. But a second later there was another jostle from behind her. More forceful this time, she lurched forward, almost losing her balance. She stuck out her right foot to keep herself upright but it was too late. There was more pressure from behind – it felt like a pair of hands at her back – and a second later she had fallen to the ground, landing on her knees.

  Instantly, she felt a boot-heel on her fingers, sending a sharp stab of pain up through her arm. The crowd seemed to be closing around her. She could see legs, feet, knees. She tried to get up, worried she was about to be crushed underfoot in a stampede. But the crowd around her was too tight. There was no space for her to lever herself upward.

  It was at that moment that she felt a sudden and sharp kick to the base of her skull, just above where the head meets the neck. ‘Hey!’ she called out uselessly, still believing that she was caught up in an accidental crush. The pain was bright.

  Another foot on her hand, her right this time. If only she could get to her feet. But the knot of people around her was becoming tighter. It was dark on the ground. She could see no sky above, just a thicket of legs. Far away, she could hear Mario Padilla’s voice. But he was on the shore and she was several fathoms below the ocean surface.