Up in Smoke

by Charlene Weir

  He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened here, except he’d tossed out words like a newbie, unprofessional, and Molly Garrett wanted him to extract Casilda Storm from the campaign. He felt a headache coming on. It was late, he ought to go to his room and crash.

  Leon breezed in, yanked open the refrigerator, selected a Diet Coke and popped the tab. He lowered his head and stared at Bernie. “You don’t look so good. She give you TB?”

  True Believerism. It separated the tyros from the pros, the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff. You needed to stay clear-eyed and remember the goals. You needed to keep in mind a man was just a man and couldn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. Damn it, Bernie knew all that, but he couldn’t help it. He never forgot the first time he’d heard the Governor speak. Hairs rose on his arm. From then on he was true and surely hooked. He had no distance, wasn’t sprinkled with clear-seeing perspective. He was one of the sheep with the soul of a political goat.

  Leon, with Bernie following, traipsed back into the living room and used the remote to raise the sound on one of the television sets that were always on, always tuned to news with the occasional break for a football game. Leon collapsed into a chair. “Watch out for Lady Macbeth, boy.”

  “She says he’s going to win.”

  Leon gave a low chuckle. “Damn straight, she does. You ever see the look in her eye? Same fanatic look Todd’s got. He’d give his left nut to win and she’d slaughter her firstborn. Two of a kind.” He tipped the can and poured about half down his throat. Bernie wasn’t even sure he swallowed.

  “And that poor Wanderer they dragged in.” Leon gulped the rest of the Coke and crushed the can.

  “Cass?”

  “I got this feeling if it ever gets to freezing and they ain’t got no fuel, they’re gonna throw her on the fire.”

  Bernie had something of the same feeling.

  “She don’t like it,” Leon said. “The Missus. She don’t like the Wanderer bein’ brought in.”

  “Why doesn’t Molly like Cass?”

  Leon gave him a pitying look. “Don’t you use your eyes, boy? Any fool can see she’s jealous.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably ’cause they fucked like mink way back when.”

  “Why do you call her the Wanderer?”

  “Cause that’s what she is. Clear as glass she’s got demons, boy, and she’s visitin’ them. Goin’ from one to the next and the next and the next. Poor thing. And it’d probably be a good idea to never leave ’em alone together. Lady Macbeth would chew her into little pieces.”

  Leon didn’t like Molly Garrett and Bernie didn’t know why. She was a great asset and worked as hard, or harder, than anyone on the staff. Even the crows liked her, and that took something. She was respectful of them. Bernie wasn’t sure the governor loved her, but that didn’t have squat to do with the campaign and none of his business anyway.

  “D’you ever see an owl catch a prey?” Leon slouched farther down in the chair.

  Bernie looked at him. “What?”

  “They don’t make a sound, owls. Big motherfuckers with these huge wings.” Leon held out both arms and tilted them up and down. “And they just glide right at some poor son-of-a-bitchin’ li’l mouse just going about his business and snatch! they have him. Scream! Sharp old talons. Struggle all he wants, no way that mouse’s gonna get loose.”

  “You been working too hard, Leon? You’re starting to creep me out.”

  Leon grinned. “I got this premonition, boy, this feeling there’s gonna be trouble.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  Leon had a bit of the carnival charlatan, a showman who played up this premonition business and, even though Bernie didn’t believe that nonsense, every time Leon started lowering his voice and intoning about premonitions chaos broke out.

  Bernie said good-night and went to his room. He brushed his teeth, virtuously flossed, and went to bed where he dreamed of owls on tree branches silhouetted against a full moon. There was music in the background, singing so soft he couldn’t understand the words. He strained to hear. “When you hear them hoot owls hollerin’, when you hear them hoot owls hollerin’, somebody’s dyin’, lord, somebody’s dyin’.”

  26

  Bernie had just gotten to sleep when Todd shook him awake and told him to get his ass in the living room. As he splashed water on his face and pulled on jeans, Bernie wondered if it was too late to ditch politics altogether and the Garrett campaign in particular and do something else with his life. He wandered in to find the whole gang there and Todd, standing in front of the fireplace, going over last-minute changes in the schedule for Illinois. The latest polls showed Jack weak with the minority vote in that state and Todd was juggling stops, putting in visits with leaders in heavily African-American and Hispanic areas. Nobody’d had enough sleep and they were all tired enough to go for each other’s throats. Bernie glanced at his watch. Two A.M. In three hours they’d board the plane.

  Nora kept interrupting and Todd was ready to strangle her. She was an irritating woman to begin with and being Molly’s personal secretary seemed to give her permission to be an even bigger pain in the butt. Bernie rubbed his aching head, poured a mug of coffee from the ever-ready pot and wondered if he had the strength to track down some aspirin. A handful would go really good with the coffee.

  Jack, seated on the couch with Molly, argued that nothing should be dropped, he could visit all the scheduled places, plus the added ones. Molly said, “Jack, just shut up, for once, and let Todd do his job.”

  Leon came in with a box of pizza and plopped it on an end table. Leave it to Leon to let no opportunity for food go unpassed.

  “How long has this been going on?” Bernie said.

  “About an hour.” Leon dropped to the easy chair which sagged pitifully under his weight and opened the box. Leaning forward, he breathed in the aroma, then peeled out a slice.

  “Did I miss anything?” Bernie grabbed a slice, sat in the wingchair by the fireplace and bit off the pointed end.

  Carter Mercado, the pollster, was slouched in the second wingchair on the other side of the fireplace. Leon offered him some pizza. Carter waved it away. Todd took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Hadley Cane, the press secretary, pulled up a straight-backed chair next to Bernie. She looked tired, too, and Bernie thought they should all just go to bed because, pretty soon, they were going to start sniping at each other and then there’d be a fight that would take days to dissipate. When Leon clicked the remote to show them the latest TV spot, Bernie knew it was going to be a long night.

  Todd and Bernie both said it was good. Jack and Molly went off to their rooms but Nora, Bernie was sorry to see, stayed. She was not only a personal assistant to Molly, she was a close friend and that gave her the assumption she was part of the core group. Since the Garretts didn’t say otherwise, so she was.

  “You need to have Molly in it,” Nora said.

  Todd hated her. Even without the interruptions, the compulsive talking, the suggestions, he’d have hated her because she was an amateur. Her only claim to a potential fifteen minutes of fame was that she knew Molly Garrett. They’d been friends since college.

  She was one of those people who talked all the time and after a while her voice slid under the skin and made you want to strangle her. Repression had them all snarling at each other. Bernie was scared to death of her—because you never knew what she’d do, she was dangerous. She never thought before she spoke. He was afraid she’d sit in on one of their planning sessions and let slip some crucial piece of strategy. She was sulking because she felt she should be the one to leak the Halderbreck-is-stupid bit to the press instead of Cass. In fact, she seemed stupidly jealous of Cass. Actually, stupid was something else she was, and that made her really dangerous.

  “Molly could sit on the desk and they could be talking,” Nora said.

  To keep himself from strangling Nora, Todd started telling Hadley what to feed the press. In other
words how to do her job. Hadley got hot and steamed and started yelling that she was the press secretary, she knew what she was doing. If he pushed her just a little more, she’d quit. Bernie had personally witnessed her quitting four times so far. God knows how many more he may have missed. It was their way of releasing tension, but Bernie worried one time it would go too far and neither one could back down.

  “I’ve got no time for this,” Hadley said. “I’ve got to get out to the press and explain to them what we’ll be doing tomorrow. They get real anxious when they’re not in on the program.” Hadley was expert at drifting through the press pool, dropping them bits of information and telling them how to interpret it.

  “You have to be careful with that,” Todd said.

  “Bullshit,” she shot back. “You have to be careful. I’m their pal. I give them lots of help and spread around cheer and kindness.”

  “You need to watch what kind of access you give them.”

  “Hey! We’re doing just fine. Periodically, Jack goes through the press section, says hi, answers questions—”

  “Yeah,” Leon perused the pizza box and, after careful scrutiny, selected another slice. “He’s a maverick and the stakes are getting high. It might be a good idea if you’d pull him back a little.”

  “He wouldn’t go for it,” she said. “And right now they like him. As much as they can, since they all tell themselves how objective they are. He treats them well and he’s been honest with them, but start hiding him in the crapper and see how ravenous they get.”

  “I’m only saying you need to pick and choose. Things are getting hot, and formal interviews need to go to—”

  “How many times do I need to tell you I know my job?”

  “Yeah, yeah, right. I’m just telling you, start thinking about the California newspapers. “The Chronicle, the Mercury News, and the L.A.—”

  “I know, I know.” She made a brushing aside wave as she went out.

  “How much we spending on advertising?” Todd asked Leon.

  “Well, right now, we got a million and a half, a little more. After we spend that, we’re close to the federal cap and we can’t spend more until we win the nomination.”

  “California’s a bottomless pit. We could spend it all just to lose.”

  “We don’t spend and we can forget about the nomination.”

  Bernie went to the kitchen and fished a Coke from the refrigerator. He wasn’t tracking with the arguments going on. His mind was on Cass. The Wanderer, as Leon called her. He was worried about her. Popping the tab, he took a sip and went back to the living room.

  “What do the polls say?” Todd asked.

  Carter, the pollster, waggled a hand back and forth. “Close. Ads will matter, no question.”

  “How we doing with ads?” Todd asked.

  “Well, in Bill Halderbreck’s ads he has all the animation of a houseplant and the humility of a cocker spaniel. And, of course, he’s right with you in whatever special interest group you represent. Mention one and he’ll step right up there, drop his pants and bend over.”

  “Everybody knows that,” Carter said. “Poll on confidence and integrity and Jack runs a little ahead, but you got to remember Halderbreck’s a known quantity. Jack’s a risk.” Carter leaned back, put his hands behind his head and rested an ankle on the opposite knee. “And, let’s admit it folks, Jack has intelligence and confidence bordering on arrogance. That makes people feel inadequate and defensive. We got to make him look smart, but not too smart. The idea of having a smart president is too scary for most folks.”

  “We got to make him look like one of the guys,” Leon said, “for the ninety percent of the people who decide their vote from television ads.”

  “His parents were farmers,” Carter said. “What’s more folksy than that?”

  “Why aren’t we hammering on this hero stuff?” Leon said. “Use Wakely, for God’s sake. He’s always around anyway. Get him early in the morning, before he gets too drunk to sit up straight.”

  Bernie could hear the frustration in Leon’s voice. Jack wanted to remain a private person, but any politician making a grab for the presidency couldn’t keep anything private. Anything a candidate wanted to hide, the media was especially determined to root out.

  “I think—” Nora said.

  Nobody wanted to know what she thought and everybody ignored her.

  * * *

  Demarco happened to be on duty when the 911 call came in. He and Yancy responded to the address given to them by the dispatcher and they were standing in the living room of a plump elderly woman.

  “You will check into it, won’t you?” Mrs. Cleary pulled her pink fleecy robe tighter around her ample frame and cinched up the belt. “I had went to the kitchen to fix myself some tea and that’s when I heard it. Goodness sakes, it sounded like somebody was tearing the house down.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Demarco said. Vera Cleary lived next door to the Egelhoff house and she’d called the shop to report suspicious noises.

  Yancy asked. “When was that?”

  “It must have been about fifteen minutes ago now.” Hint of reproach that it had taken them so long. “It’s stopped by now, of course. But the screams, my Lord, I’ve never heard such screaming.” She rubbed her hands together anxiously. “And there was all this moaning and crying and sort of mewing sounds, kind of like a kitten, you know? Oh, I just know something is terribly wrong. Will you do something?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Demarco said. Owner of the house murdered, victim’s sister missing? Damn right, he’d do something.

  “You won’t just dismiss it as the nervous ramblings of an old woman, will you? I had gone to the phone when I saw the light.”

  Demarco took her story of noises and screams, moans and cries very seriously. She was maybe mid-fifties, a widow, with short gray hair that stuck out in spikes and nervous because of what had happened to her neighbor. Just before midnight, Mrs. Cleary had seen flickering lights inside the house.

  “I thought it might be that girl Arlene who calls herself Moonbeam, the silly thing, and didn’t think a whole lot about it, but then a little later after that, I heard all this screaming. Like the poor child was being murdered in her bed. And with what happened to Gayle, being killed and put in the car trunk—well, a person just can’t be too careful.”

  “You did the right thing in calling,” Demarco said.

  “There’s not supposed to be anybody there,” she said. “With her husband dead and Gayle murdered and the girl missing—now who could be making all that noise and causing flickering lights?”

  “Did you notice anything earlier?”

  “No,” she said. “But I had went to the market, so I wasn’t here to notice.”

  “We’ll check into it,” Since Demarco was looking for the girl, this story interested him much.

  “What do you think?” Yancy said as they tromped next door to the Egelhoff house. “Burglar knowing the place is empty?”

  Nothing was flickering inside the house now, it was completely dark. No moans, no screams. “Could be. You check the back, I’ll take the front.”

  “Right.”

  “And take it easy. The girl’s still missing.”

  “And we don’t have the bastard who killed her sister,” Yancy said.

  A few seconds later, Demarco heard Yancy on the radio saying no signs of forced entry in the back, the board over the broken window still intact. No signs in the front either. Using the key he’d borrowed from the evidence locker, Demarco unlocked the door. Flashlight in his left hand, gun in his right, he went in fast and low. Living room empty. Table knocked aside. Broken glass on the floor. He listened, then moved into the dining room. Empty. He met Yancy in the kitchen and motioned for him to follow. Demarco went along the hallway. He pointed a finger to the room on the left. Yancy went left. Demarco moved farther along the hallway and slipped into the room on the right. Empty room, neat, bed made, no signs of struggle.

  “Clear,” Yan
cy called. Then, “You might want to see this.”

  Demarco went across the hall. Yancy aimed his flashlight at clothes, shoes, books, stuffed animals, scattered on the floor by the closet. Messy kid? Or had something happened here?

  “Somebody looking for something?” Yancy said.

  “In the kid’s bedroom?” Demarco shined his flash around. “What could the kid have?”

  Yancy looked through the closet. Demarco went to check the third bedroom and spotted the damaged door at the end of the hallway. Blood was seeping out under it.

  “Police! Come out with your hands on your head!”

  No response.

  “Come out! Hands on your head!”

  Still no response.

  Demarco backed up, raised one leg and kicked the lock. It gave, but something prevented the door from opening. He threw a shoulder at the door. It moved slightly, but didn’t open. Leaning all his weight against it, he peered through the crack.

  “Oh, Christ! Yancy, get an ambulance!”

  Yancy keyed his mike and relayed the request. “On the way,” he said as he clicked off. “What’ve we got?”

  “The girl. She’s been hurt, maybe killed. Lot of blood in there. We’re gonna have to take this door off.”

  Yancy nodded and went for the garage.

  “Police,” Demarco said through the crack, much softer this time. “Where are you hurt?”

  No answer.

  “Can you move?”

  Yancy came back with two screwdrivers and they removed the hinges and took the door off. Yancy flipped on the overhead light. “Oh God.”

  “Put your hands in your pockets and don’t step in blood,” Demarco said.

  Yancy swallowed. “Right.”

  A towel lay loose around her neck and the dark wound underneath gaped obscenely.

  “You’re not gonna be sick,” Demarco said. It wasn’t a question, it was an order.

  “No.” Yancy shoved his hands in his pockets.

  The girl, Arlene—Moonbeam—lay curled on the floor, one arm trapped beneath her body, the other outstretched as though reaching for something. Demarco stepped inside, avoiding blood and touched the fingers of the outflung hand. Cool. God damn it, we’re too late.