by Harlan Coben
“Gossip about what?”
“About Lizzy.”
“What about her?”
Her voice was a conspiratorial whisper. “I thought she was acting strange because she drank too much. But that wasn’t it.”
Myron leaned in and matched her tone. “What was it then?”
Deborah Whittaker gazed at Myron. The eyes were milky and cloudy, and Myron wondered what reality they were seeing. “A breakdown,” she said at last. “The ladies at the club were whispering that Lizzy had a breakdown. That Arthur had sent her away. To an institution with padded walls.”
Myron felt his body go cold.
“Gossip,” Deborah Whittaker spit. “Ugly rumors.”
“You didn’t believe it?”
“Tell me something.” Deborah Whittaker licked lips so dry they looked like they might flake off. She sat up a bit. “If Elizabeth Bradford had been locked away in an institution,” she said, “how come she fell at her own home?”
Myron nodded. Food for thought.
He stayed for a while and talked with Deborah Whittaker about people and a time period he never knew. Becky finally called a halt to the visit. Myron promised that he would visit again. He said that he’d try to bring his mother. And he would. Deborah Whittaker shuffled off, and Myron wondered if she would still remember his visit by the time she got to her room. Then he wondered if it mattered.
Myron headed back to his car and called Arthur Bradford’s office. His “executive secretary” told him that the “next governor” would be in Belleville. Myron thanked her and hung up. He checked his watch and started on his way. If he didn’t hit any traffic, he’d make it in time.
When he hit the Garden State Parkway, Myron called his father’s office. Eloise, Dad’s longtime secretary, said the same thing she’d said every time he’d called for the past twenty-five years: “I’ll patch you through immediately, Myron.” It didn’t matter if Dad was busy. It didn’t matter if he was on the phone or if someone was in the office with him. Dad had left instructions long ago: When his son called, he was always to be disturbed.
“No need,” Myron said. “Just tell him I’ll be dropping by in a couple of hours.”
“Here? My God, Myron, you haven’t been here in years.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing, Eloise. I just want to talk to him. Tell him it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, your father will be so pleased.”
Myron was not so sure.
Arthur Bradford’s tour bus had red and blue stripes and big white stars. “BRADFORD FOR GOVERNOR” was painted in a hip, slanted font with 3-D letters. The windows were tinted black so none of the great unwashed could look in on their leader. Quite the homespun touch.
Arthur Bradford stood by the bus door, microphone in hand. Brother Chance was behind him, smiling in that the-camera-might-be-on-me, gee-isn’t-the-candidate-brilliant mode of the political underling. On his right was Terence Edwards, Brenda’s cousin. He too beamed with a smile about as natural as Joe Biden’s hairline. Both of them were wearing those goofy political Styrofoam hats that looked like something a barbershop quartet might sport.
The crowd was sparse and mostly old. Very old. They looked distracted, glancing about as if someone had enticed them here with the promise of free food. Other people slowed and meandered over to take a look, not unlike pedestrians who stumbled across a fender bender and were now hoping a fight would break out. Bradford’s handlers blended into the crowd and passed out big signs and buttons and even those goofy Styrofoam hats, all with the same hip “BRADFORD FOR GOVERNOR” lettering. Every once in a while the interspersed handlers would break into applause, and the rest of the crowd would lazily follow suit. There was also a sprinkling of media and cable stations, local political correspondents who looked visibly pained by what they were doing, wondering what was worse: covering yet another canned political speech or losing a limb in a machinery mishap. Their expressions indicated a toss-up.
Myron eased into the crowd and slid up toward the front.
“What we need in New Jersey is a change,” Arthur Bradford bellowed. “What we need in New Jersey is daring and brave leadership. What we need in New Jersey is a governor who will not cave in to special interests.”
Oh, boy.
The handlers loved that line. They burst into applause like a porno starlet faking an orgasm (er, or so Myron imagined). The crowd was more tepid. The handlers started a chant: “Bradford … Bradford … Bradford.” Original. Another voice came over the loudspeaker. “Once again, ladies and gentlemen, the next governor of New Jersey, Arthur Bradford! What we need in New Jersey!”
Applause. Arthur waved at the common folk. Then he stepped down from his perch and actually touched a chosen few.
“I’m counting on your support,” he said after each handshake.
Myron felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around. Chance was there. He was still smiling and wearing the goofy Styrofoam hat. “What the hell do you want?”
Myron pointed at his head. “Can I have your hat?”
Still smiling. “I don’t like you, Bolitar.”
Myron mirrored the smile. “Ouch, that hurt.”
They both stayed with the frozen smiles. If one of them were female, they could have hosted one of those Hard Copy rip-offs.
“I need to talk to Art,” Myron said.
Still smiling. Best buddies. “Get on the bus.”
“Sure thing,” Myron said. “But once inside, can I stop smiling? My cheeks are starting to hurt.”
But Chance was already moving away. Myron shrugged and hopped on board. The carpet on the bus floor was thick and maroon. The regular seats had been ripped out and replaced with what looked like lounge chairs. There were several overhead televisions, a bar with a minifridge, telephones, computer terminals.
Skinny Sam was the sole occupant. He sat up front and read a copy of People magazine. He looked at Myron, then back at his magazine.
“Top fifty most intriguing people,” Sam said. “And I’m not one of them.”
Myron nodded sympathetically. “It’s based on connections, not merit.”
“Politics,” Sam agreed. He flipped the page. “Head to the back, bucko.”
“On my way.”
Myron settled into a pseudofuturistic swivel chair that looked like something from the set of Battlestar Galactica. He didn’t have to wait long. Chance hopped on first. He was still smiling and waving. Terence Edwards came in next. Then Arthur. The driver pressed a button, and the door slid closed. So did all three faces, their smiles thrown aside like itchy masks.
Arthur signaled for Terence Edwards to sit in the front. He obeyed like, well, a political underling. Arthur and Chance moved to the back of the bus. Arthur looked relaxed. Chance looked constipated.
“Nice to see you,” Arthur said.
“Yeah,” Myron said, “always a pleasure.”
“Would you care for a drink?”
“Sure.”
The bus pulled out. The crowd gathered around the bus and waved into the one-way glass. Arthur Bradford looked at them with utter disdain. Man of the people. He tossed Myron a Snapple and popped one open for himself. Myron looked at the bottle. Diet Peach Iced Tea. Not bad. Arthur sat down, and Chance sat next to him.
“What did you think of my speech?” Arthur asked.
“What we need in New Jersey,” Myron said, “is more political clichés.”
Arthur smiled. “You’d prefer a more detailed discussion on the issues, is that it? In this heat? With that crowd?”
“What can I say? I still like ‘Vote for Art, He’s Got an Indoor Pool.’ ”
Bradford waved the comment away. “Have you learned something new about Anita Slaughter?”
“No,” Myron said. “But I’ve learned something new about your late wife.”
Arthur frowned. Chance’s face reddened. Arthur said, “You’re supposed to be trying to find Ani
ta Slaughter.”
“Funny thing that,” Myron said. “When I look into her disappearance, your wife’s death keeps popping up. Why do you think that is?”
Chance piped up. “Because you’re a goddamn idiot.”
Myron looked at Chance. Then he put his finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
“Useless,” Arthur said. “Utterly useless. I have told you repeatedly that Elizabeth’s death has nothing to do with Anita Slaughter.”
“Then humor me,” Myron said. “Why did your wife stop going to parties?”
“Pardon me?”
“During the last six months of her life none of your wife’s friends saw her. She never went to parties anymore. She never even went to her club.” Whatever club that might have been.
“Who told you that?”
“I’ve spoken to several of her friends.”
Arthur smiled. “You’ve spoken,” he said, “to one senile old goat.”
“Careful, Artie. Senile goats have the right to vote.” Myron paused. “Hey, that rhymes. You may have another campaign slogan on your hands: ‘Senile Goats, We Need Your Votes.’ ”
No one reached for a pen.
“You’re wasting my time and I’m through with trying to cooperate,” Arthur said. “I’ll have the driver drop you off.”
“I can still go to the press,” Myron said.
Chance jumped on that one. “And I can put a bullet through your heart.”
Myron put his finger to his lips again. “Shhh.”
Chance was about to add something, but Arthur took the helm. “We had a deal,” he said. “I help keep Brenda Slaughter out of jail. You search for Anita Slaughter and keep my name out of the papers. But you insist on delving into peripheries. That’s a mistake. Your pointless digging will eventually draw my opponent’s attention and give him fresh fodder to use against me.”
He waited for Myron to say something. Myron didn’t.
“You leave me no choice,” Arthur continued. “I will tell you what you want to know. You will then see that it is irrelevant to the issues at hand. And then we will move on.”
Chance did not like that. “Arthur, you can’t be serious—”
“Sit up front, Chance.”
“But—” Chance was sputtering now. “He could be working for Davison.”
Arthur shook his head. “He’s not.”
“But you can’t know—”
“If he was working for Davison, they’d have ten guys following up on this by now. And if he continues to dig into this, he will most certainly be noticed by Davison’s people.”
Chance looked at Myron. Myron winked.
“I don’t like it,” Chance said.
“Sit up front, Chance.”
Chance rose with as much dignity as he could muster, which was absolutely none, and skulked to the front of the bus.
Arthur turned to Myron. “It goes without saying that what I’m about to tell you is strictly confidential. If it’s repeated …” He decided not to finish the sentence. “Have you spoken to your father yet?”
“No.”
“It will help.”
“Help with what?”
But Arthur did not reply. He sat in silence and looked out the window. The bus stopped at a traffic light. A group of people waved at the bus. Arthur looked right through them.
“I loved my wife,” he began. “I want you to understand that. We met in college. I saw her walking across the commons one day and …” The light turned green. The bus started up again. “And nothing in my life was ever the same.” Arthur glanced at Myron and smiled. “Corny, isn’t it?”
Myron shrugged. “Sounds nice.”
“Oh, it was.” He tilted his head at a memory, and for a moment the politician was replaced with a real human being. “Elizabeth and I got married a week after graduation. We had a huge wedding at Bradford Farms. You should have seen it. Six hundred people. Our families were both thrilled, though that didn’t matter a hoot to us. We were in love. And we had the certainty of the young that nothing would ever change.”
He looked off again. The bus whirred. Someone flipped on a television and then muted the sound.
“The first blow came a year after we wed. Elizabeth learned that she could not have children. Some sort of weakness in her uterine walls. She could get pregnant, but she couldn’t carry past the first trimester. It’s strange when I think about it now. You see, from the beginning Elizabeth had what I thought of as quiet moments—bouts of melancholy, some might call them. But they didn’t seem like melancholy to me. They seemed more like moments of reflection. I found them oddly appealing. Does that make any sense to you?”
Myron nodded, but Arthur was still looking out the window.
“But now the bouts came more often. And they were deeper. Natural, I suppose. Who wouldn’t be sad under our circumstances? Today, of course, Elizabeth would have been labeled a manic depressive.” He smiled. “They say it’s all physiological. That there is simply a chemical imbalance in the brain or some such thing. Some even claim that outside stimuli are irrelevant, that even without the uterine problem Elizabeth would have been equally ill in the long run.” He looked at Myron. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t seem to hear. “I guess it’s possible. Mental illnesses are so strange. A physical problem we can understand. But when the mind works irrationally, well, by its very definition, the rational mind cannot truly relate. We can pity. But we cannot fully grasp. So I watched as her sanity began to peel away. She grew worse. Friends who had thought Elizabeth eccentric began to wonder. At times she got so bad that we would feign a vacation and keep her in the house. This went on for years. Slowly the woman I had fallen in love with was eaten away. Well before her death—five, six years before—she was already a different person. We tried our best, of course. We gave her the best medical care and propped her up and sent her back out. But nothing stopped the slide. Eventually Elizabeth could not go out at all.”
Silence.
“Did you institutionalize her?” Myron asked.
Arthur took a swig of his Snapple. His fingers started playing with the bottle’s label, pulling up the corners. “No,” he said at last. “My family urged me to have her committed. But I couldn’t do it. Elizabeth was no longer the woman I loved. I knew that. And maybe I could go on without her. But I could not abandon her. I still owed her that much, no matter what she’d become.”
Myron nodded, said nothing. The TV was off now, but a radio up front blasted an all-news station: You give them twenty-two minutes, they’ll give you the world. Sam read his People. Chance kept glancing over his shoulder, his eyes thin slits.
“I hired full-time nurses and kept Elizabeth at home. I continued to live my life while she continued to slide toward oblivion. In hindsight, of course, my family was right. I should have had her committed.”
The bus lurched to a stop. Myron and Arthur lurched a bit too.
“You can probably guess what happened next. Elizabeth grew worse. She was nearly catatonic by the end. Whatever evil had entered her brain now moved in and laid total claim. You were right, of course. Her fall was not accidental. Elizabeth jumped. It was not bad luck that she landed on her head. It was intentional on her part. My wife committed suicide.”
He put his hand to his face and leaned back. Myron watched him. It might be an acting job—politicians make awfully good thespians—but Myron thought that he spotted genuine guilt here, that something had indeed fled from this man’s eyes and left nothing in their wake. But you never know for sure. Those who claim they can spot a lie are usually just fooled with greater conviction.
“Anita Slaughter found her body?” Myron asked.
He nodded. “And the rest is classic Bradford. The cover-up began immediately. Bribes were made. You see, a suicide—a wife so crazy that a Bradford man had driven her to kill herself—would simply not do. We would have kept Anita’s name out of it too, but her name went over the radi
o dispatch. The media picked it up.”
That part certainly made sense. “You mentioned bribes.”
“Yes.”
“How much did Anita get?”
He closed his eyes. “Anita wouldn’t take any money.”
“What did she want?”
“Nothing. She wasn’t like that.”
“And you trusted her to keep quiet.”
Arthur nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I trusted her.”
“You never threatened her or—”
“Never.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Arthur shrugged. “She stayed on for nine more months. That should tell you something.”
That same point again. Myron mulled it over a bit. He heard a noise at the front of the bus. Chance had stood up. He stormed to the back and stood over them. Both men ignored him.
After several moments Chance said, “You told him?”
“Yes,” Arthur said.
Chance spun toward Myron. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll kill—”
“Shhh.”
Then Myron saw it.
Hanging there. Just out of sight. The story was partially true—the best lies always are—but something was missing. He looked at Arthur. “You forgot one thing,” Myron said.
Arthur’s brow lines deepened. “What’s that?”
Myron pointed to Chance, then back at Arthur. “Which one of you beat up Anita Slaughter?”
Stone silence.
Myron kept going. “Just a few weeks before Elizabeth’s suicide, someone assaulted Anita Slaughter. She was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital and still had abrasions when your wife jumped. You want to tell me about it?”
Lots of things started happening seemingly all at once. Arthur Bradford gave a small head nod. Sam put down his copy of People and stood. Chance turned apoplectic.
“He knows too much!” Chance shouted.
Arthur paused, considering.
“We have to take him out!”
Arthur was still thinking. Sam started moving toward them.
Myron kept his voice low. “Chance?”
“What?”
“Your fly’s undone.”
Chance looked down. Myron already had the thirty-eight out. Now he pressed it firmly against Chance’s groin. Chance jumped back a bit, but Myron kept the muzzle in place. Sam took out his gun and pointed it at Myron.
