“Te-kee-la.” He rattled two home, quick, slamming down the empty glasses. “Don’t forget the guys on the take, we all know them, the smear sticks to everyone. But nobody busts them, nobody says a word. Because anyone who sees what we see is on one side of the line, and everybody else, they’re on the other. Even the DAs.”
Ned didn’t usually talk this much. Now she knew why. She felt like he’d slapped her.
“Asshole.”
“You do this, go in with your eyes open. That’s all.” He pushed a shot of tequila at her, grabbed the last one himself. “I have a solution.” He raised his glass. “Drink, I’ll tell you.”
She’d known him her whole life and not seen him this way before, not ever, the alcohol in charge of him. The view unsettled her. She raised the glass, unwillingly. They drank. The tequila burned.
“Three words.”
“I’m listening.”
But he said nothing, went back to the bar, came back with two pints of beer and another shot of whiskey.
“You going to be okay to drive?”
“Good girl.” He slid his keys to her.
“Three words, you said.”
“FBI.”
She’d always been under the impression Ned hated the FBI. “I’m not sure that’s three words.”
“College girl. How about this? Stupid fuckin’ FBI. That three? Not in Boston, they suck here, protecting half the Irish mob, too dumb to figure out they’re getting played. But over the years a couple of our best boyos have gone to the federales. They make cases, understand? They pick and choose, they have the time and money and toys.”
“I thought you didn’t like them.”
“ ’Cause I’m jealous. ’Cause you need a college degree, plus, to get in. They love lawyers, the feds. ’Cause you wear a suit and go after guys who deserve it. Not some chick who smoked rock laced with PCP and drowned her babies like kittens.”
She remembered that case. She’d been in eighth grade.
Ned slumped in the booth. “First on the scene. Lisa Grant was her name. Sitting on the couch. Leaning forward, watching General Hospital. Didn’t even move when I came in. Just nodded at the bathroom. I take a look, come out, I say, You do this, ma’am? Always give ’em a sir, a ma’am, they love that. Respect. Know what young Miss Grant said to me?”
Rebecca tried to imagine. Couldn’t.
“Suck your dick for rock. Officer.” Ned lifted the shot glass to his mouth. “It’s the officer that always gets me. She wanted me to know she knew who I was. All I could do not to pick her up and put her in the bathtub along with the kids, but I kept myself steady, I wanted to be sure we didn’t blow the case. Only she didn’t even get life, she had some do-good defense lawyer talking about her circumstances, her history of abuse. Be out when she’s sixty. Sometimes in the middle of the night I promise myself if I’m still around then I’ll find her, put three in her. One for each kid. Dare ’em to arrest me in my wheelchair. You want to do some good, go nuts. Just not the BPD.”
She drove home alone, left Ned at Drakes. I don’t want your dad to see me like this. Someone’ll drop me off, get the car tomorrow.
The next morning she dragged herself to the library to read about applying to the FBI. She had one advantage, she was good at languages. She was nearly fluent in Spanish and had some Russian too. But she could see that law school was a sure ticket in. Ned was right, the bureau liked lawyers.
Junior year at Wesleyan she worked as hard as she’d ever had, straight As across the board. She spent every spare hour practicing on the LSAT. The logic puzzles didn’t agree with her, but eventually she cracked them. She wound up at the University of Virginia, one of the best.
Columbia had let her in too, but UVA was offering a partial scholarship, which she wanted. She knew she’d have to take out loans. Her parents wouldn’t be paying, and Jerome didn’t like lawyers. Even with the scholarship and working summers, she would graduate law school fifty thousand in the hole.
* * *
She told Brian about the FBI the day after Eve left. Her parents were the only other people she’d told at that point. They hadn’t exactly been positive. You know it’s a paramilitary organization, right? her dad had said. I have a hard time seeing you there. Her mom made the inevitable Silence of the Lambs joke, the movie had come out a couple of years before. Like Clarice Starling, only your shoes aren’t cheap.
She didn’t even try to tell anyone at law school. Her classmates were mainly worried about which firms paid the most. You hear Cravath just went to eighty-six K for first years? The few who did want to be in public service came at it from the left, environmental defense or death penalty appeals. Rebecca couldn’t forget the way Ned had spat do-good defense lawyer like a curse. She kept her plans to herself.
But she figured Brian would understand.
“Sure it’s what you want?” he said when she finished.
She nodded.
“Then it’s good enough for me. How’s it work? You go straight after you graduate?”
Not exactly. She explained her plan. She would work for a big firm for two or three years, pay down her law school debt so it wasn’t hanging over her head when she became an agent. Getting into the bureau was a tough, multistage process. Long multiple-choice exams, interviews, a fitness exam, and a background check. If they took her, she’d train at Quantico for several months. Then they could send her anywhere in the country for her first post.
“You’re okay carrying a gun?”
The idea of wearing a weapon made her nervous. Ned had promised her she’d get used to it. It’s a tool. Probably you’ll never need it. But if you do you’ll be glad to have it.
“I better be.”
He ran a hand down her back, let it rest on her hip. They were in bed together; no surprise, they were always in bed together. “Becks?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t mean to jump ahead, but what’s it mean for kids? Do you even want them?”
Oh. The question thrilled and frightened her at once. “I want kids, yes.”
“But you’re going to have to wait a while.”
Could she tell him? Were they ready to be this grown-up?
“In a perfect world I think I’d have them before the bureau. Being a pregnant FBI agent, it seems weird.”
Also, big law firms tended to have good maternity leave policies. The unspoken quid pro quo was that female associates who wanted a chance at partner would make up the hours, work twice as hard later. But Rebecca had no interest in making partner. She could use the system to her advantage, take the paid leave twice and then get out. A cynical move, she had to admit. But ultimately it would help at the bureau.
He was quiet. She wondered if the talk of kids had scared him off.
“Cool,” he finally said.
She punched him, harder than she’d intended. “Cool? That’s all?”
“That’s all. You have a plan, I like it, I’ll roll with it.”
She couldn’t let the unspoken contrast rest. “And you don’t. Have a plan.”
“I don’t. Can you roll with that?”
She thought about her classmates, looking for the summer internship that would lead to the associate offer that would put them on a partnership track. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was being a snob in reverse. But she didn’t want one of those men. Nothing was more boring than intensity without imagination.
* * *
They went to Philly for the internship, came back for third year. Still he wouldn’t talk about his family. He deflected her every time she tried to ask. She started to wonder if his dad was even alive. Then, October, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
A gravelly voice, a smoker’s voice, an old man’s voice. “Bri there?”
“He’ll be back shortly.” He was out for a run.
“This Rebecca?”
She wondered how this stranger knew her name. “Who’s this?”
“It’s his dad.” Pause. “Jerry.” A
s if he might have another dad. “Could you tell him I said hello?”
“Of course, Mr. Unsworth, my pleasure. Will I ever get to meet you?”
“That’s up to my son.” Then he was gone.
Somehow she waited until Brian showered and dried himself off before jumping him with the call.
“My dad? You talk to him?”
“Not really, no. It sounded like he wanted to talk to you.”
“Forget it, Becks.”
“Why won’t you talk about him? Or to him?”
He laughed, hollow and bitter. His face reminded her of the way he’d looked in the nursing home after Gordon Hendricks died.
“Maybe he was fine before he went to Vietnam, I don’t know, I wasn’t alive, but he came back with a drinking problem and a heroin solution, that’s who he’s been ever since. He gets clean, but you can never trust him.”
“But if you tried to forgive him—not for him, for you.”
“For me? He’s got nothing for me. Most selfish person I ever met. You don’t get it. Everyone you know is basically decent.”
“Brian. I’m on your side.”
He’d turned away from her, letting her know the conversation was over.
Again his coldness unnerved her. Yet some part of her respected him for his unwillingness to compromise his own anger.
Wow. She must really be in love.
* * *
They married not even a year later, spring break of her third year. Nothing fancy. A quick wedding in Boston, dinner with her family. Her idea more than Brian’s, a way to handle the fact that his family wouldn’t be there. Her friend Jane officiated, a quasi-civil ceremony. Rebecca didn’t care. Her mom was Jewish and her dad Catholic. They both regarded religion more as an inconvenience than anything else.
As for the wedding itself, she’d already gone to enough friends’ weddings to be over them. She didn’t have the time or energy to pick the right band, the right venue, the right dress. They would have had to do it on the cheap, too, because her parents didn’t have fifty thousand dollars lying around, and Brian certainly couldn’t ask his dad. Grandpa Jerome was giving her ten thousand dollars as a wedding present. Only one rule, Becks, you have to spend it, can’t put it against your law school loans. For ten grand they could have a lousy wedding or a great honeymoon.
Okay, sure, some part of her wouldn’t have minded walking down the aisle in a perfect white dress. Having her dad give her away. The vision was manufactured, what she’d been sold her whole life. But she couldn’t deny it held a certain surface appeal.
She asked Brian what he thought, but he was no help. She had begun to see that he considered displays of emotion—even private displays—contrived. Almost shameful. His vision of masculinity came straight out of a John Ford Western. Tight-lipped, straight-backed. Of course, that attitude was what had helped attract her to him in the first place. But sometimes she wished he’d tell her how he felt.
“We can do it however you like,” he said.
“Maybe a chance to get all your friends together.” In the year they’d been together, she’d met only one of his friends, a squirrelly guy named Jimmy who’d slept on their couch for a couple of days before vanishing. Afterward, Rebecca realized he’d filched the money from her purse. Brian hadn’t even looked surprised when she told him.
“Not exactly the fancy wedding type, my friends.”
“So whatever I want.”
“I don’t care about the wedding, Becks. I care about the girl.”
That fast everything was fine.
* * *
They went for the perfect honeymoon instead of the lousy wedding. They spent Jerome’s money on a five-star trip to St. Barts. A thousand bucks a day for ten days, endless blue skies, a suite with an ocean view. They swam, they snorkeled, they sailed a catamaran. They rode scooters. They drank. They watched sunsets.
Two weeks before, Rebecca had gone to her gyno, had her IUD taken out. She felt almost giddy as the doctor put it in a plastic bag and handed it to her. Her own fertility, returned.
Why not? We’re getting married. Becks and Bri 4-ever.
She was pregnant by the time they flew home.
12
Birmingham, Alabama
“Mommy!”
The quivering voice cut through her sleep. She’d been dreaming about Draymond Sullivan. She could still see his face, pouchy and fleshy, corruption incarnate.
So much easier when the criminals looked like criminals—
“Mommy!”
Urgent now. Rebecca jolted up, Kira, was something wrong—
“Happy Birthday!” Thumping footsteps. Kira wasn’t a dainty girl. Good for her. She ran into the bedroom, holding a giant cupcake with a candle. Behind her Brian and Tony followed.
Happy birthday? Had she forgotten her own birthday? Before she could stop herself: “Oh shit.”
“Mommy you said sh—”
“No I didn’t.”
“We made you cupcakes!”
“Happy Birthday, Becks,” Brian said. “Happy birthday to you.”
Lately she’d noticed a touch of irony in the way her husband spoke to her. She heard it again now. Or maybe not. Maybe she was just sleep-deprived.
Brian and Kira sang birthday greetings as Tony squealed happily. This is what matters, not Draymond Sullivan, the Boss of South Alabama. For at least the next ten minutes.
Rebecca kissed Kira’s perfect round cheeks. The cupcake was smeared with thick blue frosting.
“I put it on, Mommy.”
“Thank you, baby.”
The cupcake was good, fresh, the frosting even better, rich buttercream. Brian had added cupcakes to his repertoire since they’d moved to Birmingham. Trying to be the best househusband I can be, he said. That was definitely ironic, she thought.
“How is it?”
“Great.” Still, she made herself stop after a couple of bites. A minute on the lips… For a while she’d thought she would never lose the weight she’d gained having Tony. Moving to Alabama had helped, perversely. All the barbeque and fried chicken. Every third person seemed morbidly obese, a walking advertisement for the virtues of sensible eating.
* * *
Breakfast waited in the kitchen. Scrambled eggs and fresh-brewed coffee. And a present, a white-and-silver device the size of a cigarette pack, with a little black-and-white screen.
“An iPod,” Brian said. “It’s a digital music player. I put some songs on there. I can help you download more.”
“I know what an iPod is. I’m not a total loser.” Though she wasn’t quite sure about the downloading.
He nodded, Of course you do. She sipped her coffee, tried not to think of Draymond Sullivan’s syrupy voice pouring out sweet nothings. He was probably the biggest real-estate developer in southern Alabama, and certainly the most corrupt. His name had come up in another bribery case, giving them just enough probable cause to put a wire on his phone.
As the junior agent in the office, Rebecca had to listen to the recordings. But she hadn’t heard much worth transcribing. In this football-crazy state, his biggest sin had been saying he didn’t think ’Bama could beat LSU. Tigers gon’ be tough this year. Plus off-color cracks about his secretary’s daughter Jenelle. Jenelle was sixteen.
Either Sullivan was clean—impossible—or he was too crafty to do anything over the phone. Either way, Rebecca was sick of his sugars and honeys and sweeties. No wonder the whole state could barely fit through a door.
“I should go in today.” The day before a new batch of recordings had come in.
“It’s your birthday, Mommy. And Saturday.”
“The kids were looking forward to spending the day with you,” Brian said.
“You prommmised!” Kira’s voice rose to a wail.
Work would have to wait.
* * *
They’d come to Birmingham not even a year before, straight from Quantico. She’d entered the academy just after Tony turned one. In retrospect she w
ished she’d waited longer. FBI cadets lived at the training center five days a week, saw their families only on weekends. The kids couldn’t live in the dorms at Quantico, so they’d stayed with Brian in Philly. She’d made the three-hour-plus drive back every Friday. Tony had taken her absences hard. He’d screamed when Sunday night arrived and she packed her bag.
But by the end, he just watched her go, no tears at all, stony and calm.
Stony and calm was worse.
But the training was over now, they were back together. The kids seemed to have forgiven her, though mornings like this made her realize that they hadn’t entirely. Those months of absence still clawed. She wished she could talk about her guilt with Brian, but the only time she’d tried he’d nodded and said, “I have this right? I’m supposed to feel bad that you spent four months at scout camp while I took care of the kids?”
Scout camp was clever, she had to admit. Plus… from any reasonable point of view… he was right. She just wished he could see she’d paid a price too.
* * *
She’d been near the top of her class from the beginning of training, so she’d known she was likely to have her pick of jobs. Agents rarely received New York or Washington for first assignments. Otherwise, the country was open. Brian had suggested somewhere in the West, ideally San Diego or Denver. He’d seemed surprised she wanted Birmingham.
“Alabama summers are even more miserable than this.” A sultry Saturday night, Philly in August. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a row house east of Center City. The place was cheap and had been an easy walk to work for Rebecca, but in the summer even the walls seemed to sweat.
“I’ve always wondered about the South.”
“Charlottesville’s not the South?”
“The Deep South. Growing up, everybody I knew treated that part of the country like it barely had electricity. Hookworms and Confederates.”
The Power Couple Page 9
