Elimination

by Ed Gorman

  Ted went immediately to Jess, kissed her on the cheek and sat down.

  ‘Dev tells me you did very well with the interview, honey.’

  ‘You didn’t watch?’

  The little boy again: his mom had missed the game where he’d hit his home run.

  Showalter said, ‘Well, we’ve got a few more things besides TV to talk about here. I’d like you to stay, Mr Bradshaw. I’ll have several questions for you, too.’

  ‘Really? Now?’

  This actually sounded like the kind of work that just might get in the way of calling a few thousand friends. He’d want to know if they’d seen the interview and, if they had, just how fabulously fabulous they thought he’d done.

  ‘Well, I need to go and get to work,’ I said.

  Showalter did not look amused.

  But Detective Foster did. This time her smile made me want to propose living together or maybe even tying the knot. Something was going on here. Despite the superficial flattery of her seeming interest, she struck me as far too intelligent for teases. Those eyes were as shrewd and knowing as they were lovely. She wanted something from me.

  I was heading for the door when I heard, from the living room, the music of Katherine’s laughter. After all she survived and all she might still face, her laugh, as melodramatic as this might sound, was an affirmation of life from someone who appreciated it, unlike a lot of us who bitch and kvetch about it with oblivious disdain.

  I should have guessed she was with Joel. They sat on the loveseat near the grand piano and, as always, she seemed even more radiant in his presence, a radiance I never saw when she was with her parents. Joel paid attention to her – something I suspected she didn’t get much of from either Jess or Ted. They sat in the shimmering autumn sunlight, and fine figures they were.

  ‘Both my boyfriends at the same time. Come and sit down with us, Dev.’ Katherine smiled.

  Joel had told me that Katherine always developed crushes on the older men who spent time with her.

  ‘One of us’ll get jealous in a minute,’ I said to her as I sat in an armchair across from them.

  ‘I wish I had a jealous boyfriend. I was going with this boy from Northwestern before I got sick. He still calls me sometimes but I think it’s out of duty, which makes me feel sorry for him. He’s a good guy. We weren’t ever in love or anything serious. We’d just started dating before I got sick. But he still doesn’t want me to feel deserted or anything.’

  As she spoke I shifted my attention from Katherine to Joel. His blue eyes showed pain. She wasn’t trying to be noble, she was just stating facts. She didn’t even sound all that hurt about the guilty boy moving on. But Joel’s gaze reflected the hurt he felt for her. No wonder she liked her Uncle Joel so much.

  He changed the subject abruptly. ‘I wish I’d seen you before you started talking to Showalter,’ he said to me.

  ‘I take it you don’t like him.’

  ‘Like doesn’t matter. But trust does.’

  ‘Why don’t you trust him?’

  ‘He’s hunting buddies with Dorsey. And bowling buddies. And Friday night football buddies. They both were jocks in high school.’

  ‘None of that sounds good.’

  Nobody knew as much bad news as Joel Bradshaw. It wasn’t that he enjoyed it, but he knew he needed to share it because that was the best way to address it.

  ‘Dorsey’s got this big anti-crime photo op coming up. The usual thing. Candidate in front and a wall of cops behind him.’

  ‘Standard stuff.’

  ‘It’s scheduled for next Wednesday. A working day for some of the cops who’ll be standing behind him. There’s a town statute that forbids on-duty policemen to appear in any kind of promotional activity. It also forbids law enforcement officers to make any kind of political endorsements.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know. I’ll talk to the mayor about it.’

  ‘Won’t do any good. Showalter has already convinced the mayor to waive the law in this case.’

  ‘And the mayor agreed?’

  ‘The mayor hates my mom, Dev. He’s a good friend of Dorsey’s, too.’

  ‘Bowling does it every time,’ I said. ‘You get two guys to start bowling together and they’ll be inseparable.’

  Katherine’s laugh was my reward.

  Joel said, ‘I’m just worried about how Showalter’s going to handle it. He’s really working as an agent for Dorsey. A dangerous one.’ Then, ‘But even he has limits to what he can do, I suppose.’

  ‘Now you’ve really got me worried. You know the town a lot better than I do. I hope we don’t have to get any kind of injunction for anything he tries because that might put us past the election before we could stop him.’

  ‘I keep waiting to hear about those two guys who showed up with guns at the debate,’ Katherine said. ‘Aren’t they likely suspects?’

  ‘I’m assuming that Showalter is checking them out. If they are involved they’re pretty dumb – showing up with guns and then trying to kill Jess a couple of hours later.’

  ‘They’re not exactly intellectuals, Dev.’

  ‘I know. But still—’

  ‘Maybe they left there and poured down some liquor and talked themselves into giving it a try.’

  ‘That’s possible. But they didn’t really hassle the security people or the police. They got turned away and just got in their car and left.’

  Nan strode into the room. ‘Is anybody ready for a snack?’

  ‘I wish I could, Nan. But I need to get going.’

  ‘You always need to get going, Dev. One of these times you’ll actually sit down and let me make you a good lunch.’

  ‘I’ve had several dinners here before.’

  ‘Catered. For special events I’m just the greeter. A chef comes in. He won’t let me in the kitchen.’

  ‘He’s really a snob,’ Katherine said. ‘I don’t like him. I don’t even think his name is André Babineaux.’

  ‘What do you think his name really is?’ I asked as I started to leave.

  ‘I don’t know about the last name, but his first name is Bubba.’

  ‘I like that,’ Nan said. ‘Bubba Babineaux.’

  ELEVEN

  Abby and I spent five straight hours working on a new schedule for Jess.

  She knew all the local people and all the local venues so she’d make suggestions, and if we both agreed she’d place the calls. We wanted sites an assassin couldn’t penetrate, knowing that no such site existed. Just because he’d used a powerful rifle last night didn’t mean that he couldn’t sneak in a handgun today. I called our final choices into Showalter’s office and his administrative assistant said he’d call us back after he’d looked them over.

  In the meantime, I had to check on the other races my office was running. We had new internals on all of them. The majority of them looked good; two were disasters. Pair two less-than-stellar candidates against several million in dark money and victory is going to be elusive.

  The phone rang at the receptionist’s desk and half a minute later Donna Watson buzzed and said it was for me. Abby waved goodbye and left.

  As soon as I said hello, a woman’s voice said, ‘Thanks to you I have to hide out. You have the police looking for me.’ The day bartender had called her. My mystery friend from last night.

  ‘You need to talk to the police.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to them.’

  ‘You may have information about the person who tried to kill Congresswoman Bradshaw last night.’

  ‘He needs help. I want to help him. If the police get involved they like to shoot people.’

  ‘Apparently so does he. Are we talking about your husband?’

  But she said only what she wanted to say. ‘His third tour in Afghanistan really changed him.’

  ‘I’m sorry. If he needs help then I’ll let the police chief know that and he can arrange to handle this without any threat of violence.’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe tha
t.’

  ‘So what are you proposing to do?’

  ‘I’d like you to talk to him.’

  ‘Does he know about this call?’

  ‘No. Before I tell him about it I want your word that you’ll talk to him before you call the police.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I could be accused of harboring a felon.’

  ‘He’s my husband. And I know he’s in some kind of trouble. I found six thousand dollars in cash in his underwear drawer. He was trying to hide it. He hires out as a landscaper to work on crews at not much more than minimum wage. I don’t know where he’d get that kind of money.’

  ‘So how do we resolve this?’

  ‘I need you to be at a certain place tonight at ten o’clock and I need your solemn word you won’t tell the police. I’ll explain when I see you.’

  If that was the only way I could move this along, fine. Showalter wouldn’t like it, but if we could identify our man and then apprehend him, Showalter couldn’t complain for too long.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Do you know where the houseboats are tied up in Tomlin Park?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just ask somebody.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘At the east end of the area there’s a pavilion. At that time of night on a weeknight nobody’ll be using it. My husband and I will be inside. Waiting for you.’

  ‘I hate to say this, but your husband may have tried to kill the congresswoman last night. To me that makes him a dangerous man. I won’t have any protection at all if he decides to shoot me.’

  ‘I can’t believe you think he could kill somebody. You don’t even know him. For your information, he’ll be unarmed. I’ll make sure of it. I promise.’

  He might be unarmed. But I wouldn’t be.

  ‘What if I tell him that I want to call the police on my cell phone and have them take him in for questioning?’

  ‘He’s pretty scared right now. I’ll tell him that you’ll bring that up.’

  ‘So he’s thought about what he did last night and he’s scared?’

  ‘We’ll talk about it tonight. I’m at work right now and I need to go.’

  I scribbled quick notes about the conversation. I wanted to remember everything. Her remark about her husband being scared had seemed odd to me at first. But as I sat there going back over everything she’d said I realized how natural it would be for him to be afraid now. The excitement would overcome fear – planning it, practicing it, doing it. But not only had he failed to even hurt her, now he had to face a couple of hard facts. The cops would be everywhere searching for him. Relentlessly. And when they found him he would be going to prison for life. I’d be scared, too – damned scared.

  ‘So you’ll be there.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘And you won’t bring the police.’

  ‘I won’t bring the police. I won’t contact them beforehand.’

  ‘How about afterward?’

  ‘You’re not a defense lawyer, are you?’

  For the first time, she laughed. ‘I sound like one, don’t I? But really – will you contact them afterward?’

  ‘Depends on how things work out.’

  A pause. ‘I guess that’s fair.’

  ‘As fair as it’s going to get.’

  ‘We’ll see you tonight, then.’ And she hung up.

  Suddenly even the two elections we were likely to lose didn’t seem as depressing as they had earlier. I went to work redrafting Jess’s last two commercials.

  TWELVE

  I was standing at the window watching dusk turn the sky and the world below into a dolefully beautiful evening. In Chicago I might be in a bar having drinks with a woman who interested me, hoping that I interested her as well. The old Mick maudlin side always wrenched me in its self-pitying grip at this time.

  ‘Hello!’

  Young voice, male. Cory Tucker, the volunteer driver.

  ‘In here, Cory.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I interrupted anything.’

  ‘You didn’t. I was just thinking a little about the commercials we do next. What’s up?’

  ‘Just thought I’d stop in and see what was going on. I finished up my school work and thought I’d stop by and see if anybody needed me.’

  He was modest, capable and nice-looking in an upwardly mobile way. In his V-neck blue sweater with the button-down white shirt and the tan-colored slacks, not to mention the blonde crew cut, he could have been a college boy in one of those old MGM musicals my mom always watched on TV. That was his appearance, anyway. But his enthusiasm bothered me. He seemed too bright to think that being an ass-kisser would get him anywhere. He was a volunteer. Even if he got a raise he’d go from zero dollars an hour to zero dollars an hour. Dorsey’s wet dream – slave labor. Sometimes I wondered if he was overcompensating. But then the question was overcompensating for what?

  ‘I’m going to have to rent a car.’ I needed one for the drive to the houseboats.

  ‘Hey, I’m your driver, remember?’

  ‘If you really want something to do, I’m sure they can find you plenty of work at the campaign headquarters.’

  ‘I was there earlier. Boy, the mood has really changed. Nobody’s uptight about the election anymore.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. They figure that we’ll win for sure after … after what happened last night.’

  ‘That’s not very smart. We have two weeks to go before the election. Anything could happen.’

  ‘That’s what they’re worried about now. Not getting out the vote and stuff like that. They’re worried about whether the congresswoman is going to be alive. A couple of the girls were crying when I was talking to them about it. They’re really scared.’

  ‘Tell them she’s under full twenty-four-seven protection.’

  ‘They’re wondering why she’s going right back out tomorrow.’

  I wondered if he’d come here as a kind of unofficial spokesperson for the volunteers at headquarters. Of course they’d be worried. Of course they’d be afraid that there might be a second attempt and that maybe the second attempt would be successful. And of course I should haul my ass down there and talk to them – something I should have done several hours ago.

  ‘You know what, Cory?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I could use a ride to headquarters.’

  ‘They’ll really appreciate it, Dev. They trust Abby and all but they see her every day. You’re from out of town and you’ve been doing this most of your life. And you were an army investigator. I mentioned that several times to them. I’ll mention it again when I tell them that you want to talk to them.’

  I hadn’t spent much time at campaign headquarters. This was a good excuse.

  There were maybe twenty people at campaign headquarters. Most of them were working the phone banks.

  I wasn’t about to interrupt them with some lame pep talk.

  The cliché is that elections are won or lost based on the battle your supporters put on. That’s somewhat overstated but not by too much. The phone calls, the door-to-door, the rallies, the outreach to various groups … all are critical elements in any victory. Only since the Supreme Court claimed that corporations are people, too – just neighbors as nice as can be – did the value of the supporters diminish somewhat. When millions are poured into a Congressional battle like Jessica Bradshaw’s, cash dominates everything else.

  A woman named Jean Fellows had been a reporter before retiring. She was second in command here. She should have been first. All I’d heard about the number one, someone named Mary Schmidt, was that Jean had to follow her around and fix her mistakes. Schmidt’s husband had contributed something like seventy thousand dollars to the coffers so his wife had her choice of positions.

  Jean had a tiny office in the back of the place. As I walked back there I heard the eager, friendly voices of the phone workers. Once in a while th
ey got attacked. They called somebody who believed that Jess had been born in Moscow and had won her Congressional seat by using arcane black magic on the voters. The good phone workers know to just excuse themselves and hang up when all this starts. The bad ones stay on the line and fight. It’s useless to try and persuade the tinfoil hat brigade, but I have to admit – having been a bad phone worker myself way back when I was in college – it makes you feel one hell of a lot better than just hanging up.

  Jean was just wrapping up a phone conversation reminding somebody in a terse, vaguely threatening voice that the two billboards that had been promised had yet to appear over on Sixteenth and Twenty-first avenues respectively and that certain people – namely one Jean Fellows – would be mightily displeased if they did not appear within the next six hours. She hung up, shaking her head.

  Jean was given to jumpers and Navajo jewelry. She had a strong handshake and a somewhat accusatory brown gaze, as if you were going to sell her a car that would fall apart one week after she signed the papers. She also had fluffy and elegant pure white hair.

  ‘Slumming, huh, Dev?’

  She’d visited our Chicago offices with Ted one time and we’d taken to each other immediately.

  ‘Yeah. I figured this’d be a good place to score some meth and some hookers.’

  ‘You joke, but we’ve had a few volunteers here over the three campaigns that really worried me. There was a college senior who was sleeping with a fifteen-year-old girl. He dumped her, of course, and, of course, she went right to her parents – which she should’ve done. Which I would’ve wanted my daughter to do – obviously I would’ve preferred that she not start sleeping with the jerk in the first place – but the parents decided against bringing charges because of how it would affect their daughter. You think that wasn’t terrifying? It could’ve cost us the election. That year we won by less than two points.’

  That was one campaign horror story I hadn’t heard. Jean wasn’t exaggerating. The other side spread so many false rumors. Was Jess gay? Was she into threesomes? Was she transgendered? The press would do the bidding for the other side with unmatched zeal; it was always s-e-x, wasn’t it?