The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  His voice sounded smug. “You’re wrong. Completely wrong. I might even say dead wrong, but I wouldn’t want to give you an inaccurate impression.”

  Ashley took a sharp, deep breath and realized nothing was going the way she’d hoped it would, then lifted her right hand to her hair, pushing it back from her face twice. This was the signal for her father to inject himself. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him bolt from his seat at the bar and cross the small restaurant in three huge strides. As planned, he stood at the table, blocking O’Connell from rising from the booth.

  “I don’t think you are listening to her,” Scott said. He spoke quietly, but with a cold forcefulness that he used on reluctant students.

  O’Connell kept his eyes on Ashley.

  “So, you thought you needed help?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He slowly pivoted in his seat and looked up at Scott, as if measuring him.

  “Hello, Professor,” he said calmly. “Won’t you have a seat?”

  Hope quietly watched Sally as she worked on the New York Times crossword puzzle left over from the previous Sunday. She never worked in pencil, tapping her pen against her front teeth, before finally committing letters to blocks and slowly, steadily filling in the blank spaces. The silences that she had become accustomed to, Hope thought, were growing even more frequent. She looked over at Sally and wondered what was making her so unhappy.

  “Sally, don’t you think we should talk about this guy that Ashley seems to have taken up with?”

  Sally lifted her head when she heard Hope’s question. She had been about to write down the answer to 7 ACROSS, four letters, the clue being Murderous Clown and the word being Gacy. She hesitated. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. Scott should be able to handle this with Ashley. I’m hoping that he’ll call sometime this evening and say it’s all straightened out. Finito. Kaput. On with everything else. We’re just out our share of the five grand.”

  “You’re not afraid that this guy might be worse than we think?”

  Sally shrugged. “He sounds to me like a nasty guy, sure. But Scott is pretty capable at dealing with college students, so my guess is, he’s out of Ashley’s life any minute now.”

  Hope framed her next question carefully. “In your experience, like in divorce cases and domestic disputes, are people bought off that easily?”

  She knew that the answer was no and that on far more than a few occasions she had listened to Sally as she had vented at the dinner table, or even in bed later, over the pigheadedness of clients and their families.

  “Well,” Sally said with a lack of urgency that infuriated Hope, “I think we should just wait and see. No use in preparing for a problem that we don’t know exists.”

  Hope shook her head. She couldn’t help herself. “That’s the damn stupidest thing I’ve heard in some time,” she replied, her voice rising slightly. “We don’t know if a storm is going to hit, so why buy candles, batteries, and extra food? We don’t know that we’re going to get the flu, so why get a shot?”

  Sally put down the crossword puzzle. “Okay,” she said, irritation creeping into her own words, “precisely what sort of batteries would you like to buy? What sort of inoculation is out there?”

  Hope looked across at her partner of so many years and thought how little she really knew about Sally and about herself. They lived in a world where normal was defined differently, and Hope thought sometimes it was nothing but minefields.

  “I can’t answer you, you know that,” she said slowly. “I just think we should be doing something, and instead, we’re sitting around waiting for Scott to call and tell us everything is back to the way it was, and I don’t imagine for an instant that we’re going to get that call. Or, indeed, whether we deserve that call.”

  “Deserve?”

  “Think about it while you finish your puzzle. I’m going to read for a bit.” Hope took a deep breath, thinking that there were some far greater puzzles that Sally could be working on.

  Sally nodded, dropping her eyes to the puzzle page in front of her. She wanted to say something to Hope, something reassuring, something affectionate, something that would defuse some of the tension around their house, but instead, she looked down and saw that 3 DOWN was What the Muse Sang, and she remembered that the opening of Homer’s Iliad was “Sing, O muse, of the anger of Achilles.” There were four blank boxes, with the last letter needing to be E, and so it was not hard for her to come up with rage.

  Scott slid into the booth, pushing Michael O’Connell into the corner, as he’d planned. It was a tight fit. The waitress took that moment to arrive at the table, menus in hand.

  “Give us a minute or two,” Scott said to the waitress.

  “Bring me a beer,” O’Connell said. Then he turned to Scott. “I figure you’ve got this round.”

  There was a momentary silence, and then O’Connell turned to Ashley. “You’re filled with surprises today. Don’t you really think that all this is between you and me?”

  “I tried to tell you,” she said, “but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “So you thought bringing in your father…” He pivoted slightly and stared at Scott. “Well, I don’t know. Just what exactly is he supposed to do?”

  This question was directed at Ashley, but Scott answered, “I’m just here to help you understand that when she says it’s all over, that means it’s all over.”

  Again Michael O’Connell took a long time assessing Scott.

  “Not exactly muscle. Not exactly persuasion. So, Professor, what’s your deal? What have you got in mind?”

  “I think it’s time for you to leave Ashley alone. Get on with your life, so she can get on with hers. She’s busy. Working. Going to grad school. Hasn’t really got the time for a long-term relationship. Certainly not the one that you seem to suggest. I’m here to do what I can to help you see that.”

  O’Connell didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by what Scott said. “Why do you think this is any of your business?”

  “Your refusal to listen to what Ashley has said has made it my business.”

  O’Connell smiled. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  The waitress brought O’Connell his beer, and he drank half of it in a large gulp. He grinned again. “What is it, Professor, that you got that’s going to persuade me not to love Ashley? How do you know we’re not perfect for each other? What do you know about me? I’ll tell you: nothing. Maybe I don’t look like what you expected for her, and maybe I’m not the sort of BMW-driving young executive with a Harvard MBA that you’re counting on, but I’m a pretty capable guy at lots of things, and she could do a lot worse. Just because I don’t fit your profile, I don’t know that that means a damn thing.”

  Scott wasn’t sure how to respond. O’Connell had thrust the conversation in a different direction than he’d expected.

  “I don’t want to know you,” Scott said. “All I want is for you to leave Ashley alone. I am willing to do whatever is necessary to help you understand that.”

  O’Connell paused, then said, “Somehow I doubt that. Whatever is necessary? I’m not thinking that that’s really true.”

  “Name a price,” Scott replied coldly.

  “A price?”

  “You know what I’m saying. Name a price.”

  “You want me to put a price tag on my feelings for Ashley?”

  “Stop screwing around,” Scott said. O’Connell’s grin and the easygoing way he was handling the conversation were beyond irritating.

  “I could never do that. And I don’t want your money.”

  Scott reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the $5,000 in the white envelope.

  “What’s that?” O’Connell asked.

  “Five grand. Just for giving Ashley and me your word that you will stay out of her life.”

  “You want to pay me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I never asked you for any money, did I?”

  “No.”
<
br />   “So, this money isn’t in response to anything I demanded, is it?”

  “No. All I want is your word.”

  O’Connell turned to Ashley. “I never asked you for money, did I?”

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t hear you,” O’Connell said.

  “No, you have never asked me for money.”

  O’Connell reached across and picked up the cash. “If I took it, it would be a gift, right?”

  “In return for a promise.”

  He smiled. “All right. I don’t want the money. But I’ll give you the promise. I promise.”

  O’Connell kept the cash in his hand.

  “You’re going to leave her alone? Stay out of her life? Walk away and never bother her again?”

  “That’s what you want, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  O’Connell thought for a moment, then said, “Everyone gets what they want, huh?”

  “Right.”

  “Except me.” He looked over at Ashley, freezing her with a narrow look that she could not put a word to. The harshness of the look was compounded by a contradictory, devil-may-care smile that Ashley thought was one of the coldest things she had ever seen.

  “That make this trip worthwhile, Professor?”

  Scott did not answer. He was half-expecting O’Connell to throw the money down on the table or into his face, and he tensed his muscles, maintaining a rigid control over his emotions.

  But instead of some dramatic gesture, O’Connell turned and once again stared at Ashley, letting his eyes burrow into her, so intensely that she squirmed in her seat. “Do you know what the Beatles sang, back in your father’s time?”

  She shook her head.

  “‘I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love…’”

  Keeping his eyes on Ashley, O’Connell slid the envelope into his jacket pocket, confusing the two of them. Then, still staring at her, he said, “Okay, Professor, time to let me up. I don’t think I’ll stay for dinner, after all. But thanks for the beer.”

  Scott moved aside, standing at the edge of the table while O’Connell, moving with surprising agility, slid out and stood. For a second he remained, his gaze still fixed on Ashley. Then, with a small grin, he turned about abruptly and rapidly walked across the restaurant toward the exit without once looking back.

  They remained silent for almost a minute. “What just happened?” Ashley asked.

  Scott did not reply. He was unsure. The waitress sidled back up, saying, “So, just two for dinner?” as she handed them menus.

  Outside Ashley’s apartment, the night seemed to have painted itself into shadows and shafts of stray distant light from streetlamps that barely argued against the growing autumn dark. There was no place to park, so Scott pulled the Porsche in front of a fire hydrant. He left the car running and turned to his daughter.

  “Maybe you should come out west for a couple of days. Just until we’re sure that this guy stands by what he said. Stay a couple of days at my place, then maybe a little bit of time with your mother. Let a little time and a little distance work for you.”

  “I shouldn’t be the one who has to run and hide,” Ashley said. “I have classes. I have a job.”

  “I know, but perhaps we should err on the side of caution.”

  “I hate that. I just hate it.”

  “I know. But, honey, I don’t know what else to say.”

  Ashley sighed, then turned to her father and smiled. “He just freaked me out a little. It will be okay. Guys like him, Dad, they’re really cowards when you get right down to it. Maybe he was strutting a bit when he took the money, but really he was pretty shut down. He’ll go out, call me names when he’s drinking with his buddies, and move on. I don’t much like it, and you’re out some cash…”

  “Damnedest thing,” Scott said. “He said he didn’t want it, then he put it in his pocket. It was almost like he was tape-recording us. Saying one thing, doing another. Creepy.”

  “Well, let’s hope it’s all over.”

  “Yeah. Look, here’s the drill. Any sign of him, and I mean anything, and you call home. Get your mom on the case, or Hope or me, right away. Anytime, day or night, got it? And I mean any sort of suspicion that he’s been tailing you or calling you, or harassing you, or even just watching you, and you call. You get a bad feeling and you call, okay?”

  “Yes. Look, Dad, Michael creeped me out, too. I’m not looking to be heroic here. I just want my life to go back to what it was, even if it wasn’t all that perfect.”

  She sighed again, undid her seat belt, grabbed her purse, and took out her apartment keys.

  “You want me to walk you up?”

  “No. Just wait until I’m inside, though, if you don’t mind.”

  “Look, honey, I don’t mind anything. I just want you to be happy. And I’d like to forget about this whole incident, and Michael O’Connell, and watch you get your master’s or doctorate in art history and have a wonderful life. That’s what I want, and your mother, too. And that’s what’s going to happen. Trust me. And before too long you’re going to meet someone special, and all this will just be like a little blip on the past. You’ll never think about it again.”

  “A little nightmare blip.” She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Dad. And thanks for driving and coming and helping and just, I don’t know, for being who you are.”

  This made him feel quite wonderful, but he shook his head. “You’re the special one.”

  Ashley got out of the car, and Scott gestured her toward the front of the apartment building. “Now get a good night’s rest and call us tomorrow just to touch base.”

  She nodded. Scott had one other curious thought, which seemed to come out of some darkened place within him, and before he could stop himself, he asked, “Hey, Ashley, one thing bothered me.”

  She was about to shut the car door, but stopped and leaned in. “What’s that?”

  “Had you told O’Connell anything about me? Or your mother?”

  “No…,” she said hesitantly.

  “Like on that first and only bad date, did you talk about us at all?”

  She shook her head. “Why?”

  He smiled. “No reason. No reason at all. Get inside. Call tomorrow.”

  Ashley smiled, pushed the hair back from her eyes, and nodded. Scott gave her another smile, said, “It will only take me a couple of minutes to get home at this time of night. All the troopers have the night off.”

  “Don’t ever grow up, Dad. It would disappoint me.” Then Ashley closed the door and bounded up the steps to her building. It only took her a second or two to open the outside door, enter the sally port, then open the second door. She turned as she entered and waved to Scott, who still waited until he saw her heading up the stairs before he put the car in gear and pulled out of the hydrant slot, wondering, in that second, just precisely how it was that O’Connell had known to call him professor.

  “So, they felt safe?”

  “Yes. Safe enough. Not that exhilarating we-dodged-a-bullet sensation, but enough right for that moment. They still had some doubts and some concerns. Some residual anxiety. But, for the most part, they actually felt safe.”

  “But they shouldn’t have?”

  “Would I be telling you all this if that was the end of it all? Five thousand dollars and a so-long-see-you-later fare-thee-well?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I told you. This is a story about dying.”

  When I failed to respond, she looked up and out a window. Sunlight seemed to catch her face, illuminating her profile. “Doesn’t it make you wonder,” she said slowly, “how things can be turned upside down in one’s life so easily? I mean, what protects us? I suppose the religious fundamentalist would say faith. The academic would say knowledge. The physician might say skill and learning. The police officer might say a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. The politician might say the law. But really, what is it?” />
  “You don’t expect me to answer that question, do you?”

  She tossed her head back and laughed out loud. “No. Not at all. At least, not yet. Of course, neither could Ashley.”

  15

  Three Complaints

  Each in his or her own way felt unease over the following days, almost as if a low-hanging cloud of deep gray fog had settled onto their lives. When Scott replayed the meeting with Michael O’Connell over again in his mind, it seemed curiously inconclusive one instant, then strangely decisive the next.

  He told Ashley that he wanted to hear from her daily, just to make sure that things were okay, and so they set up a regular early-evening phone call. Ashley, even with her fiercely independent streak, had not objected. He was unaware that Sally had proposed precisely the same arrangement.

  For her part, Sally suddenly found that nothing in her life seemed in order. It was a little as if she had become detached from all the anchors in her existence, with the single exception being Ashley, and even that was tenuous. The purpose for her daily phone calls to her daughter, she came to understand, had as much to do with regaining some sort of foothold on who she was herself as with being reassured that Ashley was okay. After all, she told herself, the incident with O’Connell was merely the sort of commonplace unpleasantness that all young people go through at some point.

  But far more disturbing to her was the less-than-effective work she was doing in her law practice, and the growing tension between Hope and herself. Clearly, something was wrong, but she could not bring herself to focus on it. Instead, she threw herself into her various cases, but in a distracted, erratic way, where she would devote too much time to a small issue dogging one case, while ignoring large problems that shouted for attention in others.

  Hope merely dragged herself through each day, wondering what was happening. Sally wouldn’t really fill her in, she couldn’t call Scott, and for the first time in all the years she and Sally had been together, she thought it was inappropriate for her to call Ashley. She threw herself into the team, as it pushed toward the play-offs, and into her counseling work with struggling underclassmen. She felt as if she were walking across shards of broken glass.