Dev Conrad - 03 - Blindside Read online

  ‘I doubt any of his flings were with his friends’ wives. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  He was a peach all right. A real fucking peach.

  ‘So we’ve got the murder and now we’ve got Nolan.’

  He stared at his bottle of beer and then started peeling the label off with his thumbnail. ‘Well, since we’re playing Come to Jesus, Conrad, I guess I should tell you about one other thing.’

  The headache cut down like a sword through the exact middle of my skull. What the hell was he going to tell me now?

  ‘I,’ he said, ‘am being blackmailed.’

  PART TWO

  SIX

  That night I had a highly erotic dream of a silver car and a license plate number. I was following the sleek machine on a narrow asphalt road through a dense forest in dangerous rain. I would speed up to eighty, once even to ninety, but I could never get close enough to catch her. The dream became a sweaty nightmare when my car plunged off a cliff, accompanied, all the way down, by the almost melodious sound of a woman laughing with great perfumed pleasure.

  In the morning, my clock displaying 6:47, I called Kathy’s number. She was yawning but awake.

  ‘I apologize for this, Kathy.’

  ‘Sure you do. I can hear it in your voice.’

  I smiled. ‘Actually, I do. Unfortunately, I need some help and that kind of takes precedence over everything else right now.’

  ‘You’re not even close to the record. At one of the places I worked, the boss would call me at six to tell me he was picking me up for breakfast at six fifteen.’ Another yawn. ‘So what’s going on?’

  ‘Do you have any contact with the local police?’

  ‘There’s a detective I used to date when I’d come back here from Washington. It was never a big thing but he was always a lot of fun. I’ve asked him for a few favors from time to time.’

  ‘Good. I need a license number registration checked as soon as possible.’

  I could tell she was smiling now, too. ‘Can I at least wait until eight thirty when he gets in?’

  ‘Hell, no. Call him right now. Even if he’s in the shower.’

  A sweet, girly laugh. ‘Probably not a good idea. He got married six months ago. I doubt his wife would appreciate a call from one of his old lovers, especially before seven in the morning. So what’s the license number?’

  After putting some coffee on, I picked up my cell phone and started going through the messages I hadn’t responded to yesterday. The first one was the one I wanted least. Better to get it over with. I jabbed the right numbers.

  Helen Ward answered. ‘He’s been waiting to hear from you. Can you believe all this? Just a minute.’

  I hadn’t said hello and neither had she. The old-time consultants had wives who acted like the wives of senators and congressmen. They were just as ready for battle as their spouses. She hadn’t been unfriendly just now but all that mattered to her was that her son’s campaign was in serious trouble. No other subject was allowed to enter her conscious mind.

  Tom came on. ‘I didn’t sleep for shit last night. We got the news just before midnight.’

  ‘Join the club. Jeff didn’t leave my hotel room until two o’clock.’

  ‘He’s ducking me, the little prick. He doesn’t want any advice from the old man.’

  ‘I don’t have anything new to report, Tom. But I told you I’d check in.’

  ‘Helen’s climbing the walls.’

  ‘I don’t blame her.’

  ‘Where’s David Nolan in all this? He’s handled things for Jeff all their lives. I hate to say this but I trust his judgment more than I do my own son’s.’

  So he didn’t know about Jeff and David’s wife. He was seventy-four years old. He was overweight and drank a lot. He also kept the tobacco industry rich. He still smoked those small Chesterfields that had killed Bogie among many other millions. He’d had a stroke a few years ago. He knew about the murder. But he didn’t know about the adultery. Or the blackmail. I wondered how much was too much to put on a man like him.

  ‘Yeah. I got to talk to him. Real steady as she goes. Jeff’s lucky to have him.’

  ‘Just a sec.’ He cupped the phone. I heard an angry voice. Helen. When he came back on, he said, ‘Helen heard me say that about trusting David’s judgment more than Jeff’s. I thought she was upstairs. It always pisses her off when I say that. She says I’m being disloyal. To me I’m just being realistic. Our boy has a lot of good qualities.’

  At the moment I couldn’t think of any but theoretically I suppose he did. I mean if I really thought hard about it I could probably think of a few. Maybe.

  ‘Burkhart’s probably been jacking off all night,’ Tom said.

  ‘I’d imagine so.’

  ‘You see those photos of him at the Creationist Museum? Little kids riding that animatronic dinosaur. The Europeans have always regarded us as hillbillies and by God maybe they’re right. Riding dinosaurs, for God’s sake. You think they really believe that shit happened?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen to this country.’

  ‘It’s already happened, Tom. That’s the hell of it.’

  SEVEN

  Yellow crime scene tape was the brightest color of the gray and cold fall day. Rain had turned the once colorful leaves sullen. A squad car sat next to the back door. The downstairs was a symphony of whispers. Mrs Rosenberg waved to me. It was obvious she’d been crying.

  I climbed to the second floor. Apparently the no-smoking law was no longer being honored. I saw a couple of junior staffers hurrying toward me, both of them bearing cigarettes. They nodded and hustled on by.

  David Nolan’s office was empty. I stood in it for a few minutes and cursed Jeff Ward. There are moral politicians and immoral politicians. You’ll find both on both sides of the aisle. You’ll also find the sociopaths on both sides. Power attracts them. They feel it’s their due. The hell of it is some of them vote your way, so if you want to keep the country safe from being overrun by the robber barons and the madmen you have to reluctantly support them.

  I suppose Nolan had felt that way about Jeff Ward. He’d known him so many years he had to see what kind of a man Ward was. He had to have excused a lot in the name of friendship. Or maybe he drank a little of the heady wine himself. Washington is a gaudy young whore. She can make you feel important and in some respects immortal. You want to keep going back and back. It’s the only place where you can get the magic wine. But then your ticket in, who has been your lifelong best friend, sleeps with your wife and you’re forced to look not just at him but at yourself as well. How could you not see this coming with a man like Jeff Ward? You’d covered for him so many times with the wives of other men, why would it be any different with you?

  Kathy Tomlin came in wearing a crimson sweater, black pencil skirt, and black heels. ‘David was supposed to be at an advisory board meeting this morning but he didn’t show up. That’s really not like him. I’m worried about him. He’s just such a decent guy. He really is.’ She came closer to whisper. Her perfume made me fall in love with her. So did the finely-made face. A true pleasure to contemplate. ‘Unlike another guy I could mention, I mean. David told me about Jeff and his wife. He is such a bastard. How could he do that to poor David?’

  I wanted her to keep whispering to me but she had the nerve to lean against the door frame. ‘If that ever gets out—’

  ‘You think David might ever—’

  She shook her head. ‘No way. Even if he hates the messenger, he believes in the message. Burkhart is a fascist and I know we’re not supposed to use that word because he isn’t technically a fascist but that’s what he is to me. I just wish we could get something big on him.’

  I said, ‘This campaign is so dysfunctional I don’t know how you won two elections.’

  ‘David Nolan. That’s how we won two elections.’

  Lucy came int
o the room looking as if she had absorbed the shock of Waters’ death and was forcing herself to come back to the world of the living. She had even tricked up a nervous smile for us.

  ‘Am I interrupting?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re just trying to plan the day. How’s the press conference coming along?’

  ‘Pretty well. I’ve got both the nun and the relative. A little old lady whose voice trembles when she speaks.’

  Kathy caught the moment. Grinned. ‘Shameless, Dev.’

  ‘That’s what they pay me for. And even if we pull it off that won’t stop the questions. Did Waters take drugs? Was he gay? Did he belong to a terrorist organization? The local hate radio boys and girls will be slandering him every time they’re on mike. And they’ll use that slander to paint our whole campaign.’

  ‘He wasn’t gay and he didn’t take drugs and he sure wasn’t in favor of terrorism,’ Lucy said. As she spoke her voice rose defensively.

  ‘God,’ Kathy said, ‘those brochures with Jeff in all those tuxedos and dinner jackets and with all those bimbos. Think what the radio jerks can do with them.’

  ‘He told me they were all from very good families,’ Lucy said. She sounded serious.

  Kathy joyously put a maternal hand on Lucy’s shoulder. ‘Sweetheart, we know he got a bj from one of those very good family girls in the parking lot of a Burger King one night. And I mean outside the car.’

  ‘God,’ Lucy said. ‘I forgot.’

  Kathy smiled devilishly at me. ‘That was probably the one and only time he was ever at a Burger King, by the way.’

  I spent the next hour and a half going through every newspaper in the state. They all had extensive websites. Then I went to the sites of the TV and major radio stations. The coverage ran predictably. The conservative sources had already turned Jim Waters’ murder into a mystery with hints of the diabolical. ‘Friends said that although they liked him, he was often strange and secretive. He had worked as a speechwriter for Congressman Ward for three years, even during the time that the congressman was under suspicion for seeing several women outside his marriage.’ Nice way to work that in. If they’d had more time they would have worked Ward’s history to include bedwetting, public nose picking and leading terrorist cells in singing anti-American rap songs.

  The more moderate outlets, print and electronic alike, weren’t as hostile but most made the point that with the election so close a murder was not exactly what the congressman needed. They all cited the noon press conference and predicted that it would be well attended. Then I saw a quote from a fat junkie who had a radio show. It was a long quote. I could only stomach a few sanctimonious lines of it. God and family values. I wondered what any of his three former wives would make of it.

  As I was about wrapping things up I decided to check on Burkhart’s site. Any kind of official comment would wait until after the press conference of course but Sylvia had gotten her first shot in already. ‘I want to offer the Waters family our true condolences. I’m told he was a very bright young man and an extremely hard worker. This is why it is so important that our youth get off to the right start. They get caught up in all these liberal causes and they lose their way. You can’t have a mission that includes drugs and sex and a belief that big government can solve everything and expect to stay sane. I’ve seen a lot of my friends destroyed by these things in my lifetime. I certainly hope this wasn’t the case with poor James Waters.’

  Well, she hadn’t included horse fucking anywhere in her list of liberal sins so I guess that put us ahead of the game.

  When my cell phone toned I was glad to see the name Sarah Conrad on the caller ID. My twenty-two-year-old daughter was a senior at Smith. She planned to work for my firm over the summer as she had the last two summers. Then she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Right now she had a live-in boyfriend, Robert, who was an intern at a local hospital.

  ‘Hi, honey.’

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ But it wasn’t the usual happy ‘Hi, Dad.’ This one was serious. ‘You busy?’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Dad, Mom has third-stage breast cancer.’ Now I could tell she’d been crying.

  Norman Mailer once wrote that the most powerful word in the world was cancer. He knew what he was talking about. I had a dozen thoughts and no thoughts at all. I had to say something, but what? ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘About twenty minutes ago. Andy called me from the hospital. She’s there having more tests. Since he’s a doctor there he can get her through pretty fast. He said she should be home in two hours.’

  Dr Andy Connelly was the man Erin had left me for. I was long past blaming her; the fact that I was gone sometimes for three weeks running hadn’t exactly been conducive to a good marriage. She warned me about it the last four or five years we were together. Her resentment, her anger, her loneliness. She was raising Sarah alone, she said. She was tired of going to movies and concerts and dinners alone, she said. She wanted me back, she said. And then one day she didn’t. She came into our bedroom as I was packing and she told me about Andy and how she’d fallen in love with him and how she was sorry and how I could see Sarah just about whenever I wanted. And how she had instructed her lawyer to ask for very little. Then she said she was sorry again and left the room. She wasn’t waiting for me by the front door as usual with a hug and kiss. I have virtually no memory of the next thirty-six hours. Maybe an alien swooped down and picked me up and took me to the planet Evunom. Shock. I couldn’t form coherent thoughts.

  I was having the same trouble now.

  ‘Andy said he’d like you to call her. She wants to talk to you.’

  I didn’t say it out loud but I thought how awkward he must have felt passing along that message. I’d met him three or four times over the years. We’d been painfully cordial with each other but when it came to real conversation we both floundered. I’d liked him more than I’d intended to. Sarah had convinced me over the years that he was a great stepfather and had made her mother very, very happy. Something I’d been too selfish to do, even though I’d always known that I’d never love anyone else the way I loved Erin.

  ‘You’ll have to give me her number, honey.’

  ‘I’ve got it here. You ready?’

  I wrote it down. ‘Tell Robert I want him to take you out for a very good dinner tonight and get you drunk.’

  Her laughter was frail but real. ‘He’s second shift at the hospital. That means if he does take me out it’ll have to be after ten o’clock. The new head doc has it in for interns. He hasn’t given Robert the day shift in three months. Only his pets get them.’ Then: ‘I’m scared, Dad. Robert’s still here so he walked me through everything as well as he could without seeing a specific diagnosis. He told me how staging people can be deceptive. How it’s not always as bad as it sounds.’

  ‘You don’t believe him?’

  ‘He loves me, Dad. He loves Mom, too. He wants to make us feel better. I just hope he’s not keeping anything back.’ Then: ‘Oh, there’s somebody at the door. Can I call you a little bit later? I know none of us go to Mass anymore but say some prayers for Mom, will you?’

  ‘I sure will, honey.’

  invasive

  non-invasive

  ductal carcinoma

  lobular

  phyllodes tumor

  angiosarcoma

  These were just a few of the words I encountered over the next hour as I battled my way through at least twenty different websites dealing with breast cancer. An alien language, to be sure. One would give me a modicum of hope, the next would dash it. They were all dealing with the same facts, or so it seemed to my ignorant eye, so it was the writing that made the difference. I opted for the more reassuring assessments, though none were really all that hopeful anyway.

  It was close to noon. I managed to get out of the building without anybody seeing me. I found a tavern six blocks away that offered the balm of beer and microwave pizza. You couldn’t go wrong with that combination.
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  Kathy and Lucy were looking at a computer screen together when I walked past the conference room. Kathy glanced up and said, ‘Dev, I’ve got some news for you.’

  I walked in and helped myself to a cup of coffee while they finished up looking at some new demographic breakdowns on Ward’s base. Apparently they were still worried that more than six percent of union voters would end up in Burkhart’s column even though Burkhart was actively anti-union. The American tradition – voting against your own interests.

  I sat at the conference table trying not to think about Erin. Work was my only hope. Work would keep me sane.

  They finished in a few minutes.

  Kathy got some coffee for herself and sat across the table from me. Lucy closed up the laptop and took it with her after waving goodbye to us.

  ‘The Porsche was registered to a Pellucidar Corporation. I typed in the name on Google and got nothing. Then I tried Bing. No luck there, either. I found it ten minutes later. All that was listed was the name and the explanation that Pellucidar was in the business of selling audio equipment for stage shows and outdoor concerts. None of the names of the company’s officers was familiar to me.’

  ‘It could be a dummy corporation. You know, a cover for somebody who doesn’t want to be known.’

  ‘Burkhart?’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll call my home office. We’ve got an intern there from Northwestern who’s really good at penetrating all these corporate names. Second year in law school and she’s already a wizard.’

  ‘Both CBS and NBC will be at the news conference. Their reporters have been spotted outside headquarters here.’

  ‘Figures.’

  ‘And our favorite not-news network is already asking, “What did Congressman Ward know and when did he know it?”’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense. But it doesn’t have to. All that matters is the implication. He’s somehow involved in the murder according to them.’

  She consulted her delicate wristwatch on her delicate wrist. ‘I need to go help Lucy set everything up for the press conference. You’ve got my cell number if you need me.’