American Sextet (14 page)

"Soon what?"

"You'll see."

She looked at him archly. It was an expression that he had
never observed before. Soon, he told himself. The sooner the better.

He had decided that whatever happened with Orson Strauss,
this would be the end of it. He set a time goal in his mind--a week. If she
couldn't get Strauss by then, he would go with the five. The lucky bastards, he
thought. He was about to make them immortal.

"Bet you can't snag him in a week."

"Bet I can."

"Just follow him and try to talk to him."

That was the only instruction he gave her. Nature and her
intrinsic talent would do the rest. He was sure of that.

In three days, they were walking together.

"He's very shy."

"That's understandable."

He had instructed Dorothy to tell Strauss that she worked
on Capitol Hill, parting from him near the steps of the Capitol, then walking
the few additional blocks to their Capitol Hill apartment, where she showered
and had coffee with Jason before going off to Saks.

"Remember, one week," he reminded her, pointing
his finger as if playfully rebuking a child.

He was not sleeping well. When she sensed his restlessness,
she would comfort him in her special way, and he found that her lovemaking
would often calm him. Now it just increased his agitation. Often, in the night,
he would study her face as she slept. Before, it had been serene. Sleep was
absolute. Now she, too, seemed restless, as if something foreign, disturbing,
was thrashing around in her mind. Even her own questions were becoming more and
more frequent.

"Just accept," he assured her. "It's all for
our future."

"As long as it's what you want, Jason." There was
a tentative ring to her response that hadn't been there before.

"It is, baby. It is."

He became increasingly short in his answers and wondered
how long he could deflect her growing and still inarticulate curiosity.
Although he tried to deny it to himself, she seemed to be changing in some way.
He could not define it. Some intangible growth, perhaps, but he sensed an odd awareness
in her, as if her exposure to these men and the subsequent debriefing was
opening her mind. He had not anticipated that. Had the experience awakened a
latent intelligence? How would she respond to notoriety?

It was a path that he'd never tracked before. When it
worried him he would take refuge in his original premise, that what he was
doing was necessary. The public needed to confront its hypocrisy. Journalism
needed the shock out of scandal mongering; the government needed it. Sometimes
he felt like a director in a kind of theater of the absurd. In the end, he
knew, it would make sense. He didn't care about the men whose present careers
would be destroyed. What troubled him most was Dorothy and her reaction to the
revelation. Surely, she would understand.

At first, the justice had been understandably reticent, but
after the fourth day, he was chatting amiably, enjoying the company.

"He asks lots of questions," Dorothy told him.

"About you?" Of course he would, Jason reasoned.

"I always try to tell him the truth. About where I
grew up. The mines. Things like that. Never about us," she added hastily.

"He's probing. He wants to be sure. Testing the
waters."

"He tells jokes, too. I laugh. They're very
funny."

"And you flatter him. Tell him how wonderful he is.
How smart. How handsome."

"He likes that."

"Has he made his move? Hinted at it?"

"Oh no. He wouldn't do that."

Jason felt foolish. That was her expertise, her talent.
Suddenly, he wanted it all to be over.

"Just a week," he said.

"I know, Jason." She said, pausing. "He's
such a nice man."

"Do you think he will...?"

"Oh yes, Jason. He will. You'll see."

Vanity, Jason sighed. They were all vulnerable.

It took exactly a week.

"You're a miracle worker," Jason told her.

"Not a miracle," she said matter-of-factly.
"I just know men." The remark came as a surprise. Although true, he
hadn't expected her to be able to articulate it. Perhaps she was growing too
sophisticated. The idea frightened him.

Soon the associate justice was eschewing his walk for a
twice-weekly session at the apartment.

"He's very scared," Dorothy told him, during
their first debriefing.

"I can understand that."

"But I made him feel good," she said happily.

"I knew you would do that."

"There's nothing for him to be scared about, is there,
Jason?"

"Of course not."

"He's such a gentle man. A good man. I think I like
him the best of all the others."

"Don't get carried away."

"You're still my number one, Jason," she said.

"Just remember that."

He continued to debrief her and the tapes became increasingly
repetitive. All that was needed now was to embellish on the relationship with
Orson Strauss.

"Does he ever talk about cases?" he asked.

"Cases?"

"He's a Supreme Court judge."

"Yes. I know."

It was the nuance, not the substance, that troubled him.
Was she holding back?

When she told him about the justice's dressing up in
women's underwear, he had difficulty keeping a straight face.

"I bought him stockings, panties, a bra, a garter
belt, and high heels. He looks cute."

"Cute?"

"One day I put lipstick and rouge on him and lots of
mascara. He loved himself and couldn't tear himself away from the mirror."
She smiled broadly. "Sometimes he wants me to call him Sally."

"Sally?"

Surely this is satire, he told himself. Who would believe
it? She seemed to enjoy making the man happy. Making all of them happy. Most of
all, it was making
her
happy.

As the time to end it grew near, he became increasingly
edgy. With Dorothy's tapes as documentation and her physical presence as
evidence, their denials would quickly break down in any confrontation. Some
might choose to play hardball, continue denials, hide from the press, feign ill
health. Others might opt for a full confession, throwing their reputations on
the secret mercy generated by every man's sense of guilt. "It was wrong. I
did wrong. I made a mistake in behavior and judgment." Whatever path they
chose, it was all grist for the mill.

He had also developed his own fall-back moral position, a
righteous posture. In that special role, he saw himself as an exploder of
myths, particularly the great myth of probity and sexual purity in those who
bubbled up as leaders in the democratic process. Sexuality, whatever its
expression, in or out of wedlock, was no criteria to demean character. Indeed,
it was a harmless expression of human character, a function of mind and matter,
no less common than breathing or voiding one's wastes. The fact that it gave
pleasure and joy did not make it any less human. Besides, the technology of
birth control had put sex into the category of recreation. Romantic illusion,
an anachronism, was finally being put to rest.

He viewed his effort as the last great sex scandal of the
century. He was convinced of that, imagining himself and Dorothy telling their
story on the nation's talk shows, offering themselves as a sacrifice, a kind of
delicious martyrdom to hypocrisy and cant. Perhaps, after this book, which
would be manufactured as a paean to ludicrous prurience, he would offer these
special views and at last put the great sexual revolution in the sixties in its
true perspective.

Listening to Dorothy's matter-of-fact debriefings, he
sometimes felt he had not gone far enough. Where was sodomy, lesbianism,
bestiality, necrophilia, the whole panoply of aberrations? That, he decided,
was toying beyond the pale. And it would also be far outside the realm of the
experience and interest of the mass audience he was shooting for.

Once Dorothy's relationship with the justice was insured,
all that remained was for him to explain to Dorothy what he intended to do with
the material and how she was to play her future role.

That was the moment he dreaded most.

Fiona had substituted one magnetic field for another. Now
she hurtled in Dorothy's as powerless as she had been in Clint's. Each step,
she knew, had its own inexorable logic. And professional dangers.

Tom Gribben watched her, his melancholy stare attesting to
his continued interest in her as a woman. She knew the signs, of course, but
until that moment, confronting him, his hurt had not mattered.

He had led her through the maze of corridors in the FBI
building to the cafeteria, where they sipped coffee in a quiet corner.

"I have one good set and a partial," she told
him, showing him the plastic envelopes. His eyes evaded them as he continued to
search her face. She knew what he was looking for.

"You're asking me to stick my neck out, Fi?" he
asked, with exaggerated astonishment.

"It's a professional favor."

"What happened to your regular channels?"

"Do I have to explain why?"

"I'm not going to do it," he said, although she
detected a kind of subtle temporizing. He had his own set of macho values, a
shrewdness that belied his bland exterior. He had been one of Hoover's later
young men and still clung to the amenities. A gallant knight, she had once
dubbed him sarcastically.

"I was entitled to a better explanation," Gribben
persisted. He was determined not to let their old affair die.

"It wasn't in the cards," she said gently.
"At the time."

The tacked on phrase was specious. She had no right to lead
him on to a dead end. But it was too late. He had already caught her drift, and
she made no move to correct the impression.

"We had some good times, Fi. You have to admit
that."

She could barely remember what they had done together,
except that one abysmal experience. "Yes, we did."

"And could again."

"All I want is an ident," Fiona said. A wry smile
formed on Gribben's lips.

"No," he said, shaking his head, eyes furtive,
searching the cafeteria. "Besides, you guys at MPD are a bunch of
idiots."

"Look at our statistics," Fiona said, prompted to
defend the department. She had to admit that they did often look like bungling
idiots, but when they made a case it usually stuck."Yours are still not so
hot."

She remembered now how she had taunted him, how she had
paraded FBI failures before him, citing their inability to get convictions. He
had taken it as it was meant, a personal put-down, and she turned the knife to
get at his smug FBI loyalty. Despite all the recent FBI earthquakes, most
agents were loyal to a fault. For this reason, defensiveness made him
vulnerable.

"You can put them in. It's like a gum ball machine.
Out will pop an ident and nobody's the wiser."

Once he had explained how it could be done and she had
tested him with near-perfect results. The full set, she knew, would create no
problems. The partial could be risky.

"I'm not just ready to go official. Not yet. My boss
has his hands full with the black teenage killings. Besides, I'm not even sure
there's a case here."

"We're not friends anymore, Fi. Not lovers
either."

He had put too much stock in that at one time. Without it,
they still might have been friends.

"Hell, Tom, I'm not asking for the moon."

She had, of course, miscalculated his reaction.
Remembering, she supposed that ducking his calls had been cruel. Unfortunately,
she hadn't let him down lightly and the bruised ego had not faded over time.

"I don't owe you anything," he snapped, then
suddenly grew nostalgic. "We had good times, Fi." He paused, showing
the old hunger. "We could again." His implication was clearly stated.

Alarms went off inside her head. They were always doing
that--Dorothy's magnetic field persisted, leaving her floating in space,
trapped in invisible parameters. Putting herself in jeopardy was not the issue.
There was Cates, Flannagan, now Gribben. I did not die by my own hand.
Dorothy's voice now seemed loud and clear in Fiona's mind. It could also be the
beginning of a nervous breakdown, another inner voice added.

"Come on, Tom, do it. For old time's sake."

"So you admit it. We did have old times," he
said, misinterpreting again.

"The moon was in the wrong phase is all."

Son of a bitch, she thought, smoldering ashes of resentment
catching fire. It wasn't only Tom. It was all of them, the manipulative
bastards.

"Okay then. We'll try again," he said, obviously
satisfied. In a pig's ass, she thought, casting herself loose from the last
trace of professional ethics. Her anger accelerated, but she didn't let him see
it.

"Deal," she said, forcing the edges of her lips
to curl into a smile.

"I'll put them through. Then we'll have a drink and
discuss the future. Fair enough?" He was absorbing all the disingenuous
signs like a sponge. She put her hand over his big fist, knowing he would think
of it as a caress.

By the time she arrived at the office, she had worked up a
full head of steam. She saw herself as the beleaguered female, a lone
rangeress, patrolling the swamp of the male ego. She'd fight them at their own
game, with their own weapons and win. I'm coming, Dorothy baby, she thought to herself.

"What's with you?" Cates asked. It was time, as
well, to set him straight.

"We have to talk." As her partner, he had a right
to know. Sitting in the car, she filled him in on what Benton had said and what
she had done with Gribben. There were other things she intended to do, but held
back, waiting for his reaction.

"What can I say?" he shrugged. "No victim.
No hint of murder."

"And I don't know where it will end. You're more
vulnerable than I am. He'll say you've been pussy-whipped and haul your ass out
of homicide with a reprimand sheet as long as your arm."

"It's something to consider."

"I can get you out anytime you say."

"I know." He hesitated. "But I feel that
maybe I'll be missing something. I hate to stop anything in the middle."

"I'm giving it to you straight, kemo sabe," she
said, watching him mull it over. "It'll mean double duty for the next week
or so. And we're going to fall behind in the regular work. Also, we can scare
up a hornet's next. Harassment. Entrapment. The whole list."

"Why can't we just go to the eggplant and have him
sanction it?"

"When we have enough, we'll shove it down his
throat."

He stroked his chin and contemplated his position.

"Before you get my decision, Fi, I have only one
question." It was not a simple decision for him, putting his career on the
line. She, after all, had the protection of her status as a double minority.
Bracing herself, she knew what was coming.

"Why?" he asked.

He was not entitled to that knowledge. Their professional
alliance did not change the essential situation. Nature had put him in the
enemy camp.

"Because it's there," she said facetiously. He
laughed, but did not press the question. Maybe there was a level of subtle
communication between them after all, she thought, quickly dismissing the idea.
Such things watered down resolve.

"Okay," he said, resigned to not getting a
complete answer. "We're partners, and I'll go along with you, no matter
what." So he was hooked on that myth. She hoped he wouldn't regret it.

They spent the day tracking leads on the teenage killings,
as usual, without anything significant to report. But her mind was on Dorothy
and the identification of the prints.

Back in the office, she settled behind her desk and began
typing out the reports of their investigation. On another level, she felt quite
proud of herself. Thoughts of Clint had receded into the background. Her
concentration had returned, allowing her to devote the remainder of her time to
Dorothy. I'm coming, she told herself again, ripping the report from her typewriter.

The mood in the office was still tense. She could hear the
eggplant ranting and raving at someone behind his closed door.

"The mayor's down on him now," one of her former
partners muttered. He was sitting beside her, struggling with his own report.
She looked up, catching a view of his ruddy complexion. It was obvious he was
hitting the booze pretty hard these days, trying to tough it out until
retirement.

"They need a goat," he burped, moving closer, his
breath foul with last night's drinking. "He's perfect for it. Fits him
like a glove."

"Poor bastard."

"We bring him one more potentially open case, he'll
shit."

Cates looked up and frowned.

"Drink?" Cates asked after they had filed their
reports in their case sackets. She consented, welcoming the idea which rescued
her from the prospect of going back to an empty apartment.

They went to the F. O. P., the Fraternal Order of Police,
club. He ordered double Scotches and brought them to a corner table, a big bowl
of popcorn between them.

"Sooner or later, I suppose I'll understand it,"
he said after a long sip of his drink.

She was sitting with her back to the wall, watching the
line of cops. Most of them wore sport shirts and uniform pants. Everyone,
according to regulations, was armed. It always reminded her of a bar in a movie
western and more than once some cop had gone for his piece in an argument. That
kind of altercation was quickly hushed up.

"Understand what?"

He scooped up a handful of popcorn, chewing one kernel at a
time.

"Why I'm going along with this."

"Don't get too analytical."

"I'm really depending on you. Trusting your
instincts."

Trust! They had these holy rules about only trusting one's
partner, an idea that might have been true before they began to mix things up.
She had never quite trusted any of her male partners and they had, she was
sure, never quite trusted her.

"You know what they say," he laughed, ribbing
her. "Never trust a woman."

"I'm a woman."

She said it too fast and he looked at her strangely.

"You're a cop. Like me." She wondered if he was
trying to convince himself.

"You're a man," she snapped. She wanted to tell
him that, despite all of society's new contrivances, there remained that
unbridgeable gulf between them. Never the twain shall meet. No, she decided, he
could never understand about Dorothy.

He shook his head and smiled.

"We're just people then," he said.

"We're different. That's the truth of it. I'm the
alien here. I've muscled into a man's business." She couldn't stop now.
"Look at the statistics. Who commits most of the real crimes? A woman sees
things differently. A woman thinks in a different way. A woman reacts
differently. A woman..." she hesitated. "A woman loves
differently." Again, she thought of the dead woman. "Man is the
killer." Her vehemence surprised her. She looked at him and saw that he
was, understandably, confused by her outburst.

"Shit," Cates said. "I'll still take my
chances."

"That's just macho talking, Cates."

"Maybe," he said seriously. She could feel his
eyes probing her face. "Why don't you ever call me by my first name?"

"I didn't know you had one."

"Timothy."

"Okay, Tim."

"Not Tim. Timothy."

"Okay, Timothy."

Despite herself and her long harangue, she felt him getting
closer, burrowing in. She knew she was crossing a Rubicon.

"Tell you what," she said suddenly. "Let's
order some Chinese and go up to my place."

His hesitation told her that the sudden suggestion of
intimacy startled him. Hell, it startled her, too--maybe what she needed most
now was friendship.

Or maybe she was just reluctant to go back to her apartment
alone.

He went off to the China Palace on Ninth Street while she
subwayed home.

"Damn," she said, exasperated, as she opened the
door to her apartment. Clint was sitting in the dark, slumped in a chair, his
feet sprawled in front of him. Apparently he had been sleeping and the sudden
light made him shield his eyes in a kind of sloppy salute.

"I was waiting..." Clint said, clearing his
throat. He looked forlorn and empty. Feel no pity, she urged herself.

"This is childish," she said.

"I know. I wanted to explain."

"You don't have to, Clint." She was determined to
be firm, and went into the kitchen, bringing out plates.

"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place," he
said.

"So are we all."

"There's something I wanted to say. Something you
deserve to know." He crossed his legs in front of him. Must he? she
thought silently. She was running out of activities to invent. Finally, she sat
down opposite him. Confession time. How she hated that, remembering her
childhood and all those Hail Marys.

"I told her," he said, taking in a gulp of deep
breath to renew his strength.

"Jesus," she snapped. "Do I have to go
through that?"

"I told her about us."

She stood up.

"I don't want to hear this."

"You know what she said?"

His tone was ominous, and she knew in advance it was
something she definitely did not want to hear.

"She said I hadn't fooled her for a minute. That she
knew all along."

"Knew it was me?"

"That, too. She followed me once, in the morning. Can
you imagine that? She knew all along."

"Dear Ann," Fiona said. "A good little
actress."

"I thought I was going to really hurt her. I went
through this elaborate preliminary and she knew all along. I couldn't believe
it. She lived with that."

"Such martyrdom," she said, unable to hold back
her sarcasm.

"I begged her," he began, then faltered.

"Must I listen," Fiona said.

"She said she was content with the present
arrangement. I mean that's a pretty wrenching experience for a man of my
generation, still obsessed with doing the honorable thing."