Cape Disappointment (11 page)

He and Deborah Driscoll went into the inner office, where he sat down, loosened his tie, and clasped his hands behind his head. Through a window between the offices, I could see them talking. I knew they were talking about me. Five minutes later I was invited in.

THE SHADES WERE DRAWN,
blotting out the view of the lake and rendering Maddox's face a pale smudge in the dark afternoon. Deborah Driscoll had retreated to a shadowy corner after seating me in one of the two cushioned chairs in front of the desk. “Let me give it to you in a nutshell, Thomas,” Maddox said, without getting up from the desk. The nutshell speech was one he had been famous for back in the police department, and it meant you were about to be bombarded with a diatribe of inestimable length.

“The thing I always liked about you, Thomas, was that you seem to have this radar for shit. That's what I want you to do here. Find what needs to be found and help us deal with it. If we're being spied on, I want you to find out. I need somebody who's not that integral to the campaign, who I can take aside and say, ‘Go fix that' and know it's going to get done. Somebody with allegiance only to me. We're taking on a lot of new people, and it would be helpful to have somebody with a good nose checking things out. You're also the kind of person who can blend in. But, like I said, the one trait I've always admired about you, Thomas, was your radar for shit.”

I glanced at Driscoll in the corner. “Something's happened, hasn't it?”

“We had a blackmail attempt. It's history now, but something like it could happen again.” Some of the old self-importance showed up in
Maddox's irritable response. In his rise to fame— state representative, U.S. representative, and now senatorial candidate— he'd decided he was important. Hard to fault him. He
was
important. With his silver hair, chiseled features, piercing gray eyes, and dignified Roman nose, he was recognized everywhere he went. The word
blackmail
seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, because as he said it he swabbed his tongue around the inside of his teeth. “We'll bring you aboard as a logistics expert. Nobody will know why you're really here. What do you think?”

“Before I say yes, I have to warn you I'm not one hundred percent behind your ideology.”

“You're not here to write policy. You're here to make sure we don't get blindsided.”

“You should also know that my wife, Kathy, is an active volunteer for Sheffield.”

“We already know that, and we're confident we can count on you to not let it interfere with the work you do for us.”

“Tell me what this blackmail attempt was all about.”

When Maddox hesitated, Deborah Driscoll stepped into the light and spoke. “A woman threatened to set off a bomb if we didn't pay her forty thousand dollars. Jim fired her son a couple of years ago. A few weeks after he left, he put a gun in his mouth. Apparently she blamed us for his suicide and wanted his back pay and funeral costs. The man … all his life had been having mental problems. She didn't have the capability to make a bomb, so we weren't all that worried, but it did give us pause. Nutcases come out of the woodwork during an election.”

“I didn't read about this incident in the newspapers.”

“We tried to keep it under wraps. Besides, we don't want to give the next guy ideas, do we?”

“The suicide didn't make the headlines, either?”

“Uh, no,” said Driscoll.

“Has there been another threat?”

“Not yet.”

“Surely you have your own people in case there is?”

Once again, Deborah replied. “We want somebody who's not attached to the apparatus.”

“You suspect somebody in the campaign is working against you?”

“Possibly,” Maddox admitted.

“Not at all,” said Driscoll, almost at the same time. They looked at each other, and I could see it wasn't so much a disagreement as the fact that Driscoll had decided to hand me a little white lie. I decided to keep that in mind with regard to our future dealings.

“Okay. I'm on board. I'll need to clean up some things this afternoon, but after that I'm yours.”

“Going to be some long hours,” said Maddox.

“I've worked long hours before.”

“Good. Tomorrow morning. Six o'clock. I want you to start by going over the names of the people in the office, everyone except Deborah.”

I already knew Deborah was the first person I was going to check out. “Sounds good.”

As I left the office, I had a few seconds to watch the two of them in the reflection of the window that divided the office and the anteroom. Maddox was reaching for the telephone. Driscoll was watching me.

THE TROUBLE WITH MARRIAGE
to a woman as attractive as my wife is that wherever you go guys are eyeballing her, some to the degree that you want to put a boot up their asses. It doesn't help that, as a criminal defense attorney, Kathy represents her share of impoverished, indigent, and sometimes mentally ill defendants. Her profession puts her into proximity with dirtbags who are lonely and easily swept up by her charms, men whose lives are circling the drain and who, when they get close to someone like Kathy, think they've met a creature from paradise.

The classic example is Bert Slezak, identical twin brother of my longtime friend and confident Elmer, aka Snake. Two years ago, recommended by Elmer, Kathy defended Bert in a trespass and theft case after he was caught carting off a two-ton piece of statuary from the estate of a local judge.

Bert and Elmer were both named after their mother's favorite film star: Burt Lancaster, who starred in
Elmer Gantry.
Elmer and I are close, but Bert, whose name was misspelled by his father on the birth certificate, crossed way over a line that Elmer only straddled, and at times I found him close to despicable. Like Elmer, he had a long ré-sumé: soldier, stump grinder, pressure washer, door-to-door salesman, drum maker, author (a book on UFO abductions), long-haul trucker. I
didn't believe his claim to having once been a gigolo any more than I believed Snake's. Over the years, Bert's frequent contact with my wife had been an irritant. Once, I overheard Bert trying to convince her to leave me, supposedly to spend the rest of her days guzzling beer and munching Cheetos with him in his trailer while watching reruns of
Gilligan's Island.

Two mornings after the governor's ball I made my way to Kathy's office in the Mutual Life Building, braving crowds of tourists queued for the underground tour in Pioneer Square. When I stepped into the office, Beulah rolled her eyes and gestured with her head toward the inner sanctum, where through the open door I could see Bert's arms constantly moving in time to his rapid-fire speech. His sentences came out like machine-gun bullets, lickety-split and often punctuated with the same nervous giggle Snake sometimes evidenced.

I stepped into the small cubicle I was using as an office. It contained two chairs, a desk with a computer, and a file cabinet. When I interviewed people, I did it over the phone or on their turf; if they came to the office, I borrowed Kathy's meeting room, which was generally empty because Kathy spent so much time up the hill at the King County Courthouse either consulting with clients or working deals with deputy prosecutors, or in court itself. Bert spent his share of time up there, too. Like a lot of habitual criminals, Bert was always suitably contrite and humble around the courthouse.

“What if my ex goes back to court and says she doesn't need the restraining order anymore?” I heard Bert asking Kathy.

“The point is,” Kathy said, “you've already violated an existing order, and that's the charge we'll be responding to in court next week. The order was in place; you violated it. We're going to have a hard time getting around that.”

“But she called and said she wanted me.
She
called
me.
What am I supposed to do? She's a good-looking woman.” I'd seen Bert's ex. She'd been a swimsuit model in her youth and carried her good looks and healthy lifestyle into middle age. “She called me.”

“That's not what her statement says.”

“She said she missed me, and I knew what that meant.”

“So you went over to visit even though she has a restraining order
forbidding you to be within one hundred feet of her residence. Then what happened?”

“Her boyfriend showed up.”

“And?”

“He was supposed to be at work. He works the night shift down at Nucor Steel in West Seattle. You think somebody tipped him off? Maybe the government? I've been seeing more undercover federal agents in town. Did I tell you that? I'm being followed by government agents. I ditched one this morning on the way here.” Bert's paranoia showed up in almost every conversation, though it was usually under some degree of control by the time he headed to court, as if the sweat factor snapped him out of it.

“Okay. What can you tell me about the car?”

“They can't prove a thing.”

“They have a witness who ID'd you. And it is quite a coincidence that the boyfriend throws you out of the house and three hours later his car burns down to the rims.”

“Coincidences happen all the time.”

“We drew Anderson and she's tough on domestic cases. It would help if you could show some remorse in court.”

“Sure. I can fake remorse.”

“Genuine remorse would be better.”

“No problem. I can fake that, too.” He must have made a comical face, which he was prone to, because Kathy laughed.

“You're laughing. They say that's the key to a woman's heart: Make her laugh. Check out how many comedians have married beautiful women. What do you say? Costa Rica? Just you and me and a thatched roof under the stars. We could be there in two days. We'd never have another care in this world. I would read Emily Dickinson out loud and massage your feet after long walks on the beach. Haven't you ever wanted to have a man who made you laugh, worshipped your every move, and knew how to skin a rabbit?”

“The man I have makes me laugh and worships my every move, and what's more I believe he's sitting outside that door.”

“Can he skin a rabbit?”

“Probably not, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was about to tan
your hide.” Tuning them out, I lost myself in some work on the computer. By the time I looked up, Kathy was alone in her office, on the phone but alone. I was due across the lake at Maddox's headquarters, but I needed to talk to her. Bert was long gone and Beulah was missing, too.

I got up and wandered into Kathy's office. Neither of us had spoken on the drive home from the governor's ball. Sunday we'd been polite but distant, and this morning Kathy left the house before I rolled out of bed. She spoke on the phone for another minute.

“So who's chartering the plane now?” Kathy asked. “She still thinks that's a good idea?” She watched me while she finished the conversation, then hung up the phone.

“I'm sorry for the other night,” I said. “I was out of line. I set you up, and I'm ashamed of myself. Can you forgive me?”

“I knew he was hard of hearing, but I forgot. I'm sure I'll tell the story at a party someday and everybody will get a big kick out of it, including me.”

“You forgive me?”

“Of course, I forgive you.”

“I think we need to take a couple of days just for ourselves.”

“But we've got—”

“Commitments? Our first commitment is to each other. And we're beginning to get a little off track. I really think we need to carve out the time.”

“We
have
been at each other's throats.”

“I was thinking a trip to the ocean. How about that rust-bucket motel on the beach where we stayed last fall during the storm?”

“You sure it's not too plush for you?”

“Long walks on the sand. Nothing to think about for two days. Just you and me. Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, ham and eggs for lunch at that dumpy little diner, popcorn and a video for dinner. Build a fire on the beach and roast hot dogs till midnight. Maybe buy a kite and fly it over the waves. I can't quote Emily Dickinson, but I might be able to remember a couple of booger jokes.”

Kathy got up, walked around the desk, and sat in my lap, draping her arms around my shoulders. “You do know how to sweet-talk a girl.”