Deadlock (19 page)

“Yes,” Levering said as he and the president headed for the green. “I know she’s the right choice.”

“Fine,” Francis said, getting out of the cart and grabbing his putter from the bag. “Then I want to talk with her as soon as possible. A nice chat before I make the announcement. And I want to run it by Graebner.”

“That’s a good idea,” Levering said.

“Those are the only kind of ideas I have,” Francis said. “Now take a look at this putt. You think it breaks left?”

Levering laughed. “Everything you do breaks left, Mr. President.”

|
5

Millie quivered. She was not used to raw emotion unfiltered through careful analysis. But her mind seemed paralyzed; it rang with the words she hadn’t had a chance to say to her mother.

Jack Holden had arrived just behind the ambulance. The paramedics said they’d be going to Kern Medical Hospital in Bakersfield. Holden offered to drive Millie. She gratefully accepted, and appreciated that he wasn’t feeling chatty. After about twenty minutes on the highway he gently asked, “How you feeling?”

Millie looked at him, wondering for a moment if she might be able to open up a little. What she said was, “I’m a little upset right now.” It was a cold, antiseptic description.

“You’re very close to your mother,” Holden said.

“I haven’t had a chance lately to be close,” Millie said. Something cracked inside her. A small fissure, and out of it came a warm stream of tears. She swiped her index finger under both eyes, embarrassed.

Holden, if he noticed, did not react. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Almost there,” he said.

The gray concrete hospital was just off Mt. Vernon Avenue. At emergency receiving Millie gave them as much information as she could. Then she was told to wait. A doctor would be out soon.

Soon stretched into sometime. The TV in the waiting room was tuned to a soap opera vacantly eyed by a scattered few. A boy of about five played with some plastic toys on the floor under the TV.

Holden said, “Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”

“Water,” Millie said. “Thanks.” She watched as he got up and noticed how solid he looked. He must be a real comfort to people at moments like this. That was the important thing, perhaps. Not all the theology or the preaching or the arguments for God. Maybe all that mattered was what you did when people needed you.

Holden returned with a Styrofoam cup of cold water. It tasted metallic.

“I appreciate that you’re here,” Millie said.

“Glad to be,” Holden said. “I love your mom. She’s a great lady.”

And then, needing a change of pace of any kind, Millie said, “You write a pretty good brief. Thoughtful.”

“Thank you.” His gratitude seemed genuine. “Coming from Justice Hollander, that’s high praise indeed.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I’m always game. But what about you?”

“Please. Anything’s better than just sitting here, waiting.”

Holden seemed pleased. “Funny word,
better
.”

Millie looked at him questioningly.

“Do you know the term
tertium quid
?” he asked.

“That’s Latin for ‘third thing.’ ”

“Exactly. Any moral argument needs a
tertium quid
that stands outside two competing positions. It’s like an umpire in baseball or the rule book. Without that third thing, you and I might never agree on what is good, better, best. Or even a moral standard. We always fall victim to the Grand Sez Who.”

“Come again?”

“If I say racism is a good thing, and you tell me it is not, I can answer,
Sez Who?
You? I can be a racist if I want to. There is no
tertium quid.
”

The intellectual give-and-take was indeed a pleasant diversion. She dove in. “But I can gather the community to denounce you as an ignorant outcast.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to agree. If I have guns or bombs, I can make an even greater statement.”

“And I can lock you up.”

“And so we get to the conclusion. Morality on this stage equals power. Might makes right.”

Feeling a bit testy now, Millie said, “Where is the doctor?” She started to stand up, then sat down again.

“He’ll be here soon,” Holden said. “More water?”

“No, no.” Millie pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Let’s keep talking. It helps.” She settled back to talk. “Okay, tell me how the ‘Sez Who’ theory proves the truth of Christianity.”

“Our moral sense is just one bit of evidence to consider,” Holden said. “That’s the mistake people make. They assume that because one line of argument can’t prove the case alone, it is of no value. Not so. What do we do in court? We let the jury look at all the relevant evidence and then decide which way the scales of justice should fall.”

“I’ll grant you that, Counsel, but . . .” She stopped. “I just called you Counsel.”

“I haven’t been called that in quite some time. Been called a few other things.” His smile was warm.

“Nevertheless, there is still much of the case that’s missing,” Millie said.

“That’s because you haven’t reached the killer argument yet.”

“Okay” — she let her voice become spooky — “what’s the
killer argument
?”

“C. S. Lewis wrote about it in a book called
Surprised by Joy,”
Holden continued. “One day he felt that an open door was presented to him. Nothing like light or fire from the sky. Just a door. Beyond that door was joy, not the transient kind, but the answer to the deepest longings of his heart. That’s the killer argument.”

“It doesn’t really sound like an argument,” Millie said. “What is the logic?”

“The longing of the heart for something beyond,” Holden said, “is proof that our world cannot satisfy us. The fact that we experience thirst shows that we are creatures for whom drinking water is natural. In the same way, our longing for something beyond us is proof there is something beyond. ‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in God,’ Augustine said.”

“But desires come and go,” Millie said.

“Not this one. This one stays. Lewis recognized that, and one day he found the door was open. He knew then he could walk through or turn away.”

“And he walked through?”

“Yes, though he described himself as the most reluctant convert in all of England.”

“Why?”

“He said he would have been happy to remain an intellectual atheist. But his heart was set free when he heard the call. He had to respond. I heard the same thing one night in the lobby of the Nazareth Hotel. It was like beautiful music, not something we rationalize, just something we hear.”

Holden paused a moment, his eyes looking at a secret place. “I’ve heard it described this way. Once your heart hears the music, it is never really happy unless it is dancing.”

At that declaration Millie felt something open inside her. Since she’d known him, Jack Holden had laid bare his whole life, all of his feelings, openly. She had held back. No more.

“Jack,” she said. “I will admit there have been some moments recently when I’ve thought about these things. But I’m just not there. I don’t know if I ever can be.”

“Deadlock,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re deadlocked, like a 4–4 split on the Court. What you need, it appears, is a swing vote.”

“Oh? And where might I find one of those?”

The minister smiled. “Just listen for the music. Then you can decide what to do about it.”

“Yes, well, it’s all very interesting to kick around, but — ”

She stopped when she noticed Jack looking past her. She turned and saw a young doctor striding toward them. “Ms. Hollander?” he asked.

Holden stood and helped Millie to her feet.

“I’m Dr. Weinstein,” he said.

“My mother?” Millie asked.

“Come with me, won’t you?” He led them through a door to a quiet hallway. “I wanted to give you an update.”

Millie found herself taking Holden’s arm. The way the doctor spoke gripped her with dread.

“Your mother has had a stroke. We’ve stabilized her . . .”

Millie squeezed Holden’s arm and felt his hand on hers.

“. . . and of course we are going to do everything we can. We still need to run some more tests. She is comatose, Ms. Hollander. I understand you are her closest family member?”

“That’s right,” Millie said, her voice sounding distant and fragile.

“We are probably going to need some guidance here soon,” he said. “And you’ll need to begin thinking about that.”

“Guidance?”

“Heroic measures,” Dr. Weinstein said.

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6

Washington, D.C., was Anne’s world. But New York City was her kind of town. She spent almost as much time there as she did in the Beltway. Even more of late, because her lover was there.

As she sat across from Ambrosi Gallo at Ruby Foo’s, their favorite place in Times Square, she couldn’t help but wonder at the whole thing. Then again, maybe it was inevitable. She needed
edge
. Life was a big, fat farce without edge.

She had learned that from her stepfather. He used to whisper in her ear, when he did things to her at night, when Mom was away on her business trips. She learned what life was really like in the places you thought were safe.

She never thought anything was safe again, and had come not just to accept that rock-hard fact of life, but to embrace it. That was how you lived and stayed alive. The edge worked magic. It was, after all, what led her to Ambrosi Gallo.

“You finished with that?” Ambrosi asked, pointing a chopstick at her shrimp.

“Go ahead,” she said, and watched his graceful moves. Ambrosi Gallo gestured like a symphony conductor. Italians spoke with their hands. Ambrosi sang with them.

Soon they would be in bed, and his moves would continue to sing. Anne would make her own music, the kind that drove him wild. She had never met Ambrosi’s wife, and never would. But she was sure Mrs. Gallo would never mean what Anne meant to Ambrosi.

They’d met at a club in the Village. She’d seen this dark stranger circling her from across the dance floor. Just after midnight the move was made. The man slid next to her at the bar and immediately whispered in her ear, “You been scoping me. You serious about it?”

It was no secret who Ambrosi was, a made guy for the Calibresi family, which had moved into the five-borough vacuum created when the feds put Gotti away. The feds knew who he was — Anne knew the people to ask — and they suspected him of eight murders. But they’d never been able to put a case together. Ambrosi Gallo had beaten two raps. Nobody, but nobody, would testify against him.

“You want to go see a show or something?” Ambrosi asked.

“I don’t want to go to a show,” Anne said, feeling heat building in her. “I want to go to our place.”

“You got it, babe,” Ambrosi said.

They had a studio apartment in Gramercy Park, the place Ambrosi crashed when not at home in Queens. He was not often home. His wife, he assured Anne, was like all Mafia wives. She knew, she accepted, and she got nice things. No questions asked.

Outside the restaurant window, Anne could see a portion of the passing parade that was the foot traffic in Times Square. She couldn’t help wondering how easy it would be for Ambrosi to dispose of any one of them. And then she thought, what he did with guns she did with political clout. They weren’t really so different after all.

“What’s it like?” she asked.

“What?”

“You know.
Whack
.”

Ambrosi’s eyes darted toward the adjoining table. “Hey, keep it down, will you?”

That only made Anne smile. “You like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

“I also like walking around.”

“So tell me.”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Part of my education.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Plus it will make me very excited, if you know what I mean.”

Ambrosi’s straight white teeth gleamed between his lips.
“Siete del diavolo.”

She frowned.

“You little devil.”

Anne suddenly felt oddly upset. Something about the word
devil
as applied to her. She shook it off.

“It’s no big deal, after the first time,” Ambrosi said. “You ever see that movie, the one where DeNiro plays a Mafia guy and that other guy, what’s his name, the little comedian, plays a shrink?”

“
Analyze This.
”

“Yeah, that’s it. And the shrink says it’s good to hit a pillow when you’re feeling stressed out, so DeNiro whips out his gun and shoots a pillow. And the shrink says, ‘Feel better?’ and DeNiro says, ‘Yeah, I do.’ I cracked up. But that’s what it’s like.”

“Really? Shooting a person is like shooting a pillow?”

“Once you get used to it.” Ambrosi nabbed another piece of shrimp and sent it into his mouth.

“Don’t you ever worry about someone finding out?”

“How would they?”