Deadlock (8 page)

“Oh, a man named Rosato or Rosetta, something like that. He is extremely remorseful, I understand. The police are questioning him.”

“Tell them . . .”

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

Dr. Cross nodded. “I’ll take care of it. You rest.”

She could do nothing else. Her body felt like it had been put through a harvester and dumped in a bale on a road. But her body was not what concerned her.

It was that vision. She wondered, for a few moments, if the blow to her head meant she was going to lose her mind.

|
5

Down the hall from Millie Hollander’s room, Anne Deveraux stuck a finger in a cop’s face. “Did you not hear me?” she said.

The cop nodded. “And I’m telling you — ”

She flashed her credential again. “United States Senate, okay?”

“Nobody sees her,” the cop said. “Not the president, not the Dalai Lama, unless the doctor says so.”

She looked around at the milling masses, recognizing some members of the press waiting for the impending press conference called by Dr. Myron Cross. That would be a whitewash, of course, telling her nothing she needed to hear.

But she’d hang around anyway. Maybe there would be an opening somewhere. What would they do if she walked right in?

She’d say she was paying her respects from a senator. A man concerned about her health, as he would any prominent member of the Court or Congress. A man who had admired her judicial integrity for years.

She would not reveal the real reason she was there, of course. She would not mention the word
Jaws
.

She felt a touch on her arm. She whirled around hard. Anne did not like to be touched.

She faced a short man with sweat beads on his forehead.

“You’re Anne Deveraux, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“You work for Senator Levering, right?”

She was getting rapidly ticked at this guy. He was — what was the word? — ratlike. He had a longish, pointed nose and eyes that seemed to be scouting for food.

“What business is that of yours?” Anne asked.

He smiled, showing two prominent front teeth. Rodent choppers. “I know everything that goes on in this town, every poop that’s a scoop. Dan Ricks.” He extended his hand.

Anne ignored it. “I’m busy now, Mr. Ricks. If you’d like an appointment — ”

“Get off it,” he said. “I write for
The National Exposure.”

“Tabloid guy?”

“Reporter,” he said defensively.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Don’t get huffy. You remember when the
New York Times
sat on that Congressman Conley story?”

Lawrence Conley had been forced to resign over an allegation that he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl. “What about it?” Anne asked.

“I broke that.”

That’s right,
Anne recalled. It was originally an
Exposure
story. And suddenly Anne felt like Bogart in
Casablanca,
when he realized the ratlike Peter Lorre had murdered two Nazis by himself.
I am a little more impressed with you.

“You have an angle on this?” Anne asked.

“You’re an angle,” Ricks said.

“Me?”

“What’s the senator sending you over here for?”

“Who says he sent me?”

“Why are you here?”

“Why is that your business?”

“Everything’s my business in this town.”

“Everything?”

“What isn’t, I
make
my business.”

Anne nodded. The
Exposure
was not to be trifled with. It could indeed break things that would follow you around like a bad smell.

“I like you, Ricks,” Anne lied. “I’ll level with you. Senator Levering is concerned about Justice Hollander’s health. It’s no secret she might be chief justice someday.”

Ricks nodded. Anne did not like the way he was studying her.

“She’s also a woman,” Ricks said.

“Gee, Ricks, you are a good reporter.”

Ricks didn’t flinch. “What do you know about the accident?”

“I don’t know anything about anything,” Anne said. “I’m here on an official call, and that’s it. No more, no less.”

“Uh-huh. The senator has quite a reputation.”

“You’re scampering up the wrong monument.”

“Tell me where I should scamper.”

“Why should I do that?”

“It pays to be nice to the
Exposure
.”

Anne fingered a cigarette in her pocket. “That almost sounds like a threat, Mr. Ricks.”

“From the press?” he said with over-the-top outrage. “We only want the truth, Ms. Deveraux. Remember our motto — ‘All the news that fits, we print.’ ” He took out a card and snapped it between his thumb and forefinger, like a magician producing the ace of spades.

“Call me if you hear anything,” he said. “Maybe we can help each other out sometime.”

And with a political instinct born of countless spin sessions, Anne Deveraux took the card.

|
6

“Is that you, Mom?” Millie whispered hoarsely into the phone.

“Oh Millie, your voice,” Ethel Hollander said. Her mother’s voice sounded reedy, as it always did when she worried about something.

“I’m going to be fine, Mom. They tell me.”

“When I heard it on TV, I about jumped through the phone line. I couldn’t get through. I called and called . . .”

“They’re being careful with me.”

“It’s on all the programs. They show that picture of you from five years ago.”

“What are they saying on the programs?”

“That they don’t know why you were out there.”

“Where?”

“Alone. At night. What happened?”

Millie put her hand on her pounding head and closed her eyes. It was coming back now. She wished it wouldn’t. Would she have to tell the story? To the police? They would want to know who she had been with, how the whole thing happened. More publicity.

“Millie?”

“I’m here, Mom.”

“Can you talk?”

“It’s kind of hard now, Mom. But I’ll be all right.”

“I want to come to you.”

“Mom, don’t — ”

“I have to see you, Millie. I have to. I feel I do. I can have Royal get me a ticket and take me to the airport. I — ”

“Mom, it’s going to be a madhouse here.” Millie pressed a finger to her right temple. She didn’t want her mother here with all this going on. In fact, Millie herself did not want to be here. She could already feel the clamoring of media.

“Then you come out here,” Ethel said. “Stay awhile.”

“I really can’t — ”

“It’s been too long and I . . .” Ethel stopped, and Millie could only wonder what her mother was feeling. In some ways Ethel Hollander, shaped as a child during the Depression, would always be tough as nails and not easily impressed. Indeed, Millie could not remember a time when her mother had said she was proud of her. As a little girl, that had hurt sometimes. But that was Ethel Hollander.

“Mom,” Millie said, “I have to do what Dr. Cross says. I’ll call you every day if you want.”

“I do.”

“I’ll call you again tomorrow, huh?” Millie said.

“Yes,” Ethel said. “Don’t forget. And, Millie?”

“Yes?”

“God is with you.”

“Bye, Mom.”

Millie hung up the phone. She looked at the ceiling and thought about what her mother had said. Prayer, that was the fabric of her mother’s life. It was a fabric Millie had long since abandoned.

When had she rejected her childhood faith? she wondered now, lying in the bed. It had been a slow transition, but Millie did remember waking up one morning in her dormitory at Berkeley and thinking explicitly,
I don’t believe that anymore. I do not believe in God. How will I ever tell Mom?

She hadn’t, for many years. When her mother would call to check up on her, she’d always manage to ask her daughter about her church attendance. Millie could anticipate the question coming, and formed several clever ways to steer the conversation elsewhere.

Finally, after she had been a judge for a year, she could not hide the fact from her mother any longer. It was the most difficult conversation of Millie’s life. Sitting in the living room of her childhood home, where she had once sung Sunday school songs her mother had taught her, she told her mother she had developed another sort of faith — in humanity, in principles of justice.

When the tears came into her mother’s eyes it was like a death had occurred. And in a way, it had.

“I will never stop praying for your soul,” her mother had said, almost with defiance. The thought of her mother continuing to pray for her was sometimes like a curse. Millie overcame it by learning to live in forward motion, not dwelling on her mother’s spiritual concerns.

So why was she thinking about them now? And then the most disturbing thing happened. The word
hell
popped into her mind.

Her whole body clenched. Pain shot through her limbs like liquid fire.

Hell?
Where had that come from? Why should she have thought it? Because of that vision when she’d almost died?

She would go mad if she didn’t get that vision out of her system. She had always been able to think her way out of any dilemma. Her psychiatrist had been her reasoning, rational mind. She could always rely on it.

And she would now. What she needed was to get back into her own world as soon as possible.

|
7

By Wednesday, Millie finally felt like she could see visitors. Helen had called every day — faithful Helen — and there were requests from all sorts of people for a personal one-on-one. Reporters, mostly. All the network anchors had requested interviews. NBC had even sent along a huge gift basket filled with flowers, Godiva chocolates, and an assortment of gourmet almonds.

She turned them all down. She was not going to let an accident become an open door to the press. But she called Helen and asked her to come.

Helen Forbes Kensington came in looking like she was the star of her own movie.

“You look fantastic,” Helen said, grabbing Millie’s hand. “For someone who almost bought the farm.”

Helen’s tone and temperament were cheering. “Maybe a farm wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Millie said.

“The reports I keep hearing say you’ll be good as new. Are they right?”

“So Dr. Cross says.”

“We need you, girl.”

“We?”

“All of us. The United States of America. We need you to write those opinions.”

Millie was about to say something in assent but she stopped. Something shifted in her mind. It was subtle and almost unidentifiable.

“Are you okay, girl?” Helen was leaning over.

“What? Sorry,” Millie said. “I guess I had a moment.”

“You looked like it. Pain?”

“No, no. I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

Millie looked at her friend. Should she tell her about the vision? In all the years they’d known each other, Helen had looked upon Millie as a sort of Rock of Gibraltar. In fact she had once called her that, and for several months thereafter even nicknamed her “Rocky.” And Millie had liked it. She liked it a lot. If that was to be her main reputation in the Court — to be a rock-solid justice who did not break under pressure — she would be pleased.

Now a fissure, however slight, seemed to be developing. How serious a break it would turn out to be, Millie did not know. But she did not want it to alarm anyone, especially her close allies. No, she would deal with it first, figure it out, like she always did. Think it through and get rid of it. Then she would be able to talk about it.

“I’m sure,” Millie said.

“Good,” Helen said. “Because I’ve got to tell you something. Big.”

Millie tensed. Her ribs fought her. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Helen said. “Relax. It’s about your boyfriend, Senator Levering.”

“Helen, please.”

“I know. That gadfly of his, Anne something-or-other, tracked me down.”

“Tracked you?”

“Asked me all sorts of roundabout questions. What I figured out is she wanted to know if I knew about you and the senator. I played dumb. I told her I didn’t know anything about anything. I don’t know if she believed me or not. Frankly, I don’t care. But I’m certainly not going to spill any beans.”

“I’ve issued an official statement that I was with a friend, and my private life is to remain private.”

“Yeah. But these things can take on lives of their own. Like those awful
Survivor
shows
.
Well, you’re a survivor, and you’re going to stay that way. But I got from this Anne babe that the press might get all over this story if we don’t watch it. I think it might be a good idea for you to get out of town awhile.”