Dev Conrad - 03 - Blindside (21 page)

‘Well, Mrs Burkhart, what would my brand-new friend like to drink? But remember, we've both got to be at the debate in a little while.'

She laughed. ‘You're always a smart ass. And I'll take Scotch if you have it.'

As I poured our drinks, she took off her coat and gloves and laid them neatly across the armchair. Then she seated herself at the table.

After I brought drinks to the table and sat down, I said, ‘You wouldn't be wearing a wire, would you?'

‘You mean one of those things for recording people?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘You really think I'd do something like that?'

‘It's possible.'

‘You must have a very low opinion of me.'

‘Not any lower than my opinion of Mussolini.'

Confusion in the arrogant brown eyes. ‘I take it that's one of your snide jokes.'

‘I'm still trying to figure out why you're here.'

She'd been holding her drink. Now she set it down. ‘I'm afraid you're going to go to the police. I can't find David and everything's getting scary.'

‘Is this Susan Wallace talking or Nicole Steele?'

I'd expected a dramatic reaction. I was almost disappointed. A rueful smile. ‘Oh, great. This is really getting ridiculous. I just told you that everything's getting scary and now you bring up the past. How did you find out?'

‘An investigator I use.'

‘There should be a law against those people.'

‘Why are you here, Mrs Burkhart?'

‘Will you please quit calling me ‘Mrs Burkhart'?'

‘You were following Waters and taking pictures of him. Why?'

‘Because I thought he might have something I wanted. David thought so, too.'

‘So you and David were on good terms? A man from the rival campaign?'

‘Would you fix me another drink?'

She lit a cigarette while I was tending to the liquor bottles. There was no point in arguing the hotel's no smoking policy. Royalty makes its own rules.

‘Thank you for making this one a little stronger,' she said, holding the glass up for observation, like a jeweler with a gem. ‘I need it.'

‘You were going to tell me about you and David.'

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and moved her lovely lips silently. I wondered if she was saying a prayer, the way basketball players do before a free throw. ‘I know all about my husband Rusty going to a whorehouse down the river. He charged everything to a Visa account he thought I didn't know about. I started matching the dates of his nights away with the dates on his Visa bill. It was the same ‘Allied Supplies' account over and over. After five years he was bored with me sexually. I wanted to make sure that I got all I could when we split up. I was at a party at the governor's mansion one night. One of the few people there from your side was David Nolan. He looked miserable. I liked him. I'd been completely faithful to Rusty. I guess I wanted to show myself that I could still do it. But there was something about David I really liked. He was very masculine but he seemed open, too. I could see he was in pain. Rusty wasn't there that night – probably at the whorehouse – so I suggested to David that we go out for drinks after the party. He was pretty cute. He thought I was going to pick his brain to get some secrets about Jeff Ward.

‘We both got so drunk we told each other all kinds of things. I told him about how my husband went to this whorehouse all the time. And then he told me that Ward went to the same one. We had a big laugh about that. But otherwise he was pretty bitter – he told me how he suspected Ward was sleeping with his wife, though neither of them knew that he knew. We realized we had a lot in common – we wanted to get back at the two people running for the same congressional seat. Another thing I liked about David was that he took me seriously. Rusty had checked me out before we got married. Because of my past he treated me like a bimbo. But I've been taking online classes for years from the University of Illinois. I'm close to a BA in hours. I've been studying English and history. For some reason Rusty thinks this is very funny. He thinks he's such a brain, but he never got past freshman year himself.

‘Anyway, that night David and I went to a motel and had a very nice time. And when we woke up in the morning we decided to go ahead with our plan. We'd hire a private detective to get proof that Rusty and Ward were regulars at this whorehouse. David even wanted interviews with some of the girls. The detective called us and told us he had what we needed. Then he tripled the price we'd agreed to. We said we'd pay him. But when David drove to Chicago to get the DVD the detective had just died. David went to his office and managed to find what we'd paid for. He brought it back here and made a copy for me. He had his in his desk. He went out for a late dinner one night and when he came back it was gone. He was convinced that Waters took it. Waters was the only one in the office that night for one thing, and David was sure Waters had overheard David and I talking about it on the phone. He said that Waters snuck around a lot, trying to get things on people. I started taking photos of Waters. I wanted them to give to this other investigator we were going to hire to check him out.

‘And then poor David found out his wife had been sleeping with Ward. He just went crazy – even though he'd suspected all along, when he confirmed it he just came apart. He called me the night he found out. I'd never heard him like that. I was afraid for him.'

‘You haven't heard from him?'

‘No. And I'm afraid something's happened to him.' Then: ‘I need to find the other DVD so I have the only copies. I want to divorce my husband. I want a big settlement. I can't have that other DVD floating around.'

‘What about the money you already got from him – and from Jeff Ward?'

‘What the hell are you talking about?'

I took a large swallow of my drink and said, ‘You and David were blackmailing them. Between them, they paid you both a lot of money.'

‘Well, maybe we earned it.'

‘So you're admitting you blackmailed them.'

‘We didn't look at it as blackmail. We were just getting even.'

‘I wouldn't try that one in front of a jury.'

We sat without speaking for a full minute. Her head was down.

‘We have to find David,' she said. Then: ‘Just please don't go to the police. Neither my husband nor Ward is in any position to say anything about the blackmail because if they do, everything will come out. You're the only one who can hurt us. So will you give us a break?'

‘The way you gave your husband and Ward a break, you mean?'

‘I guess I deserved that.'

I was on my feet before I said, ‘I need to get ready for the debate. And so do you.'

‘So what the hell does that mean?' The brand-new friendship was starting to fray. This was the old Mrs Burkhart, and she was
muy
pissed.

‘It means I'll think about it.'

‘You're a real son of a bitch, you know that?' She was gathering her coat and gloves. ‘I come up here and I'm completely honest with you and look what I get.'

Her charm and honesty hadn't worked. She had to be wondering if tearing her clothes off wouldn't have done the trick instead of her helpless female routine.

I took her by the elbow and walked her to the door. She tried ripping her arm from my grasp several times. I liked her better this way.

I'm sure she was going to lacerate me with more insults, but when I opened the door there was a group of hotel guests in the hall. She decided not to give them a show.

TWENTY-TWO

Y
ou might have mistaken the evening for a movie premiere done on the cheap. True, there was only one spotlight prowling the star-spread night sky and none of the people queuing up in front of the double doors could be said to be glamorous. But the patriotic music over the loudspeakers gave even old ops like me a distinct thrill. And photographers and TV crews were grabbing shots of everybody they could find.

When you thought of how many people around the world were murdered for even asking for an event like this – cowardly and rote as some of the events were – you had to feel that despite the bankers and the bought-and-paid-for Congress and the haters and the madmen . . . as yet we still had a country that we could rightly be proud of.

So the venerable building with the ivy binding much of it was tonight a symbol of many honorable things, even if the two men who would take the stage were slightly less honorable than some of the slaveholders and opportunists who signed our Declaration of Independence. For all that I disliked him, Jeff Ward would still stand up against the worst representatives of both parties.

Now was the time for a smoke, standing in the clean October air and watching the movie-premiere spotlight play across the sky while the earliest arrivals – who just might be movie stars if you didn't look too closely – filed into the building. These would be the people who'd gotten advance questions from ops on both sides. Ops wanted their advocates as close to the stage as possible. Political signs were prohibited here as was any kind of campaigning. The people went in quietly and without incident. I imagined they were surprised to find metal detectors were in place. The sponsors didn't want a tragedy or even a near-tragedy to mar the night.

Kathy Tomlin came up next to me and said, ‘They're taking bets at this little bar I go to sometimes. It's kind of blue-collar. They're betting that Burkhart pounds Jeff into the ground.'

‘That makes sense. Burkhart would pay them ninety-eight cents an hour if he could get away with it. No wonder they like him.'

‘I say that to them. If I was a guy they'd punch me. All I usually get is, ‘You're a crazy broad,' while they're staring at my breasts. Which is better than at my father's country club. I worked as a waitress there one summer and it was like working in a greaser bar. They thought they had a right to keep touching me.'

‘Sounds like my kind of place.'

‘Would you care to get a drink as soon as this is over? And that's not a proposition.'

‘I'd like that very much, Kathy.' Then: ‘Ready to go inside?'

‘I wish I still believed in God. I'd say prayers for Jeff.'

Even with an hour to go, the auditorium was filling up quickly. There were two sets of seats, each eight across, with a wide aisle between. Near each wall was a stand-up microphone where the questioners would stand. My guess was that the organizers were afraid that if there was only one shared microphone there might be trouble. Our people were on the right side of the place. We took seats in the fourth row from the front.

‘I hate that he won't let anybody see him,' Kathy said as we sat down.

Usually two or three people from the campaign are in the dressing room of the candidate, prepping him and encouraging him until just before he has to go on stage. Ward was different. According to Kathy, he always got to the site early and then barricaded himself in whatever room had been prepared for him. The only person allowed in was the makeup person. And he or she was told to make it quick. Neither Kathy nor Lucy liked this idea, but I understood it. Getting bombarded with last-minute ideas would only increase my nervousness and I assumed that was the case with Ward. Silence allowed you to focus. I knew a candidate who brought ten-pound hand weights to his dressing room. He exercised for an hour. It relaxed him.

There were so many TV people on stage they resembled an ant army. There was some trouble with lighting the four reporters who'd sit on the panel. Crew members sat in the empty chairs while the director and a man on a tall ladder with wheels tried several different angles with the lights. A giant screen had been mounted above stage central so that the audience could be seen in close-up.

Lucy slipped in next to Kathy. She smiled at us then held up her crossed fingers. She leaned forward so she could see both of us and said, ‘There are some demonstrators outside. Burkhart's people. One of them shoved one of our people and our guy shoved him back. The police arrested both of them. I just hope the night goes all right.'

Comedians use the term flop sweat for when they bomb with an audience. I get something similar when my clients have to go on stage for a big event. And mine usually starts about half an hour before that insidious little red light appears on the camera.

I'd been in situations like this where one group taunted the other group across the aisle. Tonight there was a begrudging civility. Down front people from the opposing parties were even making a show of shaking hands. Best behavior for the TV audience. The stations were grabbing shots even before the debate began. The dust-up outside had already given them the moment of confrontation their news managers would demand. Politics had more and more begun to resemble professional wrestling encouraged by the TV people. Who wanted to watch anything as boring as a serious story where there was no battle or strife?

Lucy and Kathy talked quietly while I opened my laptop and checked up on our other campaigns. One of our two oppo guys had turned up a twenty-year-old DUI arrest on our opponent. Our guy wanted to know if he should try and get in touch with the arresting officer in case our opponent had given him any kind of trouble. Worth looking into but a twenty-year-old arrest could cut both ways. I could see our opponent 'fessing up on the tube with his family and the required number of American flags behind him as he said, ‘And that was when I learned my lesson about drinking and driving. Something I've told my two teenage daughters over and over. Drinking and driving – there's no excuse for it. And I haven't done it once since that night twenty years ago.' We would have just handed him a good-guy moment and managed to look a little sleazy in the process. We might use it anyway but it wasn't really strong unless he'd decked the arresting officer. Or at least tried to.

At a quarter before the hour the moderator, a former Chicago anchorman who now fronted infomercials, appeared on stage. He had to ask three times for the audience's attention. Infomercials do not inspire respect. When they finally started listening he ran down all the rules for the evening. The big two were Don't Applaud and Don't Make Any Derogatory Noises when you disagree with something a candidate says. Then he did a mini-testimonial dinner speech about the billionaire funding tonight's debate, which I would have liked much better if he hadn't twice said, ‘And even if he agrees with one candidate more than the other – he thinks it's time for a new start in government – he wants both sides to get an equally fair hearing.' Gosh, I wonder which candidate he favors?