Lightning People (43 page)

“Both of you, out. You can use the conference room next door if you want to, but I will have no more of this in my office. Good-bye. And William, just so you know, I'm not representing you anymore.”

William was too shocked to argue, almost too shocked to do anything but bow humbly and evacuate the office. He walked down the hallway as the stunning revelation of being fired quickly transformed into rage. His fingers balled into fists in search of a victim. He yanked Rose Cherami by the arm and dragged her into the conference room. She went unwillingly, slapping the manila envelope she carried against his chest as he spun her around and slammed the door behind them.

“What the fuck, lady?” he yelled. He didn't care anymore if Janice could hear him through the wall. She
should
hear this. Janice should know that William hadn't asked this pathetic, deranged being to invite herself here and destroy his last connection to an already comatose career.

Rose's freckles bred exponentially under the fluorescent conferenceroom lights. Her face tightened and she looked at William fearfully before she cupped her hand over her eyes and shook her head.

“It's all a mistake,” she mumbled. “I was just trying to help. I was trying to warn him.”

“Warn who?” he cried, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. The dread in Rose's face scared him as much as her suggestion that she had something worth warning a person about. He glanced at the envelope in her hand, trying to figure out what documents it contained. Through the smog of pot, panic started to grease his
brain. “What are you talking about? You just got me fired. You're not leaving until you explain why you brought me up here.”

“But you aren't him,” she said. Her hand was red from lack of circulation. She gave another look of bewilderment, which seemed her default expression to offer the world. “You aren't the guy from the conspiracy meetings. I saw a picture of him on that agent's desk. He said his name was William.” Rose began to describe the person she was looking for, but William didn't need the inventory of soft blond-brown hair, clean blue eyes, or the skinny Adam's apple that bobbed like a cork when he spoke. He already knew that she was referring to Joseph. He remembered the conspiracy Web sites stored in the history of Joseph's computer. For the first time, William was thankful that the confusion pointed to Joseph instead of him. He let go of her wrist and forced a polite, sympathetic smile to gain her trust.

“His name is Joseph Guiteau,” he told her. “He's a friend of mine. What do you want with him?”

“I need to talk to him,” she said. “It's something I can only speak about to him.”

“He's too sick for that.” He was not going to let Rose Cherami leave the room until he knew the full extent of her information. “Look, you can tell me,” he said in a calmer tone. “Joseph and I are like brothers. I've been taking care of him.”

She stared over her shoulder as if someone might be listening behind the door. “I met your friend at a conspiracy meeting. I'd seen him there a number of times. He's a regular,” she clarified. “We both are. Well, until recently, this is. He hasn't come in a couple of months.”

“Like I told you, he's been sick.”

“At one such meeting, he must have spoken with a woman named Aleksandra Andrews. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Yes, he knew who she was.

“She asked me about your friend. I'm afraid I gave her your name. She was so insistent about finding it out that I couldn't but be suspicious. You see, my parents live in Langley, Virginia, near the CIA headquarters. I knew who she was. You don't specialize in corporate
conspiracies without remembering every name that gets thrown around. I looked up the suspects. I even printed their pictures out and tacked them on my kitchen walls. That helps me to remember, living with them, treating them as ordinary as furniture. That's how I remember faces so well. Her husband, Ray, was a minor player in California deregulation a few years back. I'm not talking about skimming a few dollars. I'm talking about billions when you think about reformed energy policy that would undermine any governmental control.”

“So?”

“So, anyone could see it if they paid attention. He's a dead ringer.”

“A dead ringer? Who is?”

“Your friend. He's a dead ringer for her husband. I knew in my gut that was why she asked about him.”

“Rose,” he sighed. “I'm not following.”

She licked her teeth. The lovers of secrets have ravenous mouths when they're about to reveal impossible facts. They want the moment to slow down perpetually until the announcement is forever a second from leaving their lips. She lifted her eyebrows in pronouncement.

“Ray Andrews was found dead in his car a mile from their house on the Pacific Coast Highway. One shot to the left temple, a revolver in his hand.”

“Suicide,” he deduced as if she needed the simplification.

“Suicide was the eventual conclusion,” she said. “Self-administered gunshot wound. The going theory was that he was complicit in corporate fraud and couldn't live with the humiliation when it got out. But that wasn't always the working theory, and it didn't sit well with most investigators on the case.”

“You think the government took him out? Or the energy companies?” Now he understood why Joseph felt obligated to visit Aleksandra. She was a half-crazy recluse trying to come to terms with her husband's death.

“It wasn't a suicide,” Rose bulked, chewing on her blistered lips. “It was murder. But most of the investigators didn't think it was any sort of conspiracy, not the kind you're talking about. The CIA
got involved for a little while because of Ray's deep connections in Washington. Covertly of course. I have . . . let's say I have family connections. I have evidence.” Rose shook the manila envelope in her hand. “The detectives thought Ray Andrews's death wasn't a hit, either.” She stopped and let the hush build around them. William arced his neck to encourage her to continue. “They thought Aleksandra Andrews murdered her husband. She shot him in the driver's seat to make it look like a suicide.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ray was going to go public, which would have wiped out all of their money and put them in the center of a very unseemly scandal. It's so simple really. Aleksandra Andrews got rid of her husband before he could talk.”

“You're saying she murdered him and made it look like a suicide?”

“The investigation team could never prove it. You can't go after a grieving widow who'd make it very uncomfortable in the press. So eventually they buried it. Do you hear what I'm telling you?” William did. Crystal clear. “It's not a conspiracy,” Rose said. “It's just a murder. Why else would that woman leave California so quickly and move all the way across the country where no one knows who she is? She did it. And she didn't get caught.”

A smile must have been the last reaction that Rose expected to greet her confession but that's what she received. William tried to hide it in the palm of his hand.

“Your friend is in trouble. That's why I'm here. I wanted to warn him.”

“Why?”

The question spooked her. She rocked backward and covered her stomach with her arms. “Because I liked him. Because I don't want anything bad to happen. What do you mean
why?
”

Laughter. Hideous, delicious laughter. He knotted his tongue to hold it down. Joseph, stupid, blind, unlucky, asshole Joseph. “Poor Joseph,” he said. Rose nodded her head in agreement.

She handed him the envelope.

“Give this to him. It's police reports and all the public records I
could find on the investigation. Anyone can find this information if they dig hard enough. Just make sure he sees it. She's not going to admit anything, but you need to warn him. That's all I'm here for.”

Rose left the conference room without saying good-bye. She disappeared down the hallway and into the elevator, where she returned to the street to blur into the anonymity of nine million isolated people, guilty or innocent, who could say? No one could tell by looking at them. That woman he had met briefly so long ago at the Carlyle had killed a man and made it look like a suicide, just as William had done to Quinn. William was no longer laughing as he stared down at the envelope in his hands. Guilty or innocent: those roads wove and braided before departing in opposite directions, and it began to seem like utter chance which route anyone ended up traveling down. He and Joseph had been like brothers once, and some last fragment of that friendship stopped William from throwing the envelope in the trash as he exited Touchpoint for the last time. Maybe he would save Joseph from the sickness that awaited him. Or maybe he would just sit by and watch a man who had been given everything find out for himself how easily it was to fall.

JOSEPH'S PARENTS MEET
the day after John F. Kennedy died. They meet smoking cigarettes in Alms Park beyond a ridge that dips into an awning of trees carpeted in cigarette butts. When the trees are empty of summer, glimpses of the Ohio River sparkle through the branches. The day after the assassination the branches are only half empty. Christine drives downtown to handle her grief in a mourning mass at St. Peter in Chains Cathedral. Her daughter goes to smoke. She goes with her best friend Melinda Nordstrom, a short, lava-haired girl with skin the color of raw bacon from the bitter November winds. They lock arms as they navigate the hard mud and spiked branches, leading them to a stewing circle of teenagers, making efforts not to cry.