Man of the Hour (46 page)
Lefferts’s eyelids drooped, as if he was already bored with this little playlet. “I’m just saying, it’s still not clear to me how we know your client is not an accomplice in this bombing. It seems awfully suspicious, the way he came into possession of this information. How do we know he’s not a co-conspirator with these Arab gentlemen?”
“Oh come on, Jim, he’s not a fuckin’ co-conspirator.” Ralph came back and sat down again, his chair giving a loud, alarming squeak. “He’s a fuckin’ schoolteacher. The bomber’s the brother of one of the girls in his class. The girl likes him and gives up the brother, who she’s got some problems with. What’s so hard to believe about that?”
“Well, I’m still not entirely comfortable.” Lefferts pushed his chair back from the table and winced as if suffering from an old football injury. “How’s it going to look if the Bureau gets bitten in the ass again because your guy did it with somebody else and then decided to rat them out? We don’t need another public relations disaster.”
David started to open his mouth and protest, but Judah put a firm hand on his shoulder.
“A public relations disaster?” Ralph smiled and hunched over the table, like a poker player finally getting a run of cards he liked. “What do you call Waco? What do you call Ruby Ridge? What about all the other terrorist bombings where you never caught the guys?”
Lefferts winced again. “Well, I don’t see the specific analogy.”
Even Judah Rosenbloom started laughing.
“Gimme a fuckin’ break, Jim.” Ralph put his hands behind his head. “We’re giving you the names of the bombers and the location where they have the explosives stored. We’ll even bring the girl in to talk to you once we have an agreement. You want us to make the arrest and call the press conference too?”
Lefferts’s face turned red. “Who said anything about a press conference?”
“Come on, Jim, get real. Our guy is giving the case to you on a platter. The least you can do is put out a release clearing his name and apologizing.”
Lefferts looked at David, as if he was reality-checking, and then he barked at Ralph: “That’s ridiculous.”
“Let’s go, David.” Judah turned and swung his briefcase toward the door, clearly expecting David to follow. “I don’t think we have anything else to discuss here.”
Ralph flashed Lefferts a “hey-what-can-I-do-I’m-working-with-a-lunatic?” look, as if he was suddenly the reasonable one, and started to stand again.
“Now, now, now.” Lefferts patted the air like a minister settling the congregation. “Let’s just take a mental minute here and come to our senses. If we end up arresting somebody else for this crime, doesn’t it stand to reason that the public will know your client is innocent?”
“Not good enough.” Ralph remained in an awkward half crouch above his chair. “We want
vindication
.”
“Well, the Bureau is not going to hold a press conference announcing that a man who was never arrested is not a suspect. You can just forget that, right now. This isn’t one of your Larchmont Lolita circuses. As far as I’m concerned, our agents didn’t do anything wrong. We had a lead and we investigated it. End of story. We don’t apologize to everyone we investigate. And it wasn’t us who damaged your client’s precious ‘reputation’ anyway. If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with the newspapers and the television stations.”
“Then we have nothing else to talk about.” Ralph stood up all the way. “The girl doesn’t come in. David, come on.”
David started to rise, feeling sick and unstable. Lefferts looked at him irritably.
“David, sit down,” he said.
They were playing with him. Or rather they were playing with each other, and he just happened to be in the middle.
Without waiting for any further signal from his lawyers, he stood up with hands on the edge of the conference table as if he was about to overturn it.
“Just shut up,” he said, feeling the blood rush to his face. “Okay? Can everyone just shut up a minute?”
The three of them were looking up at him as though he was a great building on the verge of collapse. But he stared down at a little paperweight shaped like the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima.
My father’s war.
“I’ve had it with all the strategies and counterstrategies,” he said quietly. “I’m fed up with all the surveillance and scrutiny. My students think I’ve betrayed them. My son has heard his father called a murderer. And my wife is ready for Bellevue. All
I
want is for this to be over.
Now.
I want you guys out of my life. Is that clear to you?”
Lefferts and the two lawyers looked at one another slightly aghast, as if to say,
What’s his problem?
But David no longer cared about their good opinion. He just wanted to be made whole again.
“Ball’s in your court, Jim.” Ralph smiled, nervously watching David from the corner of his eye. “You need our client to bring the girl in, because your agents failed to find the real bombers. You need her to testify. And my client’s the only one who can deliver her. Otherwise, she doesn’t cooperate.”
“Yes, well.” Lefferts cleared his throat and looked at Ralph sideways. “Is that something you want publicized too? Him deserving credit?”
A part of David wanted to say yes. The same part that sat in the lifeguard chair, looking for someone to save, and stood in the outfield, waiting for a fly ball to come his way.
But all he said was: “Over. That’s what I want.”
Jim Lefferts shook his head, half sad and half amused, as if somehow he knew this would all end in tears. “Well, all right,” he said. “You want your precious name back, you can have it back. But no official press conference apology. Word leaked out once, I guess it can happen again the same way.”
JUDY MANDEL WAS HUMMING
again. That low ominous sound from just under the breastbone.
“When you do that, it reminds me of ‘
This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System
,’”
said John LeVecque. “‘
Had this been a real emergency you would have been asked to report to a fallout shelter …
’”
“Do I make you that nervous?”
They were sitting in a brown-paneled restaurant near City Hall called Spaghetti Western. Ceiling fans turned slowly, doing nothing to the air. A young lawyer in a double-breasted Italian suit was standing at the bar near the front, bragging to friends about how much money he’d just won in a civil case. “Three point seven mil! That judge loves my ass!”
In the booth opposite LeVecque and Judy, a middle-aged white woman with the face of a time-ravaged Botticelli model sat stirring her drink and staring into space, as though still trying to come to terms with a broken date from years before.
“So what’s doing with the Fitzgerald case?” Judy said.
“Is that why you asked me out?” LeVecque played the mopey teenager, rearranging rolls in the bread basket.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, is that the only basis we have for a relationship? You ask me about this case and I try to avoid answering you?”
“John!”
A waitress walked by. “Can I get a Bass ale and a shot of tequila?” he asked.
“I didn’t know you drank like that,” said Judy.
“I’ve changed. A lot of things have changed these last few weeks. Things haven’t been … all that great at home.”
“Oh?”
“Well, how would you know anyway? You never really ask me about myself. It’s just work, work, work with you.”
She smiled uncomfortably. She’d had a vague sense he’d been leading up to this the last couple of times they’d had lunch, but she’d ignored the signals.
“I’m crazy about you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
The waitress brought him the beer and the shot. Outside it was getting dark and the neon signs in the window bled their light into the street. A gate roared down in front of a discount shoe store across the way.
Off-balance and tongue-tied, Judy tried to change the subject. “So I heard they were about to arrest somebody else for the bombing.”
But LeVecque kept after her. “You know I’ve thought about leaving my wife for you and I’ve never even kissed you. Isn’t that crazy?”
Judy felt her insides gather into a tight ball. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t meant to happen at all. They’d been sparring partners. Didn’t he know flirting was just part of the game? This was a man with a family. Another responsibility she didn’t want.
“Did you hear what I said?”
He leaned hard on the table and it began to tip over. She caught it just in time.
“John, I’m feeling very awkward about this. Could we talk about something else for a minute? I need to get my thoughts in order.”
“Sure, sure, of course. I know I’m putting you on the spot.” He reached out to cover her hand with his, but she moved it slightly, without being obvious.
She started humming again. “So. David Fitzgerald.”
“What about him?” LeVecque asked glumly.
“So he wasn’t the bomber, after all. His lawyers are saying he’s about to be cleared.”
“
You
were the one who wrote he was the guy in the first place.” He pulled his lips back from his teeth.
“
You
were the one who told me that.”
“That was supposed to be off-the-record.” He paused and emotions whirled across his face; it was like watching a carousel turn. “You pulled it out of me. You betrayed me. I don’t even know why I’m so attracted to you.” He finished both the shot and the beer and ordered another round. “There must be something wrong with me.”
Judy looked down into her wine glass. Come on. Get through it. Get what you need to write this story. Don’t make this too personal. Don’t let him suck you in.
“So now they know who did it?” she asked.
“Now
we
know,” LeVecque said defensively.
“And is an arrest going to be made?”
“Yes. Maybe. Soon. Very soon.” More spins of the carousel. “Look, I don’t want to get into all this,” he said. “I’m not going to let you do this to me again.”
“Just confirm one last thing for me. Okay? The lawyers say he’s cooperating?”
“Yeah, all right. I heard that too.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” LeVecque’s thin blond hair was standing up a little. He patted it and looked distracted. “It means he’s not giving anybody a problem.”
“So he’s helping with the investigation. Can I say that?”
Having taken a sledgehammer to the teacher these past couple of weeks, Judy was anxious to redeem herself and get it right. She was finding it difficult to sleep at night, thinking of some of the things she’d written about David Fitzgerald. So if she gave him a little too much credit in the process, then that was all right with her.
“Say whatever you want.” LeVecque took his new drinks from the waitress. Judy noticed his hands were shaking. “I don’t know anything about anything anymore, Judy. You got me hanging upside down. I probably shouldn’t tell you anything. I probably shouldn’t even talk to you anymore, because you’ll just betray me. But I can’t help myself. I know I’m drunk, but I have to try for the Hail Mary pass. Can you understand that?”
“No.”
“Well I don’t give a damn. I’m diving into the sidewalk anyway.”
He gulped the shot and started on his beer. In the brooding silence, she could hear the bartender stacking glasses.
“I’m crazy about you,” LeVecque said, putting the glass down, unaware of his foam mustache.
“I know, John,” she said quietly. “But don’t do this.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “I mean, I know you look at me and you see I’m this middle-aged white guy working for the city and losing his hair. But there’s more to me than that. I’m still alive inside. Inside I’m still soaring.” He stopped to catch his breath. “So I guess what I’m saying is if you’d give me the chance, Judy, I could soar with you. I could still be better than what I am.”
“Oh, John.” She finally touched his hand, lightly. “You don’t even know me.”
The hope in his eyes began to fade. “No chance, huh?”
“I’m getting married in December.”
She was doing nothing of the kind. And now that she’d lied about it, she felt she never would. She’d cursed her own future. A melancholy old Smokey Robinson song started playing on the jukebox. Something about love and mirages. She was beginning to think she would never have a child either; she didn’t have enough trust to pass on. John LeVecque sat up a little and tried to straighten his tie.
“Well, I guess that’s that.” He took his hand back. “I hope you got what you needed.”
“John, I don’t know what to say to you.”
She stared at the sweaty palm print he’d left on the tabletop. It was as if she’d run down a drunk who’d stumbled in front of her car. She felt guilty and mad at him at the same time. Yes, she’d teased and played with him to get this story, but he’d been complicit in all that. And now he was laying all this misery on her that was probably older than she was. It wasn’t right. Yes, she felt guilty about it, but she felt a lot more guilty about David Fitzgerald. She looked at her watch and tried to calculate how long it would take her to get back to the office and write this story for tomorrow’s paper. Almost six o’clock. She’d have to call Nazi and get him to hold the front page for her.
“We could have soared,” LeVecque was saying. “I’m still so crazy about you.”
She suddenly had a vision of him as a man caught in a long, elaborate dream. And here he was trying to catch her in it too. All this talk about soaring and being alive inside. It didn’t have that much to do with her, she realized. It was the dream of a sad middle-aged man. In fact, once she moved on, there’d be another girl reporter in a short skirt for him to torture himself with and he wouldn’t even remember her.
This was a very old game, she was finally realizing. And it was someone else’s turn to play.
“John, let’s get the check,” she said. “It’s late and I have to make a call.”
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
Nasser sat behind the wheel of the Lincoln Town Car, with Youssef and Dr. Ahmed in the backseat. The day seemed stunned and not quite ready to begin. Clouds like brains and old socks floated in the sky. A brown UPS truck was parked across the street. And a stumpy little Hispanic man in a white shirt and a tie hauled up the corrugated gate in front of West Side Storage.