Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense (12 page)

The other people in the room paid her every bit as much attention as they had her predecessor. The only person who seemed to be paying attention was Letitia Potter, and she seemed to be watching every activity in the room except the testimony. She sat with her elbows on the arms of her chair, her hands steepled in front of her face, and her lips pursed. Except for her darting eyes, she looked like a statue, a great statue by some long-dead Greek.

The committee did something with the bill, and Potter read off the next. Kane tore his eyes from Letitia Potter and left the room.

A
ll Kane got from two more hours in the Capitol were the coffee jitters.

Mary David served him coffee and cookies, and thanked him for rescuing her from the press.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t prepared for so much…intensity,” she said. “We’re not so in-your-face in the Native world.”

Then she told him with a show of great reluctance that she wouldn’t feel right talking to him without clearing it with her senator first.

The minority leader in the House of Representatives ground his own coffee and served Kane a brew thick enough to walk across. He said Matthew Hope had been an important member of the minority during his time in the House. He said Hope would make a fine governor. He said Hope was an unlikely murderer. He said he was happy to see an independent investigator involved in the case. He said all that very fast, interspersed with a barrage of bad puns.

The rest of the legislators seemed to be in committee meetings of some sort. Kane stuck his head into a couple of the meetings, but they looked as random and pointless as Potter’s committee.

The hallways were thick with people. Staffers walked rapidly from place to place with folders under their arms, looking important. Small groups of men sat on chairs and benches in the hallways, chatting or talking on cell phones. On one floor, a dark-haired man in a suit interviewed somebody who looked a lot like V. I. Lenin in front of a TV camera. They had collected a crowd, either because people were interested in what the Lenin look-alike was saying, or because the interview all but blocked the hallway.

Kane tried stopping some of the staffers to talk, but they waved him off or met his questions with blank stares or noncommittal comments. He thought he might run into Dylan somewhere in the building, but didn’t. He gave up for the day and left the Capitol.

As he picked his way down the icy sidewalk to Doyle’s office, Kane felt jumpy and frustrated.

I have a client who won’t talk, he thought, a lawyer who doesn’t want me around, and a tribe or cult or whatever the hell you’d call the legislature that doesn’t seem to want to talk to strangers.

His feet went out from under him as he crossed the last street before Doyle’s office. He landed flat on his back. His head bounced on the ice. Stars danced in his eyes. The fall pounded the air from his lungs and left him gasping. A man and woman rushed over to help him to his feet.

“Are you all right?” the male half of the pair asked. It took a moment for Kane to recognize his son.

“Hello, Dylan,” Kane said, taking his son’s hand and practically pulling him down, too. He released the hand, rolled over on his hands and knees, and got carefully to his feet.

“Dad,” Dylan said. “What are you doing here?”

Kane wanted to snarl like an injured animal, but he forced himself to stay calm and breathe.

“I’m here working on a case,” Kane said, “when I’m not falling down and making a damn fool of myself.”

“Oh, lots of people fall,” the woman with Dylan said. She was small and pretty, maybe forty. Wisps of red and black hair stuck out from under her patchwork cap. “The sidewalks suck now. But a couple of warm days and it’ll all be clear pavement again.”

Kane looked at Dylan, then at the woman.

“I’m Nik Kane,” he said, offering his hand. “Dylan’s father.”

The woman put her mittened hand into it and they shook.

“Samantha,” she said. Then, to Dylan: “You didn’t say your father would be in town.”

“I didn’t know,” Dylan said to her. “But we have to get going or I’ll be late for our staff meeting.” Then, to Kane: “As long as you’re going to be all right.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” he said. The truth was that his back hurt and something that felt a lot like blood was creeping through his hair. But he was afraid that if he said anything about any of that, they would try to rush him to the hospital.

Dylan turned to walk off.

“Aren’t you going to make arrangements to see your father?” Samantha asked.

Dylan turned, dug into a coat pocket, and handed Kane a card.

“I’m working for Representative Duckett,” he said. “Give me a call and we’ll get together.”

Kane took the card.

“Thanks for the hand,” he said.

Dylan and Samantha continued up the hill. Kane limped the remaining distance to Doyle’s office, thinking: Now, that was a heartwarming reunion.

He did snarl when Helga tried to head him off. He blew by her into Doyle’s office, sat down and ran through his day. When he got to Letitia Potter’s implication that she hadn’t talked to investigators yet, Doyle held up a forefinger.

“That’s interesting,” he said.

He picked up the telephone, punched in a series of numbers, and waited.

“Sean?” he said. “Francis Doyle. You want something on the White Rose investigation that didn’t come from me?” He listened for a minute. “No, I’m not willing to talk to you on the record. I’m doing your goddamn legwork as it is. Do you want it or not?” He listened some more. “Okay, I’ll give the story to somebody else. There’s plenty of press in town.” As he started to put the telephone down, Kane could hear a voice calling, “Wait. Wait.” Doyle gave him one of his frightening smiles and put the receiver back to his ear. “You’re going to have to check it out anyway, so you’ll have more than one source. Anyway, here’s the deal: The governor’s office has taken over the Melinda Foxx investigation, and no one has talked to O. B. Potter or his staff yet.” He waited. “Well, gee, Sean, I don’t know. Does it sound political to you?” He waited some more. “Sure, sure. You know me. I’ll be happy to share anything else that might help my client’s case. Uh-huh. ’Bye.” He put the phone down.

“That oughtta goose those bastards,” he said.

“Not to mention calling the entire investigation into question,” Kane said.

Doyle’s face contorted again.

“I want you to stop doing that,” Kane said.

“Stop doing what?” Doyle asked.

“Smiling,” Kane said. “It creeps me out.”

The lawyer looked at Kane and nodded.

“Other people have said the same thing,” he said. “What are you going to do next?”

Kane put a hand to the back of his head and felt the big lump that was forming.

“I’m going back to the hotel to rest my old bones,” he said, “then I’m having dinner and a barhop with Alma Atwood. Maybe if everybody but me gets liquored up, I’ll actually learn something. What time is the bail hearing?”

“Ten a.m.,” Doyle said, and gave him a room number.

“I’ll see you there,” Kane said. He got to his feet and left the office. Helga glared at him as he passed her desk.

“You have blood on your collar,” she said in a voice ripe with satisfaction.

Kane stopped and turned to look at her.

“For just one minute in my whole life,” he said, “I’d like to be as tough as you.”

He took it slow going to the hotel. Every step jarred his aching head, and his back was stiff.

I’m probably doddering like an old man, he thought, but I don’t care.

No messages awaited him at the hotel. Kane rode the elevator to his floor wondering if he had a concussion. But when he looked in the mirror in his bathroom, his pupils seemed to be the same size. He got ice at the machine down the hall, wrapped some in a washcloth, and held it to the lump on the back of his head.

This is exactly the sort of situation that’s helped by three fingers of whiskey, he thought.

When frigid water from the melting ice began running down his hand and under his sleeve, Kane got to his feet, put the ice in the sink, and patted the back of his head dry. He shook out a couple of aspirin and swallowed them. He stripped off his clothes, set the alarm clock, and climbed into bed. He could hear voices and cars passing on the street, but he ignored them. He lay there wondering if, somehow, he’d pissed Alaska off and the damage it had just doled out was the place’s way of telling him to beat it. The thought didn’t make him smile. He was feeling his age and more, and the hand of depression rested on his shoulder as it often did during the winter. More often every year, he thought. Maybe I should leave.

Then he thought for a while about his son, wondering what he could do to bridge the gulf that had opened between them.

He fell asleep on that thought and dreamed he was being tried for un-Alaskan thoughts by the entire state legislature. Letitia Potter, wearing a very small bikini, was the prosecutor. Doyle was his lawyer, but all he did was play with his toupee, which scampered around the defense table knocking files to the floor. The jury was twelve Dylans. The verdict was unanimous and, as they put the noose around his neck, he woke up thrashing and sweating.

K
ane got out of bed feeling every second of his age. His head hurt and his back was as stiff as the price of a ticket to a Rolling Stones concert. He examined himself in the bathroom mirror and found that the bruises from his fall were forming nicely. He turned on the shower as hot as he could stand it, letting the warmth loosen his back muscles. He washed gingerly around his head wound, toweled off carefully, and dressed in slacks and a black turtleneck. Bending over to tie his shoelaces was no fun, but Kane managed it with a minimum of cursing. He slipped on a gray Harris tweed sport coat and examined the result in the mirror on the back of the closet door.

Not bad, he thought. You look like your grandfather going on a date.

Actually, Kane thought he looked pretty good with his clothes on. He was down near his weight when he’d joined the police force, and his trips to the gym were paying off.

Take away the prison food and the booze, he thought, and losing weight’s not so hard.

He stepped off the elevator into the spillover from some sort of party in what was normally the coffee shop. A banner over the door read: “Defenders of Alaska Families Welcomes the Legislature.” People were drinking, chatting, and eating finger food. O. B. Potter and his daughter were talking to a cadaverous man with a bad haircut. Kane thought about going in and bracing them about Melinda Foxx, but decided against it. As an excuse to get another close look at Letitia Potter, that would work fine. As a method of actually getting information, he had his doubts.

All the tables in the bar were full, so he took the last empty stool and ordered a club soda. Tony set the glass down in front of him, slid a bowl of snack mix next to it, and nodded. Kane nodded back, turned, and surveyed the room. His time as a cop and a prisoner had given him an ability to read crowds for trouble, and he didn’t see any here. Some forced joviality perhaps, but no trouble.

Alma Atwood moved through the bar, nodding and smiling to people like she knew them all. She was wearing a tight pair of jeans tucked into knee-length leather boots and what looked to Kane like a piece of underwear beneath a little sweater with one button. Her coat was over her arm. She stopped to talk to people at a couple of tables, then caught Kane’s eye and walked over. When she got close enough, he let out a low whistle. Alma laughed.

“Guys don’t do that anymore,” she said. “It’s sexist. Nice, but sexist.”

“I guess I’m just trapped in the Dark Ages,” he said.

Kane got off the stool and stood back so Alma could wiggle onto it.

“That’s an operation worth watching,” he said, sliding in to stand next to her.

Alma laughed again. Kane raised a finger. Tony looked over and nodded.

“I read up on you today,” Alma said. “When I was done, I wasn’t sure it was safe to come here.”

“Why not?” Kane asked.

“The newspaper stories make you sound dangerous,” she said.

Tony came over and stood in front of them. Alma ordered a Cosmopolitan. When Tony left to make her drink, Kane said, “Well, you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”

Alma nodded.

“That’s true,” she said. “Some of the things they write about the legislature are so totally bogus. But, well, you have killed someone. And you’ve been in prison.”

Kane thought about whether to correct her body count and decided not to. Instead, he said, “Yes, I have. I’m not proud of it.”

Tony came back and set a pink drink in front of Alma. She picked it up and took a sip.

“Oh, that’s so good,” she said. She drank some more. “Are you bitter about prison? You were acquitted, after all.”

“Exonerated,” Kane said. “There’s a difference.”

He drank some club soda. He could tell by the way Alma sat and looked at him that she wanted an answer.

“I wasn’t legally wrong to shoot that kid,” he said. “I had the right to defend myself. But I was morally wrong. I was drunk. If I hadn’t been drunk, I might have been able to handle the situation better, probably without shooting anyone. So I deserved what I got, no matter what the law says.”

He drank some more club soda.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I hated prison. All 3,679,200 minutes of it. I hated not being free, being told what to do, living with a bunch of damaged men, knowing that my kids were growing up without me. I hated it all, but I can’t say I didn’t deserve it.”

Alma reached over and laid her hand on his cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” she said softly. Then: “You have children?”

“I have children nearly as old as you are,” Kane said. “Two girls and a boy. The boy works here, in the legislature. His boss is someone named Representative Duckett.”

Alma smiled.

“Is he dark-haired and thin?” she asked. “Named Dylan?”

“That’s him,” Kane said.

“Oh, he’s very appealing, in a needs-mothering kind of way,” she said. “And now that you mention it, I can see a family resemblance.”

Her tone changed.

“Do you have a wife, too?”

Kane nodded.

“She’s my ex-wife now,” he said. “That’s something else prison cost me. My marriage. I think. Maybe we wouldn’t have made it to the finish line even if I hadn’t spent time in prison. Who knows?”

Alma ran her hand along his cheek.

“And the scar?” she asked. “Is that prison, too?”

“It is,” Kane said. “Some people get T-shirts to remind them of where they’ve been. I got this.”

He laughed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh.

“What do you say we talk about something that’s not so depressing,” he said. “Something that makes sense. Like politics. I still feel like I’m wandering in a strange country without a map.”

Alma laughed, too, and took her hand away.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try to orient you. We’ll begin with this room. Starting in the left corner, that’s a table of people from the governor’s office. The next two tables are oil company employees on a fly-in visit, lobbying against the oil tax. Then there’s a lobbyist, his wife, and two members of the House and their wives. On our right are staffers from the Senate President’s office, a lobbyist with some clients, and a table of—how odd, I don’t know those people. Here at the bar are three researchers on the nonpartisan legislative staff, a lobbyist, us and a couple of reporters.”

“Do people always sit only with their own kind?” Kane asked.

Alma finished her drink.

“This early in the evening, yes,” she said, “but later on we might see anything.”

Kane signaled the bartender.

“That was an impressive display,” Kane said, “but you left out the two women at that end of the bar.”

Alma dropped her eyes and smiled.

“Those are two of my girlfriends,” she said. “They wanted to see what you looked like.”

Kane laughed.

“Hope I pass muster,” he said.

“I’m sure you do,” Alma said. “Now, why don’t you tell me about your adventures in the legislature today.”

Kane recounted his doings in the Capitol and Alma explained what he’d seen. The bills in the Finance Committee were foregone conclusions, so nobody had to pay much attention. The men sitting in the hallway were lobbyists; they couldn’t have offices in the building, so they hung out waiting to buttonhole whoever they were after. Staffers were always trying to impress people with their importance, so they couldn’t talk to just anybody in the hall. And so on.

This topic took them through the second drink and into the hotel dining room. It was packed, but a harried-looking maître d’ managed to find them a corner table. Kane held Alma’s chair, then sat and looked around the room in silence.

“Penny,” she said.

“I was just wondering,” Kane said, “if we got this table because the bellmen said I was a good tipper, or because you look like a three-alarm fire.”

Alma dropped her eyes again and, if Kane wasn’t mistaken, blushed.

That’s a good sign, he thought. She can still blush.

A waiter came over and put a Cosmopolitan in front of Alma and a club soda in front of Kane.

“Compliments of Mr. Bezhdetny,” he said and left.

“Mr. Bezhdetny?” Kane said.

“Over there,” Alma said, nodding toward a table. “George Bezhdetny, the lobbyist who took my senator to lunch today.”

Kane could see the big, white man looking at them, so he raised his glass and inclined his head. Alma did the same.

“He’s an odd-looking guy,” Kane said. “Who does he work for?”

“Most lobbyists have more than one client,” Alma said. “I can’t keep track of who hires whom. Besides, George is kind of a lightweight.”

“Lightweight?” Kane said. “A guy that size?”

“Political lightweight,” Alma said. “There are something like two hundred and fifty people who lobby the legislature professionally every year. Maybe twenty percent of them have important clients and make what you or I would think is big money. The rest have clients that aren’t so important and just make a living, or even part of a living, from lobbying. George has always been in that second group. Although, now that I think of it, he does seem to be spending a lot more money recently. Maybe he’s got some new clients, with money.”

They looked at the menus for a while, then made small talk. The waiter came over to take their orders.

“I’m not sure what I want,” Alma said, picking up her menu again.

“You can have it all, sweetie,” the waiter said. “Mr. Bezhdetny is buying.”

“No, he’s not,” Kane said.

Alma laid a hand on his arm.

“Let him,” Alma said. “It’s what they do.”

“It may be what he does,” Kane said, “but it’s not what I do.”

He laid his napkin on his plate, got to his feet, and walked to the lobbyists’ table. There were a dozen people arranged around it. Everyone looked up at him.

“Mr. Bezhdetny,” he said, “I want to thank you for the drink and your kind offer of dinner, but I must decline.”

“It’s George,” Bezhdetny said. “May I ask why not?”

“Well,” Kane said, “if you know why I’m here…”

“Everybody in town knows why you’re here by now,” said a woman who had obviously had plenty to drink.

“Anyway,” Kane said, “my job requires me to act on behalf of my client. I can’t have any conflicts about that.”

“Good God,” one of the male diners said scornfully, “it’s only dinner.”

Kane recognized him as one of the senators who hadn’t been paying attention during the Finance Committee meeting.

“I know,” Kane said to him with a smile, “that’s how it starts, isn’t it, Senator?”

He nodded to Bezhdetny, whose face had turned red. Embarrassed? Pissed off? Kane didn’t really care.

“Thanks anyway, George,” he said and returned to his table.

“Well, you’re a snappy one, aren’t you?” the waiter said.

“What I am is a good tipper,” Kane said levelly, “if I like the service.”

“Point taken,” the waiter said. He took their orders, then left.

“People will be talking about that,” Alma said. “I don’t think anyone’s turned down a free meal in this town since the glaciers receded.”

“Yeah, well, maybe they should,” Kane said. “But let’s talk about something else. Where in Minnesota are you from?”

So Kane learned that Alma had been born in Bob Dylan’s hometown, Hibbing, and that she’d come up one summer in college to work as a seasonal park volunteer, liked it, and come back after graduation.

“My degree is actually in resource management,” she said. “I just sort of fell into political work.”

The talk went on like that through dinner, Alma asking questions about Kane and answering questions about herself. She had a glass of wine with dinner, then another. Kane thought about saying something, but decided that it wasn’t his business to monitor her alcohol intake. The room was warm and pleasantly noisy, the food adequate, and the company interesting. The dining room was nearly empty when Kane signaled for the check.

Buttoned into their coats, they left the hotel and walked downhill. Alma put her arm through his and her hip bumped him with every other step.

“This is really fun,” she said, “but the place we’re going might take some getting used to.”

The place was a small, dark bar shaped like a triangle, full of smoke and noise and people. Several shouted greetings to Alma as they entered. The bar ran along two sides of the room, then bulged out in a U. The area in between was jammed with people standing, drinking, and trying to converse over the din. Much of the bar was lined three deep with people waiting to order. Alma led Kane through the crowd to a couple of empty stools at the far end of the U. She draped her coat over the stool and sat down on it. Kane sat next to her.

“Damn, just finding a seat makes you thirsty,” she said.

Kane waved at the bartender.

“In a minute, honey,” she called to him.

A guy turned away from the bar balancing a tray.

“Shots, shots, shots,” the crowd chanted.