Simple (19 page)

Coleson says, “I see your point. We don't know the scenario; we don't have the details. But that's just because we can't guess what went on between them and what went on in his head.”

“And he's left-handed.”

Coleson's breathing makes a raspy sound. “I know he did it. Let's look at the tape. Maybe we can establish that he's ambidextrous.”

McGranahan says, “Look, I don't want to get demoted over this.”

“Okay, you've got me going, I admit, but it doesn't do to apologize for our work on this. What kind of clout are we going to have if we start backpedaling first thing?”

“I know.”

“I'm going to get a roll and coffee and then we'll watch the tape.”

Day-old rolls from Panera Bakery on a big platter in the entryway—McGranahan has seen them and passed them up, coming in. He watches Coleson take a roll and coffee. McGranahan eats little, and never the stuff that appears at the office. Almost all food is appealing to Coleson and almost none appeals to McGranahan, which, everyone jokes, makes them perfect partners, Mr. Convex and Mr. Concave.

*   *   *

HE CALLS A WOMAN
named Rita who works for the party and is a point person on the campaign up in Centre County. Otherwise her days are spent in an insurance office up in Bellefonte. He met her ten months ago one night at some party-sponsored picnic and went back to her place. He left about three in the morning, murmuring endearments. She's not pretty at all. Which doesn't matter to him. He liked her. She needed a little excitement in her life and he provided it.

“What's doing?” she asks in a too-cheerful voice.

“Seeing people. Talking. It's what I do for a living.”

“I know that.” He assumes she's a bit miffed that he disappeared on her some two months ago.

“We've had a mess here at the firm—”

“I saw the news.”

“It's nothing to do with us, but it's distracting as hell. Otherwise, things are going swimmingly. We're positioned well. We've got good people in the field. Like you. Are you going to bring in Centre County?”

“I don't know.”

“Sure you are.” He likes to say her name like
sweetah.
“Rita, Rita! I think you're just modest.”

“If that means I worry a lot, yes, I guess so.”

“Fretting is okay. The best people fret. You just have to make time for fun, too.”

“I do.”

“Good. You know, I didn't ask you straight out if you're seeing someone.”

He waits out the little pause on the other end of the line before she says, “Nothing you need to know about.”

“How about I come up and rescue you for a little meeting with me this afternoon?”

“I'm at work.”

“I know. I mean, I called you at work. The thing is we're all pretty ragged down here over this killing.”

“I can imagine.”

“So, you can rescue me is what it comes down to. We can go for coffee and go over contributions and you can let me put my head on your shoulder.”

“I guess. Yes.”

“I have to stick to the office here for some to-do with the police trying to find out more about this woman who got killed. I could get there about when you're done with work. What happens when you quit work for the day?”

“What happens then is I will walk my dog.”

“I will walk him with you.”

“We take long walks.”

“I can handle that.” His phone rings through. “I have to take a call. I'll see you late afternoon.”

He works one or the other of his three phones all morning, getting Connolly in position.

*   *   *

MONICA LOOKS UP TO
see
Sam O'Malley, one of her colleagues, at her office door, a hand on each jamb, expansive. “Hey, it's really you,” he says. “I wondered if anybody besides me would come in early.”

She had really thought
she
would be the only one in the offices. School won't begin until August 24, a week from now. The first event is an opening mass on August 23. “I like to get a jump on things,” she says. “It's hardwired in me, always doing massive preparation.”

He smiles at her. “I'm glad to be getting back. I got totally bored this summer.”

“Most people don't admit that.”

“Well, I'm not a golfer. I don't totally mind writing academic articles, but I don't like doing it alone. I'm a collaborator. Give me people.”

She laughs. Is being dependent such a bad thing?

“Are you okay?” he asks. “I saw the news.”

“I'm … okay.”

“Did you know her?”

“I didn't. My husband hardly did. Apparently she really lobbied for a job, wanted to, you know, get ahead, be ready for law school, and look what happened. It reminds me of a person who fights to get on a flight and then the flight crashes—stories like that.”

“I know what you mean. That's why I never try too hard. Or, maybe I'm just lazy.”

Sam O'Malley loves his work. And he does write articles. Though what there is left to write about, given the huge interest in the social aspects of crime, and all that is written about it and shown on TV, she wonders. Well, it's a publish or perish world, the academic treadmill.

“Being lazy obviously works for you.” She smiles. “Will your classes be full? As usual?”

“Yeah. There's a waiting list. It isn't me, it's the subject.”

“Don't sell yourself short. I hear good things.”

“Thank you. Are your classes full?”

“Full enough. The one is Government and Medicine. When I proposed it last year, I never guessed it would be quite so timely. Now I have to worry if violent protesters will take my class just to disrupt it.”

“It's a mess for sure. Your husband probably has a lot to say about the whole health care thing.”

“Somehow he avoids the topic. Pretty good trick, huh? He sticks to bringing industry into the state and getting rid of crime and creating jobs. Nobody is against jobs so far as I know.”

“‘Too many jobs. Down with jobs!'” he chants lightly. “What's it like? Being first lady in waiting?”

“I try not to think about it.”

“I'm a Democrat. Just so you know.”

“I used to be. Maybe still am, underneath.” She looks around her small office, just so, just exactly as she wants it—each book in order. She's imagined scenarios in which she gives it up and other ones in which she doesn't. Her future is a script in the making. She knew of a woman who hired a car to drive her the three and a half hours to work three days a week and used the time in the backseat as prep time, office time. It's possible she'll opt for that pattern.

“Want to go for a coffee?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Why not is that he's flirting and always has and that she doesn't exactly mind. She's never been unfaithful—unhappiness lies that direction for sure—but right now she feels a divided self, like a highway sign that shows a road splitting. Left lane straight ahead, right lane veers off. She feels the pull of the right lane, something else, something different from the straightaway of her life.

But she has two boys. Parents. In-laws.

She slings her handbag over her shoulder.

“I'm sorry you have this awful thing in your life, this tragedy. It must be distracting.”

“Distracting … yes, yes it is. It takes up my thoughts. Mike is upset. And there's still the funeral.”

He says, “Well, I'm sorry.”

“At least they caught the guy fast. I'd like to interview him. I've been trying to get access.”

“No fooling?”

They begin to walk down the hall and don't say much of anything until they're outdoors.

Sam says, “I'm going to use the case in my class, first day. They will all have seen it on the news—well, unless they're more out of it than I think.”

Outside it's a bit cloudy, but otherwise nice, a good temperature.

“I feel like we're playing hooky,” she says.

He laughs appreciatively.

*   *   *

SO NOW HE LIES ON HIS
bunk and he reviews the conversation, trying to guess what Beni concluded about him, why she asked what she asked, what she will report.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Did you ever have a girlfriend?”

“There were girls I took out to a movie or to Kennywood. Just simple dates. In high school and after.”

“Did any of them work out?”

He shook his head.

“Why?”

He looked down at his hands. He hated the fact that his hands and knees shook. “I need to change the type I'm attracted to.”

“To?”

He shrugged. “Somebody who doesn't zip around at a hundred miles an hour.”

She frowned. “Do you possibly prefer men?”

“No. No way. That's not for me.” He looked at his feet and wondered if the group he had sat with had already started that rumor. “Is that what people automatically think if you're not dating?”

“Nice people just want you to be happy. Whatever you need.”

“I'm okay alone.”

“Don't you get lonely?”

After a pause he admitted it. “Yes.”

“Do you attend a church?”

“Not since I was a boy. With my grandmother.” This new tack in questioning threw him off. He'd got a message that Father Mansour wanted to come talk to him again and that was okay. He liked the guy fine.

“They'll have services here at the jail if you want to go. Do you have any questions for me?”

He couldn't think of anything to ask.

“Do you know why you're in the Allegheny County Jail?”

“You asked me before.”

“Yes.”

“They didn't have anybody else. I was easy.”

“That's a serious charge.”

“When you've had a bad history—I mean the blackouts—you can't get past it. It sticks.”

“One thing I'm not clear on … when was your last blackout?”

“I
think
almost ten years ago. But the thing is I can never be absolutely sure. That's the thing.”

She had looked thoughtful.

“Hathaway,” the voice on the speaker says. His cell door opens. An escort appears.

“Where?” he asks boldly, his own voice surprising him.

*   *   *

HE WISHES HE COULD
avoid the office.

The man at the desk in the lobby leans forward and says, “Good morning, Senator. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” They don't know what other term to use.

Connolly goes up the elevator with four other people who appear to be watching him, trying to find the opportunity to say a few words. Finally one after another of them ventures a phrase of condolence.

As he thanks them, he can't wait to get away, to be alone even though, when he is alone, it's worse, the way he can't control the meanderings of his own mind.
Don't think of the word “elephant.”

He has to step over flowers, bouquets of them stacked before the glass doors leading to his firm. If only this kind of effort, excess, could bring her back. He uses his pass card to open the door.

“How are you, sir?” asks the lovely model-ish receptionist with geometric hair.

“Upset … I know we all are,” he says. She nods curtly. And that seems to satisfy her and the others at the front desk.

All this mess. For what? To feel the thrill, to be fourteen years old again? Hard-ons from eating a banana or turning a page or walking down the street, not to mention looking at breasts, legs, bums, stomachs, anything. The feeling of life.

His secretary, the one he shares with his brother, since computers have eliminated the one-to-one relationship of old, hands him a few pieces of snail mail, also a relic of another time. Almost everything of a daily nature—inquiries, drafts—comes to him by computer. This secretary is a well-dressed woman of about forty, with smooth, highlighted hair and good shoes. Her expression is that of sympathy, concern.

Who suspects him, then? Which woman or man up here told the police he was having an affair with Cassie?

He and she had worked out a story, a routine. She was supposed to make something up. She was supposed to allude to a guy she was seeing to satisfy any curiosity about her. When they lay in bed, teasing about it, she said, “Oh, he's young, younger than I am. Very handsome. A bit of an athlete—such a body. He's always eager. We polish off a bottle of wine together some nights.”

For a tiny moment he thought it was true, she sounded so convincing. But then she looked depressed and said, “Is that good enough?”

“Well, no. You haven't answered why you aren't seen with him anywhere, why you don't go out.”

“Oh.”

“You'd better say he's married but, you know, make up everything else,” he'd told her.

“I couldn't.”

“Why?”

“I don't like that identity. I don't like being a person who would do such a thing.”

That had stopped him cold since she
was
a person who was doing such a thing. How did she talk to herself? What was in her mind?

“I know,” she said. “I'll say I'm seeing someone who is very shy. He doesn't like crowds or any of that. We're taking it slow. We don't run in similar circles, so we're just trying it out. I'll say I've met his family at a picnic and they are like him, simple and unassuming. I'll tell people I like that kind of person.”

And did she? “Okay,” he said. “That might float. What is it you like about him?”

“He's genuinely nice. In a world that's so full of rotten people.”

“Of bullshit.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said. “That's your story, then. Stick to it. And make sure to drop it every once in a while. Because people are going to be curious about you.”