We Know (40 page)

been able to." "You must have had more help inside the

Service. Besides the Godfather."

"Brown?" Wydell smirked. "Caruthers still has an inner core, sure. Five, six agents. They're loyal. They view you as a threat. They don't need to know anything else."

I pictured those agents who'd come striding up Induma's walk earlier this evening, how their blank expressions and firm posture conveyed a certain assurance of purpose, a freedom from uncertainty.

"But you still don't get it," Wydell continued. "This isn't about Caruthers and some agents. This is the party apparatus. Do you have any idea how many defense contracts and subsidy deals rest on his not getting knocked off the ticket? What happened seventeen years ago? No one cares. No one even knows the whole story. Not even Caruthers."

I thought about Caruthers's tears when I'd told him what had happened to Jane and Gracie. Though I believed nothing else about him, his grief in that moment was undeniable. He'd never known precisely how it had gone down. He'd been well cushioned by plausible deniability, insulated all these years by the people protecting him. Somehow that made it worse.

Wydell said, "That's how it gets done. Everyone holds just one piece of the mosaic."

"Except you."

He withdrew a pistol from his pocket and held it contemplatively, not aiming at me. "And now you."

I constructed a story from the muddle, as I had so many times before. Except this time it wasn't a story. I said, "You were on Caruthers's protection detail back then. You found out I was trying to talk to Callie about Frank's death, so you flew two

agents in from some shit field office, workaday agents who wouldn't mind having a few paid days in Los Angeles. They were willing to take my life away without even knowing why."

"They saved your life, Nick. Think about the alternative."

"You hired Tris Landreth. And Kim Kendall seventeen years later. You met them up in Runyon Canyon. You left the film slip in my locker at the gym, tipping me to Mack's address. Then you assigned Sever to sit outside the apartment. He didn't know Mack was already dead inside. You watched from the neighboring roof, the rifle grenade locked and loaded for when I showed up. As soon as you saw that I found the planted Polaroid of Bilton and Jane--"

"You know how many of those things I left lying around that apartment for you to find? You stepped on one in the bedroom."

"I hear doctoring Polaroids is tough."

"Try getting eighteen-year-old film packs, to start with."

"You planted a bug in my truck, then told me about it so I'd trust you, so I'd ask for you if I got tangled up or taken in. You're the one who sprang me from custody, knowing I'd run to Caruthers."

"And run you did."

We stood in the faint mist from the faraway sprinkler.

"You drove the dark sedan that the Bulgarians

put Jane Everett into. And Gracie in the trunk."

He wet his lips and looked at me with those dull, thoughtful eyes. The wind lifted a flap of his neat gray hair into a perfect float over his ear. "We didn't know about the baby--the father, I mean-- until late in the game. If she'd come to Vice President Caruthers earlier, we would've been able to work something out. But she was angry that he'd moved on. What did she expect? You've seen June, for Christ's sake. But Jane Everett"--he shook his head, exasperated, a tourist whose wife won't stop shopping--"this little girl had delusions. Hormones--you've seen how they get when they're pregnant. She dropped this thing in his lap at the start of her third trimester. There was a scene up at El Encanto--I barely got her out of the lobby before June checked in."

"Jane got angrier," I said. "Made demands. You were trying to work it out with her, but she was getting impatient, unmanageable. Somehow it got back to Bilton's camp that there could be an opportunity there. Everything looked good until Charlie took point on it for Bilton. Dug up the dirt. Jane Everett, scorned lover, was more than happy to give Charlie what she had. Ultrasound. Paternity test. But instead of bringing it to his boss, Charlie brought it to Frank, wanting to make a little coin. Except Frank wasn't buying."

For all my assertiveness, the statement hung in the air like a question.

"No," Wydell said. "He wasn't. He came to Caruthers. It never would have occurred to Frank I was already working on containing her." I didn't confuse it with remorse, but the regret was audible.

I took a moment, the night air stinging my eyes, my breath clean and crisp in my lungs. "Frank assumed Caruthers would want to handle it decently." Even though Wydell smirked at my last word, I continued, "But since Frank told you guys about the ultrasound and paternity test, you learned that Jane Everett was putting together evidence. And that told you it was a problem that wasn't gonna go away on its own. You needed to shut her down permanently. And once it got to that, Frank made clear he wasn't willing to play ball. And since he knew the stakes, he refused to give up his source, because he knew you'd kill Charlie, too."

I pictured Frank on his car phone in the garage, talking about the threat to Caruthers. A political threat.

I said, "So you shot him."

Wydell looked at me, an odd blend of contempt and respect. "Frank was no saint. He just wasn't as bad as the rest of us. He wasn't running to the press or riding off to rescue poor Jane Everett. He wanted it to go away. Just like Caruthers did."

"But Caruthers took steps."

"I didn't go to the house to kill Frank. I wanted to know who his source was, sure, but I went to get

him alone, to have one more chance to convince him he couldn't be neutral on this. Stakes were way too high."

"Right. When you murdered Jane and the baby, Frank would've gone public. You had to clear the way by getting him out of it."

"He had a choice. Right up to the end. But Frank was the stalwart type, duty, all that. He couldn't see the bigger picture."

"The bigger picture," I said.

"That's right. Jane Everett and her baby, they didn't fit into it."

"No one's life is worth more than anyone else's." My words sounded familiar. Then I realized I was quoting Frank.

"Of course not. But some people's lives take precedence."

"So that night?" I asked. "You had Tris lure me out so I'd shut off the alarm."

He seemed genuinely sympathetic. "Oh, no. Just to get you out of there. I knocked at the back door. Frank let me in himself. You've been living with that all these years?"

A tear obscured my right eye but wouldn't fall. I saw Wydell, warped, through the glassy veil. "You just didn't want a witness."

"You were a kid, Nick. I couldn't talk with you there. And I didn't want to have to kill you, too, if it came to it."

"You were there when I got home."

"Yes. A nice, friendly visit. Once he saw it was me, he even set the gun down on the coffee table. I wanted to resolve it with him. Come to an understanding. But we couldn't."

"He wouldn't say who had the master docs."

Wydell shook his head regretfully. "He was bleeding out, but he wouldn't say. It took much longer than I'd planned."

"I thought killing him wasn't the plan."

The reel played in my head, familiar from countless screenings. The bang of the garage's side door against the outside wall. Frank pointing, not at the key in the alarm pad as I'd always thought but at the open door beyond. The dying utterance he'd choked out. W. . . ? W-why? Not a word, not a question. But the first syllable of the name he'd been trying to tell me: Wydell.

I said, "By the time you got Jane to give up Charlie's name, he'd vanished. And didn't reemerge until a few months ago to make the senator a discreet business proposal."

The sprinkler stopped abruptly, the relative silence broken by my breathing.

Wydell gestured at me with the gun. "So you're pretty fucked here, Nick. Every agency's on alert. But I can present a solution to you. Get this mess

cleaned up."

"That's what you're good at, I suppose."

"Yes, I am. And right now I'm your only option."

"Well," I said, "not the only one." I spread my

arms, like a scarecrow, or Jesus Christ in a wind
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breaker. "Check me," I said, "for a wire."

"I could rip that thing off you. Torch the recording."

"It's a live feed. To--as you types like to say--a secure location."

"How about I hold you down and start breaking things until you give instructions to whoever's on the other end?"

I reached under my shirt and tugged the wire free. Then I broke it in half and threw it toward the outfield. "Point of no return," I said.

His lips set with amusement, and he scratched that crooked nose with a single long finger. "You're still a stupid kid. With all my years in the game, you really think I'd give you a chance to record me?" He tugged a little black box free from the back pocket of his pants and held it up. "Pink
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noise generator."

I unzipped my jacket, let the flap fall, revealing a device of my own. "Pink-noise filter."

I wished Induma could have seen the look on his face. Her gadget did look pretty impressive hanging there. I watched Wydell's expression change. His forehead lined, and then his cheeks quivered. His perfect posture didn't alter, but his head canted forward an inch or two.

He came at me fast, fist laced around the gun, swinging to break teeth. Sidestepping him, I grabbed his wrist and yanked his elbow forward

until it locked and then bowed the wrong way. It didn't snap. It just yielded with the gentle crackle of a fresh sprig bending. I rode his shoulder down, driving his face onto the pitching rubber.

His breathing was tight and gave off a whistle from his throat. I peeled the gun from his grip, then stood over him. Wydell didn't move.

"Leave," I said. "Forever."

His breath shoved a furrow into the dirt of the mound. "You're letting me go?"

"On the run. Yes. If you stop, you know what'll be waiting for you."

"Why don't you turn me in?"

"By first light every major law-enforcement agency will be looking for you. There won't be a safe place for you anywhere in the country. You won't be able to walk down the street or board an airplane. Who you've been, who you are right now, will cease to exist." I took a step closer, and he cringed a little. I said, "I'm not gonna turn you in because this is gonna be so much worse."

My finger had found its way through the trigger guard. His eyes were closed in fearful anticipation, but I pocketed the gun and walked away. When I reached the edge of the field, I paused and looked back. He was still lying there, flat on his face, his arm bent grotesquely out to the side like a broken wing. I could hear his labored breathing. He might have been crying, but I wasn't sure.

Chapter
48

UCLA was awash in bodies--in lines, at checkpoints, staggering as one when someone lost footing--a great human press, filling Dickson Terrace. Flashes popped and signs waved and groups chanted dumb couplets from behind saw
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horses. Thousands of people sat on the ground in the quad, concert style, craning to see the giant video screens suspended from steel cables overhead. The chosen ones tunneled to the checkpoints at the broad steps of Royce Hall, where they handed over security passes as if purchasing the right to be patted down, wanded, and walked through metal detectors. Purses and cell phones rode conveyer belts through X-ray machines. Agents with tight, muscular faces peered out over the sawhorses, putting their rope-line skills to work, searching out hands in jacket flaps, the woman who wasn't grinning, the dusky-skinned young man in a too-heavy coat, beads of sweat running down temples. Cops wore riot gear, agents wore earpieces, and I wore Charlie's rucksack slung over my shoulder.

Hiding in the crowd, I watched the giant video screens, which showed the C-SPAN logo and the blank debate stage. Katie Couric's voice rumbled through powerful speakers. The mighty roar of applause compounded as she introduced each candidate.

The picture was surprisingly crisp. Caruthers and Bilton took their places on low-backed stools before acrylic podiums, inadvertently mirroring each other's posture--casual lean to the outside, head cocked with interest and humility, hands laced across a knee. A lush, royal blue rug bearing the presidential seal stretched beneath the candidates, designating the boundaries should either man decide to pace or roam. Couric perkily continued, "The debate s town-hall format will permit prospective voters to address their questions directly to the candidates. We ask that you line up in either aisle in front of the microphone, and make sure to introduce yourself and speak clearly when it s your turn. "

I took a moment to collect myself, to quash the rise of fear in my chest, and then I shoved through the elbow-to-elbow press gaggle and made my way toward the checkpoint.

The speakers conveyed the first question, a woman, shrill with nerves. "Hello, my name is Cynthia McGinty. My question is for Senator Caruthers. You've said we need a change in our policy in the Middle East. But can we really be blackmailed by the likes of bin Laden into changing our views? Can we really rethink our position because of threats and violence? "