We Know (41 page)

Jasper Caruthers's smooth voice, a marked contrast to the timidity of his interlocutor's. "The question in my mind, Cynthia, is whether we can

persist with failed policies simply because we fear looking like we 're willing to learn from the past. "

Black town cars were pulled up onto the walkways and the patio before Royce Hall. Their tinted windows were dark and emotionless, the eyes of predators. The day had gone from Southern California bright to confused dusk. The buildings that had gleamed just fifteen minutes ago now looked cloaked and grainy.

Caruthers was still going on about reacting to different cultures and updating stances, but finally the next audience member stepped to the microphone: "Hello, my name is Bill Little, and my question is for President Bilton. As an educator I've had a hard time understanding the cuts you've advocated while pushing through tax breaks for wealthy corporations. ..."

My hands moved back and forth, tapping my pants on either side. Was I really going to do this? I realized I was holding my breath, and I exhaled so hard that static tinged my field of vision. I'd gone without oxygen for the past minute. Nice and subtle, Horrigan, teetering red-faced through the crowd.

Adjusting the rucksack, I approached the line of agents, none of whom I recognized. Robotically crossed arms, hair slicked back, asshole-handsome faces murmuring in polite monotones, "Hands, please. Can I see your hands? Hands." Their eyes swiveled past me. One pressed a finger to the

flesh-colored earpiece melded into his head and grinned a sharp grin, a Presidential Detail alpha dog baring his perfect teeth. I recalled Frank's old crack about the Presidential Protective Division guys: Two holsters--one for the gun, one for the blow dryer.

Bilton's detail was running the show, of course, but Caruthers had his faithful crew--five or six agents, according to Wydell--at least one of whom was likely stationed outside, on the lookout for me. Though Caruthers's men didn't know the whole backstory, they'd proved they were all too willing to bend laws to protect their principal.

President Bilton's answer continued, a low
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register drone. I sneaked a glance at one of the suspended screens. The bombardment of democracy continued. "I'm Patsy Ryan, and as an elderly person I feel great concern about rising health-care costs. President Bilton, if reelected, would you . . ."

I walked along the building, glancing at the cordons blocking the side doors. Behind me the viewers sitting in the quad jeered and clapped, news crews moving among them, bulky with equipment. It was an angry year, an angry election, and the voters weren't afraid to play hardball. "I'm John Quinn, and I'd like to know what the president has to say about the sweetheart deals with war contractors--"

A muscular college girl stepped aside, leaving

behind a wall of her floral perfume and clearing my view to the building. By the last side entrance, his eyes raking across the crowd, stood Reid Sever. He was about twenty yards off, behind a line of sawhorses and police officers. I hesitated for a panic-stricken moment that stretched out like a warbling piano note.

I rotated away. Caruthers's enormous figure loomed on the screen above me. He had his head bent down, a hand clamped to his cheek, intently focused as Bilton continued to string together catchphrases and slogans. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sever's face lift and freeze with sudden focus. My heart started palpitating.

I turned my head, just barely. Sever was speaking into his wrist. Looking across the quad. There was another Secret Service type--he looked like Brown--touching his earpiece. And relaying what he was hearing to the guy next to him. Alan Lambrose.

Then all three looked directly at me. I ran.

Sever hurdled the sawhorses, shouting into his wrist. Rucksack bouncing on my shoulders, I plowed into the heart of the crowd, stepping on legs, tripping over college kids. People scattered, shouting complaints until they saw Sever coming, his Glock clear of the holster. It didn't take long for the news crews to pick up the disruption. Glinting camera lenses swung over to capture me --zooming in from either side, leering from strategically parked vans, coasting overhead on a crane like Peter Pan in a bad stage production.

I made my way to the heart of the quad and turned, holding my arms wide. The energy of the crowd pulled to me, an electric charge. There were cameras everywhere, people's eyes. Could I actually bring this off? Agent Brown was on Sever's heels, as were several of Caruthers's other agents I recognized from the jogging detail and Induma's walkway. They spread out, closing in on me from all directions, pants whistling as they ran. Innumerable pistols aimed at my head. I waited for the crack of a gunshot, the kiss of jagged lead. People rose, first those nearest me, then in waves, an astonished standing ovation. I thought, at the same time, This might actually work, and, You '11 be shot.

"I'm Nick Horrigan!" I shouted. My voice wasn't thin or trembling. It was clear as a goddamned bell. "And I don't have a weapon on me. I have--"

But Sever hammered me, wrapping me up, and then the others were there, too, frisking me. Someone ripped the rucksack off my back. There was movement all around us, a windup to a stampede. One of the agents shouted, "He's unarmed! Unarmed/"

"What's in the rucksack?"

"Styrofoam peanuts." The guy was dumping it

as he answered.

"Nothing else? "

Black shoes stomped near my face, barely missing, as more agents jockeyed for position. I stayed perfectly still, not wanting to give them an excuse to shoot me. An iron bar of a forearm pressed across the back of my neck, grinding my cheek into the ground. Through the ankles and moving bodies, I glimpsed the post supporting the giant horn speakers.

A familiar voice: "My question is for Senator Caruthers, and it's on behalf of someone who couldn't be here tonight. It s on behalf of Gracie Everett."

Despite the lawn smashed to my face, I felt a blast of triumph.

I was hauled roughly to my feet. Cuffs pinched my wrists. I twisted to see the nearest giant video screen, and there Induma was, two stories high, holding the ultrasound aloft so the light streamed through it.

"Gracie would have been old enough to vote next year. But she was murdered when she was thirteen days old. Along with her mother. "

A hush passed over the quad, all faces suddenly intent on the screens. The agents around me stiffened and looked at one another, suddenly aware that their crew had been drawn out of the building. A breeze lifted a few of the Styrofoam peanuts from the grass, underscoring my ruse, that Caruthers's men had been diverted out here in pursuit of an empty rucksack, leaving no one inside to

shut down the senator's surprise interrogator.

Caruthers sat frozen on the stool--one loafer on the rug, the other touching the footrest as if to keep its bearing. Those brilliant green eyes were lit with alarm. An odd quiet spread through the quad, everyone sensing that something unscripted was taking place. Heads turned, voices hushed, people pointed.

Every set of eyes focused on that black and gray film, on the eighteen-week-old curl of Gracie Everett. For a brief moment, she was the center of the universe.

Induma said, "I have here as well the paternity test revealing that Grade's father was then-Vice President Caruthers, and a recording implicating him in the murders. "

Caruthers wilted back into his chair. The lights shone through his green eyes, his unruly hair.

"You have consistently implored us to question our leaders. To hold them accountable. You said that no man is above the law. You said that every American, no matter his post, no matter his privilege, can be faced down, called to answer. My question for you, from Gracie, is, will you answer?"

The agents' hands stayed dug into my arms, my neck, but none of us moved. We stood together, frozen, heads tilted back, taking in the spectacle playing out inside and overhead.

Caruthers rose with great dignity, set his microphone on the stool, and walked from the stage.

Chapter
49

I was held for nearly two weeks on the Mack Jackman murder while the storm brewed, Induma disseminating information from outside, agents and representatives of all stripes poking and prodding at me until it was obvious there was nothing more to get. We turned over the one hundred eighty grand, the ultrasound, the paternity report, Charlie's bone
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chip analysis, and the recording of Wydell on the pitcher's mound. I'd done nothing wrong, or at least nothing that the circumstances didn't necessitate. They even opened up Frank's murder file and found nothing to raise an eyebrow at. Having a new ally in the incumbent president probably didn't hurt matters. Charges were dropped, and I was released a few weeks before the election.

Returning home, I saw that my place had been ripped apart. Carpets torn up, plumbing extracted, holes punched in the drywall. It would have been easier just to move, but I decided to stay. Rebuild. It's been a few months, and the place is now functional, but it needs some more cosmetic work. I've been told that these things take time. And, finally, I feel like I have time.

The world, needless to say, is no better for what I have done. Caruthers lost. I can't say we made him lose, but we sure made him not win. I was his October surprise. Or, more accurately, Gracie

Everett was. She lived only thirteen days, but she mattered.

I didn't vote.

The night of his acceptance speech, my old friend Andrew Bilton called to express his gratitude and tell me I was a patriot. But he's still a mediocre human and a worse president. Who would you rather have? A leader who is unthinkingly loyal to opinions you disagree with? Or one who is insincere about opinions you share? A fool or a hypocrite? Too often, it seems, these are our only options. I don't know the answer. Looking at the state of the Union, I don't even know that I'd do the same thing over again. All I know is what I did. And I've been told that what you do is the measure of a person.

A few weeks after the election, Caruthers was indicted. The connective tissue between him and the murders is thin, but his link can be lab-tested and DNA-analyzed. People were crushed. There were mournful columnists and genuinely dazed talking heads and vehement staffers, holding their devastation beneath an angry veneer of denial. There were even some tears when the news cameras found the right Man or Woman on the Street. I won't say it was like when Bobby Kennedy was shot--neither is it that time, nor is Caruthers such a man--but it was a reminder to everyone that we might be too far gone to have heroes anymore. Maybe that's a good thing.

They made a big show of getting him right when the Senate adjourned. Steps of the Capitol Building and all that. The footage has become another tabloid favorite, as overplayed as O.J.'s Bronco hightailing it down the 405 or those Boeing 767s disintegrating into dust and flame. Caruthers being led, handcuffs glinting at the sleeves of his five-thousand-dollar suit. "This is an outrage," he says, "and I look forward to defending myself against all charges. I'm not concerned in the least." But in a clip they showed later of him outside the courthouse, he was raising both cuffed wrists to get a trembling cigarette to his lips. Those charges keep proliferating, from murder to destruction of evidence to conspiracy to obstruction of justice to that new blue-chip favorite: perjury. James Brown took a sweetheart deal to roll, and then two more guys went snitch, and the word is the DOJ's putting that mosaic together, piece by piece.

June has stopped showing up for court dates, and there are rumors she will file for divorce.

Wydell turned up dead last week in Altamira. In the black-and-white morgue photos, he looked like a homeless person. That neat fifties hairdo grown out into a tangle. Curls of facial hair. Dirt
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blackened cheeks. He'd been stabbed in the kidney with a screwdriver for sleeping in a bum's nook on the port, and he'd dragged himself behind a tire-repair shack and bled out.

Given the outstanding arrest warrant and the Interpol red notice, they'd done a fine job freezing his money. He had no address or bank account or telephone in his name. His first few weeks, he'd shacked up with his ghosts in a shitty motel in Veracruz, collecting tequila worms and venereal diseases and burning through what little cash he'd taken. I know how the walls closed in on him at night. I know the bitter taste of panic that greeted him when he woke. I know how he watched people's eyes when he passed them on the street. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Knowing he could wake up in prison the next morning and every morning after that. Of everything that can grind away at a person, being anonymous is the worst. You give up your power, a bit at a time, until you feel like you're not much of anything at all.

It was shocking to see how poorly a federal agent had fared in just two and a half months on the run, and I must confess a pang of pride at how long I, a nobody kid, had managed. I'd been cracked and damaged, but they hadn't broken me.

I'm inclined to think that Wydell took the easy way out by dying. It's much harder to shoulder the weight of memory, to reconcile with the past, to turn and face your troubles. It's much harder, but I'm finding it worth the struggle.

I am sleeping through the night again. There is an immense power in holding no secrets. I have protection now, in my story's being public. If I died, the right people would ask the right questions.