While Galileo Preys (22 page)

“You don’t say.”

“You see, there was a presidential campaign coming up, and the client was looking to invest a great deal of time and money in some of the candidates. But they needed to vet them first to determine which candidates were worthy. They needed it done low-key and professionally. After all, they had a reputation to maintain. And wouldn’t you know it? Henry Booth found some dirt on one of the candidates.”

Donald turned away from the wind. It was beginning to irritate his eyes. He glanced into the car.

“What did he find out, Mr. Chappell?”

Joey had fallen asleep. What was left of the cotton candy was stuck to the bear’s fur. The boy had his index finger in his mouth.

“Mr. Chappell, what did Henry learn about Bob Kellerman?”

“You don’t know?” Donald let slip a small smile. “No, you wouldn’t. You know why out of all the private investigators at my disposal I chose Bellum Velum for this job?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s because I’m tired of saints. Sanctimony has gotten stale for me. There comes a point when preaching to the choir loses its appeal. After my wife passed, may she rest in peace, I made a decision to use my resources in a different way. I’ve been doing it subtly, but surely. I’ve been funding the sinners, Tom.”

“Why?”

Donald chuckled at Tom’s confusion. “I get in a room with someone like the owners of Bellum Velum, now there’s men who need to hear the Good Word, and don’t you think with me paying them what I’m paying them they’re going to have to listen?”

“And that’s why you continued to fund Kellerman, even after finding out whatever it is you found out.”

Donald shrugged: exactly.

“Mr. Chappell, Henry Booth has been doing what he’s been doing and you’ve just stood by. All those people are dead and you just stood by.”

This raised a sudden fury out of Donald. “I didn’t know it was him! I swear! I suspected, but I didn’t know! What was I supposed to do? There is a man
whose soul is in agony. There is a man who has been betrayed all of his life. By his country. By his faith. Which I thought I could restore! I was being selfish. I thought… I…”

“Do you know where he is?”

Donald shook his head.

“I need to know what he found out about Kellerman. It may help us find him.”

“What do you think he found out, Tom? I can see it in your face. You have your suspicions. What is it you’re thinking? That Henry found out Bob Kellerman is gay? You think it’s something as mundane as homosexuality? Bob Kellerman’s not gay. I’m sorry to disappoint you. No, the secret he’s hiding—the secret that’s driven Henry to commit these unspeakable acts—has much larger ramifications than mere sexual orientation.”

A
fter his conversation with Donald Chappell, Tom flew back to Washington. He holed up in an office with Norm Petrosky and the Bureau’s top profilers. Tom presented them with the facts. They churned them into speculation. For confirmation, they needed to talk with Bob Kellerman. But the candidate had just begun a vacation.

“The day he’s back on the clock, we blitz him. What’s his first event after his vacation is over?”

“A fundraiser in Long Island.”

“What day?”

“April 12.”

Like millions of Americans, the Kellermans wanted to vacation in Orlando, Florida. Few of those other hardworking Americans, though, had the media shadowing them 24/7. In order to achieve some semblance of privacy, the Kellerman campaign struck a deal with the major networks: leave the family in peace for one week, and upon his return to civilization the governor’s first public speech, at a fundraiser in Long Island, of all
places, would be the announcement of his running mate. April was extraordinarily early in the calendar for such an announcement to be made, but it was the highest card Bob Kellerman had that he was willing to play. The media accepted the deal. No one, of course, could keep the unregulated at bay—the bloggers, the paparazzi—but Kellerman’s campaign manager came up with a solution for that problem, as well, a solution as old as public fame. Look-alikes of Bob, his wife Betsy, their two children, even their golden retriever were hired, given a paid vacation to Disney World, and sent on their way.

The real family spent the week in Southern California. They went on Space Mountain four times. They shared a chicken dinner at Knott’s Berry Farm. They spent a day at Catalina Island. On the ferry ride back to the mainland, they saw dolphins. Everyone on the ferry rushed to the rail and pointed at the sea mammals and whipped out their digital cameras and no one—no one—gave a second’s glance to Bob, his wife Betsy, their two children and their golden retriever.

Esme spent the week in nerves. By day two, her fingernails had been gnawed to stubs. By day three, her pacing had inlaid a path on the living room carpet. She looked forward to her daily trips out to Amy Lieb’s mansion, if only for the distraction that party-planning provided. April 12 would be her official reintroduction into Long Island society, the return of the old Esme. But was she the same? Could she be the same? Her neighbors had watched the news. They knew what had happened to her. When she walked into the fundraiser,
dolled up in a $2000 evening gown, who would they really see?

And did she really care?

That didn’t matter. Her actions affected her family, reflected on her family. They affected Sophie. If Esme wasn’t looked upon as an everyday mom, the parents wouldn’t allow their children to play with hers. It was that simple. And so April 12 was, more than anything else, for her.

Esme hid her anxiety well. At night, when Rafe came home, when the four of them sat at the dinner table (because Lester just refused her kind offer of getting the fuck out of Dodge), she pretended that everything was pre-Amarillo. Everything was copacetic. Pass the broccoli? Sure. Lean forward, lift the plate, ignore the fist knuckle-punching your spine, here you go. When it came time for bed, she would slide into her spot beside her husband. They would kiss and say good-night. He would tell her he loved her. He would tell her he was proud of her. She would spend the next three hours trying to get comfortable, trying to go to sleep. Some nights it helped to tuck a small pillow under her lower back. April 12 approached.

And then there were the phone calls from Tom.

She didn’t listen to his messages. She couldn’t listen to his messages. He called at least once a day, and she deleted whatever voice mail he left. She deleted his e-mails. She felt awful treating him like this, but she’d made it clear to him how she felt. Sometimes bridges needed to be burned. She knew she was making the rational choice. But logic was a poor salve for a broken
heart. If you answered the phone when he called, if they got into another discussion, she didn’t trust herself enough to resist whatever he had to say. Maybe after the fundraiser, if she was able to make it through April 12 without a catastrophe, maybe then she would have the fortitude but not now. No way. Not to mention the fact that his messages just served to remind her of the extant, deadly connection between the fundraiser and Galileo.

As days piled on days, as she indoctrinated herself deeper and deeper into her old life, a curious transformation began to happen to Esme’s feelings about Tom. She began to resent him. Her therapist played a part in this, as did Rafe, but some of the resentment had to have come from her own psyche. Here she was, trying to do what was best for the people she loved, and he kept tempting her away from them and he had no right. She had been perfectly clear to him on the phone. Did he want her family to crumble?

Tom, for his part, also suffered, each time he picked up his phone to call. Of course he knew how she felt. Of course he remembered their last conversation. He could replay it, word for word, in his mind, like a bad song. He didn’t want to be a burden to her. But the April 12 fundraiser was practically in her backyard! Despite the preponderance of facts, the federal judge had deemed the evidence too circumstantial to issue a warrant to investigate the Kellerman campaign, and so Tom needed Esme, once again. He needed her to help him get to the governor. He wasn’t even sure she would be at the event, but she was his only hope. He wanted
to fly to Long Island in advance and talk with her in person, but the judge kept calling him back into chambers to justify his warrant application and the operation in Kansas City—probable site of Galileo’s next attack—kept requiring his presence and so it wasn’t until the afternoon of the day itself, April 12, that Tom was able to finally catch a flight to Oyster Bay.

He flew into LaGuardia. Traffic in the airport was ridiculous, probably because the Kellerman campaign had also just arrived, and with them the national press. Baggage claim was a zoo of grabby tourists, and by the time Tom made it to his motorcycle, which he’d had the foresight to have shipped in advance, it was already six o’clock. He motored east through blue-tinged dusk, and to battle.

Rafe was already in his tuxedo. Once he’d showered, shaved and deodorized, it took him a full ten minutes to get dressed. This included his silk-smooth black boxers, his silk-smooth black socks, his corrugated white shirt, his pleated black slacks, his pressed black jacket, and his red bow tie. The bow tie was a clip-on.

In the ten minutes it took Rafe to go from naked to James Bond, Esme had put on an earring. It was a pearl earring, one of a set that he’d given her one anniversary. It felt heavy on her lobe, as if the clam were still attached. Everything felt heavy tonight, lugubrious. She knew it was mental. She was mental. She spent another ten minutes forcing the other pearl earring into her other earlobe.

She was wearing a red evening gown. It made her cheeks look rosy, her breasts look full and her waist
look slim. It was a 3:00 a.m. infomercial made out of satin and silk. It was Rafe’s favorite outfit of hers. He had specifically requested she wear it.

It was backless.

She wasn’t wearing her bandage. She hadn’t worn it all day. She couldn’t turn around to look at herself in the mirror because the very act of swiveling her head roused the spike-fisted pain from its dormancy. She had to assume she looked okay. She had to assume there wasn’t a giant scar, like a tongue, where the wood had pierced her, where her kidney used to be, where the surgeon had sliced her open. She had to assume a lot, if she wanted to muster the courage to leave her bathroom and join her husband downstairs…

Where Sophie was drawing a picture of her dad, all dressed up, on half a sheet of construction paper. She was using colored pencils. Colored pencils were more grown-up, and this was to be a grown-up picture. This was one for the refrigerator. The other half of the paper was reserved for her mom. She was taking a long time.

Finally, she appeared! She looked nervous. She looked beautiful. Her lipstick matched her dress. Sophie tried to duplicate the color with her pencils, but it just wasn’t the same, it just wasn’t as
lively.
Oh, well.

Rafe held out his arm. It was time for them to go. Lester ambled out of his bedroom and wished them a good time. He already had a deck of cards in his hand. He and Sophie were destined for a marathon of gin rummy. Sophie walked up to the window and watched the car pull out of the driveway, angle onto
the road, and drive off, Princess Cinderella and Prince Charming away to the ball.

Since a particularly trenchant winter had done a number on their lawn, the Liebs had an acre of fresh sod imported and implanted days prior to the event. The result was a success. By the time guests began to arrive, their backyard was a verdant wonderland, something out of
The Great Gatsby.
It stretched over six hundred feet from the house’s rear patio to a long jagged cliff that overlooked the north shore. A tan fence lined the cliff to deter wayward children from falling to the eroded rocks and the lapping sea. Each of the fence’s twenty posts had been carved by a local woodworker to resemble one of the Liebs’ dear departed ancestors. Amy was fond of telling her children that someday they’d be a post on the fence.

The media arrived at 6:30 and promptly trampled the backyard to the root. They weren’t allowed in the house, so they spent the party here, chowing down on the hot dogs and hamburgers the Liebs had been thoughtful enough to provide for them. But each and every one wished they were inside. That was where the action was. Someone in that house was the man—or woman—that Bob Kellerman was going to announce to be his running mate. Errant speculation bounced from conversation to conversation. Could it be the mayor of New York? They knew he was here in attendance. Every local Democratic politician was here in attendance and some of the Republicans, too. Their nominee, the vice president, was polling in the low thirties. The party had begged the old man not to run. The nation saw him as
doddering and patrician. But primary season hadn’t awakened any sleeping giants to stomp him down, and so the vice president, unfortunately, was their man in November. And so the governor of New Jersey, a lifelong member of the Grand Old Party, was here, at a Democratic fundraiser, all to cozy up to the presumptive future president of the United States: Bob Kellerman.

“What do you suppose he’s like?” asked Rafe.

Esme shrugged her shoulders, stared out the window of their car. They had been sitting in their Prius for an hour now and were twenty-fifth in line for the valet parking up the Mississippi River of a driveway.

“George Washington had bad breath.”

Esme glanced at her husband. “What?”

“It was from his dentures. Legend has it that when he was giving the oath of office, the chief justice at the time, John Jay, held his breath for fear of smelling Washington’s odor and passing out right there in front of all the dignitaries. That would have been an inauspicious way to start a country, huh?”

Esme smiled at Rafe. He was trying to cheer her up. He knew how nervous she was. She slid her hand along his. Their wedding rings touched.

“Although I don’t think Bob Kellerman has wooden teeth,” Rafe added.

“Maybe he has a wooden leg.”

“Now why do you suppose it is we always associate wooden legs with pirates?”

They moved up in the line. They were now twenty-four cars away from the party.

“This reminds me of the junior prom,” said Rafe. “Did I ever tell you about that?”

“I don’t know.” He had. She wanted to hear the story again. “What happened?”

“It was at this old hotel in downtown. I went with this girl named Carly McGuiness. We went as friends, because the girl I wanted to ask, Hannah Draper, was already taken.”

“Poor baby.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Only twenty-three cars now. “Anyway, so I got all dressed up. It was the first time I ever wore a tuxedo. I was so nervous I had to get my mom to help me put in the cufflinks. My palms were like a dog’s tongue.”

“Ew.”

“Sorry, but they were! Man, I looked like such a dork.”

“I’ve seen the photo album.”

“Ugh. I forgot.”

“How convenient.”

“Anyway, I borrowed the truck and drove out to pick Carly up. When she came to the door…this was not a girl I had ever thought twice about—I mean, we were friends—but when she came to the door in that dress…”

“Let me guess. It was a red dress like the one I’m wearing.”

“You know what, Esme? I think you just saved me a year’s worth of therapy.”

She raspberried him. They were inching closer to the house.

“So after I picked my jaw up off the floor and Carly and I posed for our requisite photographs, we piled back into the truck and headed to the old hotel downtown for the prom. A lot of our friends were sharing a limo but Dad had refused to let me do that because he felt limousines to be juvenile.”

“Oh, yeah. Conspicuous consumption is so elementary school.”

Rafe snickered. “My dad is my dad.”

“Yes, he is.”

“It is nice of him to come here, Esme, and take care of Sophie and all that.”

Esme had other opinions, but she let it slide. There was no need to spoil this moment with something as jejune as the truth. And besides, they were ten cars away now from the end.

“We pulled up to the front of the hotel and it was a lot like this. A whole row of cars. So we had to wait. Me in the driver’s seat, my sweaty palms making a mess of the steering wheel, and Carly to my right, fiddling with the radio. It was May and it was hot and she insisted we keep the windows open. I thought I was going to perspire through my brand-new tux. I really did. But there was a breeze, at least, so I could smell Carly’s perfume, and that helped.”

“What did she smell like?”

“Apples.”

The three-story house was coming into view. Immaculate men and women emerged from their hybrids and their Hummers and strolled up the short brick path to the front portico. Thousands of tiny white lights
snaked around the marble columns. It was Christmas in April. Esme rubbed her moist palms on the car seat. She thought of dog’s tongues.