Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

“Indeed.” I ordered a scotch on the rocks, changed my mind and had a glass of wine. “You know Pinkie better probably than anyone here. How long do you think he can stay out of the slam this time?”

“How long?” James gazed across the room to where Conklin was holding forth in front of a rank of cameras. The innocent man had an arm around Jennifer’s slim waist. She was smiling, making a show of listening to him, but her body language betrayed her revulsion. “How long depends on how closely they watch over him. My estimate is, they’ll him clean long enough to get through his suit against the police department. After that? He’ll stay clean until his money is gone.”

“He’s friendly with you?”

“Seems to be.”

“How would you feel about setting up an interview for me?”

“For what purpose?”

“The film. I’ve taped his son and mother-in-law, about half his neighborhood, it seems. I think he deserves equal time.”

James studied me for an uncomfortable moment before he decided. He raised his soda water to me. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Baron Marovich came in without entourage. Almost by stealth, he walked up to Conklin, shook his hand, mugged with him for the cameras for less than a minute. I watched him bow his head to whisper something to Jennifer, I saw her blanch. She recovered her poise quickly when someone called her name, turned her attention again to the barrage of questions.

“Will Mr. Conklin file suit against the city? Where does he plan to live? What is the first thing he plans to do as a free man?”

The way Conklin kept eyeing Jennifer, I thought the answer to that last question was damned obvious.

With no more fuss than the waiters who moved through the crowd clearing away dirty dishes, Marovich cleared himself away through the service doors.

I gulped my drink, gave James’s arm a squeeze, and slipped out the same way.

I caught up with Marovich waiting for the freight elevator in a back hallway. When he saw me, he laughed in a sad, resigned sort of way. The hair was still perfect, but he looked exhausted, pale eyes nearly transparent, deep dark circles below them.

“You,” he said. “Everywhere I look-you.”

“I hoped we could talk.”

“I need a drink,” he sighed. “What do you say?”

“Fine, as long as it’s in a public place and we drink out of the same bottle.”

Like Jennifer, he blanched. “I had nothing to do with doping Guido Patrini. I know you’ll have some difficulty believing me at this point, but I had nothing to do with the Kelsey situation.”

“Situation?” I asked.

“Drinks first,” he said.

We went down to the elegant lobby bar.

While the waiter waited, Marovich asked me, “Do you like champagne?”

“For celebrations.”

“Then, it’s champagne.”

I said, “You can’t expect me to celebrate what just happened in court.”

“No,” he said. “This is my very own party.”

We had icy Dom Perignon in crystal flutes, and tiny canapes. The background music was vintage Ray Charles. The setting was perfect for an auspicious occasion. And clearly, this was an occasion. I just didn’t know what it was about. Marovich watched the bubbles rise in his glass and then he tipped its rim to mine.

“What are we celebrating?” I asked.

“The end.”

“But it isn’t over. Lawsuit, book deal, movie rights-it’s just beginning.”

“Not for me.” He pulled a folded sheet from his inside pocket and handed it to me. “My office issued this statement at five o’clock this afternoon.”

My watch said ten after.

The single sheet was heavy bond, the district attorney’s letterhead. Over Marovich’s signature, I read, “I have worked for the city and county of Los Angeles for the last eighteen years, fortunate all that time to be able to perform work that I love.

So it is with some sadness, but no regret, that I announce my decision to withdraw from the race for district attorney.

“I do not have the heart to wage the brutal, personal, negative campaign that it would be necessary to wage to prevail over my opponent. I have closed my campaign offices and ordered my staff to immediately cease all campaign activities.

“At this time, it is my intention to retire from public office to spend more time with my family. I wish Godspeed to my opponent.”

No mention of the untimely demise of Roddy O’Leary in the announcement. I asked, “Why?”

“You just read why.”

I handed back his bombshell. “I also read today that I’ve been pursued by a deranged stalker, so don’t push any more fiction on me. What happened? You have a talk with Jesus?”

“I had a meeting all right. But it wasn’t with Jesus.” He flicked the caviar garnish off a canape before he ate it. “Campaign staff pow-wow. I can’t win. It’s as simple as that.”

“You still have five weeks to pull off a miracle.”

“I’m out of the miracle business.” Marovich finished off his glass in a long swallow, moved forward in a chummy posture. “I had nothing to do with what happened last night, Maggie. I fired Roddy yesterday.”

I said, “Uh huh,” as in, liar.

“I did. Hardest scene I ever went through. ‘Everything I’ve done for you,’ he says. ‘Conklin will pull up the polls,’ he says, `get the momentum going again.’ Couldn’t take it anymore. I fired his ass.”

“About time,” I said, and refilled Marovich’s glass for him.

“Had to do it.” A black, sardonic laugh. “He was going to be indicted, anyway. I knew you wouldn’t leave him alone until you had him up for murder. I cut my losses.”

“Better hope you did it in time. Why are you talking to me, anyway? Aren’t you afraid how I might use what you say?”

Suddenly he looked old rather than exhausted, his star luster fading. When he spoke, there was sad resignation in his voice.

“No one’s listening, Miss MacGowen,” he said. “I’m history as of five o’clock. I’ll get a few gasps over the news, but by tomorrow, after the follow-up, in-depth a.m. edition bullshit, I’ll become invisible. No one will care about anything I did. By day after tomorrow, ninety percent of the people who wept for Conklin on the news tonight won’t even recognize his name. You know how it works.”

“Three people are dead.”

Eyes evasive, he said, “Roddy ran amok.”

“He’s dead, so he’s taking the whole rap?” I felt sick.

“Police have found evidence linking him to two killings, Hanna Rhodes and Jerry Kelsey.”

“We a know about the immutability of evidence, though, don’t we?” I meant to be sarcastic, but there was a catch in my throat that made it sound bitter, injured. “For a long time, I tried to figure out why, in the middle of the political fight of your life, you would resurrect an old case that was such a potential bomb. Finally, it came to me.”

“Drink up,” he said.

“Remember the story about the peasant’s daughter who had to spin straw into gold or the king would kill her, kill her father, too?”

“What?” Off guard and wary.

“That’s what happened to you, isn’t it? You had to turn a disaster into political gold, or die.”

“You’re telling me a fairy story?”

“There are great moral lessons in those stories. That’s why we read them to our kids, you know.” I filled his glass again. “So, this peasant girl lies and cheats, trades her firstborn to get some elf to do the actual work for her and save her neck. Then, as her reward, the king marries her. The reward for the elf? She gets him killed.”

“What’s the moral? Cheaters prosper?”

“Hell no. She made her bed, she had to lie in it ever after-I’m not sure about the happily part. Every night, she had to fuck this greedy king who had held a death sentence over her.” I smiled up at Marovich then. “I think she got her punishment, don’t you? She couldn’t divorce the king. You can’t divorce this mess by resigning from the race or putting everything on Roddy’s ticket.”