Ed Gorman - Blindside

‘But you went back to him. And he told you about the DVD he’d stolen from David.’ A conjecture, but a reasonable one.

‘Jim was going to blackmail them. He wanted me to help him and then we’d run away and get married. He was in love with me; we’d been sleeping together for a long time. I wasn’t sure if I loved him but I liked the idea of getting back at Jeff. But he wouldn’t do it. He got scared. All his big talk and his big plans, but when it came right down to it he wouldn’t do it. He just kept saying we’d go to prison. He got real paranoid. He even managed to get a gun somewhere and kept it in his car.’ I thought of the. 38 bullets I’d found in one of his bureau drawers; now I knew where he’d kept the gun. But the police hadn’t found it in his car.

‘You wrote his speeches for him.’

‘He had some kind of block. He wrote a couple of bad ones and Jeff started riding him. And that intimidated him. He couldn’t write anymore. I didn’t want to see him get fired. Is that how you figured out how I knew about the DVD?’

‘When I found out I started thinking maybe there was a connection. If you were close enough to know about his block, you’d probably be close enough to know about the DVD.’

After a time, she said, ‘When I was little and my parents got into their fights I’d always run down to the church and sit in the chapel. They had terrible fights. I got so I’d be afraid to go home. But sitting in the chapel with just the candles always helped me. Like nothing could touch me as long as I was there.’ Then: ‘I leaked a lot of stuff to the Burkhart campaign. I really wanted to hurt Jeff. Now I wish I hadn’t done that.’

So I finally had my spy.

‘I hate to say anything at a time like this, Dev — I mean poor David’s being operated on and here I’m worrying about myself — but do you think I’m in any legal trouble?’

‘Not if nobody ever finds out. Just about every campaign has a leaker once in a while. You should be fine.’

‘But I still feel guilty anyway. I wish I’d been nicer to Jim, too, and I wish I’d never known anything about that DVD. I think I really would’ve gone through with it.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe at the last minute you would’ve changed your mind.’

‘But I was really tempted.’

‘We’re all tempted to do all kinds of things. But we don’t do them. That’s what matters.’

I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘C’mon, I’ll walk you back to see Kathy. She’s probably worried about you.’

‘Sometimes this is all like a dream,’ she said, then stood up and carefully made her way out of the pew. She made a quick sign of the cross, then turned to me and said, ‘Even if we win, I’m going to quit. I can’t take any more of him, Dev. I really can’t.’

In my hotel room I checked my messages and drank a beer. The wind smashed invisible fists against the windows. For a time I thought about Erin, about how much I’d been in love with her and how, as I’d learned talking to her again, at least some of those feelings remained. Her dying seemed impossible. Not in this time continuum, not in this universe. She was too fiercely alive to ever not exist in earthly form. Then I thought of our daughter and what she was going through now. The same fears I had.

The surgeon had told us that David’s surgery had gone well. The evaluation would continue tomorrow with a neurologist brought in. I’d said my goodnights and come back here.

I needed to change the subject. Jenny’s cell phone rang several times before she answered. The clamor made me hold the phone away from my ear. Banging band, shouts, laughter, cries.

No point in trying to recreate the conversation. It was interrupted several times, once by somebody apparently trying to grope her. I had to repeat four times exactly what I wanted her to do. She finally seemed to grasp what I was saying and began to sound suspicious. Or maybe not. Maybe I was imagining it. Hard to say. She was in a club not far from my hotel. But she agreed. Half an hour. The bar downstairs.

The place was crowded. Another convention, this one of certified public accountants, began in the morning and the early arrivals had decided to throw back a few in the quiet, respectable way one would hope CPAs would conduct themselves. No one had barfed on the bar yet or goosed a waitress or thrown a punch. That might come later, but looking around it seemed unlikely. These guys didn’t even raise their voices when they drank. These people were downright un-American. Or maybe it was simply the fact that a good number of the CPAs were women, almost always a civilizing factor except on the dimmest of American Express cowboys.

She was twenty minutes late. The male CPAs paused in their quiet conversations to note the fact that a fetching young woman had entered their purview. She’d given up on Goth and now wore an expensive black coat and black heels. She began to take her coat off before she reached my booth, revealing a smart black dress. I wondered if Armani had a line of mourning clothes.

Only the hair and face were the same, a hint of fashionable street girl and Eastern college coed. The only difference now was the lack of luster in the dark eyes and the grave gray circles beneath them. Her sigh sounded weary when she collapsed into the booth across from me. ‘God, thanks for calling. I just couldn’t seem to leave that place. I hadn’t been there in a long time and all these creeps I used to hang with wouldn’t leave me alone.’

A waitress appeared. I asked for another Scotch and water. I expected underage Jenny to order Perrier or the like but she said, ‘A glass of merlot, please.’

The woman, at least as weary as Jenny, glanced at me. I shrugged. ‘I’ll have to see some ID, miss.’

‘Oh, sure.’ And from within a shiny black purse slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, Jenny’s hand secured a red wallet. She flipped it open and offered it up. The waitress’s eyes went from the ID to Jenny and back again. She returned the wallet with a ‘Thank you, miss.’ She took one more look at me, knowing she’d been bullshitted.

‘How much did that cost you?’

‘It’s a pretty good one. Two hundred and fifty. I haven’t been turned down yet.’ Jenny should have been sounding boastful, insolent, but not tonight. And it was just then that I noticed she’d started biting her lower lip; I also noticed the quick look of apprehension now filling the eyes.

She knew why I’d asked her to come over here.

‘I miss Jim. I even called his number a couple of times today just to hear it ring. Isn’t that crazy? I’m glad they haven’t disconnected it yet.’

‘We all do stupid things when we’re suffering. Right after my dad died I used to put on one of his sweaters and pair of shoes and walk around in them all day.’

‘That’s pretty sad.’

‘I suppose, but at the time it was comforting.’

The waitress was back with our drinks. As she set Jenny’s drink down, she said, ‘Honey, whatever you paid for that ID, you spent too much. But this is the only drink you’re going to get from me tonight, okay?’

After she was gone, Jenny said, ‘They never hassle me about it at clubs.’

‘They may have paid off the cops and don’t have to worry about it.’

‘You’re always so cynical.’

‘Practical. That’s how a lot of clubs operate, otherwise they’d be out of business.’

‘I thought I looked older, anyway.’

‘Not tonight you don’t. You look exhausted — and scared.’

The last word jolted her. She had been about to raise her glass of merlot but then stopped. ‘I don’t know what I’d be scared about.’

‘Sure you do.’

She gripped her drink hard enough to whiten her knuckles. ‘If you keep looking at me that way I probably will be scared. Are you drunk or something? The only reason I came here was because I thought you’d make me feel better.’