MaxAllan Collins - Quarry's vote

“Yes. But I wish I wasn’t.”

“What do you mean, Jack?” Her anger was fading already.

“Nothing. Let’s forget about this and just have a nice meal, okay?”

“Oh-kay,” she sighed, smirking with frustration, and we ordered drinks-her a martini (again) and me a Diet Coke (again), and I got her talking about her kids for awhile. The older one was a cheerleader, but not such a great student; the younger girl was shy, though her marks were excellent. Angela’s eyes lit up when she talked about them. The sadness that I’d noticed in her last night was absent this evening, at least when her kids were the topic of discussion.

I hadn’t eaten anything today, so I had a full dinner, the main course wiener schnitzel (the Sundance menu wasn’t particularly frontier-oriented); Angela, who probably weighed one hundred twenty, had the diet plate.

She was having a second martini, an after dinner one, when I got back into it.

“I need to ask you something about your husband,” I said.

“Bob? What about him?”

“You said he’s working for George Ridge now.”

“Yes. He’s an… executive assistant, I think is the title.”

“But Ridge and Preston Freed had a bitter falling out. Are you aware of that?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding.

“Yet you indicated your husband is still under Freed’s ‘spell.’”

“Yes, Bob’s still a member of the Democratic Action party. I don’t think he’s as active as he used to be, but… I don’t get your point.”

“Well, the point is, how can he work for Ridge, and still be involved with Freed?”

“I don’t know. Lots of people who work together, who’re in business together, disagree politically. Is that so unusual?”

I let some air out. Shrugged. “I just figured the rift between Ridge and Freed was so acrimonious, it’d spill over into other things …”

“Maybe so. I really don’t know anything about it. Why don’t you ask George Ridge about it? Or Freed? Or Bob, for that matter?”

She didn’t know it, of course, but nobody was going to be talking to Bob again, not unless it was with a Ouija board. And the same would be true of George Ridge, before long, once I’d met him and his plane Monday night. Freed I could, and would, ask.

“Something else we need to talk about,” I said.

“Yes?” Her smile was eager; she was assuming, wrongly, this would be pleasant.

“Don’t ask me how I know this. Don’t ask me how I did this exactly.”

“Know what? Did what?”

“That rumor about Preston Freed’s video-tape library.”

She smiled, laughed softly. “His triple-X home movies, you mean. What about it?”

“It’s no rumor.”

She shrugged. “I’m not really surprised. But how’d you verify it? Oh, sorry-you said not to ask…”

She wasn’t as impressed as she should be.

I reached over to the chair next to me where my brown leather coat was draped. I got the black plastic box out of one pocket and showed it to her. “This is from his private library.”

She smiled one-sidedly, a little amazed. “You’re kidding!”

“No. Check out the spine.”

She looked at it. “‘Angela,’” she said. “Well, this isn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Hey, he’s got a camera pointing right at his bed. He’s got a shelf of over thirty tapes with the names of women on every one of them. There’s no reason to kid me.”

“Jack. Read my lips. This isn’t me. I never slept with Freed. Or did anything with him. Have you screened this?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know where to find a machine that’ll play it. It won’t play in a home VCR-I need the kind they use at TV stations.”

“Three-quarter inch, not half-inch,” she said, nodding. “You know, I think I know where I can find us a screening room.”

We took her car. It was dark now, as we headed up Brady through its neon franchise canyon, gliding along by BEST BUY, heading on out past the shopping malls and even her own housing addition. Well past the city limits, as Iowa farmland began to kick in, a cluster of small buildings appeared at our left, a garden of big metal mushrooms- satellite dishes-along its one side.

We got out of the car and she looped her arm in mine, saying, “If Chuck still works here, and I think he does, we’ll be in business. I used to drop Preston Freed’s weekly ‘news’ show off to ’im.”

There were no lights on in the front, office part of the small building complex, but a few windows glowed toward the rear. The side door, marked “Cable Vision Employees Only,” just this side of the mesh fence that enclosed the satellite-dish garden, was unlocked. I followed her in and down a narrow hall.

An open door to the right revealed a small studio, lights unlit, cameras unattended; she knocked at the next door and, shortly, a shaggy-haired mustached guy in a dark green sweater and blue jeans answered, styrofoam coffee cup in hand. He was about thirty-five and sleepy-eyed; dope was in his past and maybe his present. Behind him was a small but elaborate control booth, video tape machines and monitors and banks of switches, with a big window looking out on that empty studio.

“Well! How ya doin’, beautiful,” he said, brightening at seeing her. “Don’t tell me you’re workin’ for the Great White Father again.”

She laughed. “No, I had enough of that windbag to last a lifetime. You’re still running on caffeine, I see.”

He sipped his coffee. “It’s legal. What’s the occasion?”

“Need a favor, Chuck.”

“Hey, anything for a pretty face. You still selling cars?”

“Yes, and that’s why I’m here. We had this hotshot advertising firm out of Cedar Rapids do some commercials for us, but when the tape arrived, it was on three-quarter. All we have at the

showroom is a VHS.”

“And you wanna screen the sucker. Well, no problem, babe. There’s a machine and a monitor in the office next door.” He pointed with his thumb to a door that said STATION MANAGER. “It’s not locked.”

“Thanks, Chuck.”

“No problem-o, babe. Gotta get back to work. Let me know when you’re leavin’…”

He toasted her with his coffee and shut himself back in his booth.

“They run a pretty tight ship around here,” I said.

“It’s a small operation,” she said, leading me into the station manager’s office, a cluttered cubbyhole with a desk and several files but also a stand on which sat a TV monitor and, under it, a big VCR. “They serve several small communities. And they’re making some dough uplinking Freed’s show for him every week.”

I handed her the tape and she inserted it in the machine and we stood and watched.

Watched, thanks to a sharply focused if stationary camera, Preston Freed in spirited action with a lovely blond girl of about twenty. I fast-forwarded it through several sexual positions and practices and some mutual coke use and, while it was hardly a testimonial to the conservative values Preston Freed extolled, the tape had nothing to do with Angela Jordan.

Almost immediately she said, “That’s Angela Huseby.”

“So it isn’t you.”

“No, of course not. See for yourself. I’m not the only Angela in the world.”

“Who is this girl?”

“She was only with the party for a few months. She’s dead.”

I looked at her sharply. “Dead?”

“She had a nervous breakdown. Suicide.”

“When was this?”

“At least two years ago.”

I shut the tape off. “I’m sorry. I should’ve believed you.”

She smiled at me, touched my arm. “You were trying to do me a favor, weren’t you? You saw the name on that tape, and assumed it was me, and took it. To give to me.”