Эд Горман - Stranglehold

“His father was a leftist and his brother was a fag.”

I took two steps toward him. I was happy to see the fear spoil his central-casting face. “Listen to me, you piece of shit. Don’t push it or I’ll take you apart right here. You understand me?”

I’d spoken louder than I’d intended. His eyes scanned the lobby to see if anybody was aware of what was going on. I turned and walked toward the Governor’s Room, the main restaurant so named because a governor in the early part of the last century had come from Aldyne. His bearded scowl hung from every wall.

We took a table that overlooked the river. Fishermen lined the far shore. They were likely much happier than I was at the moment.

Larson ordered a double scotch and water. I ordered a cup of coffee.

“Think you’ll get me drunk and I’ll tell you everything?”

“Just tell me what you want to tell me.”

“The ladies must really like your idea of foreplay.”

He waited until the waitress had brought our drinks and taken our orders and then he said, “Monica and I were about to dissolve our partnership.” He must have expected some dramatic response from me. I just stared at him. “I found out what she’d been up to the last three or four years.” I still said nothing. “Are you interested in this or not?”

“Not so far. Why would I care if two sleazebags didn’t want to work together anymore?”

He sat back, folded his hands on the table, and frowned. “I have to admit I probably went a little overboard on Potter. But it was a close race, Dev. I hit him with the only thing I could.”

“His father’s a decent man and so is his brother.”

“I guess that’s where we differ. If the old man is so ‘decent,’ why is he such a socialist?”

“Universal health care makes him a socialist?”

“Hell, yes, it does. And you know what I’m talking about. Some of the op-eds he wrote against going to war in Iraq bordered on treason.”

“You’d better look up treason, Larson. You don’t know what the word means. And all he said was that we were being lied to. That hardly qualifies as treason.”

“And his brother — that state doesn’t want some flaming faggot to be its senator’s brother. Especially when he’s always pushing for gay marriage and gay adoption.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help myself.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m sitting here talking to some fop with manicured fingers who’s had two or three face-lifts and two turns at liposuction. You’re the flamer, Larson. Not Dave Potter. He’s like his brother Bill. He did two tours in Iraq when it was at its worst. So knock off the phony John Wayne bullshit. And Wayne was a draft dodger, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“That was a nice little speech.”

“Bill Potter was a good senator and a decent man. Unlike the hack you got elected. I was surprised he didn’t show up wearing his white sheet and carrying a torch.”

“Very funny.”

“So what the fuck do you want? I’m giving you three minutes to lay it out or you’ll be eating both of our lunches by yourself.”

Out came the salads, came a refill of coffee for me, came the fresh hot bread.

“I found out that Monica was blackmailing three of our clients. One of them was Natalie Cooper.” He was pleased with himself. He’d gotten my attention. But my silence made him uneasy. He hurried on. “That’s why somebody killed her.”

“And you, of course, didn’t know anything about the blackmail?”

“I’m ruthless. I’m not stupid. Monica was both. She went through our money as soon as we got it. She even tried to convince me we needed a private jet. But she was a good front for our firm. She was good on TV and the cable boys didn’t hate her the way they hate me. So she was useful. But she was greedy and so she got into blackmail.”

“If she didn’t cut you in, how did you find out about it?”

“I had her computer hacked. She was smart enough to never say anything outright, but after I read a few hundred e-mails it became clear what she was doing.”

“Why are you telling me? Shouldn’t you be telling the police?”

“You’re losing your savvy, Dev. The police know there was a lot of friction between Monica and me. A couple of people in the hotel told them about our shouting matches. They wouldn’t mind pinning her death on me. The press would love it. It’d be like seeing Karl Rove in a perp walk. You people would be having multiple orgasms if you saw something like that. So I’m sure as hell not going to let them know that I had a good reason to want to kill her.”

Our food came. I had no appetite. I stuck to coffee. He started sawing on his rare steak immediately. After his cheeks were puffed out with meat and his lips glistened with blood, he said, “And there’s another reason. If any of this ever hits the press, I need you to verify that I told you all this. If I’d had anything to do with the blackmail, I sure as hell wouldn’t have told you about it.”

“Because if the story gets out about blackmail, you’re out of business whether you had anything to do with it or not.”

“You don’t have to sound so goddamn happy.”

I pushed my plate away and then pushed my chair back.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“I have work to do.”

“I tell you all this and you just get up and leave without saying anything?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

I threw down a ten for the tip and left the Governor’s Room. The old fart in all the framed photographs and paintings looked crabbier than ever.

The Cooper estate stretched across a sprawling piece of land that was partly forest and partly field inhabited by the massive stone Tudor-style great house and the lesser servants’ quarters and the stables where the horses were kept. Senator Cooper had bred and raised trotters. The white fences were stark in the bright afternoon. I pulled up on the circular drive and parked in front of the place. I stood for a moment watching a man walking a horse in from the field to the stables. There was something timeless about it, like a French pastoral painting. The door had a leaded-window insert and was made of half-timber paneling. I had the feeling a tonsured monk might open it.

A friendly woman in a russet-colored dress greeted me. The white hair framed a handsome face that had likely persevered seventy-some years in this vale of tears. “Yes, may I help you, sir?”

“My name is Dev Conrad. I need to see Mrs. Cooper.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Conrad. Please come in. My name is Winnie Masters. I’m Mrs. Cooper’s secretary.”

My feet echoed on a gleaming dark floor as she led me through an entry hall that was probably as big as the tiny house where my ex-wife and I spent our first two years. This house felt like a museum, and I didn’t like it at all. As we moved down a hall I began to notice an endless number of framed photographs on the walls. The late senator and Natalie in meet-and-greets with everybody from Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela to Bono.

As we continued our trek I noticed a formal dining room to the left. There was enough room for a good share of the United Nations to eat there. Winnie Masters finally stopped when we reached another Tudor door. This one hadn’t required three trees to build, but it still had the sturdy and somewhat forbidding air of all such doors. Winnie opened it, then stood aside while I walked into a timbered den filled with icons of many different eras. The enormous floor-to-ceiling bookcases contrasted with the largest plasma screen I’d ever seen. The snapping flames in the brick fireplace seemed out of place in a room where a dozen theater seats were set in front of a movie screen partially covered with a curtain. There was a dry bar in a far corner. Before she directed me to a deep leather chair, Winnie Masters produced a quaint little coffee cup and said, “Do you take anything in your coffee, Mr. Conrad?”