Steve Martini - Double Tap

“Yes, but he’s also softened his tune to harmonize with the audience he already has. The man’s adaptable. He knows where he is, never loses his place. He knows exactly how many challenges he has left and what he has to do when he starts running dry. Unless I miss my bet, by the time he’s finished, our jury’s going to be in his pocket.”

“Well, I’m glad to see we’re on top of things. So how do you propose to deal with him?”

I see Janice, my secretary, coming this way through the half-open blinds at the window nearest the door. She wouldn’t bother us unless it was something important.

“If we’re lucky, maybe we won’t have to.”

“What are you talking about?”

I get up out of the chair and head toward the door.

“If you have a plan to push Templeton out of the case, I’d like to know what it is,” says Harry.

“Not exactly. Bear with me.” I give him a wink, then open the door before Janice can knock.

“There’s somebody here to see you,” she says. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but I didn’t know if you’d want to see him. Says he’s an old friend.” She hands me a business card.

I rub my thumb over the embossed gold seal to see if it is still hot from the press. Representative, 42nd Congressional District . Leave it to Nathan Kwan to have his congressional cards printed before the election results have hit the wire services in the southern part of the state.

As I enter the office half a beat behind my secretary, Nathan is sitting on the couch. He greets me with a big smile as I come through the door.

“Hey, buddy. Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.” He’s up off the couch, leaving the newspaper he was reading behind him on one of the sofa cushions.

“No, no. There’s never a bad time to see an old friend. Especially an important one.”

“What can I say? Cream always rises to the top.” We both laugh. “Along with bullshit.” We shake hands. It was a saying we had when Nathan and I shared space in the Capital County DA’s Office more than twenty years ago now, a way of laughing at the overlords who shuttled us around, giving us case assignments and bragging about their brilliance in court when they used to try cases.

“I know you’re up to your ass in the trial of the century. I was just reading about it in the newspaper,” he says. “So I’ll make the visit short. I guess we’re both famous. Or should I say infamous.”

“More like it,” I tell him.

Nathan always has a warm smile, one of his best features, and a good sense of humor. His quest for power has never left him without a laugh and healthy appreciation for self-deprecation.

“I guess congratulations are in order!” I’m holding up his business card, reading it. “Impressive.”

“Yep, gold seal and all,” he says. “Pretty soon I’ll have congressional cuff links. I’m told that if I can survive one term and get reelected, they’ll give me the decoder ring.”

Nathan has won the special election for the open seat in Congress created by the death of the incumbent. The last time I saw him he was nibbling at the edges. Two weeks later he jumped into the campaign with both feet. According to tidbits in the papers, he had been leaning toward the race quietly for some time, apparently sizing up the man’s office in D.C. with a measuring tape right after he died.

“It was an opportunity, so I seized it.” He pauses a second. “Okay, don’t tell anybody, but I carpetbagged.” Nathan’s comic timing has always been pretty good. This has been all over the news up in Capital City for months. I’ve seen his opponent’s charges in the headlines on the Internet. Nathan moved his residence into the district, large portions of which seemed to neatly coincide with his old Senate seat in the legislature.

“I’d like to say I planned it. The fact is, it was a godsend. I think I told you the last time we met I was about to tap out in the Senate. Term limits.”

“I remember.”

“Under the circumstances it pains me to say I got lucky. Did you ever meet Troy Olders, the congressman who passed away?”

“I don’t think I ever did.”

“He was a very nice guy. Died of Hodgkin’s. It was a long illness.” The way Nathan says it, I get the sense maybe it was a little too long. “He was a friend. He told me when he was dying that if he could pick anybody to succeed him in Congress, it would be me. I cried. Can you believe it?”

With Nathan I can believe it. For a man steeped in the cynical world of politics, who has come a long way from a hard-scrabble beginning, his emotions run to the sentimental side. Before law school he had been a cop for a few years on the Capital City force. This was after a stint in the Army. Nathan is a man with a million former lives. I am told he dug deep into his pockets on more than one occasion to help people in trouble. To Nathan, old-world liberalism is real, a kind of religion: Christian charity imposed through the ballot box. The product of an Asian father and an Irish mother, he is a man with dreams that, for the most part, he has realized-though if I had to guess, based on the card in my hand, he is not quite finished whipping that horse.

“I really didn’t mean to interrupt, but it may be the last chance I have to get down here for a long time-my last trip south before I resign from the State Senate-so I wanted to stop by. I have something for you.” He has a big grin on his face.

I glance at Janice. This is why she interrupted to bring me his card.

Nathan turns around and reaches under the newspaper on the couch behind him. He comes out with a package. It is gift-wrapped in striped foil with a wide red ribbon tied in a bow. He hands it to me.

It is flat and heavy. I’m guessing maybe a coffee-table book.

“Open it,” he says.

I peel the ribbon off of one corner and let it drop, then tear the foil paper. Janice and the receptionist are looking on, smiling, trying to get a glimpse.

“What is it?” With Nathan I can never be sure. Whatever it is, it’s boxed in cardboard under the paper. I split the cellophane tape holding the fold closed on one end of the box.

“Be careful.” Nathan puts a hand down to make sure it doesn’t slide out onto the floor. Heavy wood and glass, the picture frame is upside down as I flip the empty box onto the couch. When I turn it over, I am startled to see myself under glass, a younger face and twenty pounds lighter. In the photo I am standing in the kitchen of our old home in Capital City. Standing next to me behind the center island is Nikki, my wife who has been dead nearly ten years now. She is holding our daughter, Sarah, in her arms.

“Sarah was only eighteen months old when I took that,” he says. “I remember because you told me. You were a proud papa,” he says.

I have a lump in my throat. My eyes are watering. It is perhaps the best picture of the three of us I have ever seen, and one of the few I have left from that period of my life.

“Remember the old Olympus thirty-five millimeter? I used to carry it in my pocket. That’s what I shot it with. Look at the detail. That was a good camera. Wish I still had it,” he says.

“I remember,” I tell him. “You used to take pictures of everything in sight.”

“That’s my Asian half,” he says.

I do the only thing I can think to do at this moment: I reach out and hug him, holding the picture tight in one hand as we stand in the center of my reception area, two guys, arms around each other, choking back sniffles. Nathan pats my back with one hand and holds the coffee cup away with the other so that it doesn’t slosh on my shirt.

“Tell me it doesn’t bring back memories,” he says.

“It brings back memories. Good ones,” I tell him.