Steve Martini - Undue Influence

I don’t tell her about Jack’s fall from grace, his sealed indictment, or plea of guilty to dirty politics. This would no doubt buoy her spirits. It might also lead her to talk, tales of jubilation. Jails have ears. At this moment Jack’s travails and the fact that a curtain has been thrown over them by the federal court is like my card facedown in a game of blackjack — something that, if the gods are with me, Morgan Cassidy does not know.

‘Tell me about Jack’s operation.’ I’m talking about the vasectomy.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Why did he do it?’

‘To clear the decks for action.’ She gives me a little laugh, as if to say, ‘Why else?’

‘You know Jack. He never saw a skirt he wouldn’t chase. And he didn’t like condoms. Jack had a saying, usually reserved for the cronies he ran with, but I heard him more than once. Jack used to say that rolling latex was for housepainters. That was back before AIDS was part of the lexicon,’ she says. ‘Jack had a special talent for rubbing my nose in his affairs.’

‘How did you feel? About the operation, I mean.’

She laughs. ‘You think he consulted me? He went off and had it done, an hour in the doctor’s office. He didn’t tell me until later, months later.

‘By that time it probably didn’t matter,’ she says. ‘We were married in name only. He’d leave me and the kids all night and go off with his friends, lobbyists with a license to take their limit of trollop.’

I remember these nights, Laurel and the kids, Julie younger than Sarah is now, coming over to visit with Nikki and me, Laurel on a constant search for social interaction, confirmation that she could still relate in an adult world. Jack would come home with the morning paper, smelling like a brewery, wrinkled clothes, his underwear inside out, telling Laurel that he’d been at a meeting. Vega was always transparent. To him, being a legislator meant that people had to believe your lies.

And Jack could get in trouble. For a man with a wandering eye, he was intensely jealous. Twice he’d gotten into fights over women he had not seen before that night.

To Jack, commitment was always geared to the cut of the tush and the size of the bra — double D stood for dueling. Sniff in the wrong place and Jack could rack horns like a moose in heat. When it came to women, Vega had a herd instinct. Possession was always nine-tenths. I’d seen his nose bloodied and his eye blackened after one of these brawls.

‘Do you know who the physician was who did the vasectomy?’

‘I’d have to look in a phone book, but I think I could find it. If he’s still in practice,’ she says.

‘And he’d have the medical records?’

‘I suppose. I could call it to your office tomorrow,’ she says.

‘No. I’ll have Harry come by in the afternoon with a notepad.’ I don’t trust the telephones in this place. Conversations have a way of getting to prosecutors.

‘One other thing, then I’ve got to go,’ I tell her. ‘Do you remember the gun that Jack had? The chrome pistol in the walnut box?’

‘That was a long time ago,’ she says.

‘But you remember it?’

‘How can I forget? He spent more time with that thing than he did with me. Until the novelty wore off.’

What she means is like everything else in Jack’s life.

‘Do you know what happened to it?’

‘Last time I saw it Jack had it. Made a big deal out of it in the property settlement agreement.’

This would be like Jack. Give up half his retirement benefits for a shiny gun.

‘Do you have a copy of the agreement?’

‘At home with my papers. The box in my closet,’ she says.

I have the key to her place, Sarah and I watering her plants, taking care of the place.

‘Maybe he sold it or lost it?’ I’m thinking out loud.

‘Not likely. Why?’

“Cuz when the cops asked him, the night Melanie was murdered, if he ever owned a gun, he told them no. They searched the house pretty well. If it was there they would have found it.’

‘You think that was the gun?’

‘No. But I’m wondering why he lied.’

It’s four-thirty in the afternoon, Harry and I locked in a heated argument over the strategy on pretrial motions. My intercom buzzes. I pick up the receiver.

‘Dana Colby. She says it’s important.’ The receptionist.

‘What line?’

‘No. She’s here in the office.’

I tell Harry, make a face like search me, and excuse myself for a moment.

I find her out in the reception area, looking at one of the prints on the wall, Harry’s pride, a black-and-white daguerreotype of two riverboats locked in the dead heat of a race, steaming under streams of black smoke up the river from the Delta, before the turn of the century.

She hears me and turns. ‘Sorry to bother you.’

‘No problem, what is it?’

‘I’ve got something I have to show you,’ she says. ‘Can we talk someplace private?’

I lead her to the library and close the door. I offer her a cup of coffee. She says no. I pour myself a cup.

Dana breaks open her briefcase on one of the library tables and pulls out a manila folder.

‘I have some pictures I’d like you to take a look at.’

I’ve been doing this on and off for days at the federal building, looking for the face of the courier in FBI mug books, broken down by specialty; people who do bombs.

The fact that Dana has brought this set to my office tells me that maybe they think they have something hot.

‘Bear with me,’ she says.

She arranges the photographs, various sizes, facedown on the coffee table.

‘I want you to look carefully at each one,’ she says, then flips over number one, an eight-by-ten glossy. A guy, caucasian, in his twenties, white numbers on a black plaque jammed under his chin, a lot of dead in the eyes. I shake my head.

Number two is a little older, military haircut, no numbers, more clean-cut, but he rings no bells.

She turns over the third picture. Still no prize.

The fourth picture is a tiny one. She turns it over. Color on a blue background. Not a mug shot, but something from Motor Vehicles. I have to squint to see it, hold it in my hand, and suddenly I am standing bolt upright, big eyes like someone has fed me cyanide.

Dana sees my expression and stops.

‘That’s him. The courier,’ I tell her.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I could not forget that face.’

Thin lips, hair clipped like someone ran a mower over it. Eyes as cold as an Eskimo’s ass. As for age, it could be the picture of Dorian Gray, anywhere from twenty to forty-five, but in good shape, like he works out. He looks more mature in the picture than he did that day at the post office. I attribute this to the uniform he wore. The eye sees what the mind expects. A lot of couriers are college students making ends meet.

‘Who is he?’

She reaches for a notepad in her briefcase.

‘Name is Lyle Simmons, alias Frank Jordan, alias James Hays, and so on and so forth. Former Green Beret, sometime soldier of fortune. Hires himself out for odd jobs.’ The way she says this I know she’s not talking about gardening.

‘He’s under suspicion in two unsolved murders in Oregon. No convictions. Fancies himself a high-tech security type. That’s what he claims to be his legitimate business. When you can find him.’

‘Any record?’

‘He’s been arrested three times on weapons violations, two convictions. It seems they always catch him on the way to or from work, never at it,’ she says.

‘How did you find him?’

‘It wasn’t easy. We backed into him, based on your theory about Jack. The thought that maybe he hired somebody to murder his wife.’

I’m all ears.