T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

“So all my staff have worked in other congressional offices?”

“Congress, committees, two have pulled stints in the White House. All but one are Washington old-timers.”

“Carter Styles,” he guessed.

“Very good, Congressman. I must be very careful not to underestimate you.”

“How do you know these things?”

“It’s my job. I have a file on every congressman, senator, senior staffer, cabinet member, and White House flunkey. Every one of them needs to be tracked and identified. What they are passionate about, which issues they could be flexible over, where they go, who their allies are.”

“It sounds like I could learn a lot from you.”

“So much. So very much indeed.”

Wynn was intrigued by the way this woman switched from business to intimacy with a look, a word, a tip of her tongue tracing the edge of her teeth. “You had some request of your own?”

“Graham Hutchings was a professional acquaintance. I have long wanted to go by and pay my respects, but it’s not a journey I wish to make on my own. I was wondering if I might possibly impose.”

“You don’t want me.”

“Oh, Congressman. .” Valerie finished with a very pretty smile.

“No. Really.” Utterly serious now. “Esther Hutchings and I are enemies from way back.”

“Then this is the perfect opportunity for you as well. You must go by and pay your respects, Wynn. Listen to me. I know this town. You’ve been appointed to replace a man who has been debilitated by his work. A visit is required. It is the absolute minimum in decorum. What is the worst that could possibly happen?”

“She might gnaw my head off.”

“I doubt that very much.” This time the hand did come to rest upon his arm. “Now you really must regale me with the tale of this bad blood. I positively thrive on such gossip.”

“Not a chance in this world.”

From coquettish to serious in the span of one breath. “Go, Wynn. Do this thing. Or you will be buried by people unearthing the tale and spreading it far and wide. Embellished, inflamed, and made immeasurably worse.”

He accepted his defeat by finishing his drink and setting the glass on the tray of a passing waiter. “All right.”

“Excellent. Shall we say six-thirty Friday?” She graced him with a full-wattage smile. “Come now, Wynn. It won’t be that bad. And afterward I’ll offer you a fine dinner somewhere. My treat.”

As she walked away, Wynn caught sight of the priest slipping through the exit. The little man did not necessarily look his way, perhaps he just glanced at the room as a whole. But it was enough to repaint the evening a darker shade and turn Wynn’s idle longing to dust.

Thursday

Jackie awoke to a skyless dawn. She stretched muscles made doubly tired by hours of frustrated cleaning, and stepped onto her tiny balcony. Somewhere close overhead the firmament was swallowed and gone, replaced by a seamless gray nothing. No wind, no sound, nothing to mask the humid heat or the din already rising from the awakening city. One look was enough to confirm that the weather perfectly suited her plans for the day ahead.

Her reflection in the single remaining fragment of her bathroom mirror looked grim and weary. She prepared camp-style coffee, boiling water in a battered pot, then pouring it directly over the grounds in her only intact mug. As she sipped the bitter brew, Jackie surveyed the final three bags of formerly precious trash.

The apartment was utterly bare. Every scar and yellowed seam was revealed, every fray and stain in the carpet, every fabrication of a life precariously stitched together. Jackie felt more than exposed. She felt violated.

Jackie dressed in her standard mourning garb-black calfskin boots, black jeans, black T-shirt, black velvet hair ribbon. She did not need her shredded wall calendar to know the date. The monthly routine was branded upon her soul with a lifetime’s acrid heat.

She closed her flimsily repaired door and carried the last of the trash bags downstairs. As she walked down the drive, a voice called from out front. Jackie carried the bags with her, both because they were in her hands and because it would be a genuine excuse to leave.

Millicent’s doctor asked her, “You all right?”

“Fine.” At least she was not damaged where it showed.

“Millicent said something about wolves in gray jackets.”

“I was burglarized.” She glanced at her watch, not because she was late, but merely to show she had things to do.

The doctor gave no indication he had noticed. Now that he was semiretired, Dr. Crouch fought to slow all the world to his own pace. He was old enough to remember when house calls were expected, and too stubborn to change. “You call the cops?”

“There wasn’t anything stolen. Just wrecked. And you know Millicent.”

“She didn’t want to open the door for me, thought maybe a social service type was hiding behind a tree.” He frowned at the bags. “You still ought to file a report.”

She gave a noncommittal shrug. “How is Millicent?”

“Crazy as a loon. But other than that, not too bad. You still doing her shopping?”

“Twice a week. Today, in fact.”

“Get her some Cream of Wheat. Had to hide her bottom dentures. Looks like her gums are infected again.” He stared at the sagging empty porch. “She moved her mattress and bedsprings into the front parlor.”

“All by herself?”

“Sure didn’t get any help from me. Millicent says there’s less moonlight on the street side, which means the beasts don’t howl so loud.”

“She told me the burglars were cursing something awful,” Jackie replied, hating how she had caused the old lady to worry.

“She keeps the downstairs rooms clean as a whistle, is all I know. She takes her medicine and she dresses herself, in a manner of speaking. ’Course, the way things are now, yellow leg warmers with a neon green cocktail dress and black sneakers might be high fashion.”

Jackie started toward the curb. “Let me know if I need to do something for her.”

Crouch called after her, “Know what Millicent told me this morning? You’re a good daughter. I said she could take that right to the bank.”

Jackie dumped her load with the other bags and lengthened her stride back to the Camaro. Crouch’s words merely darkened the day’s already bitter cast. She backed down the drive, ignoring the doctor’s hesitant wave. The motor rumbled deep-throated taunts all the way to her mother’s nursing home. Good sister, daughter, student, fiancée-all the lies she had watched crumble, all the energy lost to pretending it didn’t matter.

The nursing home’s front door expelled the harsh scent of industrial cleanser. The place was extremely Catholic and packed with religious ornaments and nurses in the white headdresses of the full-on devout. Jackie had come here because it was the only Medicare bed available when her mother had suffered the stroke. Now she counted it as one of the luckiest days of her life. Nobody else would have put up with her mother for this long.

Like many of the home’s staff, the manager was Ghanaian, stoic, and quietly sympathetic. The heavyset woman rose from her desk and beamed a welcome far too genuine for this place. “Miss Jackie, what you doing here so early? I didn’t expect you before lunchtime.”

“I’ve taken a couple of days off work. Thought I’d come over before things got busy.”

“If I had me a day free, sure to goodness I wouldn’t be spending it here.”

Jackie started grimly for the stairs. “How’s Mom?”

“She’s drinking her own bile and dying just as fast as she knows how. Same as always.” Knowing dark eyes followed her departure. “Don’t you go be doing the same, mind.”