Jeff Abbott - A Kiss Gone Bad

After lunch, Whit interviewed from the bench a Port Leo woman who had told her sisters and neighbors over the past week that President Kennedy was living in their attic, hiding from the Cuban missiles, and dallying with an aged Marilyn Monroe. The assassination in Dallas and suicide in Hollywood never happened and Kennedy, now with a shaved head and a beard, had been fishing along the bays of the Texas coast ever since with his blond companion. The woman claimed she employed them as a gardener and maid on occasion. For their protection and hers, she had taken to carting around a loaded pistol that was a family heirloom.

Whit nodded solemnly through her recitation of her reality. She’d shaved her eyebrows and she often ran a finger along the hairless, ghostly arches, as though twisting the reels that played for her mind’s eye.

The woman said, ‘Mr President adores the water, but he just couldn’t show his face on the East Coast again. And the rest of the Gulf Coast is closer to Cuba.’ She lowered her voice. ‘West Coast, too many cameras. And they shot Bobby there. That’s why Jack stayed here. And that’s why I keep the gun handy. Protection.’

‘That’s considerate of you,’ Whit said. Her two sisters stood to one side, crying quietly. The woman smiled serenely as Whit signed the warrant to detain and transport her to a medical facility for a psychiatric review. Whit – as gentle as a summer breeze – explained to the woman that she would go to see some doctors at Port Leo Memorial. She smiled, determined to indulge him in this silliness. The constable led the woman and her sisters away. Traffic court didn’t seem so bad then.

Court concluded, he walked down the private hall back to his small office, shrugged out of his robe (wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and Birkenstock sandals underneath), and hung it carefully on its hanger. He’d made three phone calls to the Nueces County medical examiner this afternoon, quick breaks between cases, and they hadn’t cut into Pete yet. To make matters worse, a downtown drug deal had soured last night in Corpus Christi and three twenty-year-olds had shotgunned each other into oblivion. A woman had been found strangled over in Ingleside, and apparently Pete Hubble, senator’s son, warranted no special rank to break ahead in the line of corpses. The deputy medical examiner, Liz Contreras, promised she would call him as soon as she had some details.

A musical, double-knuckled knock rapped at his door. ‘Hey there, Whit!’ Buddy Beere stuck his head in, with miles of smiles for his esteemed opponent.

‘Hello, Buddy. How can I help you?’

You could vacate this office for me in a couple of weeks was the answer Whit imagined flitting across Buddy’s mind, but instead Buddy offered Whit a friendly hand. ‘I wanted to invite you. To a debate. Between you and me.’

Whit shook the proffered hand and Buddy sat down, uninvited. He reminded Whit of a teddy bear gone to seed. He was more stocky than pudgy, in his early forties, with brown hair straggling across his head. In campaigning he smiled a lot, as though grinning were as expected as breathing, crowing an ill-defined platform he termed ‘real judicial fairness,’ as though Whit managed the justice court with all the probity of a Salem witch trial.

‘What exactly would we debate, Buddy?’ Whit asked. ‘Would you sign arrest warrants differently than me?’ Probably would. With a little happy face drawn next to his signature.

Buddy shook his head. ‘No. I mean on the critical issues facing voters. No offense, Whit, but your daddy, bless him, sort of waltzed you onto the bench and the voters don’t know much about you.’ As if that was Buddy’s responsibility to fix, and as soon as he did Whit’s unrobed ass would hit pavement. ‘Other than your fondness for too-casual apparel.’

‘Don’t know me? I’ve lived here most of my life, and my family’s been here since Texas was part of Mexico. What’s to know?’

‘Well, I was sitting in the back of the courtroom earlier. Observing. You sentenced those teenage smokers to community service. You could have given them a two-hundred-dollar fine.’

‘Those kids are all from families living out at Port Leo Country Club, and community service will make a bigger impression than scribbling a check. They ought to get their hands slapped and a little dirty.’

‘Well, we could debate the rightness of that real easy,’ Buddy said with satisfaction.

Whit watched Buddy eyeing the black robe hanging in the corner. ‘Buddy, don’t you already have a good job down at the nursing home?’

‘Sure do.’ Buddy was an administrator at Port Leo’s one nursing home, down in a crook of St Leo Bay.

‘Well, then why do you want my job? It can’t possibly pay you as well as the nursing home does.’

Buddy’s florid mouth worked. ‘I want to make a difference in people’s lives.’

‘Buddy, I frankly don’t know what we would debate about. I sentence to community service – you’d do a fine. Big effing deal.’

Buddy’s smile tightened at the brush with profanity. ‘How about debating moral fiber?’

‘Moral fiber? I’m opposed to it. Unless it fights colon cancer.’

‘I’ve heard you’ve been keeping company with a woman of less-than-sterling repute.’

‘Are we talking about Pete Hubble’s friend?’ God, not Faith, he thought.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I heard,’ Whit said, ‘that you were keeping company with Pete and his friend Velvet as well.’ A junior high refrain: I heard she heard you said they said.

Buddy’s smile died a natural death. ‘You better not be spying on me.’

‘Is it true?’

‘Why not just have me testify at the inquest?’ Buddy asked, and Whit smelled a stinky political ploy.

‘Buddy, I’m not subpoenaing you when we’re running against each other.’

Buddy tugged at his lower lip, like a reluctant tattletale. ‘Well

… I was out campaigning and Pete stopped me. He wanted to know how he could get close to his family again. He had been a disappointment to them and he wanted to make amends.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘To leave town. No one wanted him here at all.’

State Senator Lucinda Hubble kept a collection of heads on the top shelf in her study. Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton represented the presidents; for the governors of Texas she had George W. Bush, Ann Richards, Mark White, Bill Clements, and Dolph Briscoe. All grinned like decapitated clowns, rubbery skin sagging without bones. Their false-lipped mouths gaped, caught between mirthful smile and slackened grimace. Lucinda also had one of herself, complete with trademark puffy red hair and big azure-framed eyeglasses.

Whit had arrived ten minutes ago, a little past four. The housekeeper, a dour Vietnamese sparrow of a woman, told him Faith was out, Lucinda was on the phone, and would he mind waiting in the senator’s study? Anything to eat or drink? she offered. The kitchen and dining room tables creaked under the weight of the collected casseroles and salads and pies brought by neighbors and churchwomen and by the Democratic power elite. But only a few mourners stood gathered, nodding with awkward sympathy.

He wondered if the truth about Pete was leaking, like a slow hiss from a balloon. Faith had stood him up, perhaps off conducting damage control. What would people say to Lucinda? Sorry your son’s dead or sorry he turned out so badly? The Democrats in the living room looked fretful. He followed the housekeeper and sat, studying the study.

Underneath the political gallery of plastic masks stood an old pinball machine themed BIG SPENDER, with a fat cat tossing bills to an admiring crowd of 1920s zoot suiters and flappers. Prominently behind her desk were her framed nursing certificates, yellowing with age. On the wall hung an array of photos: Lucinda Hubble with President Bush, with President Clinton, with Willie Nelson and Ann Richards, with a steady parade of Texas celebrities. In each picture Lucinda gave a thumbs-up, as though marking another successful conquest. Lucinda’s office was almost too relaxed for a politician.