Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

While Morris Sawchuck has his eye on the governor’s mansion, he already wields plenty of power as the state’s attorney general. (“Son of a bitch,” she says again.) He’s fifty-seven and Bridget is his third wife. He married her three years ago, and it’s still a subject of gossip among the chattering classes, what with her being twenty-one years younger, and quite a looker, too. There’s talk about the fact they take separate vacations, but Allison already knows that.

Sawchuck met his first wife, Katherine Wolcott, while attending Harvard. They married shortly after he got his BA, and she worked as a legal secretary to support him while he went on to Harvard Law. Five years later, he divorced her for Geraldine Kennedy (no relation to those Kennedys, or at least not close enough to spark invitations to the family compound at Hyannis Port, as one of the stories Allison finds suggests).

Sawchuck didn’t divorce Geraldine. She committed suicide, in 2001. Sits in her BMW with the garage door closed and the engine running and lets the carbon monoxide do its thing. She had, the stories said, been in and out of the hospital and diagnosed manic depressive. There’s one quote attributed to Katherine, which she denies ever making: “I don’t know why I didn’t do that. God knows, when I was married to the cheatin’ son of a bitch, I sure thought about it.”

There were stories. And puzzlement. Katherine was beautiful, and Geraldine had been a stunner as well. Why was it always the guys with gorgeous wives who ended up looking for something else?

Sawchuck never dignified the rumors with a response. He settled into an appropriate period of mourning, threw himself into his work as a prosecutor. He garnered a lot of attention, going after crooked union bosses, Russian mobsters, a gang of child pornographers. Of the last, Sawchuck reportedly said if he could find a way to get them strung up by their nuts in Times Square, he’d do it. Scored him points, although, according to one pundit, it would lose him the child pornographer vote.

Several death threats were made against him. He reportedly now carries a concealed weapon whenever he is out.

A couple of years after Geraldine’s death, he was spotted occasionally with a number of different, and very attractive, women. He got his picture in the papers at play openings, fund-raisers, political functions, usually with someone different on his arm each time. Some talking heads expressed concern that his eye for the ladies might, at some point, prove a political liability. Everyone admired a player, to a point, but players had too many secrets that could rise to the surface and embarrass them later. Like that old Italian president with his harem of strippers, although that guy, man, he made philandering an Olympic sport. Those same pundits said that before Sawchuck pursued his ambitions for higher office, he’d have to settle down, or at least appear to.

And then came Bridget.

A onetime fashion model with jet black hair who stands five-ten in her stocking feet-she has a passing resemblance to Allison herself-she works for a prestigious public relations firm with offices in SoHo, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. She had organized an event to raise funds to build a kids’ baseball diamond in an underprivileged area-a favorite cause of the attorney general’s-and they appeared to hit it off from the get-go. A whirlwind courtship-as they say-followed, and before some kid who doesn’t have enough money for breakfast can run to first base, the two are engaged. Three months later, they’re married.

Sawchuck, Allison’s research finds, has powerful friends from across the political spectrum, but the majority of them are on the right. He knows two former vice presidents, one Republican, one Democrat, well enough to have them to dinner at his home whenever they’re in town.

Oh, and there’s something else that’s of particular interest to Allison. The dude is loaded.

Estimated worth falls into the “holy shit” category. Most of it inherited. You don’t make that kind of money working for the state, unless you are very, very dirty, and there’s nothing to suggest Morris Sawchuck is, even if his closest friend and adviser, Howard Talliman (nickname: Howard the Taliban) has been known to cut a few corners here and there. Morris’s father, Graham, had been a big-time real estate developer and owned a couple of dozen skyscrapers in Manhattan. Sawchuck inherited the business when his father died, which is now run at arm’s length to avoid any allegations of conflict of interest. Sawchuck doesn’t mind having property and more money than anyone like Allison can even imagine, but what he really craves is attention and influence and the high profile, and he’s found the best way to get it is through the relentless pursuit of those who break the law. Everybody loves a crusader.

Allison jumps from Web page to Web page, finding more information about how much money Sawchuck has. Millions, for sure, if not billions.

It’s enough to make one’s head spin.

Looks like she might be able to get what she needs to pay back Courtney, and buy herself a new pair of Manolo Blahniks, too. Girl always needs new shoes.

SHE paces the apartment for the better part of an hour, practicing what she’s going to say. She doesn’t want it to sound like out-and-out blackmail. What she’s really looking for is a loan. Except, unlike most loans, this would be one she gets to pay back on the installment plan. Payments stretched out over, say, the next couple of thousand years. So, okay, maybe it’s more like a gift she’s seeking. But is that such a big deal? All that money, how big a deal can it be to throw a few thousand her way? And Allison can return the favor. No doubt about it. Allison knows just the right way to show gratitude. And not by putting her mouth in some special place to make someone happy.

She can show gratitude by keeping that mouth shut. That’s her way of saying thank you.

She can decide not to go to the Daily News or the Times or the Post. Or one of those TV shows, like Dateline.

Won’t that be a nice thing not to do?

Because something like this, coming out, well, that’s not going to help Mr. I-Want-to-Be-Governor one little bit.

Maybe she’s not even going to have to get to that point. She won’t have to mention the newspapers or the TV shows. Maybe she’ll have a check in her hands seconds after she says the words “I know who you are.”

Allison picks up her cell, starts to enter in the number she was given, then stops. Her heart is pounding. Making up stories to get money out of her mother, that’s one thing.

This is something else again.

This is what happens when a girl leaves Dayton for the big city.

“HELLO?”

“It’s me. It’s Allison.”

“What-Allison?”

“Yeah, Allison. Remember me?”

“Of course I-look, I really can’t talk now.”

“We need to get together.”

“This isn’t a good time.”

“I saw you on the news.”

“You-what?”

“I had no idea. No idea at all who you are. How’d you forget to mention something like that? First, that you’re married, and second, that-”

“Look, Allison, I’ll try to give you a call in a week or two. There’s a lot going on right now. If you saw the news, you know things are starting to heat up in the campaign and…and…there are other problems. A possible investigation of-”

“You remember where we first hooked up?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Be there at three. Before it gets busy, and you can still make it to Lincoln Center or Broadway or whatever thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner you have to go to tonight.”

“I can’t meet with you. We can’t-I’m really sorry but we can’t be seen together.”