Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

“My father has a special bottle of 1948 Glenfiddich. He’s had it for thirty years and refuses to open it, like it’s liquid gold.”

Well, how could I possibly refuse?

She led me back to the living room, where a fire was roaring in a truck-size fireplace. No lights were on inside the room; the only illumination came from the evocatively flickering flames. She made herself a vodka gimlet and me a tall glass of scotch, and then we sat on a brown leather couch that faced the big fire. I savored that first sip and guessed it was probably worth about two hundred dollars. It wouldn’t bankrupt old Homer, but it would give him a little something to remember me by.

After a long while staring at the fire, Mary said, “Sean, I need to tell you something. No matter how this turns out, I’m going to divorce Bill. I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier. What a miserable marriage we had.”

I nodded, because we both knew I wasn’t expected to offer any comment or condolence. He was my client. She was my former girlfriend. My prescribed role was to stoically absorb this news.

She lifted her glass and took another sip. She said, “Bill and I haven’t had sex in over two years.”

“Gee, two years. That’s a long time,” I replied awkwardly, because if you had to pick the most hazardous topic in the world for us to be discussing as we sat all alone in this big house, well, here it was. I added, “If it’s any consolation, he isn’t having any sex these days, either.”

She stared into her glass and said, “I know about him. What about you?”

“What?”

She stopped staring at the glass and looked at me. “Are you involved… with Katrina, maybe?”

“Uh, no. Our relationship’s professional… or it was… she quit today.”

“That’s too bad. She seemed very nice.”

Which part was too bad? That I wasn’t involved with her or that she was no longer on the team?

She leaned against the arm of the couch and put her feet up on the seat, stretching those tantalizing legs toward me. She chuckled. “Do you remember that week my father was gone and we stayed here?”

“In this old mausoleum? We did that?”

She gave me a light kick in the ribs. “Don’t play the fool with me.”

“I remember.”

“And I hid your clothes and made you walk around naked for two whole days?”

“I wasn’t naked. I wore a towel.”

“A facecloth as I recall.”

“Same principle.”

“Not when you’re wearing it on your head.”

“Well, I’m modest.”

“And on the second morning we were sitting in this very same room, on this very same couch, and Consuela the maid walked in?”

Like I could forget that, either.

Mary’s foot landed in my lap and she started giggling. “You were racing around this room looking for a pillow to hide your private parts.”

“Your father should keep bigger pillows around.”

She laughed and then we sat and stared at the fire some more. Mary was obviously using this opportunity to convey a message. Or maybe two messages, one subtle and one not. That divorce thing was clearly the unsubtle news. The more opaque message was that she might need the services of a rebounder when it happened, and I’d already pushed the ball through the net a few times, so to speak, so I stood in good stead. I pondered all this for a while.

My dear friend Mr. Pudley pondered it as well. He shifted into position, feet in the sprinter’s blocks, and waited for my other brain to catch up.

I finally asked, “Have you been interviewed yet?”

“What?”

“Have you been interviewed, Mary? Has the CIA asked you to sit down with an interrogator to go over your story?”

“No,” she said, sounding off-balance, like, Hey, dope, you’re spoiling the moment here.

“Have you found a lawyer?”

“I haven’t settled on one yet.”

I tore my eyes from the fire. “Mary? Why haven’t they interviewed you yet?”

“I don’t know. I suppose they’ve been busy cleaning up everything else.”

“Uh-huh. Why hasn’t your name hit the news yet? I mean, it’s irresistible. You’d think somebody would leak it.”

She stared at my face. In the firelight she was as beautiful as I’d ever seen her, the light from the flames playing across her sculpted features, occasionally sparking a glint in her blue eyes. Mr. Pudley was getting very upset with me.

She replied, “I’ve been expecting it. I pick up a paper on my way into the office, dreading the headlines. I guess I’ve been lucky.”

“Bullshit,” I said. Softly, but I said it.

“What?”

“You helped snare him.”

She didn’t even flinch. “What makes you think that?”

The important thing to note from her response was that she didn’t say, “No, that’s not true.” I put my glass on the table. “Have you been asked to testify?”

It was her turn to look away and stare at the fire.

“Have you?” I asked, more harshly. “I’ll eventually get a witness list from Golden. I’ll know… eventually. Tell me now.”

“Yes… I’m going to testify.”

“Are you one of Eddie’s witnesses?”

“Yes.”

My lips popped open and shut a few times, like a grounded fish, but no sound came out. She finally stopped staring at the fire and faced me. Her voice turned pleading. “I had no choice. Sean, please, you have to believe me. Imagine how you’d feel if you learned your husband was a traitor. I put up with his affairs, but treason? That bastard used me. He soaked up everything I knew, undermined me, made me part of his treachery.”

My lips were still popping open and shut as I tried to think of something to say, only nothing remotely intelligent was working its way to the surface.

She stood and walked to the mantel. She stared at the flames and began speaking to herself, or the burning logs, or posterity. “I didn’t cause this. He did. And it’s not revenge, it’s self-defense. If I didn’t work with them, I would’ve been ruined. When they were tipped off by their source, they approached me and said it was my choice. I was his wife, for Godsakes. I’d shared everything with him. I would’ve faced professional ruin, disgrace, maybe even prison. I’ve got children, Sean. They didn’t threaten me, but we all knew the stakes.”

That last comment showed she’d been professionally coached. I could picture Eddie saying, “Okay Mary, now listen closely. Since you’re his wife, you’re going to be asked if you’re testifying under duress, if you’re doing this because you were threatened. Wink, wink… you weren’t, right? You’re just doing your patriotic duty. You’re responding like a loyal American to your husband’s infidelity to his country, your country.”

My voice grew cold. “Did you help catch him?”

She paused for a moment, then said, “Sean, I didn’t want it to be true. I thought at first I might be able to prove they were wrong, that their source was lying.” She spun around and faced me. “Think about what this feels like. They’re showing you reports on your husband’s movements, his phone calls, his trips to hotels with strange women. His watchers were standing in my office, shuffling their feet, avoiding my eyes, giving me the names of the women he was screwing, showing me pictures of his latest affair. He was sealing his own fate.”

Her face looked stricken, her body tense, coiled. She was too emotionally immersed to realize how they’d strung her along, how she’d been played. Of course they’d showed her those pictures and let her overhear her husband’s voice making dates with his floozies. If I had to guess, that was Eddie’s idea also. It was definitely his style.

I abruptly stood up. “I have to go.”